Always Forever

by Mark Chadbourn

  "Bastards." A pause. "Is this the best they can do? We'll be out of here in no time."

  "How?"

  A long silence. "How solid can this thing be?" Another pause. "It's not like it's meant to keep things in. We could jemmy the door-"

  "Wait."

  "What?"

  "We are not in here alone."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Hush."

  There came the sound of a large, slow-moving bulk dragging itself at the far end of the mausoleum.

  "What the hell's that?" Unease strained Veitch's voice.

  Shavi felt the hand leave his sleeve as Veitch scurried in the direction of the door. Several moments of scrabbling and grunting followed before he crawled back, panting and cursing.

  Whatever else was in there was shifting towards them. Shavi had an image of something with only arms, dragging what remained of its body across the floor. He couldn't help but think it was hungry, probably hadn't been fed for a long time.

  "I've still got my crossbow." The note of futility in Veitch's voice suggested he wasn't about to use it. "I thought this was just the land of the bleedin' dead."

  "Ryan. Hush."

  After several minutes, the dragging noise died away. From the echoes, Shavi estimated it had halted about fifteen feet away. All that remained was the sound of breathing, slow, rhythmic and rough. Although there wasn't even the faintest glimmer of light, he couldn't shake the feeling it was watching them with a contemptuous, heavy gaze; sizing them up, dissecting them.

  At his side, Witch's body was taut. Neither of them knew what to do next.

  "The rules of this place were formed long before your kind emerged from the long night." The voice sounded like bones rattling across stone. Its bass notes vibrated deep in Shavi's chest; he felt instantly queasy, not just from the tone of the voice, but from the very feel of whatever squatted away in the gloom. "No warm bodies, no beating hearts, no words or thoughts or ideas."

  "No. There's a deal. I was allowed to come here," Veitch protested cautiously.

  "You were allowed to cross over, but the rules of this place can never be transgressed. The living are not wanted. The dead rule here. And they will have no warm bodies spoiling the cold days of this land. They will have punishment."

  Shavi waited for it to attack, but there was only silence. He pictured it savouring its taunting before the inevitable. Here was not only intelligence, but also cruelty, and hatred.

  "What are you?" Shavi asked. The hairs on the back of his neck had snapped alert.

  "This is a place without hope for those who do not leave. Where behind is too terrible to consider, and ahead is an unwanted distraction. This is desolation, and despair. Misery and pain."

  "A land for those who prey on those things," Shavi said.

  "Here, the dead have their own existence, their own rules and rhythms, their own hierarchies and mythologies, fears and desires."

  The dark was so all-encompassing Shavi was beginning to hallucinate trails of white sparks and flashes of geometric patterns. The atmosphere of dread grew more oppressive.

  "What are you?" There was no bravado in Veitch's voice. Shavi really wished he hadn't asked the question again; he was afraid the answer would be too terrible for them to bear.

  "I am the end of you."

  Those simple words made his stomach clench. They were flatly stated, yet filled with such finality, hinting at a fate much worse than death.

  Slowly it began to drag itself forward, an inch at a time.

  "Wait," Veitch said sharply. "I was allowed to come here-you can't get away from that. And Shavi here, he's not dead-"

  "He will be." A blast of cold air.

  "But he's not now. He shouldn't be here. What I'm doing ... yeah, it might go against your rules-but against the bigger rules I'm doing the right thing. I'm taking him back. I'm making everything all right again."

  For a long period the mausoleum appeared to be filled with the soughing of an icy wind. Then: "There is the matter of trespass."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The dead want no reminder of the living. It makes them aware of what they have lost and what they have yet to gain. To remember makes their suffering even greater."

  Veitch sensed a chink in the seemingly inviolate position. "So they want some kind of payback," he said, warming to his argument. "We can do that. Then you let us go, and everybody's sweet."

  "No!" Shavi gripped Veitch's wrist; the memory of the price he had paid for the deal with the dead of Mary King's Close was still too raw. "You never know to what you are agreeing. Words are twisted so easily."

