by Terry Kitto
The van turned onto the high street, amongst the midmorning bustle, and claimed a mother pushing a rickety pram. Skulls cracked the windshield. A dusty baker crossing from the Spar with a fresh pack of cigarettes had his jaw torn away by the wheel arch.
The van mounted a pavement, teetered to one side, and then rolled across Penryn high street. The cabin spun. Person and vehicle crunched underneath Rasha before the van came to a stop. Stephen wasn’t done. He was angrier – he needed longer. It hadn’t been enough hurt. He scrambled out of the broken driver’s side window and dove toward terrified onlookers. Rasha followed. The road behind them was in carnage; twisted bodies and blood tracks painted the tarmac. Penryn or Homs?
Shrieks filled the air. She’d seen into Stephen, a victim of fraud. His wife had slept with the vicar, and his manager had threatened him with suspension. The horror he imparted did not counteract the things he endured, Rasha knew that. But she understood each death relieved his hurt, and in quick succession more so. It numbed Stephen’s pain.
The pedestrians scarpered. It was only a memory. She couldn’t hurt anyone, not really. What would it matter if she took her anger out on a bypasser? Stephen did, and it was real for him.
Patrick had reminded her of a purer way to live. He pointed at the incomplete house, more perfect than he envisioned. His family built it, and they were content. Their troubles wouldn’t last forever; the family cottage could. They’d cherish the summer’s memories until their dying days.
Except, Macaid’s roars, heartbroken and bitter, said different. A pain that couldn’t be ignored. Happiness could not be chosen; tell it to the tribespeople who floated facedown in the misty water. Tell it to Macaid who took her own life because she knew she had been inbound for lifelong grief.
Max was beaten that night. Kenneth dragged him from his closet. He was struck and struck until his heart gave up. His mind went first as his imprint detached from his battered little body. No remorse. War wasn’t remorseful either. The Western world kept calm and carried on as the East continued to collapse and burn. Max would have wanted revenge if he hadn’t been so fearful, if he hadn’t been so weak.
Stephen was satisfied. He swiped a bug-like man into a wooden bench.
Before she knew it, Rasha strode toward an estate agent who was welded to the cobbles by fear. She thought of President Bashar al-Assad causing the revolt in Syria, Fred’s taunts of her being a terrorist, Joel Tredethy perpetually haunting her, Haya pretending she didn’t exist. The estate agent embodied them all.
She raised a fist.
Rasha snapped from the ombrederi and fell to the tunnel floor.
Her arms unsteady, she rose to her feet. If she’d remained in the ombrederi, Allah knows what she would have done, where Stephen would have taken her next.
‘Vanessa?’ she called. ‘Vanessa?’
She tripped on the uneven ground, staggered a few feet, and managed to save herself. She was alone. Vanessa had abandoned her, and she was metres underground, in the dark, with no way out. Imprints skirted around her subconscious, wanting to engage with her or worse: for Stephen to draw her in to his violent ways.
Milana crushed by debris.
Light wavered through the inkwell of darkness ahead. Voices resonated down the tunnel toward Rasha.
‘Her reception to the ombrederi is beyond her age,’ Vanessa said. ‘She wasn’t occupied by any old guiding imprint.’
‘So they lied to us, or they don’t know,’ came a woman’s flowery voice. ‘You think it was the gywandras?’
‘She’s shown signs of being a coercer. There isn’t anyone like it in the UK, let alone the Network.’
‘She’d be perfect for the initiative, in time.’
Rasha was certain she was the topic of conversation. She paused so they wouldn’t hear her approach.
‘I think she could transcend,’ Vanessa said. ‘Even now, with little training.’
Rasha kicked a stone, and it clattered across the tunnel floor. Vanessa called her name.
‘Coming,’ Rasha replied, acting as nonchalantly as she could. As she traipsed to the exit, she tried to remove the look of accusation from her face. Her suspicions were proven true: her witnessing training fed an ulterior purpose. One that, she realised, confirmed the Network’s knowledge of the shadow imprint.
The gywandras.
The opening up ahead leaked early morning light. The sea crashed against the cliff wall, and gulls squawked to declare a new day. The Long Walk, indeed. Rasha exited the mouth of the tunnel. The turbulent wind and infinite Celtic Sea overwhelmed her after near silence and darkness of the Long Walk.
