by James Erith
For a brief moment Isabella very nearly gave in. ‘No, no, Daisy,’ she said as she pulled herself together. ‘You must be shattered. Get back to the cave. Call down when you’re there. It’ll give me time to compose myself.’
Daisy smiled, trying hard not to betray her nerves, and moved in close to give her sister a hug. ‘Look, you can do it. Easily,’ she said, her voice croaking. ‘Piece of Mrs Pye’s cake, sis. Easy-peasy.’
ISABELLA SMILED as Daisy’s footsteps receded up the stairwell like distant whispers.
She stared at the drawings on the wall for some time, just as Archie and Daisy had, thinking hard about what they’d been through and if these cave pictures had any bearing on their current circumstances. Wasn’t it a coincidence, she thought, that everything on the walls seemed to bear out what they’d been through? But why them? In particular, why her?
She wondered about her best friend, Sue. Had she sent her to her death by telling her about the old rowing boat? What had she done? Suddenly she missed Sue like mad and her tears stained the dry stone floor. She would give anything for her to be here now; they always had a way of working things out.
She returned to the bottom of the stairwell, wiped her eyes and listened. Daisy must be nearing the top by now, she thought, and almost immediately she heard a croaky, eerie voice echoing down, which sounded nothing like her sister’s voice.
Time to push the stone.
She ran her fingers through her hair, conscious that she was shaking almost uncontrollably. She inhaled deeply and tried to remember her relaxation classes. Centre yourself, be calm, she thought.
Breathe.
She moved out into the cave once more for a last look at the quiet, gentle pool and the curious murals and the extraordinary seal covering the entrance.
She stretched her legs and moved in front of the protruding knob of stone. A terrible nausea swept through her.
OK. Here goes, time to do it.
She put her hand on the stone and leant on it with all her weight, waiting for something to give, something to click – anything.
But however hard she pushed, nothing happened.
FORTY-SEVEN
KEMP, IN CAIN
Trapped inside Cain’s ashen body, the boy, Kemp, twisted in pain.
Why hadn’t he died? He should have run off like his friend, Archie, rather than bend to the crackpot desires and charms of a deranged ghost. He would have been better off dead – rather than endure this … this relentless torture.
Cain had wanted a body in which he might move and be free and Kemp had willingly given his.
So, Kemp thought bitterly, why didn’t Cain damn well look after him? The ghost had no understanding of rest, or the needs of human beings, and now every action forced upon him was as if rods of red hot iron had permeated every nerve, muscle and sinew in his body.
Kemp remembered the moment in the alleyway when he knew that the words spoken by the ghost were neither in jest, nor madness.
The de Lowe children, Isabella, Daisy and Archie, the ghost said, were the Heirs of Eden and had to negotiate a prophecy that originated in the mists of time. He’d laughed at first, but then the storm began to crash about and bolts of lightning smashed onto the rooftops and splinters of tile and brick flew through the air like shrapnel and the deafening noise made every hair on his body stand to attention and he had never been so frightened.
Kemp felt a burst of heat on his leg. He moved and the pain faded. How could those ridiculous de Lowe siblings save the world? I mean, they were crazy, nutty kids. Super-heroes … them? Even now, the thought would have made him chuckle … if only he wasn’t so filled with pain.
A test of Mother Nature, the ghost had said. Madness the lot of it, but here he was, trapped inside the spirit of a ghost, his body reduced to ash. He’d witnessed the storm, seen the raging fury of the lightning and rain and, by all accounts, the de Lowes had made it alive to sundown, but only just – at least that’s what he’d thought he heard Cain say. The muffled sounds of being stuck inside another body made it so difficult to hear.
If they survived, the ghost told them, the storm would cease. And when that actually happened, a flash of heat shot through him so powerfully that he swore he smelt his hair burning. They must have survived.
