Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  As they entered, Trevor looked up slowly from the large armchair in the centre of the room, and grinned.

  Jay was unprepared for the extent of the injury to Trevor’s face, even though Juliet had told him all about it. The five lamps that Annie and Lisa had rigged up were still shining, giving Trevor multiple shadows. His arms were tied tightly to his waist with some of the rope from the dump truck (it had been one hell of a job, and had taken all of them to subdue him). There was dried blood on the ropes now. His legs were bound together and tied to the chair legs. The chair itself had been anchored. They could see that the carpet around his feet had been worn threadbare where he’d constantly scuffed with his heels, trying to rise.

  “Hello, my angel,” he said. His remaining eye was screwed shut, but it seemed that somehow he could still see, and was looking past Alex and Jay at the person behind them.

  It was Juliet.

  She stepped into the room, her face tight. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out.

  Trevor hissed in agony. The sound of a striking snake, or of coals on a fire. He began to twist his head from side to side.

  “You’re damned!” The voice that broke from his mouth was not his; it was a hundred voices, radiating hate. Now he was speaking in the voices of the Vorla.

  “You’re all damned! You’re in Hell and we’re going to feast on your souls!” Now Trevor’s face was a mask of pain again, the voices hissing away. When the spasm passed, his cracked face smiled. It was as if he had been playing a game with them. “Please,” he asked, in his normal voice. “Put the lights out.”

  “Why?” asked Jay.

  Trevor turned to “look” at him, still with his one eye shut. It was uncanny.

  “Because I’m asking you nicely?”

  “Trevor,” said Juliet. Again, the mask turned to “look” at her.

  “Sweetheart. Won’t you at least draw the curtains for me?”

  Juliet said nothing. She stood looking at him; then put a hand over her mouth in distress. “It’s not him any more,” she sobbed. “It’s not Trevor.”

  Trevor laughed. A hideous, dry crackling sound.

  “Want me to put my cock in you, Juliet? You used to like that so much. If you let me fuck you again, I’m sure you’d change your mind. Come on, you don’t have to untie me. Just zip me down and…”

  “Shut UP!” Juliet turned away from him. Jay moved to her, put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Ah-HAH!” said the Trevor-thing in its myriad voices. “A new boyfriend? Didn’t take you long, slut! Even in Hell you can find someone to fuck. Tell him what we used to do, tell him what you liked best, tell him…”

  “SHUT UP!”

  Laughter burst from Trevor’s throat; the sound of a hundred damned souls.

  Jay plucked up one of the lamps, trailing its flex. Grim-faced, he marched across the carpet and held the lamp up to the Trevor-thing’s face. The effect was instantaneous. The laughter stopped as Trevor flung his head back, breath hissing from between clenched teeth as if some bizarre pressure valve inside him had broken. Frantically, he twisted to keep his face from the light. Angrily, Jay kept the lamp shining full on him.

  “Take it away! Take it AWAY!”

  Jay stood back.

  “Tell me the truth,” he said. “Whatever you are, inside there. You know what’s happened. Tell us!”

  “You’re damned and you’re in Hell…”

  Jay swiped the shade from the lamp and thrust it forward again. The naked bulb touched Trevor’s cheek. Smoke curled from his flesh. Trevor shrieked in a hundred voices as his head snapped back.

  “Tell us!” shouted Jay.

  Trevor’s one good eye opened wide.

  And Jay lurched back in alarm as a spout of black ink erupted from Trevor’s eye socket. It ribboned in the air, black-beaded globules splattering back on to his upturned face. Alex flattened himself against the wall as Jay pulled Juliet back to the door. Trevor’s entire body was juddering now as the black liquid swarmed and bubbled like hot tar on his mask-face. Unlike any earthly liquid, it left his face and poured down around his neck. Gathering itself, it suddenly surged and flowed down over the bloodied ropes, settled on the armchair between his legs and began to splash into a pool around his feet like molasses. It writhed and bubbled there, gathering sticky streamers of itself from above, leaving no trace behind on Trevor’s body.

