Darkness Rising

by Mary Jennifer Payne

  “Red,” I whisper back to her. “Remember your elastic. They grow stronger if we’re afraid. They feed on fear and anger.”

  “Well, sod this,” Sara says, drawing her thick lips together. “I’m not mucking about, waiting for that lot to break in and kill us. I’m getting my pole and going out there. We have a ride to catch. Jasmine and Lily, you can back us up and grab curtain rods from the bedroom.”

  The rest of us nod in agreement. As we turn to get our weapons, there’s a final, thunderous boom as the door to the apartment finally surrenders and slams open against the wall.

  JADE

  We follow Mick down the station platform. He motions at us with a sharp wave of his hand as he turns to the right, toward a low archway. There’s already another lit cigarette clamped between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. I watch the little red beacon at its tip disappear along with Mick.

  I glance up and down the shadowy platform as Mr. Khan and Amara enter the archway. Is it safe for us to just follow this guy? After all, we’re in a subway station. That could definitely mean demons, and we don’t have a clue where Mick is taking us. By following him into a place with a single entrance/exit, we may be willingly and stupidly getting ourselves into a very dangerous situation.

  “Come on, Jade,” Amara says, impatiently waving her hand at me. “Hello?”

  I realize I’ve stopped walking. “Two seconds,” I say. Looking up and down the platform, I try to scout any alternate exits, in case we need to make a quick getaway.

  “Girl, don’t make me carry you in here,” Amara says. I can tell by her voice that she’s only half-joking.

  There’s no other way out. As I jog back to Amara, I can’t help but be more than a bit surprised that Mr. Khan is so casually following this guy. Amara’s a first-born, so it’s understandable that she’s a little less cautious. Yet, it’s undeniable that we’re safer if we’re together — even if we’re not as strong as we would be with our sisters.

  Amara raises an eyebrow at me as I approach her.

  “Sorry,” I say, though I’m not at all. As I step under the tiled archway behind her, something flashes in my peripheral vision. It’s only for a second, but I could swear a shadowy figure just ran across the tracks toward the side we’re on. And, though it sounds crazy, I’m sure it’s Seth. My stomach turns uneasily. That nauseous feeling is back. Big time.

  “Take a seat,” Mick says as we step inside. He points at two empty chairs. We’re in a small alcove that’s furnished with a couple of lamps and a card table with four chairs. Mick and Mr. Khan are already seated at the table, an opened bottle of Irish whiskey and two glasses between them.

  “I really don’t drink,” Mr. Khan says, as Mick pushes one of the glasses toward him.

  “I don’t trust a man that doesn’t drink or a woman that doesn’t wear makeup!” Mick proclaims, picking up his glass and throwing the whiskey back in one gulp. He slams the glass back down on the plastic tabletop with a hammer-like bang. “You’re up,” he says, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “I don’t drink,” Mr. Khan repeats, his voice calm. “I’m Muslim. It’s haram.”

  “One of London’s best mayors — if not the very best — was Mooslim,” Mick says with a wide smile. “Back about ten years ago he finished up. Sadiq Khan. Maybe one of your relatives? Son of a bus driver and cared about us, the regular people. The working class and the poor. Not many of us left in the city any longer, though. Despite his best efforts, London’s just the filthy rich and the begging classes now. So at least drink to him, to Khan, because everything went to shite directly after his mayoralty ended.” Mick pours himself another as he speaks. “C’mon, mate. Allah won’t know. And I won’t tell, neither,” he says with a wink.

  Mr. Khan’s eyes widen at Mick’s suggestion.

  “Give it here,” Amara says, reaching across the table with lightning speed to pick up the shot glass. She throws it back in one go like Mick did.

  “Looks like the girl has more balls than you,” Mick says with a laugh, as Amara clamps her hand across her mouth, eyes bulging.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Mr. Khan says. I nearly laugh at that. After all, what would Mick say if he knew Amara and I could snap him in half like a twig faster than he could do up the fly on his pants?

  “All right, ladies, have a seat, then,” Mick says, pulling one the chairs out with the toe of his boot. “You’ve bloody well earned it.”

