“You’re a special boy, Jacob. Like your grandfather and his father before him.” His mother was so proud of him, even after he decided to keep the dropped ‘l’ out of his surname – she never liked that, but she let him do it. He always thought she might be jealous of those in the family (Sillences or Silences, have it however you want it) that had the gift. She had married into a family who had carried the gift for generations – even Jacob’s father had it in touches, he had been told, but never really learned to use it – and there she was, with the proverbial head like a sieve. She forgot birthdays, anniversaries, and even people’s names. She was normal. Achingly normal. She often called the gift, the sight, and many others had called it all manner of things over the years. Jacob had been a freak, a weirdo, a wizard and a monster. No one would ever believe him until he was forced to show them. Pupils at his school were terrified of him. Everyone was, of course, but his classmates were especially. Maybe, he always used to think, teenagers have a right to be afraid of having their minds probed and prodded. Filthy little buggers.
He watched Mia yanking the young Party member up a set of wooden stairs at the back of the shop, saw the strain and stress on her face, and yet something more too. The girl was tough and strong, they had all told him that, but here was something more worrying for Silence than that. What is it about her? He could read her like the largest print, see her as if from a giant TV, and yet something was behind it all, muddying the vision. There was a shadow across the print, a crack across the television. The further he pushed at her and the more he saw, the greater that alien sensation came into him. That dear old emotion that he had long since thought he had rid himself of – fear. He was frightened of the girl and he had no idea why.
Silence opened his eyes and stared at the front wall of the living room, at the awful cream coloured wallpaper, and its piss yellow patches of cigarette stain. What kind of person would have decorated their living room that way, he asked himself and then saw the answer in his mind. He pushed these two new faces away and focused back at the wall. He looked through it, beyond the house, and then out into the street and then through the florist’s shop opposite. They were on the top floor now, squeezing their way into a small one-room apartment. The florist used to live there. A tubby, once jolly man, with sideburns and red cheeks, and more hair in his ears than was still left on his head.
No, he didn’t live there.
He slept over sometimes. Weekends.
Yes, he slept over at weekends. Him and his fancy piece would rendezvous there. Get comfy on a mattress and pretend they were the only people in the world and what they were doing meant nothing, even though it meant everything to her. Poor woman. Suicide. A jumper. There is nothing in the room now but an old and rickety chair. Mia is putting the Party Plod into the chair, waving a gun at him. She has fired a gun before. She doesn’t like it. The dog is on guard. The young chap with the stupid hair, old Frosty, young Frosty – ‘Frosty bollocks’ his sister Callie calls him – he is hanging by the door wanting to be elsewhere, anywhere. Scared of the girl. Scared of everything…a weak thread in the web.
‘Spider…’
Silence stood from the armchair and looked to the floor, widening his eyes as he did, and let the hundreds of images break away. He could feel the tightness in his head that always came on with a huge barrage of thoughts like the ones he was having now. It was like a two minute hangover, a heavy, stuttering firework in his mind that never quite exploded. He hated the sensation and scolded himself for letting it happen. He had opened a door as soon as he tapped into Mia Hennessey, and now his thoughts were being flooded. He needed to put up walls to keep out the irrelevant and focus on the job. He was being self-indulgent, arrogant again, by letting the gift run free on him. Somehow he knew it was dangerous to allow that where Mia Hennessey was concerned. Her catch was strong, her doorway had too many corridors. Her web too much trapped prey.
“Sometimes, kid, when I find I’ve got caught in the mind by someone I’ve tapped into, I think of them as a spider. A big ol’ hairy beast with, big, long, hairy legs.” Silence’s grandfather (the man who dropped the two ‘l’s’ from the surname) told him once, back when he realised his grandson was embracing the gift and not running from it. “You will get some people where the catch is so strong that it will start to scare you. Don’t worry about it, just learn to manage it. Keeping your focus clearly in your mind can be like trying to pick up a sentence from a quietly spoken child in the middle of the capital at rush hour. Takes practice and focus. When they are so bright that they catch in your mind and you can’t shake them too easily, you will start to see everyone else around them clearly too. You will feel every connection, hear every thought, sometimes. All those voices talking, shouting, screaming through your mind. Send a weak man mad that would. But you can learn to manage the gift, Jacob. You can learn to master it. To me they were always spiders and all those connections that came from them where just parts of the web. That’s all. You’re not scared of spiders are you?”
Silence looked off across the old living room, his back to the wall. He reached over his shoulders and pulled up the hood of his long coat. The chaos of his mind was calming, but yet there was something else there, something new, someone new…
He took the tanned pouch from around his shoulder and placed it on a table before running a long, bony hand inside and taking out a small flask. It had been Jack Raizbeck’s flask and he had made such great show of offering it to him. Raizbeck had left prison before him and that had been his parting gift. A gesture from cellmate to cellmate, friend to friend. If Raizbeck could see how Silence was playing with Mia Hennessey right now, his new boss would go spare. And that is what you are really doing isn’t it, Jacob? You could go over there right now and take her, couldn’t you? So why don’t you? It wasn’t just arrogance. Silence had considered taking her as soon as he first saw her in the car with Hector, and maybe back then it was arrogance, the thrill of the chase, but now it was more than that. He would take her, but he would take her on his own terms and would not even consider it until he had her alone. There was something about her to fear. Raizbeck and The Party may not know it, but he did. He would take her web apart before he made his move, picking off the weakest threads and then carrying on through it until she was exposed. He would destroy Hector Frost first.
