by T Hodden
“Why?”
“Because I was not kind to them.” He snorted. “I can not leave my cell. I was not free then, I am not free now. He made the doors translucent as you see it. The magic that holds me remained there. One day he opened this window, this peep hole to talk to me. But he was dead. Lord Scratch Luther was slain with a sword I had not seen in several thousand years.” He spoke slowly. “A sword that should still have been in my House. House Of Ashes.”
“What is Heaven's Edge for?” I whispered. “It has to have a purpose to be worth killing for. Slightly more than a way to meet people like me?”
He stared at me.
“The sword should be in your House?” Ted said. “So if we proved somebody had to break in to steal it, rather than just opening the door like you would, would that help your case?”
“That would be a start.” Amduscias hissed. “Then return. I will guide you in asking questions of those who were in the conference. If you care to accept a noble quest.”
I stopped myself from retching on a throat full of bile until I had walked away and the door had turned back to impassible stone. I stood up straight and tried to walk away with out wanting to spew or scream. Ginger reached up and tugged on my sleeve.
“So... He knows about Doreen?” Ginger asked.
“You picked up on that too.” I gave him my best smile. “I am sure she is fine. She is looking after the rest of the bears, so they can keep her out of trouble right?”
*
Captain Jones Gerardo was using the voice she kept in reserve for emergencies. The one that was insufferably calm and devoid of any sense of fear. The one that she only used when she was pretty terrified. She glanced over at her First Officer, a stout and reliable pilot, and tried not to let any of her fear show on her face. She was flying a jet crammed to the brim with transatlantic passengers. She could not afford to be scared. Fear caused mistakes they would all have to pay for.
“Traffic Control,” the Captain said into her headset, “the Unknown Lights are closing in fast. Every time they get in a few hundred meters of our tail the electronics go buggy and the engines to stall. I do not know what they are, but I need assistance.”
The Unknown Lights had been following the plane for several minutes now. They had come from nowhere, heralded by a flare across the scanners that sent the instrument panels into chaos for a few seconds. At first they had just shadowed the plane, then they had started flashing past in streaks like a comet, spitting distance away, sending the controls and engines spluttering every time they got close.
There was a knock on the cabin door. The Second Officer leaned over and spoke through the door.
“We are a little busy.” The Second Officer said.
“There is a woman here who says she knows what is going on.” An attendant said. “She... Has bears.”
“And they should all be in their seats, with their seatbelts on!” The Second Officer barked. Before he could say any more, there was a noise like tissue paper rustling and a woman stepped through the door without opening it, which was not something you see every day. She was a little gawky, a little mess, and quite pretty. She was dressed like a school teacher, in shades of grey, but in skirts and a jacket that made her look like she had escaped from a costume drama from the Sunday night line ups. A maid or housekeeper in her Sunday Best. She shot the crew a quirky smile that was as surprised as they were.
“I had no if that would work. But I am a ghost so seemed like it was worth a try.” She said as she turned around and slipped the latch on the door to allow the bears in. There were three bears, with golden brown fur, anoraks and bobble hats. She looked over to Jones Gerardo and cleaned her hands on her skirts. “Right. So you are being trailed by drones from Rylo- er, Rylaff, er... A ruined city under the sea. They are trying to herd you so you fly over the ruins and then they will make you splash down so The Coo Thoo- The Catfood- The... Great Old Monster can sort of use us a packed lunch.” She frowned. “Why can the monster never be Bob from Leeds?”
“So, assuming that doesn't sound entirely insane,” Jones Gerardo sighed, “what exactly do we do about it?”
“We have a plan.” One of the bears said, removing his bobble hat and mittens so he could climb up onto the captains lap and take the control yoke. “We are going to fly into that storm.”
“That would be the vast electrical storm that the air traffic control diverted us around because it was too dangerous?” The First Officer had a sceptical tone.
