by Mark Cassell
“What are we waiting for?”
He peered out into the street. “Our only exit.”
“You’re joking!” My eyes leapt to the table of barbecue supplies, and then to the Fabric. “We’ll break our necks from this height.”
Still the Fabric hadn’t budged, and without taking my eyes off it, I sidestepped towards the table.
“We have another exit.” I grabbed the bottle of lighter fluid. We had fire.
Victor saw my intention and pulled from his pocket a lighter. It was similar to the one I’d bought for Goodwin.
“This and a pair of gloves,” he said, “is all we need.”
“And maybe the Witchblade.”
“Yes.”
“If it wanted to kill us,” I said as I unscrewed the lid, “it would’ve done so already.”
Victor swiped Lucas’s weekend supplies to the floor, kicked a chair away, and heaved the table from the wall. One of the chairs tipped and fell with a sickening thud onto a part of Lucas’s remains. It was hard to tell, perhaps it was his trousers. My heart thumped with each passing second. We had to get out of there. Now.
Victor shoved the table into the doorway.
Waiting until he retreated, I squirted the lighter fluid at the table and the walls. “This could go horribly wrong.”
The Fabric still didn’t move.
“It’s our only way out.” He flicked the Zippo wheel a few times. The spark eventually created a flame, and in an underarm throw, he tossed the lighter at the table. The flame arced through the air and skidded across the surface, coming to rest halfway. Orange and yellow, plus traces of blue, surged as the fire fanned outwards. It coated the table and climbed the walls.
On the ceiling the Fabric shuddered, stretched itself out, and pulled its mass further into the room. I cringed, waiting for a tentacle to reach for us, to rip us in pieces as it had Lucas.
Nothing.
Victor darted underneath the burning table. I ducked and threw myself after him. Everything was bright. Knees banging the floor, I scrambled under the fire, dragging and pulling myself through the doorway.
I ignored the pain in my knee as I scrambled into the hall. The Fabric still hung from the ceiling, mostly in the room behind, held back by the flames. Smoke drifted out as the crackles intensified.
Victor ran from the kitchen holding The Book of Leaves. Remembering what happened earlier, I was relieved to see it wrapped. Loosely, but still out of sight.
I charged downstairs with Victor a short distance behind me.
On the first floor landing, I stepped aside as he caught up. I turned and pointed the bottle of lighter fluid up the stairs and squeezed. The jet of liquid caught the flames in the doorway, and immediately the fire spread along the carpet. I hoped none of the fire would run back into the bottle—this was one dangerous game.
As we were about to descend the final set of stairs, flames burst through the upstairs wall and part of the staircase. Carpet and plaster heaved as both fire and darkness fell on us. The black of the Fabric did little to dim the inferno now engulfing the top floor.
The heat stung my face. Smoke, heavy and bitter, filled my mouth. My lungs were tight. This was insane.
Victor made a noise and staggered away from me, clutching the package close to his chest. The floor tilted, lifting us upwards, and shifted sideways. A tentacle, thick as an arm, forced its way up from under us. It smashed part of the wall.
“Victor!”
He was gone.
On either side of me the walls were jagged sheets of plaster and skirting. Flames licked everything. The ceiling creaked, and with each passing second, the heat snatched more air away. Smoke stung my eyes and tears blinded me.
A bulk of shadow loomed on the edge of the flickering light as it tore through the upper floor.
“Victor!” I coughed and spat.
I tilted backwards, the floor heaving. Something cracked and splintered from behind and below. Both my feet slipped forward. With arms flailing, I peered over my shoulder—the snapped floorboards and split balusters peered up at me. Fire lashed between broken furniture.
The staircase was no longer there, replaced by vicious stakes and splinters. A mantrap like those I’d seen in Vietnam: lethal traps constructed from household objects such as tables and chairs, hidden beneath the forest floor by the Viet Cong. Desperate to remain upright, that was all I thought.
One hand still clutched the bottle, the other searched for a wall no longer there. I waited to fall, to be impaled by a mantrap of splintered balustrade and broken flooring.
