Death's Dominion

by Simon Clark

  Paul called out, ‘Sir, you aren’t fit enough to be out here yet.’

  ‘I’ll never be fit enough,’ the priest replied. ‘My soul is already in purgatory.’

  Dominion moved ahead with Paul following. He was mindful of the vehicles below him on the road. Their searchlights were trained on the priest, while the people sheltered behind boards that had been hastily bolted to the tops of the trucks. They resembled old time sailing boats, only these men o’ war boasted wooden sails. No doubt somewhere in the backs of the trucks dozens of saps crouched safe from Dominion’s stones.

  Dominion held his hand out to the priest. ‘Come back indoors. We can talk there.’

  ‘You want to talk?’ panted the man. ‘What, with this?’ He struck himself in the face. ‘You won’t be talking to me. You’ll be addressing a slab of dead flesh that only bears a passing resemblance to me. I died in the church. What you see here now is a shell without a spirit.’

  A voice called from the truck below. ‘Father, tell them to release you. We’ll take you back down into the town.’

  ‘Haven’t you seen what these creatures have done to me? They’ve made my body into the same vile beast as they are.’

  The owner of the voice failed to understand. ‘Father, they are transients. It’s against their law to harm you. Tell them to open the gate. Then walk toward the vehicles. We’ll take care of you.’

  ‘I know you will do that. That’s why you must prepare for my funeral. Listen to me! Even though I might appear to be alive you must bury me in the graveyard.’

  His words were enough to coax townspeople from the vehicles. They clearly saw that the old priest had been transformed into a youthful man.

  ‘They have brough one of their machines to the Pharos. The ones that mock both God and nature. Oh, yes, they’ll tell you they’ve brought me back to life. Lies, of course.’

  ‘Sir,’ Dominion spoke gently. ‘Come down and talk.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Don’t you feel young again? What does it feel like to have a strong heart beating in your chest?’

  ‘I don’t feel anything because I no longer have a soul to feel with.’ He turned back to his people gathered on the roadway. ‘Don’t you see? These creatures are playing a trick on you? I’m not real. This isn’t alive.’ He slammed his fist against his chest. ‘They are mocking you. I am not your priest now. What you see up here is a monster.’

  The mayor appeared from behind a van. ‘Father, don’t talk like this. There must be a way to—’

  ‘There is a way. Destroy this abomination.’ He slapped his chest again. ‘Destroy the other monsters in here. It’s your sacred duty!’

  ‘Father—’

  ‘Do it. Then bury this carcass in quicklime!’

  A pause. The silence that wasn’t a silence. That absence of sound seemed to screech in Paul’s ears. Then came a flurry of shots.

  A dozen hooch-soaked kids raised their weapons then let fly with a motley collection of shotguns and rifles. Bullets knocked chips of stone from the wall. Then there were those that found their flesh and blood target. The man on the wall flinched as a hail of white-hot lead struck him. Even from here Paul saw how a bullet sped at the priest like a shooting star, struck him in the ribcage then tore through the body to explode out the other side in a spray of blood. Yet, he only faltered on the wall before regaining his balance. Hard to kill. The drunken gunslingers would have to wreak far more damage with their guns before felling this new God Scarer. The firing, however, stopped as quickly as it began. The mayor waved the young guns back. He was furious that they’d fired on what most of the townsfolk still believed to be one of their own.

  ‘Father,’ the mayor implored, ‘we can take care of you.’

  Blood ran down the priest’s face from a gunshot wound. In the searchlight the smear against his skin glared a violent crimson. ‘I’ve told you what you must do. Put this monster in the ground. Cover it with quicklime. Bury it under rocks, so it can’t dig itself out.’

  Dominion spoke, ‘Don’t you see what you can do? You’re healthy again. You’re stronger than before. These people need your help.’

