by S J Howland
With a quick glance at his watch, Xander made a decision. He would return to the museum. If he saw those people again, he would ask them to explain what had happened and, more importantly, how to make it go away. Most likely however, there would be nothing to see, everything would be entirely normal and he could officially put this whole experience behind him; just something weird he had imagined. Much happier now he had a plan, Xander stood up and put a hand on his mother’s arm to make sure she would actually hear him.
‘Mum? I’m just going back to the museum to check out a few things.’
Even as he spoke, Xander felt better; decisive and definitely on the way to a rational solution.
His mother looked up and nodded, her eyes not quite focussing on him. ‘No problem. Have a good time.’ She smiled distractedly, her hand already reaching for another file.
After pocketing his keys, Xander headed out to catch the bus back to the museum. In his haste, he did not notice the shadows shifting behind him in the hallway, sliding down towards the door he had just slammed shut.
*
It was still lunchtime when Xander stood once more in the atrium. The lofty space was teeming with people but still was not crowded. He was in the same spot as before, where he had witnessed the odd little group passing into the halls beyond, through a doorway illuminated with blue light. In a conscious repetition of the day before, he turned and looked over his shoulder at the cafe area where his class had sat, oblivious to the bizarre turn of events which Xander had witnessed. Today, the tables were full of strangers: families with small children in high chairs, grey-haired couples and groups of tourists with bright-coloured backpacks.
‘It’s now or never’, he told himself. He turned back towards the doorway and barged straight into an unassuming brown-haired man, who had been trying to walk around him.
‘Sorry,’ Xander blurted out, embarrassed.
The man gave him a strange look before walking off without a word and Xander wondered whether he had been talking out loud to himself like a crazy person. He rubbed his shoulder where it had knocked the unsuspecting passerby and walked over to the entrance to the Egyptian halls.
As he drew closer, he saw a faint lattice of blue light criss-crossing the doorway, and had a sinking suspicion this would not be the uneventful re-visiting on which he had been pinning his hopes. The lattice was so faint as to be almost invisible, but Xander could see occasional shimmers of blue along the fine threads. He hesitated, uncertain whether it would be safe to walk through this glimmering barrier. As if in answer to his question, a couple of tourists, chatting unintelligibly, walked straight through it and past him into the atrium. They were both clutching maps of the museum and appeared completely unaware of anything out of the ordinary.
For just a moment, Xander wished fervently that he could still believe that a mysterious fungal infection had caused all this, but the impossible barrier still hung there, barring his way. The image of a beautiful black dog with pale challenging eyes flashed up in his mind’s eye, its head cocked at him. He took a deep breath, telling himself that he wasn’t doing this because he had been dared to by a dog, squeezed his eyes shut and plunged forward through the doorway.
After three or four steps, he stopped and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a little girl, staring at him and giggling. Xander grinned back. Obviously he had looked ridiculous, leaping through the doorway with his eyes screwed shut and tensing as if he expected to be blasted back out again. When he looked back, he noticed the lattice was still visible from this side, but even fainter. The disturbing static sound was back, now he was on this side of the barrier, buzzing in his right ear. With an uneasy shake of his head – which drew another laugh from the small girl avidly watching him – Xander began to follow the sound.
He made slow progress at first, his way impeded by crowds of people, all of whom appeared to be heading for the atrium. Eventually, Xander gave up the unequal struggle of trying to force himself against the tide of people, and just stood back against the smooth marble wall to wait for them to pass. It was only when his way had cleared that he became aware he was the only person left in the halls. The abrupt change to echoing emptiness was unsettling and, for a moment, Xander considered turning back, but his curiosity drove him onwards.
As he walked through the doorway into a small chamber, the buzzing noise rose to a sharp pitch and he immediately recognised the frontage of the small stone temple. He had barely set foot in the room when he heard the ripping noise of a furious snarl. Spinning around, Xander saw the huge black dog, standing less than five feet from him, its hackles up and long white teeth exposed. Xander froze, but the dog wasn’t looking at him; its snarl was directed at the blank stone on the side of the temple. It was the exact same place where the shadows had been flickering so oddly the day before and Xander’s stomach lurched. He wasn’t sure how, but he was quite certain that something very bad was about to happen.
‘What are you doing here?’
Xander started. In his preoccupation with the dog, he had not noticed anyone else in the room, but now he looked around to see the same mysterious figures from the atrium, angled around the stone building and looking tense. The man with the cropped dark hair stood closest to Xander, his cold blue eyes staring at him with mingled surprise and exasperation. It was clear he was the one who had spoken, his voice hard and resonant.
‘How did you resist my ward?’ he demanded.
Xander hesitated. The dog’s rumbling growl was a continual counterpoint to the man’s words and he could feel the wrongness rolling off the temple wall. Xander swallowed hard against the queasiness rising in his throat.
‘I dunno,’ he faltered. He assumed the man was referring to the strange barrier. ‘I just walked through, I suppose.’
The man gave him an irritated look and opened his mouth to speak again but –
‘It’s coming.’
The red-haired woman’s voice was sharp and the man swung back around to face the temple wall, his hands rising as if to repel something. Xander saw that all of them wore large, crystalline stones set into bands on their wrists, which were glowing with a clear light.
