by Ben J Henry
‘I think I just killed someone.’
His eyes darted to the ceiling, to the bedroom above, and then to the bedroom behind her.
‘Who?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. Not someone you love. ‘You don’t…she was a…’—a friend? An enemy?—‘it was Winter.’ Her voice caught as she delivered the name that meant nothing to him and would forevermore mean everything to her. His confusion thickened and she averted her eyes. ‘I thought I was waking her up.’
Winter disappeared, leaving the pillar bare. Amid the simulacrums that wailed and clawed at the ledges, Amira stood beside the entrance to a tunnel. One look at that horror-stricken face and Alicia knew that Winter would not wake. She slid from the ice and let those wretched screams envelop her as she fell towards the lava.
‘I was trying to wake her up.’
Alicia shrank when Ryan raised his arms. And then he held her in a tight embrace. Holding her together. With a palm against the back of her head, he drew her into his shoulder, into a wordless hug, firm enough for her to understand that he too was lost. He did not press her to his chest because she was innocent; he held her because nobody had held him, and because she needed to be held.
She broke, weeping against the soft jumper and gripping him as she had gripped the bear. Too soon, he relaxed his grip. She watched him stare through Amira’s bedroom doorway. Where once his eyes had been as placid as a lake, an ocean of thought surged within them.
‘How do you live with them?’ he whispered, shutting his eyes for a full second as if willing a migraine to pass.
‘With who?’
‘The voices.’
She wiped her eyes to better see him trying to make sense of this new world.
‘You are the voices.’
A scar ran from the corner of his left eye towards his ear, just over an inch long. That jagged thread, a brilliant white against the fair skin, was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen. What was more real than imperfection? Suddenly repelled by her desire to hold him—to accept his attempt to ease the pain that she deserved—Alicia withdrew from the embrace.
‘I’m sorry I shot you,’ he said in earnest. Concern furrowed his brow. ‘Rainn was about to extinguish you—to try, anyway, and I think she might have…’
His explanation continued: how she was not ready for this test; how he had to force her to wake; but the word ‘extinguish’ expanded between Alicia’s ears as Rainn’s cerulean eyes stretched to the corners of her mind.
Had Winter’s vision filled with green eyes when Alicia reached inside and seized her soul?
Ryan lunged forward to catch her by the shoulders as her knees buckled. The truth pressed in on her, pushing her, and she staggered out of his reach, creating a distance between herself and the comfort she craved. Not a simulacrum, but still a stranger, he stood with strong arms ready to catch her and she knew that his desire to hold her was as urgent as her desire to be held. She fought the temptation of those open arms to lure her from the epicentre of a pain that she had authored.
‘Melissa,’ she said, ‘your mum, she’s in the Pagoda. With your dad.’
The pair looked through the open front doorway, across the paths and ponds to the tower in the trees. A squirrel crossed from a branch to the roof of the Pagoda, pelted along the bamboo and disappeared into branches on the far side. Alicia shot a final glance at Ryan, caught the longing in his eyes as he sought the face of the mother that awaited him, and a fierce jealousy tore at her throat.
She fixed her gaze to the wooden fence at the bottom of the sloping field. Only the odd beam was visible amid the browning leaves of the bushes. Beyond the fence, the trees were perfectly still. Not a breath of wind disturbed the branches. She stepped onto the patio, staring at the silent woodland. Were this Vivador, her mental state would have driven a gale through those trees, uprooting all in its path. How could this world remain so utterly indifferent to the emotion that ravaged her?
For a full second, she closed her eyes and the world disappeared.
And reappeared. Solid and impervious to will or expectation. An intense pain shot through her chest and her vision blurred. In that moment, it was not her brother that she needed. She closed her eyes and dropped to the ground.
Alicia lay on the patio, her head inches from a birdbath that Ryan had once filled with frogspawn. He wanted to cross the mossy flagstones and rouse her, to check that she was breathing. He wanted to shift her awkward limbs into a more comfortable position that might resemble someone sleeping, rather than a corpse.
