The Dead Have No Shadows

by Chris Mawbey

  “Come on then, Jolly,” he said bitterly. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Mr. Jolly was almost at the foot of the final ladder. He grunted a series of instructions and the dancers and musicians flooded down the stairs and broke into their performance around Mickey. The plague doctors formed a perverse honour guard, keeping slow pace with Mickey. Mr. Jolly joined the procession, keeping a handful of steps behind Mickey.

  Pester and Elena moved ahead. “We’ll wait for them outside,” said Pester.

  “Why should we wait?” said Elena. “He is a gangster. Just like my mother said he was. We should just go and leave him.”

  “No he’s not,” said Pester. “Mickey Raymond was never a gangster and you know that. And he promised to help you. You’re almost safe now. I’m just hoping he has a plan to get himself out of this.”

  “He robbed a bank,” Elena argued.

  “The raid failed,” said Pester. “You saw for yourself that he was forced into it. It was his loyalty to his friend that trapped him. It’s his loyalty to you that’s got you released. That kind of loyalty is rare in people.”

  “So do you think he still wants to do more to help me?”

  “Aye, I’m certain of it. And not by sacrificing himself just so that you can go on. You would make it on your own from here but I don’t think Mickey is done with you yet.” Pester held the door open and Elena left the mall and stepped outside.

  When the procession reached the exit the dancers formed a corridor for Mickey to walk down. They played and danced as he progressed. The armed guard moved ahead, forming a funnel to guide Mickey to the outside.

  Mickey paused by the exit door. He had a choice to make here – stay or go. Staying would bring him what? – nothing. The mall would become a perpetual prison for him until his body failed. Mickey supposed that when that happened he would just become a pile of bones in a corner of the mall. Going outside would take him one step closer to the end of his existence. It was an inevitability that Mickey had to face. Pester and Elena were watching him from the outside.

  Mickey took a step forward and pushed the door open. A warm breeze fluttered across his face. It brought with it the scent of living grass and a hint of the sea. Mickey realised that this was the first time since he’d arrived in this strange land that there had been any wind. Everything before had been static and dead. The breeze was a welcome sensation. He gratefully accepted it, knowing that it wouldn’t last for long. He stepped outside.

  The sword guard of plague doctors followed and quickly formed up around him. Then came Mr. Jolly and finally the dancers and musicians, who fanned out and began their routine again.

  Mickey glanced over his shoulder, questioning Mr. Jolly.

  “Walk straight ahead,” came the response. “You will soon see where you need to go.” Mr. Jolly was smiling but it was a greedy, avaricious smile, totally devoid of humour or humanity. Then he laid a hand on Mickey’s bare arm. The sensation sent a shudder through Mickey’s body. He felt as if he’d been coated in ice.

  “Answer me this before we go,” said Mr. Jolly. “Why? Why give yourself up so easily for her? She means nothing to you. You were never going to get anything from her.”

  Mickey turned and smiled. “Didn’t Jesus sacrifice himself for the people he loved? People he didn’t even know?”

  There was a stumble in the music and dance. Mr. Jolly’s self satisfied smirk faltered and didn’t quite return with its previous full vigour.

  Mickey’s smile broadened. Maybe he’d been wrong about there not being a God after all.

  A small paved area gave way to a carpet of grass. After so much time spent walking over rough ground Mickey found the feel of the meadow soothing on his feet. His trainers had split on the sides and soles and he could feel the blades of grass stroking his feet. An underlying dampness seeped into his socks, cooling his feet.

  The ground was gently undulating but not uneven so the going was fairly easy for him. Each undulation raised the ground level slightly and Mickey was surprised by how high he’d climbed when he looked back over his shoulder. He was also surprised that the huge grey wall and the dead forest were nowhere to be seen. The meadows ran beyond the mall for as far as Mickey could see. He was certain though, that if he’d been able to walk in that direction he would have been confronted by some invisible barrier that would have gently but inexorably steered him back in the direction he was intended to go. He knew that from now on every step he took would be one step closer to the coastline. He wouldn’t be allowed to ever increase the distance between himself and the beach.

