by Gill, J. G.
“See?” Shrapnel grinned. “Pretty ingenious, eh? No one would even suspect people were living here.”
Bede blinked as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room. There was a long bench down one side that looked as if it had once been part of a craftsman’s workshop. It was stacked so high with old papers and assorted junk – machine parts, a broken bookshelf, an old fridge – that the pile almost met the long, draping cobwebs which hung from the ceiling like sleepy ghosts. A collection of shoes and muddy gumboots hovered at the door, nesting among rakes, shears and a wheelbarrow with a missing handle. The place smelt nasty, like a combination of wet dog, smelly feet and mouldy cheese.
“So where are the people who live here?” said Bede, wrinkling his nose.
“Dunno, should be around somewhere,” said Shrapnel.
They stepped through the door on the other side of the room and into a long corridor that ran down the centre of the building. From where they were standing, Bede counted a further four smaller corridors branching off to his right. Halfway down the left-hand side of the main corridor, a staircase led up to the floor above, while, at the very end, Bede could see what looked like a kitchen.
“This place is huge,” he muttered to himself as he turned to Shrapnel. “How many floors are there?”
Shrapnel shrugged. “Dunno, four I think. Troy reckons it used to be a hotel or something.”
Bede began to explore the house, quietly wandering from one dark, doorless room to the next. Each one had a series of mattresses lining the sides, some of which still had people sleeping on them.
“Hey, Troy,” Shrapnel called in a low voice. “Troy, are you here?”
There was no answer. Then someone in a sleeping bag suddenly rolled over, making Bede and Shrapnel jump.
“Sorry man, didn’t see you there,” said Shrapnel.
“Don’t worry about it,” the man said, yawning. “I need to be getting up anyway. Who’re you looking for?”
“Troy,” said Shrapnel. “Do you know if he’s around?”
“Yeah, if you go upstairs, first room on your right, you should be able to catch him before he goes on nightshift.”
“Thanks,” said Shrapnel. They left the room and walked to the staircase. The wooden stairs wore grooves from years of use and the banister swayed under Bede’s hand.
“Hey, Troy, are you there?” Shrapnel called.
“Depends who it is,” a voice replied from somewhere above them.
“Shrap, man, your cousin.”
Shrapnel turned to Bede, gesturing for him to follow up the remaining stairs. As they reached the landing, the door of a bedroom opened to reveal a man in his early twenties, dressed in a singlet and red boxer shorts. Like Shrapnel, he was as thin and wiry as a greyhound, although considerably taller than his cousin. He continued to pull a battered comb through his wispy dark hair as he looked down at the visitors.
“Hey, Shrap, long time. What’s with the visit?”
“It’s my friend here,” said Shrapnel, nodding at Bede. “He kind of needs your help.” Troy squinted in the dim light.
“I know you, don’t I?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” said Bede. “We’ve met a couple of times down at the skate park.”
“Oh yeah, Bede isn’t it? So, what’s it you want?”
“He needs a place to crash,” said Shrapnel, “just until he gets himself sorted. He’s kind of….well, fallen on hard times, right Bede?”
“Yeah,” said Bede, deliberately avoiding any detail.
Troy looked at them suspiciously.
“Okay, exactly what kind of ‘hard times?’ Are you hiding from the cops or something?”
“Nah, nah, nothing like that,” said Shrapnel quickly. “Bede’s a good guy. It’s just, well, he had to leave home pretty quick, if you know what I mean.”
Bede felt a sharp pang of guilt chisel at his insides. It was true, he had had to leave home quickly and he didn’t have anywhere else to go but the squat would also be a great place to hide from the police. He was still deciding whether or not he should fill in the gaps in Shrapnel’s story when Troy began nodding.
“Yeah, all right, but just for a short time, okay? It’s not really a place for kids to hang out. There’s food in the fridge if you’re hungry. We all put in money, so stick a fiver in the jar on the counter. As for sorting out a bed, it’s pretty casual. Pick a room, pick a mattress, that’s pretty much it.”
