Sombre

  A blur of vivid red hair flashed by to her left.

  “There!” she cried. She switched, reeled back, aimed - then lost sight. “Damn!”

  A distinct feeling of dread filled her to her very core. All was not right here. The ticking was getting louder and faster, as if it was racing to an end. Her clock now felt impossibly heavy at her breast. She coughed and let out an involuntary whimper.

  Willing herself to remain in control, she uttered. “Come on now, Miss Knight … keep it together.”

  Clenching the Remington, she stalked her prey.

  As if appearing from a magical pocket of air, a young pale-faced male, was lifted high then thrown down on a table of magazines.

  Halliday got a good look at her vicious Nightmarer. Holding thin knives in each hand, the woman was tall and heavily built, wearing a most unflattering prison issued jumpsuit. Through the long, flaming red hair, Halliday could see that her hard face was turning a deathly blue.

  “You there, halt!” Halliday bolted in her direction.

  There was no screaming and no fight-back from the Nightmarer’s victim. Submitting like a frightened pup, the citizen was every bit as pitiful as a Sombre citizen could often be when put to the test.

  The Nightmarer playfully turned the blades inches from her victims face.

  “Halt, I say!” Halliday aimed at the woman’s leg and pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped a hole as it lodged. The shot achieved nothing as the Nightmarer set to task; her expression of pure, cold concentration not faltering in the slightest. She was incredibly quick as she worked. One hand sliced the boys lips with cursive strokes - The Beating Clock was cut out cleanly with other - then flicked out of its cavity with indifference. The timepiece hitting the table with a thud.

  Halliday stood mesmerized, her gun barrel wavering. She had no idea how to play this out. She had never seen a Nightmarer as brutal as this one; had never seen such indifference shown to the Beating Clock. How was Sombre allowing this to take place?

  The boy rolled himself off the table, lips incised, a freshly bleeding pit at his chest; red wet spreading down his denim shirt. He walked off showing no trace of emotion, as if resigned to the fact that his chest was now hollow.

  “You abomination,” Halliday whispered at the Nightmarer.

  The red-haired woman turned and faced her, laughing darkly, showing the whites of her teeth, stark against her increasingly ghastly complexion.

  Halliday looked round at the bedlam this woman had just caused in Ginnifer West; breathed in the chill. She licked her bottom lip. Sombre would never had allowed this. Halliday felt those invisible fingers crawling down her back once again.

  “Ether,” she murmured under her breath. The ghoul - was only feet away from where she stood. She knew it like she knew who her own name. How it could be here and have just done what it did to Dave Bi-Plane was anyone’s guess. But it was here. She looked to the woman’s left and right, above and behind. It had somehow possessed and guided this Nightmarer to do the unspeakable. But how?

  “Where are you? Show yourself!”

  The woman just stood watching her, silently taunting, blood dripping from her knives.

  As confused as she was, Halliday sensed an opportunity.

  “Leave her, you dirty infiltrator! The Nightmarer is a product of Sombre!”

  She aimed the Remington just above the woman’s head and took a shot. Just a warning shot. Preserve the Nightmarer – she had to try and keep the poor thing in one piece, not riddle her with bullets. In a deep voice full of bombast, she hurled another warning. “Come out you coward! Show yourself! Let me sink a bullet between your eyes!”

  Then the strangest thing happened.

  The woman opened her mouth and four fingers appeared from within. A thumb pushed against the inner skin of her cheek and she made the vilest of retching sounds. The fingers then wriggled as if gesturing Halliday a hello. More fingers from a second hand appeared and wriggled on top of the others.

  “The hocus!” A stunned Halliday breathed the words and her gun fell limp in her hand. She was being mocked. The Nightmarer’s body began to lift and convulse.

  Ether nodded her head viciously.

  A horrible realization dawned on Halliday – of just what the ghoul had done; ripped the Beating Clocks out of all these citizens, left them with holes, butchered them and somehow had kept them all standing upright and in motion. It had turned the weather from hot to cold. And now, it was inside this poor woman. This thing was always going to be a step ahead, always, because it came from outside Sombre.

  “Unstoppable,” she said in awe.

