Light.
She'd left an opening after all.
Her heart hammering Jessica scrabbled at the battery cover but her nails slipped and skidded off the plastic casing. She tried placing it screen down on the mattress but still the growing light crept round the edges and threw up the faintest of shadows across the bed and wall. There was no bedding left to cover it with, and imagining covering it with her own clothes made Jessica's skin crawl.
Her head was swimming. She could barely see, barely think. Acid was welling into her mouth, burning the back of her tongue.
Leaving the phone where it lay, Jessica ran for the door. Her legs tried to fold under her, but she caught hold of the handle and was about to open it when she saw –
– the sliver of light –
– bright yellow electric, pure and painful –
– coming from the landing outside.
She'd left the landing light off. She knew she had.
There was a noise coming from the street outside, underneath the wind. The scrape of metal on metal.
There was another noise, inside the house. A creak. A footstep. Down at the bottom of the stairs.
Jack.
Jack was coming.
Jessica catapulted herself away from the door and climbed back onto the bed, next to the buzzing blinding phone. Her ears stung, and she touched one to find something damp and sticky running down the side of her face. She was coming to pieces.
The phone-screen was so bright it hurt to look at. Jessica squinted, and could still see the letters of the original message.
Shadows flickered on the surface of the mattress. Shadows clustered on the wall. She could see movement, fingers and heads and hunched backs.
Another footstep. Jack was halfway upstairs.
The door was out and the window was blocked and her mouth was on fire and she couldn't think.
Jessica grabbed for the phone. The message still wouldn't go but the other buttons somehow worked and she found Amy's number, messaged –
"help me please help"
– before something brushed feather-light against the back of her knees. Something tickled the side of her face.
There were shadows all around her, and Jessica tried to –
Eleven
Amy held her tears in until she reached her own front gate, and then they flowed beyond control. The front door blurred, and it took her some seconds to find her keys and fit them in the keyhole.
Door shut, light on. Amy didn't move any further, but stood in her front hallway and sobbed until she thought she might dissolve.
Everything was against her. Tom festering away behind his smiles making her life a hell for months, and now Jessica of all people, Jessica taking all of Amy's efforts and sacrifices and spitting on them.
Maybe she deserved it after what she'd tried in Blackjacks that night? No that couldn't be right no-one deserved that, no-one deserved to be used and bullied and ground down like they did to her. They were horrible shells of people all of them and they deserved no more of her. Let them go elsewhere for help – Tom with his paranoid conspiracies, Jessica jumping at shadows. They were both as foolish as the other.
Amy couldn't help but remember then what she'd seen in Jessica's kitchen, in that split-second before she slammed the switch back down. A shadow where no shadow should be, painted across chair and table like a scorch-mark.
It wasn't nothing. She couldn't in all conscience ignore it, not if she believed everything she'd ever claimed about light and life and cycles. Life was sacred, and every nerve in Amy's body told her the shadow she'd seen was something other, something inimical.
Fine. She'd do things on her own. Let Tom – ugh, Tom – and Jessica stew without her for a while.
Taking her coat off and hanging it up, Amy dried her face. If nothing else, doing some reading would help take her mind off everything today had thrown at her.
She headed into the living room, went for her books on folklore.
Amy hadn't recognised that old woodcut the way Tom and Jenny had –
– Jenny, now, there was someone else Amy could do without after the way she'd run off to work without helping –
– but when she'd read the page that went with it in more detail, something had struck her. Tom had been looking up light and lighting failures, and how these had been going on for centuries. Amy had the feeling of having read something on that subject herself, months ago.
She dug through the disorderly books and found a slim volume, cheaply printed by local press. 'Tales of Crooksfield and the Lamber.'
Settling herself on the end of the sofa beside the useless lamp, Amy blew her nose and began to read.
When she began turning the pages, Amy didn't remember the book at all, but the more she saw of story-titles and stray lines the more it grew in familiarity and resonance, until after a minute she was leafing past irrelevant tales with full knowledge of the contents. There were the old creeds of the Grey God, the history of Langley's End, the songs of Sippian Shee and the warning of the Pure-Faced Man – all pointless. She was two-thirds of the way through the book – it had no contents page, betraying its amateur origins – before she found the chapter she'd been searching for.
'The Firebringer.'
This chapter went back not only hundreds but thousands of years, far before the well-documented histories Tom had been showing them earlier. It referenced old oral histories and local stone carvings as its sources, but sketchily – nothing in this book had real conviction to it, and Amy had often wondered if the anonymous author had simply invented the contents.
It told of clans from the northern hills bringing with them the secret of Need-Fire, and of how the local people had become dependent upon it to keep their cattle free from disease. Crooksfield had barely been a village back then – just a handful of farms and the old fort in the hills.
Amy had visited the fort once and seen the ring of packed earth and the domed hummocks of burial mounds. Thinking of what lay under them had made her shiver – the ancient kings and warriors buried in cold stone and soil.
