by Ben Jeapes
“That’s it,” he whispered. Ted peered over the stone tomb at the source of the swirling colours, and the sight of the thing thudded into the back of his brain because suddenly he wanted it, he wanted it so badly, it was the biggest want ever.
It hung thirty feet up in the air directly beneath the tower, in the wide open space where the nave and the quire and the two transepts met. It was like an endless recursion of information that receded into the distance and up and down and across, and probably back and forth into other dimensions too. It was beauty and sex and fascination. Shades and shapes writhed and spiralled and squirmed within it, sending out the splashes of colour that they had already seen. It was never the same twice and his eyes could barely latch onto it. Ted could believe it was the way home because it looked like it should be – a vortexy wormholey twisty kind of thing that people would step into in all the right kind of movies. But home was the last thing on his mind right now. All of his mind was taken up with want.
It wasn’t like he wanted food when he was hungry. It wasn’t like he wanted to play a cool new game that had just come out. It wasn’t like wanting to look at porn or wanting Robert to get better or wanting STOOPID to make him rich and famous. Every satisfaction he had ever had in body and mind and spirit was just the merest shadow of the fulfilment he would feel if he could only own this.
“Let’s get closer,” Robert said eagerly. Ted looked quickly down at him, then back at where they had been. He had already taken several steps forward without even realising. He nodded and they scuttled further down the row of pillars together.
It’s going to be mine, it’s going to be mine ...
But the thing had over-reached itself. The want burned in Ted so badly that instinctive self-preservation kicked in like a circuit breaker. Nothing he ever wanted came this easily. There could be people watching. There could be CCTV.
“Hang on ... hang on–” Ted had to make his legs stop moving, and he put his hands on Robert’s shoulders to hold him back while he peered carefully into the dark corners of the cathedral, though he felt he barely had the willpower even for a cursory glance. His eyes just wanted to glance off the shadows and go back to the glowing thing that hung in the air. But if he felt that happen, he made himself look more closely into the dark. He just wanted to be in the thing and for the thing to be his, but if anyone was going to catch them doing this, now would be the time ...
Robert knocked his hands away and jumped over the stone platform into the nave. Ted whispered as loudly and insistently as he dared:
“Robs!”
But Robert ignored him and walked quite openly towards the thing, head high and shoulders back. Ted took one final look to confirm there wasn’t anyone about and hurried after him again. If the witch lurked in some nook or cranny that he hadn’t spotted – well, it was too late now.
“Look at it–” Robert breathed. His face was wreathed in wonder. “It’s so close–” But then he stopped, so abruptly that Ted walked into him. “I ... I can’t go any further, Ted!” He looked up at his brother and his face crumpled into fear and worry. “I can’t go any further! Help me, Ted!”
Ted took one last look around and decided that this was it. He took Robert’s hand.
“Come on,” he said. Robert smiled gratefully and they stepped out together.
Something swatted into Ted’s mind. It felt like a physical touch but at the same time it just seemed to slip away. He paused, annoyed that something seemed to be trying to keep him away from the prize, but there was nothing there and so he carried on walking. The same thing happened again. He could feel something in his head, trying to get a grip, but it couldn’t hang on. It was like walking head first through a mass of curtains. There was resistance, but if you kept going you could just push through. He could say to himself, this doesn’t apply to me, and it didn’t.
The suggestion formed inside his head that he should go back. It was something between a small whisper in his ear and a voice a long way away screaming at him, but he didn’t particularly see why he should listen to it – not when the sight of every satisfaction he had ever wanted filled his eyes and his thoughts and his heart.
They were almost at the thing, positioned exactly between the four mighty pillars that held the weight of the tower. The colours of the shifting dimensions filled Ted’s entire being as he gazed up at it. He remembered he had a reason for being here but somehow he couldn’t quite remember what it was. All that mattered was that he was here, and the thing knew it.
It no longer brushed against his mind. His mind was suddenly seized by a firm grip, hard enough that he cried out loud. He felt it drive into his skull and crack it open. It had driven a tunnel down into his deepest thoughts and it was about to pour into it – everything. It would hurt, it was terrifying, but there was no going back.
“Yes!” he shouted.
“Not for you, boy!”
It was a man’s voice, amplified enough to fill the building. A mighty force swatted him away. The breath was knocked out of him as he hit the floor and he skidded back down the stone flags, coming to rest at the foot of a pillar.
Robert stood in the exact centre of the space beneath the tower with his hands held high. His face was exultant and radiant as the thing lowered itself upon him.
Ted struggled to his feet with only one thought: to get his brother out of there.
“Robs … what?!”
It was no longer Robert who stood there with his arms reaching towards the ceiling but an old man, clad in flowing robes. The man Ted had last seen in a pencil sketch on his laptop screen. The man shot him a glance and gestured casually. Again the force slammed into Ted and he flew further back down the aisle as if the cathedral itself were rejecting him. The impact of landing winded him worse than before. He clambered groggily back to his feet, ready to make yet another attempt to get to his brother, wherever he had gone. The thing was now so low that the old man was almost hidden.
