by Guy Adams
‘So what would happen to us,’ I asked, ‘if one of those creatures caught us? Nothing physical, I guess, because our bodies aren’t even here.’
‘I can’t speak from experience,’ said Jamie, ‘obviously, because I’m far too brilliant and careful. But there are travellers who have been attacked here, and all there is to show for it are the empty shells they leave behind. The majority of our minds are here. If we lose those, then we’ve lost everything.’
‘As good as dead then? Brilliant.’
‘Maybe worse,’ he replied, damn him. ‘I think I’d rather be dead than catatonic. I mean, there must be some brain function left behind, mustn’t there? Some trace element of our psyches still rattling inside. Imagine what it would be like to be trapped in our bodies forever, not able to do anything more than just lie there, breathing.’
‘No, thank you. I don’t think I will imagine that. I don’t think it would help.’
‘Fair enough. Let’s just agree that at the first sign of trouble we leg it back to the van.’
‘If Derek moves the van in the real world …’
‘It won’t matter. Our van is symbolic. It’s our exit point; as long as we get back to where we started before we jump back out, we’ll be fine.’
‘I wish he’d parked it a bit closer.’
We continued to make our way along Shad Thames. The buildings either side of us were strange reflections of those I had walked past the day before with Shining. On one, the glass of its windows billowed like a sail on a ship. On another, the mortar between the bricks steamed as if to vent some terrible pressure from within.
We turned the corner and the warehouse was in view.
‘Oh,’ said Jamie, ‘that’s going to make things a bit difficult for sure.’
The building was surrounded by the strange wraiths that populated this place. Every variation on the form, all swarming on the pavement around the sealed double-doors.
Jamie pulled me back, the pair of us pressed against the wall of what had been an apartment block in our world. I could feel the wall undulating behind me, as if quivering at our touch.
‘How do we get past them?’ I asked, speaking as quietly as I could.
‘We don’t,’ he replied. ‘It’s one thing staying still and hoping they don’t register you’re there, but there’s no way we can start pushing them out of the way to get to the door.’
‘We can’t just give up,’ I insisted. ‘There’s too much riding on this. Maybe we can get to it from the rear.’
‘Maybe,’ he said doubtfully.
Before we could try, the wraiths shifted. They moved as one, all stiffening as if sensing something close. I was reminded of the way a cat moves when it senses possible prey. The way it becomes static, completely tense. Its awareness utterly heightened, the cat becomes a statue, not wanting to tip off the possible prey with even a flicker of movement. The wraiths held that position. I made out a woman, her hair bolt upright as if she were hanging upside down, her face a perfect, hungry hole. Near ‘her’, what might have been a bicycle, its tyres pinched and hooked like the claws of a preying mantis. A pack of dogs, each bleeding into the next, one shifting mass of hair, claws and teeth.
I opened my mouth to speak. To ask Jamie what it was that had drawn their attention, wondering if it might be us. Then I closed it. If they hadn’t noticed us yet, they certainly would if I made a noise.
As one, they surged away from the building, flooding in the opposite direction to us and chasing after one another up the road.
After a moment, I turned to look at Jamie.
‘What do you think is happening?’
‘I have no idea,’ he admitted, ‘but something drew their attention. Who cares? Let’s take advantage of it.’
We ran up the street towards the warehouse.
SUPPLEMENTARY FILE: TAMAR
The boot pushed her straight through the open hatchway and into thin air. Tamar lashed out, desperate to stop herself from falling, and grabbed at the chain that hung from the old hoist. The rusted metal cut into her palms, but she held on with all her strength, swinging out over the road below, the hoist creaking in sympathy with her pain.
Tamar twisted at the end of the chain, turning to face the open hatchway as she swung back towards it. The figure was there again, a man dressed in military fatigues. But as she watched he seemed to fade. With a roar, she let go of the chain and let her momentum carry her through the hatchway and into her attacker. As she connected with him, her body jolted as if she had received an electrical shock. She convulsed, falling on top of the man. He seemed to be vanishing altogether but then instantly solidified, and her head spun as if with sudden vertigo. She rolled off him, trying to focus, trying to think before this man took his opportunity to strike her again. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she think straight?
She got to her feet, finding it almost impossible to keep her balance. The room around her seemed different, the walls more damaged. Great patches of daylight lit her way as she tried to run, tried to put a bit of distance between herself and her attacker. At the centre of the room there was a large table filled with equipment. Tamar glanced at it, wondering if there was something she could use to defend herself.
She caught her foot in a hole in the floorboard and stumbled forwards towards the far wall, a view of the river flying upwards before her eyes as she hit the floor. Her head was pounding, a wave of nausea rising as she pushed herself up. Hands grabbed her from behind. She kicked out with her foot, jumped up and continued to fall forward, tumbling hopelessly through the ragged hole in the wall and out into the air once more.
Shapes thrashed around her as she fell, waves of colour that she couldn’t even begin to identify before she hit the water below.
For a while there was nothing.