The chapter went on to describe how the Need-Fire had fallen out of use once the Christian Kings arrived, but that the farmers of the region had continued to regard fire with more than normal reverence – once or two had been caught praying to it and punished or fined accordingly. Local tales had then arisen of a figure who wandered the hills at night, carrying the Need-Fire with him – the Firebringer, the Lightbearer, the Lord of Secrets. His anger was as feared as his protection was desired, and the fires and disappearances that sometimes struck the farmsteads were laid on the shoulders of this figure – who seemed to have no name, only his titles.
The tales had dwindled as Crooksfield grew, and after the Plague swept through in the fourteenth century they had fallen out of favour altogether – or so the book said.
Leafing back through the chapter, Amy read how this spirit was blamed not only for the starting of fires but for the cessation of them – for choked hearths and damp kindling.
There. That was what she'd remembered.
But what was the use of it? Her book made mention of rituals and customs about this Firebringer, but stopped without further detail.
Amy was about to check the other chapters when her phone went.
Jessica didn't text like that. Not unless she was in a hurry.
She was in real trouble –
– how could Amy have been so selfish HOW she'd only acted like that because she was frightened –
– there wasn't enough time, and less of it to lose.
Dropping her book, Amy sprinted into the hall, flinging her coat over one shoulder. Slamming the front door behind her, she ran into the night.
Amy reached Campion Road in a matter of minutes. It was mid-evening by now, and the wind had dropped, meaning the only sound she could hear was her own frantic panting. Her chest was on fire and her legs ached.
She staggered to the front of Jessica's house. Amy had tried texting as she ran,
but there'd been no reply.
The lights were on. Amy could see the hall and landing ablaze with electricity, and another light in the upstairs window where Jessica's room was, gleaming through the cracks in the curtains and blankets.
That wasn't right.
Amy sat on the garden wall, head spinning, and looked up at the bright windows. She couldn't see any signs of life.
Pulling her phone back out, she tried messaging Jessica again, and when that brought no reply tried calling. Nothing rang at the other end, and a robot voice told her Jessica's phone was unavailable.
That wasn't right either.
She started at the house, at the bright lights and the empty windows. The front door was open a crack, shivering in the wind
Her phone sounded, and Amy looked back at the screen to find an anonymous message. "I couldn't stop the light," it said.
Tom wouldn't send her anything that cryptic. He should know better than to send anything after she'd smashed his computer.
It looked more like something Jessica would say, but that made even less sense than everything else – how could she send it with her phone off? Why anonymously?
Looking back to the house, Amy refused to think the obvious.
As her breathing slowed to normal, she became aware of another sound. It was a metallic scraping coming from behind the house, round past the garden and by the back door. From where she'd found the footprints.
Amy tried to get up from the wall and found her legs didn't agree. She shuffled sideways, feeling the rough bricks bite through her skirt and into the backs of her knees.
There was a narrow footpath running between house and wall, from front to back. It was encased in shadows, but if she leaned sideways Amy could just see –
– why wouldn't her legs get up why –
– down to the far end.
There was a silhouette by the back door. Something flapping at the top of it, head-height.
Go.
Her feet spoke to her brain.
She had to go right now.
They found the ground, pulled her off the wall and carried her backwards.
Amy tried to stop herself, telling her legs she couldn't leave Jessica –
– but Jessica was gone she knew that, gone into darkness and shadow-stains just as surely as Jack and Hazel and Steven and who knew how many others –
– pushing the thought back out of her mind, Amy gave in and turned and ran. Ran as fast as she'd come here. Ran until her legs faltered and her throat ran raw and the metallic scraping was only a memory.
By the time Amy's legs gave out she was at the corner of her own street, her front door in sight once again. She faltered and almost fell over, and it was then that the thoughts she was trying to suppress came whirling back with a vengeance.
Her fault. Her fault, her fault herfaultherfaultherfaultherfaultfaultfaultfault –
– Jessica had asked her for help, no-one else but her –
– gone, now. Dead. Worse.
What had she done?
Amy was too numb for tears. Gritting her teeth, she began to place one foot in front of the other, pull herself back towards the flat.
What had she done?
– herfaultherfaultHERFAULT –
No more Jessica. No more eyes, no more smile, no more giggles no more soft touch of fingers as she played with Amy's hair no more friendship no more hope no more –
Amy had let her go. Amy had abandoned her.
Amy opened the door with fingers she could barely feel, sat down shaking on the hall carpet. No point going any further, just get herself where no-one could see her –
– she didn't deserve to be seen –
– so much for rebirth. Old Amy might have been vile but new Amy was worse, uncaring monster letting everything and everyone slip away –
What had she done?
Jessica. Was. Gone.
Amy made herself say it out loud, almost enjoying the pain it brought her. She did deserve that.
So close they'd been for precious seconds but it kept breaking –
– herfaultherfault –
– now she'd swept away the pieces.
Better she stay here. Better she keep the lights on. Wait for whatever was coming because whatever it was, Lamplighter or Lightbearer or Firebringer or shadows or Jack, it couldn't compare to Amy herself –
– Jessica was better off taken by it by them than having to make do with Amy, that was clear now.