The doors at the West Front crashed open and the witch tore down the aisle like an express train, robes billowing behind her and horror stamped on her face. The man’s mad laughter echoed around the cathedral.
“My prize, witch! My prize!”
She stopped some distance away from the storm of light that completely obscured Robert. Now there was only the faintest outline of a person hidden in there.
Ted clutched a pillar for support.
“Please–” he begged. He no longer wanted the prize – that desire lay like a burnt-out husk inside him. He had no idea what was happening but enough was going wrong that he would even ask the witch for help. “Please help my brother–”
The witch turned on him with a face dark with fury. With a roar, she raised a hand and pushed Ted away. He fell back, away from the light and the witch and the cathedral. He tumbled through the walls and the city of all-the-Salisburys dropped away from him into the dark.
THURSDAY
Chapter 12
Robert and Ted lay in beds on either side of the room and the old man hovered between them, one ghostly, wizened hand held over each boy’s head. Stephen could just see the pattern of the wallpaper through the man’s robes. He sat in the room’s one chair and nervously chewed the skin around his nails.
He was finally having time to think and he wasn’t happy with the thoughts. He checked his watch. Quarter past one in the morning, give or take. It had been a couple of hours now.
He had had to sneak out of the house without his mum noticing, which wasn’t hard. Thereafter it had all been a blur, most of it spent on his bike for the surprisingly long and apparently all uphill journey to the hospice. He couldn’t believe Ted did this journey by bike almost every day, but Ted was a lot fitter than he was. The night porter at the desk hadn’t even looked up as he came in – his new friend said he had somehow clouded the man’s mind. And then it was up to Robert’s room, where they found Ted like this.
Ted lay curled up on top of his duvet on a camp bed, but it wasn’t a peaceful
sleep. Whatever had knocked him out, he hadn’t gone quietly. His face was stamped with a frown, his breathing was rapid and the eyes beneath his lids flickered rapidly back and forth.
By now Stephen’s legs had stopped throbbing and he had got his breath back. The old man was doing something but it was on a plane way above Stephen’s understanding. He didn’t want to interrupt but questions were rising to the top of his mind, and foremost among them was: why exactly am I here? What am I contributing? Am I just to be a friendly face when Ted wakes up?
The man suddenly arched his back and shouted at the ceiling.
“My prize, witch! My prize!”
His face when he lowered it again was exultant. Proud. Cruel.
“It is done–” the man whispered, as though he could barely believe it: as if something years in the planning had finally happened. He locked eyes with Stephen as a shark might exchange glances with a swimmer. He spoke again and his voice rose with each word. “It is done!”
“Uh ... great–” Stephen mumbled. “Okay. But ... what do I do? Exactly? I mean, I, uh, can’t really see how I’m going to be useful–”
“Useful?” It was a harsh, dismissive bark of laughter. “Oh, dear boy, you could never be more useful than you are now. This is the moment you were born for.”
From his robes he produced a jewelled glass vial the size of a whisky flask. He knocked back the contents with a single movement, and threw it aside. And then he was walking slowly towards Stephen. Stephen leaned back in his chair, then scrambled awkwardly out as it seemed the man was going to lie down on top of him. His back bumped into the wall.
“Hey ... what–”
The old man was closer, so close that he filled Stephen’s vision. The smell of his robes was like a shirt that has lain in the clothes basket for too long and his breath was cold and dry on Stephen’s face, but when Stephen tried to push him away his hands went straight through the image. Stephen felt the man pressing into him: quite literally into him, through every pore and every sense.
Stephen stumbled away from the wall, tripped over the chair, sprawled on the floor. It made no difference: whichever way he turned his head the man was still in front of him, growing in his perception, clinging like an alien parasite, merging into his being. He pressed back the boundaries that defined Stephen and filled the gap with his own presence. He forced himself into Stephen’s mind – every nook and cranny, every private space – and always Stephen felt himself pushed further and further back.
He screamed, but by now the man had such total control of Stephen’s body that no sound came out.
*
A new body! Young and healthy and with many years ahead of it.
He flexed his neck, moved his arms and legs experimentally, took some steps around the room. The physical frame was a little overweight, the muscles underdeveloped; however, the brain! He probed the edges of his mind’s new home and delighted. His patience was rewarded. The desires he had fuelled in the boy, and the self-denial, and the mental discipline, had forged iron bonds of self-control. Little by little, bit by bit, for sixteen years he had lived in Stephen’s subconscious. He had made sure that the neurons of his brain connected just so. This brain had created STOOPID – something that was less than a child’s toy – and now that was gone but the neural channels remained, perfectly fitted for the top levels of the Knowledge that now flowed through them.
He was alone in his head. The boy was gone. Good. There were things to be getting on with – it wasn’t all over yet. He had to consolidate his power. He had taken steps to make sure no one would interfere with him for the time being, but it wouldn’t last. As he grew in power, he would attract people’s attention. Many would try to oppose him and most would fail but maybe ... who knew? Some shaman in a yurt in outer Mongolia; some witch doctor in darkest Brazil from a tribe that had yet to see a white person; someone, somewhere, where some trace of the Knowledge lived on. Just knowing he existed could be all the inspiration they would need and they would arise to fight him.