  Mick leans forward on his elbows as we sit down. The stench of the whiskey is now rolled into all the other offensive smells wafting off him. I lean as far back in my chair as possible while still being somewhat discreet.

  “Let me get straight to the crux of the matter. None of you has a chip,” he says, his eyes dark with concern. “Just like us. How is that possible, if you’ve been up there for any length of time?”

  “Up there?” Amara says. “What do you mean?”

  “In London. Above ground. What did you think I meant?” Mick says with a sandpapery laugh. “No more whiskey for you.”

  “What Mr. Khan said is true. We haven’t been in London at all,” I say. At least not in 2032 CE. But I’m not about to say that to Mick. “We’ve somehow ended up here from Toronto. I think it might’ve had something to do with that virtual reality gaming technology we were using. The developer said it was pretty new, didn’t he?” I say, staring hard at Amara and Mr. Khan.

  “Yeah, yeah, he did,” Amara says, nodding a little more enthusiastically than I’d like. “And I pressed London. I wanted to see where Jack the Ripper lived.”

  We had an brief encounter with the Ripper’s lost soul the last time we went to the Place-in-Between.

  “The Ripper?” Mick laughs. “Well, you can tell the developer that his game is rubbish. You’re sitting under one of the poshest areas of West London — St John’s Wood. The Ripper lived in the East End of the city, in Whitechapel.” He leans forward again, looking thoughtful. “So you’re telling me this game somehow teleported all of you from Canada to here?”

  “It’s the only explanation that seems feasible,” Mr. Khan says, flashing me a look of gratitude. I’ve got to admit, my story is pretty good, considering I made it up on the fly. At least it seems to have convinced Mick that we’re not MI5 agents or whatever crazy idea was floating around inside his unwashed head.

  “Where’s this game gear now, then? How come you ain’t got it on yer ’eads?” he snaps.

  Damn.

  “I honestly haven’t a clue,” Mr. Khan says, his voice calm. “May I ask why you and your crew down here aren’t microchipped either? I mean, judging by your accents, you’re all local.”

  Mick smiles proudly. “I am. Born and bred in Lewisham and a proud Charlton supporter. Even with the borders closed, we still have the Premier League, we do. The entire lot of us down ’ere aren’t chipped. Some of the younger ones were going to be taken to the camps for breaking their ASBOs. And I’m no friend of the police, so I brought them here. One or two were in the UK illegally, as well. We came together and decided that we weren’t going to let the filth get a hold of us only to deport us, book us, or worst of all, send us to them camps.”

  “What camps?” Amara asks, leaning forward on her elbows. “Do you mean refugee camps? Like where they used to hold climate change refugees while they processed their claims?”

  “Used to?” Mick laughs bitterly. “Those were inhumane holding cells. Sometimes they’d keep people in there for nearly a decade. Babies grew to be children in those prisons, guilty of nothing other than being birthed in the wrong nation and having the wrong skin colour.” He shakes his head. “These camps — the ones the government is running right now — they make those camps from before look like bleedin’ Ibiza, they do.” He stops speaking just long enough to light another cigarette. “Nothing gets processed in these new camps except death certificates. And it’s not just refugees and the like ending up in them. Anyone speaking out against the governmen
t, against the chipping and the like — gone.” Mick snaps his grime-covered thumb against his middle finger. “Faster than you can breathe one, two, three.”

  “How can you possibly know all of this?” Mr. Khan asks. “You’d have to have been in these camps, or else somehow have a way to glean intimate inside knowledge.” He doesn’t have to say what the rest of us are thinking: Mick doesn’t look like someone who would be let in on sensitive government secrets.

  Mick sits back and sucks deeply on his cigarette. “I know a lot more than you’d imagine,” he says. His words are deliberate and slow, and he’s looking at us like a snake might look at three baby mice. Something in his gaze is cold and calculating. “There might be time for me to share some of my secrets with you,” he says, sending a winding trail of smoke into the air above his head. “But we’ll have to see what you can give me in exchange for my secrets. Because the way I see it, the three of you just might be my way out of this place.”