“Thanks Troy, I really appreciate it,” said Bede.
“No worries.” Troy disappeared back into his room and shut the door.
“Thanks man, you’re the best,” said Bede, turning to Shrapnel.
“Hey, it’s nothing,” Shrapnel mumbled embarrassed. “Look, I’ve got to get going. The olds will be on my case if I’m not home soon.”
“Okay, later then.”
As Bede watched Shrapnel disappear down the stairs, his guilt began to gnaw at him. It seemed wrong somehow, for Troy to be doing him a favour without knowing what he was potentially getting himself into. Bede sighed wearily. He knew he’d have to fess up once Troy got back from work, even if it meant getting kicked out of the squat.
In the meantime though, he figured he could at least use the bathroom to get rid of the grime and sweat that had congealed on his skin. The hot tap refused to heat up but Bede was beyond caring. He found a bar of soap, plunged himself into the cold bath, and began scrubbing himself like a maniac. He then turned to his underpants and T-shirt and washed them too. It was only once he was stepping out of the bath that he remembered he had nothing to dry himself with. Toilet paper wasn’t a great option, but it would have to do. Once he was more or less dry, he pulled on his jeans, jumper and winter coat over his shivering body and took his wet clothing to find a mattress for the night.
CHAPTER XIII
The light coming through the window high above my head was the strangest I’d ever seen. In all the hours that Thomas and I had been sitting there, the beams had neither darkened nor lightened, but remained exactly the same shade of grey. It was as if the world on the other side of the wall had got caught on a snag between night and day.
“We need to find a way to break this shackle,” said Thomas, glancing at his wrist.
“How?” I said. The iron was so thick and heavy it was hard to imagine anything that would be strong enough to cut through it.
“See if there’s anything we can use to smash against it. Check every brick, stone and rock – if anything moves, try to prise it free.”
I stood up and began checking the walls, spreading my palms and pressing them against the stone has hard as I could. Nothing budged.
“This is going to take ages if we have to do the whole room,” I said.
“Just keep going, as fast as you can,” said Thomas.
Whoever had built the place had obviously used a lot of cement. I kept moving down the walls, pushing, pulling and kicking at the bricks until my fingers and toes hurt.
“I don’t think it’s any use!” I shouted to Thomas. “The place is solid.”
I was about to give up completely, when something caught my eye. A large iron handle, the shape of a stirrup, was hanging limply from the inside of the door, its metal clasps heavily worn. It was the only thing in the whole room that showed any sign of weakness.
I ran to the door, snatched the handle with both hands, and twisted it back on itself as hard as I could. The metal yelped but continued to hold fast. I tried again, this time putting my full weight behind it and shoving my shoulder up against the wall for extra leverage. I thought I heard something crack, although it was hard to tell. I tried again. This time the cracking noise was much louder. Now I knew for sure that I wasn’t imagining it. I summoned every last bit of strength I had and wrenched the handle as hard as I could. Suddenly, the entire thing broke away in my hands. I was so surprised it took me a second to realise I’d actually done it.
“We’ve got something!” I shouted.
Cradlin
g the handle in my palm like it was gold, I ran back to Thomas. He looked up at me, his milky blue eyes as shiny as moonstones.
“Good. Now, to break these,” he said, rattling the chain and nodding at the shackle.
“I still don’t quite get how this…” I nodded at the handle, “…is supposed to break that,” I said, pointing at the thick cuff around his wrist. “It’s just a lump of iron.”
Thomas smiled, the way I was getting used to him smiling when he knew something that I didn’t.
“Trust me, that handle will be enough.” He waved at me to step closer. “When I say, hit the shackle as hard as you possibly can, okay?”
I nodded and raised the handle high above my head, waiting for Thomas to say the word. As I looked down I could see that he was now in deep concentration, his eyes closed as he cupped his hands around the shackle. There was just enough space between his fingertips for me to bring the handle down. I’d have to be dead accurate though, which was not exactly my strongest skill.
