Glass Town

by Steven Savile

  This was the Opticron, he realized. It had to be.

  If he opened those shutters, he’d see other worlds. Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen?

  He wasn’t even remotely tempted to find out.

  What he was tempted to do was kill whatever was powering the damned device and bring down the barrier, but not until he’d found Seth’s fingertip. He needed the light to see by.

  It’s got to be here somewhere, he thought to himself. There were glass cabinets, like museum display cases, around one side of the curved wall. On the other were racks of film canisters. What better place to hide something in a projection room, Josh realized, going over to the racks and lifting down the first can. It was labeled Number 13 Daily Print. There were twenty more, each with the same handwritten label, the only difference being the date stamped beneath it. He looked for the last date in the sequence, then twisted the lid off the can.

  It was empty.

  He cast it aside, and pulled the next one out.

  Another empty can.

  The third one contained a small loop of film, nothing else.

  The fifth can he lifted down rattled in his hands.

  There was no film inside. The can contained a bone. The distal phalange of Seth Lockwood’s missing little fingertip.

  Josh fished it out of the metal canister and pocketed it.

  He knew exactly how he was going to dispose of the damned thing. He wasn’t going to salt and burn it; Seth wasn’t a ghost. As evil as he was, he wasn’t some sort of demonic entity, either. No, he had other ideas.

  But first, he intended to bring down the veil and pull Glass Town out of limbo for the first time in a century.

  He looked around for a plug, but the Opticron seemed to be powering itself on thin air. Josh started trying to fumble around with it, looking for some sort of off switch, but he was clueless. Clueless and frustrated. Grasping the contraption from the base, he lifted it from the table and carried it toward the small window. He hefted it up onto his shoulder, then ran the final three steps to the wall, hurling the Opticron through the window.

  The glass shattered as Damiola’s machine spilled out of his fingers. It teetered on the edge of the window frame for a moment before it toppled. It was a long way down. He heard the twisted detonation of impact as it hit the street. No matter what magic powered the contraption, there was no chance it could have survived the fall.

  The darkness all around him testified to that.

  The barrier that had kept Glass Town hidden away from the world had fallen.

  Using the lighter, Josh followed its tiny light carefully back down to where Eleanor waited.

  “It’s done,” he promised her.

  They left the cinema hand in hand like so many young lovers before them. What they stepped out into wasn’t Wonderland. The Opticron lay in hundreds of pieces strewn across the road. Each one of them glowed with the same eerie pale blue ghost light he’d seen emanate from within Myrna Shepherd, but it was fading fast. Josh looked up at the sky where the stars were streaks of silver, every single one of them up there a shooting star. “It’s all coming undone,” he said, and it was. All around them the world that had been hidden away for so long was rolling out to take its place within the London of today much to the consternation of late-night revellers who suddenly found themselves facing walls that hadn’t been there a few moments before, unsure of just how much they’d had to drink as they approached crossroads that they knew like the back of their hands only to realize there was an entirely new choice to be had that they’d never taken before. Those movie set streets forced their way into the city, staking a claim on some of the most expensive territory in the world.

  It was a magic night.

  People were going to wake up to a different London in the morning, but at least they’d be saved the hysteria of watching Glass Town unfold before their eyes. That would have been too much, even for the endless possibilities of the capital.

  The night wasn’t as dark as it should have been—that was because of the trailing stars. It was going to take a while to familiarize himself with this new geography of the city. They needed to get over to Ravenshill before Seth found the old magician. That was five miles away.

  The cut from the shard of glass in his palm made his fingers ache. Josh flexed them a couple of times, imagining what it would feel like to be without the smallest of them.

  In the distance he could see the white faces of skyscrapers towering over the lowly buildings below. New money always rose to the top, while old money was content just to be, spreading out behind the marble façades below.

  They walked together through the utter silence of this forsaken place. Up above the stars slowly shortened with each step they took until they were single points of light up there in the heavens. Surely that meant that Glass Town had finished unfurling around them to take up its rightful place in the heart of the city? And that being the case, then surely that in turn meant time had been restored, Damiola’s grand illusion undone?

  There was no going back.

  In destroying the Opticron he’d effectively killed both Seth and Eleanor even if the years hadn’t caught up with them yet. He could tell by the look in her eyes she knew it, but she was focused on being with him right to the end, making sure that Seth couldn’t somehow find a way to cheat death and walk away from this again. Not that Josh would let him. This had stopped being about Eleanor and Isaiah and Boone for him. There was only one person this was about now: his mother. Seth had killed her, and for that he was going to pay the ultimate price.

  He saw ragged silhouettes of people coming into focus as he approached them, and ignored their confusion as he passed.

  “What the…?”

  “Did you see that?”

  “Where the fuck did they come from?”

  “What the hell is this place? Where’s the fucking chippie? I’m dying for a kebab … Could have sworn it was here. Must have taken a wrong turn back there.”