  Jay shoved Juliet outside with the others, and slammed the door. Only he and Alex were in the room now.

  The Vorla which had erupted from Trevor looked no more than a couple of pints of spilled pitch. It pulsated…then began to send creeping liquid tendrils of itself out over the carpet, like a spreading ink stain on blotting paper.

  “Now what?” said Alex, still flattened against the wall.

  Jay moved back again, still holding the lamp.

  The black pool looked like a live, painted spider on the carpet. Its questing liquid tendrils drew back from the light all around it, recoiling all the more as Jay advanced with the naked bulb. It probed and tested, hissing like a tarantula when it found only more light. There was a sofa on the other side of the room. Withdrawing its tendrils, the liquid surged in a thin, glistening-black flow towards it.

  “It’s trying to get away from the light!” Jay ran forward as the blackness vanished under the sofa, hunting for shadow. He bent and seized the edge of the sofa, trying to lift it. Pain stabbed in his ribs and he fell to his knees. A thin black tendril shot out from under the sofa, inches from him.

  “Christ, don’t let it touch you!” Alex pushed away from the wall, grabbed the sofa and spun it away across the room on its castors as Jay staggered to his feet again. Alex kicked hard and the sofa fell over on to its back.

  Revealed to the light once more, the Vorla shot across the carpet towards the door.

  “Grab a lamp!” shouted Jay. “Don’t let it get away!”

  The black pool spread at the foot of the door, stretching itself thinly like some bizarre, glistening draught-excluder. Alex grabbed a lamp and advanced on it.

  And then the Vorla shrank at the base of the door—and was gone.

  From the corridor, Juliet cried out, followed by Candy and Damon.

  “It’s gone under the door!” Alex flung it open in time to see the others flattened against the corridor wall, looking down to their right at what had slithered into view. Alex stepped out into the corridor and the lamp in his hands went out as the flex was yanked from its socket.

  “Shit!”

  Lisa snatched the boy away as a black rivulet flowed out through the open door and into the garden. And now Alex and Jay were out of the room and hurrying with the others to follow the Vorla as it pooled and bubbled on a cracked flagstone path, looking for somewhere to go. A hissing, glistening patch of tar no more than two feet across and a millimetre thick, it writhed and undulated in the “daylight”. It flowed to a bush in the garden for shade, found none that could end its agony and began to flop and bubble as if it were on a hot plate.

  They stood watching it.

  “There’s nowhere for it to go,” said Annie.

  Smoke began to rise from the black patch. Tentacles formed and quivered, dissolving and hissing. The pool began to shimmer, black ripples spreading across its surface. The smoke became thicker. Now the thing began to make a sound like a rattlesnake. It gathered itself, tried to rise in a column, as if reaching for the sky. Glistening black tentacles continued to open all around it, shivering; like some bizarre black sea anemone, flowering in an underwater current. The tentacles dripped and disintegrated. Smoke engulfed it as it flopped back to the ground. Now there was no black pool. Just a hissing, writhing cloud of noxious gases. The smoke swirled and parted.

  And the Vorla was gone, leaving nothing behind but a burned and smouldering patch on the grass.

  “I think that’s one up to us,” said Jay.

  “Too late,” moaned Trevor from inside the extension. He sounded grief-stricken. “T
oo LATE!”

  As one, they all turned and headed back through the main door. Alex paused only once, looking back at the blackened patch on the grass as if to make sure that the Black Stuff had really gone.

  Inside, Trevor was where they had left him. Tied to the armchair, head hanging down on his chest. He looked up when they entered the room, his eye screwed shut again. His face twisted in a snarl. Foam flecked at cracked lips as he tried to push forward, towards them. He still looked inhuman.

  “There’s more of you inside there,” said Jay, retrieving his lamp and switching it back on. “Isn’t there?”

  He stepped forward. The Trevor-thing hissed.

  “The stuff that got out,” continued Jay. “I mean, the part of you that got out. It didn’t escape. You know that, don’t you?”

