by Seth Patrick
He was in a heavy seat he recognized from the garden – wrought-iron sides and teak slats. The chair was old, the slats warped. It was absolutely fucking uncomfortable, and his wrists were tied to the bastard thing. His feet, too.
He rocked left and right to test it. And yes, it was as sturdy as it was uncomfortable. He was really very deeply annoyed.
‘Hello?’ he called. He tried to work out what the hell he was doing in there, and it came back to him in a rush. Jonah had asked him to help sedate Sly, but Sly had – he realized now – been sedated already.
They had both been the target.
‘Jonah? For fuck’s sake, talk to me.’
The shelter door clunked and opened. In came Jonah, not making eye contact. ‘I’m sorry about this, Never,’ he said. ‘I really am.’
‘Oh good,’ said Never. ‘I’m so glad you’re sorry. Just tell me one thing, OK? What the fuck?’
‘We sedated Sly, Never. With you down here working on the generator, out of the way. I figured I needed time to be able to see the shadow on her shoulder. That maybe it was hiding, and I just couldn’t see it.’
‘You made sure I was out of the way?’ said Never. He took a long breath. ‘You weren’t certain it was her.’
‘Oh, I was pretty sure,’ said Jonah. ‘It fit too well. But there was a chance I was wrong. There was also a chance that more than one of the shadows had got into the van. Imagine if you’d been there watching as I looked at Sly, and I realized I was wrong. Do you think that if you had a shadow on you, then it might just have decided to react? If it suspected it had been found out, could it have pushed hard? What might you have done? What effect could it have had on you? There was no point risking it.’
‘So you didn’t see it on Sly?’
‘No,’ said Jonah. ‘And I took my time. I think I would have seen it, if it had been there.’
‘And now you’re here to check me over.’
Jonah looked away, just for a second. That brief pause was enough for Never to feel horribly wary. ‘I came and got you,’ said Jonah. ‘I thought, maybe I was completely wrong. Maybe I wouldn’t see one on you, either. But even then, there’d be a chance they’d learned to hide too well for me to detect them, and that would have been an altogether different problem.’ Jonah looked at him with an expression that spoke of a deep weariness, bordering on despair, and suddenly Never felt a fear growing within him. A hot, dangerous fear. ‘That’s not how it’s turned out.’
‘You’ve already checked,’ said Never, slowly. ‘You’ve already seen it.’ He felt sick. He looked to his left shoulder, then to his right. ‘Where is it?’
Jonah looked a little nauseous too, he saw. ‘Before, they were always up high on the shoulder. Their fingers going down under the collarbone. Yours is on your back. Under your left shoulder blade, over to the side.’
His mouth felt appallingly dry. ‘What does it look like?’ he said. But did he really want to know?
‘It’s small,’ said Jonah. ‘Three, four inches across maybe. Flattened against the skin. The tendrils, or fingers, whatever they are . . . they spread outward, four in all.’
‘Colour?’ He did want to know, he realized. He wanted to know what this fucking thing was that had dared to infest him, that had made him scare the living shit out of his friends and put everyone at risk. He needed to know his enemy.
‘They’re not really black,’ said Jonah. ‘They’re mottled, grey, sickly things. Like something dredged up from a dead river, a rotting mollusc. It pulsates slowly, but the rhythm is close to your own heartbeat.’ Jonah looked Never in the eye, at last. ‘It’s part of you now.’
‘Enough,’ said Never. He closed his eyes. His lip was trembling. God, he felt cold. His breathing was getting faster as his dread grew. ‘I didn’t know, Jonah. I swear, I didn’t know.’
‘When you were unconscious, I took your shirt off and there it was. I saw it right away, no trouble at all, and I checked Sly again. She was clear. We had to do something with you, and I’d had time to think already. Getting this place cleared, making space so we could bring you here and ensure the thing couldn’t get out. Whatever happens.’ Jonah shook his head. He went to the door and opened it again. Annabel entered. She didn’t make eye contact, either.
‘Why is she here?’ said Never. ‘It’s not safe for her. It’s not safe for you. Leave me here, leave me tied up.’