  Ether finished nodding the woman’s head. Pulling her jaw wide open, one hand on top, one at the bottom, he stretched the mouth’s skin as if it were mere rubber. Halliday was speechless. She could only watch on as the jaw snapped with a sickening ‘click’ and the woman’s lower mandible was thrown to the ground like a piece of unwanted offcut. Her body was then stretched and pushed savagely outward from within, bones cracked with the contortion as cartilage made way for another someone from inside. Tearing the whole body apart like a skin jacket, Ether stepped out from the Nightmarer. Covered in blood and inner goo, as if newly born from its victim, Ether stood in a human form. He was smiling at Halliday, hair wet and congealed with gore, the thick strands coming down passed the eyes, black shining eyes.

  She hadn’t known what to expect, but it was a very unremarkable figure. Other than the eyes, he was an average joe if ever there was one. Dressed in a black - hip length coat and slacks, and a pair of knock-off shoes. Was it the hair? Ether looked down on his luck, not unlike a common street bum.

  “What will stop me shooting you dead?” Halliday said grimacing as Ether’s stench attacked her nostrils. She lifted the Remington and took aim, set right between the filthy leeches eyes. “I know you, you tainted scar! Before I shoot your unfortunate face off your oddly long neck, tell me, what brings you to Sombre?”

  There was no answer, at least no answer that made a skerrick of sense. His smile just widened. The ticking hurt her head. Her Beating Clock began pushing hard against her; as if it were burrowing into her chest. The pain excruciating, she fought the urge to double over and cry.

  “What is this peculiarity, you p-pig of a person!”

  Ether stepped toward her and snorted with excitement.

  In a reed thin voice, all she could muster, she yelled, “Confusing creeper! Take a barrel full of lead!” Holding her breath, she pumped the Remington. Bullets ripped open Ether’s cheeks, punctured through the man’s throat, and she screamed a “YAHHHHH!!!!!”

  She shot the freaky man in his smiling mouth, exploded his right eye socket. There was relief, the pain in her chest lessened and she yelled in triumph. “Wickedness from the unknown! Taste your comeuppance!”

  The aberration was to meet his end right here in Ginnifer West! She would have such a story for everyone at The Ruptured Spleen! She licked her lips, suddenly craving her Scotch and Dry from Orty.

  Amid her gunfire, she noticed the ticking had stopped - along with any motion from the monster. Halliday’s trigger finger slowed as she realized that more gunfire was pointless.

  “What? Where? You blasted snake!”

  Lowering her gun, she pushed on what was left of the head. The body was light, like a termite scavenged log.

  Ether was gone. He had left his shell.

  She poked his chest with the barrel of the Remington. The remains toppled and very un-ceremoniously hit the ground, breaking into pieces.

  Each and every one of the hollowed-out citizens of the market followed suit in a mass-collapse. Lifeless bodies folded over in unison.

  Ginnifer West fell silent.

  “Damn,” Halliday muttered.

  CHAPTER 28

  Hamish, A Clever Fellow

  The marketplace of Ginnifer West resembled the aftermath of a massacre. Bodies lay strewn every which way, drunken looking in their deadness; some slumped over tables, others
bent sideways in chairs. A lot were face down on the ground, arms folded underneath them on dislocated angles.

  Sunshine and heat had returned to the town, as had the lush green hills surrounding the market. Halliday stood with Hamish the Mender as a dozen other Mender’s mindfully lifted corpses onto gurneys and pushed them back into The Funneling. Like the bloodiest of bric-a-brac, the gorily extracted Beating Clocks gracing the market table were being gently placed into a blue tarpaulin bag.

  “I’m still a little confused, Hamish. Is this all there is in Ginnifer West? This market? Is this Ginnifer West a town or just a market? Is there more?”

  The chief Mender gave her a bemused look and shook his head. “I do often wonder, Halliday, what it is that triggers your thought patterns? Here we stand in the middle of a catastrophic mess of corpses and, let’s face it, an obliterated Nightmarer, and your focus is the makeup and origin of Ginnifer West?”

