by Simon Kewin
“Then stop interrupting me,” said the creature. “Their security is good. It will take even me a few more moments. It's fortunate I can pull in processing power from all over the net to brute-force their encryption.”
Fer looked to Catherine for an explanation. The older witch shrugged.
There was a silence filled only by the sound of running footsteps, louder each moment. Then a metallic sproing came from the door and three lights lit up green on the lock. The Lizard King pushed and the door swung inward.
“Can you lock it once we're through?” asked Catherine, speaking loudly as if she had to for the creature to hear her.
“Obviously,” said the voice from the lock. “But then you're on your own. There are no electronics inside and the phone signal's almost gone.”
They stepped into the darkness, slamming the heavy, metal door behind them. Catherine sent a hissing werelight into the air. Instead of bricks or tiles it revealed a passageway hewn from bare rock leading downward. Strange to think of all that splendour built on top of it.
Crouching, they shuffled forward. The air tasted of clay. Here and there the floor was patches of red brick, worn and crumbling, but mostly it was cold mud. No one talked as they descended. Catherine panted heavily from the effort but she wouldn't stop.
They reached another door. This one had no lights, no buttons. Instead it was bare wood, tattered and rotten, held together by lines of iron nails. There were marks etched upon it, standing figures she couldn't quite make sense of, a repeated spiral scratch. The wood looked like it would crumble to the touch, but when Fer tried to push it open it resisted as if it were made of rock. She tried again but the door remained utterly strong. Warding magic had been worked through it. She wondered if it had been set there to keep something in or out.
Bethany? Can you open it?
It will yield for me. I am one of them. Place your fingers on the door.
Fer did as she was told. The sensation of magic flowing through her skin, magic that wasn't her, sent a shiver through her. Then the door creaked open, and they were through.
We must set the seals back in place, said Bethany. The monsters must not be allowed entry to this place. Place your hand upon the door again.
When it was done the three of them stood side-by-side, the rock and the door to their backs. Fer caught the scents of roots and worms and seeping water, but there was something else there, too. Something about the echoing space reminded her of the building they'd hidden within before retrieving Johnny's guitar. The cathedral. There'd been whispers there, too. She heard them again now, insistent, angry. Somehow they knew not to strike a werelight. Not, even, to talk. A watchful, brooding presence filled the air. A cowering fear that crackled with a burning resentment.
Faint, bobbing lights began to appear in the darkness, white and yellow like candle flames. More and more of them lit up, like thousands of ghostly stars appearing in the night. Except, they weren't only overhead. The lights were all around, surrounding Fer and the others. Some blazed brightly while others were nothing more than dim smudges. The hard wall at their back was gone. Perhaps they were no longer in a cavern beneath the ground of Manchester.
Soon the whole space glowed with the lights. Did she really have the right to ask them what she wanted? She'd promised to do what she could to help the lost and broken spirits of this world. Cait, too, had made a promise. Perhaps this would do it, give the spirits peace. Or perhaps it would be a start.
Fer's voice echoed hollowly in the cavernous space of the Shadow Town Hall. The ghosts wouldn't be able to understand her, but she wanted them to hear her voice. Bethany would translate.
“My name is Fer. Bethany Weerd is my relative and my friend. Please, we've come here to ask for your help.”
14. The Shadow Town Hall
Fer sat on the cold ground while the ghosts of Manchester thronged around her. A constant breeze blew on her face, bringing with it musty smells of cobwebs and age. In the shifting light it was hard to be sure but the echoing cavern felt huge, no ceilings or walls to be seen, no sense of the rock pressing in on her.
It was surely too vast to be a real void in the ground beneath the towering buildings on the surface. The ghosts' home had to be something like the archaeon's cave or the Tanglewood: separate from the real world, a place apart, an island or a bubble in the aether.
If the scale of the place wasn't enough to make that clear, the appearance of Bethany did. As in the bookwyrm's cave, her dead relative was a girl of flesh and blood here, not merely a whisper and a giggle in Fer's mind. All the dead were visible, flickering lights no more. They were children mainly, but one or two among them were fully grown.
Most of the ghosts were as solid as Bethany: girls and boys and women and men. To Fer's eye the dress of one or two looked modern, not very different to those of the real people on the streets. Those recently lost to the world, unquiet in their graves. The majority of the dead, though, were clearly from earlier ages, their clothes like Bethany's: simple cloths, grey smocks, patched rags.
They walked and talked in the Shadow Town Hall despite shocking injuries to their bodies. A woman with long, golden hair stood nearby, face calm as she listened intently to Bethany's words, one of her arms dangling from her shattered shoulder by shreds of flesh. The limb waved and spun as the woman moved. It didn't appear to trouble her at all.
Next to her stood a young lad who had clearly been crushed to death, his body badly deformed, his ribs caved in so that their teeth-like ends poked from his chest. Again, it didn't stop him joining in with the shouting and arguing. In truth he seemed to be enjoying himself greatly. Fer had the impression their visit was the most exciting thing that had happened to him for a long time.
