The Leaping

by Tom Fletcher

  And sometime, somewhere, would be the Leaping. The Leapings.

  And the dancing, and the stars, and the trees, and the snow, and the fires, and the wolves, and the Lord, and the fiddle and the pack and the clean air and the clean earth and the open sky at night.

  That was the world that we would usher in.

  Taylor was sitting on a rock just in front of us, drifting in and out of my vision. He was tall and crooked. He had put his suit back on. His face was human although it stretched backwards, pulled backwards, and swept up into two black and pointed ears that protruded from the top of his head. Wolfish ears. His legs were crossed and he rested his right elbow on his right knee and his chin on his right fist. In his left hand he held some sort of ball and he was looking at it.

  ‘Taylor,’ I said, my voice faint. ‘Taylor.’

  ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘Jack and Jennifer.’

  ‘Where are we?’ I said.

  ‘The shore,’ Taylor said. ‘We are on the shore.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of the lake,’ he said. ‘What else?’

  ‘Taylor,’ I said. ‘I had a dream about Erin.’

  He was silent for a long time.

  ‘What kind of dream?’

  ‘You know what kind of dream.’ Another long silence. The mist obscured him and then revealed him. The ground was wet and the stones shone.

  ‘That kind of dream,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think dreams mean that much. I don’t think they mean anything whatsoever.’

  ‘I don’t know if what we think matters at all,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘I just thought I should tell you.’ I turned to Jennifer. ‘I just thought I should tell him.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t,’ she said.

  ‘Erin was with me not too long ago,’ Taylor said. ‘Her ghost.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ Jennifer asked.

  ‘She moved on,’ Taylor said. ‘The ghosts move on.’

  ‘Where to?’ I asked.

  ‘How would I know that?’ He looked at me and even through the pale haze his eyes glinted.

  ‘I thought – I thought you, um, we, I thought we were all part of the same thing,’ I said. ‘The same world.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Most ghosts move on. She moved on. She’s gone. We are not part of the same thing. If you have a soul, it becomes a ghost when you die. Just like everybody always believed.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ Taylor said. ‘I remember a short period of incredible emotional agony, but it all went away. I don’t care. I don’t even have the capacity to care. I gave all that away and do not regret it for a second.’ He grinned at me and it was the most terrible thing that I had seen in all of this, in all the blood and the things and the killing, Taylor’s smile, his slow smile, his considered smile, his eyes looking past me, at nothing. Because it was a smile that Jennifer had hidden from me so far. ‘I gave it all away.’

  The thing he was holding was Graham’s head. My heart swelled into my ribs.

  ‘But so did I,’ I said. ‘So did Jennifer. She bit me. She changed me. We’re like you too now. Like you too. Werewolves.’ I whispered the word.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You, Jack, have some sort of disease. You are a human that changes shape and forgets what you really are. You are nothing like me. You made no exchange. You sacrificed nothing. You are in debt. And you still feel. You are still basically a wreck.’ He threw Graham’s head into the air and caught it again. ‘Jennifer, on the other hand. Jennifer was seduced as I was, albeit for different reasons.’

  ‘Taylor,’ I said. ‘We have to leave now. The Lord and all of the others are having some sort of contest – the Leaping – and we have to be away from it. We have to go. I thought we were so far away. But I can’t hear them. So we still have time. We have to go.’

  ‘You know why you can’t hear us?’ Taylor said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  I looked around me and the mist started to thin, and it seemed that I was not on the barren shallow rocky slope that I originally thought, but in the middle of a thicket, surrounded by trees. I looked back at Taylor. I didn’t understand.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  He smiled.

  They were not trees or ordinary living things at all. It was them. They were there already. I realised that they had always been there, just waiting, standing silent all around.

  ‘I thought there was some potential here,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘I thought there was some element of power. We could escape to another world, Taylor, if we knew how to use what we have. We could bring that world back.’

  ‘It is typical of you to think that,’ he said, ‘but nothing is ever the way you think it is.’ He threw his head back and barked a laugh, an explosive exhalation. ‘Maybe that is the single lesson, the single truth that you can take away from this whole thing. This whole sorry mess of a party. Or maybe even that is a fallacy. And maybe you won’t take anything away with you, Jack. Maybe you won’t get to take anything at all.’

  Behind Taylor there was a taller figure, standing with his hands on his hips. Taylor’s smile disappeared and he looked me in the eye.

  I looked down at the ground.

  ‘You should not have dreamed of her,’ he said. ‘There was a moment up there after we found Jennifer. I learned something. A way for you to get out of all of this. I was going to tell you it.’ He fell silent, as if thinking.

  I didn’t interrupt him.

  ‘You should not have dreamed of her,’ he said, again.

  I didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Then I said, ‘So. The Leaping.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the figure standing behind Taylor, and he walked forward. I realised that it was him, the fiddle-player, the Lord, and without fully intending to I fell to my knees. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you are too kind. Get up.’