“It is the storm used to herd you here to keep you in range of the drones.” Doreen Grey said, somehow managing to loom over the pilots with out growing any taller. “And it is a storm they are too delicate to fly through. And-”
“It is away from the kill zone.” Jones Gerardo said, understanding. “Changing course. They are on our tail.”
The bear leant past her to the throttle and heaved it up to maximum power, then he swatter her hands from the controls. He looked back at her. “Er, everybody was strapped in yes?”
“Why?” The Captain was staring at the instruments. They were all flickering and flashing, under the influence of the drones. The three lights were closing in. One of them was flying towards them at ramming speed, like a missile. “Oh.”
The bear hoisted on the controls, spinning the lumbering whale like jet into a barrel roll, avoiding the drone by a hairs breadth. The bottles of water, pens, papers, coffee cups and sandwiches in the cabin tumbled through the air as the jet span wildly through the air and swooped towards the storm front. Lightning raked down from the sky to the sea. Clouds boiled and rain filled the air. The bears let out a whoop as the jet swooped inside, the drones peeling away to give up their pursuit.
“Again!” The bear on the Captains lap squeaked. “One more roll, go on, or a loop?”
Jones Gerardo lifted the bear from her lap and shot Doreen a smile. “I think the passengers might want a little warning next time.”
*
“I sure she is just sitting at home doing crosswords or something.” Ginger agreed as we made our way through the winding windowless passages of House of Prices. He paused as we passed one of the side passages. He lifted his phone to take a picture of the statue in the passage but frowned at the screen. “Wont show up right.” He mumbled. “Too many dimensions.”
“So as much as I like the Gothic Dungeon look, this is not how I pictured Hell. There seems to be something missing. Like the billions of lamenting souls of the lost and the damned.” I dug my hands in my pockets. “Not that I am in any rush to find out how hell works...”
“But you are worried you might stumble onto the answer?” Wendy purred the question. “I know what you mean.” She shuddered.
“Still, we know a man who knows.” I muttered as we reached the residential chambers. I stood by the door to the Raven Room and hammered on it with my fist until Sylas opened it and glowered at me. He was there as the formal representative of the Grey King. He was dressed in a suit of royal blue and a coat somewhat less garish than normal. He lifted his head haughtily.
“What is it you want?” He sighed in the same tone he might have used if he came home one morning to find me kicking his puppy. Behind him was a room decorated with fountains and mosaics, a bed covered in cushions and a demonette with pale lilac skin under many layers of silk veils who stood in the corner as an obedient servant.
“The Grey King insisted quite strongly I took this little job.” I said. “What was it he said?”
“If you denied the request to aid Amduscias I was to drag you here by your nose hair.” He reported. He smiled. “And here you are. Your job is done and I have charming waif of a servant to take for drinks. Ta ta.”
“I assume he wants me to actually do that job then?” I said. “Even if it meant asking you for help. Like, asking you how one travels between Great Houses?”
“Oh dear.” He sighed. “And I bet I know which one. Did I ever mention how much contempt I hold you in at times Fisher?”
&nbs
p; I nodded. “More in your tone than in the words themselves.”
A few minutes later we were crammed in a wooden orniphopter swooping through a blood red sky full of dust and ash, over an endless wasteland of jagged rocks. I looked down at the crags and gulleys between the rocks and boulders, the maze of volcanic cracks, and I soon learned where all the souls sentenced to hell were. Slaves in rags with chains on their ankles and sweat on their backs clawed at the baking hot rocks with picks and hammers.
“Those are the few. The few who never repent.” Sylas explained. “Few being a relative term of course. Most pass through here. You remember once upon a time I showed you how to perform a spell that makes people feel the pain they caused others? That is what hell is meant to be. Retribution. The ultimate fair trial. You suffer for your sins in exactly the amount of anguish you deserve and you come out the other side ready to be reborn, or to move on, or...” He smiled. “Or whatever else the Singularity chooses for you when you finally meet your maker.”
“Singularity?” I asked.