‘Get out. Now!’
The man snapped out the command to Xander but his attention did not waver from the wall of the temple which, to Xander’s horror, was flexing like it was made of some fluid material. The air before it was shimmering, as if in a heat haze. All of the figures had their arms outstretched now, extended towards the temple, and light was flaring from each of their wrists. The air itself seemed to crackle and the buzzing noise rose to a screech. Xander backed uneasily towards the door, but it was already too late; in a heartbeat, the world turned upside down.
The side of the temple exploded with a noise that hit Xander like a punch, but no flying stones, heat or light accompanied the blast. Instead, fluid blackness flowed out of the temple, dropping in snakes and tendrils to the pale marble floor, where it oozed and coalesced like shadows turned liquid. Cold sweat broke out over Xander’s body and the only part of him that was not rigid with sudden terror was his frantically beating heart. His experience the previous night was nothing to this. Every ancient fear of what lurked in the darkness was realised in this heaving mass of shadow, so black it seemed to draw light from the rest of the room. The temperature had plummeted and Xander could see his breath coming in short, panicky pants.
‘Don’t let them coalesce. They’re more dangerous when they’re corporeal,’ snarled the crop-haired man, sounding as though he was speaking through gritted teeth.
Without warning, a black column rose out of the mass on the floor and swayed for a moment, before lashing out with blinding speed at the slightly built woman. She defended instantly, a barrier of white light flaring to existence before her and repelling the blackness with a sharp crack. As Xander stood, transfixed, two more columns rose. A hand grabbed his upper arm and threw him back towards the doorway.
‘Run,’ growled the crop-haired man.
‘Go back to the atrium.’
Head pounding, beyond reason, Xander turned and fled. In his blind panic he was no longer sure which was the way out and, as he raced past stone friezes mounted on the wall, he knew he had not come this way before. He skidded to a halt in a large hall, searching frantically for a sign for the atrium. With a sudden chill he saw the familiar row of stone tablets mounted on the wall, behind their protective perspex; the nearest tablet was cracked and missing the top left corner.
‘Great, Xander,’ he muttered. This was the last place he wanted to be. Desperate, he looked around the room, seeing many entrances and quite unable to remember which one would take him back to safety.
Shouts and loud cracking noises came from the distance and Xander made an instant decision, dashing towards the farthest doorway, but even as he ran the buzzing sound rose again and the air chilled. The light in the room dimmed and faded to that ominous monochrome. Xander stopped, his heart hammering as the shadows lying on the floor beyond the doorway twitched and oozed in that now familiar flow towards him. He spun around, towards another doorway, and froze. A black column had risen from the floor and was blocking the way out. Gazing around in wild terror, he realised that he was now trapped. Mist was forming in wisps along the wall, as the temperature plunged.
Unable to breathe, with cold sweat prickling down his back and on his shaking hands, Xander began to back slowly against the wall. He flinched as he saw the tablet which had started all of this trouble hanging right next to him. It was quiescent now but he cringed away from it, trying not to even brush against its frame. His mouth opened wide to shout for help but, like a nightmare, he could not make any sound come out. The shadows slid along the floor towards him, the edges of each separate flow merging silently. Xander watched, horrified, as a column rose before him, knowing he was helpless.
‘Hang on,’ shouted a female voice, as an arcing lance of light instantly vaporised the swelling black column. Xander’s knees shook with relief as he recognised the red-haired woman running towards him, her small, pointed face full of concern. ‘Stand still – they react to movement.’
Xander grimaced. This advice was fairly redundant since he wasn’t sure his legs would carry him. The woman stopped on the edge of the heaving black mass, blasting three more rising columns with casual ease. With a quick frown, she raised her hands and directed two streams of blue-white light into the mass on the floor, trying to clear a path through to Xander as he shrank back against the wall. There was a violent explosion.
The woman was thrown backwards across the chamber, against the giant stone bathtub Xander had examined the day before, while the shadow-mass seethed, creeping inexorably forward across the floor. It was only ten feet from Xander now and he tried not to imagine what would happen when it reached him.
‘Well, that didn’t work,’ the woman said and Xander could hear the anxiety in her voice.
‘Ari!’
Both of them turned at the urgent shout. The crop-haired man and his other companions burst out of the corridor lined with friezes, and his jaw dropped as he spied the boy pinned against the wall. He recovered himself almost immediately and his eyes narrowed.
‘I thought I told you to get out of here?’ he snapped.
Xander’s temper finally flared. It was almost a relief to find that there was room beside the terror in his mind for anger.
‘I was trying to get out,’ he shouted back. ‘Those – those – that wouldn’t let me.’
Ari had scrambled to her feet and hurried to the man’s side.
‘D’you really think this is the time for lectures, Flint?’ she asked pointedly. The darkness was seeping backwards and forwards, as if distracted by so many targets, but Xander was relieved to see it had, at least temporarily, ceased its flow towards him.
‘Don’t over-react, Ari. We’ll just lift him out.’