  Trevor leered again, hissing. Jay waved the lamp at him. Trevor recoiled, slapping his head back against the armchair. The hissing stopped. His cracked teeth were bared.

  “It’s daylight outside,” Jay went on. “Nowhere to hide. That’s why you’re in so much pain, isn’t it? That’s what you mean by ‘too late’. You’ve been trapped inside Trevor too long, and now you can’t get out. Not during the day, when it’s light. Not during the last few nights, too close to the bonfire. Last night, all these lamps were keeping you inside. Now…it’s daylight outside. And there’s nowhere for you to go. So all we have to do is repeat the process, to force you out where we can deal with you. Bring the light really close…”

  Jay stepped forward, holding out the bulb, checking that he wasn’t stretching the flex. Trevor twisted his head from side to side and moaned.

  “…and wait for more of you to come out. We’ll just keep on doing that, until there’s no more of you left in poor old Trevor.”

  “Juliet,” groaned Trevor. “It’s me. Don’t let him hurt me. I’m sorry for what I did. Really. It was the Vorla made me do those things to you. Just make him go away and stop hurting me…”

  “Jay,” said Juliet. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe…”

  “You know you were right,” said Jay, not taking his eyes from the figure tied to the armchair. “It knows it’s stuck, and it’s using Trevor’s voice because it thinks it might help. Well…it won’t.”

  Trevor was still then. The pleading expression was gone. His face was fixed where Jay stood. Waiting.

  “But there is a way out for you,” continued Jay. “Only one way. And I can set you free. If I want to.”

  Trevor remained motionless, his face set.

  Jay waited again.

  At last, the Vorla inside Trevor said: “How?”

  Jay nodded, a grim smile on his face. “I’ll take you back. Back to the pit. Back to the Chasm. Where the dark is. You can go back down there.”

  “Back to the others?”

  “Yes. Back to the rest of the Vorla. But there’s a condition.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’ve got to tell us the truth.”

  “The truth?” The Trevor-thing began to chuckle. The sound was liquid, as if the black tar inside were churning in his lungs.

  “You’ve got to tell us what’s happened to Edmonville. What’s happened to us. Where everyone else has gone. And what you…what the Vorla really is.”

  The Trevor-thing stopped chuckling. It was silent again for a long time. Grim-faced, Jay waited. Behind him, the others stood tensely, mesmerised, waiting.

  “You’ve been shown the truth,” hissed the thing. “Don’t you see? You’ve been SHOWN! This way for the sorrowful city! This way for eternal suffering! This way to join the lost people! You’re in Hell, you’re…”

  “You’re a fucking liar,” said Jay, and he stepped forward, holding the naked bulb out towards the Trevor-thing’s face. Instantly, he was silent, twisting his head back again in a frenzy. “So I think we’ll just squeeze every last drop of you out, and watch you evaporate like that thing out there.”

  “You’ll let us go back to the Chasm? You’ll set us free?”

  “I’ll take you to the edge, chuck you right over myself. How about that?”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart…and hope to die.” Jay stood back again.

  “There may be punishment. If we reveal what all the Vorla has hidden.”

  “Your choice. The truth and nothing but. Or else…” Jay held the lamp up to his own face.

  Trevor made a noise in his throat then. Like a ventriloquist trying to suppress several voices that wanted to erupt from his mouth at the same time. A strangled, squirming sound. He swallowed, and the noises were still. And then a sly smile came over his horrifying face, a hideous travesty of the face that Juliet had once known. A face that had kissed her. A face that she once thought she might have loved.

  “You’re wrong, Juliet,” leered that face, and Juliet had to look away. “About Trevor being gone. He’s deep down here somewhere. The…important…part of him, that is. What he’s done, what he is…it’s all a part of us. When we return to the Chasm, all the fear and the pain and the misery that Trevor gave…will all be a new part of the Vorla.”

  “Make your mind up!” snapped Jay. “Now!”

  “We’ve made our minds up,” said the Trevor-thing. “We’ll tell you…and we’ll tell darling Juliet…the others must go.”

  “They’re staying,” said Jay. “They’ve as much right to hear what you’ve got to say.”