  The figure swayed on the wall as he turned to face Dominion. ‘You really think Scaur Ness will welcome a monster as their priest?’ He placed the flat of his hand against the tower wall and pushed himself backwards from the battlements. Paul witnessed the man’s fall to earth. The long tails of his coat flapped in the slipstream. A black raven plunging earthwards. The silence of the townspeople made the slap of the body striking the road as shocking as a gunshot inside a church.

  Immediately those manning the searchlights on the trucks swung them down onto the fallen priest. The black figure lay there with the arms straight out in a pose of crucifixion as if he’d been nailed to the ground. Then the fingers twitched. A moment later he rolled onto his side before laboriously standing. He took three limping steps toward the truck. The body must have sustained broken bones but it still remained upright.

  ‘Hard to kill,’ Paul murmured. ‘What will his people do with a fractured priest now, Dominion?’

  ‘More to the point, what do we do now?’ Dominion clenched his fists.

  ‘Didn’t your eight-pound brain foresee the possibility that the priest would prefer his own extinction, rather than live on in a form he detested?’

  The priest’s voice rang out with such power it echoed back at him. ‘Use your guns! Shoot me!’ The townspeople froze. Now in that incandescent light they saw what the man in black had become. Hard to kill … The first volley of shots hadn’t killed him. The fall hadn’t killed him. Paul knew what must be running through their minds. What do we do now? Burn him alive? But which one of those saps had the guts to destroy their own man of God.

  ‘Fire on me!’ he boomed. ‘It’s not your priest who commands it. Christ commands it!’ As he advanced toward the vehicles the men retreated. They didn’t know how to deal with this … phantom? Demon? Monster? This creature bathed there in brilliant light resembled the priest they all loved.

  ‘Fire your guns at me!’

  ‘We’ll take you home. There will be a way to …’ A way to what? The mayor couldn’t finish the sentence.

  The priest held out his hands. ‘Those monsters in there have damned me. If you don’t destroy what I’ve become then you will have damned me, also.’ He looked down on the town from the cliff top. ‘If I should still move, disregard it. If I shout, cover your ears. Bury me as deeply as you can.’ Having said that he climbed the fence then stepped off the cliff. This time the fall was hundreds of feet. The silence ran on for a long time before Paul heard the crunch. At that height, 200 pounds of muscle and bone must have hit the buildings below with the force of a bomb.

  The silence that followed was a painful one. Paul sensed the rising tension. For a moment there was this frozen tableau. Here are the God Scarers on the battlements that overlook Scaur Ness. A dying town that lies in the darkness. On the cliff top a bunch of vehicles. They still shine their lights on the spot where the priest stepped into oblivion. The vigilantes don’t move a muscle. Yet emotion scalds them inside as their anger builds with a pressure that’s nothing less than explosive.

  Paul’s gratitude for the rugged steelwork of the portcullis that kept the saps locked out became surreal. He could have kissed that gate. Because as sure as the sun would rise in the morning that was the only thing that protected the God Scarers in here now.

  The surf hissed in the distance. In some of the houses below lights burned. He turned to gaze down at the mob. They’d do something. Their hatred blazed from them in a way that was nothing less than nuclear. Yet they still hadn’t moved. No one had shouted. There was only this lack of activity that somehow seemed worse than them screaming abuse and firing their guns. Then, when they did make their move, it was what Paul expected least of all.

  38

  Here Comes a Chopper to Chop off Your Head …

  Paul stood beside Dominion on the castl
e wall as the trucks began to move. After the townspeople had witnessed the fate of their priest Paul expected them to fire on the castle. Instead when the vehicles moved they retreated from the fortress. He glanced to his left along the walkway. Most of the God Scarers had climbed up here to watch events unfolding below. They exchanged puzzled glances, then shrugged; the behaviour of the mob had them mystified. Elsa stood beside Caitlin. West hoisted himself up to sit on the battlements for a better view. Beech talked to Xaiyad; from their expressions they clearly had no idea what was happening either.

  Paul spoke to Dominion. ‘You killed their priest. I expected them to attack, not for them to crawl back to their homes.’

  ‘This will end peacefully,’ Dominion told him.

