by Luke Walker
“Ash, we have to go now.”
“No, Dad. I’m doing this. Makepeace was right. This isn’t how it should be. We shouldn’t be afraid all the time. We can do better than this.”
Shouts rolled in from somewhere off in the night. The people of the village were coming closer. I quickly checked for their lights and saw nothing. Tom finally made it out of the van; he and Ashleigh embraced.
“You really shouldn’t have come. I told you not to. How did you find me?”
She saw his hand and held the bandage. “Oh, Tom. Oh, no. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She was crying as she held him. He kissed her cheek.
“It’s okay. I can deal with it, but your dad’s right. We need to get out of here right now.”
“No.”
She stepped back, eyeing both of us.
“Not until I find the mirror.”
“What the hell is this mirror?” Tom shouted.
“You don’t know?”
“We didn’t get that far.”
The shouting drew closer. “We need to go now,” I said, trying to pull both of them. Ashleigh shook me loose.
“The mirror. It’s in there.” She pointed to the hall. “It’s a way to another world. A way out for everyone. Makepeace knew about it. That’s why he put it in his fiction. The story Thacker tells Lady Ashton. The Mirror of the Nameless.”
Tom pulled a face. “We didn’t get that far. Look, Ash. There are people coming from the village, and the gods, they’re destroying the country. Everywhere’s being trashed.”
It was the wrong thing to say. The knowledge the hated gods were in the country only hardened Ashleigh’s resolve. She backed away.
“Go,” she said. “I love you both. Now go.”
Knife at her side, she turned and ran for the hall.
“Shit,” Tom shouted and moved to run after her. I grabbed him.
“I’ll go,” I said and jabbed a finger towards the approaching shouts. The lights could only be seconds from us. “Kill them.”
He swore again and handed me one of our guns. “I’ll pick you both up. Just get her.”
I clapped his arm. “Thank you, Tom.”
With that, I ran after my daughter, the silent bulk of Ashton Hall rushing up to meet me, the first of the lights appearing at the entrance to the courtyard.
A moment later, Tom began shooting.
37
I sprinted over the gravel, breathing hard. Ashleigh was nowhere in sight. The flickering lights scattered under Tom’s shots. Ahead, the side of the hall was a long line of windows and shadows. One of the shadows moved.
Ashleigh stood a few steps from me, panting. “You need to go, Dad.”
“Not without you.”
Abruptly, she grinned.
“Stubborn.”
“Says you.”
Behind, Tom’s gunfire ceased. Then the van started and its outline sped towards the entrance and the few remaining lights. The men ran; Tom skidded around the corner and out of sight.
“It’s okay. He’ll pick us up,” I said.
“Then we’ve got a bit of time. If you’re coming, then come.”
Without waiting for a reply, Ashleigh opened her bag and pulled a crumbling brick free. She launched it at one of the windows. Glass exploded inwards, leaving a wide hole in the frame. The darkness inside the room licked at the remaining shards.
“Ash, what the hell are you doing?”
“Saving everyone.”
She boosted herself up, used her elbow to knock out the rest of the glass and glanced back at me. “Give me five seconds, then follow me, Dad.”
She jumped through and landed lightly by the sounds of it. I clambered up on the ledge with far less grace than Ashleigh had, counted quickly to five and jumped blindly.
Glass crunched below my shoes as I landed and tipped to one side. Ashleigh caught me and pulled me upright. Fumbling in her pack, she brought out a flashlight and shielded the light as she waved it around the room.
There was little furniture to fill such a huge room. Around us, a few paintings remained on the walls, most of the images damaged, and a couple of rotting sofas sat against a wall. Dirt coated the floor and the air stank of age and decay.
“Where to?” I whispered.
“The mirror. We have to find the mirror.”
She headed towards the doorway, leaving me to chase after her. “What is this mirror, Ashleigh?”
We left the room to enter a long corridor. Ashleigh’s flashlight shone a few feet towards the front of the house. There was a brief snatch of gunfire and shouts, then silence.
“I don’t know where it came from or who built it. I just know what it is. We can send this world into that one and leave the gods here.” She studied the walls quickly. “Stairs. Come on.”
We jogged down the corridor; it curved, taking us past dozens of rooms and doors. Moonlight shone through windows to cast white light on old furniture, and our running steps kicked up dust, making us cough. We skidded to a stop in the main foyer at the sound of sirens. They were coming closer and they were coming fast.
“They’ve called the police,” Ashleigh said.
“Tom. He’s still out there.”
I headed towards the door and my daughter held my hand. “He’s got guns, Dad. And we can help if we find the mirror.”
Hoping Tom had found somewhere to hide, I joined Ashleigh in the run for the stairs. We hit the first one and everything shook.
We fell into each other. She held me as she had as a child. The world shook again, and a mix of screams and shouts rose from outside. Flickering lights filled the windows by the doors. When the third terrible thud came, I realized what it was.
Segoth was with us.
