Fallout

by S D Wasley

  I pulled the handbrake back on, hopelessness creeping into my heart. Léon motioned for me to move into his place and I shuffled forward so he could switch seats. He put his hands on me as he did, and I shuddered. I hated him. If I never saw him again it would be too soon. He utterly repulsed me and that tender, concerned gaze of his only amplified the feeling.

  Léon resumed driving. If only I could send a message for help. I moved my hand to my side, making as though I were fumbling with the seatbelt so I could sneak my phone out of my pocket onto the seat beside me. Oh, hell. It wasn’t in my pocket. I cast my eyes around the van desperately but it was nowhere to be seen. It could be anywhere after that rolling and spinning. Maybe it even went out a window.

  “You need to understand something, Francesca. I must tell you the whole truth. That little boy with the matches in the church ... he is no random troublemaker. He is my little son, my Henri. He is just five years of age and doesn’t know any better. He is an innocent. This accident, this fire, it is not his fault. Even now I know, from your help with the visions, that he somehow gets hold of the matches and perhaps starts the fire. I know it is not his fault. Look.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a wallet, driving with a precarious hold on the steering wheel as he fumbled to open it. “This is Henri.”

  He thrust the wallet at me and I stared dumbly at the photo behind a clear plastic window. In the van’s dim dashboard light I made out a serious-faced little boy with brown skin like his father, close-shorn hair and big blue eyes. The boy from my dreams.

  “It’s him, no?” Léon said. “The boy you saw?”

  “Your son!” I repeated in blank shock. “He’s your son?”

  “Yes.” He checked my face hopefully. “You see? You understand, yes? I know you understand children. You are good with children. I watched you with Patrick. My Henri has no mama. She left us.”

  I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was he lining me up as some kind of substitute mother for this kid? “Where is he now?”

  “In Québec, with his grandparents.”

  “Shouldn’t you be with him, protecting him?”

  Léon threw me a glance so full of fury it almost had its own physical force. “I want to be with him! But I had to find a way to save him first! None of my group could go any further with their visions, and then they all abandoned me. Owen told me what you could do. I knew I had no choice but to come and find you, to bring you back home with me. Henri’s safety depends on it.”

  I tried not to think about going to Québec to be Léon’s little boy’s pseudo-mama and said, “Why didn’t you just tell me what you needed help with right from the start? Of course I would help you save your little boy, in any way I could. You know I would.”

  His face softened again as he glanced at me. “Yes, I know you would, now. But when I didn’t know you and you didn’t know me, I couldn’t be sure. I needed to be secure in your loyalty.”

  I was silent. He must know he didn’t have the loyalty he wanted from me. Or had he deluded himself that I was another disciple?

  “Are we going to the lake?”

  “No. We will go to Gaunt House.”

  My spirits rose. Cain would be there waiting for me. “What about Owen ... the rescue?”

  “There is no rescue,” he told me simply. “That was not the truth. I needed you to come with me. When you transform, you will understand.”

  I bit back my horrified rage at this admission. “Why are we going to Gaunt House?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  There was nothing I could do after that but sit in silence while Léon drove us along back roads to the ruin set in the field. I thought at Cain as hard as I could, just in case he could somehow pick up another psychic SOS from me. If only I knew how to switch that trick on and off. When we got to the ruin, my gut clenched: no motorbike. Shit. Where was Cain?

  Chapter 14: Aspectus

  “Come, Francesca.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “They are not hurt.”

  Fear got the better of me. I opened the van door and ran wildly for the road. I had only been running for seconds when I felt myself seized around the waist, stopped in my tracks. I coughed, winded by Léon’s solid arm.

  “Please,” I panted, “let me go.”

  “Come with me.”

  “You honestly want me to go to Canada with you? Léon, it’s not that simple! How do you think you’ll get me out of the country? You’re not invincible. All I have to do is tell someone I’m being taken against my will and the whole of airport security will descend on us.”

