It may have been a threat and an invitation, but more than either of those things, Jacob Silence also knew that it was fate. An inescapable fate entwined between himself and his would-be killer, the strange girl he had found and the evil that had found her. It was preposterous, lunacy, a craziness that would swallow a normal man whole. But there weren’t that many normal people left any more. Normal had become abnormal. He finally fitted in.
As he stood on the truck and gazed off along the horizon at the few orange smudges of streetlights that were left in City 17, those solitary signs that the broken city was even there at all, a church bell sounded somewhere in the distance, announcing the coming of the witching hour. On the twelfth chime, Jacob Silence was back in Sam’s beloved car and driving off into the night, City 17 at the edge of his vision, and heavy thoughts of murder in his newly empty mind, each coloured the deepest red by the insatiable rage inside him that needed to be satisfied.
‘Darkshines,’ he said out loud to himself and then floored the accelerator. He remembered the way all too well. He could have got there with his eyes closed.
THE HOUR
1
Midnight…
Raizbeck dangled the old rusted chain above his head and let the face of the old pocket watch turn in front of his eyes. Midnight, it was telling him, but he had never really been sure about how well this old watch kept the time any more. Sometimes the hands seemed to slow, almost threatening to stop, and other times they seemed to move faster than they should. It made time seem detached and irrelevant. Raizbeck looked up through the branches of the tree under which they were sitting, towards the dark, tempestuous sky. It felt like midnight. It was a time that seemed to fit. Midnight it was then, he decided.
He had found the pocket watch six months ago on the body of an old man. A face of bushy white, and a mane of tufty hair that fell every which way, the man, dressed smartly in a tweed suit, had been propped up on a seat by the side of a road leading out of the capital. Raizbeck had been leading a patrol on foot, heading towards the rumour of another makeshift community out in one of the nearby woods, when they saw him. He had halted the patrol and bent down to the man, convinced in that moment that the old fellow was still alive, because his eyes seemed to water and twinkle, but looking closer, Raizbeck could see he had long since checked out. The index finger on the man’s right hand seemed to be pointing out at a different angle to the others, back in the direction of where they had come from. The watch was in the breast pocket of the suit along with an old tissue and a scrap of card, something torn from a birthday card by the look of it – HDAY WITH ALL MY LOVE D X, was written by a neat and precise hand.
Something about the man had touched Raizbeck in a place he had long since thought sealed off. He had seen so many bodies in the years since The Party had taken him on board; young and old, men, women, children, those loyal and those that would do The Party harm, and it had all become a bit of blur. Emotions held back progress, that was one of the first things The Party taught you, and Raizbeck had thought himself more emotionless than most until that point. But there was something calling him from behind the face of that old man.
‘Bury him,’ Raizbeck had said to his patrol. ‘Do it now, and do it well.’ There had been moans but his men had gone about their task and done the job. Raizbeck had placed the scrap of card under the man’s right hand and pushed his eyelids closed. As his men set to their orders, digging a shallow grave at the top of the grassy incline next to the road, he sat on the tarmac watching the minute hand of the pocket watch creep onwards, pushing time on with what felt like a grim determination, turning the present into the past with each gentle movement.
‘Nice,’ Everett said to him through a mouthful of sandwich. He was nodding towards the watch and raising his eyebrows. The scar on his forehead, usually a thin, jagged line, creased and looked like a grinning mouth. ‘Something from your family?’
‘What?’ Raizbeck snapped the lid of the watch closed and shoved it back in a trouser pocket.
‘The watch? I see you looking at it from time to time like it means something more than telling the time. Like it’s special to you. Thought maybe it was a family thing. Belong to your dad, did it?’
‘No. No, it didn’t. I have nothing of theirs any more. What would be the point?’ Everett shrugged and wolfed down the last of the sandwich. ‘What about you, Everett? Do you have anything left from your family?’
‘Didn’t have a family, so that would be difficult.’ He laughed and then burped. Fallon and Porter passed each other on the road, just behind where Everett was sat, both men diligently patrolling the area with their weapons, keen eyes working through the darkness. ‘Hey, Porter? You want me to take over?’ Everett asked the shorter of the two and got a dismissive wave of the hand as a reply.
