The Infernal Aether Box Set: All Four Books In The Series

by Peter Oxley

  I was conscious of N’yotsu’s eyes on me, silently accusing me and reminding me of the jolly scene playing out so many thousands of miles away, of my younger self—supposedly the one who was suffering a penance—enjoying himself whilst my blameless brother was alone in this tomb of learning.

  “But he’s happy,” I protested. “Max is never happier than when he’s with his books.”

  “Ah, well, then at least your conscience is clear.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” I asked. “Fly back and risk imprisonment or death, just to comfort him?”

  N’yotsu shrugged. “As I said, as long as your conscience is clear.”

  “Look,” I said. “It was not like it was constant drinking and glamour up on that ship. For a long time I was a prisoner there, in chains and treated little more than a slave. And even when I did manage to prove myself so that Freddie treated me like a human being, there was the constant threat of death at the hands of pirates, or the navy...”

  “So, then, it was good preparation for your current battles?” said N’yotsu. “The constant threat of death?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again, finding myself colliding head-on with his implacable logic.

  N’yotsu nodded. “Speaking of which, there is one last stop for us to make.” He tapped his cane on the floor and the books and shelves melted away like spores blowing on the wind.

  ***

  The street was dark and forbidding, buildings crowding down on grimy passageways filled with brown slush, stubbornly unaffected by the driving snow’s efforts to blanket this squalor. Doors and windows were shut tight against the cold, in many cases swathed in blankets as a form of makeshift insulation. All was quiet, as though the inhabitants were wary of making a sound lest they invite the fatal tendrils of cold into their houses. Icicles clung to the edges of roofs, door and windows, glass-like daggers pointing down at the roads below. I shivered, even though the fact that I was not really there meant that I could not feel the cold.

  We made our way through this scene in silence, stepping over piles of rubbish and the bodies of frozen animals. A huddled form ran past us and, as I turned to watch, I caught sight of a figure sheltering in a nearby alleyway, hunched against the bitter night and wrapped up in so many blankets and papers that it was scarcely discernible from the rubbish piled around it.

  I walked towards the figure, fearing that it was a corpse, for surely nothing could survive exposure to these conditions for too long. I breathed out a sigh of relief as I saw it move, shifting position and shivering. The movement brought the face of a young girl—no more than eleven or twelve years old—into the half-light, mud stained cheeks streaked with tears and wide eyes searching frantically around. A shout from the end of the street sent her scurrying back into the darkness.

  I turned to look at the source of the noise, a huge fat man marching down the round. “Girl! Where are you girl?” he shouted. “I swear to you, you’ll swing for this. When your father calls, you come running!” The tone of his voice made the breath catch in my throat.

  I watched him as he approached, noting that he seemed unconcerned by the cold weather in spite of the fact that he was dressed in little more than a tattered shirt, trousers and a costermonger’s apron. By the way he was staggering and shouting, it was probable that this nonchalance was due to drink, but the sheer bulk of the man no doubt also insulated him from the elements. Malicious, pig-like eyes glared out from under a thick brow and atop a bulbous nose which had clearly been broken and badly set a few times in its history. All of this sat in a round and hairless head, perched on a neck which was conspicuous by its absence.

  He stopped a few feet from me and bellowed once more. “Girl, I didn’t mean any harm. Everything’s fine, your mam’s fine. You’ll see. Your brothers are missing you.” Any reassurance these words were meant to provide was undermined by the man’s tone and the way that he cast about violently. My eyes were drawn to his hands and arms, which were splattered with blood: fresh blood.

  I held my breath as he spotted the alley in which the girl hid, peering into it for a long moment. Then there was a noise from the end of the street, the sound of something being knocked over. He turned and glared in the direction of the disturbance, giving the alley one last glance before marching off in that direction. “You don’t need to worry,” he shouted. “It’s me, your dad. I just want to know you’re safe and well.”

  I watched him leave, glaring at his retreating bulk with a venom which surprised me, given that I knew nothing of him or his circumstances. A sniffling sound came from the alley, followed by a muffled “shush!” I looked to N’yotsu, who had been watching all of these events with an impassive manner that I could only envy. He gestured to the alley.

  “You can see in there if you wish,” he said.

  “But it’s too dark.”

  “One of the benefits of being a spirit,” he said, “is that we can lift the veil of night just like this.” He clicked his fingers and the scene in the alleyway jumped out in stark relief, the details lifted as though it were daylight.

  I stepped forward to see the girl hunched in the furthest reaches of the alley, behind and beneath the piles of rubbish. As I approached, I noted that she seemed to be in muffled conversation with someone else within the bundles in which she was swathed. The blankets parted and I saw a little boy, no more than a toddler, gently sobbing in her arms. She cradled and rocked him, whispering in his ear in a soothing voice.

  “It’s all right Tommy,” she whispered. “He’s gone now. I won’t let him hurt you. Not now, not ever.”

  There was something about her voice, the way she said the words, which made me peer closer at her face.

  “What about mummy?” asked the little boy. “Did he hurt mummy?”