‘Who did you connect with?’ Vanessa said as she prompted Rasha up a footpath that snaked to the top of the cliff.
‘Stephen.’
Vanessa gripped Rasha’s hand – the one that was injured the night she’d engaged with Joel.
‘You didn’t even try,’ Vanessa scathed.
‘I did, I did, I’m just tired,’ Rasha said, and that was also true. ‘With school and this.’
‘Vanessa . . .’ Leri warned.
Vanessa released Rasha’s hand. Rasha barged past the women to the cliff top. From there was a clear view between the trees and chain-link fence to the collieries’ yard. Two vehicles veered onto the gravel, one being Trish’s Reliant. Trish. Rasha sprinted down the slope toward them.
Trish, Sam, and James slammed their car doors and shouted amongst themselves. Vanessa and Leri huffed and puffed behind Rasha, but try as they might, they couldn’t catch up with her.
‘Trish!’ Rasha called as she reached them. The trio turned to her, every face riddled with worry.
‘Rasha,’ Trish exclaimed. ‘Are you okay?’
Vanessa and Leri joined them.
‘What in the frequency is all the commotion?’ Vanessa asked, breathless.
Rasha studied Trish’s and Sam’s faces. They were crestfallen, eyes red. Sam was agitated, unable to keep his body still. The iron door to the collieries buzzed open, but no one dared enter.
‘Tonight’s code red was a death,’ James informed them. ‘Elderly patient at Angove Lodge, Wadebridge. The taken couldn’t be reinstated. We had no choice but to invoke article fifty-seven. The nurse saw our faces, but we gave aliases. No CCTV in the immediate area.’
‘I’ll have Gregory scan police records,’ Vanessa said. ‘Find some doppelgängers. It’ll be best for you all to lay low.’
Rasha realised they plotted to frame petty criminals for their misdeeds. How powerful could the Network be if they infiltrated police records? How could they, as an organisation, preach a moral compass when they did so many bad things?
‘And the imprint?’ Leri asked.
‘A Russian guide by the name of Nika,’ James said. ‘We didn’t find any logs of her on Anascribe.’
Sam locked eyes with Rasha as if trying to communicate another version of the truth. She noted how drawn his cheeks were, how pronounced his brow had become.
‘I’ll check with the archivists,’ Leri continued.
‘I want to go home,’ Rasha interrupted.
‘We can take her,’ Sam said, his hand on her shoulder. ‘If we’re laying low, our homes will be best. I haven’t had visitors since Theresa May was elected. Hope that isn’t an omen or something.’
‘I’ll take her,’ Vanessa said.
‘It’s on the way to the priory,’ Sam said matter-of-factly.
Vanessa took a long hard look at Sam.
‘Take her straight home,’ she said, relentless.
‘Aye,’ Sam retorted.
‘Come on, Rasha,’ Trish said. Rasha dared not look back at Vanessa, eyes on the Reliant.
The trio hopped into the Trish’s iron steed and trundled along the wooded lane. Rasha leant toward the driver’s seat to ask Sam and Trish, ‘What do you know about the gywandras?’
Far off the beaten path, Trish drove Sam and Rasha to a disused farmyard. Rasha learnt Trish’s family friend owned it. In the low
morning sun, the scrap metal and farmyard machines could have been the excavated remnants of a prehistoric graveyard. Dragged from pillar to post herself, Rasha knew that it took a pitiful set of circumstances for someone to live that way.
They raced from the Reliant to the canal boat. Trish promised them that Calypso had the perfect conditions to practice engagement. When they were inside the cabin under multicoloured fairy lights, they shed their coats and jackets. Trish brought Rasha up to speed on the gywandras.
‘It’s plagued all of us,’ she concluded. ‘You, my sister, Sam’s mum.’
‘And Will?’ Rasha asked before she could stop herself.
‘It seems that way,’ Sam croaked, eyes to the floor.
‘We don’t know what it is,’ Trish said, ‘or what it wants.’
Rasha’s stomach knotted; an unknown entity with no clear agenda was a new kind of horror. What if it just wants to cause pain? Rasha wondered. Pain and suffering to all.