Man, I wish it was Bede doing this and not me, I thought to myself. There was no time to panic though; the next thing I knew, Thomas was giving me my cue.
“Now!”
I was already so worried about hitting Thomas’s fingers that his voice made me jump and, without thinking, I brought the handle slamming down on the shackle. A loud crack reverberated off the walls and a vivid yellow light blossomed around Thomas’s wrist. The shackle was now lying in two jagged pieces on the ground.
“How did that happen?” I said.
I glanced up from the shackle to Thomas, who was lying slumped against the stone wall, his fringe wet with sweat and clinging to his pale forehead. He suddenly looked very small.
“Are you okay?” I said, leaning across and touching his shoulder.
For a moment there was no reply. Then, just the tiniest of voices could be heard.
“Yes, I’m fine,” said Thomas, slowly propping himself up on his elbows. He was breathing heavily.
“You seem exhausted,” I said.
Thomas gasped a lungful of air. “It’s the darkness. It drains away Aeon light, robs us of our power.” He picked up a piece of the shattered shackle and held it up to me. “See this?” he said derisively. “I should have been able to shatter it without blinking. But here I am, reduced to using an implement like a mere mortal – no offence – where the most simple of tasks has almost killed me.”
I ignored the “mere mortal” bit. If Thomas wanted to believe that he wasn’t human, fine, just so long as he didn’t expect me to buy it. So he’d done some sort of weird light trick and the shackle had broken, so what? It could have meant anything. That the iron was weaker than we’d thought; that I was stronger than I realised, that Thomas had a new-fangled lighter that he carried around with him for some reason. None of those had anything to do with immortality.
What might have been more believable was the impact that the darkness was having on him. Every year, after months of winter in Wiltsdown, I’d always hear people complain about the lack of daylight hours. I think there was even a study on it once, where someone said it could cause depression. Even so, it still didn’t completely make sense as far as Thomas was concerned.
“How can the darkness be affecting you so badly?” I said. “You’ve only just arrived.”
“Demarge and I fought before he brought me down here. I was already weak and my defences were not as they should have been. This darkness is taking whatever energy I have left.” Thomas glanced up, his eyes locking onto mine. I could see the tiny beads of sweat gleaming on his forehead and rolling down the sides of his face like clear, melted wax. “Clare, whatever you do, you must get out of here, even if you have to leave me behind,” he said.
I felt a chill skitter down my back. “Don’t say that. There must be a way of getting out of here,” I said.
I quickly scanned the walls of the room again, looking for any sign of weakness that I might have overlooked before. The solid, square blocks of stone stared back at me defiantly. That left just one possible escape route: the window. I peered up at it, just able to pick out the iron bars that lined the small open square. It didn’t look that high. Not really.
I gently ran my hand over the wall directly beneath it, feeling for lumpy pieces of rock and allowing the coarse surface to graze my skin. I figured that if I could find a few decent footholds it might be possible to climb up and knock the bars out with the iron door handle. It wasn’t the safest plan in the world, but it was the only one I had.
Kicking my boot against the wall, I soon found a piece of stone that was jutting out further than the rest. I then began searching for a fingerhold, finding a small stony nook that was just about at eye level. Good, I was ready to start. I looped the door handle over my hand and eased it up my arm as far as it would go, keeping it out of the way while I climbed. I then stepped onto the rocky ledge, hooked two fingers into the notch in the wall, and pulled myself up. So far so good, but there was still a long way to go. The tips of my fingers were now supporting my entire weight and the pain of the rock digging into my flesh was excruciating. I pawed the rocks below me with my boot, frantically searching for another foothold.
“Just keep holding on,” I willed myself, screwing up my eyes and digging my fingers further into the rocks despite the pain. But just as I thought I might be getting somewhere I began to feel myself slip, my knuckles skinning themselves on the sharp edges of the rock as I slid down the wall.