  Halliday peered down at the poor opened up woman; like a woefully performed autopsy from the heaviest of hands, exposed internal organs were squashed, ribcage split into two. Halliday thought it looked like someone had left the twin doors open on some sort of carcass closet.

  Hamish rubbed his chin and shrugged. “It’s okay I suppose. Quite sure your other versions were the same – callous, with more than a sprinkling of a common sociopath. It makes you the Gatherer you are.”

  She found herself quite angry at the whole situation, “Ether took my Nightmarer, Hamish. I didn’t even have a chance to get this one to you in any sort of reasonable state!”

  Hamish nodded and sighed. “Walk to the office with me Halliday, bring Wilder, I wouldn’t mind checking on the piston work we did in her knee’s, anyway.”

  “Nag, here!”

  S

  “How can Lucretia call herself a Gatherer, Hamish? How can she be one of us and be in league with this miscreant as well? She’s a bleeding wretch of a woman!”

  Halliday held Wilder by the stirrup, guiding her through The Funneling with Hamish walking alongside. Fast moving gurneys were being pushed by complaining, harried Mender’s. The doors to the Office’ had been chocked open to allow easy access.

  “And you have had this discussion with her, she’s admitted to it?” Hamish rubbed his hand through his thick black hair. Getting his fingers stuck momentarily, he yanked them free then gave Wilder a pat on the nose.

  “Yes! Twice, man! She’s in league with the creature!”

  Inside The Office of The Menders the scene resembled a war time hospital. At the walls, waiting bodies were piled two and three high. All gurneys were in use as makeshift bench space. The usually spotless and ammonia-cleaned floors were stained red, a male Mender wrung a mop out into a steaming bucket, slapped it back down and tried his best to clean the blood from the floor. Intense expressions were worn on faces all-round as delicate and intricate procedures were being performed amidst total mayhem.

  “What a meat factory you have here at the moment, Hamish!” Halliday said dumbfounded.

  He looked at his office with a hardness. “We can’t keep this pace up. Something has to be done. To say it’s all on top of us is an understatement. It’s never been so bad. This is meant to be a facility to configure new Nightmarer’s. Standing citizens are meant to come second, and you bloody Gatherers, a distant third! You know we’ve had Dave Bi-Plane in here twice in three days, don’t you? He’s at four strokes. Dave at four! One our most solid performers.”

  Halliday frowned and brought up something that had been niggling at her. “Is it a man? Ether? Lucretia said it was an ‘it’. I saw a man in Ginnifer West.”

  Hamish rubbed his chin. “No, I don’t think so. I think it takes on a bodied form when it needs to. As you know, no real human, animal or monster can exist here in Sombre without a Beating Clock.”

  “Well, that’s why Lucretia being in league-”

  Hamish shot her an exasperated look. “Halliday, my god! Stop it with her will you! What does it matter?”

  “What are you on about, man! Ether is the cause of all this! And she speaks to him! Goes to this other place as well!”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Hamish huffed and shook his head.

  “Oh, she doesn’t? How would you know? That’s quite a stupid assumption coming from the gob of such clever man!”

  The Mender gave her a wry smile, then he walked to Wilder, squatted down and set about pressing his thumbs into the piston joints of the machanihorse’s mechanically muscularized legs. He didn’t look up as he spoke to her. “It’s not an assumption, Halliday. It’s a fact. The only type of transportation from Sombre is to an entity on earth. Through sleep. You know this. We simply can’t exist in any other kind of place or world. If it did happen to Lucretia, I would imagine her combustion would be instant and infinite.”

  “Then how does she know of The Isolate?”

  “This is what she calls it? The Isolate?” Hamish considered, “legitimate sort of name, I guess … Oh, I don’t doubt she’s had contact with Ether, as you have had. She may have learnt of this place. She definitely didn’t go there though; maybe she’s just trying to impress you with her dark ways.”

  “She does try and do that a lot.”