  Léon dragged me back toward the ruin without answering. Either I’d hit a nerve or he had some plan in mind. Could he honestly make me go with him? Impossible. But I doubted myself, too. Weren’t there drugs that could make a person do pretty much anything they were told?

  “Where’s Cain?” I demanded, my voice a terrified hiss.

  “He’s busy with Helen.”

  That could have been a line to make me doubt Cain or it could be true, given Helen’s circumstances. I tried not to let his words add to my fear. We arrived at the trapdoor and Léon told me to open it. I did so, trembling with a mixture of anger and terror, and he ordered me to descend first. At the bottom, waiting for Léon to close the trapdoor and come down after me, I thought about running again. But it was no use. He was so fast. And there was nowhere to run, anyway. He pushed me toward the chamber and opened the door. Several candles were alight and when the door gusted wind into the room, shadows leapt up on the words Adsero nos on the chamber wall.

  “Give me your phone.”

  “I don’t know where it went.”

  Léon checked my pockets in case I was lying. I wanted to slap him again while he touched me but held back. I needed all my faculties if I was to get out of this situation and slapping him might backfire on me. Eventually he nodded, satisfied.

  “There are some things I need to collect,” he said, “for our journey. Cain, Liz, and Jude are otherwise engaged right now but they might still come here tonight, so we’ll stay somewhere else, you and I. I won’t be gone very long.”

  I panicked at the idea of staying somewhere alone with Léon. What the hell did he want from me? He backed away, watching me carefully before bending down to pick up a metal bar lying near the door. I’d never seen it before tonight. Dear God, he’s prepared for this moment. He transferred the bar’s weight into his other hand and I cowered reflexively. To my shock, those intense green eyes filled with tears.

  “Francesca.” He sounded impossibly hurt. “I would never harm you. I’m your protector. But I’m obliged to bar this door so you do not run away.”

  Léon stepped close and pulled me into his arms. I froze in horror as his hand stroked my hair. “Together we can save Henri. I need you there to help me intervene at the right moment, I know that now. I’ve seen how you love children, and how wise you are. You will help me save him.”

  “Can I come home after we save Henri?” I asked. Maybe Léon was genuinely only concerned about the rescue effort, not replacing the absent mama for his son.

  He pulled back and smiled, making me feel abruptly and unreasonably better. Damn him, with that gift for protection.

  “You belong with me and my group. I think once you meet Henri, you will not wish to leave anyway.” His gaze went to my neck and he frowned. “Where is your necklace?”

  My mind went blank and his frown deepened. “I took it off,” I blurted at last. “The catch wasn’t closing properly and I didn’t want to lose it at the party tonight.”

  He nodded but still looked as if it bothered him. “I will be back very soon.”

  My mind ran ahead, contemplating points at which I could try to secure my escape. The car ride to the airport. The stop back home for my passport. The airport itself. There were so many opportunities for getting away. I ignored the doubt waiting in the wings of my mind, tapping its toes, telling me Léon would cover all his bases
and probably succeed at whatever the hell he had planned to get me back to his home.

  To add to my confusion Léon fussed around me slightly. “Do you have enough to drink? Are you hungry? I should only be gone an hour or thereabouts. Then we can get away very quickly.”

  At last he left me alone in the room. He blocked the door from the passage outside our chamber, steel scraping rock as he placed his homemade bolt across the door. Then I waited for his ascent so I could thump and scream as soon as I was sure he was gone. The van’s gears gave a shriek of protest when he started it up and, although I couldn’t hear the van itself anymore, I assumed he drove away.

  The planned thumping and screaming seemed utterly pointless now I found myself locked alone in this hidden underground chamber. I tried the door of course. It was old but solid and the way he’d wedged it made it impossible to budge. Even if I had my phone I wouldn’t have had a signal to make contact with the outside world. My mind raced, trying to imagine how he could possibly have distracted Cain, Jude, and Liz so they wouldn’t come back to Gaunt House for the night. Maybe that had been a lie, too. Oh, God. What if he’d hurt them, hurt Cain? Even killed him?