A crash and a roar rushed over me as part of the ceiling collapsed. The world was blinding.
My feet shot out from under me and I fell.
I shouted something, my voice lost in a roar of fire and darkness, the heat unbearable.
Gravity tugged at me. It would be a short fall onto those deadly spikes, then a gloved hand yanked me to a stop. It jarred my neck. I grabbed Victor’s forearm, my feet perched on the edge of wooden splinters. He held me with one arm, The Book of Leaves under the other.
He hauled me up and my feet found buckled floorboards. His eyebrows twitched, eyes determined. The flames licked the ceiling. There was a lot of darkness behind that—I couldn’t tell if it was the ruined upper floor or the Shadow Fabric.
Shadows—normal ones, I hoped—flickered and danced around us.
Victor’s foot slipped and I fell back. He dropped the book and it slid down broken boards, disappearing into the room below. With a humph, he clutched me and I swung to the side. I kicked my legs for purchase and my knees slammed into the remains of a wall. Finally, my feet found something solid.
Teeth clenched, heart in my throat, I nodded to Victor and he let go. Any doubts whether I could trust this man vanished the moment he dropped the book. With a few grunts, I levered my body onto stable ground and collapsed against the wall, my breath fierce, my throat ragged and burning like the building.
Coughing, Victor pulled me up. The bottle of lighter fluid rolled at my feet. With so much fire destroying the house I doubted I needed it, yet I grabbed it regardless.
Victor slithered into the bookshop below and I followed, managing to snag my trousers and bang my head. Clean air rushed into my lungs as I clambered over a busted bookcase. Flames raged overhead.
Then darkness blocked it out.
I gasped, coughed, and brought the bottle up. Squeezing the last of the fluid into the hole I prayed none would splash down on me. Flames leapt around jagged floorboards and ripped carpet, and in the Fabric’s retreat, a roar shook the ceiling.
As I made it to ground level, a huge portion of a far wall gave way amidst a tangle of strip lights. They exploded.
A black mass leaked through the ceiling. Fire raged and fell through, covering the bookcases and broken shelves. Flames claimed them.
Darkness filled the room. With so much burning plaster and floorboards, and now books and shelving, the Fabric failed to come closer.
I ran to Victor who crouched over a mountain of books. His hands slapped at them.
“The book.” He coughed. “Help me find it.”
I didn’t want to help, I wanted to run. My clothes stuck to me. Smoke clogged the air and crawled into my lungs. My eyes stung. Another part of the ceiling fell and fire spilled down, obscuring the Shadow Fabric. Both fire and shadow were close to killing us, and we had to find a single book amongst a pile of others. My eyes jumped back and forth, desperation must’ve been etched into my face as it was in Victor’s. Every other breath had become a sharp cough, my vision blurred with tears. I had to fight the urge to leave him to his ridiculous search. He wanted to destroy The Book of Leaves, after all. I knew that. I also knew we couldn’t leave it for the Shadow Fabric to claim.
There it was, among hundreds of scattered books. As if drawn to it, I pointed and darted for it, grabbing it without hesitation. Perhaps it was confidence in wearing Lucas’s gloves, or having the Fabric above, which drove me to
snatch it. I clutched it to my chest and lunged for the archway.
“Got it.” My mouth tasted of smoke. A sharp cough leapt from my throat as I stumbled over books.
Victor close behind me, we sprinted through the bookshop. No more than fifteen seconds later, I had my foot jammed on the car’s accelerator and with squealing tyres, we headed away from the inferno.
CHAPTER 23
“Headlights,” Victor said, and coughed.
I’d been driving for a few minutes, oblivious to the oncoming cars as they flashed their lights, trying to tell me mine weren’t on. My eyes were on the road, yet all I saw was Lucas torn apart, chunks of his flesh flying about the room, and the Shadow Fabric chasing us down through the floors. That, and my vision of the metal boxes. What the hell did it mean?
An orange glow spilled into an edge of the rear-view mirror and I spotted blue lights, flashing between distant trees.