  Veitch shook him off. "We have to cut a deal-it's the only way. There's too much at stake."

  "Ryan! You must listen to me-"

  But Veitch had scrambled off in the dark. "Go on then." His disembodied voice filled Shavi with ice. "What's the deal?"

  There was silence from the brooding presence. Shavi couldn't work out what that meant, but he felt like it was swelling in size to fill all the shadows.

  After a moment or two, Veitch repeated, "What's the deal?"

  "A hand," the rumbling voice replied.

  "Ryan, please do not do this. We can find another way."

  "A hand?" Veitch's voice was suddenly querulous. "Cut off my hand?"

  "A small price to pay for your friend's life."

  The price is too high! Shavi wanted to cry out, but he knew his voice would only tighten his friend's resolve. The sense of threat in that confined space felt like strong arms crushing his chest. They both knew their lives were hanging by a thread.

  In the silence that followed, he could almost hear the turning of Veitch's thought processes as he considered the mutilation, what the absence of his hand would mean in his life, what the absence of Shavi would mean. There was an awful weight to Veitch's deliberations as he desperately tried to reach the place where he could do the right thing, whatever the cost to himself. Do not agree, Ryan, Shavi pleaded silently.

  "Okay." The word sounded like a tolling bell.

  Shavi tried to throw himself between Veitch and the dark presence, but he misjudged his leap in the dark and crashed into the wall.

  "Don't worry, mate. Really," Veitch said. "I know you'd do the same for me. Whatever you say, I know that. We've got bigger things to think about. That's what Church always said. I can do this. For everybody else."

  Shavi bit sharply on his knuckle to restrain his emotions. All he could do was make his friend feel good about his choice. "You are a true hero, Ryan." Shavi knew it was what Veitch wanted to hear, what he had wanted from the moment he had got involved with them.

  Veitch didn't reply, but Shavi could almost feel his pride. "Get it over with," the Londoner said.

  Veitch was trembling, despite the bravado he was trying to drive through his system. He still couldn't quite believe what he had agreed to, but from his position the lines appeared clear cut: Shavi was the better man; the world couldn't afford to lose him. What did his own suffering mean against that? Once they were back in the world, he'd take it all out on the Bastards. Bring on an army of them.

  He threw off the shakes, set his jaw, and extended his left arm.

  The first sensation made him shiver with disgust. Hot air on his hand, rushing up his forearm, then something wet tickling the tips of his fingers, brushing his skin as it enclosed his hand. The flicker of something that felt like a cold slug on his knuckles.

  He closed his eyes, despite the dark.

  The sharpness of needles encircled his wrist. The pain increased rapidly until the sound of crunching bones brought nausea surging up from his stomach. The noises that followed were even worse, but by then he had already blacked out.

  He lost consciousness for only a few seconds, and when he came round there was heat in his wrist and the sickening smell of cauterised flesh. His left arm felt too light. Amidst the shock and the nausea, thoughts flitted across his head without settling.

  And then he did capture on
e, shining more brightly than all the others: he had saved Shavi. Through his sacrifice, he alone.

  "That's my part." He didn't recognise the ragged voice as his own. "Now you've got to let Shavi go."

  The wet, smacking sound churned his stomach even further, but he wouldn't allow himself to accept what was happening. When it had died away, the rattling bones voice returned, flat, almost matter-of-fact: "Then he may go."

  A wave of relief cut through the shakes that convulsed him.

  "But you must stay."

  Veitch couldn't grasp the meaning of the words. Shavi was yelling something, trying to grab at his arms, getting knocked away by a figure, more than one figure; not the monstrous presence, which was dragging itself back into the depths of the mausoleum.

  He drifted in and out, his left arm by his side, trying to move his fingers.

  Movement all around. Shavi was being dragged away. He fought himself back to clarity, knowing it was vitally important, but he still felt wrapped in gauze. At some point he realised he could see, although he couldn't guess the light source; the illumination was thin and grey, like winter twilight.