38
Linking hands, Ashleigh and I ran up the stairs, the ground and building trembling with each impact of the dead god’s feet on the earth. Several smaller thuds followed the impacts: his flesh raining to the ground, burning, consuming. It made no difference that nearly everyone outside would welcome the god’s visitation but not a death from him. His stink and decay would find them. In seconds, the scene outside would be much the same as it had been during those terrible minutes in the pub with Derek.
Putting the images out of my mind, I ran with Ashleigh along another corridor. She stopped at a junction, shone her flashlight in both directions and swore.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We need to find her bedroom. It’s…” She swore again.
“Whose bedroom?” I said, feeling slow and old.
“Lady Ashton’s. The mirror will be in there.”
A huge explosion roared outside. I ran to the nearest window and peered through the mucky glass. Something in the dark was burning. I could only take a guess that a building in the village had exploded. Milling shapes ran back and forth through the courtyard. If Tom was down here, he wasn’t driving or shooting.
A huge mass dropped past the window, inches from my face. The wet splat from below made me groan. Segoth’s dead flesh was falling right over us. Another brown sludge fell, then a third. It was raining pieces of the god.
Downstairs, a window broke. Outside, the night shifted. I staggered backwards, trying to scream.
The air was turning green. The night was fading to be replaced by the horrible green of Gatur. She was here. Segoth was falling onto us. There was no way we could do this.
Another window broke below. I ran to Ashleigh.
“We have to run. It’s over,” I said.
She’d seen the green light outside and heard the smashing glass below. She understood what both meant. Her face tinged green, she set her mouth in a tight line and shook her head.
“We can’t, Dad. We have to find it.”
Her gaze flicked to over my shoulder and her mouth dropped open. I tried to turn; she pushed me back and down.
Glass exploded. The window coughed inwards, bringing in the stink of the rotten flesh, the seductive warmth of the green light and so
mething else.
A flying thing made of too many eyes and a dozen wings. Something from Naz Yaah. She’d come just like the others.
The monster streaked over us, fluid dripping from its mouth, dancing shadows cast by its buzzing wings running up and down the walls. The liquid hit the carpet and hissed.
“Down,” I screamed at Ashleigh and fired at the thing as she dropped.
My bullet hit the ceiling. The buzzing monster rose out of sight and swooped around a chandelier. I drew aim on it again as its wings hit the chandelier. Metal snapped. The chandelier dropped and shattered on the dirty ground. Glass exploded in all directions, deafening us. The creature danced across the ceiling, clearly pleased with its destruction, its irregular movements keeping out of my shot.
Then from the windows beside the front door, the first of the burned bodies began clambering inside.
Ashleigh pulled me from the top of the stairs to another corridor. We sprinted in the dark, shadows and light running beside us. The windows we passed gave glimpses of the outside and I wanted to stop looking. That was impossible. I had to see.
Dozens of police cars had arrived in the last few seconds; the officers were alternating between trying to dodge the raining chunks of flesh and killing any of the burned bodies coming for them. Above the chaos, Gatur’s light grew much stronger, announcing her full arrival. The killing began as it had in Norwich. We ran past a huge picture window and I had a glimpse of the great shape of Segoth advancing over the fields. Gatur’s light lit the monster, sending his mammoth shadow down to coat the countryside. His fingers, the size of buildings, dripping skin and muck; his hands large enough to smash through mountains, and his eyes somewhere beyond the rolling, boiling skin of his face taking in everything he knew was his kingdom.
We rounded a corner; another explosion ripped the air apart and windows fell in. Through one, the undulating form of Naz Yaah twisted her way across the grassland and trees close to one of the hall’s rivers. Moonlight shone on the mass of her white body; massive drops of burning slime dripped off her while dozens of her tentacles tasted the air, all of them waving as if in greeting. The horror of her white body glowing in the dark made my stomach queasy and when the top half of her body rolled to bring her head around, I screamed.
Her mouth, a cavern of teeth, was big enough to drive a bus into. Beyond those hundreds of teeth, her tongue was a sliding piece of meat, flicking in and out in time with her tentacles. She rolled herself closer to the hall, covering a dozen feet in one movement. And below all the screams and roar of fires, the steady hiss of her acidic slime grew louder. Her slime was eating the land.
We ran again. Heat and smoke chased us. I crashed into Ashleigh, sending her to the floor. And still, she kept moving. She crawled forward, dirt coating her hands and face, the dancing green light of Gatur rolling towards her.
I lunged up and forward, knocking her flat, covering her head and screaming at her not to look.
And a hand closed over mine.
39
The hand gripped my forearm and pulled hard. I slid up, grabbed Ashleigh’s hand at the last second and pulled her with me.
The wall hit me as someone shoved me against it. Through the noise and smoke, a face loomed at me.
The leader of the Little Nazs. The man who’d let Tom and me go near Ely.
“Hello, again.”
“Dad?” Ashleigh said.
I held her hand and tried to picture myself bringing my gun up fast enough to kill the man before he killed us.
“This way,” he said and pointed farther along the corridor.
“What?”
“The mirror. That’s what you’re looking for, right?”
“Who are you?” Ashleigh shouted.
The man opened his coat, exposing the white line down his shirt. Ashleigh closed her mouth. Back at the top of the stairs, the shuffling figures with their melted skin came into view. All of them headed for us. Another window split behind them and a second of the flying creatures shot inside.