  ‘Really? But then how can my three-pound brain match your eight-pound brain for wisdom?’

  ‘You detest what I am, don’t you?’

  ‘Until I met you,’ Paul said, ‘God Scarers were fortunate individuals who had been rescued in their entirety from death. You’ve been built from a scrap heap.’

  ‘I have the same senses.’

  ‘But only more so. You, Dominion, really are Frankenstein’s monster. You’re an amalgam. Even your brain is bolted together from a mish-mash of other brains.’

  ‘I still feel pain and loneliness.’

  ‘We … these men and women here … we’re devoted to the notion of serving humanity. You know something, I believe you were built with the express intention of being more than human.’

  ‘And that makes you hate me.’

  ‘Hate you? I should have destroyed you when I had the chance.’

  When Dominion glared it felt like the blow of an axe. Paul forced himself not to flinch, or show any sign of weakness. Dominion claimed there’d be a peaceful end to the siege, but how did that abnormal brain of his define ‘peaceful’.

  West shouted a warning. ‘Watch out. They’re up to something.’

  The vehicles’ lights revealed what happened next. A breakdown truck lurched out of the darkness into the glare of the assembled headlights. In clouds of blue diesel exhaust it rumbled up to the portcullis. Paul expected it to ram the gate. But the narrowness of the road, flanked by the cliff at one side and the castle walls at the other, made it impossible for the truck to strike head on; it would be a glancing blow. The nose of the truck swung toward the portcullis then turned away again. With a squeal of brakes it skidded to a stop. The back of the truck had been covered by a messy conglomeration of old house doors; clearly a crude attempt at armour to protect anyone in the back of the truck if Dominion had access to any homespun missiles. But Dominion at that moment was empty handed. All he could do was watch events unfold … or as time would show: unravel.

  Paul saw that the breakdown truck hauled a car. A rust-covered wreck of a thing, the rear tyres were flat, the bonnet had vanished, exposing a motor that had been deprived of usable parts. The machine had been dragged from a back street where it had lain unused for months, if not years. As they watched, the chain that connected it to the truck’s winch went slack. Then the truck drove away to leave the car there alongside the portcullis.

  ‘That showed us,’ West laughed. ‘They’re dumping old wrecks at our front door.’

  Cold spider feet prickled down Paul’s spine. He hoisted his upper half over the top of the wall so he could look down at the car forty feet below. Then he turned his head to see the saps’ cluster of vehicles a good 200 yards away. Their engines had been idling, now they began to rev them hard. Exhaust smoke hazed the headlights. He turned back to stare at the car. It lay there; an inert lump of metal, plastic, cracked windows. Then he noticed a thin trickle of smoke emerge from an open window. There wasn’t much. No more than someone lounging in the back seat to smoke a cigarette.

  Paul opened his mouth to take a deep enough breath to shout as loud as he could.

  Elsa had seen what happened to the priest. She’d watched the tow truck dump the old car at the gate. The night breeze began to blow colder. Above the rushing sound of surf on the beach she heard a deep pulse of sound on that chill air.

  What’s a helicopter doing here? she asked herself. Elsa leaned over the wall to search the dark sky above the town. Surely with this mountainous landscape it would be dangerous to fly so low at night. Even as she asked herself the question about the helicopter she spotted a light in the sky above the hills. That was the moment, too, that song of the dead returned. It rose in a chorus that shook her senses. In shock she glanced round at the others. Why couldn’t they hear it? Instead they were staring down at the old car outside the portcullis. Elsa clenched her fists. The unearthly music worked its way into every fibre of herself. The notes expanded in her mind; they stretched her senses until weird purple blooms burst through the black sky above her. The taste of the sea ran across her tongue. In it was more than brine. Somehow her taste-buds prickled with the atoms of everyone who had ever drowned there. The surreal notion took her back to her death … that first death of hers when she and Richard swam in the ocean. The currents had carried them too far out. They’d clung together in desperation as they’d become exhausted. Each had tried to support the other as the riptide hauled them downward. The coastguard had found her. Within hours her lifeless body had been rushed to a transit station. Within days she’d been taking her first ‘newborn’ steps round the station’s rose garden. Richard was gone. Never found. After all these years the ocean would have dissolved his body. Now its molecules might be rushing in the surf toward this very shore. The voices of the singing dead called to her. Their madrigal haunted her.