Then there was light and the sudden need to throw up. She had drifted to the shore, washed up in the dirt. Thick river water flooded out of her and hit the silt bank in front of her. Her bleary, tear-filled eyes watched as the ejected water seemed to contort, slapping in the sand as if it were alive. That made her nausea even worse and she vomited again. Her vision blurred and she lost consciousness once more, face down in the mud.
She woke again, better now – still confused, but the sickness had passed.
She tried to think. What was happening? She’d fallen … The man in fatigues …
Tamar rolled over onto her back and looked up. She could see the hole in the wall she had fallen from, but there was no sign of her attacker. In fact, there was no sign of anyone. She got to her feet and moved around to the main promenade, a place that should be filled with bars and people. It was empty.
She pushed her wet hair away from her face, and shook her head. Everywhere was so quiet, as if she had water lodged in her ears. She felt muffled, removed, not quite part of the world around her. It must have been the fall.
Then she began to wonder whether it was her that was the problem.
She took in her surroundings, her eyes falling on the strange, unearthly Tower Bridge behind her. She wasn’t in London; she was somewhere that was having a nightmare about London.
Panic began to swell inside her, the sense of nausea threatening to return. She knew that August dealt with some weird business. She knew that the world was not as simple, as logical, as she would like it to be. She must have been transported somewhere, to a horrible, surreal version of the city she had left.
Either that or she was still in the water, drowning, and all of this was nothing more than a hallucination as the liquid filled her lungs and the life drained out of her. Yes. That was also possible.
She climbed up from the water’s edge to the promenade above, her clothes dripping strange Mercury-like droplets of Thames water onto the pavement beneath her feet. She rubbed herself down, squeezing as much of the strange liquid out of her hair as she could. It felt oily and thick. By the time she’d finished she found herself surprisingly dry, as if the liquid had covered but not penetrated her clothes.
>
She walked along the promenade. Stepped up to the plate glass window at the front of one of the bars and pressed her face up against the glass. The tables and chairs were set out as if for service, but nobody was using them. Bottles lined the wall behind the bar but the closer she looked, the more she realised she didn’t recognise them. There were a variety of different coloured labels, the bottles a range of shapes and sizes, but the whole thing was fake, an illustration of what a bar should look like but without the fine detail. There were no visible brand names, the labels were a block colour with no text. As she looked, something moved beneath one of the tables: a fat, coiled shape that stretched, pushing the chairs away as it forced itself between them. It had the appearance of a fat worm or snake but was featureless, just a pale grey skin that glistened slightly in the lights from behind the bar.
She didn’t wait for it to notice her.
She walked further along the promenade. Was this where August had been taken? Toby said that the kidnapper had appeared out of thin air, grabbed her friend and then vanished again. Perhaps he had performed the same trick on her. That seemed likely. Whoever these people were, they could snatch you from the real world and bring you here. So where would they be keeping August – the warehouse? Is that why the other man had attacked her? Was he protecting their base of operations? She decided she must head back there. She would be careful of course; her attacker knew she was here and, unless he thought she had died in the fall (she scoffed at that, she was built of harder stuff), he would be looking for her.
She kept close to the buildings, dropping low and moving quickly when in the open.
As a child she had learned how to avoid the enemy, how to move quietly and stick to the shadows. They had caught her in the end, but she was older now, knew more. If she wanted to escape notice, then that was exactly what she would do.
She moved away from the river. A narrow passage had been formed by the buildings bulging towards one another, a distorted tunnel that creaked around her as she passed. Perhaps the buildings are alive, she wondered, maybe they’re as much the enemy as the men who kidnapped August? Everything was so strange around her she couldn’t discount any possibility.
The tunnel widened out as she entered the road parallel to the water, turning left towards the front of the warehouse. At least, she hoped that was where the front of the warehouse would be – the further she walked the more warped her surroundings became. Could it have moved?
The wall next to her glistened as if the brick was exuding some form of liquid. She avoided touching it as she ran along the street.
The warehouse came into view but it was surrounded by bizarre creatures – things that seemed human until you paid closer attention, saw them for the monstrosities they were.
She stopped running but, as one, they froze, then shifted towards her.
Tamar had developed an instinctive sense of when she was in danger. Whatever these creatures were, they meant her harm.
The warehouse could wait; she would be no use to August if she were dead.
She turned on her heels and ran, the creatures surging after her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: INSUBSTANTIAL
I would never call myself a planner. Till now in my career I have never needed to be. I am the person you give the plan to, the one who marches from Point A to Point B and sees that the hard thinking done by others is played out more or less as they saw fit.
Even outside work, in the hollow playground I call my social life, planning has not come naturally. I stare at things a lot, wondering what I should do about them. I run in an instinctive direction and hope for the best.
Sometimes this could be described as a virtue, a proof of spontaneity and a willingness to experiment. Sometimes it’s a massive failing.
‘So what do we do now?’ Jamie asked as we came to a halt a few feet from the warehouse entrance.
‘We get in there.’
‘Yeah, and then what?’
This was a perfectly good question. I had no idea how to answer it. ‘I can’t know what we’re going to find beyond that door; we’re just going to have to wing it.’
‘I’m not sure I’m happy with that.’
‘You should have asked earlier.’