“Ouch!” I said, jamming my fingers in my mouth. The metallic taste of blood spread across my tongue and I grimaced with disgust.
“This is hopeless, what are we going to do?” I mumbled through my fingers.
Thomas didn’t reply. He was too busy staring at something high above my head. I traced his line of vision to a thin sliver of blue light, drifting slowly towards the window and curling itself around the iron bars. Further blue tendrils were now joining the first, decorating the dark iron in a delicate lace. The patterns began to darken steadily, as if the light was actually solidifying. Soon the bars were covered in a thick, bright blue foliage of crystals.
“Min, where are you?” Thomas whispered.
New crystals continued to appear, filling up every tiny space between the bars. Once all the gaps were filled, the crystals began piggy backing on the tiny shards of blue that had already formed. There were so many of them that they started to spill over the windowsill and down the inside walls of the room towards us. As they drew closer, the crystals started to melt, their hard edges melding into one another, as if transforming themselves into a single piece of glossy blue satin. As it hit the floor, the blue began to collect in folds, spreading into a large pool.
“Thomas, what’s that?” I said, a mix of awe and terror creeping into my voice.
The centre of the pool had now begun quivering like soft rubber, and something scarily hump-like was rising out of the blue morass. At first it looked like a perfectly smooth ball, but as it grew I could see that the surface was divided into two halves by a distinct ridge. The ridge itself was made up of long and short pieces, like the dots and dashes of Morse code. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that they were in fact pieces of bone and that the ridge was a spine.
I began to edge away from the pool, trying to distance myself from whatever freaky thing was about to emerge. My back hit the wall, the solidness of the stones oddly comforting as I continued to stare, hypnotised by the arms and legs that were taking shape in the blue soup. Within minutes, the figure of a dark-haired woman was rising to her feet, unfolding her arms from around her head, and flexing her shoulder blades.
“Min,” Thomas breathed as the woman turned to face us. My mouth gaped open as I saw that Thomas was right. How could he be though, given everything I’d seen in the Consus Room? Before I could ask, Min was already kneeling at Thomas’s side, cradling him in her arms as his body began to flood with soft blue light.
“What…how…” A million questions crowded into my min
d, fighting with each other to be spoken first.
“We need to leave as soon as possible,” said Min.
“Hang on, how did you even do that ‘melting through the window’ thing?” I said.
“I’ll tell you as soon as we’re safe,” said Min. “But right now we must hurry. Demarge will be back for you both before long.”
I watched as she rose lithely to her feet, her movements reminding me of the liquid mercury I’d once seen in the science lab at school. She reached down and helped Thomas up. He was now looking a lot healthier than he had been before.
“How are we supposed to get out of here then?” I said.
“Through the window,” said Min simply.
I scanned her face, alarmed to see that she wasn’t joking.
“But it’s covered in bars,” I said. “Besides, how are we even going to get up there?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll show you,” said Min, turning to Thomas. “I may have found a route which will be harder for Demarge to sense. It won’t be easy, but we may be able to get Clare into the Slipworld without showing him the way.”
Min raised her arm towards the window and spread her palm, as Thomas reached up and laid his palm on top of her’s. They closed their eyes, the tendons in Thomas’s jaw clenching with concentration. There was a sudden flash of blue and yellow light, so achingly bright that it made me squint. I could hear the dull, metallic clank of iron clattering against stone and, as I opened my eyes again, I saw a haphazard collection of twisted pieces of iron bar, lying on the ground like mounds of dark grey macaroni. The window was now completely clear.
I looked at them both, horribly aware that I was about to drop one mighty big fly into their already less-than-smooth ointment.
“Umm, I know you want to take me to the Slipworld, or wherever, but I’ve actually really got to find my brother,” I said. “He’ll already be pretty freaked out that I’m missing. I can’t just take off and leave him in Wiltsdown somewhere.”