Kemp felt his fingers burning as though currents of molten wires extended to his fingertips. Why wouldn’t the ghost leave him alone for just one minute? He tried to scream but Cain didn’t hear him. He needed sleep, desperately, and food and water too. How long had it been? A day or two, three? It felt like a week – a month even. He yawned and felt his body moving off, his legs clumpy as if filled with wet sand. Every time he stopped a surge of intense heat smashed into him and he had no choice but to keep moving.
Kemp could see, though not well, and the sickly vapours of singed hair and fried flesh caught at the back of his throat. Every sound was muted, like being underwater. Soon his thoughts turned to death. If he refused to go on and died within Cain, then what? He’d be burned alive, probably. But would Cain remain trapped inside him until he decayed into dust or would Cain simply slip away like the spirit he was? Kemp groaned. Cain wouldn’t die – he couldn’t die – he was nothing more than a spirit who might leave him at any time.
But why had Cain tried to swap him for Archie towards the end of the storm? For a moment he’d been released – tossed out naked onto the rocks and deluged by the rain. He’d seen Archie, battered and smashed, his body covered in cuts and bruises, his head bloodied from a gaping wound, his body motionless, pale, deathly.
Tears came to him then, but they would not flow.
He thought instead of Archie’s strange hair. Kemp managed a wry smile. He knew then that his friend was too far gone to make the choice of joining Cain willingly.
So did Cain.
He remembered how the storm had lashed him with such violence that he knew he didn’t stand a chance, certainly not while naked, burnt and hungry. He had no choice but to give himself, freely, back to Cain. He regretted it. He should have refused then and there, died in the storm and let Cain drift off to be a ghost again.
Now, here he was, living in the darkness of the body where burns streaked him like a spray gun of hot oil. It was like being trapped in space, he thought, with no one there to hear him scream.
‘LOOK AT US, BOY,’ Cain whispered. ‘Here … look at me. Isn’t it magnificent!’
Cain studied his body in a tall mirror ringed with dull gemstones. Morning light shone through a vast window. He stood alone. ‘You’re here, boy,’ he said, as his voice echoed off the walls. ‘Right here inside me – that’s right; half ash, half man … or boy … only a fraction ghost.’
Cain examined his reflection. His borrowed eyes weren’t anything like the proper article – his vision filtered by a grainy film – but what a sensation to see anything when, for thousands of years, he had tuned into the vibrations and presence of things using his highly developed other sense – his sixth sense.
He studied his hands and turned them over. Then back. He clapped, the noise a muted thud. Ash puffed up and floated quietly through the air.
Oh, the joys of having a body, he thought, whatever form it took.
Cain removed his overcoat, took off his hat and returned, naked, in front of the mirror. His figure was the same size of the boy and his torso was covered in layers of flaky ash in every conceivable hue of grey. How utterly remarkable, he thought, as he rotated from side to side.
His chest was a boyish replica of the one he remembered, though his pectorals and abdomen were not so hard and toned as perhaps they once were, and the sinews and muscles on his thighs, calves and buttocks were pleasingly accentuated by the light.
His feet, he noted, were unusually large. He sprang up on his toes only to find that a couple of digits simply dropped off. Cain stared, fascinated, as they instantly re-grew.
In the reflection of the mirror, Cain moved close. His face appeared sallow and partially skeletal, with
a flaky grey chin that jutted out more than he cared. He nudged his thick plump lips, prodded his flat nose and admired his eyebrows. He touched his hair that sat in a matted mass of ash swept back off his forehead and he admired his eyes that sparkled like polished coals.
Then he noticed a strange cluster at the top of his legs. Wasn’t this awfully important? Instinctively, he reached for it, but to his horror – and just as he remembered its purpose – the appendage severed, slipped through his fingers and careered to the ground. The ash dispersed over the floor. Cain squealed.
His concerns were short lived. Quickly it re-grew and he and his organ were re-acquainted. Cain’s mood brightened. ‘Thousands of years without one,’ he roared, ‘and the first one falls to pieces!’
Cain was a living body of ash – a by-product, he realised, of being burnt to death all those years ago. His eyes narrowed. How could he forget the burning, when his powers were taken away from him. The deal, he remembered. Oh yes, The Deal. Part of his Punishment.