  They’re calling me … Richard is calling me. And even though she thought the voices of the dead couldn’t get any louder they did. She slammed her hands to her ears. Surely these people could hear the music now? When she looked at Paul he was moving away from the wall and he’d opened his mouth to shout …

  Paul yelled the warning with as much force as he could. ‘Get down! There’s a bomb in the car!’ The explosion tore through the night air like a thunderclap. A second later the shockwave slammed him against the walkway. Simultaneously a flash seared his retina. A yard from him the car’s gearbox crashed down in a shower of sparks. Broken glass fell from the night sky with a faint tinkling, as if it was a fairy-tale rainfall that had been transformed into diamonds. Then he saw nothing. Black smoke that smelt of burning paint obliterated everything.

  When the sea breeze ushered the fumes away he blinked. First of all he realized that Dominion had vanished. Then he knew why. The blast had knocked the giant from the walkway into the courtyard below. West had moved fast because he was already down there helping one of the nurses haul the unconscious man toward the room that housed the regenerator.

  So they packed an old car with dynamite? There are quarries nearby … the source of the explosive is obvious. Only we were too dumb to realize they’d do it.

  ‘Caitlin!’ He yelled her name as she ran toward him. ‘Get back inside. Use the tower doorway.’

  ‘Not without you, I’m not.’

  His head rang like a bell. ‘My hearing’s taken a beating. What’s West shouting?’

  Caitlin helped him stand. ‘He says they’ve blown a hole in the gate.’

  ‘Uh.’ He groaned, not with pain, but because he knew what would happen next. ‘Caitlin, get yourself inside, please.’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes were calm. ‘Not without you, Paul. Either we both go or we both stay. OK?’

  ‘OK. Get everyone inside and lock the doors. Xaiyad? Xaiyad, can you walk?’ He coughed as smoke engulfed them again. The stink of burning plastic made him want to vomit. ‘Xaiyad!’

  ‘I’m fine. You get the rest. Beech is hurt.’

  Paul risked putting his head above the parapet. The lights from the vehicles bathed the front of the castle in a brilliant light. Now the saps left the trucks to run toward the portcullis. Although he couldn’t see the extent of the damage from this angle, he saw the black smear on the road together with the burning w
reckage of the car.

  ‘Caitlin,’ he shouted, as he scrambled over crumpled sections of the car’s bodywork that had been hurled up here by the explosion. ‘Caitlin. I’m going down into the courtyard.’

  ‘West said they’d blown up the gate.’

  ‘There’s a chance I might be able to block the gap.’

  ‘Paul! They’ll be here any second. They’re armed!’

  ‘Even if I can’t someone’s got to make sure the doors from the courtyard into the castle itself are barricaded.’

  ‘No! They’ll kill you.’

  ‘If I don’t there’s nothing to stop them walking in and killing us anyway.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  There was no time to argue. He managed a groggy nod before half-stumbling, half-walking across what had been the roof of the car toward the entrance to the tower.

  Elsa lay flat under a sheet of metal. The shockwave had knocked the air out of her lungs. Even when someone walked over the debris that pinned her down it was all she could do to breathe never mind cry out. Elsa realized what had happened. Explosives in the car had detonated outside the portcullis. Yet she seemed to occupy two separate worlds now. One of noise, commotion, shouting; then another one where ethereal music washed through her. With the aura of tranquillity came a yearning to surrender to the inevitable as voices called to her across a vast gulf of absolute darkness. That resonant summons had become irresistible. I’m coming … Elsa knew she must find the source of the music. That’s all that mattered to her now.

  Disaster. The word thudded inside his head. Disaster, disaster …