– her fault.
What if it was Jessica who came? What if leaving the lights like this called up Jessica, all distorted like she'd said Jack had been?
Amy deserved that too but she didn't want it. Couldn't bear it. Couldn't face her even if it meant ending at last.
Who were they to use Jessica like that?
Who were they to take her, to terrify her?
Amy might have abandoned her but it was them who'd taken her away, the things in the dark, the shadows. They'd brought her and Jessica back together only to tear them apart, and without them Jessica wouldn't have acted as she did, wouldn't have pushed Amy away, wouldn't have made everything happen –
It wasn't only about light. Amy understood, that moment. Jessica had been safe while Amy was there.
It was being alone. Light was the catalyst, not the cause.
Jessica, Jack, Steven, Hazel – all of them must have been by themselves. Not only alone but cut off. Disconnected.
Anonymous. Blank faces in the dark.
But that meant –
– that really meant –
– it was still her fault. She'd left Jessica alone, and that had left Jessica defenceless.
Amy dropped her head into her arms, and the tears finally came back.
Time went by. Amy buried her face until her arms ached, flooded her eyes until they stung, cried and sniffed and coughed until her throat and nose were numb. Nothing changed, and she was empty.
She'd wept too many times today. Amy felt bored with herself, felt as if she could see the pattern of her life laid out and know that everything would end in tears. How predictable. She let people walk all over her, make a punching bag out of her big flabby self, and it was happening again.
Enough.
She wouldn't let snivelling Tom win. Wouldn't let the shadows take her.
They wanted light and fire? She'd give them an inferno.
If her book ran short of answers, she needed to ask someone who didn't. Amy turned to her phone and looked for Cordelia's number.
There was another anonymous message waiting for her. "Why didn't you come back?"
That brought a wrench in her insides, but Amy concentrated and pushed her guilt away again. Rang her High Priestess.
Cordelia took longer to answer this time.
"Hello? I do understand you're worried, Amy, but I told you earlier that I couldn't sense anything."
"She's gone," Amy said, surprised at how calmly it came out. "They took her."
"Who? Your friend? Amy, you're not making sense. Who took her?"
"I saw him." Amy took a deep breath. "Cordelia, do you remember the Firebringer? In that book you gave me?"
"I... think so? But what that has to do with – "
"I saw him," Amy said again. She'd never dared interrupt Cordelia before. "He was outside the house, and she was gone."
"Amy, this is – this is crazy." She could hear Cordelia hesitate, breathe in. "Are you feeling okay?"
"No. Of course not." Amy tried to rein herself in. "Look, I know it's late and you already came out for me once today and I'm sorry, but please, please, this is serious. I'm serious. I really need your help, and I need to know what you know about the Firebringer legends."
"I suppose I can have a look." There was scepticism dripping from Cordelia's voice. "How about you come over to mine tomorrow?"
"It can't wait that long." Amy took another long breath. "You don't have to do anything if you don't want to, I can just come by yours now and pick up
whatever you have and look at it myself. Please? Really please?"
"I'm not sure–”
Amy interrupted her for a second time. "I'm not asking you to do anything but lend me some books, if you have them."
"No." Cordelia sounded strange. "I mean, no, I'm not going to lend you my books and leave it at that. You know any of you can ask me for help, Amy, I've always said that–”
She had, at every opportunity. Amy hadn't thought that way before, but some new spirit inside her was twisting everything around.
"– and I meant it. Come over to mine when you can and I'll help you look, all right? Just give me time to put the boys to bed."
"See you soon." Amy breathed out, almost collapsed. "And Cordelia? Thank you so, so much."
She ended the call. Amy headed for the kitchen and made herself down glasses of water until her head stopped throbbing, then tucked the book of local tales into her bag and headed out the door for the second time that evening.
No more thinking about what might have been. She had to keep looking ahead or she'd go mad.
For all she tried to believe that, Amy couldn't help flickering back over today's faces. Tom. Jessica. Jenny.
Jenny deserved another chance. Jenny was tough, wouldn't let this get to her.
Testing as she walked, Amy sent another message over.
"Hi, sorry about flipping out before BUT Jessica's gone. Please call me?"
Jenny had a bad shift that afternoon. Everyone she rang seemed to be in a foul mood, whether it was down to being disturbed or for some other troubles in their stupid little lives, and all of them took it out on her. She'd felt too shaken by earlier events to flirt properly, and had found her voice going flat and judgemental as soon as people started complaining. She'd made no sales.
The calls had been so close together she hadn't even had time to check her phone, and so it was with a foul mood that Jenny saw the string of messages from Harry when she got off shift. This was why she hadn't given out her number – someone else must have given it to him. Probably some idiot like Steven –
– but it couldn't be Steven because Steven was gone.
Jenny shivered. This time she didn't try to walk, but waited at the bus stop with her fellow drones, ignoring every text she got.
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