Occasionally, I coughed. My heart thumped in rhythm with a roar in my head louder than the car’s engine. I let the road take us wherever. The headlights cut into the night and forced back shadows which reminded me again of poor Lucas.
My voice shot from a raw throat. “The Fabric tore him to pieces, Victor.”
“I know.”
“Crazy.” I eased my foot off the accelerator, dropping the car to the speed limit. I’d been doing fifty in a thirty zone. I didn’t want the police to pull us over, especially as we were headed away, stinking of smoke, from a bookshop blaze.
“The Fabric came for the book,” Victor said, “not us.”
I glanced at the book in the rear, loose in its wrapping and seeming to take up half the back seat, then said, “You think Stanley is controlling the Fabric?”
“Quite possibly.”
“It appeared when you got the book out.” I shivered, thinking of Victor unwrapping it.
“It does seem to be linked. Nothing explains why you fainted, Leo. That’s the troubling thing.”
“Troubling? Fuck that!” I shouted. Softer, I said, “Lucas is dead.”
“I know.”
“Tore him to pieces.”
We travelled in silence for a few miles.
“Where am I driving to?” I’d been following the road, keeping perfectly within the speed limits, which may have been suspicious in itself.
“We must destroy the book. Before that…”
“What?”
His face was in shadow.
“I have to show it to Goodwin,” he said. “He believes The Book of Leaves to be a legend.”
“We can’t trust him.” Saying that left a sour taste, a weird combination with smoke clinging to the back of my throat. I wanted nothing to do with Goodwin.
He added, “I know Goodwin is hiding something—”
I laughed without humour. “Hiding something? Victor, he’s hiding a lot.”
“I have to show him The Book of Leaves.”
After all that had happened, I didn’t want Goodwin to see the book. I didn’t want him near it. And why did I see metal boxes when Victor had unwrapped the damn thing? I couldn’t believe he wanted to show it to Goodwin. Victor annoyed me.
Finally, after a long drive with nothing else said, we reached Periwick House. The reception desk was empty and our first stop was the toilets. We had to clean ourselves up. I spent most of my time at the sink splashing water on my face and gulping some to soothe my ragged throat. It didn’t eliminate the taste, or smell, of smoke.
I returned to the foyer, Victor behind me. I didn’t want to speak to him—I was still pissed off. I didn’t want to be here. Around the corner from the restaurant, raised voices reached us.
“I can’t believe you’ve taken it!” It was Suzy’s voice.
We entered the restaurant as she dropped a crate of sparkling glasses onto the bar top. It was a surprise they didn’t break. With all this madness, people were still going about their business; everyone, not just here, but the whole of the human race was oblivious to the darkness beneath what they assumed was real.
Joe, the resident barman, stood with his hands on his hips, his jaw set.
“Suzy, I—” He knocked his head to the side to remove floppy hair from his face.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “You turn the lights off and things just disappear, is that what you’re saying?”
“Suze, I wouldn’t steal from you.”
“Things don’t just disappear.”
The pair had a small audience, people I’d met earlier in the week. The father and daughter sat in a far corner. He cradled a pint of lager and peered across the room with the typical expression of an eavesdropper, while his daughter thumbed a magazine. The only other occupied table was taken by the couple whose argument had blocked my way into the foyer. The grimace on the woman’s face suggested she crunched ice cubes. She rolled an empty tumbler between her palms, eyes burning through a menu. I recalled her name: Pam. Her husband, Mick, wore a blank expression, his eyes on the bar. He sipped a half-pint of Coke.
Goodwin sat on a bar stool with his back to us.
A twist in my gut reminded me this guy had been my best friend—my mentor—over the last two years. He’d paid for everything since my accident, and I thought I’d known him. All I could think of was his silhouette in the cave while he oversaw the herding of a dozen handcuffed men under gunpoint. I wanted to turn and walk away.
All eyes were on Suzy and Joe. Except for mine. They were riveted to the back of Goodwin’s head. The sound of Suzy’s voice had already fused into a chirping noise.
Victor grabbed my arm as we made our way towards the bar. Against his chest, he held The Book of Leaves wrapped tight in its packaging.