  The dead had come back in. Shavi was against the open door, hands clamped across his mouth, head and arms. Veitch could just make out what appeared to be a large rough box, the lid open, next to a gaping hole. His shock-addled brain couldn't put the information into any coherent shape.

  Then the dry-wood fingers of the dead were in his clothes, pulling him forward. He had no strength to resist. They bundled him into the box, which was just big enough for him, and then the lid swung shut with a bang. That jarred his mind into life: with a surge of panic he realised what they were planning.

  "No!" In the dark again. He punched the lid with his remaining hand; the splintered wood grated into his knuckles.

  The box was lifted into the air. Yelling his protests, he threw himself from side to side, but it didn't overbalance. A brief moment of weightlessness, then a crash that jarred his head so sharply he lost consciousness again.

  The next thing he heard was a rattling on the wood. Smell pebbles. The slush of gritty soil falling on the lid, kicked or thrown in. Then the occasional slumps turning into an insistent fall. He screamed and shouted, hammered on the lid and box walls, but there was no room to get any purchase, barely any air to breathe. The stones and earth fell faster, but grew more and more distant.

  Finally he couldn't hear anything at all, apart from the sound of his own hoarse voice, growing weaker by the moment.

  With the dead gripping him tight, Shavi watched Veitch buried alive. His empathy made him feel acutely the choking claustrophobia and rising hysteria; horror, almost as much as he could bear. As soon as the hole was filled in, he was released, but the dead formed an impenetrable wall between him and the grave; they were not going to allow him to save his friend.

  "This is not fair!" he raged to the shadows at the back of the mausoleum, but although they pulsed slightly, there was no reply.

  Flailing around, Shavi wandered out into the thin grey light. The area that Veitch had seen as a graveyard, but which he saw as a battlefield spanning the entire history of human existence-trenches and barbed wire, iron age earth defences and mediaeval fields of sucking mud-was deserted. With retribution achieved, the army of the dead had returned to wherever their homes lay.

  He couldn't leave Veitch, but what could he do? Sacrifice himself to save his friend? Perhaps that was what the dead truly wanted: a neverending cycle of sacrifice and suffering, the best punishment of all for being alive.

  As he paced back and forth in distress, he noticed a figure about fifty feet away, almost hidden in the cotton-wool mists. A chill ran through him as he instantly recognised the body language: Lee, back to haunt him.

  His first thought was to ignore the spirit of his dead boyfriend; at that moment it was too much to bear. But then he changed his mind and hurried over until he was a few feet away. The mists folded around Lee, providing only the briefest glimpses of him.

  "I need you now," Shavi said. The words hung in the damp, misty air. "I have paid my dues to the dead of Mary King's Close." He caught his breath. "I carried a burden of guilt for what happened to you, Lee ... that I could have done more to save your life. But the truth is, I could not do anything. I remember you in life. I loved you, I think. I loved your values, your beliefs, your gentleness. You were never a man who would want to see anyone suffer." He let the words flow from his heart without any interference from his mind. "The pain you caused me over the last few weeks, I think ... I am sure ... that was not through any desire of your own. It might have been the Edinburgh dead, but I believe it was probably me, punishing myself. Whatever the cause, that lies behind us now. Now I want your help."

  The coffin had grown unbearably hot from Witch's rising body temperature. It was also becoming increasingly harder to breathe. His chest felt like rocks had been placed upon it, and there was a prickling sensation in his arms, regularly obscured by waves of pain washing up from his missing hand. He tried to suck in some of the air tainted with the odour of rock dust and soil, but there wasn't enough to fill his throat.

  After the swinging emotions that surrounded his sacrifice, the adrenalin had died down and panic had started to set in. He recalled how terrible it had been trapped in the tiny tunnel beneath Edinburgh Castle, and knew that if he gave in he would go crazy, tearing futilely at the wooden lid until his fingernails were broken and bloody.

