by Ben J Henry
Joe turned for the stairs, scratched his nose and turned back. He crouched to Alicia’s level.
‘I needed to protect him,’ he said, his hard eyes now locked on hers. ‘I let Rainn take your mother’s letters. I wanted her to leave. To get them off our backs. You know what they’re capable of, my—our family. But your mother, my half-sister.’ He attempted a smile, thin and pained. ‘She had courage. She came to see me, in Galway. Showed me that book, and I…’ He barely moved his lips when he continued: ‘I told her to burn it. After Ben, I just…I was lost. Anna told me Melissa Lawson had sent her to that lighthouse, so I looked her up. Melissa said they’d taken her son. She wanted the book—she wanted to give it back to them. An exchange. But Anna…When I refused to help her, she turned to Melissa. And they ripped her.’
Ripped—the word plunged through Alicia like a spectral fist. Is that what the Order called it, to tear a soul from its body?
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because she was fearless. Because they didn’t need her any more, not with Ryan leading you to them. And because Anna had…ideas.’
He wanted to tell her why her mother had gone to see Melissa that day. What would Alicia make of her mother’s plan to overthrow the Crows? Wind ruffled the long grass outside the vents, brushing feathery shadows across the walls.
It could wait.
He rose from the crouch and stretched his legs. Golden rays struck his cheek.
‘They asked for my help. Both of them. Your mother and Melissa. And I couldn’t—I didn’t help them. But you…you don’t have to be brave any more, Alicia. Aldous and Morna want you, you know that. They won’t harm you, they need you alive. Just stay out of Vivador, and you’ll be safe.’
He nodded to the stairs.
‘Is there anything I can do, before I…?’
‘A cup of tea would be nice,’ said Alicia. His eyes narrowed and she shook her head. ‘Leave us.’ Her voice was firm but not unkind. ‘Bring him home. I have everything I need.’
She managed a smile, with one hand on her father’s shoulder and the other on her brother’s brow. Bathed in sunlight, there was nothing but a profound serenity in her malachite eyes. Joe nodded and climbed the steps. He was halfway to the door when she called his name.
‘He needs more than your protection, Sergeant Crow.’
Moonrise
The Earth continued its ceaseless rotation, creating the illusion of the moon rising over the ocean. The rays of a hidden sun struck the surface of the moon like a mirror before bouncing over the ocean waves, up through the glass of the lighthouse and into Gus’s pupils, where the light stimulated receptors in the back of his eyes to generate an image in his mind that looked nothing like anything on which he gazed. The moonrise was steady but certain, unhurried but unstoppable, and in the great white face of the moon Gus found a haunting beauty. A timeless indifference to the drama of his little life.
Sam lifted his head at footsteps on the stairs. The husky watched Rainn reach the raised metal walkway and then lowered his head back down on Winter’s thigh and continued to stare at the rotating bulb.
Rainn’s small nose wrinkled with distaste as she lifted her heel to step over Winter’s bare feet. She reached Gus with twin moons reflected in her eyes.
‘You think you’ve saved her, but she’ll return to Vivador.’ Rainn scratched a fingernail through the rust on the metal cage that protected the bulb. ‘You haven’t spared your cousin, only delayed the inevitable.’
She folded her arms, waiting for him to challenge her. He was exhausted to the bone and tired of her games.
‘She’ll have no reason to go back.’
He chose his words carefully. He saw nothing beyond the curved glass but the silver light upon the waves and a broken mast battered against the rocks. But what souls might have left their beds below to hover before his unseeing eyes?
‘You think you can kill them, don’t you?’ said Rainn, giving his cheek a sharp pinch. ‘So cute. While Aldous and Morna are in Vivador, you cannot rip them. And you won’t find them in the immaterial realm unless they want you to.’
‘I crossed that chasm,’ Gus whispered, the mark on his pale cheek reddening. ‘I have the Sol.’
‘But do you, though?’ She winked, her smile devious. ‘You think you’re the only one who crossed the Active Nothing?’
Her face was so close that Gus caught his open-mouthed reflection in her eyes. When Alicia had vanished into the void, Rainn had eyed the bridge of light and Gus had cast it away immediately, so that she would be unable to cross it.
‘You said—’
‘What you needed to hear. The Active Nothing: an idea vulnerable only to one with the Sol. That’s what Peter told me—that’s what he had been told by Aldous. But you see, young Augustus, an idea is only as strong as those who believe it. Aldous and Morna do not possess the Sol, so how could they have generated an idea any more powerful than themselves? Will and expectation: to cross that chasm, you need only believe that it is possible.’