  I stood. I looked up at him. All around us the mist had more or less gone and I saw that we were surrounded by hundreds of them, the werewolves, and there was almost a cloud of other beings around them, less physical things, faeries almost, spirits, beings made up of colour and air, and it was as if the werewolves emanated a passionate light full of living sparks. Everything was so beautiful. Bearpit stood near the front of the throng, further back behind the Lord. The Lord himself seemed near ten feet tall and wore a long black cloak and ragged black trousers. He did not have his boots on, and he did not have feet but round hooves, dark and tattered. His skin was pale. His head was a man’s head, with short grey hair and a down-turned mouth and thin lips and high cheekbones and hollow cheeks. His ears were sharp and lay flat against the sides of his head and his pupils were black, horizontal ovals, like they were just stab-holes made with a thick knife, or coin slots. The whites of his eyes were a milky yellow like those of a farm animal. His chest heaved in and out and his mouth was frowning and his fists were clenched. His arms were bulky with muscle and he wore a solid black bracelet. He was the clever vicious creature that you always thought was outside waiting for you in the dark, waiting for the lights to go out or for the river to freeze.

  ‘The Leaping,’ he said, and he reached behind him and lifted the fiddle from his back. His voice was uneven, like two bits of metal scraping together, like he was made out of metal, like he was some prehistoric machine. He drew the bow across the fiddle strings and the resulting screech echoed across the valley and the surface of the lake, which was visible behind the crowd. He waved the bow at the pale, indistinct glow that indicated the location of the distant, indifferent sun, and it seemed to fall to the western horizon and set the whole thing aflame. Tongues of orange licked up from behind those fells and the sky above them turned red. ‘The Leaping,’ he said again, and every cell in my body was vibrating. I wanted to die. ‘It happens when it happens for no good reason and no good shall come of it. The pack falls upon the being which makes the most pitiful attempt. Do you understand?
’

  The sound that the pack made in affirmation was one of grief, almost, a long, low howling that was the sound of the red sky, the voice of a dying fire. It faded and then came back, falling and rising, as various members of the gathering paused to listen and draw breath and start again. It went on and on. I could have stayed there listening to it forever.

  Jennifer was howling too.

  I opened my mouth to join them but could not; my voice was merely human, lacking the timbre and tone and power of theirs. I closed my mouth again and just looked at the grey rocks beneath my feet. Until I couldn’t bear it any more, and then I closed my eyes.

  Eventually, of course, the chorus stopped, and after a second of utter silence, or maybe two, the Lord brought the bow down on the fiddle and the furious music was fast and high and mad. They all surged towards Wastwater. Jennifer leaned on my shoulder and we moved slowly. I had thought I was finding a way out. I had hoped my whole life to find another world and another way of living and I came so close. I was shaking. All around me, humanoid shapes were gradually becoming other things. Handsome, quadruped things.

  ‘Jack,’ Jennifer said, into my ear. ‘We have to change.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘OK.’

  ‘Jack,’ she said. ‘I’m going to lose. I can’t jump, Jack, I can’t run.’

  I looked behind me and the Lord was following me, grinning, and playing his fiddle.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ she said.

  ‘I love you,’ I said.

  She just looked at me and bit her lip and closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘You didn’t open your present.’

  The change came more easily this time. My vision buckled as my body twisted into a new and more agile shape. It hurt but the pain seemed to fall behind some-where in time and the others were howling with joy and laughter at the game. I saw those in front of me leaping at the shore, reaching incredible heights, their changing shapes silhouetted against the bloody heavens. Some of them looked almost human at the apex of their flights. More and more of them were getting to the lake and jumping, so that the sky was filling up with their energy and their beauty.

  All that wasted power. They could have gone so far.

  I turned around. Ran away from the lake. Turned around again. Music. Dancing. A thousand different scents. Meat and fireworks. Cold wet stone. Jennifer. My beautiful Jennifer. She looked at me. Big eyes. Stars set in her face. Stars in the sky like the eyes of wolves. We ran. Stars wheeled past like the sky was melting. The water bubbled and lapped. Wolves roared across space. We ran. Cold air. Hot breath. We ran.

  We leapt. The lake fell. We rose. We flew. We shook. Everything shook. The fells shook and started to fall. We spun. We howled.

  We started to fall. Planets span out of orbit and fell. The stars in the sky all started to fall. The red light in the sky started to fall. The rocky shore fell. The black water fell. We fell. The Lord fell. God fell. The machines fell. The wolves fell. The cities fell. People fell. The young fell. The old fell. The houses fell. Fell House fell. The castle in my dream fell. The green walls fell. The deserts fell. The trees fell. The rivers fell. The sun fell. Fire fell. Bombs fell. TV fell. The war fell. Heaven fell. Hell fell. The barn fell. The boat fell. The bodies fell. Balthazar fell. Taylor fell. Francis’ naked-skulled body fell. Graham fell. Erin’s ghost fell. Jennifer fell. I fell. We all fell.

