Sanctuary 12, page 32
Join your hands, she instructed.
The police cruisers skidded to a halt just short of the house, and the chopper blades whirred directly overhead. ‘Do it,’ Martha said, reaching her hands to each of the boys. Heven and Vladimir reacted without hesitation.
Forget the outside. Focus solely on the mirror.
They all sensed the dark nature of what was about to enter the book-house; the same insidious force Martha and Vladimir had felt when they entered Lima; the same force that had closed in on Heven as Whitman’s captive.
Do not think of it. Only the mirror, only the mirror, she repeated. Allow yourself to flow into each other—send your power out—into the mirror. A shimmer crossed the surface of the glass. The mirror’s reflection moved slightly, like ripples over a stream. There is no time for fear.
Heven reached out towards the growing ripples. His fingers were about to touch when a stinging voice, amplified by a loudhailer, broke his concentration. ‘HEVEN RAMIREZ, THIS IS THE POLICE. YOU ARE SURROUNDED. YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS NEED TO COME OUT QUIETLY, WITH YOUR HANDS OVER YOUR HEADS. FAIL TO DO SO AND WE WILL USE FORCE.’
Vladimir released his grip on Martha’s hand and strode over to the window next to the sewing bench. What he saw made him kick the floorboards in frustration. ‘There must be fifty pigs out there. Whatever we do, it needs to happen fast.’
They could hear the clicking metal as the officers pumped their shotguns in readiness for what would be a brief and brutal firefight.
‘COME ON NOW, SURELY YOU CAN SEE WHAT YOU’RE UP AGAINST. NO ONE ELSE NEED DIE TODAY. IT’S OVER.’
Hurry, Celeste warned.
Heven stepped up and plunged his hand into the glass. The surface dispersed like fluid, allowing his hand through, right up to his wrist. He snatched it back, holding it up to his face. ‘It’s so cold,’ he said, clearly in pain.
That only occurs on retraction. You must proceed.
‘No!’ Heven stepped back alongside Martha, shaking his head in defiance. ‘Every time I listen to you, someone dies. I won’t do what you say anymore.’
‘Fuck it then, leave him here,’ Vladimir said. Rushing back to the mirror, he beckoned Martha towards him. ‘Martha, you first. Hurry up.’
All must travel through, or none at all, Celeste whispered.
‘No.’ Heven took another step backwards to the doorway.
Vladimir lifted Medusa, pointing it at Heven’s face. ‘Do as she says or I swear to you, I will end your miserable fucking life right here.’ There was no doubt that Vladimir meant it. If he was going down, he was taking this idiot with him.
‘You don’t need an excuse to gun someone down. It’s what you live for, isn’t it.’ Heven stood his ground.
‘Why don’t you grow up,’ Martha snarled.
Heven ignored her, still glaring at Vladimir. ‘Come on, end it then. I want you to. Come on!’
Vladimir’s finger began to squeeze down on the trigger. Heven closed his eyes, anticipating the shockwave. The next thing he felt was Martha’s elbow striking him in the small of his back, thrusting him headlong toward the mirror. As he stumbled past, Vladimir increased his momentum with an extra shove. In the last moment, Heven attempted to grasp at the mirror’s frame, but it was too late. He hit the surface and it sucked him through to what lay beyond; Martha followed close behind. Vladimir watched them disappear, barely getting chance to draw breath before he heard the front and back doors of the house being barged down simultaneously.
By the time he’d crossed his chest and jumped in after the others, the heavily armoured police were already charging up the staircase. They scurried left and right along the hallway, a couple of them carrying small, cylinder-shaped battering rams. They stampeded through each room, yelling ‘clear’ as they went. It took seconds for them to search every corner, upstairs and down. Sheriff Vallen forced his way through the twitching officers on the stairs, heading straight into the dressmaker’s room. Rage burned behind his eyes as he scanned every inch of it, eventually falling upon the standing mirror.
‘It’s empty, sir—the whole place,’ muttered the officer standing closest to him.
Vallen ignored him, approaching the mirror instead. A couple of the other men glanced around, bemused. He drifted two fingers across its solid surface, bringing them up to his nose. ‘They were here,’ he said.
