“I’m fine. You?”
“I’m fine, JC.”
“Can you see anything? Sense anything? Anything the Intruder wouldn’t want us to know about?”
“This isn’t a train,” said Kim. “It’s the Intruder’s idea of a train. A new-made thing, based on the hell trains it used to abduct the commuters earlier. There’s no driver in the engine; the train knows where it needs to go. The Intruder’s becoming stronger all the time . . . its thoughts and intentions can take on shape and form now.”
“All the more reason to brace it in its lair now,” said JC. “Before it becomes so strong it can bring us to it just by thinking about it.”
He gestured sharply to the others still hesitating on the platform, and one by one they entered the car. Natasha made a point of striding fearlessly through the open doors. Erik scurried in after her, trying to look in every direction at once. Happy positively bounded on board, smiling foolishly. Melody gave her machines a last farewell pat and stepped through the doors as though it were just another train. Happy slipped his arm through hers and beamed at her chummily. Melody pulled her arm free and slapped him round the head. The doors slammed together abruptly, and the train moved off, leaving the platform behind.
* * *
The train ride was unnaturally smooth and easy. The engine was utterly silent, the car didn’t rock in the least, and once it entered the tunnel-mouth, the train never once deviated from its path. No jolts or turns, no corners, no other platforms; only a straight line through an endless, impenetrable darkness. Not one trace of light outside the car windows, and with no stations or landmarks to judge the train’s progress, it was hard to tell if it was moving at all. Or even if they were still underground rather than moving through some great night-dark sea.
Natasha and Erik sat side by side, not looking at each other. She seemed entirely calm and in control; he was keeping a watchful eye on every part of the car, in case something should jump out at him. Melody stood with her back to the car doors, arms tightly folded across her chest, glaring about her as though daring anything to try anything. Happy was too full of nervous energy to stay in any one place for long. He tried half a dozen seats, couldn’t settle, and finally skipped up and down the central aisle, humming tunelessly and occasionally breaking into a surprisingly accomplished soft-shoe routine. JC sat quietly, thinking and planning, and Kim did her best to sit beside him though she had a tendency to rise and fall in place when her concentration wandered. She studied JC with real concern, but he didn’t notice. He was working.
And then all their heads came up sharply as the darkness outside began to seep through the windows and into the car. Slowly and inexorably, it poured in like thick, dark syrup, as though the window-glass weren’t even there. The five agents moved quickly to stand together in the central aisle, as the darkness poured in from every side and dripped from the ceiling. None of them wanted to touch the stuff, and none of them wanted it to touch them. The darkness filled up both ends of the car, then spilled forward along the rows of seats. It was utterly dark, more like an absence than a presence, as though the agents and the slowly shrinking pool of light were the only remaining life in an endless, dark nothingness.
Natasha produced something small and round from a pocket and shook it hard. A soft, yellow organic light blazed from the ball in her hand, and where it touched the approaching dark, the light stopped the darkness dead in its tracks. Natasha waved the glowing ball back and forth, reinforcing the circle of light’s boundaries.
“Salamander ball,” she said succinctly.
“Bit small,” said Happy.
“Hell,” said Erik. “You only get two to a salamander.”
The yellow light sputtered, then faded quickly away to nothing. Natasha shook the ball hard, swore briefly, and threw the thing away.
“I think it was frightened,” said Happy. “Does anyone have anything else, and someone please say yes.”
Melody produced a chemical stick and waved it. A dull green light flared up.
“Oh wow!” said Happy. “We’re going to a rave!”
“You want a slap?” said JC. “You’re the telepath; is this darkness real, or a broadcast illusion?”
“It’s the dark,” said Happy. His voice was suddenly serious, and his face was like the melancholy clown whose eyes are always sad above the painted smile. “This is the real dark, the real thing, far more than just the absence of light. This is the living dark; and it’s hungry.”
“All right,” said JC. “Not as helpful as I’d hoped, but that’s Happy for you. Natasha?”
