Roosevelt tried another door, and then another, but both of them were locked. He opened a third door, but that room was crowded with shadow-selves, too, black-faced and white-eyed, and they took a threatening step forward. Roosevelt pulled it shut as fast as he had opened it, but he shouted out, ‘I can’t lock it! There ain’t no key! They’re tugging at the handle and there ain’t no key!’
Jim said, ‘Back in here, quick! We’ll just have to break another window!’
He beckoned everybody back into the room with the filing cabinets in it. Vinnie was the last, except for Jim, and he was sobbing with panic.
‘Vinnie!’ said Jim. ‘We’re going to get out of here, all right?’
Vinnie stared at him wild-eyed. ‘They’re going to cremate us alive! We’re all going to die!’
‘Pull yourself together, will you? We have kids to take care of!’
‘I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! We didn’t know that anything like this would happen! I swear it …’
Jim pushed him roughly into the room. He was just about to follow him when a slanting bar of sunlight crossed the wall at the side of the staircase. It disappeared almost instantly, but it was definitely sunlight. For a split second Jim couldn’t think what it was, but then it came to him. Somebody must have opened the front door!
Treading very cautiously, he went back to the banister rail and looked down into the hallway. The silvery-black shadow people were still there. In fact there were more of them than before, jostling together like cockroaches. They were all looking up at him, and some of them were baring their black, negative teeth. He kept his hand half-raised in front of his face, in case they started flashing their lights at him, but they seemed to be waiting for something.
He stepped nearer to the banister and saw what it was that they were waiting for. Right in the middle of them crouched the hooded black figure of Robert H. Vane. His tripod legs were extended so that they were even longer and spindlier than they had been before, which made him twice the size.
Vane took one step forward, toward the bottom of the staircase, and then another, and another. His legs were so long that he crossed the hallway in two steps, and the third took him halfway up the first flight of stairs. He was followed closely by the swarm of shadow-selves, so that the awkward clattering of his feet was accompanied by the same metallic rustling as before, only much louder this time.
Jim ran back to the filing cabinet room and shut the door behind him. There was no key, so he tugged Randy by the sleeve and said, ‘Put your shoulder against it! Hold them back as long as you can!’
He turned to the window. Shadow and Freddy were wrestling with claw hammers, trying to pry away a protective wire-mesh screen. Jim hadn’t noticed it before, because it was painted black, just like the glass.
‘How long is that going to take to get off?’ he demanded.
‘Doing our best, sir! The screws is all rusted and painted over.’
‘Well, hurry! Vane’s here, and he’s coming upstairs!’
‘Vane?’ Vinnie almost shrieked.
‘This was a trap. Vane must have known we were coming.’
Jim picked up a hammer and hit the side of the wire-mesh frame, trying to dislodge the screws. He hit it again and again, but all he managed to do was distort it.
‘Mr Rook!’ Randy shouted. ‘Mr Rook! They’re pushing against the door!’
‘Shadow! Go help him! Vinnie, you too!’
‘They’re going to burn us alive!’ screamed Vinnie. ‘We don’t stand a chance, they’re going to burn us alive!’
‘Just shut up and help to keep them out!’ Jim yelled.
The door began to shake as the shadow-selves threw themselves against it. Randy, Shadow and Vinnie pressed against it as hard as they could, and Edward joined them, while Jim and Philip carried on smashing at the wire-mesh frame that covered the window.
But then there was a blinding flash all around the edges of the door, and an unbearable blast of heat. The A-Team staggered back into the room, flapping and clutching and blowing on their hands. The door was kicked from outside, and then kicked a second time. In a swirl of noxious black smoke, the door swung wide open, its paint still blazing and dripping on to the floor in rivulets of fire. Outside stood Robert H. Vane, with the black cloth drawn back from his square, bone-white head. Jim could see now that it was only his right eye that had mutated into a huge black lens. His left eye was gray, and disconcertingly normal, although he stared at Jim as if he were short-sighted, or drugged. His mouth hung open on one side, like a stroke victim, and his teeth were crowded and spotted with black decay.