  The thought was too much. I paced the chamber until a noise stopped me: a whispering. I froze, every hair on my skin rising.

  “Who’s there?” I demanded, voice shaking.

  The whispering paused, and then continued, indecipherable but perfectly audible. Tears sprang to my eyes but they weren’t tears of fear. They were tears for the uncanny: tears of shock and disorientation. I practically scampered to the sofa and pushed myself back into the familiar, lumpy fabric, praying silently. Part of me felt bitter. How unbelievably shitty that whatever it was haunting these ruins had left it until now to launch its attack ... now, while I was isolated and vulnerable.

  Okay, I had two choices. I could let whatever it was cow me into frightened submission or I could seek it out and face it head on. Some hidden, brave part of me fought its way out to claw back a little control over this messed up situation. I steeled myself to go into the black corridor and find this damned whispering spectre. However, when I stood I was overcome with an odd sensation of becoming unanchored. Floating. I looked around and there I was, still sitting on the sofa; eyes closed, face peaceful. How was this possible? I was standing here, and yet looking at myself. The girl on the sofa was me, and yet not me. Which was the real me?

  At the same moment I knew I was both me and her and stopped trying to make sense of it. There was no time to make sense anymore. A rush of sensory information settled over me: cold, pain, peace, death, shame, fear, love ... countless experiences and emotions. I turned back to the corridor and it lit up before me, hung with kerosene lanterns, filling with figures. Women. Pregnant women, young and old, thin and bony, hobbling or healthy. Their heads were mostly scarfed but where they weren’t some had patches of hair missing. Not cut short or shaved, just missing. Bald. They talked quietly, the noise rising from those familiar whispers into real conversations. Nothing distinct, merely a gentle hubbub. One or two had young children clinging to their long, old-fashioned skirts.

  Charles Gaunt’s poorhouse women.

  I followed them into the corridor, bustled along with them all. We walked much further than was possible in the chambers beneath the ruin. The cavern wasn’t this big, surely?

  “Where are we going?” I asked a woman and although she ignored me I got an answer.

  “First day at the tanning works?” she asked a young, timid-looking girl with long, fair hair.

  “Yes’m.” She sounded nervous. “I didn’t know Mr Gaunt would make me work there,” she added.

  The woman barked a harsh laugh. “None of us knew until we arrived. No rest for the wicked,” she added, giving the younger girl’s pregnant belly a look and touching the head of a little girl toddling at her side.

  “Has she grown up here?” the younger woman asked.

  “Not always. She’s not mine. I got stuck here when I got into trouble, thanks to Mr Green, the water engineer.”

  “Whose is she then?”

  “She belonged to Mary Carmody, to be sure. But Mary died.”

  “In her confinement?”

  The woman scowled. “Not bloody likely. The tanning potions is what killed Mary. How’d you think we all got so sick?” She stared at the younger girl, giving her a look somewhere between pity and malice. “Most likely the bosses at the tannery will find a different sort o’ work for you though, pretty face like that.”

  I was jostled by others passing me and fell back into a different group, trudging the corridor in morose silence. Exactly how far did this place go on? We must soon reach the walls that marked the end of the underground chamber. Where did these women honestly think they were going? And yet the corridor stretched far ahead, lined with lanterns.

  Of course.

  This chamber had not always been a chamber. It was part of a tunnel that would take us all the way to the tannery where Gaunt sold his poor wayward women as cheap labour. It was the perfect way to hide what he was doing from a town that might not condone quite such cruel treatment, even of women who’d found themselves pregnant out of wedlock. I fell behind, the women shuffling on ahead of me. Where was I now? When was I? I stopped, wondering what to do.

  A movement to one side caught my attention. Two men in filthy work clothes rolled a barrel down a dim section of tunnel before heaving it upright. They were from a different era, with their thick denim trousers and checked shirts. The fifties? Seventies?

  “No one can get to it?” one asked the other. “Caustic stuff.”

  “Who the fuck’s gonna come down here?”

  “There used to be access from Gaunt House, I heard.”

  “That’s been blocked off for years.”