Silence smiled to himself and let his tongue out to lick around the nozzle of the flask, but before he could take a sip that nagging new thought came again, and with it a face and a voice, and it was like a fork of lightning breaking through his skull and skewering his brain. He staggered backwards and hit the chair, the flask slipping out of his hands as he swayed on his feet, and then clenched his head between his hands.
It was a young boy in his mind and the boy meant something. He was a thread of the web he hadn’t seen.
Books…
There were books, shelves of them, and the boy was falling. A girl with blonde curls was with Silence watching it all and her name was…
Callie.
His name was Sam.
7
The boy, not yet much of a man, that had not long since held a gun on her was sat on the solitary chair in the room, looking down at his own clasped hands. To Mia, he looked even younger in the gloomy light of the small apartment above the florist’s. She guessed his age at twenty-three, the same age as Hector, and yet right now he looked like a child dressed in his daddy’s clothes.
As Blarney paced around the boy and Hector hung in the doorway, Mia knelt down in front of him, the rifle across her knees, and lowered her voice to a whisper. She had hoped a soft voice might put him at ease, but she knew right away that it didn’t. His words were belligerent and defensive, but his attitude was a sham. Mia could see he was as frightened of her as everyone else was.
‘What is your name?’ Mia asked. ‘I’m Mia, as you know, the folically confused guy in the doorway is Hector and this is Blarney.’ She nodded down to the prowling ginger body and a small gro
wl of confirmation came back.
‘Tom,’ came his mumbled response. ‘Tommy.’
‘How long have you been with The Party, Tommy?’
‘Two months.’
‘How many are here, in the city?’
‘A lot.’
‘Is it just a pick-up?’
‘A pick-up and you.’
‘Why did you join them?’
‘Two choices these days, Mia, the other choice didn’t seem so great.’
‘Have you been in jail?’
‘Why?’
‘That’s where The Party recruit the most people from.’
‘No. It was what my father did. It’s the family business, I suppose. You know a bit about that, don’t you?’
Mia nodded. ‘I do. Yes.’
‘I heard about your father. Everyone knew about Lucas Hennessey. The Party’s best assassin is what people told me. And I’m sitting here justifying myself to you? What do you care why I joined The Party, anyway? At least they have food. Is it better living like a scavenger out here with you people?’
‘Better to be a hired gun and a stooge for them, is it?’
‘Like our fathers?’
‘Shouldn’t we learn from our parents?’
‘At least I’ve got a bed to sleep in tonight.’
‘What are they doing at Bleeker Hill?’ The sound of Hector’s voice almost made Mia jump. He had moved from the doorway and was now standing next to the one window in the room, peering around the frame and out into the fallen city beyond. ‘Why are they taking people up there? The Wash?’
‘Yeah, and what do you know about The Wash?’
‘I’ve heard people talk. Story is they are trying to steal people’s minds. Empty them. Control them. That’s why you are taking these people up to Bleeker Hill, so some mad quack can experiment on them. I’m right aren’t I?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t care either, right?’ Hector said into the window.
‘No. Not really. Why do you?’
‘The Party is not what they seem to be, Tommy. Do you not understand that?’ Mia was looking deep into Tommy’s eyes, picking up his twitchy fear once again. ‘Do you not know that?’
‘Why should I care? Look out the window, Mia. Look at the city. Where are our chances to be virtuous? I don’t care what The Party do. I just don’t want to be out there on my own. My father cared about their cause. His beliefs didn’t do him much good. Didn’t do your father much good either, did they? I joined The Party to survive. Beliefs get you killed.’
‘Who was your father?’
‘That hardly matters.’
‘Seems to matter to you.’
‘What do you want from me, Mia? This place is swarming with people looking for you because of what you did. You’re not getting out of the city. You do know that, don’t you? They won’t let you.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to just yet? Maybe this is where I need to be right now?’
Tommy looked away from her and lowered his voice to what felt like a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Why did you do it, Mia?’
‘I didn’t, since you ask, not that I expect that to matter. Who is calling the shots now? Who is head of The Party?
‘Guy called Jack Raizbeck. He’s the only one I’ve ever met.’
‘Is he the Prime Minister?’
Tommy laughed bitterly. ‘You’ve been out of the loop a while haven’t you? The Party dispensed with that position months ago. There are others at the capital, Party bosses I suppose, someone or other calling the shots, but Raizbeck is the face, he’s the man that matters.’
‘How many cities do they control?’
‘They control everything, Mia. They control everyone.’
‘They don’t control me.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
Tommy shook his head slowly as small tears threatened his eyes. ‘What the hell happened up there, Mia?’
‘Haven’t you heard the stories?’
‘I don’t believe in stories.’