  The ground crested a rise and began to slope gently downwards into the shallow, u-shaped valley. The valley floor looked like a pedestrian motorway. There was a steady flow of people all heading in the same direction, from left to right. The flow was growing in number as people joined from the surrounding hills.

  Most of the walkers were in pairs and Mickey guessed that one of these would have been a guide. Large patches of bare ground was showing through the grass that had been trampled flat by thousands of feet all carrying their owners to the sea. The valley opened out onto the wide sandy beach which, strangely, given the flow of bodies towards it, was deserted.

  Mickey began to make his way down the slope to join the flow of bodies below. The plague doctors and dancers went with him. Pester and Elena let most of the group go then followed along.

  “What is happening?” said Elena, pointing at the back of the group. The musicians and dancers had stopped moving. As the group spread out down the slope the musicians and dancers began to sit down. The colour in their faces and clothes faded away and the defunct bodies rolled over or slumped into piles of bones covered in dirty rags.

  “These are Wights, just like the ones that captured you before,” Pester explained. “Mr. Jolly will have brought them from the Underworld to serve his purpose. Now he has no more use for them; so he’s abandoning them.”

  More of the musicians and dancers were dropping out and were joined by some of the plague doctors. Mickey had been concentrating on what was going to happen next but even he began to notice that something was different. The music now sounded disjointed and incomplete, as if some instruments were missing. He looked around to see the debris of spent bodies trailing off at the back of the procession.

  By the time that Mickey reached the bottom of the slope all of the musicians and dancers had become untidy cairns on the hillside. There were only three doctors left and one of those had dropped his sword. The other two were dragging the tips of their weapons along the ground. As they moved onto flat ground, Mickey felt the pain in his damaged thigh lessen, but not by much. It still felt weak and Mickey wasn’t able to make any great pace. This annoyed him as he was sure that he could have outpaced the weakening swordsmen who now looked as if they were ready to drop.

  A little way ahead the path branched off slightly to the left. The branch led to a cleft in the hillside and a tunnel entrance that was partially shielded from the main pathway by a spur of higher ground. The angle of the pathway and the entrance to the tunnel was such that most walkers wouldn’t even notice it was there. As he reached the branch Mickey stopped walking. Though he could no longer see the entrance to the tunnel Mickey could see that the area surrounding the entrance was bathed in a red glow. It wasn’t a warm welcoming glow but one that looked hard, angry and painful.

  “Time to say goodbye, Mickey Raymond,” laughed Mr. Jolly.

  Chapter 31

  Mickey turned and smiled. “Yeah, you’re right, it is.”

  He turned back to face Pester and Elena, who had walked a little way past the entrance to the tunnel path. Mickey paused as he watched the unarmed guard sink to the ground. The body inside the cloak seemed to dissolve, leaving an empty cloak topped by a beaked mask and brimmed hat. The two other swordsmen were positioned close by but didn’t look to be in any position to prevent or cause anything to happen. Mickey turned back to Mr. Jolly, still smiling. This was the moment. />
  “Goodbye,” he said. Mickey turned away and began walking towards Pester and Elena. The two guards didn’t react.

  Mr. Jolly began a slow hand clap.

  “Very funny,” he said, though his tone of voice suggested anything but amusement. “You made a decision, remember. And as Pester no doubt explained to you, over here decisions are binding.”

  Mickey stopped his slow walk and turned back to face Mr. Jolly.

  “I know,” he replied. “I’ve made a few decisions since I arrived here. One was to fight a bully, someone a lot like you, so that Elena could make her own journey. I also made a decision and a promise to help her and stay with her to the end of her journey.”

  Mickey looked around at Elena. He wanted one last look at her. If this all well wrong then he wouldn’t be seeing anything for much longer.

  “Yes, I agreed to walk with you to your Finem Omnium but I never said I’d enter it. I couldn’t. I’d already made my decision to stay with Elena and I’m bound by that. Isn’t that how the rules work over here?”