4
Heven couldn’t see anything but silver. He felt like he was walking through glue, or through the contents of a giant lava lamp. The strange substance should have prevented him from breathing, but it didn’t. He could not stop, and he could not turn back; all he could do was keep moving. As he pushed forward, struggling to force his body through the substance, he grew ice cold. He guessed that he was reaching the end of whatever gateway he’d entered. The resistance of the fluid gave way, sending him toppling forth through the standing mirror on the other side. Off balance, he fell to the floor. The ground felt soft under his shoes. A lavish, four-poster bed, of all things, stood directly in front of him, set upon a dense, pale blue carpet.
Martha was the next to emerge. She too fell into the room awkwardly, landing on her knees next to Heven, almost smashing her head on one of the bed posts. ‘Where are we?’ she said, staring at the hand-stitched duvet in disbelief. Turning round, they saw the silver standing mirror against the wall. Its liquid glass erupted, forced out by Vladimir’s body. When he landed at their feet, the glass snapped back to its original state, solid again. A light bulb flickered in its shade, bouncing dull, intermittent light from the walls. There was no window, which gave the place a cold air of detachment. The huge bed took up most of the space; if it hadn’t been for the high ceiling, it would have felt unbearably claustrophobic. Martha tilted her head to examine the intricately sculpted border around the ceiling’s edge. The imagery depicted a long line of cherubs, reaching to their heaven. Something else drew her gaze, forcing her to her feet in awe of it. Why hadn’t it been the first thing she’d noticed? The wallpaper swam with hundreds of pale blue dolphins.
‘I don’t want to know what just happened. I don’t even think I want to know where we are. The main thing is we’re safe.’ Vladimir rubbed his hands across his face, disoriented from their unorthodox mode of transport.
‘That felt like nothing on earth.’ Martha shivered, reaching down to help Heven from the carpet.
‘Get the fuck away from me!’ He avoided her grip, getting to his feet. ‘We’re safe then? Cause I swear we just stepped into a magic mirror to a completely different place. So how the hell do you know that it’s safe? Happened to you before, has it?’
‘Know what? Now we got away from Duma and the police, I’m not so sure I shouldn’t pop your head anyway,’ Vladimir replied.
They both squared up to each other.
‘Don’t start this shit again. Don’t you think we should open that, see where we ended up?’ Martha gestured towards the white door facing them.
‘Be my guest, Jodie Foster,’ Heven said.
‘Piss off,’ she snapped.
‘Shh.’ Vladimir held a finger to his lips, lifting Medusa towards the door; there were faint footsteps outside. They closed ranks, taking a step back. The door’s ivory handle began to rotate anti clockwise with a thin screech. Vladimir pulled back the nickel hammer in readiness.
Goat-Song
1
Milton Keynes, England
‘I don’t know about you, sir, but I’m fucking terrified.’ Reeves stumbled as he spoke. He could not take his eyes from the shredded frame of the locomotive on the tracks ahead.
‘Watch your language, Reeves. At least pretend to be a professional,’ Morrow said. Although quick to remind Reeves of his duties, he could easily have cursed too; there were no words more appropriate to articulate what lay in front of them. In all his years, he’d never witnessed anything remotely like it. The embankment on each side of the railway tracks rose high above them. A broken trail led from the woodlands. The dense, otherworldly clouds had dissipated, leaving a clear sky to shine down, exposing every crevice of the horror below. The express looked as though it had been travelling at two hundred miles an hour upside down. It was more or less intact at its wheels and base. The rest, however, was as decimated as anything could be. As they drew closer, the detectives witnessed a multitude of fire fighters and police officers searching for signs of life at the base of the wreck. There were no fires. Several rescue workers turned away to face the length of open fields, physically repelled by the appalling sights piled up amongst the debris. There wasn’t a single body part they recognised as human. Rather than individual people, they saw a single mass of devastation—part organic—part machine. Morrow saw one fire fighter go down on his knees, retching fresh air. A little further and the stench hit them both full on. He recognised it. He’d been present at a few murder scenes, as well as suicides (more suicides than murders, actually). Sometimes, the undiscovered corpses had been there for days before he got to them, but it was never like this. It infected their nostrils, carried on by the wind. It was the kind of smell no one forgets. Steam rose from the folds of warm meat into the air. The sludge of human matter and organs twisted around the deformed metal as if they had never been apart; a massive cyborg lying hewn on the tracks. A police constable approached. His skin looked as lifeless as those which lay inside the wreck. His eyes glazed, unable to trust what they had seen. Once he realised who the detectives were, he allowed them to pass unquestioned. Morrow and Reeves stood out a mile.