‘You want me to try and engage with it, don’t you?’ she asked, hesitant.
‘Much like you did that day with the receptor,’ Trish said. She procured one from beneath a sun-bleached dustcover. ‘This one is mobile. It’s not connected, so it isn’t as powerful, but neither do we have the tools to cut engagement for you.’
What she’d overheard after the Long Walk stayed with her. She didn’t want to invest faith into mere strangers.
‘Vanessa said I was a coercer,’ Rasha explained, ‘and they wanted me to transcend.’
‘We don’t know what that is.’
‘Then how can I trust you?’ Rasha said.
She was surprised that Sam answered before Trish. ‘Because we want bad things to stop happening to good people,’ Sam said.
Rasha was certain he referred to Will’s demise, his mother stowed away in a place that witnesses seemed to fear. His actions, careless drug use, and introverted demeanour were certainly misjudged, but he meant well. All Rasha had to do was look into his sad hazel eyes to know that.
‘What do I do?’ Rasha asked and settled onto a bench in the saloon.
‘We need to recreate the conditions of the last time,’ Trish said. ‘Get yourself back into the headspace, thinking and feeling everything you were then.’
Milana crushed beneath stone, her father disembowelled.
Well, that’s the easy part, Rasha thought.
Trish’s lip curled slightly, and Rasha was sure she’d heard her thoughts. Trish brought the receptor over and placed it on Rasha’s head as Sam adjusted the neck brace beneath it.
‘This one’s a lot heavier,’ Rasha said.
‘It’s the battery,’ Sam explained. He knelt down, eye to eye with Rasha. ‘You’re sure about this? You don’t – ’
‘Let’s get it over with.’
Trish switched the receptor on, and Sam navigated the spectrometer’s interface.
‘Ready when you are,’ Sam said. He glanced at Rasha, then his eyes moved back to the spectro’s screen.
Rasha nodded, took a deep breath, filled her tight lungs with damp air, and let Syria erupt into her consciousness.
Oh Allah, had Rasha howled, hunched over the remains of Milana’s body. Her throat stung at the very thought. A fire spat to her left and spewed acrid smoke across the debris. All Rasha ascertained was how she hurt Milana, and there was no chance to make amends. No chance at forgiveness.
‘Rasha!’ a voice croaked. Haya had erupted from the smoke and tugged Rasha from the wreckage. Away from Milana.
‘No, Mama . . .’ Rasha cried.
‘I know,’ Haya said. She wrapped her arms around Rasha. ‘We have to go. If we want to live, we have to go.’
‘I don’t want to,’ Rasha had cried. She didn’t want to go; she didn’t want to live.
‘Rasha,’ Haya pleaded. She pulled her only daughter to her feet.
An explosion thrust them against the wall. They rebounded and hit the rubble. Haya’s arm burst into flames, and fire devoured her shrug. Rasha clambered to her feet, grabbed what had once been the living room curtain, and smothered Haya’s arm until the heat simmered and the smell of singed hair dissipated. Haya nodded thankfully. Rasha threw the curtain aside. A wound wept and bled on her mother’s forearm. It’d need a doctor; they had to leave.
Rasha offered her free hand and helped Haya to her feet. She gained her bearings: they were on the first floor. They’d fallen an entire storey. They stumbled in the darkness, unable to find the staircase to the ground floor. The precarious floorboards creaked with the weight of the debris. Rasha and Haya treaded toward the sill of a decimated window. The apartment’s wall had fallen into the alleyway and provided a ledge of sorts to climb down upon. They fled through the ruined streets. Gunfire tore through the air, and explosions rumbled on the horizon.
An impenetrable silence. Rasha opened her eyes at Calypso’s innards. The gywandras came. It stooped to fit inside the saloon, its irregular legs bowed to accommodate its bulbous torso. Its oily skin was a liquid mirror, reflecting the Calypso’s gloomy interior and their horrified faces. She saw into it – through it – as though there wasn’t skin or flesh or even a skeleton for that matter, but instead a void so expansive that if she stared any longer Rasha would plummet into it and never stop.
Rasha found herself in a study-come-library. Printer paper, tacked upon every inch of available wall, rustled in a polite wind. Across them were scribbles – formulas of many words and numbers beyond comprehension.