“The maker of all things. The Perfect Jewel. Humans have lots of names for her, they see many paths to her light, many facets of the jewel.”
“Are you talking about God?” I asked.
“A popular path to her light. Or to darkness I am afraid.” Sylas smiled. “Those down there are the ones who endured the pain and revelled in it. Who have no understanding of the consequences of their actions. Or those whose souls were promised to one of the houses in return for... Favours. Or those souls that were pawns in the great games of politics.”
Our vessel was dragonfly shaped. The cockpit was bulbous, the wings a blur and the tail long and sleek. The windows were very much like compound eyes. Sylas pointed down to some ornate gates carved into the side of a chasm. “There. That is where your friend once ruled his army from.” His voice was deadly quiet, his snide humour missing. “I will of course be bravely protecting the vehicle.”
I nodded my understanding. I wrapped several thin scarves over my face and put some goggles on before I lifted the hood of my sweatshirt up. I opened the canopy and stepped into the bitter winds, grateful for my battered old leather jacket. If I could have afforded a new one it would have become old and battered a few minutes after being first exposed to the air here. It was full of ash and grit. It tasted foul of burnt rubber and over boiled cabbage. The bears had the hoods of their anoraks up and decided their trusty gas masks would offer them protection from the raking weather. Hell was a punishment after all.
The wind hit me like a bulldozer and almost swept me off my feet. It howled with the sound of a million anguished souls (and I put that metaphor straight out of my mind in case it was a little too literal) and tried to shout for the bears to wait behind. They pretended not to hear me and tethered a safety line between themselves and the Dragonfly, clipping it to each of their belts. I staggered against the wind until I could shelter in the carved doorway.
I pressed my hand against the stone. The locks should have sensed I was there with permission and withdrawn their bolts, but something had sliced through the bolts and clasps. I swung the doors open, revealing the dusty hallway beyond and we piled inside for shelter. I eased the door closed behind us, really hoping that the way the shadows seemed to crawl over the mosaics on the walls were tricks of the light and nothing more sinister. Ginger and Wendy produced gas powered flaming torches from their rucksacks. The others had a variety of LED torches. Gwyn had chosen a kids toy that could project stars and moons and happy images on the wall, changer the colour of his light and produce sound effects at the press of a button. As he struggled to flick it on it started to play a candy pop ditty as unicorns and rainbows were projected all around us.
“Sorry.” He mumbled slapping the side of the casing. Shooting stars and dancing clowns replaced the projected images. He slapped it one last time and it became a shaft of amber light with the ditty playing out of key.
“Nobody touches anything.” I warned the bears. Ginger stopped touching something on the wall and a chandelier crashed to the floor of the reception room through an arched doorway. I stared at him until he mumbled an apology. I nodded for them to follow down into the maze of passageways. The mosaic walls sensed our presence and started to glow in pastel shades with a dull light wherever we walked. The design sense was ancient. I was reminded of sand and sandal melodramas at the Saturday Morning Movie Showing. There were no images in the mosaics, just maze like patterns, although they seemed to have a nasty habit of changing shape when we were not looking.
Our destination was the atrium in which a vast tree of silver bark and drooping bare limbs grew out of a bed of ash and bone. Bone white birds with scales rather than feathers and insects the size of cats lived up in the rafters, fluttering about and feeding on vermin. A tall skeletal figure in rags so fine they may have been spider webs should have been waiting for us in the shadow of the tree. A Scare and His Crows was a dangerous weapon. An undead guard with no compassion or mercy. Instead he was pinned to the body of the tree by a black iron dagger. His head cleaved off, his swarm of crows reduced to twisted meat. The body of the tree had been hacked away to reveal the storage compartment inside.
“What can cut through Silverbark trees?” Ted asked in a whisper. “In Everafter they are grown to make spaceships. Spaceships. I can't think of anything that can cut it that is man portable. They need huge platform mounted machines to harvest it.”
“You would need a Banesword for that.” Gwyn said. “Like the one that was stolen.”