Others among the gathering were less solid, glowing palely or threatening to flicker out completely at any moment. Fer watched several shrink back from the hubbub of the gathering, their translucent eyes wide as they slipped into their own private shadows. Some among the host were barely there at all, mere windblown shreds of memory and emotion, bodies drifting in and out of existence within the crowd.
As she studied them, Fer tried to set aside the troubling thought that she was little better than Hellen, giving everyone their orders at Islagray. Fer had summoned the lost spirits of the great city and now with Bethany's help she was cajoling and persuading them to do what she wanted. How was she any better than Hellen? She'd shunned the coven and its rules all her life, hated people telling her what to do, and here she was, trying her hardest to do just that.
She could see little alternative, but that didn't make her feel much better. The arguments raged on around her. Fer felt the touch of the ghosts again and again, like tendrils of fog creeping into her bones. The spirits' words made little sense to Fer, but the Lizard King translated as best he could, trying to keep up with the flow of the debate.
Bethany called for hush as the cacophony of voices rose to a crescendo. Many of the spirits clearly knew her, Bethany addressing them by their first names. When there was quiet, she set about explaining at length all she'd seen on her journeys in the other world. The lands of Angere and Andar. The great river. The undain. Then she explained about the Masters' machines, and the refinery and the pipe and what it was all for, what it was doing to people. Finally, she repeated the words Cait had given her. They had to try and stem the flow of Spirit from their world into the other. If the undain army were deprived of the stolen life-force, even for a time, it might help Andar. It might make all the difference. They had to try. The other land was a beautiful and peaceful place, and it would be crushed and burned. They had to do something.
A stick-thin girl, half her head gone from some terrible slicing injury, pushed her way through the crowd to stand directly before Fer and Bethany. Her lack of half a face, half a skull, didn't stop her talking. “No. We mustn't go outside. We're safe here. They leave us alone here.”
Bethany kneeled so that her face was level with the girl. “This might be our
chance to defeat them, Abigail. To make them pay for everything they've done.”
Other voices murmured their agreement. But a fury blazed in Abigail's one good eye. “But I don't want to go outside. I don't want anything to do with them. You should never have brought those three here. Now the living know about us and everything will change.” There was an edge of panic in the girl's voice as well as anger.
“The wards on the doors are back in place,” said Bethany. “They can't touch you.”
Abigail shook her cloven head. “No. Can't you feel them? The Masters and the monsters, battering at the doors? They followed you here. They hunger for these two witches. They'll devour us all because we're in the way. Because they can. Because we've annoyed them.”
Worry clouded Bethany's face. Were the girl's words true? Perhaps. Perhaps Fer had damned them all by coming here. She could think of nothing to say to the girl in reply.
A boy who might have been nine or ten when he died spoke next. His body looked whole and unblemished, his hair an unkempt tangle. “Why should we help them other people? No one helped us when the pit roofs caved in on us, when the machines grabbed hold to chew us up.”
Bethany put out a hand and stroked the boy's black hair with clear fondness, trying in vain to smooth it into some order. She spoke as a parent might to a troubled child. “I know, Ethan. I thought the same once, you know I did. I even told you we had to hide away. But now I've seen sunrises and woods. I've smelled the flowers and felt wet grass on my feet in the morning. I've dipped my hand in cool, running water. Cait gave me that, Cait and now Fer. And I've decided I don't want to hide any more. That was all taken from us, and we need to get it back. And if we can't, then I think we can at least stop others having it taken from them. Do you understand?”
The boy – his body little more than scraps of cloth – looked like he might burst into tears at Bethany's words. He wrung his hands, twisting and untwisting his fingers in his alarm. “They'll send us down their pipes to fuel their army like you said. I don't want that to happen. I don't want to go.”
“I understand,” said Fer, her voice said. “But we can't let them get away with what they've done.”
“We've no chance against them,” said the boy.
“There's always a chance,” said Bethany, “if we work together. I told you what happened at the White City, when Cait and I unleashed those lost souls. There aren't as many of us here, but we can attempt something similar. They need those pipes of theirs to keep them alive. We can attack them. Hurt them.”
“Ethan's right,” said the girl with half a face. “They'll come with their machines, suck us screaming from the ground because we opposed them. Because you opposed them.”
“That might be true,” Bethany conceded. “But if they do win their battles in the other world they won't leave us in peace. After the White City they won't leave themselves open to another attack. Everything will change. But if we can help beat them we'll be free. We won't have to be afraid of them any more.”
“I saw the woods once,” said another boy, a few years older than the first. One of his legs was gone, replaced by a crude wooden limb held together with iron brackets. “I'd like to see the trees again.” His eyes were wide, as if he could see the woods across the aether. “Could we go there, to the other world? I mean, if the Masters were defeated?”
Bethany, clutching her rag doll to her stained smock, looked to Fer for answers.
Fer replied in her own tongue after the wise man had translated. “If you survive and Andar survives, any of you would be welcome. Both Bethany and I found our way through the aether. One way or another I'm sure you could, too. People have always stepped between the worlds, following the shadow paths. Especially if there was need.”
