Mirror of the Nameless

by Luke Walker

  Tom smiled. “My father-in-law.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Close enough,” I said. “We’re looking for my daughter and—”

  He held up a hand to silence me. Inside, I swore. The Children of Naz Yaah were supposedly big on family. In their small way, it was apparently a link to their god, a way of making a smaller version of their relationship to her.

  “You cost me a lot,” he said to me. “I take it you’re aware of that?”

  “Yes.” Seemed pointless to lie.

  The man turned in a circle to study the landscape. “And now you come to our city. You kill my brothers and you come to my city as if you have any right to be here.”

  “We weren’t coming here,” Tom shouted. “We were trying to get round it.”

  The man nodded. Nothing happened for a second and it seemed he’d nodded at me for some reason. Then one of the two men behind him took a step forward. He swung his bat at the same time.

  It smacked into Tom’s stomach, doubling him over. He choked and collapsed, holding his stomach. He sobbed; helpless saliva dropped from his hanging tongue to land beside scorched road.

  “Tom,” I muttered. “Shut up.”

  “Probably a good idea,” the leader said, smiling. “Now, what do you expect to happen here?”

  I wanted to turn in a circle as he had, see the unpretty surroundings while I could. I didn’t think I was afraid of death, but not to die like this with my daughter in trouble and my last sight being an ugly, ruined land marked by the filth of a worm god. All I could hope for now was for the insane men with me to consider a death here a sacrilege, perhaps, and take us somewhere else.

  The leader leaned close to me. He whispered beside my ear. “I know what your daughter is doing.” He breathed hard, his breath as hot on my skin as the air. There was no wind at all. Just the touch of his breath.

  “I know about the mirror,” he whispered.

  Then his hand crashed down on my neck, turning everything black.

  30

  Light and sound returned at the same time, the light much stronger. My eyes stung even though I kept them tightly shut. Black pools moved back and forth beyond the light, and the black was made of muffled voices.

  Pain registered in my head, hands and arms all at once. The image of the man’s hand a rising blur before he hit me returned; I tried to stretch a hand to my head and my hands went nowhere. I was cuffed, which explained the pain in my arms.

  A formless mass buried the light pressing on my eyes. “Hello.”

  I opened my eyes, squinting. The leader squatted before me, his bulk blocking the daylight. I was in the backseat of his car, stifling heat sitting with me.

  “Are you awake?” he said.

  “Just.”

  My voice shocked me. I’d known exhaustion and fear before, but this was something new.

  “Good. Now let’s talk.”

  “Where’s Tom?”

  The leader shifted, exposing the road and field. Tom was at the line where green met the road, three of the Little Nazs around him. One held a baseball bat. Tom was cuffed like me. Blood ran from his nose, shockingly red against the paleness of his face. Whether he could make me out in the gloom of the car, I couldn’t say.

  “Let’s talk,” the man said again. “About the mirror.”

  “What mirror?”

  He smiled, reached behind himself and waved once. The man with the bat swung it down hard and fast. The smack as it connected with Tom’s thigh raced over the road to hit me. Tom screamed.

  “That’s one. The next one will be two. And so on.”

  “Look.” I did my best to control my racing heart, to keep the dripping sweat from my eyes, to keep my terror from controlling me. “The only thing I know is my daughter needs help. That’s the one reason we’re looking for her. I don’t know anything about a mirror. I promise you that on her life.”

  He appraised me, face unreadable.

  “I don’t pretend to know much if anything about your beliefs.” My throat clicked; I’d never been as thirsty as I was at that moment. “And I won’t insult you by pretending I do. I’m not stupid.”

  He smiled. And raised his hand.

  “Wait.”

  His hand remained motionless. I spoke fast.

  “The one thing I do know is how important family is to you. I know you love your children. I love my daughter. She needs my help. That is literally all I know. Nobody’s said anything about a mirror before now.”

  He waved.

  The bat hit Tom on the other thigh, then his stomach. His scream from the first impact lasted barely a second before he lost all his air. He flopped over, curling up, bleeding.

  “I believe you,” the leader told me.

  “What?”

  “I believe you. You’re telling me the truth. It’s wonderful what you can find out about someone just by knowing their name and address.”

  I stared at him, wanting to punch him and never stop. “If you believe me, why the fuck are you beating Tom?”

  “Because he deserves nothing less. Neither do you.” He eyed me as if I were an interesting specimen of new creature. “Does that surprise you?”

  “Should it?” I muttered.

  “Would it if you knew who I was before my conversion? If I told you I was a man of the old god? The lost god?”

  I kept quiet. He wasn’t just dangerous. He was insane.

  “A long time ago. Before our gods, the only gods came to us. That was me. A waste of time. A waste of belief. Now I am saved. Now I live for Naz Yaah and I do anything to protect her.” He sighed. “I don’t pretend it’s pleasant for everyone but it’s necessary.”

  I said the only thing I could. “And I’m the same when it comes to my daughter.”

  He stared at me, his thought clear on his face.

  Blasphemy.