  “No.”

  Jay stepped forward angrily. Trevor hissed.

  “Let me out of here!” snapped Candy from the corridor. “I need a drink.”

  “You’ll tell us all!” shouted Jay.

  “NO!”

  “Why?”

  “Jay,” said Alex. “It’s okay. The important thing is to get the truth. Annie, maybe it’s best if we…”

  Annie nodded. Whatever the reason why the Trevor-thing wanted them all out, at least Jay might get the truth out of him and he could tell them all later.

  “But you must draw the curtains,” said the Trevor-thing. “And turn off some of the lights.”

  “No,” said Jay simply.

  “Tuh-trick,” said Gordon.

  Jay looked back. “He’s tied tight. And you saw what happened to the Black Stuff in the light. Annie, maybe you and Lisa could make sure that the generator’s okay.” Annie nodded. The last thing they needed now was for the lights in the extension to fail.

  “Outside,” said Gordon, backing towards the door as the others left the room. “Me. Right outside. Any tuh-trick and…” Gordon slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand.

  “Thanks.” Jay nodded, and turned back to the Trevor-thing. Juliet, gritting her teeth, moved to sit on another chair.

  The door closed.

  Now all the others were outside. Waiting.

  “Sitting comfortably?” leered the Trevor-thing, his eye screwed shut but “looking” directly at Juliet.

  “Get on with it,” said Jay.

  “If there wasn’t a Hell before,” said the thing, and laughed, “then there is now…”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Truth

  Gordon, Alex and Annie shuffled and paced in the garden, watching the day grow lighter and trying to think of something to say to each other that might make some kind of difference, or give some kind of general comfort. No words of comfort would come, and the fact that the answers to what had happened to them all might even now be coming out of the thing that had once been Trevor Blake was adding to their agitation. Annie had checked the generators. There would be no problem, and she was going to leave the back floodlights burning all the time, given the nature of their prisoner in the extension. Lisa was still holding the boy, casting anxious glances out at them from the back garden door of the boarding house. Damon was leaning against the back wall, still nursing his hangover and pretending that nothing he’d seen or heard that morning had anything to do with him. Alex moved back to the burned patch, where the small part of the Vorla had evaporated, and began pushing
at the shrivelled grass with the toe of one shoe. He thought again of what had happened in the mini-mart, and of seeing what seemed to be the son they’d lost. Candy had retreated to the bottle and hadn’t been able to discuss it with him any more. But he knew that despite the alcohol she was pouring into herself, she couldn’t help but think about it. Neither could he. But what was the point of playing and replaying the events of that night in their heads, over and over? There was no answer.

  But now there might be answers. Answers to everything.

  From the mouth of the thing that had once been Trevor Blake.

  “Al…Alex.”

  He looked back at Gordon, and at his troubled expression.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said, walking slowly back to him. “If they need us, they’ll yell.”

  “No,” said Gordon. “Not that.”

  “We’re all under strain, Gordon. Everything that’s happened…”

  “No!” Gordon struggled to find words. “Want…Alex…”

  “Okay. Do it slowly.”

  “Tell…tell you…something.”

  “All right, I’m listening.”

  Alex watched Gordon struggling to find the words. He looked as if he might begin to weep.

  Alex raised a hand, almost put it on his shoulder.

  Then Gordon shook his head and whirled away; confused, angered to the point of tears at his inability, and disgusted with himself. Alex tried to say something reassuring, but couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t be mistaken for a patronising attitude.

  Gordon walked to the extension, and stared hard at the door, listening for any sounds within. It seemed that he just needed one excuse, the slightest noise, or evidence that the Trevor-thing was trying some kind of trick, and he would burst in there and strangle the Vorla’s host with his bare hands. He’d wanted so much to be able to tell Alex. No point in even approaching Candy. But Alex needed to know. Needed to know what had happened the previous night after everyone had gone to bed, when the night-children had visited. And yet wasn’t there another part of him that didn’t really want to share it with anyone? Gordon shook his head, and squatted down in front of the extension door, confused.