On the pine floorboards lay a girl. No. Her body hovered inches from the ground, and her shaggy blond hair and Powerpuff Girls bathrobe billowed around her. A minute middle-aged woman knelt beside her, urging her to stop, to be well, to ‘Be my Kasey!’
Rasha awoke on the Calypso’s saloon floor. The lights were out, and for a moment she thought the other two had disappeared.
‘It’s gone,’ Sam said.
She sat up, and hot pain shot across her back. She rolled her shoulders; she hadn’t felt the fall when it happened, only when she woke from the ombrederi.
‘What happened to the lights?’ she asked.
‘They blew,’ Trish said. She raised the blinds to let in sunlight. ‘There was an immense surge of frequency energy. What did you see?’
‘I don’t think I saw anything.’
Sam sighed.
‘I mean, I wasn’t just shown something. I was taken there.’
‘Taken? Taken where?’
‘There was a girl. Kasey. She was floating, actually floating, above the floor. Her mum was so upset. It was an occupation.’
Trish unpacked her phone, likely to check their Anascribe database.
‘What other occupations have there been?’ Sam asked.
‘There’s no need. You won’t find it,’ Rasha said. ‘It’s happening now.’
‘I overheard Leri talking the day you were . . . helping yourself to supplies,’ Trish said to Sam as the Reliant bombed down the A39. Rasha sat in the back, seat belt clamped in her hands. Her stomach churned at the prospect of what they headed toward and the speed at which they did so. ‘The occupation was in Lanhydrock. I don’t know where, specifically, but the Network has been tending to it.’
‘Could you find it with the receptor?’ Sam asked.
‘I can try.’
‘What do we do when we get there?’ Rasha faltered.
‘We’re gonna save her, Rasha,’ Sam said.
‘And that old man?’ Rasha asked. ‘You said he died. What about him?’
‘We didn’t have you with us.’
Rasha sat back, unsure of what Sam thought his comment would achieve. The thought of being responsible for another’s life made her chest clamp with anxiety.
Lanhydrock was new to Rasha. It took twenty-five minutes to get there, by which time the sun glared in the sky. A rugged stretch of countryside whirled past the windows, interspersed with reams of farmland and throngs of transmission towers. Trish pulled up beside a sign that read, ‘Trebyan,’ and gave up the
driver’s seat to Sam.
‘You can drive?’ Rasha asked him with trepidation.
‘Not legally,’ Sam retorted.
Trish joined Rasha in the back of the Reliant as Sam pushed the car forward. The clutch thunked.
‘Easy!’ Trish said.
She unravelled the receptor from its dusty bag and placed the precarious device around her head and shoulders. Rasha helped her with the buckles and straps now that she was more than accustomed to the contraption.
‘Thanks, bird,’ Trish said, then winked. ‘Watch how a pro does it.’
Trish closed her eyes and leant back on the seat, and she crossed to the ombrederi. Her eyelids fluttered as her eyes rolled beneath them.
So that’s how it looks, Rasha thought. She understood why her classmates ridiculed her for it. She seems to enjoy it.
‘We need to head north,’ Trish said. ‘Back through the farm, past the school.’
‘On it,’ Sam said. He made a haphazard three-point turn and raced back toward the main road.
‘What do you see, Trish?’ Rasha asked.
‘The girl,’ Trish said. ‘Kasey, she’s lost and alone and running. Running from the gywandras.’
Sam accelerated. Once they’d passed the small elementary school, Trish instructed them around Lanhydrock House and Gardens, a left turn, and two right turns. They trundled through a well-kept parish dotted with expensive detached houses that Rasha could hardly fathom living in.
‘Stop!’ Trish said. Her eyes snapped open. ‘Here, she’s here.’
They’d pulled up at a gated cottage. The building had been renovated with accents of steel and glass, separating itself from the rest of the traditionally kept parish houses. Sam parked in a gateway opposite.
Trish fled the car first, her bag of equipment in hand, and Rasha and Sam took the rear. The group paused at the gate whilst Sam pressed the intercom to its right. He hopped from one foot to the other, the way a runner would before a marathon. A nervous voice came through the static on the intercom.