  “Hope so, ’cause I dunno if this shit breaks down, Bill.”

  “We won’t leave it forever, y’bloody moron. Just until we can afford the transfer.” He shone his torch over the metal barrels. “Twenty-two drums. We’ll sort ’em out soon as we can.”

  His nervous co-worker counted. “Right. Soon as we can, eh?”

  Something nudged my foot and I looked down. A rat. Not alive though. A dead rat that decomposed before my eyes, desiccating into dust. When I looked up everything was different once again. The men had changed. Now they were clean-shaven and wore high-visibility vests, powerful lamps shining from their hard hats.

  “Oh, holy shit,” one breathed.

  “That’s what I said when Jason showed me,” the other said with a short laugh.

  The first leaned down to take a closer look. One metal drum had been demolished, half-crushed, and a foul sludge puddle had formed around its base.

  “Listen,” he said.

  Through the silence came a slow dripping noise, hollow and echoing, like a cave.

  “How far did they drill down?”

  His colleague shrugged. “Forty feet?”

  The man backed away, his expression alarmed. “That’s gone right through. Through the bedrock into the underground lake. Whatever’s in that drum’s going into the lake.”

  “Shiiit,” was the other man’s slow reply. “I’m guessing it’s tannery effluent. Thank Christ the bore drill only hit one of the barrels.” He glanced at his companion. “This is going to slow things down again. We’ll need to get the enviro guys in.”

  “We can’t let it slow us down.” The tension in the man’s voice ratcheted up a level. “The investors are already screaming at us after those damn court delays.”

  Long silence. “Well, what are you thinking?”

  Another long silence. “Maybe we can clean this up without a fuss. Can we trust Jason?”

  “Yeah. Jason won’t talk to anyone if I tell him to keep it to himself.” He paused thoughtfully. “Between the two of us, using a couple of the project trucks, we could move the barrels out of here, get them somewhere for proper disposal. We’ll find somewhere quiet to put them until we can get them all out. I’m thi
nking ... if we can get a couple of dozen out each night, store them, and then do a few night hauls to a disposal facility after the café opens we should be able to clear them without drawing any attention.”

  “Store them where?”

  “There’s the sheds on site. I can install some more. Locked sheds, away from the roadways.”

  “Sounds like a plan. How many effluent drums you got to move?”

  “About 650.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Yeah, I know. 678 to be exact.”

  “Goddamn farmers,” the man muttered as they headed away from the drums.

  The two men disappeared and I was left alone in the corridor. I went back the way I’d come, unsure whether I was still in the same underground tunnel. But within a couple of minutes dim light appeared ahead of me. I emerged into the main chamber, candles still flickering either side of the Latin words on the wall, my body seated beneath it, eyes closed. For a moment I wondered if I could be dead. Perhaps I’d died of fright. Maybe I was a spirit, wandering the underground tunnel like the others I’d been hearing beyond the walls of our cavern. But my body still sat upright, breathing peacefully. I crossed to the sofa and as I approached she held out a hand. I touched her fingertips with mine and was dragged back into my body in a great rush, as though sucked into a vacuum. I gasped, opening my eyes.

  I expected to feel drained but there was nothing like the exhaustion I’d experienced the last couple of times this ... this ability had manifested itself. I was peaceful, sitting there with the truth in my hands. I now knew how the chromium had gotten into our town’s water supply and I knew they were covering it up. The tannery developers had as good as murdered Helen’s mother. I thought about all those Gaunt House women working at the tannery last century, exposed to caustic ‘potions,’ getting sick and weak, losing their hair, dying. And Helen’s farm had been near here ... was it possible this cover up could also be related to Helen being born with a missing limb? Perhaps the effluent had been leaching into the soil and water for years, making Mrs Niven sick and even affecting her unborn daughter. And then Helen’s grandmother had misguidedly administered the poor woman spring water from the old farm every day, probably making her sicker and sicker, especially after the developer’s bore went through an effluent drum and haemorrhaged tannery chemicals into the underground lake that fed the natural spring.