Sam Black Shadow

by Paul Berry

  ‘It’s not even an animal, just a collection of reanimated flesh.’

  ‘He has feelings; he’s scared.’

  ‘Sometimes we have to do things we’re not comfortable with. It’s called being an adult. Something your father obviously failed to teach you.’

  ‘Don’t mention him again. You gave up that right when you chose this fucked-up place instead of us.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  She takes me back to her quarters and tells me to wait until the ritual is ready to be performed.

  ‘This will be your chance to shine, my son.’

  ‘I’ll try not to disappoint you,’ I say resentfully.

  Before she leaves, she takes The Travellers Between Spheres and slams the door loudly behind her.

  Chapter 22

  I sit on the sofa and stare at a fake window, wondering if this is my last day on earth.

  There will be no happy ending to this fairy tale.

  If Adam is captured, they might just kill us both. But it won’t be a quick death. We’ll be slowly tortured and then ripped apart until they uncover all of our secrets. Even if they cure me, I’ll never leave this place, despite my mother’s promise of the perfect family reunion.

  I wait for a few minutes, then press my ear against the door, only hearing the dull hum of generators deep under the concrete. I slowly open it and peer down the passageway, the floor glowing chalky white under the fluorescents. I follow it to the empty hall, the door that separates them unlocked. The lift is unguarded and I take a step towards it. I could try to escape again, or at least die trying.

  Ultimately, though, I’ll be trapped by the vampire that is rapidly growing stronger inside me. I’ll be silently screaming inside my head while it walks around in my body. The only thing that might save me is finding out more about Adam’s father, the entity in the house that infected me.

  I hear mumbling coming from Professor Ward’s cell. I go to the door and look through the bars. She is sitting cross-legged and scratching her forearm with the nail of her index finger, the bloodied weals forming the crude shape of a pentagram.

  ‘You’re hurting yourself,’ I whisper. She looks up and stops, flicking blood from her nail. She pushes the hair from her face and stands up, looking at me, confused, as though she can’t be certain if I’m real. She walks to the bars and stretches her fingers through them. I touch them and she smiles.

  ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you,’ I say. She takes a deep breath as though she is also fighting to keep control over her mind.

  ‘We deserved it. Prodding the other places like a hornet’s nest. Eventually something unpleasant would poke its head out.’

  ‘What happened at Adam’s house?’

  ‘We tried to summon the god Hastur. We thought we could control him. Use him to restrain the other things which have been leaking through.’

  ‘Adam isn’t Hastur,’ I whisper.

  She nods. ‘The old ones, they want to return to the earth and reclaim their ascendancy.’ For a moment the walls of her cell undulate as though something vast is pushing against a membrane.

  ‘Why did you draw that symbol?’ I say, gesturing towards the pentagram on the wall.

  ‘It’s the key to reaching further, between the spheres.’ I remember the cold eyes I saw when I stared into the crystal and that hand reaching through the book to touch mine.

  ‘When I’m cured, I’m getting you out of here.’ I almost believe my words, and from the hopeful glint in her eyes, she does too for a brief moment.

  ‘I’m past saving. There’s only a sliver of me left now. The Datum used our darkest secrets to twist us into monsters. Mine was guilt. My daughter drowned at the seaside while I was cavorting drunk on the beach. A seagull foot seems a fitting punishment, wouldn’t you say?’ She scapes her grotesque foot across the floor, the claws gouging marks into the concrete. ‘Your mother … well, she became something much worse. The mother you had before, your real mother, is dead. All that remains of her is a simulacrum, hungry for power and domination.’

  ‘There must be part of her that’s still left too. There has to be.’ She shakes her head.

  ‘Don’t trust her … don’t trust anyone in here. You’re nothing but a prisoner, something to be sucked dry and then tossed aside. But I’ve been dreaming about a place beyond this town. Only there will you find salvation.’

  ‘What place?’

  She clutches the side of her head and slaps it.

