by Damien Love
“Anyway, if you’re idiotic enough to have your fortune told and you pull the death card, the great mystic charging you for the experience will always tell you death doesn’t actually mean death, it means . . . change. One thing ending, another beginning. Or something equally open to infinite interpretation.”
“But the card Marvastro gave me said power,” Alex pressed. “That came true.” Along with his growing concern for his grandfather, frustration was beginning to build inside him at the old man’s eternal evasiveness.
“Well.” His grandfather scratched an ear. “Like I say, depends how you interpret it, Alex. What if it meant . . . willpower? The power to know your own mind. You’ve shown a bit of that, too, and maybe that’s more important, eh?”
“I just don’t get you!” Alex exploded, frustration quickening into anger. He gestured around them. “We’re in the middle of all this, this . . . magic. You’ve been up to your neck in it for over a hundred years. You’ve dragged me into it. And it’s like you still pretend you don’t believe in it.”
The old man winced. “Well. I told you before, Alex,” he said quietly. “I’d much prefer that all these old stories were just that: interesting old stories. I’d prefer to live in a world where all of this was gone, consigned to the past. There’s enough magic and mystery to be found in life without wasting time on this nonsense. And enough horror.”
“But you just asked me to . . . you must believe in it. You’ve seen the proof. You are the proof.”
“Alex.” The old man sighed in exasperation. “Look. There are countless people on this planet today perfectly content to believe all manner of things without any proof for any of it. Faith, they call it, right? Well, I’m just like that, except in reverse. I’ve seen the proof, and I’m happier not believing. Get the idea? It’s like . . .” He stood searching for words, then brightened. “It’s like rugby.”
“What?”
“Yes. One of the sports I hate most. Now: I know that rugby exists, okay? But I can perfectly well choose to live my entire life without ever having to think about it or get involved. See?” He beamed.
“No.” Alex kneaded his forehead. “No.”
“Well, maybe rugby’s not such a good example.” His grandfather frowned. “I’ll think about it some more, and we can have a good old philosophical discussion about it once all this is over—”
The old man suddenly dropped his bag and spun, swinging his stick hard at the air. There was a rattling, clashing noise and something fell whining to the ground before him, jabbing out with sharp little arms. A flier. Missing one wing, which now lay severed off a few feet away. He placed a boot on the thing, holding it down as it buzzed furiously.
“So: Harry?” Alex’s grandfather sent him a searching look. Alex shook his head.
“No.” The old man sighed. He stood head bowed for a moment. “Well. Can’t be helped. Could you take my bag?” He lifted the Gladstone and handed it to Alex. “And I’ll grab this.” Gingerly, taking care to avoid the slashing hook and blade, he picked up the flier, pinning the arms down. He wrapped a handkerchief around its amber eyes like a blindfold, then gave Alex a nod.
“Let’s get going, then.”
XVIII.
DOWNHILL
Unseen things buzzed among the trees as they ran up the track. Alex noticed his grandfather was leaning harder on his cane, growing short of breath. But carrying the incredible weight of the Gladstone, he still gradually trailed behind the old man.
As he struggled to keep up, something caught and tangled around Alex’s ankles, and he stumbled and fell. Bending to free his feet, he was puzzled to find it was some kind of fabric. In the dim light it took a moment to identify it as a jacket. Squinting around, Alex picked out five strange piles on the forest floor: backpacks and ropes and hiking clothes. Nearby lay a woolen bobble hat in bumblebee stripes of black and yellow.
He stared in bewilderment, remembering the climbers they’d spoken with. Somewhere beneath his confusion, another memory was struggling, but he couldn’t quite reach it.
“Alex!” His grandfather’s voice came as a concerned hiss from the darkness ahead. “Are you there? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine, I just—”
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind, we are in a bit of a hurry.”
Alex scrambled up to join him.
Coming into the parking area, Alex saw two vehicles parked together some distance beyond their Citröen. A black transit van and another vehicle, long and low, indistinct in the murk. A hulking bald man hunkered by the van, staring fixedly at them while massaging his temples. Another of the giant robots came striding from the darkness but too far away to trouble them.
As they ran for their car a vicious whine filled the breeze. Fliers came streaking from beyond the parking area, rippling fast through the rain in the frail light. Alex stopped as he saw Zia appearing blackly over the rise behind them, gesturing madly.
“If you pop the bag open,” Alex’s grandfather said, “there’s a pocket at the top. Should be a couple of salt sachets in there. Last of the emergency supply.”
Alex fumbled at the Gladstone’s silk lining. The pocket seemed empty.
“Soon as you like, Alex,” the old man said.
Alex felt the little packets, so thin his fingers almost missed them. He pulled them out.
“One should do,” his grandfather said.
“Eh?” Alex held it up. “What do you think we’re going to do with this?”
The fliers were three-quarters of the way to them.
“Well, if you could do the honors,” the old man said, proffering the wingless flier struggling like a hostage in his grip. Alex understood. He ripped open the salt and sprinkled it directly over the machine.
In the distance, Zia faltered, then started twisting sharply, as if being stung repeatedly.