  That was it. I’d blasphemed to a Little Naz by comparing my daughter to his god. If we were lucky, he’d shoot us both. If not, he’d make us scream all over the road and through the wild grass.

  Silently, he leaned into the car, face an inch from mine. The stink of my sweat competed with his and any sight of the road and Tom was lost to me.

  “You will go to your daughter. You will go to the mirror and you will see that I am right.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Is that what you want? To know I am right?”

  “About what?” I said.

  “About the old god. The fake one. About our gods being the best thing about our lives. About the alternative to our gods being worse than you could imagine.”

  He shifted closer and I licked sweat from my lips. Screaming inside, I dug my nails into my palms. “I want to find my daughter.”

  “You will. But you’ll wish you had not.”

  He shifted backwards, leaving the car. At once, the outside air rushed in as if keen to fill his space. “But you still owe us.”

  He stood to one side, faced the three men beside Tom’s prone figure, and clicked his fingers. I could do nothing but watch and scream for them to stop as they squatted beside Tom, grabbed one of his hands and placed a knife against his little finger. Tom pleaded with them not to do it; I shouted everything I could think of for the leader to call a stop to it. Neither Tom’s pleading and screams nor my mad shouts changed a thing.

  They sawed through his finger, and in my horror-filled struggles and bellows, two of them smiled at me, enjoying my struggles as much as they were enjoying Tom’s sobs.

  His finger came free. He howled and I wished more than anything for him to stop the awful noise. He didn’t, though. He howled into the baking air; the hot road took his spilled blood and the men joined the two closer to their leader.

  “A token of a sacrifice,” he said to me.

  Two of his men yanked me from the car and dragged me to drop beside Tom. I tried to speak to him. He screamed and wept and blood coated his arm and the road around us.

  The leader chucked keys into my lap. “Your choice. If you s
tay here, you won’t regret it. If you go to your daughter and the mirror, you will. I promise you.”

  They left us to our weeping and our bleeding.

  31

  After struggling for several minutes, I managed to undo the handcuffs. Then despite his sobs and his struggles to get away and the pain bolting up and down my arms, I man-handled Tom back to the van. He fell into the passenger seat, cradling his gore-streaked hand, rocking back and forth.

  “Let me see it, Tom.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Tom, please.”

  He kept it tight against his stomach. I opened one of our few bottles of water and held it to him. “Sip it.”

  His unmarked hand shook as he took the bottle and both of his eyes were obviously struggling to stay open. While his clothes and hand were completely covered in blood, I wasn’t worried about blood loss—as long as I could get to the wound and bandage it. Shock would make him pass out if I didn’t do something quickly.

  He drank fast, mouth and throat working, water running in streams down his chin and neck. Downing half of the bottle, he gazed at me with one eye. The other closed.

  “Why didn’t they take your finger?” he croaked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t. Maybe because you rescued me the other night. Maybe because they’re nuts. How the fuck should I know?”

  He showed no signs of flinching at my shout. His other eye closed, then opened as if he was slowly winking at me.

  “Tom? You with me?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Both his eyes opened wider than I’d ever seen. No vagueness there. He was aware of every single thing about our situation.

  “What did you tell them?” he croaked. “About us.”

  “Nothing. Nothing to tell.”

  “Nothing about—” He coughed; his arm shook and fresh blood coated his clothing. “About Ashleigh? Or Makepeace?” He coughed again. “Thacker?”

  “No. Tom. I need to help you. You need that treated.”

  “You’ve done enough.”

  I risked a look outside. The day was still early. There wasn’t a danger of being stuck near Ely after nightfall as long as we got moving at some point soon. Despite the Little Nazs letting us go, I had no urge to be sitting in the van on that bloody, burned road by nightfall. Ten years or not since Naz Yaah’s visit and destruction, her influence was all around us, and who could say what would come wandering in off the fields in the dark.

  “Tom. Once this is done, you can do what you want. But don’t forget who we’re doing this for right now. Why we’re in this situation. We stay here and we don’t help Ashleigh.”

  His head lolled but his eye remained open. “You’re a bastard.”

  “I know.”

  He peeled his blood-streaked hand off his stomach, mouth trembling, and extended it towards me. “Be quick.”

  I yanked most of the stuff out of the bag I’d grabbed in the pub, spilling the contents on my lap. Near the bottom, I found some rudimentary medical supplies: an old bandage, a few large plasters, half a box of ibroprufen and the essential. A small bottle of vodka, half-empty.

  “You much of a drinker, Tom?”

  “What?” he whispered.

  I undid the bottle, passed it to him and unrolled the bandage while he drank. The alcohol made him cough; droplets of blood hit me and the seats.

  “What did he say? The man?” Tom muttered.

  I told him about the man’s story, of being a priest in the old days, about his knowledge of Ashleigh and his ramblings about a mirror. The mirror angle meant no more to Tom than it had to me. All we could hope for was it meaning something to Ashleigh and that we’d find her soon.

  I finished unwrapping the bandage and took another quick look outside. Still blinding sun, still the same dead road. And still the urge to get moving, get away from this horrible place. One last thing to do, first.

  “Tom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We need to stop that bleeding before I put the bandage on.”