Bethany translated in turn, her voice quiet yet seeming to fill the echoing space. Then she added, “My family came from there, as some of you know. Cait and Danny, who some of you saw by the tower blocks the day I left, they've gone the other way, flying through the darkness to reach the other land. For us, for spirits, it's easier. All we need is a road to follow through the shadows. Even if we don't go there, this world is bigger and more beautiful than I thought possible. I've seen much of it now and I want to see more. I want what should have been mine all along.”
There was another silence, and then the boy with the caved-in chest elbowed his way to the front of the crowd. “I'll go with you, Bethany, I'll show them. Hiding down here is boring. It's time we stuck up for ourselves. Tell me how to get to this great factory so we can make a start.”
A murmur of something like consent rang around the crowd of ghosts, although many also frowned or shook their heads in response. One or two shrank back into the shadows where they stood.
“Thank you, Georgie,” said Bethany. “Those who wish to help, follow me, we'll show you what we have in mind. We have to leave this place. With any luck the Masters will leave those of you who remain alone when we're gone. For a time, anyway.”
Bethany stepped through the throng. The spirits parted to let her pass. Some of the ghosts drifted after her, fingers reaching to touch her. Others stayed where they were or moved away.
Fer, Catherine and the Lizard King stood and followed along behind.
It was only when Bethany's voice whispered inside Fer's mind that she realised they were back in the real world. The spirits were dancing lights and murmurs once more, patches of light in the darkness. Fer, Catherine and the Lizard King had crossed back from wherever they'd been and were in the real space beneath the Town Hall. The air felt damper on her face, but not so cold. From somewhere nearby, a repeated booming sound shook through the cold air. Someone or something was attempting to batter down the door they had come through, just as the dead girl had said. Fer didn't have to seek far to find the mass of undain bearing down on the old wooden portal.
She sent a werelight bobbing into the air, lighting up the anxious faces of Catherine and the wise man. A short way ahead lay a rough pile of rocks, as if the roof of the cavern had collapsed there. Fer sent her light upward. The ceiling was only ten feet or so above. The walls, also, were nearby, far nearer than the distance they had appeared to walk. The hollow in the earth was really quite small, a far cry from the echoing cavern the ghosts had fashioned for themselves.
“What do we do?” asked Catherine. The werelight deepened the shadows on the old witch's face, making her lines of worry and exhaustion all the clearer. “How do we coax the spirits away from this place and take them to the refinery?”
Fer hadn't explained the plan she and Bethany had come up with. It had sounded so unlikely, desperate even. She had to tell them both now. Tell them or show them. “Help me move this pile of rubble,” said Fer, kneeling to begin the task. “What we need is buried beneath.”
She rolled away the larger lumps of rubble, picking up smaller shards and setting them aside as if she planned to move the whole mini-mountain a few yards to the left. Not commenting, the wise man knelt beside her to join in.
After a few minutes of work, something glinted white among the dirt and rock. Bethany had been right. There were bones there, buried beneath the rock fall.
Perhaps she imagined it, but there was a resistance, a tugging, as Fer lifted the delicate sliver of rib. It was as if the cavern wanted to hold on to its own. The cavern or the bone's original owner. Fer didn't fight it. Carefully, she placed that bone back on the ground. A few moments more scraping revealed another fragment. She touched her fingers to this one without dislodging it.
She sensed – or thought she sensed – less resistance this time. It was like coaxing a scared animal out of hiding. This bone, when she gently lifted, came away freely in her hand. She would take this one. Was it from the same person? Hard to be sure. Probably not. The jumble of smashed and fractured bones beneath the rocks was a puzzle that could never be put back together, but perhaps the original owners knew which bones were which.
Some like the boy Georgie wanted to join in the fight. He
'd been among those crushed. His voice, Bethany explained, counted for a lot. Although, the girl with the terrible skull injuries, Abigail, had been here too, and many would listen to her. Fer wondered how many of the ghosts of Manchester would actually help them.
She accepted that. In fact she preferred it. It made her feel a little better that some of the Spirits refused to do as she asked. That spirit of rebellion, of individuality, was something she understood. Making people go against their own natures was what had started all the trouble in the first place.
Catherine made a little cradle out of the woollen overgarment she wore and Fer placed the sliver there.
“Bones?” said Catherine. “And how exactly will they help?”
Fer returned to her careful work, talking over her shoulder as she scraped at the grime and rubble. “Many spirits are anchored to something in the real world. A place. A loved one. Or simply the dead person's own remains. That's why these spirits are here.”
“Bethany knows what happened?”
“Children digging away at the foundations of the new Town Hall were crushed when the rock fell in. The people decided to leave their remains down here rather than going to the expense and difficulty of recovering the bodies just to bury them again. They all died but their spirits lingered, full of anger at their lives cut short.”
“The bad thing,” said Catherine.
“The bad thing. There were twenty or more of them, just left here as part of the foundations. Their rage rang through the aether and over the decades others have answered the call. That's why the Shadow Town Hall is here.”
“And we're taking the bones because…?”
“The spirits we talked to would be lost outside. They knew little of life beyond the city. Bethany was able to travel because of Cait, but the others are tethered here, anchored to the real world by their remains. If we move the bones, the spirits can move too. Then, perhaps, once a few come the others can follow.”