‘If you could cross it, why didn’t you go after Melissa yourself? I saw Peter. He called you, didn’t he? Before he died.’
Rainn toyed with a blackened thread that draped across her navel. She then straightened up, with her hand on her hip.
‘I gave you what you wanted. Revenge, for that—’ She flicked a thumb over her shoulder at the dead body behind her. ‘And you didn’t need much of a push, did you? Came rather easily, didn’t it?’
She shook her head, flashing a smile, her teeth opaline in the moonlight. ‘At Burnflower, I learned a lot from Peter. He taught me that fear is the great catalyst that drives us through our lives. But he failed to see that it comes in so many different flavours. Such different intensities. He created fear through hatred and hatred through fear—Ryan ran that vicious cycle like a hamster in a wheel, and Peter almost got what he wanted. But hatred will only get you so far. Vengeance, yes, and enough anger to drive a misled little boy across an empty void. But if you want real fear—top grade, eternal, all-consuming—you need love. Alicia loves her brother, and behind that love is an unbearable fear that she will lose him again. Now that she has found him, now that you have reunited the pair of them, what would she do to protect him?’
‘The police…’ Gus hesitated. When ghosting through Burnflower, he had been unable to hear the words spoken between Melissa and the girl. He edged closer, leaning into Rainn’s ear, and cupped a hand to his mouth so that his lips could not be read by spectral observers.
‘The police are on their way. Joe will find the key for that door and we will finish this. You have no use for Alicia. Get out of here, and leave us.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Rainn. ‘The show’s not over yet. I think I’ll stick around. Joe will take the key from Burnflower and Aldous will rip him before he even reaches the door. Devastated, you will beg Alicia to return to Vivador. And she won’t need much convincing, since only Morna can wake her brother. But those are events waiting to happen. Steps along a path already laid. It’s the unpredictable that interests me. What will our Ryan do when he finds out who killed his mother?’
Gus closed his dry throat. He leaned back a fraction and did not cover his mouth when he spoke.
‘I told my uncle that Aldous and Morna killed Melissa.’
A siren wailed. Red and blue lights lit the surrounding glass as a police boat rounded the corner of the peninsula. Rainn pushed the sunglasses over her eyes and patted Gus gently on the cheek. It took him a moment to register the emotion. It was a maternal pride.
‘Welcome to the family.’
EPILOGUE
With a look of undisguised disdain, Agent Oliveira surveyed the woman on the far side of the front desk. This was the third time in as many months that the French woman had visited Caroeiro’s small police post, and this time she had brought her cat. In broken English, the woman explained her grievance with the town florist, and Agent Oliveira shifted his weight from one leg to the ot
her, drawing fingertips down his neat beard and biting back the urge to remind her that he had endured these details twice already. The woman had moved into a coastal property earlier that year and was adamant that the florist was lifting begonias from her hanging baskets and replacing them with withering plants, so that he could sell her healthy specimens at his stall in the town centre. The cat had, allegedly, scratched the perpetrator during his previous attempt to rob her, and hissed wildly whenever the man passed her on the street. The languorous animal lay boneless in the woman’s arms, and the officer could not imagine it stirring into action even if it were dropped onto a nest of rats.
‘You ask him in, this moment,’ said the woman. Her skin was weathered, her hair tangled by the sea spray, her eyes quick and mistrusting. ‘You call him now.’ She prodded the phone on the desk with her finger, and her sudden movement caused the cat’s ears to prick irritably. ‘And I show you how she hisses.’
‘A cat is not a witness.’
There followed a snort of laughter from the bench against the far wall of the small and narrow room. Two of his colleagues watched the exchange with a twist of amusement about their otherwise bored expressions. Unlike this pair, Agent Oliveira had a good grasp of English, which meant he was often landed with the complaints of tourists and expatriates. The men were idle, waiting for the superintendent, who was on the phone in an adjoining room to a British police officer. The young woman they had brought in had winked at Agent Oliveira as they led her, handcuffed, through the open doorway. The superintendent had taken a look at her to verify the description he had received, and asked his men to wait with her before returning to his call. She had stretched out along the length of the steel bench and fallen asleep immediately, wrists handcuffed in her lap. Having failed to wake her, the policemen perched on either side of the bench, the larger of the two half-submerged in the leaves of a potted plant.
The French woman spoke a fierce diatribe, slowing only when struggling to translate curse words. Agent Oliveira folded his arms and enjoyed a deep yawn. The animal’s amber eyes mirrored his indifference.