“And if you had one to hand,” Tiger said, “you would not need to steal one. Except...”
“If you wanted two!” Ginger squeaked. “Or...” He looked at the glare Tiger was giving him. “If you wanted to leave a smoking gun that would frame somebody?”
“Yes.” Tiger said. “And you might actually want to photograph something we need to record on that phone of yours.”
“Ah. Yes!” He started snapping away. I already had several photos saved on my own phone that I really had no intention to look at if I could avoid it. They were not exactly going to make the album to be reviewed over tea and tiffin.
“So is this going to be a cunning ruse by Amduscias to avoid suspicion?” I asked.
Nobody had an answer.
“Yeah. Kind of what I expected.” I sighed. “Come on, there is nothing more we can learn here.”
*
“Dad!” Chloe Hampton wailed from the top of the stairs. “There was something under my bed. I saw it!”
“Did you now.” Mr Hampton had been trying to watch the football and growled with frustration as he paused the live feed and followed his daughter up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. Or rather up the stairs to her room. He turned on the lights and went through his usual routine. She had been having the strange nightmares for a few weeks now, that the Monster Men were coming for her when she slept. She had stolen some garlic cloves from the kitchen and planted them in a little pot that she kept by her bed and had started leaving the curtains open a little so she could see if the security lights over the drive and front garden flicked on. Mr Hampton was well used to the routine.
“Nothing under the bed.” He said, leaning down to shine the light from his phone at the toys stacked there. “Nothing in the cupboards.” He opened both wardrobes to reveal nothing but clothes. “And nothing behind the door.” He swung the door closed and wondered why his daughter was screaming. He spun on his heels to see the small brown bear in an anorak and combat trousers who had been hiding behind the door.
“Hello.” The bear said, trying to hide a cricket bat behind her back.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Mr Hampton demanded angrily.
“Waiting for the Monster Men?” The bear asked, a little confused. “Tall people, thin as rakes, bulbous heads, wearing a kind of tinfoil one-piece pyjama set?”
Chloe was nodding, and oddly that was how she had described the ghouls who had been trying to get in her room.
/> “Vampires!” Chloe said.
“Don't be silly dear.” The bear shook her head. “There is no such thing as Vampires.” She gave Mr Hampton a 'kids huh?' kind of look and rolled her eyes.
“See dear.” Mister Hampton said.
“No. These are Martians!” The Bear declared. As she spoke there was a light outside the window. A loud humming noise that droned with such power the toys on the shelves started to vibrate. Mr Hampton made a gurgling noise and drooped into a standing sleep. “Ah. See. A hypnotic field. That is why none of the adults ever see them. That low sound is telling them to sleep, and to forget. It sort of stops the memories forming. Kids are immune to it a little. So you feel trapped in bed and can't move, but are all too awake. When the noise stops you run down stairs, tell your mama and of course she would have no idea.” The Bear was waddling towards the window. “All quite clever.”
The security lights in the garden flickered on. Long shadows were cast over the lawn by the gangly, wavering figures who seemed to drift rather than walk as they crossed to the house. The Bear gave Chloe a wink and cleared her throat. “Oh no! We are helpless!” The Bear declared in a theatrical tone. “I do so hope those naughty Martians do not try to come through the back door I carelessly left unlocked. Here in number sixty three!”
The figures started clawed at the patio doors trying to open the door that was not quite as unlocked as promised.
“Don't say that!” Chloe hissed. “They will all come this way.”
“Oh?” The Bear looked worried. “Sorry! I was meant to tell you I am just the distraction and everything will be just fine.” She patted her cricket bat. “One way or another.”
“Distracting them from what?” Chloe asked.
“From her.” The Bear nodded back down to the garden. From the shadows at the edge of the garden another figure was emerging. A woman dressed in an antique style strode angrily into the pool of green light cast by the humming flying saucer. Doreen Grey was also armed with a cricket bat. Hers was larger and heavier.