‘I do not need your invitation!’ she snarled. ‘This was my house once! It is you who tread on sacred ground. You profane my home!’
‘Lies!’ Ishran tried to pull her from the bed, but she vanished to stand in the doorway, looking back at him. In the light she almost looked like a normal child.
‘Keep away from him!’ Ishran said. ‘Wait if you want to be born into flesh. There are other bodies in the mountains you can enter! Wait your turn with other souls, child of darkness! You Looz Drem make me sick, refusing to grow up, not accepting your deaths.’
‘Rachel does not long for life!’ she said. ‘Why would a Looz Drem crave what is impermanent? I love cold flesh, and hot stars in my hands. I sleep near him to steal his dreams! I suck on his memories. To be born to flesh would not amuse me.’
‘Liar!’ Ishran said. ‘Poor frail Rachel,’ he mocked. ‘Poor little Rachel who has to sup on the dreams of the living. Poor little Rachel whose father loved her so much he loved her to death.’
‘Here is a dream for you,’ Rachel said. ‘They are coming for you. They wish to close the doorway between dreams! A child has been born. She floats like a fly. She is filled with glass and she will feed on blood. Where will you run to, Ghormho? These people, these humans do not want you. They are driven mad, their minds are filled with flies. Will you return to rule Kondoell, Ghormho? Or will you hide here in the mountains, killing the innocent, believing your lies? The Eom has awoken and its decaying breath is escaping. When your bones are bleached white in the Outerezt, the giants will stand triumphant.’
‘An amusing dream, but save your breath to cry for your mamma.’ He sang to her.
Rachel, fair of face, Rachel filled with grace.
Blessed be my child fair.
Always shining, Rachel, golden maggot hair.
She hissed at his parody of the lullaby and he laughed.
‘Return to your dark queen!’ she said. ‘Hide behind her skirts to save yourself when the Glazrmhom, Rashka, comes looking for you. But know this, the witches are coming to close the doorway and the Wild Hunt is on the move!’ She shifted, became shadows.
Ishran stuck his fingers up at her and then turned to the bed where Lazariel lay sleeping. Oblivious of the dialogue and held helpless by Morpheus, he was far into the world of inner dreams where Ishran could not enter. The Ghormho stared down at his peaceful face, an obscene tenderness entering his heart at Lazariel’s beauty. Gently, with the tip of a clawed finger, he traced Lazariel’s cheekbone and along his jaw. What was it like, he wondered, to have a heart that pumped blood, a red, juicy jewel of a sparrow that could cause a chest to rise and fall? There would be a dignity in being human, he decided. Knowing your life span was brief would make you appreciate the more trivial elements of life. You would be unafraid to show fear, love or vulnerability. He lay down next to Lazariel, sniffing him as he always did, loving the smell of flesh that would decay as long as he did not claim his Heztarra Galaxy origins. Ishran’s thoughts went to his dead Hosthatch. How she would despise him for such sentiments; he had always been a disappointment to her. It was strange to think that she was now in the Underworld, and he would never have to endure her nagging again.
Lazariel shifted in his sleep, murmuring, and Ishran watched him with fascination. When he had first seen Lazariel and made contact with his occult group, he had thought it amusing to befriend them, just to establish control and play with their minds. But it had all been too easy, really. There was no challenge when the Bluites were so weak they didn’t even try to protect themselves and no longer seemed to care whether they lived or died.
At first it had amused him that there were no limits to what they were prepared to do for him. They had opened their minds and bodies, they had killed for him. Originally it had seemed thrilling to manipulate their minds to the point they would kill on command. He was sure that Charmonzhla had introduced him to Lazariel with the expectation of seeing the members of Light Vision become hunters, and ultimately hunt each other, when their minds had become too damaged for them to function in their world. But like most of Ishran’s ideas, it now seemed so pointless and trite. Where was the challenge when the Bluites so readily accepted the poisoned chalice of his presence into their lives?
He reflected again on the demon child’s words and realised he felt incredibly depressed. The Eom had awoken, if her words were true, reactivated itself without him. All his efforts had been in vain. He had been unnecessary. He could almost see the sneer on Rashka’s face that he had failed once again.
Useless, snivelling Ghormho! Weak and pitiable Ghormho! Would there never be an escape from the scornful words that had rung in his ears since his first hatching? It was Sati, he realised, causing his melancholy. Return to your dark queen! the Looz Drem had sneered, and the truth was he now felt he did want to return to Sati. Unlike Seleza and Rashka, the Bindisore queen had never patronised him. She may not have fawned over him like Minette and Sophie did, but she had seemed to appreciate him for who he was. Yet he couldn’t imagine her accepting him back after he had raped her stolen child Fenn. She had been so close to the dirty Faery that Ishran suspected he would find it very difficult to get back into her favour. He should never have given in to the lust that had overtaken his body that day, but he had been so enraged he had been raising a Faery changeling all these Turns of the Wheel he had lost control of himself. Even the great love he had felt for Lazariel was beginning to evaporate since Lazariel had begun to sprout his wings, which Ishran found hard to understand.