Cain flexed up and down on his knees. He had movement – real gravity-based movement and physical presence. Utterly marvellous. None of this floating around nonsense any more, none of this walking through walls and doors and people – although it did, from time to time, have its advantages.
He wondered if the boy would interact with him and how their relationship would work in their combined state. Would the boy do as he commanded? Who controlled who? Who was master? Cain threw his arms up in the air and clapped his hands as a shower of ash fell over his head. So far, he had been in control, no doubt about it.
All of a sudden, a feeling of heaviness overcame him. Was the boy asleep again? Cain clenched his fist and found that when his concentration focused on that movement alone, the fingers pulled themselves together, like it or not.
Cain pressed one foot down, followed by the other. He felt a modicum of resistance, like a badly-fitting drawer that needed forcing. He willed his leg to move. ‘Come on, boy – we need to be able to use these, and to good effect.’ But the movement felt sluggish, sleepy. He pulled his leg back and thrust it forward in a loose kicking motion, ash spraying. ‘Good lad!’ he said. Now he flailed his arms, moving them faster and faster until the boy trapped inside him did exactly as he wished.
‘We’ve places to go, my little friend, and there’s not a moment to lose.’ Cain said out loud. He couldn’t tell if the boy inside him could hear, but a feeling told him that the boy wasn’t entirely deaf. ‘Do my bidding, little friend of Archie de Lowe,’ he said, ‘and everything will work out fine. Just fine. You never know, we may even get to like one another.’
Hard as he pushed and cajoled, the boy inside him soon slowed to a standstill. Maybe sleep was required. A couple of hours should do the trick and then he’d be off again; Cain has returned from the ashes, the rumours said. Cain the Cruel, Master of Havilah is back, the cry went round. He could almost taste their fear, smell it. The inhabitants of Havilah were terrified of his apparent re-existence, he’d been told.
Cain knew instinctively that he needed to make the most of his presence, his new form – and fast.
CAIN RAN through the sequence of events of the past few days. Archie de Lowe, that scrawny young boy, deceiving him before the storm broke. Running off, cheating death. How, in the name of Eden, had the boy and his sisters survived? Battered and broken, they made it to sundown by the very skin of their teeth and with no magic except for the special gifts they had been given by the dreamspinners. But they were children. Children, for goodness’ sakes! How many human years? Fourteen for the eldest, twelve or thirteen, perhaps, for the other two, the twins?
When men lived to be a thousand years, he thought, children of this age would be considered little more than babes. Cain smirked. Maybe these days they simply grew up faster. But even so, it was hard to fathom. The whole area ravaged; destruction and death on a horrific scale, but these de Lowe children, the pathetic Heirs of Eden, survived. Were they possessed with luck, he wondered, or had he underestimated them? Maybe they had escaped because they were too small, too weak.
Cain enjoyed the thought but his mood turned darker, a rage building in him.
The boy shifted.
And how, he wondered, had the old man arrived? What did they call him now, Old Man Wood, or something preposterous like that? That bumptious, bungling old fool had dragged them into the safety of the cave where the water would mend them; of that he was certain. Cain gritted his ashen teeth, noting how they disintegrated and fell away, re-growing instantaneously. But did the children, these supposed Heirs of Eden, have the faintest idea what they were doing or what awaited them? Did they really understand?
Cain sighed. No, how could they? The riddles for the finding of Eden were designed for grown men, versed in magic, educated in battle, long in wisdom and the ways of nature.
He listened for the boy inside him and heard, faintly, snores coming from within. It had a strangely calming effect. Luck – that’s what it was. Maybe they had been blessed with the vagaries of fortune. But fortune, he reminded himself, never hung around for too long.
And thinking of luck, what a huge slice that Asgard, the Dreamspinner, had found him. Dreamspinners, the most ancient and mysterious of creatures, who spun dreams to living things, but were hidden from all … apart from him. Who would have thought he might travel through the blue electric middle of a dreamspinner – through its electric maghole – across the worlds?
