The Devil in green da-1

by Marc Chadbourn

  He sensed the change in the new buildings immediately. There was an unbearable atmosphere of potency, of a sick, crazy power leaking from every part of the fabric. Shadows were distorted; others were thrown by no obvious light source. At a distance, straight lines appeared to bend as if they were being warped by some magnetic force. This was most apparent in the long, columned corridors and the great hall, where the pillars rose to an enormous height and the roof was lost to darkness.

  And the further he progressed into the building on Stefan's trail, the worse it got. Logic was cut adrift, replaced by a dreamlike chaos where nothing quite made sense. Mallory would realise that the Hipgrave-thing was behind him only intermittently, when he heard that strange bird-cry or was overwhelmed by a smell like battery acid, but mostly the corridors and rooms at his back were filled only with darkness.

  After a while, time lost all meaning. It felt as if he was on a Mobius strip, passing through the same places, experiencing the same emotions. But a single thought had taken root in his mind and that was enough to drive him on: to make amends.

  It was in a room lined with statues of people he didn't recognise that he met the Caretaker. Some of the statues resembled ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Celts, while others appeared vaguely non-human with pointed ears and an unusually delicate bone structure, and the Caretaker was at first lost amongst them, his giant form silent and unmoving in the shadows.

  He stepped out and held up his hand, startling Mallory. 'You will never reach your prize by running, Brother of Dragons,' he said in his deep, echoing voice. You will be adrift in here for ever, never quite making up lost ground, till your time is gone or the world winds down around you. Only by going back will you achieve your aim.'

  'I can't go back,' Mallory said desperately. 'There's something behind me… death…'He glanced over his shoulder.

  'You know this door, Brother of Dragons.' The Caretaker motioned to a portal that hadn't been there before.

  And Mallory did know it, though he tried to pretend he didn't. It had a look of the fairy-tale about it, with mysterious figures intricately carved around the stone jamb. Mallory was suddenly overwhelmed with inexplicable emotion, terrified yet trembling with an abiding sadness at the same time. 'I can't go back,' he said desolately.

  Mallory took a step away from the door and found himself in front of it. 'No,' he said. He had no choice but to pass through into…

  'Did you get it?' Stevens barked at Mallory the moment he stepped through the steamed-up glass door of the cafe. He was sitting at his usual table in the corner, smoking a cheap cigar, while his hard-eyed cronies sat around, laughing at his jokes.

  'Yes.' Mallory was shaking. He dropped the haversack on the table.

  Stevens chuckled, looking around at his dismal associates. 'The only good bitch-' He paused mid-sentence, his eyes growing wider, the familiar fury rising in his face. Suddenly he grabbed Mallory's wrist. 'Is that blood?' he snapped. Mallory snatched his hand back, letting the sleeve of his leather jacket obscure the tell-tale sign. 'Go and wash it off, you fucking idiot.'

  As he headed towards the toilets at the back, Sylvie caught his eye. She was carrying a plate of egg and chips destined for a Geordie man in his eighties who always sat at the window smoking roll-ups. 'You didn't do it?' she hissed with a condemnatory expression that he'd hoped he'd never live to see. She looked tired, her face made hard by too much work for not enough money.

  'I didn't have a choice.'

  'Everybody has a choice, Mallory.'

  She barged past him in a way that suggested she'd finally written him off.

  He had to get out. Filled with despair, he stepped through the door into the toilets.

  Mallory skidded down a pile of rubble from a wall that had collapsed from great age, tumbling into a vast vault whose extremities were lost to the gloom. At the bottom, yellow bones protruded from a shattered crypt.

  Stefan's footsteps echoed like gunfire, but they were now accompanied by a pathetic whimpering; he knew he'd never get away. Mallory picked up a chipped thigh bone as he ran and hurled it with force into the dark. Stefan's cry came back sharp and sweet.

  'I'm going to get you, you bastard!' he yelled, though strangely he couldn't remember who he was trying to get; or, indeed, who he was. He had a name — Mallory — but that was all he knew. It probably didn't matter.