His passion for the Heztarra angel had been so intense in the early days he had found it difficult to breathe at times. Not for the first time he wondered how much he was influenced by Charmonzhla. Was he merely the angoli’s puppet for some scheme cooked up by him? He sighed, a pain in his heart, a memory of Sati. The two of them soaring together, united in their love for each other and the joy of flight. Sati with her long dark hair sitting up in bed, surrounded by rose petals she had placed around herself. Sati, offering him the first taste of a kill, her face demonic and beautiful as she restrained her own blood lust, allowing him to rip out a Bluite’s throat.
His lush, sensual Bindisore whom he had fallen madly in love with the day he spotted her soaring through the Eronth skies. They had shared many adventures in different worlds since then. Sati had loved nothing more than to disguise herself with glamour and cross into Earth to hunt unsuspecting prey. There had been other worlds that promised similar delights, but the Blue Planet was their favourite because of the quaint way the Bluites experienced their brief lives through their heart chakras. If the Azephim couple had been truthful, the fact that the prey on the unsophisticated planet was so easy to catch because of their closed down psychic centres also made Earth a most tempting destination. They had killed, dined and loved in some of the biggest cities on the Blue Planet: Paris, Berlin, New York, London. Crossing had been made even easier when the owl woman and her witches had opened the exhlaz portal, in the Blue Mountains. Now Ishran lay staring into darkness, hearing Lazariel dream beside him and thinking of Sati. He remembered how weary he became of her mood swings, her longing for a child. But he knew part of the reason he abandoned her was because he couldn’t bear the thought he had been unable to impregnate her with his egg. His cheeks flushed hot with shame. He was the Ghormho, for Alecom’s sake! Useless, fucking Ishran! Not only could he not cause the Eom to charge, he couldn’t even plant his own egg. Misery seeped through him, and the rhythmic sound of Lazariel’s breathing only reminded him of the memory of Sati’s white soft skin, her face that could transform so swiftly into a beak. Memories of wing, laughter and brilliant apricot-coloured Eronth skies.
The house was filled with dreams. They stretched from sleeper to sleeper like glistening webs, filling the rooms with beauty and a strange terror. Lazariel lay next to Ishran and dreamt of Theresa. In his dream they were swimming in a large pool together where whales basked. There were black shapes floating in the waters. Lazariel knew they wer
e sharks but he was not afraid. There was a sense of peace and completeness about this dream.
Ishran slept briefly, just before dawn, and dreamt of his Hosthatch. She was looking at him with adoration. He had never felt so cared for in his life, and he fought against wakening so he could hold onto this precious vision. Minette dreamt of a cricketer whose face she had seen briefly in a magazine. They were rising into the air together, flying over the Blue Mountains, beautiful and serene. Sophie dreamt that she had her legs and arms removed, that she was being buried outside the house. It was terrifying, but she had forgotten it completely by morning. Alan dreamt of a woman with the head of an owl, who smiled at him and wanted to teach him the guitar, except he had the feeling if he took her guitar into his hands, he would die. Daniel dreamt the same dream, cradled against Alan, but both had forgotten it by the time they woke, and so they never knew this interesting fact. Theresa dreamt she was having sex with Lazariel. It was so real she climaxed, pushing up against the sheets and drifted back to dreaming about a wild dog who was starving and eating a body covered with bees and honey.
As they slept, ghosts from different dimensions called to them in discrete tongues, but went unheard, lost to the secret language of the night. Thought patterns, gathered over time, performed nebulous mechanical duties in the rooms. Transparent and wispy, they had little life energy. A diluted woman washed clothes at an invisible sink, an indistinct series of shapes made love in different corners of the house, a slight cat stalked a long-dead mouse. Vague, inconspicuous beings, existing in a twilight world of beings. Their original creators long dead, they lacked all recognition they were not real and they clung jealously to the little amount of life force they possessed. Outside, a small owl in a gum tree watched the house with narrowed eyes.
The night held its secrets well. As daylight broke, the sleepers woke and broke the webs that had held them bound all night, and the routine of a busy day distracted the Light Vision followers from the knowledge that their Protectors had been trying to convey to them all night. Change was in the air, something terrible was on its way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sleep,
Those little slices of death.
How I loathe them.
— EDGAR ALLAN POE
Lord help my poor soul.
— LAST WORDS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1849
In her Paddington bed-sitter Veronica woke with a cry. Dawn had not yet broken. There was something in her room. Terror froze her, and she lay half expecting a knife against her throat. Shock washed over her. I am too young to die. Then she saw the thing whose presence she had only sensed, and she screamed, jumped from the bed and reached panicking for the light switch. As light flooded the room the horrible image in her mind exploded into nothing. A woman with the head of an owl, tiny antlers on her head and matted, long dark brown hair. Leaves seemed to be flying about her, a strange buzzing sensation in the room, the smell of damp earth. Oh God. Now that she was faced with an empty room she felt confused, disorientated. Shit. Had she dreamt the whole thing? She must have dreamt it! Her heart was pounding so hard she was terrified she would have a heart attack. Crossing to her tiny bathroom, she put on the light and ran some water into the basin to splash her face. She looked at her reflection in the bathroom cabinet. Her face looked unfamiliar, defenceless. There was a peeled, pinched look about her. The pupils of her pale green eyes were huge. Her short fair hair was sticking out from her head, freshly washed from the night before. Under her left eye the skin was folded where she had been sleeping on it. The clock on her bedside table which contained a pile of books and a bottle of Chanel Number 5 said 4.20 am.