‘Sir?’ Reeves could not hold the queasiness in his stomach at bay any longer. He needed assurance from his boss, but Morrow had none to give.
‘I know, Reeves. Just be quiet for a minute,’ Morrow said. He too was overwhelmed by where their search had led them. Unlike his partner, he was also intrigued. He changed direction, making a beeline for a tall, middle-aged man, dressed in a full-length beige overcoat, barking out instructions to plain-clothed officers. The officers jogged away in opposite directions, and the man took another despairing look towards the carnage, rubbing his forehead.
‘Excuse me, are you in charge here?’ Morrow asked.
‘I am. Inspector Faulkes—and you are?’
‘Inspector Keith Morrow, Arkvale police. This is my associate, Detective Daniel Reeves.’
‘A little out of town, aren’t you, Inspector?’ Faulkes shook Morrow’s hand.
‘We were following up on a lead we had for a murder suspect at Northampton station. We had the idea he may have boarded this train.’
‘Ha. What train? Can you see a train anywhere?’ Faulkes replied. ‘If your suspect was on board this train then I’m afraid your lead has been severed…there’s nothing alive in there.’ He gazed back to the railway line. He’d arrived at the scene nearly two hours ago and could barely believe the truth.
‘What happened here?’ Morrow said.
‘Your guess would be as good as mine. The more I look at it, the more I don’t want to know.’ The experience had shattered him, equally as much as it had the poor bastards who searched the crash site hoping to find something resembling a survivor.
‘It’s difficult to believe.’ As Morrow spoke, a chopper whizzed overhead, making a full sweep of the surrounding area.
‘Wait until you’ve stared at it for an hour or so—your mind goes to all sorts of places,’ Faulkes replied.
‘So we don’t know what caused this?’
Faulkes turned to Morrow, his grim expression intensifying, delivering his reply in a matter of fact way. ‘All we know is that the control centre lost radio contact with the driver at twelve minutes past eleven. So far, there is no sign of impact to the front of the train, no wreckage belonging to anything else, and no fires or traces of explosion. Initial examinations from the few remains gathered have proved inconclusive, but I think we can safely say terrorism was not the cause here. About the only thing we do know for certain is that there have been absolutely no survivors found.’
Morrow’s mind wandered back to his own strange case. He wondered if Flynn had actually boarded at Northampton and was lying in unrecognisable pieces in the middle of all that death. He was appalled that the trail should end here. The sight of the savaged carriages pulled him abruptly back to the present. He looked on, thankful it was not his crime scene. ‘How on earth do you search for evidence in this?’ he exclaimed.
‘We did find something—something very significant—but I don’t really know what it tells us,’ Faulkes said.
‘What?’ Morrow’s intuition began to prick at him.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this, but I want to run it by someone else before the military swarm all over it.’
‘The military?’ Morrow said.
‘Come with me.’
They followed Faulkes to a clearing on the left, just ahead of the wreck. Three armoured police vans and two cars were positioned in a circle, shielding something. A great hive of activity took place around the circle. Several white coats (Morrow’s term for forensics) seemed hard at work.
‘It’s through here.’ Faulkes led them through the gap between two vans and the officers on guard moved aside to let them pass. ‘We only found this about twenty minutes ago. It was embedded in a large section of a carriage’s side panel.’ Resting on the ground, set on a large tarpaulin sheet was a curved object, about eight feet long and five feet in diameter; a cylindrical shape, thick and rounded at one end, gradually thinning to a point at the other. Morrow noticed that the rounded end had what looked like grey, shimmering flesh hanging from it, as if it had once been part of something else entirely. There were streams of a dried up black substance running along its surface. Faulkes appeared at Morrow’s side, staring at the object. ‘At first, no one had a clue what we were looking at. Then one of our techs, who studied palaeontology at university came up with something. He thinks it looks like a…talon.’