‘I was too drunk to tie my own shoes, let alone discuss tactics. I assumed you had something in the way of a plan.’
‘In order to plan something you have to have enough intelligence on the situation to predict possible outcomes.’
‘Intelligence … yes, that does seem lacking.’
‘I mean in the sense of “information”.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Look, we’re not here physically, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we have one advantage over Krishnin. Those things may be able to harm us, but he can’t. What’s he going to do?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘Can he shoot us?’
‘No.’
‘Then fuck it.’
I pushed the doors open, sick of second-guessing everything around me. My hands felt numb against the wood, but the doors swung apart and I stepped inside the building.
For all that this place had presented a distorted view of London, the warehouse was familiar. It was more dilapidated, a little larger and perhaps the shadows felt denser, more laden with possible threat; but, by then, that was probably just my paranoia.
There was no sign of Krishnin, but Shining was towards the far end of the lower floor, tied to a chair.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if it isn’t Ludwig the friendly ghost.’ His left eye was puffed-up and trails of blood trickled from his nose and the corner of his mouth. Krishnin had clearly beaten him.
‘Where is he?’ I asked, keeping my voice low. ‘Where’s Krishnin?’
‘Upstairs I think. To be honest, I may have nodded off for a moment.’
Jamie had crept up behind me, the look on his face once he registered the state of Shining mirroring my thoughts exactly. I didn’t know how I was going to achieve it but there was a Russian nearby who was desperately owed a sound kicking.
I moved behind the chair, examining Shining’s wrists. They were bound with plastic ties.
‘We need to find something to cut these with,’ I said to Jamie. ‘You do it while I go upstairs.’
Jamie nodded, looking towards a nearby table. Its surface was covered with tools that I had no doubt Krishnin had been using on his captive: a pair of pliers, a small hammer, several long nails …
‘The signal,’ Shining whispered, ‘you have to shut it down.’
‘I’m on it,’ I told him, moving towards the stairs.
I was moving cautiously but then I realised that my insubstantial state had another advantage: my feet made no sound at all as I walked. I ran up the stairs.
As I reached the top, I saw Krishnin, his back to me as he stood flicking switches and turning dials on a large radio set placed in the centre of the room. He was dressed in military clothes: loose trousers tucked into heavy boots, a padded waistcoat and a heavy sweater. Operational clothing, a man at war.
Somehow he sensed me, turning as I ran towards him. His face gave me a moment’s pause. For the first time, seeing him in a clear light, that wasn’t the case – his skin was grey, his mouth half-open, his eyes terribly empty. He was a dead man standing.
I jumped at him, expecting him to fall backwards under the momentum of my attack. But I was more insubstantial than I had hoped. As we collided it felt as if I had brushed into something – a large bush perhaps, or a heavy curtain; the resistance was nothing like as much as if we had both been solid.
He grabbed for me, gloved hands taking hold of my wrists, squeezing so hard his thumbs appeared to sink beneath the surface of what I perceived as my skin.
He threw me backwards and I couldn’t stop myself falling to the floor. As I landed it was as if the floorboards had been covered with something soft. I bounced slightly.
‘Troublesome ghost,’ he said, his mo
uth creaking into what might have passed for a smile. ‘You haven’t got what it takes to fight me. But I’m impressed. I didn’t think anyone but Shining could come after me here. My intelligence was clearly incomplete. Section 37 must be bigger than I had been led to believe.’
‘Not by much,’ I conceded, ‘but more than enough.’
I glanced at the radio. To take it out was vital. I had to focus on that.
It appeared to be wired into a separate generator (which certainly made sense – this place could hardly be over-burdened with electrical suppliers). If I could pull the cables …
Krishnin kicked at my legs. I felt them move to the side, but there was no pain. Though he was able to touch me, it seemed I couldn’t be hurt by him. I rolled over and grabbed at the floorboards, trying to pull myself forward.
His boot slammed down on my back and, for a moment, it was as if I was falling apart. Whatever body I possessed, held together by thought as it was, yielded slightly at the blow. But his boot passed through me and collided with the floor beneath. I turned over, trying to ignore the sight of his shin vanishing into my stomach. I reached up for him, grabbing at his belt and trying to pull him over.
He tilted as I yanked at him, but he didn’t fall.
‘There’s nothing to you,’ Krishnin sneered. ‘You’re smoke – let me blow you away.’
‘Not while I’m still here,’ interrupted a voice from behind him. Shining had appeared, and the small hammer from the torture instruments was in his hand. He brought it down on the back of Krishnin’s head. There was a sharp crack and the Russian staggered, his hands going to the back of his skull.
‘The wires!’ I shouted. Jamie had run up behind Shining, seen the radio set and understood what needed to be done. He moved towards the generator and snatched at the power cable. A flash of electricity sparked out making his hands ripple as, briefly, they lost their cohesion. With gritted teeth, Jamie pressed on and yanked the cable from its socket. The lights on the front of the radio transmitter flashed out.
‘Destroy it!’ I yelled to him as, on my feet again, I headed towards Krishnin. The Russian, slightly recovered, had grabbed Shining’s hands and shaken the little hammer from the old man’s grip.