Jim stepped in front of his students and spread his arms protectively. None of them spoke. Robert H. Vane heaved himself into the room, and stood facing them, with six or seven of his silvery-black shadow people trying to force themselves around his legs.
‘So – ahem! – this is the showdown,’ said Jim. He was trying to sound challenging, but he had a catch in his throat and he had to keep clearing it. ‘This is where absolute evil starts to take over the world, is it? And – ahem! – woe to anybody who tries to stand in the way.’
Robert H. Vane’s bellows-like chest rose and fell. ‘I do nothing,’ he whispered. His voice reminded Jim of a sack with a dead dog in it, being dragged across a rough path. ‘All I do is show the human race what it really is.’
‘Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, he’s going to burn us alive!’ moaned Vinnie.
‘The human race isn’t all evil,’ said Jim. ‘There’s good and there’s bad in every one of us, except for you.’
‘I am purity,’ whispered Robert H. Vane.
‘You?’ said Jim. ‘You’re pure evil, that’s what you are. You and all of these shadow people that you keep trapped in your daguerrotypes. The good Robert H. Vane is lying in his grave, and all that’s left is his ugly side, which is you.’
‘I am the purifier.’
‘Don’t make me laugh. You’re a walking contagion.’
Vinnie gritted his teeth. ‘For God’s sake, don’t provoke him, Jim, he’s going to cremate us!’
‘I am the beauty of simplicity, and objectivity, of uncontaminated good and uncontaminated evil.’
Jim stared at Robert H. Vane’s lens-like right eye and suddenly understood what utter evil really was. It was like waking up at night and finding the bedroom to be seamlessly black, without even the faintest chink of light. I look, I judge, I take what I want and I destroy what I don’t want. Because I alone have the right to do so.
Robert H. Vane raised his right hand and it was like a trough, rather than a hand. A trough like an old-fashioned flashgun, but filled with the brilliant energy of evil instead of magnesium powder. Vinnie was right. He was going to cremate them, reduce them all to nothing but ashes and burned bones.
But what had Ruby’s grandmother said? ‘Evil can’t bear to look at itself.’
Robert H. Vane took one more unsteady step closer. Sue-Marie had her eyes tight shut and she was making a high-pitched squeaking noise. Shadow was rapidly muttering a prayer. Even Edward was reciting Psalm 23: ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, thy rod and thy staff …’ Vinnie just kept sobbing and snorting.
One of Robert H. Vane’s brass-bound feet caught the edge of a daguerrotype plate, and it gleamed briefly in the corner of Jim’s eye. ‘Evil can’t bear to look at itself.’
‘A-Team,’ said Jim, as clearly as he could. ‘Simon says pick up a daguerrotype. Now.’
‘What?’ said Sue-Marie, opening her eyes.
‘Just do what I do! And do it now!’
Without another word, Jim bent down, picked up two daguerrotype plates, and held them in front of Robert H. Vane’s lens, one above the other. Edward did the same, and so did Shadow, Philip and Randy. Only Vinnie looked confused.
‘Vinnie!’ shouted Jim. ‘Pick up some plates! Hold them like this!’
Still Vinnie didn’t understand. Jim was just about to help him when Robert H. Vane
let out a scream that sounded like a horse caught on a barbed-wire fence. He lurched backward on his tripod, his lens dipping and turning as he tried to escape his own reflection. But in each of the fourteen daguerrotype plates that Jim and his A-team were holding up, all he could see was the murky, distorted image of a man who had grown into something unspeakably hideous.
Vane shook his head and tried to turn himself around, but his tripod legs were caught on the skirting boards, and he tripped on the scattered daguerrotypes. Behind him the silvery-black shadow people collided with each other in their confusion, and twitching snakes of static electricity crawled from one to the other.
‘That is not me!’ screeched Robert H. Vane. ‘That is not me! That is not me! I am beauty!’
Jim brandished his daguerrotype plates nearer and nearer to the lens of Robert H. Vane’s right eye. His students did the same, until Vane was almost surrounded.