  He sprinted across the dusty floor, bones flying right and left. The air smelled of chalk and damp, and was as cold as the grave.

  The sound of tumbling rocks behind him snapped his attention back. Hipgrave was at the top of the rubbled slope, all sense gone from his eyes; the beast ruled him completely now. As Mallory watched, horns burst through his skull in a circle around his head at forehead height, became knives, then retracted.

  Obliquely, Mallory realised that Hipgrave was closer: he was catching up.

  He leaped forwards, plunging into the dark.

  'You can't trust Stevens,' Mueller said with surprising insight. He never looked as though he was paying attention to anything.

  They sat on the balcony watching the crew, under the guidance of Denny, setting up the sound system near where the altar would have been. The pale wintry sunshine still brought a dazzle of cascading colour from the stained-glass windows.

  'Whose stupid idea was it to turn an old church into a club? It was a crappy idea back in the eighties when the Limelight set up shop,' Mallory said.

  'Did you hear me?' Mueller turned to him, then slowly relented. 'The Devil has all the best tunes.'

  'I know. It's a metaphor.' Mallory plucked the ice cube from his glass, placed it in his mouth and began to crunch it up. 'Stevens thinks he's smart, but he's not. He's a thug, an East End barrow boy made bad. He's no match for my educated, wily ways.'

  'Educated? You dropped out,' Mueller said. 'But he's got one thing you haven't. He believes in what he's doing. You watch yourself, Mallory.'

  'You're such a moaner, Mueller. Moan, moan, moan.' The engineer checked the balance by playing an oldie on Mallory's decks. 'Beth Orton remixed by the Chemical Brothers,' he noted. 'Good taste for a monkey.' There was a plaintive element to the song that made him introspective. 'Do you ever get the feeling that the world isn't the way it should be?' he said, lost to his thoughts.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Which word don't you understand?'

  Mueller sipped his drink quietly. He'd been here so many times over the years, he knew better than to get riled by anything Mallory said.

  When Mallory saw that he wasn't going to bite, he made a face and continued, 'Look at it — what a sour, miserable existence. If there is a God, is this the best He can do? A place where people like Stevens thrive.' He grew introspective again. 'Sometimes I think this is all an illusion… a mess… and there's a better world somewhere behind it. Sometimes, if you catch this world sleeping, you can look at it just right and see straight through it to that good place on the other side.'

  'Sylvie's addled your mind, Mallory.' Mueller tittered.

  'Shut up, Mueller. You never did have any sense. I don't know why I ever took you on board.'

  Doors opened on to rooms that vaguely resembled ones he had passed through before, though each had a slight difference — a carving, a gargoyle, a column. There was stone and shadows, and dust, steeped in antiquity and quiet centuries of deep reverence, where no words were uttered but thoughts were offered up to the heart of Existence. There were chapels and vaults, tombs and halls, galleries and corridors, places of sanctity and places that felt alien and unwelcoming.

  Mallory crashed through them all, knowing that if he slowed Hipgrave would be behind him, but never quite managing to lessen the distance between him and Stefan. He had the unnerving feeling that sooner or later he would forget the reason for running, that it would simply be something he did, like eating and breathing.

  And each new doorway provided a new room, a new sensation, a new way of looking at life, and each time he lost a little bit more of who he
was.

  'You do it,' Stevens said, 'or that little waitress you like gets taken out back by my boys, done over, then popped in the head and dumped in the river. Do you hear me, you little fucker?'

  Mallory picked himself up off the floor. His ribs felt as if someone had stuffed a firework in them. 'You really think I'd do something like that?'

  Stevens smiled slyly. 'Well, I don't really know. I suppose we'll see, won't we? I mean, I'm just a thick boy from Bow — what do I know? You're the one with the good education. I expect you'll be putting me straight sometime soon.'

  'Irony works best in a single sentence. You spoil the effect when you drag it out.' Mallory wiped his mouth with the back of his hand; it left a dark smear.

  Stevens didn't have to retaliate for the attitude; he knew he had Mallory between a rock and a hard place. He simply watched and smiled, relishing his position of absolute power.