‘I’m not going to leave you,’ said Jonah. ‘The longer it’s on you, the deeper it’ll take hold. It doesn’t have you yet, Never. You say you didn’t know it was there, and I believe you. I think I can still help.’
‘Why the hell do you think that?’ he said.
‘You still seem like yourself,’ said Jonah. ‘I think—’ He broke off, and Never could see tears in his eyes.
‘You can’t trust anything I say. Just leave me. Lock me in here.’
‘We deal with this,’ said Jonah. ‘Here and now.’
‘Annabel, please,’ said Never. ‘Get out. Take Jonah, and get out.’
‘I volunteered,’ she said, still without looking him in the eye. ‘Jonah needs help with this. And if you think we’re just going to abandon you . . .’
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please.’ He was starting to understand that Jonah was wrong, that he had known, deep down. He thought back to the van, holding the damn doors for so long, slumping to the floor in exhaustion and fear. Something had been nearby, and he’d known, but it had been too late.
He’d known. But every time his mind went there, every time he came close to remembering, he lost track of his thoughts. He didn’t recall destroying the panels or the batteries, but he did remember talking to Sly during the night, after the chaos had settled down. She’d been confused then, drifting in and out of sleep, and he’d whispered to her, making sure the others were out of earshot. He’d talked of how dangerous it was to stay here, and how – surely – she knew better places to be.
He’d set her up.
He’d done it, and then it was gone from his mind. He was like a dog distracted with a thrown stick. And now that he was aware of it, it was still trying to throw him off the scent.
‘I can feel it,’ he said. Jonah looked at him, pain and fear in his eyes. ‘I can. It wanted you all put at risk, outside. Ready to be offered up.’
Jonah’s eyes narrowed. ‘Offered up?’
‘Shit,’ said Never, appalled that he knew this. ‘Yes. Offered up. Prone. Defenceless. You wondered how anyone in St Petersburg knew the Beast was coming back.’ He stopped for a moment: when he’d said Beast, he’d felt an odd sensation. A pleasurable one. Nausea swamped him at the thought. ‘Someone like me, like me but stronger, must have held out enough to be able to tell them. It will come back, and there’ll be enough shadow-hosts to protect it. No, not just protect . . . Prepare. The others I saw in DC, they’d been taken easily, and completely. No need for them to pretend to themselves that everything was fine.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m stalling you, aren’t I? Just get on with it.’
Jonah looked to Annabel. She nodded.
‘This is probably going to hurt,’ said Jonah. He walked towards him, then around behind him. He was carrying scissors, and he pushed Never forwards gently, cutting his shirt away.
‘I liked this shirt,’ said Never. He tried to smile, but he was crying now. ‘I think . . . I think I might try and hurt you.’
‘I know.’
‘Annabel, you shouldn’t be here.
’ ‘I’m staying,’ she said.
‘Signal for them to lock the door, Annabel,’ said Jonah.
She nodded and turned, then Never heard a clunk. She turned back. ‘Done.’
Petro’s face was at the window, emotionless.
‘They’re under orders not to open up under any circumstances, until we’re finished,’ said Jonah.
‘You’re fucking crazy,’ said Never. He pulled at his restraints again, and he realized that while part of him wanted to test that they were secure, there was anot
her part of him that wanted them to be weak, to fail.
He couldn’t understand why Annabel was risking herself like this, or why Jonah was letting her. ‘Please! I can feel the fucking thing now. It’s angry, don’t you see? It’s trying to burrow in deeper. I feel it scratching at my fucking mind.’
‘I can do this,’ said Jonah. ‘Trust me. Try and hold still, if you can.’
As Never closed his eyes, he could feel something now, where Jonah had told him the creature was – a cold twisting in his back. His breathing was becoming more rapid, and shallow. Panic was flowing through him.
‘I’m going to try something now,’ said Jonah. ‘Just . . .’
Pain coursed through Never. He yelled, and when the agony subsided he was out of breath. He looked up. Annabel was staring, her hand over her mouth.
‘Jonah?’ she said. ‘Jonah?’