The cat turned its head towards the open door and delivered a loud hiss, halting the woman’s rant. The three police officers watched the animal wriggle, twist and scratch the woman’s bare arm, drawing blood. With an offended shriek, the woman opened her arms and let the animal drop to the floor. It arched its back and continued to stare at the doorway. Its black head moved slowly to the right, as if following the passage of a fly so small the humans were unable to see it.
‘You must take him outside,’ said Agent Oliveira, his patience spent. ‘Or we will have no choice but to arrest him.’
Recovering from the behaviour of her pet, the woman opened her mouth to correct him on the animal’s gender when the police officer rolled his eyes. She took a breath, readied herself for a fresh rebuke and Agent Oliveira dropped to the desk. His head struck the telephone, knocking the handset from its base, which followed him to the floor in a tangle of cables.
His colleagues bolted upright, calling his name. The leaner of the two approached the desk and dropped as abruptly, collapsing like a puppet with severed strings. The remaining police officer emerged from the leaves of the potted plant, staring at the wild woman as if she had cast some spell on them. A second hiss issued from the cat and the policeman’s eyes glazed over, his jaw falling slack. He fell back into the plant and slid down the wall to settle with his chin against his chest.
On the bench beside him, the woman stirred, opening her eyes and blinking lazily. She let out a satisfied moan as she stretched her handcuffed wrists over her head and shifted upright. She met the woman’s startled gaze, nodded to a set of keys that hung from the policeman’s belt and held out her handcuffs.
‘If you wouldn’t mind?’
Author’s Note
I’m a new author, and this book will disappear into the ether without reviews. If you can spare a minute to write a line or two, I would greatly appreciate a review on Amazon.
Review on Amazon UK
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Now let’s play a game.
Which of the five below is fictional?
• Blindsight
• Godalming
• Mt Psarnox
• REM behaviour disorder
• Lucid dreaming
All of them? None of them? Somewhere in between? Let’s find out…
Blindsight: David may be fictional, but his condition is not. Incredibly, studies have shown that participants with blindsight are capable of interacting with their environment as if they can see it, despite having no conscious image of the world. When asked to describe what lies in front of them, they cannot. When asked to place a dot in the centre of a circle, a part of their mind will tell them where it is.
Godalming: It may sound like somewhere out of The Lord of the Rings, but Godalming is a town in Surrey. I celebrated the turning of the millennium inside the Pepperpot, in fact.
Mt Psarnox: Much of the description of Psarnox was inspired by Mt Rinjani in Lombok, Indonesia. Aldous and Morna did not recreate a volcano they had seen in the waking world, for Psarnox does not exist.
REM behaviour disorder: This is real. Terrifying, right? When we sleep, our muscles are inhibited, so we can go for a walk or have a little dance and our bodies remain safely under the covers. For people with RBD, this inhibition doesn’t happen, and they literally act out their dreams. The disorder can be managed with medication, but there is currently no cure.
Lucid dreaming: As far as I’m aware, it isn’t possible to access another realm while you sleep; but the act of becoming conscious within the dream, of altering the dreamscape and facing your subconscious, is not only possible but every bit as exhilarating as it sounds. It’s such a weird phenomenon that a handful of my closest friends—those who knew I’d been writing the trilogy for almost a decade—asked: “You can actually do that?”. Like many others, they assumed that lucid dreaming was pure fantasy.
For those interested in lucid dreaming, I’ve written a short guide, available to download for free at benjhenry.com – why not give it a try this month?
The website also contains a little more about the trilogy, blogs on lucid dreaming, and the opportunity to stay in touch by joining the Chaos Readers Club. I email members on the first Friday of every month, with lucid dreaming tips and updates on the trilogy.
Stay in Touch
Join the Chaos Readers Club and get a free guide to lucid dreaming. As a member of the Club, you’ll get an email on the first Friday of every month, with updates on new releases, behind-the-scenes information on the development of the trilogy and, of course, the latest tips for lucid dreaming. Join us here.
The Trilogy
The Order of Chaos is the first in a trilogy. Burnflower is set for release in December 2021, and Catalyst will follow in 2022. For more information, visit benjhenry.com.
Thanks
A huge thank you to Mum, who helped me to edit the early drafts. This book was finished during a particularly challenging time of my life, and I’m eternally grateful to those who got me through it—you know who you are.
Thank you to Victoria Lee, for her incredible attention to detail during the final edits, and to the Faber Academy for providing such encouraging support while I revised the manuscript. I would also like to thank Jericho Writers and David Gaughran, whose sage advice helped me to navigate the world of self-publishing.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Ben J Henry
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, contact [email protected]
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FIRST EDITION
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