It was then that Vane ignited his flash. The light was so bright that Jim thought for an instant that there could be no darkness anywhere in the world, not even inside his own skull. The heat, too, swamped him totally, as if somebody had thrown a bucketful of blazing gasoline all over him. His fingernails, unprotected by the daguerrotype plates, felt as if they were on fire. Beside him, Vinnie didn’t even have time to scream. His hair flared up, his flesh shriveled, and then there was a sharp crack as his bodily fluids evaporated. He collapsed on to the floor with a hollow knocking of bones.
But it was Robert H. Vane who caught most of his own flash. Reflected back to him from fourteen silver daguerrotype plates, it shattered his lens, roasted his face, and set fire to the black cloth that covered his back. He pitched backwards, his tripod legs blazing, his arms furiously thrashing. The shadow-selves shrank away from him on to the landing.
‘I am … I am … beauty!’ he raged. He lifted his flashgun again, trying to hold it steady with his left hand.
Jim shouted, ‘Watch out!’ At the same time Vane set off another flash, even more blinding than the first. Sue-Marie screamed as the heat burned her fingers, and Freddy yelled, ‘Shit!’ But they held their daguerrotypes tight, and most of the flash bounced back.
Robert H. Vane exploded with a soft, pressurized whooommfff! Fiery pieces of fabric and wood were thrown across the room, and his body collapsed in the middle of his burning legs.
Jim dropped his daguerrotypes and frantically blew on his fingers to cool them down. His corduroy pants were scorched at the bottom and his shoes were smoldering, because the daguerrotypes hadn’t shielded him completely, but it had been enough.
He looked down at the blazing ruin of Robert H. Vane’s shadow-self. His A-Team stood around him, and for the first time in his life he couldn’t think of anything to say.
But then there was a rustling sound from the doorway. It was crowded with silvery-black images; the dark side of ordinary men and women. Static electricity flickered on the ceiling like summer lightning, and there was a threatening smell of ozone in the air, as if a thunderstorm were just about to break.
‘This sucks,’ said Freddy. ‘How are we going to get out of here?’
Eighteen
‘Maybe they won’t hurt us, now that Vane’s gone,’ said Edward. Maybe … if we kind of leave the premises quietly … let them get back to their plates …’
‘Are you kidding me?’ said Shadow. ‘They may look like an old-time minstrel show, but those mothers are seriously pissed.’
Jim took a step toward the door. The shadow-selves didn’t budge. In fact, they began to press even more closely into the room. The crackles of static grew increasingly loud and violent, and showers of sparks began to dance around their hair and fingertips.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Sue-Marie, huddling herself close to Jim’s shoulder.
‘Building up their energy is my guess,’ said Jim. ‘I think they want to blitz the lot of us in one damn great flash.’
‘We should break the windows,’ said Philip. ‘If they can’t stand the light—’
‘That’s right!’ Roosevelt interrupted. ‘I saw that in a Dracula picture. They pulled down the drapes and Dracula got totally frizzled.’
‘We can’t get to the glass, man,’ said Shadow. ‘That screen is totally impenetray-table.’
‘Maybe we should football charge them,’ Randy suggested. ‘All get together and go for it.’
‘Oh, sure, and all end up like a KFC party bucket.’
One of the shadow-selves stepped toward them, followed by another, and another.
‘Oh God,’ said Sue-Marie.
The leader was tall and looming, with wild shoulder-length hair. He gave an aggressive shake of his head, and his eyes flashed with brilliant white light. He shook his head again, and this time the flash was even brighter. Jim, blinking, heard a slowly rising whine, like the whine of dozens of flash battery packs. It was the shadow-selves, building up their power.
‘The plates!’ Jim said. ‘Pick up the plates again, and use them as shields!’
But Shadow said, ‘No way, man! I am sick of this shit! There ain’t no black-faced gooks going to barbecue me!’
‘Sonny!’ Jim shouted. But Shadow trampled forward, over the daguerrotype plates, and pushed the leading shadow-self back against the wall. Then he pushed the next, and the next, and then he was forcing his way out on to the landing, elbowing his way through the crowd of shadow-selves, yelling all the time at the top of his voice.
‘You get out of my way, you freak! You hear me? You just get out of my face!’