“Please leave the talking to me,” he said in a low voice. “No matter what.”
“That’ll be difficult. Goodwin is up to something and I’ve just seen your friend get ripped apart.”
“Please, Leo.” He gripped my arm tighter. “I mean it.”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
He released me.
Goodwin followed Joe’s gaze and nodded to us.
I pushed a smile onto my lips and hoped it was convincing.
Joe’s stance hadn’t changed in the few seconds it took us to join them. Suzy screamed into his face: “How can I trust you?”
“I promise you, Suze,” he whined, “I didn’t take your money. Why would I do that?”
“All day things have been going missing, and now this.”
“I—”
“I told you to keep your voices down!” Goodwin shouted, cutting off Joe’s mumble. “Now, hang on. What else has gone missing?”
“I don’t care about anything else. I care about my purse. My money.”
“I know you do, Suzy.” Goodwin’s voice did little to calm her. She rounded on him, fists thumping the counter. A splash of spilt drink flicked up her shirt.
“Joe was the last one with it.”
“Yes, but please tell me what else has gone missing today.”
“Loads of things.” Her shoulders slumped and she leaned against the counter. Her hands unclenched and her gaze lowered. “You’ve said to me before about leaving stuff around the place. This is different.”
“Go on.”
“Silly things have gone missing, mostly little things.” Her eyes were moist, chin trembling. “Like mops, buckets, cloths, not the stuff people normally nick.”
Why did we listen to this pathetic argument? I’d just witnessed a man get ripped apart by the fucking Shadow Fabric.
Joe took a couple of tentative steps back and grabbed a can of furniture polish.
“And these things, too,” he said. “I swear we had one under the counter, but I had to get another one this morning. I know it sounds stupid, but I know my bar.”
“Not at all.” Goodwin winked at Suzy. “Looks like you’re not alone.”
“It’s as if we’ve got gremlins running around nicking stuff for the fun of it,” Joe said, more to himself.
�
�Still doesn’t explain my money, though, does it?” It was impossible to ignore the chemistry there, this pair were more than work colleagues.
“Suze…” The way he said her name was another indication of their relationship. “You know I wouldn’t take your purse. That’s stupid.”
“Don’t call me stupid.”
“I didn’t.”
“You—”
“That’s enough.” Goodwin stood up. “Both of you.”
They froze, faces slack like children rebuked by a father.
“Leave it with me and I shall look into it. Trust me, people.”
Trust me…
* * *
“You have the book?” Goodwin said and sat behind his desk. At some point, he’d put on gloves.
Placing the package in front of him, Victor stood back while I sat in a chair on the far side of the office. I didn’t look at it. I didn’t want to have another episode and faint again. Not only that, I didn’t want to look at Goodwin. I heard the wrapping fall away as Goodwin revealed The Book of Leaves.
Victor eyed me as he sat opposite Goodwin. His look said, don’t say anything about our mistrust. Well, I trusted Victor—obeying him was another matter. I already found it difficult to remain quiet.
Perhaps Goodwin noticed the way I avoided shaking his hand when we came into his office. I hoped so. My stomach twisted into a tight, heavy lump.
“There it is,” Victor said. “As described in all references to the Shadow Fabric. Bound in leather. Pages made of leather.”
“I once believed the book was only legend.” Goodwin slumped and exhaled. “And it contains the shadowleaf of witches caught in the 17th century. Do you think that’s true?”
“That book contains a few thousand shadowleaves.”
“There were that many witches?” Goodwin asked.
“Those discovered, yes.”
I heard the slow rasp of turning pages. Somehow, I managed to resist looking.
“This is incredible,” Goodwin said.
“It is.”
“Almost four hundred years, and this book has stood the test of time. Look at it.”
I gave in, and looked.
The Book of Leaves sat amongst a nest of dirty cloth. Opened wide, its brown pages appeared innocent enough, kind of like a carpet-sample book. The only difference being each swatch was black. To my relief, nothing happened, no dizziness or queasiness. No visions invaded my mind. I sat up and saw that the pages held a dozen shadowleaves. Each not much larger than a thumbnail.