  ‘Get away from here … they’re coming.’ I hear the cables of the lift clang and whine behind me as it descends.

  ‘I’ll return for you, I promise.’ I almost run back to my mother’s rooms but then remember Tim. Is he trapped in a cell like I was, bleeding and alone?

  There are four cells along each of the two longest walls, containing Dr Ward, Peaslee and the Frankenstein creature, which means Tim could be in any of the others.

  There is a whimpering from the cell I was locked in and I peer through the bars to see the Frankenstein creature curled up foetally on the floor. Two of the other cells are empty. I go to the next, which contains a man with tentacle hands who waves at me and laughs maniacally. Inside another cell is a woman hanging from the ceiling by four spindly legs, holding a filthy bone which she is greedily licking. I run to the last cell just as I hear the thump of the lift. Inside, a blond man is sitting on a mattress with his head on his knees.

  ‘Tim?’ He raises his head but it’s not him. Twin tentacles slide out from his eye sockets and strain towards the door, the ends of them snipping the air with earwig-tail pincers.

  The lift opens and I dash towards the room with the Kirlian imager. The door is unlocked and I slip inside, the light turning on automatically, and close it just as the orderlies’ voices echo around the hall. There is nowhere to hide, so I open the door that leads into the library. Lights switch on, and the first thing I look at is the glass case.

  The Necronomicon quivers inside as I step towards it. I open the case and it moans when I touch the cover, which feels like clammy skin. I flick through the pages; the columns of symbols weave around each other in a spiralling dance and I start to comprehend them.

  I stop at an illustration of a bleak wilderness. A black cloud hangs over it, flowing with thread-like tentacles which squirm into a man lying prone on the scorched earth, screaming as his blood is sucked out. On the opposite page is the title: Hastur. I concentrate on the symbols below it and words start to coagulate in my mind.

  Banished from his world of Blood and Shadow, the King in Yellow seeks to regain his dominion of Pain and Despair.

  I’m starting to understand what the symbols are. Each one is alive, individual but also part of a bigger entity. When they come together, some force is created.

  I hear the door to the adjoining room rattle. I snap the book shut and close the case, run between the two metal shelves and crouch down. I peer over the tops of books and see Dr Stone enter the library, carrying a black briefcase. He goes to the metal cabinet facing the shelves and unlocks it, opening both doors. Fixed to the cabinet walls are knives. He takes about eight and puts them in the briefcase. On its shelves are several helmets that look almost medieval. Carved onto them are the symbols.

  He closes his briefcase and looks around. I remain perfectly still, hoping he can’t see me between the book spines.

  He starts walking towards me and I tense. Multiple shrieks from the creatures start echoing through the door from the hall.

  ‘What now?’ He sighs and looks in my direction one more time, closes the cabinet doors, then leaves the library. The cacophony from the hall grows louder, and I can hear him shouting. I wait for a few minutes, then slowly stand up and walk out from between the shelves. I pull on the doors to the cabinet. They open. He must have forgotten to lock them. On a shelf next to one of the helmets is a spiked metal ball attac
hed to a long wooden handle by a chain. I touch one of the spikes and it burns my finger. I suck the tip of it and look more closely at the ball. Each spike is etched with tiny glyphs.

  Below the shelves on the floor of the cabinet are a line of box files. I kneel down and pull one out. It contains a stack of thin manilla folders and I slide one free. Typed on the left-hand corner is:

  Jupiter Hill. Phase 3.

  Inside the folder are pages of technical drawings. Some show tanks with the symbols painted on their sides, other pages show illustrations of full body armour also embellished with the glyphs.

  The blood drains from my face. I realise what they are planning. They don’t want to open a rift to the Datum to protect the world.

  They want to invade it.

  My mother’s first attempt failed and now they will use me to carry out their plan, but first they need to clean up the mess they created in the park.

  Will they even be able to assemble enough troops to invade the Datum? I remember my mother’s disclosure that the Syncret stretches far beyond this facility. Maybe with a big enough army they could swarm through and conquer it.