  'You've got to be joking,' Mallory said, starting to realise with mounting horror that Stevens wasn't.

  Stevens shrugged. 'Well, bang goes your bitch — in more ways than one.'

  Mallory began to back-pedal. 'Now, look-'

  'No. Let's not look. Let's deal with the offer on the table. It's simple — even I can understand it. You can do this… or this.'

  'I'll do anything else. You wanted a cut of the takings-

  Stevens made a dismissive hand gesture. 'That's all gone now. This is what's happening.'

  'But… but… it doesn't make any sense. You don't get anything out of this-'

  'Well, that's where you're wrong, my son.' His expression told Mallory everything: what he got was the brutish satisfaction of seeing Mallory torn apart by a choice no one could ever make without being destroyed.

  'What you want me to do — it's inhuman.'

  'Yes, it is, isn't it?'

  Mallory felt as if he was drowning.

  'A couple of other things while you… ruminate… that's a word, isn't it? You try to run, the waitress gets it. You do anything at all apart from what I've asked you and she gets it. Anything at all. But you do what I ask and everything'!! be sweet.'

  Mallory's mouth was dry. He couldn't see Stevens any more, just the horrendous images playing across his own internal screen. 'How do I know you won't kill Sylvie anyway?' he said, dazed.

  'I'm an honourable man, Mallory. I stand by old-fashioned values — I'm not a slippery, fast-talking fucking intellectual like you. When I give my word, that's it. I believe in die things that made this country great. The world now, it's gone to pot. Being honourable, that's all we've got to hold everything together.'

  The irony would have been funny if Mallory hadn't felt like being sick.

  Things changed as he emerged from a tiny door into a room that contained an enormous subterranean reservoir. Echoes of lapping water bounced off the walls, while light from an unidentified source provided shimmerings in the gloom. Walkways crisscrossed the stone tank, but they were barely wider than a man and it would be impossible to run along them without slipping into the black water of unknown depth.

  Stefan was making his way cautiously across the network of paths, unbalanced by the box he was carrying. If Mallory was careful he would be able to make up lost ground.

  Watching his feet, he stepped out on to the nearest walkway and moved as quickly as he could. Where the shadows were thickest the water looked like oil. But in some places, where the mysterious light fell across it, he had a perception of depth, and he had the unnerving sensation that things were moving in it. Stefan, too, appeared to have noticed the same thing, for he regularly cast worried glances into the water on either side.

  As he passed the first crossway, he realised he was indeed closing on Stefan, who was edging forwards very slowly, as much for fear of what might lie in the water as of falling in. Mallory's growing confidence was shattered when he glanced to his left and saw, floating an inch or so below the water, a woman who appeared maddeningly familiar yet had no place in his life as he knew it. He was overcome with a feeling of affection, even love, but the woman's eyes were wide and accusing.

  Other bodies drifted silently nearby, and although he thought of them as bodies, another part of him was convinced they were alive in some way he couldn't explain. They, too, were at the same time recognisable and not.

  The shock of seeing them there like dead fish almost made him lose his footing, and he feared what would happen if he fell in amongst them. He was only distracted from his uneasy thoughts when he realised there was a disturbance in the water around Stefan. Rising on every side were the cowled figures of the dead clerics from the ossuary.

  Stefan cowered before them, terrified, as if he knew why they were there for him. 'I have nothing to fear from you!' he cried out, his voice reverberating insanely up to the vaulted roof. As one, the clerics each raised an arm and pointed at him. Their silent accusation gave Stefan added impetus and he bowed his head and hurried past them.

  Mallory ignored the figures in the water around him and followed quickly, allowing just one glance back. Hipgrave was on the walkway, shifting back to his human form from something that had wings like a bat.

  Mallory realised there probably wouldn't be an escape for any of them.

  'I'd do anything for Sylvie.' Mallory blinked away tears of frustration and pain.

  'You think she'd be happy with you, knowing what you'd done?' Mueller was incredulous. 'Stevens has won. Whichever way you turn, you're damned.'