“It’s real,” she said flatly. “Real enough to kill us all. Or perhaps remake us in its image.”
The green light from the chemical stick was already guttering. Melody shook the stick savagely and said terrible things to it, but it died anyway. The darkness crept remorselessly in, from every side at once. Some of it had already crawled up the sides of the car and joined together on the ceiling, over their heads. There was a distinct chill on the air, as though the darkness was soaking up all the warmth in the car.
“This is not a natural darkness,” said Erik, his voice high and unsteady.
“Oh, you think?” Melody said harshly. She threw her useless chemical stick at the darkness, which swallowed it up in a moment. “What was your first clue? When it oozed right through the bloody windows? Of course it’s not natural!”
The five agents huddled together as the circle of light slowly contracted around them. Kim hovered beside them, glancing nervously at the dark ceiling. JC glared around him, his eyes glowing very brightly behind his sunglasses.
“Erik’s right,” he said abruptly. “This darkness may be real, in the sense that the Intruder created it and imposed it on our world; but it’s not a natural darkness. This is all more of the Intruder’s mind games to soften us up. Right, Happy, Natasha?”
“I don’t know,” said Happy. “I can’t tell. Maybe.”
“So help me, you take one more pill without my permission, and I will knock you down and stamp on your head,” said JC. “Concentrate! Is this darkness something the Intruder created?”
“Yes!” said Happy. “Has to be. Darkness doesn’t behave like this in the normal world.”
“Natasha?” said JC.
“If the Intruder made it, then it’s real enough to kill us,” said Natasha. “But that doesn’t make it real.”
“Make a circle,” said JC. “Everyone hold hands. Kim, fake it. This is symbolic. We’re going to work together, join together, and repudiate this darkness through sheer will-power.”
“What makes you think that’ll work?” said Erik.
JC grinned. “Because I already did it once.”
They made a circle, standing very close together, hand in hand in hand. Kim stood inside the circle, both her ghostly hands on top of JC’s. The darkness was very close. There was no car left outside the circle of light. They stood alone, the living and the dead, surrounded by darkness. JC took off his shades, and his eyes were very bright.
“Be strong,” he said, and his voice was calm and comforting and very sure. “The darkness is not real, but we are. See the world as I see it, through my eyes.”
His eyes blazed up, as some last trace of the given Light shone through them. The darkness stopped, and even recoiled a little. A sudden charge went through the circle, racing through their joined hands. They all gasped and cried out, even Kim. And in that moment, the Light shone in all their eyes, bright and sharp and irrevocable; and the darkness could not stand against it. Fuelled by their joined strength of will, by their simple and brutal act of disbelief, the energy shot round and round the circle, growing stronger all the time. The six of them turned their heads and looked at the dark, and the darkness could not bear the Light that burned in their eyes. It fell back, rushed back, down the car and out through the windows; and suddenly the car was back again, just as it had been, and the only darkness was outside.
JC gently tugged his hands f
ree from Natasha and Happy, and everyone else let go. The energy was gone, the circle broken, and everyone’s eyes were back to normal again. Except for JC, who calmly replaced his shades. Happy shook his head uncertainly as the others slowly resumed their seats.
“Wow—what a rush. Tell me that’s not how you feel all the time, JC; I’d be killingly jealous.”
“That was . . . incredible,” said Natasha.
“It’s all to do with will-power,” JC said easily. “One of the first things they teach you at the Carnacki Institute.”
“I must have been off sick that day,” said Happy. “The only lesson that stuck with me was Don’t go up against the Great Beasts on your own. Along with how to fill in next-of-kin forms.”
“The Project believes in encouraging individual effort,” said Erik. “Along with basic and advanced treachery, back-stabbing, and general unpleasantness. Survival of the fittest. Trample on the weakest, glory in their plight.”
“No, I’m pretty sure that last bit is only you,” said Natasha. “Nasty little man.”
“Heh-heh,” said Erik.
“I think I’m going to go and sit by somebody else,” said Happy. And he got up and moved away from Erik to sit down beside Melody. Who immediately punched him hard in the arm.