  JASMINE

  A loud scream fills the air.

  “Fahima!” Atika shouts, her eyes wild with fear. “She’s still in the sitting room.”

  “C’mon, then,” Sara says, grasping her pole tightly with her sausage-like fingers and swivelling on the ball of her right foot to run down the carpeted hall, back toward the living room. Atika and Susie follow closely behind her.

  I run back into the bedroom and wrench the metal curtain rods off of the two windows, letting the dusty floral curtains slide to the floor in a heap. I toss one to Lily where she stands in the doorway watching me.

  She catches it with the fluidity of a cat. “Is this because of us?” she asks, biting her bottom lip nervously. I can’t help but notice again how tired and unwell she looks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” I say, jumping off the bed. “Doesn’t matter now. We just need to get in there to help.” Banging sounds and the occasional shout reach us from the living room.

  Kiki pokes her head out of one of the bedrooms as we run back into the hall. Her curly black hair frames her head like an angel’s halo in a hurricane. “What’s going on?” she asks, her eyes half-closed.

  “We’ve had a break-in,” I say, not wanting to go into detail about the guys standing outside, staring up at the flat just before all of this happened. “Grab Dani and your poles and make it quick. Everyone’s in the living room, confronting them.”

  Kiki’s dark eyes widen. “What? Intruders?” She swivels around. “Dani! Get your bottom out of bed. Now.”

  “You should get your poles,” Lily adds.

  “Are they demons?” Kiki asks.

  “I haven’t seen them,” I answer. “But it sounds like they’re putting up a pretty good fight against three Seers in there, so …”

  “Go!” Kiki interrupts. “We’ll be right behind you.” She disappears back into the bedroom as Lily and I turn and run toward the chaotic noise coming from the living room.

  As soon as I kick the door open, it’s clear what we’re dealing with. A decapitated head sits at our feet — its glassy eyes seem to stare directly up at us. The face looks completely human, but I know the drill. Demons on this plane inhabit the bodies of those who are vulnerable, such as drug addicts. I don’t know why. I’m not even sure if the person is dead while they’re possessed. One thing I do know for certain: we don’t know how to kill the demon besides decapitating the body it’s in. So even if the person is still alive when the demon enters them, they’re for sure not going to be once a Seer gets done with them. Problematic, to say the least.

  I quickly scan the room. There are four demons still alive, and the situation is critical. Susie and Sara seem to be holding their own, but Atika is unarmed and losing her battle against a male demon with spiky, bleached-white hair. It’s got her pinned down, holding her wrists above her head, digging its knee into the soft spot at the base of her throat.

  “Atika!” I shout, springing forward. Her eyes bulge out like hard-boiled eggs and her face begins to turn purple. She’s suffocating.

  “Get off her, you bastard,” Lily says, coming up beside me. She lifts her pole above her head and brings it down squarely on top of the demon’s head like a woodcutter chopping at the remains of a tree.

  The demon lets out a howl as its skull splits from the crown of its head to the top of its nose. It swivels around to glare at Lily, blood seeping down its face. With one swift pull, she brings the pole back up and over her head before jumping away.

  I take advantage of the fact that the demon’s focus is off Atika and pull her toward me by the arm. She’s as limp as a ragdoll. For most people, moving an unconscious body that weighs the same as them would be virtually impossible, but because I’m a Seer, it’s an almost effortless task. There’s a loud popping sound from her arm, and I realize I’ve likely caused a dislocation. More worrying, though, is the fact that Atika doesn’t respond at all to the injury.

  The demon lunges toward Lily, but the large crack in its skull seems to be impacting its balance; it misses her completely as she jumps backward again. As soon as her feet hit the carpet, she moves her right foot forward and draws the pole back like a pro baseball player about to hit a home run. There’s a crunching sound and then the splattering of blood as the curtain rod tears through the demon’s jugular vein and neck. Its head drops to the carpet with a thud.