  I will be the harbinger of Phase 3.

  I put the file back and close the cabinet. As I leave the library, I resist the urge to return to the Necronomicon and touch it again.

  The door of the Kirlian room is closed. I open it a crack and squint through. The hall is empty and silent apart from an occasional grunt from one of the creatures and the thrum of generators. I cautiously open the door wider and slip through, keeping to the edges of the hall where the light is less intense.

  Leading off from the hall is a dimly lit corridor like the one to my mother’s apartment.

  At the end of it is a door.

  Room 49.

  I press my ear against it and hear low moans combined with whispers. I open the door. There is a circle of six televisions. Sitting in the centre, back to back on two chairs, are the twins, staring at the screens, their eyes completely white. Attached to them on metal poles are IV drips.

  Symbols flash on the screens, alternating so it gives the illusion that they are continually rotating around them like a Victorian zoetrope. Within the circle of televisions, shadowy entities with nebulous faces appear for a spilt second before disappearing.

  A shadow grows more substantial and looks at me malignly. It scutters forward but then jerks back as it tries to pass the televisions. It screeches and dissipates.

  On the floor around the televisions is a circle of symbols painted onto the concrete that prevent the entities from crossing it. I take a step towards it, being careful not to let my foot cross the border. One of the twins turns towards me and shakes his head in warning. I reach out my hand and feel the air crackling around my fingers.

  ‘Go back.’ His voice sounds in my head and I feel a force pushing me away. I stare at the screens, and as the symbols flash I can hear alien screams coming from a vast gulf of blackness. The vampire squirms nervously inside me and the muscles in my legs tense as it tries to move me away.

  Cables from the televisions snake into the walls and I think about ripping them out. But if the twins’ minds are channelling some arcane energy, it could kill them or open a rift to a region in the Datum worse than where Hastur came from. I close the door, blinking away tears, and make my way back to the hall.

  The door opposite the lift that leads back to my mother’s quarters is ajar.

  I open it. Smith is standing inside.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he asks, tapping a taser against his thigh.

  ‘Let me pass.’

  He shakes his head. ‘We’re gonna have some fun.’

  ‘No.’

  He points the taser at my face. ‘Tim was reluctant at first. He eventually changed his mind.’

  ‘What did you do to him?’

  Smith’s mouth opens wide and the hand holding the taser starts shaking. I look down at my hands. They are bristling with claws.

  ‘You’re right,’ I say, my voice muffled as fangs jut around my tongue. ‘It’s time for some fun.’ He sidesteps around me and starts backing away.

  ‘Keep away from me, you fucking freak.’

  Kill him. Kill him now, the vampire whispers excitedly, and I can almost feel Smith’s blood spurting down my throat in hot gouts. I take a breath and thrust the creature back down, the bracelet crackling against my skin.

  ‘Until next time, Mr Smith.’ I lurch down the corridor to the apartment, slamming the door and locking it when I get inside.

  I sit on the couch and imagine the vampire bound with padlocks and chains.

  It laughs.

  Look what I found.

  Clasped within its maw is a struggling mass.

  It is biting down on my anxiety, my depression, about to devour it and finally release me from its stranglehold.

  Do you really want to keep me shackled?

  Yes.

  Doubt creeps over me.

  We belong together. Stop resisting. You …

  I fasten the last mental lock and the vampire goes silent.

  Chapter 23

  I go into my mother’s bedroom – which, like the bathroom, is devoid of mirrors – and open a chest at the foot of the bed. Inside are tattered papers and spiral-bound journals. I flick through one and see page after page of symbols from the Necronomicon and the walls of Professor Ward’s cell, my mother’s handwriting scattered amongst them. There is no mention of weaponising the symbols and I wonder if she is being forced to carry out Jupiter Hill’s plans, a victim just like all the other creatures trapped here.