  He rolled round as much as he could to test the lid with his shoulder. It wouldn't budge. Trapped; powerless. Another wave of panic. His throat almost closed up. Flashes of light crossed his eyes.

  Dying.

  Trust in the others. He tried to focus on something Church had told him. Have faith. It's out of your hands now.

  The dark closed in around him and the panic rushed up through his chest into his head and then he was yelling until his throat was raw.

  The blood trickled from Tom's nose into the corner of his mouth. The ritual had been an awful strain; he felt as if his life had been sucked out of him, and part of it probably had, but he felt good about himself, for the first time in a long while.

  Robertson had fled back into the house and buried himself beneath a pile of furniture once he saw what was happening. The stable block door had been torn from its hinges. Intermittent smoking pitholes marked a trail across the courtyard to the sweeping lawns, where another route of churned mud continued to the dew pond.

  Tom hoped he had done enough. More, he prayed he had not made things worse.

  The stillness was like the moment after the final exhalation of breath. Shavi thought that place had been that way for as long as time, and would probably remain in that state of suspension until the end of existence. So when the ground shook and the sky cracked with thunder, it really did feel like everything was coming to an end.

  Shavi spun round, his heart pounding. The thunder was tearing towards him through the thickening mist. The vibrations drove nails into the soles of his feet.

  Was it some kin to the thing that lurked in the mausoleum, sucking up the despair of the dead? The notion chilled him.

  He knew there was no point in running. As he waited for it to present itself to him, he became aware of a prickling on the back of his neck, a familiar sign of warning from his supercharged subconscious. When he turned, the sight was so shocking he couldn't help an exclamation. From nowhere the dead had appeared in force, a silent army of thousands forming a grey barrier around the mausoleum. All their eerily staring eyes were turned towards the direction from which the thunderous noise was approaching.

  The vibrations were now so powerful the nails had reached Shavi's knees. There was a rhythm to it; not thunder at all. The sound of hoofbeats. All other thoughts were lost as he turned to stare alongside the dead.

  The mist usually drifted with a life of its own, but now it was sweeping away rapidly. Unconsciously he cupped his hands over his ears against the deafening noise. The dead remained
impassive.

  Shavi was buffeted with a warm wind filled with the stink of stables and the musk of sweating, over-worked horses. When the intruder appeared, he was instantly overcome with the swirling destabilisation of perception that always accompanied the most powerful of the Tuatha De Danann. This was worse than anything he had experienced before; his mind revolted at the image his eyes were attempting to present to it. After a few seconds, the sensation eased slightly, to be replaced by a succession of rapidly changing forms: a beast that looked more serpent than animal with gleaming black scales and a pointed, lashing tail, a voluptuous woman oozing sexuality, a pregnant mother, blissful in her fertility.

  The uneasy flickering eventually settled on one form that his mind found acceptable. A woman, naked apart from a silver breastplate and a short skirt of leather thongs, long, chestnut hair flowing in the wind behind her, riding a stallion of inordinate vitality. Her beautiful face was filled with pride and joy, power and defiance. In her raised right hand she carried a wooden spear tipped with a silver head, while in her other hand she held aloft a gleaming silver shield. Shavi thought of Boudicca, of the power of womanhood, strength and sexuality so potent he could almost taste it.

  "Epona," he said beneath his breath.

  Her terrible gaze snapped towards him as if she had heard him, and the sheer force of what he saw there made him look away. Here was a power he had never experienced before, one of the oldest gods, the most primal and powerful, not far removed from the archetypes. Her form had resonated in the belief system of mankind from the earliest time.

  The horse reared up before the ranks of the dead, its hooves striking the air. She let that withering gaze move slowly across the army of the dead. It was apparent they were not going to allow her through.

  From the way she was directing herself towards the mausoleum, Shavi guessed she was there for Veitch, although he had no idea why. She took her charger back and forth across the frontline of the dead in search of access.

  At one point she paused to address the dead in a language Shavi had never heard: wild shrieks that disappeared off the register, interspersed with the snortings of horses. Whatever she suggested, it had no effect.