  And on and on the blather went, meaningless words from meaningless people. Josh took Boone’s tin from his pocket. His hands were shaking. He needed something to do with them. The adrenaline was flooding from his system, reality pouring in just as it had in the wake of the halo’s undoing. He didn’t want anything to do with it. He rolled a cigarette, then lit it. The cold air had him squinting into the near distance. He saw what he was after, the carapace of a beetlelike black cab idling on the corner.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing Eleanor’s hand again and running.

  The chill became a cold breeze, the cold breeze an icy wind as they ran headlong into it. The night sky filled with starlings and pigeons and all manner of city birds, their migration battered by the unforgiving wind.

  At the end of the street he noticed a dozen or more cats side by side with just as many dogs, all of them crowded around the ragged edge where the barrier had come down. The air was peculiar, rippling with bruised purple light that replaced the halo as Glass Town entered the twenty-first century. It was like seeing the Northern Lights on a London street: impossible, but absolutely beautiful just the same.

  He could have sworn he heard voices in the wind, but he ignored them. That way lay madness.

  They ran past the windows of uninhabited houses, eyes fixed on the cab on the street corner and its indicator, which wasn’t signaling any intention to move out before they reached it.

  Josh waved frantically toward it, hoping the driver would see him in the mirror before he pulled away.

  “Ravenshill,” Josh said, clambering inside.

  “Sorry, guv, I’m done for the night. Got to get home to the missus or she’ll have my guts for garters.”

  “Please,” Josh said. “It’s only a couple of miles. We can pay.”

  The driver caught sight of Eleanor Raines in the rearview mirror and changed his mind. “Come on then,” he said, buckling up. “So, what the hell was all that fuss back there? Sounded like a bomb going off.”

  “Th
ey’re filming something,” Josh said, hoping the man would buy the lie. He’d read something somewhere about a movie or television show being shot every single day in the city, so it wasn’t an outrageous stretch of the imagination to think the BBC’s special effects crew might be blowing something up even if it was the middle of the night.

  “Ah, you coming off the set, guv? Had a few celebs in my cab, you can always tell the real ones, like the lady here, they’ve got a certain something. A luminescence.”

  Eleanor smiled sweetly at him. “Something like that,” she said. “Believe me, it’s been a really long day.”

  “Amen to that, love. This shift feels like it’s lasted a hundred years.”

  There was no answer to that.

  46

  THE MAN IN THE MIRRORS

  The taxicab dropped them at the crooked gates.

  “Can’t say’s I’ve ever been out this way,” the cabbie noted, taking the crumpled twenty from Josh. He made no move to break it. Instead he waited, the protracted silence becoming meaningful, though far from profound, until Josh said, “Keep the change.”

  “Good man. Much appreciated. You folks have a good night doing whatever it is you intend to do in there,” he raised an eyebrow toward the old cemetery. He chuckled knowingly as he said, “I ain’t gonna judge.” Though clearly he was. That last line was delivered through a smirk.

  Josh helped Eleanor out of the cab before slamming the door.

  The cab was gone before they were through the raven gates.

  Josh looked around, but there was no sign of Seth. He took Eleanor’s hand again and led her through the graves to the magician’s mausoleum.

  The old man waited for them in the shade of the overgrown willow. He ignored Josh. He couldn’t take his eyes off Eleanor.

  “I trusted you,” she said. “I thought you were my friend,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was weak. I made a mistake. More than one. It was a long time ago—”

  “For you.”

  “For me,” he agreed. “I am not the coward I was, dear lady. You have to believe me.”

  “You will forgive me if I don’t.”

  “I am trying to make amends.”

  “It’s not enough,” Eleanor said, and he didn’t argue. Instead, he turned to Josh. “It is ready.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll ask you one last time, are you certain you want to do this?”

  Josh nodded slowly.

  “There can be no going back once it is done.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you: This is what I want.”

  Josh heard the high-pitched squeak-squawk of lovesick bats flitting back and forth behind the mausoleum. He realized it was the first sound other than voices that he’d heard in a long time.

  The second sound—a car’s engine—came a few seconds later.

  Josh saw the flashing blue light as Julie Gennaro’s squad car pulled up at the gates. “I’m going in. When he gets here, tell Julie to follow me into the tomb. Give us a few minutes’ privacy.”

  “What are you planning?”

  “Nothing,” Josh lied. Damiola knew he was lying. Eleanor knew he was lying. Neither of them called him on it. “Just give us a couple of minutes.”

  “If there are a couple to give,” the magician said.

  He ducked past Damiola before the old man could protest, and walked into the darkness of the tomb, only it wasn’t dark anymore. A candle burned in the main burial chamber. For a moment he thought it was a lot more. It was an optical illusion. A trick of the mirrors the magician had arrayed around the tomb. They were the same mirrors Josh had seen in Damiola’s workshop, the ones offering different views in their reflections, though, now he saw a hundred thousand flickering candles, going deeper and deeper into an endless mist, and beside the flames, like an infinite array of ghosts, each wearing his face. Staring at it for long enough would be enough to drive a man out of his mind. He approved.

  He heard footsteps behind him.