  We fell into the lake and we kept on falling through the water and the earth and the whole thing started to crack open and break, huge plates falling off and revealing something hot and liquid inside. We fell through the various layers towards the centre, the very centre of the falling earth, and we fell and the earth fell through the falling space and everything was rushing together and we fell towards the centre now, all things fell towards one point like an ending of some sort, but we wanted to KNOW, we wanted to know what was there right at the middle, right at the centre, right at the end. I twisted and burned and screamed and grinned and we wolves rushed past each other like wind and my mind flew backwards, further back, a silver train running along a perfectly straight track, accompanied by a beating drum, taking us back, a beautiful bolt of silver in the dark, running backwards, back to a long time ago, before, and I like to think that we were all very happy then.

  The grey stones of the shore knifed into my all-too-human hands as I hauled myself over them. Once my feet were clear of the hungry, lapping edge of Wastwater I rolled on to my back and looked up at the cold, red sky. I could hear laughter and singing and small groups of wild, happy monsters playing discordant music. I could hear fires, and the splashing of hairy, sharp-toothed people emerging from the lake triumphant. But I just looked up at the sky. It went on forever.

  A figure moved into view, standing over me. Looking up I couldn’t tell whether the head was lupine, looking down, or just human. Either way, though, I knew it was Taylor.

  ‘Taylor,’ I said. ‘Are there any clothes I can wear?’

  ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘She lost.’

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘With her only having one proper leg and everything,’ he said. ‘If only you’d known what was coming, hey? I almost regret bringing the axe back. I should have known something like this would happen.’

  The insides of my eyelids were sky-red. I opened my eyes again and sat up. The mountains rose into sharp, irregular points all along the horizon. The surface of the lake was rippling, choppy, disturbed. It slapped back and forth just beyond my bare feet. Taylor sat beside me.

  ‘Why did you?’ I asked.

  ‘Why did I what?’

  ‘Why did you bring the axe back to Fell House?’

  ‘I was coming to help Jennifer. I thought I’d heard her howling. But the door was already open. So I left the axe, and I rushed back down here.’

  ‘Where is she?’ I said.

  ‘She’s with the Lord now.’

  ‘Is there any way out of this?’

  ‘No,’ Taylor said. ‘I don’t think so.’ He turned and looked behind us, away from the lake. ‘They’re coming,’ he said. ‘They’re coming over here.’

  ‘Jack,’ the Lord said, in his ancient metal voice. He arrived and stood above us, one hand on Jennifer’s shoulder steadying her. Her leg was still weak, embryonic. ‘Get up.’

  I stood, shakily. He was nearly twice as tall as me now, his tattered black vestments fluttering in the gathering wind. His violin was slung across his back again. His yellow eyes pointed downwards at me, disapprovingly. ‘She is injured,’ he said. ‘You injured her.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I should let her live and punish you instead.’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked up at him. ‘Yes, please do that.’

  He frowned at me, his brow dipped and wrinkled, his eyebrows slanting, his eyes narrowed and blank, his mouth downturned. His whole frame was trembling.

  ‘Please do that.’ I shook my head and looked down. ‘Please.’

  He threw his head back and burst into mad laughter, loud enough to silence the crowds of lycanthropes all around. It rolled back from the fells, echoing as if there were a hundred Lords, a hundred Leapings, a hundred jagged shorelines. In opening his mouth so widely he revealed a long, wide purple tongue and long narrow teeth that tapered to sharp, flat edges.

  ‘No,’ he said, bending forward again. ‘No, I don’t think so. I was only joking. Besides, I’m not entirely sure of your motives, young man. I can’t help but think that dying is the preferable option.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ He smiled.

  ‘She doesn’t deserve to die.’

  ‘No,’ the Lord said, and looked down at Jennifer, pressed against his side. ‘She doesn’t, does she? She’s been an all-round remarkable girl.’ He laughed again. ‘Although I don’t know what deserving has to do with dying, Jack.’

  ‘I could give you myself,’ I said. ‘Instead. My – my, uh, my—’

  ‘Your
soul?’ he asked, leaning in closer and raising his eyebrows. ‘Is that what you’re offering me, Jack?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He straightened. ‘It would only make things easier for you in the long run, boy. And I don’t want that. The pure cold avarice, the nihilistic apathy that remains after making such an exchange – it’s a gift. It’s a gift that I’m not going to grant you.’ He grinned. ‘You, ah – you don’t deserve it!’

  He laughed again, and this time the whole assembled host laughed with him, Bearpit behind him laughing the loudest of all. They were huddled all around us, their strange bodies mutating with mirth. I was suddenly acutely aware of my nakedness.

  I waited for them all to stop laughing.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked, once they had done.

  ‘Doing what?’ he asked.

  ‘All of it,’ I said. ‘The Leaping. The killing.’

  ‘Oh.’ He appeared to consider his answer for a moment. ‘It happens for no good reason,’ he said, at length. ‘And no good ever comes of it. It can come from nothing; it can arrive from nowhere. There’s no knowing who it might kill. None of us really understand it.’ He paused. ‘I hope that’s a satisfactory answer.’