But she had shrunk from his touch. She had slipped from his embrace. She had looked into his eyes and seen what he was too afraid to face, and then withdrawn from him.
Without another look at the Pagoda, he turned for the bedroom that had not always been Amira’s. On a chest of drawers between the beds lay a glass terrarium—and before this, a dollhouse with tiny panes of glass, uncracked: a coveted birthday present. On the bed beneath the window lay a white bear—and before this, Sam.
Footsteps on the carpet, fingers reaching for the dollhouse.
‘It’s at the top of the house,’ he whispered in Sam’s ear as curly hair tickled his cheek. ‘I’ll show you.’
The light of a torch flicked on and off.
Sam: the orphan. The adopted brother. The eight-year-old boy who died in the attic.
‘He had an epileptic fit. It wasn’t your fault.’—his mother’s explanation tasted like a lie. He cradled his head in his hands, trying to remember what had happened in the attic. How was it possible for a mind to crave a truth so desperately while knowing that it might destroy you?
He returned to the front doorway. Gravel paths stretched like running tracks, set for him to tear between the ponds, down to the tower and into his mother’s arms. But his legs would not move.
Your mother finds it hard to love you after what you did to Sam.
What if he found her and she pulled away, scared of the secrets in his eyes? Steeling himself, he turned for the stairs. Whatever had happened in the attic, the memory had been locked away, sequestered in a hidden file for his own protection.
When you’ve a question on your mind, ask the mirror.
Repression leaves scars, Ryan thought; 29 of them, if he remembered correctly. A song on the radio can transport you to the time and place that you last heard it; a smell can evoke the memory of a deceased relative. All he needed to unlock his past was to look in that mirror and find the truth in his eyes.
Taking the steps two at a time, he shook cowardly voices that urged him to let it be. Like a lamb to the slaughter, he stepped through the attic doorway, ready to spear himself upon an irrevocable truth. Rising through the fear, he reached the top step and strode between the numbers carved by a girl who feared him.
He gripped the grey-white sheet and his chest tightened. He had yet to connect a violent thumping to the beating of his heart. Incessant mental chatter screamed for his attention as he braced himself to face all that he had seen and all that he had done. With a sharp tug of the bedsheet, he uncovered the mirror.
‘Those eyes will get you in trouble one day.’ His mother gave him a wink and he licked the ice cream from his fingers, wondering what she meant.
Will and expectation: he would find the truth in his eyes because that is precisely what he feared. He looked into that fear and searched for the cause that lay beneath it. He caught snatches of truths that he already knew: Peter whispering through permanently-clenched teeth that friends should share secrets. He had wanted to share his secret mirror with Sam. He had not wanted to hurt him. He could not remember wanting to hurt him.
Frustrated, Ryan pulled his eyes from those cloudy depths and cast them across the reflected room, willing the memory to surface. Dust motes hovered in the shaft of light that fell upon his mattress, but his memories remained locked in the shadows.
A large 29 caught his attention, engraved into the nearest beam. In the mirror, these digits reversed and t
he air in his lungs petrified. Every inch of the attic walls as high as Amira could reach was covered with two letters: PS.
P.S. Lawson—the gold lettering of the briefcase flickered violently under the light of the torch in Peter’s hand.
‘Stop it!’ Ryan shouted as Sam collapsed on the floor. He tried to turn to his friend, but rough hands gripped his shoulders. He was thrown forward and a light exploded in his head as he struck the corner of the iron frame.
‘Ryan is a murderer,’ whispered the voice in his ear as all went dark.
Paralysed by the enormity of his father’s deception, he slid to his knees and drew a thumb along the white scar that ran down his cheek. Beyond the horror that made pinpricks of his pupils, Ryan found innocence.