‘Sure you do. That’s why you came at me with a gun. They told you I’m a murderer, didn’t they? They told you I was a killer and that those dead people at The Hill are because of me. Is that right?’ Mia could see there was hatred in Tommy’s eyes as well as fear, and she wondered just what this young man had been told about her, how far the lie had burrowed and festered. ‘Tommy? Is that right?’
‘Someone killed those people.’
‘It wasn’t me.’
Wasn’t it, Mia?
Mia rolled forward on her knees and almost lost her balance. The rifle butt jerked in her grip and then cracked across Tommy’s left shin, causing the young man to wail.
‘Sorry.’
‘You all right?’ Hector had stepped into the light spill from the window and stood at Tommy’s shoulder. ‘Mia?’
Mia slumped down to the floor and cuddled the rifle in to her chest. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry…I didn’t…’ Blarney was at her side nudging an arm with his nose, whimpering and fussing at her. Mia let a hand drop onto his back and she patted him absently. ‘I did. I did kill someone.’ Mia looked back up at Tommy. ‘I had to kill to get out of there. A man. Just one man. I had no choice. I had to get away from that place. I had to get away from The Party. There was nothing else I could do.’ She was fighting a barrage of thoughts and memories that were starting to zigzag through her mind, fitting together as quickly as she tried to break them apart. ‘But I’m not what they say I am.’ Mia could feel the marked skin throbbing under her jacket. The letters carved there were on fire. ‘There is evil at that place. I’ve seen it. Whatever The Party are doing up there they need to stop it. They need to get the hell out of there. Believe me, Tommy.’
‘So it was just Sullivan? It was just him that killed everyone?’
The name was a little dagger through her skin.
Sullivan…
This place is judgement…
Hector stepped back into the shadows, leaning gently against the wall. The light spill dulled momentarily as the sun found the cover of a cloud and hid itself from sight. ‘Who is Sullivan?’
‘A friend.’ It was all Mia could think to say. What was he to her? A stranger. A man that didn’t fit in with everyone else that had been there at The Hill. The last good person in a country gone to pot.
‘A killer,’ Tommy seethed through gritted teeth, those watery eyes narrowing again in their angry disdain.
‘He was no killer. Neither of us were. You have no idea what went on there.’
‘Tell me then. Please.’ Tommy’s young, impossibly clean face was shaded by shadows in the room that seemed to be growing and bending around their bodies. ‘What did you do at Bleeker Hill?’
It was the question she had been preparing to be asked for months, and she was as unprepared to answer now as she was when she escaped. How to explain the unexplainable to someone who hadn’t seen it?
Do you believe in ghosts? She found herself saying that in her mind and she could see the blank, uncomprehending expression Tommy would doubtless respond with. There was no way to explain the horror of the place or the terror that she had lived through there. She could cope with being dubbed a murderer by The Party. But somehow the idea that Sullivan would be seen that way hurt her. She saw his sad face float through her mind and then break apart and her heart sagged at the idea of what may have become of him.
His judgement was set a long time ago…
‘There is evil at Bleeker Hill.’ Mia spoke the words precisely, emphatically, hoping that would somehow be enough. It was all she had to offer.
‘I’ve read the stories. Place has a history. Stupid people think it’s haunted. Yeah, whatever. I didn’t believe it as a child and I don’t believe it now,’ Tommy snapped.
‘I’ve seen that evil.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I’ve seen that evil possess a man, take him over. I spoke to that evil through the body of someone else. I saw that evil tor
ture that man before my eyes.’ Mia was now looking down at the rifle in her lap, refusing to meet Tommy or Hector’s eyes, ploughing on before they had chance to respond or before silence could make her hear how stupid she sounded. ‘There is anger at that place. Terrible fury. It is a home of lost souls. Judgement. They’re all going to die up there at The Hill.’
In the distance came the small popping of gunfire. Blarney lifted his right front paw from the ground, cocking his head to the noise. Hector shuffled forward and craned his head to look from the window.
‘Do you believe me, Tommy?’ Mia asked.
‘Do I believe in ghosts, you mean? I think I answered that.’
‘Tommy…’
‘Do I believe that some evil entity possessed and then killed those people at Bleeker Hill?’
‘No. I mean do you believe that I’m a killer?’
Tommy gestured down to the rifle and then bowed his head. ‘If you are going to do it, just do it and stop wasting my time with this rubbish.’
‘I asked you a question. Answer me. Please.’
‘Just get on with it, Mia.’
‘Gunfire is coming from two streets over,’ Hector said from the shadows. ‘I can see trucks. Four or five Party Plod.’
‘Twelve,’ Tommy said into his chest.
‘I need to get to Callie. We need to go, Mia.’ Hector was gathering his bags again and pulling them across the room to the doorway. ‘We need to go now.’
‘We?’
‘Me, then. Me. I’ve got to go. You can do what you like. I’m sure you’re good at that.’ Hector yanked the bags onto his shoulders and then stopped in the doorway. ‘I can get into the library without being seen. So, if you want to come?’
Mia stood slowly and turned to face Hector. ‘Thank you, Hector.’
‘Whatever.’
Darkshines Seven Page 6