  Lily wipes bits of grey matter and blood off her face and looks around the room. I follow her gaze. Susie and Sara are standing over the decapitated corpses of three other demons. Sweat rolls down their reddened faces.

  “We need to get out of here,” Sara says, wiping away her damp hair. She looks at Atika. “Is she still alive?”

  I crouch down beside Atika. Her injured arm juts out from the shoulder joint at an uncomfortable-looking angle. Her face is pale. Taking a deep breath, I carefully place the index and middle fingers of my right hand against the side of her throat.

  There’s a pulse. It’s faint and seems a bit irregular, but it’s there.

  “She’s pretty badly injured, but she’s still alive,” I say, standing up. “Where’s Fahima?”

  Susie shrugs, her face concerned. “We don’t know. She wasn’t here when we entered the room.”

  “Bloody hell,” Kiki says from behind us. “I guess Vashti was right. We have been found out.”

  “Okay, we’ve got to go,” I say. “Sara, can you help me take Atika?”

  Sara nods. “She’s going to need a doctor, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “Vashti can help us with that once we get to the new safe house, right?”

  We kneel down on either side of Atika and quickly hoist her up, sharing the weight between us. I’m on her injured side, and try to be as careful as possible.

  “Vashti will help us for sure,” Susie answers. “Are you two going to be all right getting her down the stairs?”

  Sara and I nod. I’m glad now that Sara is built like a bull, because the narrow staircase will be tricky to navigate down while carrying the dead weight of Atika. She still hasn’t stirred at all, and that’s starting to really worry me.

  “We’ll go ahead,” Dani says, as she and Kiki step in front of us, holding their poles up, ready to attack.

  Moments after we step outside the flat, the light in the hallway flickers like a firefly before going out completely.

  “Bugger,” Kiki says. “Looks like the rolling blackouts have started. Brilliant timing.” She and Dani turn on their video watch flashlights and train them on the staircase.

  The shadowy figure standing on the landing shocks all of us. Sara and I nearly drop Atika, we’re so startled. As Seers, we should’ve been much more careful leaving the flat.

  “Follow me, and keep your profile as low as possible. We can’t have you noticed as we leave. They’re onto all of you, and we still don’t have the safe zone secured,” Raphael says.

  JADE

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Mr. Khan says, keeping his voice level and his face neutral. He stares at Mick
. Hard.

  “You got here because of some sort of virtual reality game, yeah?” Mick says, sarcasm coating his voice. It’s clear he doesn’t believe us.

  “Yep,” Amara says, leaning her elbows on the table, mirroring Mick’s aggressive stance. “What about it?”

  Mick raises an eyebrow at her. “You’re a real live wire, aren’t you?”

  “Would you say that to me I were a boy? If I were white?” Amara snaps, her dark eyes flashing angrily. “Doubt it. So, what exactly do you want from us?”

  I know Amara’s read his mind. And now she’s on him like a pitbull on a dog abuser.

  Mick’s laughter punctures the air. “I want you to figure out how we can get back to where you came from. Canada. The United States. Where-bloody-ever other than here. That virtual reality device must be around somewhere, if you came here with it. It must be near where you landed, yeah?”

  I stare at him. Everything about Mick is kind of ashy: his skin, his breath, the colour of his hair.

  “I guess we can go back out on the platform to look for it,” I say, trying to ignore Amara and Mr. Khan’s raised eyebrows and concerned glances. “If you think it’s secure down here, we can split up to look.” I pause. “But what if we don’t find it? I mean, our transition here was pretty bumpy. You saw how far apart from each other we landed.”

  “You saying you don’t think this virtual reality contraption is ’ere with you?” Mick says, eyeing me suspiciously. “Where’d it go, then?”

  I shrug. “I’m not saying that it’s for sure not down here,” I reply, taking my time and weighing my answer carefully. This conversation makes me feel like a bleeding seal in a shark tank. One wrong move, and I’m a goner. “It’s just that we can’t know for sure. Not until we look for it, anyhow.”

  Mick raises an eyebrow at me. I don’t need to reach into his thoughts to know that he is doubting us — in a huge way. But I enter his thoughts anyway.