CHAPTER NINE
Frieze
A pillar of rock rose from the ground like the trunk of a redwood tree. Over fifty metres high, it was nearing the ceiling of the cavern when Gus halted its growth. A resounding crack echoed between the walls as the rock split at its base and proceeded to topple forward. But as the falling pillar crossed the edge of the chasm, it disappeared into the darkness, leaving nothing but a blunt stump that hit the ground with a quaking thud. The base of the pillar rolled to the cliff’s edge, where it lay flush against the Active Nothing as though sliced with the beam of a laser.
No light fell on the chasm, yet Gus was able to discern the ghostly outline of its far edge. Had Aldous and Morna granted passage to those meagre rays of light touching the distant cliff, so that Gus would see the side he could not reach?
‘No thing that you create can exist here,’ Rainn had said before disappearing as abruptly as his failed creations. Had she given up on him? Since he was unable to generate a structure spanning the abyss, Gus assumed that Rainn had left in search of Alicia. He inched his hand forward again, focusing on his fingertips and willing them to exist where nothing could. They vanished.
Only you can cross it. Gus found new meaning in Rainn’s words as he stared into the void. He had no fingers. These were mere projections, as real as the pillar of rock. If he were to believe that he held a unique energy capable of overcoming the will of others, then it was this energy alone that could cross the Active Nothing.
But what was it? What exactly was he supposed to command? What intangible element of himself was he expected to draw from?
Impatience stoked the fire in his chest. He resented the imaginary heart that pumped imaginary blood through his imaginary body. In his mind’s eye, Rainn overlooked his physical body on the cliffs, preparing to roll that dead weight into the ocean. Melissa pursued Alicia, tightening the knot at the back of her head as she readied herself to do whatever it took to recover her son. And he glared at an empty void, paralysed by his own failure.
Rainn reappeared and the air thickened, enveloping Gus with a viscous emotion that she struggled to repress. He recalled her vulnerable form, cradling the telephone as a beam of light swept her vacant eyes. Who had she spoken to? Winter’s death meant nothing to Rainn: this was not the news she had received.
But whatever had happened, he thought, wherever she had been, at least she had not rolled him off the cliff.
Gus’s face was intense as he edged his hand forward, focusing not on his fingers, but the energy within them.
‘Your parents only wanted to protect you.’ Her whisper crackled through his skull. ‘In their attempt to save you, they lost their lives.’
A violent undercurrent stirred her words and the edge of his nails glowed like a blade in sunlight. As his nails crossed an invisible line, this light remained.
‘If you fail to stop Melissa, Alicia will die.’
Like breath across a burning coal, Rainn’s words filled him with a bright vengeance and the tips of his fingers glowed.
‘Surrender to the fire,’ she hissed. ‘Let it burn.’
Gus moved forwards, feeding himself into the void as he drew on all that he was. Inching over the abyss, he had no hands or feet. He controlled no body and saw with no eyes. As fear and anger and hatred, he crossed the Active Nothing.
Feet met rock and he collapsed to the ground, letting unreal air fill his projected lungs. His mind reeled as if he had been squeezed through a garlic press. Rolling over, he glanced back across the chasm to see an unbroken gloom. He was alone.
Like the teeth of a gargantuan beast, stalactites hung from the ceiling of the cavern while stalagmites rose to meet them from the gently inclining floor. Slender beams of golden light fell through cracks in the ceiling to strike rock pillars like dappled sunlight upon a petrified forest.
The ceiling lowered and the gradient of the floor continued to rise until, ten feet apart, they met the far wall of the cavern. Etched upon the volcanic rock were engravings that ran in a long band, stretching to the left and right like the Parthenon Frieze. Images on the far left depicted a man and woman sleeping hand in hand, facing one another in bed. Gus stepped closer to the engraving as something caught his eye. The rock that formed the characters’ eyelids twitched perceptibly like the shell of a hermit crab, revealing obsidian eyes beneath. In the image on the right, the outline of a volcano had been cast into the wall. As he looked at it, the rock above the crater split and sealed repeatedly, giving the impression of an eruption.