“Thaaaaank you,” Alex’s grandfather said. He tossed the dazed little robot high and swung his cane as it fell, batting it away with a mighty crack. Zia stumbled to her knees, clutching her head. Her fliers dropped from the air with a great rattle. But within seconds she was groggily standing again. Her metal swarm started weakly rising.
Alex and his grandfather were already in the Citroën.
“What now?” Alex said as he slammed his door.
“Play it by ear on the roads.” The engine roared as they accelerated out of the parking area. “Try to lose them. Then I’ll get you safely on a train or a plane back home.”
“What?”
“I need to get you out of it now. It was worth taking the shot, Alex, but we’ve tried, we’ve failed, and there we are. I can’t risk you getting hurt. Or worse. You’re right, I should never have dragged you into this. We’ll get you home. Leave the robot with me. If I can get through this, I’ll see it’s destroyed.”
“I’m not leav—”
“Then again.” Alex’s grandfather’s brow creased uncertainly. “Maybe I shouldn’t send you back home alone. They had their eye on you. Maybe I should keep you close so I can protect you. That’s partly why I dragged you into all this in the first place, Alex, to try to keep you safe from . . . Sorry, Alex. I’m finding it a little hard to focus. Bit of a fog on the brain.”
“You can forget it, anyway,” Alex cut in. “It’s not happening, Grandad. I’m not leaving you.”
“Alex. No. I—”
“I’m not leaving you. That’s that. I’m sure I can reach the power again, if I can only work out . . . and even if I can’t, I can still help you.”
“Okay,” the old man said after a minute of silent driving. “Good man, Alex. Well. Here’s the immediate plan, then: we need to lose them, but not lose them. We need to get them off our tail, but we need to get on theirs, follow them. Failing that, we need to work out the significance of the paintings.”
Alex thought again about the reds and blue
s glowing from the picture on his phone by Harry’s graveside. “I had another idea about that,” he said as the car bounced wildly down the crooked road. “I don’t know if it’s stupid. We said that maybe they needed the actual physical paintings, right? So, could it be something in the paint itself?”
“How do you mean?”
“I was trying to remember.” Alex pulled the phone out to spark his memory. “A lesson our art teacher gave us, about, like, Renaissance artists. How they used to make colors for paint back then. Reds and blues. The pigments were really valuable. They did it by crushing up minerals and even, like, insects and things. Some of the stuff was dangerous, toxic.”
As he pulled up the picture of the rising dead, Alex noticed he was getting a signal on his phone. “It made me think about what you said, about snake venom,” he continued. “The different ingredients your father used in his potion, besides whatever this . . . flower gives him. So, maybe there’s something else he needs, but he can’t get anymore? Like, it’s extinct? But he can get it out from the old paint?”
Alex’s grandfather was silent, navigating a sudden bend. “Not bad,” he said at length. “I should have thought of that. My mind is a little slow at the moment, Alex. But that’s not a bad notion.” He winced as though something unpleasant had been put under his nose.
“You know . . . there was a pigment they used back then, Caput mortuum. Used to be very popular, right up into the twentieth century. Gave artists nice rich browns and lovely, ah . . . flesh tones. And they made that by, well . . . grinding up old mummified bodies.”
“What? Human bodies?”
“Yes. Pieces of people. They’d dig up mummies from Egypt, then pulverize them and mix it all up with—”
“And paint with it? That’s completely gross. That’s horrible.”
“Well, yes. But galleries are full of it, Alex. Bear that in mind next time you visit a nice posh museum. Point is, though, it was the ancient Egyptians who first got really serious about the whole immortality game. My father had an entire section of his library devoted to early Egyptian texts, techniques for eternal life. Now, I have a friend in Berlin, a scientist. If we can get the painting Harry saved to her lab, we could run some proper tests, try out your theory, and some others. I wonder . . .”
His grandfather fell silent. There was one new message on Alex’s phone. From Kenzie. Sent a few hours before:
Look out your window.
Alex glanced to the side, then behind. Nothing.
“Harry,” he said after a bit. “I’m sorry I couldn’t.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry about, Alex. I know you tried. I’m sorry for asking.”
“You told me before,” Alex went on, still puzzling over the message. “About your father, I mean. You told me once: People were getting hurt, killed . . . I guess I didn’t really take it in properly at the time. I was still caught up thinking he was my dad. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get it. I still wondered why you first went against him. What made you leave him. You know: why not try to live forever, if you can? But I know now. If people get in their way, your father and sister, they just kill them. Like the museum guard in the video you showed me. Like Harry.”
“Well, yes.” The old man stared grimly ahead. “That kind of thing has happened more than once. But, Alex, that’s not why I first went away from them. That’s not the only reason people . . . were dying.”
They reached the foot of the mountain and turned onto a country road that was all blue shadow.
“You see,” Alex’s grandfather continued, “the reason I left was, I discovered—”
A heavy thump on the roof sent a shudder through the car. They turned to each other. The ceiling over Alex bugled, buckled, then split open as a huge gloved fist smashed through. He ducked just in time to avoid it. A second fist ripped through, closer to the old man.