Astonishing, really.
Cain watched as a section of his ashen finger fell and collapsed in a puff of ash on the floor. Big, ugly, spidery things, dreamspinners, like peculiar angels, or silky, spidery clouds with long, thin, opaque legs and cavernous, oval-shaped black eyes.
Cain allowed himself a wry smile. Asgard also knew the prophecy of Eden was not meant for children and, now that the dream powders in the Garden of Eden were finished, Asgard had the wisdom to understand that the only way to keep dream powders coming was to seek the help of Cain the Cruel, Master of Havilah.
Cain noticed, for the very first time, a gentle, rhythmical beat within his chest cavity.
A heart.
My goodness, he had a heart. He placed an ashen hand over it and pressed gently, feeling the steady rhythm of its beat. It reminded him of his mother, the Ancient Woman, stuck forever in the Atrium of the Garden of Eden. She would need protecting, but the Heirs would fail before it got to that point. In any case, Archie had sworn to protect the Ancient Woman.
He’d hold that boy to his promise over his dead body.
So what next? Cain thought. He removed his hand from his chest, shut his eyes and took a deep breath. What followed flooding? Cain smiled. Disease. Yes, of course. Disease came next. Now the memories flowed: the Heirs of Eden had seven earth days to find three tablets and understand the riddles they posed. Seven days to save the planet and the human race as they knew it. Actually, Cain calculated, if they escaped from the cave, it would be more like five and a half. Probably less.
Cain wondered what the ridiculous Heirs of Eden were doing. Still stuck, no doubt. Ha! The clues were painted on the walls of the cave, or so he’d been told. And it required great skills of observation, strength and speed to get out. Oh, happy, happy days, he mused. With any luck the little children would end up buried there with dear, forgetful Old Man Wood. Maybe he should pay them a visit and see how they were getting along.
Cain felt an arm stretch out wide. It was the boy in him, moving his limb without him. It felt quite marvellous, thrilling. He felt a long breath of air fill his new lungs as the spark of an idea gathered in his dark mind.
If the disease starts where the storm began, he thought, then maybe he ought to make things a little more lively, speed things up, put the humans out of their misery a tad earlier.
So … what if he were to add some of the disease particles to human dreams?
He listened to the silence of the night air, thrilled with his idea. He’d work on it. If he was right, the children would
be too busy trying to figure out what was going on to be in the least bit concerned.
And besides, by the time most of the world had received dreams from his dream powders made from the spider webs of Havilah, there wouldn’t be a world worth saving.
Cain opened his eyes and stared through the large window, his mind buzzing with a sense of excitement he’d long forgotten.
And then the road would finally be clear, he mused. Yes, after the longest time imaginable, he would lay claim to the greatest prize of all: the Garden of Eden.
FORTY-EIGHT
THE PROTRUDING STONE
At the top, Archie and Daisy listened, their ears straining, the silence unbearable. Archie nibbled his fingernails until he’d run through both hands. Occasionally he wondered if he’d heard a sound, like a click or thud, and he’d peer nervously down the stairwell.
Daisy shook her legs out, shut her eyes and imagined Isabella readying herself to push the stone lever, urging her to do it. She found that when she focused, she heard, quite clearly, Isabella’s gasps and groans and mutterings, but the words bounced off the walls, reaching her ears as garbled sequences of noise.
The minutes passed. Daisy slumped down the wall. ‘What if she can’t do it?’ she whispered.
Archie shrugged. ‘What if she’s not doing it right?’
‘There’s nothing to do wrong.’
‘Maybe it’s stuck – you know, jammed,’ Archie said. ‘It must be pretty old—’
‘Nah. I reckon her brain’s stopped … or she’s had a breakdown …’
They leaned their heads back on the hard stone and closed their eyes.
‘What do you think, Old Man Wood?’ Archie asked.
The old man stared at the wall as though completely lost, miles away, and shook his head. ‘Don’t know, littlun,’ he said, a worried look on his face. ‘Think I might have to go and help her.’ He picked himself up and stretched out his arms.