Well, he thought, bring it on. I can take on anyone. I have the means, right here in this room.
Through the link in his mind with Robert he could sense the Knowledge that squirmed within the younger boy. He had stolen it from where the witch and her ilk had hidden it and he had carefully poured it into the empty container that was Robert’s head. An association from his new body’s old memory intruded into his mind: he was the laptop running the program, and Robert was the memory stick that he needed to contain the data, because the data exceeded his own drive capacity. Of course, his own capacity would expand, with further years of discipline and practice: then he would be able to take it all inside himself and dispose of Robert. For the time being he would have to keep it in the boy and keep the boy close to him.
Now to see what he could do with it. He stood in the middle of Robert’s room and let his awareness creep out into the building around him.
“Oh, yes–” he breathed.
He stood in one square of a grid of shadows – the walls and floors of the hospice. A small constellation of diamond-bright flames shone all around, one in each room – the fires that dwelt in the heart of each resident. The fires in Robert and Ted were the brightest, shining like a magnesium flare. Just a few feet away was another fire, almost as bright: the child in the next room.
Out of curiosity he reached in his mind towards this flame and squeezed. The fire went out.
“Heh.”
There were other flames too. The room on the other side of this one. The rooms across the hall. One, two, snuffed into nothing.
The building was full of these little flames. Hmm. He could have just stood here and picked them off, one by one, but he had better things to be doing. This was sport, nothing more. It was time to get serious.
There was one more to deal with, though. He looked down at Ted, still lying peacefully in his bed. Oh, yes. He felt a pang of regret that the tool he had crafted so carefully over the years had to be disposed of after a single use, but as he had used the boy for a particular purpose, so too could others. He could not afford to leave Ted lying around. He reached into Ted’s heart and squeezed.
He hissed and withdrew quickly. It had been like taking hold of a hot bit of metal that scorched his hand. The flame of Ted’s heart continued to burn as bright as before.
A familiar presence flooded the room and he looked up. The witch stood over the unconscious boy and her eyes blazed with furious tears.
“Thief! Murderer!”
“Witch,” he acknowledged.
“You cannot have this child!”
“‘Child’?” His mouth twisted into a sneer. “By the time we were this child’s age we had completed our first two scrolls. I was master of over twelve rituals.”
“You cannot have him!” she repeated.
Her image flickered and only someone who knew her very well – like him – could have seen the strain on her face. He grinned.
“This must be taking all your strength. I just killed three innocents and you choose to protect my accomplice?”
“He is almost a man and he has the best chance of stopping you.”
“Stop me? Stop me? Dearest sister, why should anyone want to stop me? I am saving us.”
“You will destroy us!”
“The Knowledge is a volcano waiting to blow. That will destroy us. I have tapped it. It can be controlled.”
“It will control you.”
“It controls those who are weak. At the moment, sister, the weak one is you. You would preserve a gangrenous limb and then wonder why the body died. I know how to make sacrifices.”
“You will not sacrifice this one.”
“I could beat you down eventually.”
“I am guessing you must have other plans. Better things to be doing than murdering more children.”
“How insightful you have become.” His eyes darted down to Ted, then back up to her. “You were never one to make conversation for its own sake. Y
ou have a disciple here.”
There was a flicker on her face, and again, he knew her well enough to detect it.
“And he–” Another flicker. “She? She is on her way.” His laugh was abrupt and dismissive. “If you want to fight me, possess her as I possessed my own.”
“You have murdered your own! I will never lower myself to your level.”
“Until you cross over fully, you will never be as strong as me here. You do know that?”
He turned away without waiting for an answer. She was right – he had things to be doing. He crossed to Robert’s bed and pushed his will into the space he had left in the boy’s head for basic functions.
“Get up.”
Robert looked up at him, then pushed back the duvet and stood. The witch stood and watched and seethed, but could do nothing to intervene – not without letting down her guard over Ted.
“Put your dressing gown– no, wait.”
Robert’s gown hung on the back of the door. The thief was aware of it with his new senses – a gown-shaped zone of gownness. He took hold of that zone in his head and willed it towards Robert. The zone, that part of the universe that defined the structure of the gown, moved towards the boy and the gown by definition moved with it. It rose from its hook behind the door and floated across the room.
Then a wave of dizziness swept over him and the gown crumpled to the floor. The thief had to put a hand out quickly to steady himself against the wall. He hung his head to clear it and seethed at the tiny level of satisfaction he picked up from the witch.
Very well. The effort had almost exhausted him and he would have to work up to greater things by degrees. But he had lifted the gown, and even that was a tiny, insignificant thing compared to what he would be able to do in a few short hours, as his grasp of the Knowledge matured.
For now, he wasn’t quite up to willing the gown onto the boy. He helped Robert into it the mundane way, while the boy stood mutely in his passive trance.