  He rocked back and forth in his seat, sweating, shaking and continuing to bleed. He swallowed a few times before giving me a quick nod.

  I stabbed the cigarette lighter in and we waited for it to heat. And in those silent few minutes, I tried not to think about Tom’s upcoming screams.

  As it turned out, they were even louder than I imagined.

  32

  I drove. Tom cradled his bandaged hand to his bloody shirt and refused to speak much. We headed south without stopping and I did my best not to notice how the day was growing dark despite the early hour. Usually, sunset came anywhere between nine and midnight. Some nights, it didn’t come at all. Not that day. Barely four in the afternoon and the thick yellow of the constant sun was definitely fading. The heat remained with us, of course, as heavy and ugly as always. There was nothing we could do about it but keep the windows down and hope our speed generated enough of a fan effect to cool us.

  As we closed in on the village of Ashton, Tom tried calling Ashleigh. I didn’t have to ask how he was doing. The answer was obvious in his anger and fear. Instead of talking about Ashleigh, I went for a different angle.

  “This Thacker character. Makepeace.”

  “What about him?” Tom said, staring straight ahead at the road. Tree branches, all thick with lush leaves, hung over it to form a roof.

  “How is it he’s not more well-known? We can’t be the only people who’ve heard of him and who’ve put two and two together.”

  Tom shrugged, then winced. “We’re not, but we’re the only ones doing something about it. Everyone else…”

  “Everyone else what?”

  “Everyone else either doesn’t care or they’re too scared to try changing things.” He let out a cynical laugh. “I’ve thought that sometimes over the last couple of years, but the last two days have convinced me of it. People think we’re actually better off like this.” He waved his injured hand around the van. “All this fear. The constant paranoia and shittiness. Those nutcases back there. The government telling us it’s good if we become sacrifices. Our gods playing with us. Fucking playing with us.”

  He kicked down hard and glared at me. “And you’re one of those people, Dave.”

  I crushed the brake, swerved us to a stop at the side of the road and grabbed Tom’s arm. In his face, I shouted at him.

  “Listen, I am not one of those fucking people, all right? I’m not. I’m sorry those men hurt you. I’m sorry you’re scared. I’m sorry you have to be part of this shit, but you are, so either start dealing with it or fuck off. I’ll find Ashleigh by myself.”

  Reaction raced up and down my midsection, leaving me hot and nauseous. Confrontation wasn’t my thing, but I’d had enough. Tom needed to face what we were doing as well as what we were up against.

  He eased back from me and I let him go. He continued looking me in the eye, I’ll give him that. I wanted to drop my gaze and could not. Not if I wanted him to believe me.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  His cheeks were as red as his bloody shirt. The expression on his face took five years off him. I could have been arguing with my daughter when she was a pain-in-the-arse fifteen-year-old.

  “Good.”

  I took us back to the center of the road; Tom held his phone against his ear again. A moment later, he swore and lowered it.

  “Just her voice mail. Nothing else.”

  I was about to answer when a word on the radio, the volume low for the last few miles, caught my attention.

  Breached.

  Tom heard it as well. We listened in silence as the newsreader struggled to put a spin on what had happened. She failed.

  The influx of terrified Europeans barreling down through the Channel Tunnel had smashed through the military blockade. Hundreds were dead. Thousands more were coming. A last-minute attempt to close the tunnel had failed and w
hile more of the military were on their way to the scene, nothing could be done about the vast numbers of people fleeing Segoth.

  But it wasn’t just Segoth. Naz Yaah had been sighted north of Cumbria and was apparently heading south. Heading towards the huge crowds from France and Germany and heading towards Segoth.

  And in what was described as an unconnected incident, outbreaks of violence were being reported through Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. Violence involving family member against family member, husband and wives attacking each other, strangers killing strangers.

  Gatur the Green was back.

  I lowered the volume and tried to find some words.

  “Why now?” Tom whispered. “Why all three of them here?”

  In the hot shade, I knew the answer. “It’s the people. They’re running from Segoth. He’s coming after them. And the other two are coming to join in the fun. They know that where there are a lot of us together, there’s potential for deaths. And that’s what they want.”

  “What do we do?”

  I stared straight ahead to the empty road lined by its trees. And how green the leaves were all of a sudden.

  “We find Ashleigh.”

  33

  We parked in woodland a couple of miles from the grounds of Ashton Hall. While the day hadn’t grown any darker in the last hour, it still wasn’t right. Shadows lined the road and slinked out of the spaces between the trees. There were no clouds; the sky was a heavy blue closing in on purple, and the sun appeared to be stuck in the minutes before sunset. Everything around us was still in a queasy way. It made me think of vomiting and fever and storms.

  Tom joined me on my side of the van and waved his mobile. “I just texted her. Worth a go if she’s not answering.”

  His eyes widened. Instinctively, I whirled around and crouched. Six men had left the trees to sneak up on us, all moving without making a sound despite the dead leaves and the masses of twigs covering the ground.

  “Hello,” I said softly.

  One, a skinny man holding a tree branch, grunted and pointed to my gun. “You can put that away. We’re not dangerous.”