  I dig around underneath and pull out a handful of photos. Some are of her and my dad, holding hands on a beach, laughing at a table in a restaurant, taken before she summoned Hastur, her complexion unmarred.

  She has scratched out her eyes in each picture.

  The only one of me is at a wedding I vaguely remember. My dad had not gone with us, and it was not long after we had found the geode. I’m wearing a chequered suit and a bow tie, her hands on my shoulders but facing away from the camera, her hair covering her blotchy face.

  At the bottom of the chest is a brittle sheet of newspaper, and I carefully take it out to avoid tearing it. Although the ink is faded, I recognise the man in the picture. It’s my grandfather, his black beard and glasses making him look like Sigmund Freud. Above the picture is a headline. ‘Scientist Murdered’. The photo under it shows my mother as a young girl, her hair in a plaited ponytail, her face cold and inscrutable. The text is too faint to read apart from the words ‘stabbed to death’ and ‘no suspects’.

  ‘I see you’ve found my box of memories.’ I jerk my head round. She is standing in the doorway.

  ‘You said he died in a fire … you killed him, didn’t you?’

  ‘He deserved what I did to him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He used your grandmother as a test subject in his experiments. She died screaming in agony, and so did he. It was only fair.’

  ‘Everything you say is built on lies.’

  ‘Sometimes lying is the only way to survive. You of all people should understand that.’

  ‘It’s not the same. I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘You will, though. It’s in your nature, even before you became a monster. You’re a survivor.’ I hate that she’s right. The rage I feel has only been amplified by the vampire, not created by it.

  ‘I went back to the library while you were gone. I know what you plan to do with the Datum.’

  ‘We must strike first to gain the advantage. Our initial attempt to open a rift has brought about a conflux. Eventually the Datum will spread beyond Adam’s house into the rest of the world like an infection, consuming everything.’

  ‘And room 49? Is that how you decipher the symbols?’ She looks taken a
back.

  ‘They volunteered to use their gifts.’

  ‘Did they have a choice? You’re experimenting on them, exploiting them. Like father, like daughter.’

  ‘The war with the Datum is inevitable. Sometimes steps have to be taken that are unpalatable. Whether you like it or not, you’re now part of this war.’

  ‘I didn’t ask to be part of your war.’

  ‘Unfortunately, you don’t have a choice. It’s kill or be killed.’

  ‘Maybe I prefer to be killed.’

  ‘The fate of the Datum will determine the course of all our lives, including your father’s.’ I blench at the mention of him, but I know what she’s implying.

  To save his life I must battle the Datum.

  ‘Did you ever love me?’ I ask, wanting to hear at least one truth before I die. She looks down and shakes her head.

  ‘Your father wanted a child, so I gave him you. I only loved him.’

  ‘Wasn’t he the lucky one.’

  ‘But I could become your mother if you gave me time. I could learn to love you.’

  ‘I don’t think we have much time left.’

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  ‘And if I fail?’

  ‘You won’t.’

  We enter the lift and my mother presses –2. The last button is –4, and I wonder what other monsters Jupiter Hill has sequestered within its bowels. The lift briefly shudders down, then stops, the doors scraping open. We step into a small concrete chamber, the ceiling low enough for me to touch if I stretched up my arm.

  About eight of the orderlies are standing in a semicircle around a narrow stone plinth on which sits the open squid box, the crystal glinting inside. Dr Stone stands with them and stares at it in greedy anticipation. My mother takes off her veil, and everyone’s head turns to gaze at the quivering growths on her face.

  Each orderly carries a knife similar to the one Dr Stone cut me with, the blades inscribed with the same alien symbols. Smith winks at me and taps his knife on the back of his hand. One of them is standing next to the Frankenstein creature, which is wearing a ragged pair of shorts, the thing’s metal leash lashed around his wrist. The creature sees me and strains against the chain, reaching his arms out. I stroke the back of his head and he whimpers in pleasure. The orderly jerks the chain and pulls his head away.