Scanning the animated carvings, Gus saw the history of Aldous and Morna. The furnace inside him burned and a flush of contempt heated his cheeks as he witnessed the arrogance—the glorification of a tale that ended in the slaughter of innocents.
Stepping to the right, he followed their story, with each static scene stirring to life under his attention. Lightning bolts snaked down the rock in jagged cracks to strike at raised boulders. Tornadoes and car crashes—several of the events he did not understand. Others, he recognised immediately: a golden eye unfolding on the cover of a book. He ran his eyes across the dynamic engravings, searching for meaning.
A woman climbed upon a throne and plunged a crystal dagger into her chest. Eloise Grett took her life so that her granddaughter might inherit a responsibility she had been unable to face. Gus’s breath spilled like mist from his open mouth, clouding the tiny crystal dagger as a coldness gripped him. He had crossed the Active Nothing; had Eloise’s power passed to him?
Outside a lighthouse, two figures handed a book to a third before collapsing to the ground. Gus sank to his knees, tracing his fingers along the arm that his father had slung around his mother’s body. As the rock split and sealed, it pinched his skin and he brushed the pad of a bloodied fingertip across his mother’s fallen face. The image reset, with his parents emerging from the lighthouse, and he watched them collapse twice more before struggling to his feet and remembering his purpose.
The death of his parents last summer was the final scene of this animated frieze; the section to the right was blank. But as the bare rock received his attention, it shifted like quicksand, presenting him with a new image. Light fell over his shoulder from a hole in the ceiling and struck the rock in a horizontal line, forming a bridge across a dark recess. The figure of a woman drifted across this bridge. Gus leaned closer, following the single green stone that travelled through the rock: the eye of the woman who had crossed the Active Nothing. The figure drifted between pillars towards a cloaked individual that had materialised on the igneous canvas with a bead of obsidian for an eye. The woman raised her palm and the figure disappeared.
On a cliff in another realm, his heart clenched. This was not history, but a premonition: the elimination of Aldous by a woman with green eyes. Did the patriarch of the Crow family await Alicia Harrington? Had he surrendered to his fate, ready to face a weapon that he would be unable to withstand?
But Aldous was wrong, and the premonition false: Gus had crossed the Active Nothing.
A high cawing sounded behind him and he turned to see a crow perched on a stalagmite, watching him with a cocked head. The bird took flight and Gus followed its passage between the pillars, leading him deeper into the cavern. Dark wings fluttered
silently between the shafts of light and he was beginning to tire of chasing shadows when he heard a roaring in the distance.
The petrified forest gave way to a clearing as large as a football pitch, with a low basin and a high ceiling. The tremendous roar came from a hole in the roof of the cavern. Gus wandered down to where a wide shaft of light through the circular opening struck a single boulder in the centre of the basin. Unlike the dark igneous rock, this boulder was of a light stone, almost white beneath the falling beam. The boulder was massive, over twice his height, and its flat surface had been carved with the lines of a poem. Gus’s thoughts returned to the animated frieze as he studied the scorched letters, burned into the rock by bolts of lightning.
The greatest war that man shall fight will not lie on the plain.
No spear or gun, no atom bomb, no enemy terrain.
The foe long sought, this evil fought, will share his given name.
The war between and war within will be one and the same.
From fear inane, projected blame: to seek is not to find.
The greatest war that man shall fight will lie within his mind.
Gripping a lone stalagmite with leathery talons, the bird watched Gus approach, its eyes dark and knowing. Stepping into the light, he saw that the opening above was a tunnel, stretching higher into the rock than he could fathom. He was not surprised that this tunnel matched the diameter of the blowhole on Earth; but unlike the jagged blowhole, carved by decades of erosion from the ocean waves, the shaft above was smoothed by a tornado that whipped along its length. This was the tunnel through which Aldous and Morna had first accessed Vivador. This was the portal through which they hunted the souls of their defenceless victims. Twelve months ago, his great-grandparents had stood as he did now before launching themselves through that portal and after his fleeing parents.
Gus stared into the eye of the tornado and leaped from the rock.