  'She doesn't have to know-'

  'She already knows. One of Stevens' monkeys told her this morning. He's just turning the knife-'

  'How do you know?' Mallory leaned back against his bookcase for support, as if gravity was suddenly too strong for him to keep standing.

  'She called me up… wanted to know if it was true.'

  'What did you say?'

  'I said I didn't know!' Mueller paced about the lounge, rubbing his fingers through his hair anxiously. 'But she knows Stevens wouldn't make something like that up…'

  Mallory covered his face; everything was fracturing. 'I don't have a choice.'

  'You had a choice two weeks ago… if you hadn't let your pride and your arrogance-'

  'Oh, shut up, Mueller.'

  There was such desolation in his voice that Mueller was briefly stung into silence. 'I'm sorry. That doesn't help.' He swallowed, ordered his thoughts. 'You can't do it, Mallory. Not something like that-'

  'I can't let Sylvie die, can I? It would be as if I'd killed her myself.'

  'If you do it, Stevens will probably kill you and Sylvie anyway Mueller's voice faded out.

  'You always manage to find the silver lining, don't you, Mueller?' He took a deep breath, but it failed to calm him. 'No, I believe him. He's a fucking psychotic thug, but he thinks if he sticks by some personal perverse code of ethics it makes everything he does all right.'

  Mueller chewed on a fingernail; he looked on the verge of tears. 'You can't do it, Mallory. No decent human being could do a thing like that and not be destroyed.'

  Mallory slumped on to the sofa, looked at the records and the books, all the trappings that made up his life. 'I love her, Mueller. I love her so much, nothing else matters. I'm a cynical bastard and I tried to pretend it was just infatuation or sex, but it isn't. I couldn't bear for anything to happen to her.'

  Mueller fell silent, staring blankly at the spines of some CDs. When the pressure in the room finally became too great, he said, 'You know this won't be the end of it. Stevens might not hurt her this time, but sooner or later he'll come back at her to get at you… to punish you even more, just because he can. He's going to kill her sooner or later, Mallory.'

  'I know.' The desolation he felt was painful.

  'What are you going to do, Mallory?'

  Doors and rooms, and rooms and doors, stretching off into infinity. After the reservoir there was another series of corridors and indistinguishable halls where no feet appeared to have trod for hundreds of years. But he had indeed closed on Stefan
. The only drawback was that Hipgrave had drawn nearer to him; he could now hear each transformation, like a silk sheet being torn by a knife. Things were converging.

  Out of the gloom loomed an enormous trilithon that reminded him of the ages-old monuments at Stonehenge. As he passed through its massive portal, he fell into deepest shadow, and when he emerged on the other side he was in the strangest place he had seen so far. It was a vast underground cemetery: crypts and mausoleums, obelisks and gravestones, crosses modern and Celtic and old markers that were little more than crumbling lumps of rock. Instead of the usual flagstones, there was dusty, water- starved soil beneath his feet. All around, torches blazed on the houses of the dead, creating stark pools of light and shade.

  A veil appeared to lift from his mind, and with it came a clarity of who he was and what he was doing.

  Stefan was nowhere to be seen. He had obviously taken the opportunity to lose himself amongst the jumbled layout. Just before Mallory threw himself into the network of byways that ran through the necropolis, he checked back on his own pursuer; the Hipgrave-thing writhed on the other side of the trilithon, seemingly unable to pass through it. Mallory's relief edged into a cold focus on the matter at hand. He set off in silent pursuit of the bishop.

  The cat-and-mouse game continued for an age. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse of Stefan's robes against the bare white bones of a mausoleum. Mallory would run and hide, dash and squat, all emotion driven from him by the long, wearying chase. The only thing that gave him comfort was the sword singing gently against his leg, its blue light seeping into the very fibre of his being.

  After a while, he realised the energy was coming in soothing pulses, but there was a pattern to it, as though it was calling out — or guiding him. Through trial and error, he matched his directional changes to the strong pulses until the flow of energy was constant. And that was when he saw Stefan creeping along the next byway.