He turned his head as far behind him as he could, and for a second he didn’t know where Jonah had gone. Then he saw him on the floor, motionless. ‘What happened?’ he asked Annabel. He was trembling all over, now, and felt colder than he’d ever felt in his life.
‘He went to touch it,’ said Annabel, terrified. ‘He just collapsed.’ She started to walk towards him.
‘Stop!’ cried Never. ‘Annabel, I can feel it. I think . . . Oh God, I think it’s trying to come away . . .’ It was what they did: when bonded to a host, they could detach, coalesce into something tangible, something dangerous. The sensation was appalling, like a limb pulling from its joint.
Surely Annabel could see the desperation in his eyes – she turned and pounded on the door, calling to be let out. After a moment she turned back, pale. ‘They won’t open it,’ she said. ‘They won’t let me go.’
‘Let her out!’ screamed Never. ‘For fuck’s sake let her out.’ He could feel it leaving him – no, not leaving, not like that. It wasn’t letting go of the hold it had, just loosening the grip, venturing off on a long leash. His breath hitched. He closed his eyes again, and gasped when he could still see, his point-of-view low down, dropping to the floor . . . ‘Oh Jesus, Annabel. I can see what it sees. I can feel what it feels.’ And what he could feel sickened him. The anticipation, watching Annabel back away from it, horror on her face because she could actually see the thing now that it had detached from him, see it pulsate and glisten as it slowly slouched towards her.
It was the first time it had detached, the first time it had walked, and suddenly Never understood how ancient this shard of darkness was – and what it had once been. The Beast took the souls it consumed, but only the ones it had truly taken its time with were truly corrupted, transformed into mirrors of itself. The rest were mere fodder.
This had been a soul, once, but what it had been so long ago no longer mattered to it. It worshipped its new god, and in Never it had found another to convert to its unholy faith. But first, it would feed. It would enjoy feeding. The woman ahead of it, shrieking now as it drew nearer: she would suffer, and once the Beast had taken this world, it would be free to return to the corruption of its master’s heart, and bring the new proselyte it had found back, transfigured into darkness.
‘Please, Annabel,’ said Never, barely above a whisper. ‘Please get out. Run.’
Too late, he thought. Too late.
Tears poured down his face. He forced his eyes open, ripping himself out of the creature’s viewpoint, and now he could see it fully, midway to Annabel, lurching along on its newborn limbs. He could sense the tendril that still connected him to the pulsating horror on the floor.
‘Annabel . . .’ he mumbled. His strength had gone, and he knew why. The creature was draining him in its efforts to form itself from the fetid shadow-flesh it had, to congeal and harden its legs, and ready its barbed claws from noxious excretions, preparing the newly forged muscles to leap.
But worst of all, worse even than the horror burnt into Annabel’s expression, was the simple fact that he could feel its enjoyment, its anticipation of the pain it would inflict on its victim.
He could feel it, and it felt good.
‘God forgive me,’ he said. He screamed it: ‘God forgive me!’
It had almost reached her. The creature rocked back and forth on its rapidly strengthening legs. It hissed through a sham of a mouth, relishing the terror it was creating. And then, just as it was about to leap, Never had a simultaneous rush of utterly conflicting emotion as he realized that Annbel’s expression held not just horror, but a stolid anticipation of her own.
She was waiting for something, and it made Never rejoice and rage all at once. The creature, tied to him, realized it too. Something was wrong. It hesitated, uncertain.
Too late, Never thought again. His love for Annabel collided with the hatred the creature felt for her, as she reached to her side and yanked at the yellow plastic sheet beside her to reveal what it had been hiding.
A sunlamp, that burst into terrible, beautiful light.
He felt an appalling pain rip through him, and he screamed. Every part of him was on fire, it seemed; the agony grew and grew, spreading out from his back, and gathering within his head, building as if his skull would explode with the intensity of it.
Suddenly he was aware of movement behind him. He managed to turn his head enough to see Jonah standing, reaching, and he could feel it as Jonah took hold of the tendril that connected him to his abhorrent offspring.