“Ow!” said Happy. “What was that for?”
“For sneaking pills when you were expressly told not to. I’ll think of other things to hit you for later.”
Happy nodded unhappily. “I suppose a pain-killer is out of the question?” And then he broke off and looked round sharply. “Hold everything, go previous . . . I think the charge running through that circle flushed most of the chemical goodness out of my system. I haven’t felt this sober in years. I don’t like it. But I am definitely feeling things. Heads up, people; there’s someone else here.”
They all looked around, but there was no-one else to be seen. The darkness was back beyond the windows, where it belonged, and the car seemed perfectly normal.
“Are you sure?” said Melody. “It isn’t just . . .”
“No it isn’t just!” snapped Happy, up on his feet and glaring about him. “I am, unfortunately, entirely clear-headed again, and I am telling you. There’s a presence in this car. Not a ghost, not as such. But I can feel it, like a background noise, like a flickering light, or a voice calling from another room . . . It’s here, and it’s alive . . .”
“Yes!” Kim said suddenly. “It’s a man! I can sense him if I concentrate hard enough. Over there, by the end doors.”
And again everyone looked, but even when Kim pointed, they still couldn’t see anything. JC even lowered his shades for a moment, but it didn’t help. He looked at Happy.
“Not a ghost. A presence. Alive, not dead. So who is it?”
“I think . . . it’s the man who killed me,” said Kim. “Or what’s left of him.”
JC leaned in close beside her. “Are you sure?”
“He’s not entirely dead, but pretty close,” said Kim. “This is part of him. His mind, his spirit . . . driven out of his body by some terrible trauma.”
“Oh good,” said Natasha. “I was starting to feel peckish. Don’t look at me like that, it was just a joke!”
“Well, what’s it doing here?” said Melody.
“I think he’s trying to warn us about something,” said Kim. Her gaze had softened, and her voice was no longer angry. “He feels so sad, so hurt, and so very afraid.”
“Warn us?” said Happy. “Warn us about what?”
“About what’s waiting for us,” said Kim, her head cocked slightly to one side, listening. “He desperately wants to warn us about what he saw and what happened to him. He says he has a name for us.”
“What name?” said JC.
“Fenris Tenebrae,” said Kim.
“Oh shit,” said JC.
“What?” said Natasha. “What?”
“Fenris Tenebrae,” said JC, and his voice was very cold and very grim. “The Wolf In Darkness. The Devourer. One of the really old Great Beasts, and the most terrible.”
“What’s so bad about a wolf?” said Natasha.
“You eat ghosts,” said JC. “Fenris Tenebrae eats civilisations, and worlds. It is the end of all things, given shape and form and appetite.”
“Oh shit,” said Erik.
“We never stood a chance,” said Happy, softly, bitterly. “Right from the beginning, we never stood a chance. It’s been playing with us . . .”
“More fool it,” JC said steadily. “We can do this, people. There’s always a chance.”
“Of course,” said Kim. “We’ve got you.”
* * *
The train slammed into a station, and a cold, characterless light shone through the car windows. The train slowed smoothly to a halt and stopped. The five living agents and the dead woman stared out the windows. The station had no name and no markings, no destinations map, and nothing at all on the bare stone walls. No-one moved on the empty platform. The car doors opened silently and waited. JC looked at the doors, then at the station beyond.
“So this is the station the Beast made for itself. Bit basic. Not big on details, our Beast.”
“It’s not playing games any more,” said Melody.
“It doesn’t have to,” said Happy. “I think the Beast brought us here to show us its true face.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Natasha.
“To look into the eyes of a Great Beast is enough to destroy a human mind,” said Happy.
“You really do have self-confidence issues, don’t you?” said Natasha. “Grow a pair, dammit. We’re trained agents! We can do this!”
“Yeah,” said Erik, giggling. “Man up. What’s the matter with you? It’s only a big bad wolf.”
“Okay,” said Happy. “You crazy people can go out first. I’ll be somewhere else. Hiding.”