“Hold on!” Alex’s grandfather started spinning the wheel frantically, slamming the car from side to side, trying to shake off their unwanted passenger, then stomped on the brakes, stopping them with a force that sent Alex’s seat belt biting into his chest.
It was no use. The enormous hands had taken a tight grip through the ragged holes in the roof. Now, with a sickening wrench, they started ripping the roof away.
The old man threw the car forward. Alex stared up. He saw a life-sizer, peeling the car open like a sardine can. But his attention was grabbed more forcefully by what was in the air behind it.
Zia.
“Peekaboo,” she called.
She flew along just above them in a cruciform pose, fifteen or so fliers lined up along her outstretched arms, holding her aloft with hooks through her black coat. Her pale face glowed like a second little moon racing through the sky, black hair streaming across it like thin clouds in a storm.
She blinked, her thrumming machines shifted, and she darted close, tossing a powder over Alex’s grandfather. The car swerved sickeningly as he tried to clear his eyes.
“Get,” she said, nodding at the huge robot.
The big machine reached down, and, as Alex tried to squirm away, snapped his seat belt, then started hauling him up, ignoring the punches he rained on its iron arm.
With desperate inspiration, Alex reached quickly into his pocket and threw the old toy robot to the floor of the car, saw it bounce out of sight under his seat. Then he watched his kicking feet rise above the mangled roof. It took a stunned moment to realize he had been lifted into the air. Flying. He was aware of a whining noise all around, saw dozens more fliers laboring to support the life-sizer that carried him.
Below, the car skidded, careening off the road. It smashed through bushes and went crashing into the ditch around a dim, rutted field.
“Grandad!”
He was lifted higher. Cool rain bathed him. A rushing noise came close. He looked around to see the moon face looming in.
“We’re waaaalking in the aiiiiiir,” Zia trilled. “Come on, join in.”
Alex found his notebook in his pocket and flung it at her end over end like a ninja star, then kicked out wildly as she dodged easily away.
“What? Don’t feel like singing? Okay.” She moved in, shoved a small fist under his nose. When she uncurled the fingers, more gray powder lay in her palm.
“Night-night, then,” she said, blowing it in his face. Alex jerked back, but the stuff was already in his eyes, up his nose. A heavy, spicy smell.
Blinking to clear his vision, Alex saw, far below, the beams of the car’s headlights stretching forlornly across the field, lighting up a group of horses that stood startled in the darkness, watching the strange flying formation. He started to feel warm and full, cold and empty, moving slower as the world rocketed faster away from him.
Eyes closing. Opening. Closing. Opening.
The horses were galloping below, running after him, looking up, as though they were trying to catch him, tell him something he’d forgotten.
Closed. Open.
The world rushed away. He thought about his mum waving him off to school, his grandfather falling from a roof, Kenzie Mitchell falling into the light, witches dancing on collapsing mountains with their thumbs all bleeding, cars crashing everywhere, bye-bye.
He saw horses . . . horses . . .
And then his eyes closed and would not open again.
XIX.
DOWN IN THE HOLE
The moon was enormous, blindingly bright in the black sky. A halo of light echoed around it.
Alex lay on his back, staring up, until the glare made him turn away. Shielding his eyes, he looked again. There never was a moon so big. As he blinked, a shadow moved across its lower edge.
“Morning, bunny,” the shadow called.
Alex flinched and his head struck something hard and cold. There was a smell of time and dampness. It took several seconds to work out what was going on. The glowi
ng white disc above wasn’t the moon in the night sky at all. It was the morning sky: gray-white clouds, framed within the circular opening of a deep, dark well.
And he was lying at the bottom of it.
He lurched up, stumbled, stood staring around. A dingy bed of twigs and leaves rustled beneath his feet. The well was about five feet across. The dank brick walls were furry with moss, but otherwise depressingly smooth, devoid of handholds. The opening was thirty feet above. Maybe more.
“Led us quite the merry dance,” Zia shouted down, her voice bouncing happily around him. “How d’you like your new nursery?”
“Let me out of here!”
“Oh, dee-pressingly predictable, my dreary dearie. I had a bet with myself what your first words would be.”
“Let me out!” Alex felt panic closing in, did his best to fight it away.
“Don’t repeat yourself. And don’t whine. Besides, do you honestly imagine I would have gone to all the effort of getting you down there just to help you back up?”
“I don’t have it!” Alex shouted.
“What’s that? Not with you, bunny. You don’t have what? Wit? Style? ‘What it takes’?”
“The robot—the tablet. The name of God.”
“Oh, I know that, Alexander. I searched your disgusting pockets before I popped you down your rabbit hole. You didn’t have anything useful at all. But we can fix that; I can give you something all kinds of useful now—catch!”
Alex ducked back as she dropped something. It landed with a soft thump inches from his toes, disappearing under the leaves. He tensed, staring at the spot, waiting for something unimaginable to come crawling out.
“Well, take it then!” Zia finally shouted. “And a thank-you wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Wh-wh-what do you want?” Alex stammered.