Jonah twisted it around his arm, gathering it in.
The creature backed away from the light, its grey-black skin blistering. It turned and hissed, then ran towards Jonah and launched itself at him.
18
Jonah grabbed it as it leapt.
This had been the plan, of course: to feign his own collapse, and use Annabel to lure it out, to force it to take on physical form. That was when they posed the greatest threat, yes, but it was also when they were at their most vulnerable.
Seeing it on Never’s back had been a terrible shock at first. He’d had several minutes of angst before he realized that there was hope. This creature was small. It wasn’t like the powerful shadows he’d faced before, powerful enough to withstand the burning light a sunlamp gave out.
And he’d managed to kill one of those, in the darkness of Winnerden Flats, as it had tried to attach itself to Kendrick. Back then, the creature hadn’t had time to gain a deep hold on its victim, and Jonah had grasped the thing, pulling the creature out by the roots.
He knew that the same approach might not work with Never. His shadow, small as it was, had burrowed deep already. He hadn’t had long to formulate a plan. While the shelter was made ready, he devised their strategy.
Lucas Silva was the key.
When Kendrick had arranged for the capture of Silva, he had also devised a series of tests, experiments to ascertain the weaknesses of the creature. Exposed to the light of a sunlamp, it had rapidly returned to its host for protection.
Draw it out, he thought. Draw it out, attack it, and try to prevent it from rejoining the host.
Annabel had been horrified at the idea.
‘These things can kill when they’re physical,’ she’d said. ‘They can kill easily, Jonah.’
‘The lamp will hurt it, trust me.’
‘And what if it doesn’t come for me? What if it attacks you straight away?’
‘These creatures are very wary of me,’ he told her. ‘When I ripped it off Kendrick, the shadow was weakened just by my touch.’ Perhaps all revivers had the same effect, but it didn’t matter. He was poison to them.
‘You can grab it from Never’s back,’ she said. ‘Grab it and hold it, that’s all it will need. I’ll be ready with the light, and I’ll move in quickly when you tell me.’
‘I’ll try and apply what I did with Kendrick. I’ll make Never fear, make him feel sick at the thought of it, and then I’ll make my move. But if that doesn’t work, Annabel . . . You know what to do. Getting it as far as possible from Never is crucial.’
‘It won’t come to that, OK? You’
ll be able to do what you did with Kendrick, just peel it from Never, peel it away and watch it shrivel and die.’
There was one more thing she’d insisted on. As the shelter was prepared, she’d sent Petro to his house to retrieve heavy-duty rigger gloves. Jonah agreed to wear them, if the first approach failed.
With Never tied to the seat, terrified of what was to come, Jonah had reached out with his bare hands, suppressing his revulsion as his fingers closed in on the sickening, pulsating darkness that had taken root. He’d grasped it, and he’d pulled, and at once he’d understood that this wouldn’t work. He’d had an overwhelming sense of the depth of those roots, the moment he took hold.
He’d had no choice. He’d fallen to the ground, as planned, and Annabel had switched seamlessly into her new role. She was the bait, and the creature fell for it.
The plan progressed. Jonah took its life-tether and gathered it in; the creature turned and leapt. But there was one small change Jonah had made.
He’d decided not to put on the gloves.
*
The moment Jonah’s skin touched it, he could feel the sting. It was desperately trying to get back to its host, and its physicality was fading rapidly, thank God, but there was enough left to draw blood and slicken his hand. There was a sudden danger that it could wriggle free of his grasp. While he’d managed to gather up the strange tether that linked it to Never, he didn’t want it getting out of his grip.
‘What’s happening?’ said Annabel, sounding utterly terrified. ‘I can’t see it any more. Shit, Jonah, your hands are bleeding.’
‘I still have it,’ said Jonah. ‘It’s weakening. I don’t think it can do much more damage to me.’ Its legs were thinning out now, becoming the corpse-like ‘fingers’ that wanted so much to embed themselves back into Never’s essence. ‘Bring the light nearer, but be careful.’ He took a few steps to come around the front, so that he could see how Never was faring.