  She sighed and looked up to the skies, her eyes glistening with tears. For a moment I saw the young, vulnerable, innocent girl that a fairer world would have allowed to be. Then a cold, steely hardness descended on her face, a pragmatic edge which would never leave her, would never allow her to be that vulnerable again.

  “My God,” I muttered. “Kate, what did he do to you?”

  “Don’t worry Tommy,” said the young Kate. “I won’t let anything ever happen to you. You and me, we’ll be together forever—I promise.”

  “Promise?” asked the boy.

  “Promise,” smiled Kate. “I swear.”

  I backed away, my mind reeling at this glimpse into a past I had never considered existed. I knew that Kate had had a hard upbringing—there were very few in the East End who did not—but I had not realised that she had been forced into such desperate situations at such an early age.

  “Just by way of context,” said N’yotsu. “At this very moment you and your pirate friend are carousing in the skies somewhere above the Subcontinent. Suffering your penance.”

  The words were like a hot poker to my chest and I blinked back tears as I looked at him. “Your point is made,” I said. “In spite of how I may feel, I have led a relatively charmed life compared to my companions.” I looked back at the two children, huddling together against the cold on this first night of being forced to fend for themselves, wanting to put my arms around them: to protect and comfort them.

  “My God, Kate,” I muttered again. “What did you...?”

  As the world dissolved around us, I found myself wondering why Kate had never mentioned the boy, Tommy, to us. Surely she could not have hidden him from us for all of this time?

  ***

  “Oi, lazy bones,” shouted a voice in my ear. “Wake up!”

  “Kate,” I groaned, still reliving that moment in the street in my mind’s eye. “My God...”

  “Now, I’ve heard plenty of men moan my name in my time,” said the voice. “But never thought I’d hear you doing it!”

  I opened my eyes to find myself back in the dank cell, with Kate standing over me, a wry grin on her face.

  “Kate,” I said. “Is it really you?”

>   “I think you know the answer to that, don’t you?”

  I groaned. “So you are the second ghost then.”

  She curtsied. “Yep. You ready for a trip?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Nope. Now get up, hold my hand and prepare to be enlightened.”

  ***

  I shot sideways glances at Kate as we walked through the snow-lined streets. “What?” she asked.

  “I... You are not really Kate, are you? You are just a figment of my imagination.”

  She shrugged. “Pretty interesting imagination you have, eh?”

  “In which case,” I continued, “there is no point asking you about your past, your father, the little boy Tommy. I would effectively be trying to console myself.”

  She pursed her lips together. “Don’t want to talk about all that stuff.”

  I rubbed my fingers through my hair. “Which is exactly what I would imagine you would say. For what it’s worth, I am so, so sorry for what happened. And if I ever get out of this mess and get to see you again, I will do whatever I can to help, to make this right.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever happened, happened a long time ago. What makes you think that you can do anything to help now?”

  “I have to try,” I muttered.

  “Why?” she asked, rounding on me. “To cure your own conscience? Make yourself feel like you’re being the big man, all protective of the little girl? Spare me—you know me better than all that. What’s done is done, the here and now’s all that matters. Speaking of which...” She stopped and gestured at a nondescript door in front of us.

  “What’s this?” I asked, peering up at the ramshackle building. The thing looked like it had not been lived in for quite some time, and in fact appeared on the brink of collapse.

  “Well, why don’t you go in and have a look?” she asked, making me feel like a schoolboy who had just asked a particularly stupid question.

  I stepped inside and looked around, my eyes adjusting quickly to the dark. We were standing in the entrance of a large warehouse space, a cavernous building which was furnished by little more than the odd stacks of rubbish. Prone figures were dotted around the room, the homeless and helpless of London seeking shelter from the worst of the weather.

  “I remember this place,” I said slowly. “This was where N’yotsu fought that demon. The one who killed all of those girls.” I walked over the centre of the room and squatted down next to the hand which jutted out of the concrete, as though it were a tree growing from the ground. The analogy was apt, as some wag had decorated it with makeshift baubles and holly, the one nod to the festive season in that grim place. The adornments could not fully mask the true nature of the item, though, and I could still make out those terrible nails—slightly worn down and chipped now, no doubt due to investigations by curious visitors—and the scaled skin. I traced the hand down to the wrist, at which point it disappeared into the concrete floor, remembering the look in N’yotsu’s eyes as he had somehow thrust it—not to mention the creature attached to it—into the ground, turning solid concrete to liquid and then back again with just a few muttered words. I looked down, imagining the creature entombed beneath us, impossibly drowned.

  “This was where we first seriously realised that N’yotsu was more than he appeared,” I said. “The first evidence of his powers. Why are we here?”

  “You’re not the only one that this place means something too,” she said, nodding at a squatting figure nearby, who was rocking slowly forward and back.

  I stood and walked over, recognising him straight away as our friend N’yotsu. As I drew closer, I could discern muttering coming from his huddled form and bent down to listen, feeling as though I were intruding upon his privacy but nevertheless compelled to do so.

  “Not me. But was me. Nothing. Can’t do. It’s not. How can I?” A clutter of half-finished phrases tumbled from his mouth as he clenched himself tight against whatever inner battle he was fighting.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked. “Why is he here, rather than with...?”