“Best be quick,” the man shouted.
We ran after him. He smashed into a closed door no different to all the others; the door broke at his impact and he shoved it open to reveal a spacious bedroom.
“Inside,” he said.
Without any choice, we entered the bedroom. Moving faster than I would have thought possible, the man pushed a table against the door, then two armchairs against the table.
“The bookcase,” he shouted at me.
We took hold of a sturdy bookcase, lifted it and shoved it on top of the armchair. There was no way of knowing how long our barricade would last.
“What the hell is going on?” I yelled at the man.
In answer, he pointed at Ashleigh.
She was walking towards a corner of the bedroom and an object almost lost in the shadows. Her flashlight found it and shone on the large cover.
We’d found the mirror.
40
Even as I shouted her name, Ashleigh gripped the corner of the cover.
“This is it, Dad.” She made no move to face me. I wondered if she was aware of me as much as she was of the mirror or if I’d become nothing more than background. “We can change everything with this.”
“That’s true,” the Little Naz said.
I ran to him and shoved my gun up to his chin. He didn’t flinch at all. In the wan light, his face remained impassive.
“Talk. Now. What the hell is all this?”
“The mirror’s not what your daughter thinks it is. It’s—”
“He’s lying,” Ashleigh yelled.
“No, I’m not. The mirror will make everything much worse than it is now. I promise you.”
Hands hammered at the door. It shook but held. Ashleigh began pulling at the cover and the Little Naz’s hand was a blur. He brought his gun up and aimed at Ashleigh in the time it took me to realize what he was doing.
“No,” I shouted.
Ashleigh froze, hand still on the cover. More hammering hit the door. Sweat blinded me for a second. I blinked it away and caught sight of a white shape passing the window. Naz Yaah was surrounding the building, her ghastly weight pressing into the old bricks. It wouldn’t be long before she either smashed through or just burned her way in.
“Trust me, Dave,” the Little Naz said.
“Why the fuck should I?”
“Because I saved your life back on the road. Who do you think killed those two cops? I wanted to get you here so you’d know I was right. That mirror is not the savior she thinks it is. It’s damnation. For all of us.”
We stared at each other. And the hammering and the smoke and heat and the screams outside, they were all a million miles away for a tiny moment. Then Ashleigh spoke from somewhere off in the dark and my heart was a beating love for my daughter.
“We’re damned already. We’re in hell.”
She yanked the cover off the mirror.
41
Time stopped.
I knew the Little Naz was shouting at me, telling me to see. I knew Ashleigh had backed away from the mirror. I knew the hammering on the door had become the sound of wood splitting. I knew the huge grunts from outside were Naz Yaah’s filthy breath blowing against the people.
I knew all of that and yet all I really knew was the surface of the mirror.
There was no surface. There was a nothing, an absence of light and space. In that absence, I was a falling mote, racing ever downwards through the space between all things, speeding down to crash into what might have been grass. Except each waving strand was a sentient life, a questioning intelligence stroking my leg, talking to me in a language made of shapes, not words. Air as alive as the grass pushed into my face, bending my head back until I thought my neck would break, rolling over my eyes and drying all the moisture in them so I was unable to blink.
The sky, bigger than any sky on Earth, stood above me—a mammoth ceiling made of all the colors there are. Made of new colors I had never imagined. All
that light was horribly familiar.
I’d had a glimpse of it earlier. The silent lightning was a warning of what was to come. Our world linking to wherever I was now. I’d been traveling alongside a window between here and there, not knowing how thin the space between us really was. Not knowing I could fall through at any second, fall into this terrible place.
Flickering shapes danced in those colors. And the shapes were the voices of the grass living miles and miles above the plains I stood on. And the voices were crushing into one another, becoming a single booming voice, words racing from one end of this awful world to the other in the time it took me to blink.
Words that were a demand, not a question.
WHO ARE YOU.
The Voice blew me backwards. I flew for a million years, screaming all the way and my staring eyes unable to close against the unending void I lived inside.
Dropping, I fell into the living grass; it buried me alive in solid black, and that black spat me back through the mirror to crash down into my own feet.
“And now you know,” the Little Naz said.
There was no time for me to reply, to vomit up the shrieking sickness inside my stomach. The splitting wood of the door fell in and a face peered through. A ruined face made of melted flesh, one eye hanging by a thick strand of dangling skin, the other eye a staring hole.
Tom.
Ashleigh screamed. And ran to the mirror.
I howled her name. And brought my gun from the man’s chin to bear it on the mirror that wasn’t a mirror but a door.
“Ashleigh, wait,” I yelled.
And her fingers were reaching for the mirror. And the light was green, so green. And Naz Yaah’s foul breath raced through the hall to coat all of us.
“I can save everyone, Dad. I can get us all out of here. I can save the world.”
My daughter’s fingers hit the surface of the mirror that wasn’t there.
I fired.
42
That was close to six months ago. Although to be honest, it feels as if it could have been minutes ago. I play every second of it over and over in my head and it happens again just like it happened in reality.