Flint gestured and the stone on his wrist flared. Suddenly, Xander felt weightless and, looking down, was stunned to realise that he was already several feet off the floor. Several things happened at once: a forest of black columns snaked up and lashed out at Xander’s rescuers, and Xander’s feet slammed back onto the ground. He staggered but managed to catch himself before he tumbled face first into the shadows. He pressed back against the wall, his heart trying to burst out of his chest.
Flint picked himself up off the floor and then offered a hand to Ari, who had skidded several feet further backwards. He scowled at Xander as though it was all his fault.
‘Who are you, boy?’ he demanded. ‘You’re like some kind of a shade-magnet. Where do you come from?’
‘I’m Xander King,’ Xander returned, his voice shaking. ‘I came here on the bus, from my house.’
Flint stared at him as if he was mad.
‘This is obviously going to be harder than I thought,’ he muttered. He looked perplexed as well as irritated now. ‘I’ve never seen shades react this way before.’ He frowned at Xander, who glared right back at him.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Xander’s voice was embarrassingly close to a wail. ‘How do I get out?’
‘There’s a Stone right there on the wall,’ said a different voice. The tall man with white hair eyed Xander, as if he was an interesting puzzle to be solved, while the dog rumbled defiantly at the seething dark mass. ‘Luckily it’s still operational so he can use it to get out.’
‘What?’ Flint and Xander both spoke at the same time.
‘He activated it yesterday,’ the man responded, his calm voice reassuring.
‘How is that possible?’ demanded Flint, eying the tablet while Xander himself just gaped. ‘That thing is literally a museum piece, not to mention broken. How could the kid operate it?’
The black mass gave a sudden lurch in Xander’s direction and he cowered back. Amid his terror, the part of his mind that was not petrified with fear could not help wondering why the shadows were moving so sluggishly. He had seen them strike with lightning speed before, but now they seemed almost reluctant to move further forward, as if they were being repelled.
‘Possibly the ‘how’ is less important right now than the ‘what to do’?’ suggested the tall man, in his quiet voice.
The shadows lurched again and Flint’s hands lifted involuntarily, but then stopped; he seemed to come to a decision.
‘Can you use that Stone?’ he demanded.
Xander hesitated, warily eying the tablet hanging dormant on the wall beside him.
‘I touched it yesterday. My fingers – they went straight through the glass on it, and then it lit up and yanked at me.’ He stared at Flint, looking for a normal, sceptical reaction to what was clearly an insane sequence of events. Flint just nodded in a matter-of-fact way.
‘That’s right,’ he said, while Xander blinked in disbelief. ‘See the top of the Stone? There’s a symbol there, on the right, which you can use.’ He sent a meaningful look to the tall man, who grimaced before leaving the room at a run through one of the now-cleared doors, the dog loping at his heels. Flint continued on with his terse instructions. ‘It’ll pull you out of here, just relax and let it take you. When you get there, do not move. Someone will come and meet you. I’ll come as fast as I can but we still have all this to deal with.’
Xander stared blankly at him. This was most definitely not the rational explanation he had come to the museum to find. He squeezed his eyes shut, in a desperate hope that all this lunacy and horror would just disappear and he could find himself back in the sensible, logical world he had thought he lived in. With a deep breath, he opened his eyes again.
He had only a split second of warning. With an ominous hiss, a pillar of blackness, wreathed in mist, rose into the air with blinding speed in front of him. Xander’s hands seemed to move of their own accord, one thrown out in front of him in a vain attempt to fend off the attack while the other reached unerringly for the stone tablet. His fingers passed through the glass again as if it did not exist, and the symbols on the stone blazed with sudden fire as he
touched the one Flint had indicated. As his fingertips pressed into the stone, the light flared into incandescence and his stomach was once again wrenched sideways. This time he did not resist and, for a moment, he felt as if every part of his body was exploding, even as the hand held up in front of him burned with sudden heat. The last thing Xander saw was the darkness detonating before his eyes and, behind it, Flint’s stunned face.
Chapter Two
The world shattered into fragments of whirling colour. After an endless instant, Xander felt a sharp lurch and found himself standing in a small, dusty room with his fingertips pressed to another stone tablet, this one whole and seemingly a part of the wall. As he snatched his right hand back, pain bloomed in his left and he turned it over to see that his palm was oozing with blood. His vision started to swim, his heart-beat roaring in his ears and he swallowed hard, twisting his hand away. Xander had always had a weakness for the sight of blood and now he took several deep breaths, trying to control the visceral reaction.
Attempting to distract himself, he stared around the room. It looked old, with blank stone walls and floor, and could plausibly be in the museum. This impression was strengthened by the stack of wooden storage crates and the piles of worn, carved stone blocks, some standing upright while others were leaning against the wall. Most were broken. He noticed a door, but hesitated as he recalled the man’s urgent warning to stay where he was. Instead, he walked over to the single window, injured hand awkwardly held behind him, and rubbed at the smeary glass. It was a wasted effort; when he had cleaned enough to see, the only view was onto a small courtyard, empty but for a few bins.
Xander had just turned away in frustration when he heard running footsteps. The door banged open with enough force to make it rebound off the wall, almost hitting the tall boy who had burst in.