He was halfway across the landing when there was a dazzling flash of light. Jim saw everything in reverse, so that Shadow looked white and so did the shadow-selves who were jostling all around him. There was another flash, and then a whole succession of flashes, as if Shadow was a celebrity arriving at a movie premiere. But with each of these flashes, Jim could feel a tremendous blast of heat.
Shadow shouted out, ‘No!’
Jim saw that his hair was alight, and smoke was billowing out of his hooded top. But he kept on shoving his way through the crowds of shadow-selves until he reached the door on the opposite side of the landing.
Shadow was burning now, and flames were jumping up his back. But he pushed his way into the room, past the rows of wire cages, waving his arms around like a fiery windmill and yelling at the shadow-selves that were milling around in his way. His words weren’t even intelligible now – they were nothing but screams of pain and desperation.
He forced his way toward the window. Three or four of the shadow-selves clung to his blazing clothes, trying to stop him, but he twisted himself from side to side and shook them off. Then, without any hesitation, he lowered his head and threw himself right through the black-painted glass. The window exploded, and Shadow disappeared in a roaring gout of fire.
Instantly, as if accompanied by a fanfare of golden trumpets, the sun blazed into the room, and right across the landing. The shadow-selves let out a dreadful, orchestrated shriek, and shrank away from the sunlight with their hands clamped over their eyes. They couldn’t even make it to the darkness downstairs. They dropped to the floor, one on top of the other, like slugs showered with salt. Jim and his A-Team stood in the middle of the room, close together, watching in disgust as the shadow-selves writhed and shriveled. Their silvery-black sheen turned to viscous gray, and then to albino white, and then they faded altogether, the way that all photographic images fade in the sunlight. Their grinning black teeth were the last to disappear.
Jim went cautiously to the door and looked around. The landing was deserted. There was nobody in the animal hospital but them. Even the smoking heap that had once been Robert H. Vane had faded away, leaving nothing but a few fragments of a broken camera: a blackened lens, a shutter mechanism, and a few brass hinges.
‘We did it!’ said Edward. ‘Or Shadow did it, anyhow.’
‘Shadow!’ said Randy.
They hurried downstairs, opened the front doors and went outside. There was a crowd around Sh
adow already. He was lying on the sidewalk with a blanket draped over him. His face was scarlet and black and badly charred, and a thick delta of blood was running from the back of his head into the gutter.
Jim knelt down next to him. ‘Sonny?’ he said hoarsely, but Shadow’s eyes were closed.
‘He just fell,’ said a white-haired man in a flappy pair of khaki shorts. ‘The window went bang and out he came, burning like a space shuttle.’
‘I called nine-one-one already,’ added a young man in a long red apron.
‘Is he dead?’ asked Sue-Marie, standing close behind him.
Jim felt Shadow’s wrist. He couldn’t feel a pulse. ‘I think so,’ he said.
‘What happened in there?’ asked a fat woman in a flowery dress.
Jim slowly stood up. His face was smudged with smoke and his hair was sticking up like a cockerel. ‘I think you could call it a tragedy,’ he said.
Lieutenant Harris came into the interview room, accompanied by Detectives Mead and Bross. They all pulled up chairs and sat and looked at Jim as if the very sight of him made them feel tired.
‘To be frank,’ said Lieutenant Harris, ‘we don’t believe one single word of it.’
Jim nodded. ‘I didn’t expect you to. I don’t believe it myself.’
‘The problem is, there is no other explanation. Not unless all of you are certifiably insane.’
‘That’s one possibility, of course,’ Jim agreed.
Detective Mead said, ‘It’s going to take a few days to get a complete report from the CSU, and even longer before the ME’s finished. But it doesn’t look as if you or any of your students were directly responsible for the deaths of Vincent Boschetto or Sonny Powell.’
‘It looks like two more cases of spontaneous human combustion,’ said Lieutenant Harris.
Jim looked at him narrowly. Lieutenant Harris didn’t even blink.
‘The ME has already decided that Bobby Tubbs and Sara Miller were victims of SHC, and so we’ll be releasing Brad Moorcock. Apparently all of the recent burnings in the Santa Monica and West Hollywood areas have also been caused by SHC. The theory is that solar flares have had something to do with it. That, and the very dry summer. People have literally been microwaved to death.’
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