  “I’m sure she does. Every Lucretia St Aimes has had a problem with every Halliday Knight. This isn’t new. She has always had a bug in her backside about your beauty and light; your wit and charm - as misguided as it all is sometimes. And you, Halliday, have always thought of her as Sombre’s only real devil.” Hamish appeared from behind Wilder’s rump, he rubbed a cleaning solution into his hands, “Wilder is good …

  “Anyway, don’t forget that Lucretia is just another Gatherer, Halliday. You aren’t all on some sort of sporting team, you know. Every Gatherer is an individual. Just because you all meet at The Ruptured Spleen and get bombed together, it doesn’t make you any kind of joint conglomerate at all, in any way. You are all working for Sombre, you are not working together.”

  The Mender hesitated and gave her a searching look, as if trying to find the answer to a question he was about to ask before actually asking it. He raised his eyes and rubbed his chin in consideration, “Hmm.”

  “What?” She didn’t like the cut of his gaze. “What, man? Spill it! I don’t appreciate your leer!”

  “Okay, well, now I’m going to contradict everything I just said to you.” Leaning back on the bench he sat on his hands and sighed. “This could be the dumbest thing I have ever had to set in motion …” He shook his head. “Just know that I really don’t know if you’ll be able to cope with this at all, and if it all goes awry, I am sorry. But, Halliday, if this Ether is to be stopped, I feel at least some of you may have to work together. Form a working alliance. Everything you see here,” he gestured to the room, “This is all unprecedented. We’ve never had anything like this before. Ether is something else. And if there is one thing Sombre won’t stand for, it is something it can’t understand or control.”

  Halliday picked up on his meaning straight away. “A band of us to go and stop Ether? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mind began to turn the idea over. She folded her arms and shrugged. “We could do it I suppose. But we will all be called in for missions, Hamish! You know that. Sombre never leaves us to ourselves for long.”

  “I think Sombre will leave you alone whilst you take this on.”

  “And Em’? She’s quite hopeless, Hamish! Sombre won’t be able to stop her crashing her plane! I can’t be there for her!”

  “It might be a good idea to make Colonel Em Contusion part of your ‘band’ as you put it. You need to be able to keep her under control while you do this. She will be of little use, but then, you never know, she might surprise you.

  “You best pick your Gatherers. As soon as you name them, they will know they’re needed, Sombre will see to that. You need to begin planning how to stop Ether. I don’t have too much advice. This isn’t a normal human, but it needs to be one whi
le it’s in Sombre. The shell it left behind in Ginnifer West was an impressive anomaly – like some sort of calcified ghost – something I can’t explain. But a body is a formation of bone, skin and organs – we have to hope that while it’s in this form it can be destroyed.”

  “Well as you saw, I tried shooting the scoundrel! It didn’t work!”

  “I would think it will need more than a mere bullet from your Remington, Halliday.” He gave her a dark look. “You have the biggest possible weapon at your disposal - The Morphia. As random and untamed as it is, it is an incredible killer; faster than a cheetah with a jaw like a metal trap. Your cohorts will hopefully be able to help you to keep it under control, so it can be used efficiently.”

  “Lucretia can control hers’,” she frowned.

  “Her Morphia isn’t as powerful as yours,” Hamish said flatly. “The Morphia Affliction is an imbalance in the psyche that relies on Personality Differential. You, Halliday Knight, are very different to The Morphia – once you engage the beast it works from the complete opposite end of a long range. In layman terms; day becomes night. Freezing reaches boiling point,” he shrugged, “good becomes evil, if you will.”

  “So, it’s because Lucretia is such a nasty prickle, that her Morphia is weak? Right, good to know,” Halliday nodded to herself smugly.

  “Well, yes, although I wouldn’t say weak, Halliday, just not as strong as yours. The differential isn’t large enough. She has a darkness to her personality that she will never shed - and will never want to.

  “Anyway, the speed that Ether uses will have to be matched. What seemed like just moments before Ginnifer West, you alerted us to Dave Bi-Plane’s felling at The Common Ground. Ether seems to be able to use Sombre’s Byway’s with incredible efficiency. His killing efficiency is even more impressive. The dissection of our Beating Clocks actually scares me, and I don’t scare easily.”

  Halliday tapped her bottom lip and pondered. “But I’ve never tried to use The Morphia’s speed. It’s mind is an out-of-control Whirly-Gig, Hamish. I’m surprised I can run in a straight line, let alone jump through The Byway’s chasing a smart monster like Ether!”