  Stifling a smile Mickey turned and continued walking towards his friends.

  Mr. Jolly’s forced smile crumbled and he stared in disbelief as he realised that Mickey was serious. He hadn’t known about what had happened in Koprno and the consequences that cascaded from it. Mr. Jolly, master of deceit and deviance had been so absorbed by his obsession to trap Mickey Raymond that he’d allowed himself to be outwitted at the last moment. Failure was something that Mr. Jolly never enjoyed and failure in this case was something that he knew would be severely punished.

  Barging into one of the plague doctors, easily knocking it to the ground, Mr. Jolly snatched up the sword and rushed at Mickey.

  “Look out,” screamed Elena.

  Mickey turned to see Mr. Jolly bearing down on him. All traces of sick humour had vanished from the aggressor’s face. Holding the sword double handed Mr. Jolly hoisted the blade over his shoulder. Mickey raised a futile arm to defend himself and closed his eyes.

  The blow winded Mickey. He felt no stabbing or cutting sensation. As he fell to the ground he felt something burst in his right thigh. Mickey let out a howl of agony and had to fight the wave of nausea that swamped him.

  He felt a weight on his body and opened his eyes to see Elena lying across him. Her face was bathed in pain and she was gasping for breath. Mickey put an arm around her and felt dampness. He lifted his arm and his hand was slick with blood. Mr. Jolly was standing a little way off, looking triumphant; the lower half of the sword he was holding was red and dripping. He moved in for the kill.

  “It’s over, Jolly,” Mickey grunted through his pain, wrapping a protective arm around Elena.

  “It is not over, not by a long chalk,” said Mr. Jolly. “You promised to stay with the girl to her journey’s end. Well her journey is about to end, freeing you from your obligation to her.”

  “No, you’re wrong. You’ve lost,” said Mickey. “I’ve walked past the entrance to your cave. I couldn’t go with you, even if I wanted to. And because of that I reckon your time here will soon come to an end as well.”

  “You fool,” growled Mr. Jolly. “I am not the only one of my kind here. There are hundreds of others like me.”

  “Aye, there are,” said Pester from behind him. “But there won’t be you.”

  A length of sword appeared through the front of Mr. Jolly’s Ringmaster’s coat. The blade twisted and was then withdrawn. Mr. Jolly dropped his own weapon and fell to his knees.

  “What have you done?” gasped Mr. Jolly. He watched his blood soak through the front of his coat, darkening the fabric.

  “Something I should have done years ago,” Pester replied. He grabbed Mr. Jolly by the shoulders and dragged him over to the side of the path. “You can sit here and watch all the good people walk past you and your hellish path.”

  Pester returned and knelt by Mickey and Elena. He looked at the girl’s wound. Mr. Jolly’s sword swing had been lucky for him but deadly for her. The blade had cut cleanly between two of Elena’s ribs, slicing through one of her lungs. The left side of her body was drenched in blood.

  “I want to see the sea,” Elena whispered. “Please put me where I can see the sea.”

  Pester nodded and gently lifted her off Mickey’s body. She was a tiny thing and Pester had no trouble in folding her into his arms.

  “Can you stand?” he asked Mickey.

  Mickey nodded. “I’ll manage,” he said, climbing to his feet. He groaned with the pain and, fearing he was going to pass out doubled over until his head began to clear. Elena’s whispering of his voice helped Mickey focus. Pester waited until Mickey was ready then set off at a slow walk towards the coast. Mickey forced himself to keep up and positioned himself so that Elena could see him.

  “I can hear the waves,” Elena murmured, after a few minutes. “Let me see.”

  Pester stopped walking and moved around so that Elena could see along the valley floor to the beach and the sea beyond that.

  “Oh,” she sighed and smiled.

  Overhead a gull passed, crying a mournful lament.

  “Hold on Elena,” said Mickey. “We’ll find your door for you.”

  Elena continued to smile but didn’t answer.