  He didn’t need to turn to see who it was. A hundred thousand Julie Gennaros stepped into the tomb. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder.

  “You took your time,” Josh said to all of his reflections at once.

  “You try laying your hands on bolt cutters and a blowtorch after midnight. It’s not as if I could just wander down to the hardware store.”

  “But you got them?”

  Julie nodded. “I did indeed.”

  “Good. I want you to do something for me, Julie, and I don’t want you to argue. We don’t have time to waste. Seth will be here any second, and this needs to be done.”

  “I’m not liking the sound of this.”

  “It’ll hurt me more than it hurts you,” Josh said. “I promise you that.”

  He knelt on the floor in front of Julie and held up his hand, fingers splayed. “I want you to cut the tip of my little finger off.”

  Julie shook his head. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “It has to be done. Just get it over with before I change my mind.”

  “Christ,” Julie said, but he did what he was told. He dropped his shoulder so the backpack swung around and landed on the small flagstones that tiled the ground at his feet; then unzipped it, reaching in for the bolt cutters.

  “It’s going to be messy, and I’m going to scream. You’ll need to cauterize the wound with the blowtorch. Just ignore my pain and get it done. I’m relying on you, Julie. This is your one chance to make up for betraying me to that bastard. Do this and we’re even.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “People keep asking me that,” Josh said, no trace of humor in his voice. “Do it.”

  He took a T-shirt from his bag, wadded it up, and gave it to Josh. “Something to bite down on.”

  Josh nodded and stuffed it into his mouth.

  He looked like a sacrificial pig staring wide-eyed at its butcher.

  “Keep your hand steady,” Julie said, opening the bolt cutter’s jaw and resting Josh’s fingertip on its teeth. Josh closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see the mutilation happen. “This is seriously fucked up, mate,” Julie said, shaking his head as he clamped the handles together.

  There was surprisingly little resistance as the bolt cutters sheered through the bone.

  Josh screamed into the T-shirt, gagging on the cloth as a spray of blood fountained from the wound. He clutched at his ruined hand, but Julie dragged his good hand away so that he could get at the wound with the blowtorch before he lost too much blood.

  Josh swayed on his knees, threatening to black out.

  Julie back-handed him across the face, not sure what else to do. Josh’s panicked eyes flared wide open. “It’s only going to get worse,” Julie said, encouragingly.

  Josh nodded, eyes red with tears. His breathing was fast and shallow, his nostrils flaring as he drew in breath after ragged breath.

  Moving quickly, and doing his best to ignore Josh’s agony, Julie lit the blowtorch. He held it in his right hand as he grabbed Josh’s wrist with his left and applied the blue-hot flame to the wound, turning the flesh to blackened charcoal.

  It took less than a minute, but in those sixty never-ending seconds Josh was sure his heart was going to stop. The pain was blinding. All he could hear was the roar of the blowtorch. He stopped feeling anything. His entire hand might as well have been on fire.

  And then there was a pop, then nothing.

  Silence.

  Josh toppled onto his side, clutching at his ruined hand.

  It was too late for regrets.

  “Come on, mate. Up.” Julie helped him stand. His legs were like jelly. Josh leaned on Julie. It was all he could do not to pitch forward face-first into the dirt. With his good hand he fumbled in his pocket for Boone’s cigarette tin.

  “Where’s the bone?” he asked.

  “Fuck knows,” Julie said.

  “We need to find it,” Josh sank to his knees and started feeling o
ut across the stone floor, trying to find it. It took another minute. The fingertip already felt dead.

  Seth would pay for what he’d done to his mother.

  Damiola was explaining to Eleanor what he needed her to do as they walked out together into the night.

  She nodded several times, eager finally to be playing a part in the grand deception. She promised she wouldn’t fail him. He believed her. Lying was in her blood. It was why she would have been one of the greats, but for the fact Seth had stolen her future away from her.

  Eleanor left to take up her position.

  They didn’t have to wait long for Seth Lockwood to arrive.

  He strode through the twisted iron gates with their buckled ravens and walked straight toward them.

  “Well, well, well; quite the family gathering,” Seth said, spreading his arms wide, as though to embrace them all. “And all for me? I’m honored. At least I think I am. Cuz, you don’t look good. Actually, you look fucking awful. I would ask what happened to you, but frankly I’m amazed you made it out of the warehouse without being eaten by the rats. So, it’s good you dragged yourself out of your pit, even if you’re too fucked up to hurt a fly, it’ll be enjoyable to finally put an end to your side of the family tree.” He turned to Julie. “Officer Gennaro, now you I didn’t expect to see here. I thought we were done with you, to be brutally honest. Not a lot to offer anyone on either side. A bit part, but played well, especially the final betrayal. Always a winner that. But, you’re done. You’ve served your purpose. You should go now.” Julie looked at Josh, not sure who he was supposed to be taking orders from now. In the end he thought better of staying and walked off, leaving Josh to stand on his own two feet. As he did so, he noticed the old magician’s eyes flicker down toward Josh’s ruined hand. Maybe the mutilation made sense to him?