  “With who?” snapped Kate. “He’s never really been one for drugs and booze, so that counts you out.”

  “But Max or you...”

  “We’ll come to that,” she said. “Why don’t you try looking in his head, though—see what you can see in there.” At my dumbfounded look, she sighed. “You’re experiencing a vision as a spirit,” she said, as though she were telling a dog to sit. “So you can look wherever you want. Including into peoples’ thoughts. So go on.”

  “But how?” I asked.

  “Just concentrate,” she said. “Come on, you’re the writer. This is your vision—use your imagination!”

  I turned and squatted in front of N’yotsu. “Sorry about this, old friend,” I muttered as I focused my attentions on his forehead. I was about to turn and tell Kate that it was not working when the world started to melt around me and I felt myself falling into N’yotsu’s head.

  We were back in the hut in Scotland, banshees outside screaming their constant lament, my friend’s penance for all he had done. N’yotsu was a frantic blur as he charged around the room, careening off walls with a frustrating energy which was as bewildering as it was terrifying.

  I tried to engage him, to get him to stop or at least speak to me, but to no avail: I was clearly as insubstantial here as I was in the real world. I turned to look at Kate, who was leaning against the door with her arms folded.

  “What is there to see here? That he’s in turmoil? I did not need to come into his head to see that.”

  She nodded. “Try looking out here.” She kicked the door open and stepped aside.

  I found myself walking through the doorway, transfixed by what I could see; a scene which even the most insane imagination would have struggled to conjure. All around were flames, deep red hellfire licking away at a void which threatened to suck me in with its enormity. Such was the vastness before me that I felt a form of vertigo, a dizziness borne of my own insignificance as I looked out and out and out, a space without end or boundary.

  Images and movements played out in front of me, a theatre of the absurd featuring impossible actors and unfathomable scenery. Ghastly creatures ranged and shouted and barked in a language which pained my ears to absorb, undertaking actions which I had no hope of comprehending. Each one featured the same creature which was sickeningly familiar, and I realised that I was looking at N’yotsu in his true form, back in his own land many aeons ago.

  The screaming was louder here, and when I forced myself to look I saw not banshees but a host of tortured souls, each protesting their own wordless torment stretching out and out into infinity.

  In the centre of all of this madness lingered a face which watched everything with a sad bitterness. The eyes flickered alternately with tears and a cold hardness, whilst the rest of the face shifted with the scenes playing before it, the features of N’yotsu merging with Andras and something else, something more primal, alien and... vicious.

  A woman in a shredded dress floated past, a pathetic skeletal thing with tears streaming from vacant eyes and trailing a mournful wail in her wake. The face screwed up in remorseful dread as it first spotted her, flickering alternately with a demonic leer.

  I turned slowly, willing this hell to end. “This is terrible,” I said. “I never realised how conflicted he is.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Given everything you know about him, and this surprises you?”

  I shrugged; she had a very good point. However, that was not the extent of the revelations from our friend’s psyche. “What is that?” I asked, as the head turned for a moment.

  “What do you think?” said Kate.

  I walked round so that I could see the rear of the head and gasped. “He’s...”

  “Not all there?” asked Kate.

  Whilst the words were harsh, they fitted the picture perfectly, for the rear of N’yotsu’s head was missing. The appearance was almost akin to a partially comp
leted block puzzle; whilst his face was still complete, the rear was a stepped nightmare, a blank series of missing elements showing a void where his hair and skull should be. The head twitched as another victim wandered past and a block floated away from the head and into the air.

  I frowned. “The memories are tearing him apart.”

  “Not just that,” said Kate. “He’s had them memories for years now. If it was as simple as that, he’d be a gibbering shell by now.”

  “Then what does this mean?” I asked and then frowned at her as she tapped her head impatiently, encouraging me to think.

  I looked back at the image before me. What had changed to prompt this descent into madness, or whatever all of this represented? Another guilt-ridden vision floated past and the face of Andras flickered before being extinguished by N’yotsu’s image, prevalent once more. He opened his mouth in a silent, tortured scream and another part of his head floated off into oblivion.

  “Of course,” I said. “He is being overwhelmed by the memories, but it’s the lack of a demonic aspect which is the real issue. Andras could handle all of this: N’yotsu alone cannot. His enforced exile from those parts of his personality is effectively destroying him, driving him insane.”

  She looked at me. “It’s more than that, mate,” she said and clapped her hands, throwing us out of N’yotsu’s head and back into the dingy warehouse with a jolt.

  As I recovered my breath she walked around N’yotsu. “Now you know what’s going on inside his head, take a look at his body.”

  I did as she said and then gasped. “My God. He’s fading away!”

  In much the same way as the internal struggle was having an impact on the mental image of his face, so it was manifesting itself on his body. Each time he muttered or jerked in response to another private torment, his physical being reacted. Before my eyes he paled then aged, the strong vital man I knew replaced with a withered husk. Then, with a deep shuddering breath, the N’yotsu we knew was back there before us.