  Chapter 32

  Pester carried Elena’s body towards the beach. Mickey still limped alongside. His right leg was now slick with blood. He had wanted to carry Elena the final yards to the beach but he was barely able to cope with his own weight. He would never have been able to bear Elena, slight as she was.

  Just before the entrance to the beach a small path cut a narrow gulley between two low crags. Pester left the main path and started to climb the rear of the crag closest to the beach. Mickey followed.

  The top of the crag gave uninterrupted views over the golden beach and the sea. Pester sat Elena in a natural step in the forward facing rock that made a perfectly sized seat. Mickey then took over from Pester, wiping the congealing blood from his hands first. He arranged Elena so that she was sitting upright and rested her head gently against the rock wall behind her. Then he laid her hands in her lap. To anyone looking, she was just a beautiful young girl taking in the sea view. A strand of raven hair fell across Elena’s face and Mickey gently replaced it.

  “Can she feel anything?” Mickey asked Pester.

  “No, nothing at all,” Pester replied. “She can see and she can hear; but her senses of touch, speech and smell are all gone.”

  “What about her emotions?”

  “At the moment she’ll be in turmoil,” Pester conceded. He knelt to help Mickey rearrange Elena’s clothes to conceal the fatal wound as much as possible. “But I think she’ll be happy that you’ve made it to your journey’s end, even though she didn’t quite make it herself.”

  “Do you think so?” Mickey sounded bitter.

  “Oh aye,” said Pester. “We had a talk while you were with Mr. Jolly. Elena knows you’re no gangster. She knew that all along. She was just angry with you that you were such a fool and let yourself get into such a mess.”

  Mickey nodded and easily accepted Elena’s judgement of him.

  Pester stood up and looked around. Mickey followed his guide’s gaze.

  “You picked a good spot for her Pester,” said Mickey. “I think she’ll like it here.”

  Mickey looked back at Elena. He kissed the corner of her mouth. Then he reached around her and pulled her to him so that their cheeks were touching.

  “Thank you for saving me,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I let you down. I hope you’ll forgive me one day.”

  Mickey eased Elena back into position in her eternal seat. When he pulled away Mickey wasn’t convinced that all of the tears running down Elena’s cheek were his own.

  Mickey climbed to his feet and tried to walk back down the path but found that his feet wouldn’t take him that way. He looked to Pester in confusion.

  “Every step has to take you towards the beach,” Pester reminded him.
/>   “I didn’t realise that you meant it quite so literally,” said Mickey. He looked down the face of the rock wall they were standing on. The rock face was broken and uneven providing plenty of natural steps and footholds.

  “If I fall and break my neck, pick me up and sit me next to Elena.” Mickey took one last look at Elena. She looked as if she was oblivious to his presence but Mickey knew she was watching him. Mickey gave her a final smile then started to climb down from the crag.

  Things went well until the rock steps got smaller and became more like foot holds. Mickey had to take his weight on his hands and left leg while he lowered his right leg to the next level. His right foot found a good purchase on a ledge of rock but when Mickey transferred his weight to his injured limb it wouldn’t hold him and he fell to the ground below.

  When Mickey opened his eyes Pester was standing over him.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Ok, I think,” Mickey replied. He tried to sit up but an intense throbbing in the back of his head and a wave of dizziness made him roll to one side and retch.

  When the nausea had passed Mickey tentatively touched the back of his head. His hair was sticky and matted and the skin beneath it felt very tender.

  “Your head didn’t bleed for long,” said Pester. “Come on you need to get on your feet. Your time’s run out.” He held out a hand for Mickey to take.

  Mickey the accepted the offer and was hauled upright. It all happened a little too quickly and another wave of dizziness washed over him. Pester grabbed his arm to hold him upright.

  Mickey waited for the nausea and pounding in his head to ease before he tried to put any significant weight on his leg. When he did the pain was like nothing he had ever felt before - even being shot hadn’t hurt as much as this. Mickey was grateful that Pester hadn’t let go of him. It felt as if someone else’s leg had been transplanted where Mickey’s leg had once been; all without anaesthetic.