‘Porter’s all right for now. We’ll not be staying here long.’
‘We going to look for another vehicle?’ Everett waved his greasy sandwich wrapper in the direction of the utility truck, sat further back along the road. ‘Or you want to see if we can get some petrol?’
‘We’ll keep walking. If we find another vehicle along the way, then fine. But I can’t risk a detour with no purpose. It’s only a few miles to the coast. Can’t you smell the salt in the air?’
Everett sniffed the air and smiled.
‘You were saying something about your family?’
‘I was? Doubt that, boss. Nothing to say. Can barely remember their faces. Party is my family now.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Everett. Really. You’ll go far. The Party loves you.’
‘The Party loves you too, Mr Raizbeck.’
‘Call me Jack. If we are family, you should call me Jack.’ Raizbeck pulled himself to his feet, tapped the bulge of the pocket watch and then whistled across to Porter and Fallon further along the road. ‘Let’s go!’
The four men spread out in single file and then wandered slowly off into the night, towards the source of the fresh, salty tang in the air.
2
The air in the tent, so thick and tight, felt like it was stacked up on top of her, weighing her down, rooting her to the ground. The smell of sweat and blood mixed with the strong smell of wet grass and turned earth and made the thickness cloying in her nostrils. She couldn’t move, the strength in her body withering away as she sank to her knees, her muscles limp and lifeless. The will and fight within her easing out like slowly released second hand air from a shrivelling balloon. The hands that were on her were firm but she could barely feel them. She didn’t want to move. She wanted to rest her face into the moist grass in front of her and close her eyes. She wanted to dream.
She saw Sam’s battered old trainers pass across the ground in front of her and saw the spots of blood splattered over the toes. She told herself that they would have to find a new pair of trainers for him. That there was no way he was going out looking like that. He’d wanted new trainers for some time, he had said, and now they would have to find some for him. Was he the same size? At what age do your feet stop growing? The thought distracted her for a few blessed seconds and then the sound of machine gun fire launched Albie back to reality.
Sam had been knocked off his feet by the blast of the weapon and was lying on his back in front of her, steadying the machine gun at his shoulder, ready to go again. Donald was tottering back and forth in front of him on legs that didn’t seem to be his own. Albie had just time enough to notice the blood and then Mia was down on her knees in front of her, screaming in her face.
‘Albie! Get up, we have to go! Come on!’ Mia’s good hand grabbed at Albie’s top and tried to pull her up. Albie went with it and then felt her legs give again and then Mia was ducking under her left arm, burying her head against her shoulder and pulling her on, dragging her towards the entrance to the tent.
To her side she saw Blarney latched onto Jarrow’s left ankle, shaking his head manically as he bit down deep. Jarrow, a nasty smear of blood across the back of his ripped shirt, was weakly trying to craw
l across to where Sam was on the ground. Beyond them Melissa sat hunched up in one corner of the tent, holding her screaming children’s faces to her chest. Hector and Callie were just visible outside the tent, wrapped up in each other it seemed, their hands flailing, and fighting.
‘Sam…’ She tried to turn her head and look over her shoulder, but she saw nothing past the jagged hole now torn through the side of the tent. She said her boy’s name again and then sunk in Mia’s hold.
‘Hold on to me, Albie! Just hold…’
A blow came across their backs and then they were both launched forward, losing their balance and landing face first on the ground. Mary was standing over them aiming frantic kicks at Mia’s side. This silent and submissive woman was now screaming, shrieking and spitting out promises of retribution. Albie felt Mia roll away from her, heard her scream as her bandaged arm went underneath her, and then as she turned her head up, saw Mia kick her right leg out and take Mary’s legs from under her. Mia’s left hand was out at her side, fumbling for her rifle, and as Mary clambered back to her feet she was quickly knocked sideways, back down to the ground, by a sudden flash of ginger fur. Albie craned her head around, searching the other end of the tent, looking past Jarrow sprawled out on the ground, off towards the cage and Galton’s lifeless corpse, but still she couldn’t see Sam. All she could see in that moment was that stranger slashing the scalpel across Galton’s throat, that imposter that had tried to look like her boy.