Natasha sniffed loudly, shouldered JC aside, and strode out through the waiting car doors and onto the deserted platform. JC hurried after her, not wanting to be left out of anything. Erik and Melody went next, and Happy brought up the rear, dragging his feet so much that Kim actually floated right through him to join up with JC.
The station was so cold it hit them all like a blow and stopped them dead in their tracks. The freezing air cut at their exposed flesh like a knife, and breathing in the bitter air was enough to burn their lungs. The five living agents huddled together instinctively, crowding close to share their body warmth. Kim looked at them blankly. She didn’t feel the cold at all. Both ends of the platform had disappeared, swallowed up by darkness, and the only source of light spilled out from the car behind them. Only now it was a harsh yellow light, as though it had somehow gone off, gone rotten, become . . . spoiled.
“This is what it will feel like at the end of the world,” said Happy. “When the sun has gone out, and Fenris Tenebrae has eaten the moon. When all the living things are gone, and nothing remains but the dark and the cold and the endless night.”
They looked around, but nothing looked back. They were alone on what remained of the platform, in what remained of the light. Dust seemed to be falling, softly and silently, in endless grey curtains.
And then Kim drifted slowly forward, untouched by the cold or the dark or the terrible foreboding of the place, and pointed out a small dark shape tucked away beneath the exit arch. JC made himself move forward to join Kim. There was someone sitting there, half-hidden in the shadows. A man, small and anonymous, curled into a foetal ball, staring straight ahead with fixed, unblinking eyes. His clothes were covered with a thick layer of frost, hard and unyielding to the touch, and he was locked so tightly into his state it was hard to see how he would ever rise from it again. He was still breathing. Small puffs of shallow breath steamed on the chill air. But his wide, staring eyeballs were covered over with fine misty patterns of frost.
“He doesn’t even know we’re here,” said Kim. “But I know him.”
“Is this the presence from the train?”
JC said quietly. “The man who killed you?”
“I never saw his face,” said Kim. “Just felt the sudden pain in my back. But yes; this is what’s left of him. The body his mind was driven out of.” She looked at JC. “I think the Beast showed him its true face; and this is what it did to him.”
“But what’s he doing here?” said Natasha. She’d finally found the strength to move forward to join them. The others were coming, too, each at their own pace. Natasha prodded the unmoving body with the toe of her pink leather boot, and the small man rocked slightly in place, for a moment.
“I think the Beast called him here,” said Melody. “Because it had no more use for him. It didn’t want one of its agents ending up in the Institute’s hands, or the Project’s. We might have got some answers out of him.”
Erik crouched before the frozen figure, studying him with ghoulish fascination. “Fascinating . . . Almost cryogenically preserved. I really must send someone back for him when this is all over. I could have endless fun defrosting and dissecting him.”
“He’s ours,” Melody said automatically. “Hands off.”
“You wouldn’t even know what to do with him,” said Erik.
“We’d do our best to treat him, restore him,” said Melody.
“Exactly,” said Erik. “Look at his face. The despair, the horror. You think he ever wants to wake up and remember what he’s been through? If Kim is right, he’s half-way to being a ghost already. So let him go. At least I could have some fun with what’s left.”
“You’re still assuming there’s going to be an afterwards,” said Happy. “There’s a Great Beast here, remember? Let us put all our efforts into surviving the next few moments.”
He pushed Erik aside so he could crouch before the frost-covered figure and peer into its frozen face. Erik reached for a weapon. Natasha grabbed his arm and glared at him. None of the others noticed, intent on the still body.
And then there was a sound, and they all turned to look. It was an abnormally low and unnatural growl. It resonated in their bones and in their souls, triggering a strangely familiar atavistic fear. It was a sound from the Past, out of the Deep Past, out of the ancient shared past of the human species. From when we all lived in the forest, and we all lived in fear of the wild. It was the sound of the Beast, of all the wild things that ever were. Full of hate and contempt and brute bloodlust.
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