‘A talon?’ Morrow’s eyes widened.
‘Reckoned it could date back to the early…erm what did he say? Cretaceous period?’
‘The man’s clearly lost his mind. He’s talking about a period in history that dates back thirty million years.’ Morrow squinted hard, as if that would somehow make what he was seeing and hearing seem more logical. All three detectives leaned closer. The surface of the object was almost translucent, and they could see a faint web of veins still pulsing within.
‘I think I can say, without a hint of irony, that I want my mum.’ Reeves said.
Apostasy
1
Briaridge Orchard, Bedfordshire
Barnes had taken the lead, and it stayed that way for a couple of hours until they made their way down to a sheltered stream. They traced the path of the flowing water out from the woodland to a country road. From there, they crossed over and began another trek through several fields dotted with sheep.
Stuart thought of his parents and how beside themselves they would be, praying for the phone to ring with positive news.
Jerrico thought of Kate and their last heated exchange. Was it hate he felt from her or indifference? If he could get her to believe what really happened, convince her that this macabre fairy tale being played out at their expense was reality, would it really matter in the end? She would still hate him for bringing his nightmare into her world. There was a possibility she could be in grave danger without him having any way of getting close to her. It was imperative he piece this blood-soaked jigsaw together so it made some kind of sense, for Kate and for his lost friends. If following the girl’s call was the answer, then so be it. If he really was insane, and all of this turned out to be a delusion, at least he was too far away from the people he cared about to do them any further harm.
The fields they crossed seemed to stretch on forever, most of them populated by their woollen watchers. Jerrico felt their calm flow into him as they passed—a collective stillness. It was another reason he loved animals so much, even if some decided to bite him. Barnes hadn’t paid him any mind since he’d awakened to her whispers. Every time he glanced down at the dog, he remembered how he had bravely planted his muscular frame between him and the dreadful creature in the train car. It didn’t prevent the wound from bleeding any less.
Stuart wasn’t blind to Jerrico’s discomfort. He watched as he tried to cradle his wound with his other arm, wincing each time he stumbled on the uneven ground. He also noticed the Jollybird’s petrol gauge was in the red. ‘How much longer before we get there?’
‘Not long now,’ Jerrico said, clearly not keen on continuing the conversation any further.
‘I hope it isn’t, cause I’m running out of juice.’
‘Don’t sound so grim—you’re not going to sink. I’ll push you.’ Jerrico’s dry delivery set Stuart laughing. Jerrico joined him and Barnes turned back to look at them.
‘Ah, come on, Barnesy, live a little.’ Jerrico’s comment made Stuart laugh harder. Their fleeting jollity carried across the open spaces, falling upon the ears of the grazing sheep. After they had calmed down, Stuart fumbled in his side pouch and produced three fairly squashed chocolate bars.
‘My way, Short Round.’ Jerrico held up his good hand, ready to receive the throw.
‘They have nuts, so protein,’ Stuart said.
‘Whatever.’ Jerrico didn’t care as long as it was edible. He was too busy trying to get the wrapper from the sticky chocolate before it fell apart.
‘Barnes?’ Stuart began to open another bar for the dog so he could launch it in his direction. ‘Oh, sorry, Biscuit.’
‘What’s up?’ Jerrico asked, mouth already crammed with chocolate and nuts.
‘He can’t eat it—poisonous to dogs, isn’t it?’
Fortunately, Barnes didn’t need to wait until they reached the end of their journey. Jerrico had kept one-half of the sandwiches purchased on the train. Although it was as dry as a bone, Jerrico could have tucked into it himself. Instead, he offered it up to Barnes, and the dog ran his tongue along Jerrico’s palm and up to his wrist, before gobbling the sandwich in one bite. ‘You’re welcome, buddy,’ Jerrico remarked, ruffling the fur on his head. He turned to Stuart. ‘Biscuit?’