Outside the tent there was another blast of the horn and it sounded miles away. Hector was shouting for them now and yet his voice seemed to carry from a place far, far below them. Albie felt disorientated, drunk on a dream, some terrible nightmare that had stained her mind. Across the tent she caught Melissa’s terrified stare and found herself shaking her head and mouthing an apology. The sight of Henry trembling in his mother’s arms tore at her and something inside her, something near her heart, felt heavy and leaden. She wanted her own boy in her arms, wanted to scoop him up and keep him from this madness. She needed to protect him.
She heard Mia’s fist connecting with Mary somewhere to her right, heard the grunts of exertion and rage, and the cries of pain. Each punch was as loud as a gunshot to Albie, and as lethal as bullet. Pulling free of her rage, Mia gave one quick, shrill whistle, and then Blarney was suddenly bounding in front of Albie, jumping from front paws to hind legs and back again, as if he were in some sort of canine rodeo. Mia Hennessey’s dog gave one happy bark and then sauntered out of the tent, his little stumpy tail quivering.
A pair of heavily scuffed boots pulled up in front of Albie’s face and then a second later they were joined by a pair of blood flecked trainers. Albie slowly raised her head again, a head that felt as light and fragile as a balloon, and looked into the adult faces of two children. The boy was leaning down to her, his strong hands grabbing hold of her arms, and then he was lifting her to her feet. Up and up she went, her old body feeling as if it wanted to float away, up through the thick, stormy air. If it had tried, she found herself thinking, she would have let it.
3
The clock on the dashboard read 12.25 when the car finally gave out on him. It had been running on fumes ever since it crossed into City 17, the petrol gauge so deep in the red the hand had almost disappeared, but Silence had been intent on getting it to the top of the hill where it was now sat, before he would allow it to die on him. He knew this road well, he remembered the view down across City 17, could still pinpoint the buildings in that dark basin of gloom, even with only a smattering of streetlights working.
The shops that ran down the hill on the right hand side had changed over the years, this once thriving shopping street of originality and variety had held no fight to the soul-sucking juggernaut of big business blandness any more than other streets in other cities, but the great park that ran off into the distance on the left side of the hill still seemed intact. The gazebo had been flattened, and the bandstand torn down and destroyed, but in comparison to the hollowed-out shells of the shops opposite, the rest of it was looking quite chipper.
He sensed the movement in the nearest shop front straight away. Two shapes, standing there, watching him, then tiptoeing across broken glass and walking out onto the pavement, heading his way, slowly. Ducking in and out of shadows. He could see weapons in their hands. Guns most likely. Silence sighed heavily, wound the driver’s window down and unbuckled his seatbelt, waiting for them to come to him.
He knew the edge of Darkshines asylum was there in the corner of his eye but he refused to look at it. He wasn’t ready to see it again, not yet. He knew that great, gothic hell house from top to bottom, outside and inside, and he knew it wouldn’t have changed, that indeed it would be the only building in these surrounding roads that was every inch the same as it had ever been. The giant gates, the winding pathway that led up to the building through the courtyard and the neglected gardens, the security building by the main entrance, the side building that led down into The Hole, none of those things would have changed. Audley Thinwater’s hideaway from the world would be exactly the same as he remembered it. As would be the man himself.
He closed his eyes and imagined the building on fire and the grounds torn down to ruins. Milo Singer was still in his cell and he wasn’t laughing. He was screaming.
The cold barrel of a sawn-off shotgun pressed against Silence’s neck. ‘Get your bony backside out the car. Do it slow.’ The breath of the man leaning into the driver’s side window was tinged by whisky and tobacco. The stench of sweat and personal filth emanated off him, and spittle landed on Silence’s cheek as he spoke. ‘Don’t make me shoot you, don’t want blood on my new wheels. Let’s be a good old boy and get out the car. I promise I won’t shoot you if you do what I say, and let me tell you, that’s the best damn offer you gonna get today.’
Silence opened his eyes and stared ahead. The second person, another man who, if appearances were any judge, carried the same personal hygiene routine as the first, was leaning across the bonnet of the car and tapping a metal bar against the windscreen. There was arrogance in those eyes and Silence felt a pang of sympathy for him.
‘Cars dead,’ Silence said to the windscreen.
‘That so?’ the first man replied with a small contemptuous laugh.
‘You still want it?’
‘You’re not from around here, are you?’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘If you were you’d know better than to be out on this road after dark. What you doing here, weirdo?’
The second man suddenly smashed the metal bar across the windscreen, swung back and then hit it again. A jagged hole shattered in the glass, and now the man was leaning closer and leering in at him.
‘Fate,’ Silence said flatly and then swung the hunting knife in his right hand up, hard and fast. The blade ran straight through the first man’s wrist, the force shoving the man’s hand, and the shotgun, up to the roof of the car. Silence twisted the blade with one quick jerk and the shotgun tilted and slipped free from the man’s hold. He let it drop into his waiting left hand and then fired a single shot under his right arm, directly into the first man’s chest. Discarding the shotgun on the passenger seat, Silence’s left hand jerked through the hole in the windscreen, grabbed the second man by the hair and then dragged his head back through the windscreen and yanked it downwards, forcing a jagged blade of glass through the man’s neck. Releasing the knife from the first man’s wrist, Silence took the shotgun and stepped from the car.
The building was there again at the edge of his sight and now he turned to it for the first time since he had turned his back on it.
Darkshines asylum sat in the distance like a giant, ugly monster lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce and eat you up.
A single light glowed out of the giant, gothic edifice.
The monster’s watching eye.
4
‘Your boy is a psycho. Just thought you should know that.’
‘He’s not my boy. He’s
not my anything.’ Saying out loud what she had always known, yet never actually articulated to anyone before, made Albie’s sadness feel like a lead weight. All those moments of wilful delusion, those stupid, fanciful times when she had been alone with Sam and smothered him in the mother’s attention that had for so long been inside her, yearning for release, all seemed so ugly right then. How wasted those moments were. She couldn’t even picture his face now without a sudden coldness oozing through her and making her shiver. All she could see with any clarity was Galton, his broken fingers scrabbling at his throat and the gushing blood spurting over them.
‘Convenient,’ Hector replied. ‘Now we can see him for what he is, it’s quite convenient for him not to be your responsibility any more.’
‘I can assure you there’s nothing remotely convenient about it.’
‘Or maybe you’re just frightened of him, that it?’
Albie started playing with her hands in her lap. She was staring down at her crossed legs, refusing to look across the ambulance to Hector or to Callie. ‘Yeah, I am. I am frightened of him.
‘You and me both then, Albie.’
‘I’m not stupid, I know he’s…’ Albie paused on the words she was going to say, gave a nervous cough and then changed direction, ‘you have to do things out here, inhuman things to survive. I know that. I know he’s had to…to grow up quickly. I know that. I don’t delude myself it’s any different. Are you telling me your hands are clean, Hector?’
‘You do what you have to do to get by. Sure.’
‘So?’
‘So, I’ve seen some things out there on the roads and in the cities. We all have, I’m sure. I’ve seen people attack other people. I’ve even seen a few people kill. But I have never seen anyone do it with such a detachment. A boy at that. A child. You know what I started thinking about? When Callie and I were at school we had a friend who lived in a big old house in the country, and sometimes we would stay there during the summer. Our friend’s dad used to sit out in their garden all summer getting pissed on expensive wine, a book in one hand and a large fly swatter in the other. Every little creature that fluttered within two feet of him would get a swipe. Flies, bees, wasps, midges, any old damn thing, he’d give them all one quick, heavy smack with that swatter, and he would hit every single one of them, never once looking up from his book. That’s what your child did just now. He swatted a fly.’
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