Hating herself for doing it, she began to check behind the door, and under the bed and wardrobe. It had seemed so fucking real. She hoped she hadn’t woken the elderly couple who lived next door. Christ, they would think someone was being killed. If she went back to sleep now, she knew she would never wake up when the 6 am alarm went.
She made herself a cup of coffee and found the packet of cigarettes in her bag. Fuck the five a day. She needed to fill the flat with smoke and try to purge it of the damp earth smell she fancied was still about.
One cigarette followed another as she waited for dawn to break over Sydney, writing in her journal about her dream owl woman. The act of writing it down triggered the memory of an earlier dream: dogs, massive dogs, surrounded by a swarm of bees. They had been hunting something in bushland, trying to dig it up. The pack watched its leader paw at the earth, but what had happened next had been wiped out by the hideous owl woman.
Feeling her body protest with nausea over the amount of tobacco she had put in it at this unorthodox hour, she sat trying to sketch the figure she had seen. Finally giving up, she stood at the window looking out at the tree-lined street outside, watching commuters thicken as daylight broke over the city. Next door, she could hear the elderly couple playing their Greek music loudly and talking. The familiar city scenes brought some normality to her. Just a frigging dream, probably triggered by the past night’s curry after the gym. She would grab breakfast at the TV station, she decided.
Work was hell. Lisa oozed smugness, thrusting out her implanted breasts and talking loudly on her mobile phone at her desk about her recent shoot with Sting. Veronica had spent about an hour eavesdropping on her raving about his dreamy blue eyes, the outfit Trudie wore, fuming that Lisa always got the international stories while she picked up the crumbs. Stuart Evans, the producer of Australia Tonight, spent the morning calling Lisa into his office for some mutual touchy-feely, while Veronica was called in for an assessment of her latest six stories. Uninspiring, colourless and dead tuna were just three of his adjectives. Well, if you stopped assigning shoots with your dick and started rationing the work out a bit more fairly . . . But the words she longed to utter felt like barbed wire in her mouth. It would be suicide to voice what she knew the entire crew was thinking.
She spent the morning chasing a con-artist who had been ripping off pensioners with an insurance scam. At one point the creep grabbed Matt’s camera and threw it to the ground. After lunch she read the incoming email on last night’s show. Lisa received the usual quota from men commenting on her luscious breasts and lips. Bitch. Veronica was convinced she was sending them to herself. There were only two lousy emails on Veronica’s wild dogs story. One said they liked her shade of lipstick, the other was from a Blue Mountains resident:
Dogs from hell aren’t the only thing we have to worry about in the mountains. I’ve seen with my own eyes the damage that they do. Two big dogs ripped my little Freddy to pieces in front of me. It’s the witches at Light Vision that worry more of us however. In fact, some people here even question whether it is the dogs doing the damage or the witches killing for their sacrifices. There have been funny deaths and folks going missing. I’ve seen and heard things up here you wouldn’t believe. The papers in the city don’t know the half of it. I’d be willing to talk if you offer the right amount. I know Channel 3 is very interested.
The email was signed ‘Emily Robson’. Attached to it was a jpeg file of a brown dog, a kelpie by the look of it. Freddy. She bit her lip, feeling touched but wanting to laugh at the same time. Then she threw the hard copy email messages into the bin. Thirty-two comments about the size of Lisa’s breasts and how gorgeous she was didn’t really give her lunch quality digestion.
Dea Dreamer sipped from a latte in her regular Kings Cross coffee shop, nervously looking around at the cafe patrons. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The cafe was filled with its usual eclectic mix of tourists, sex workers and local residents. Still, she could never tell when it came to Phillip. Dea Dreamer knew not to underestimate him. Her refusal to go traipsing over to France on his whim hadn’t made any difference; now they were all on their way here. She knew it. She could smell them coming and there was no way, no way, she told herself again, she wanted to be mixed up with that lot. They were into some very heavy stuff, shit she could never tell anyone, people would think she
was a nutcase. Cael and Johanna were now dead for godsakes. For all her powers, Johanna hadn’t been able to overcome the evil they had unleashed in the mountains.
Under her leopard-spotted top, Dea Dreamer fingered a gold crucifix. That was why she had become a Christian. The coven thought they were strong enough to fight the powers of Satan, but they were fooling themselves. There was only one thing strong enough, and that was the Lord. Phillip hadn’t taken her seriously when he had phoned, with his insane idea about the coven re-forming to close the portal in the mountains. He had brushed aside her stammering explanation about how she was totally against the occult and had found God. Phillip, being his normal arrogant self, had simply offered to pay for her ticket as if money was the real problem. Although it was a minor factor, money was hardly the issue.
Since she was reborn, Dea could see how Phillip and Johanna had put everyone in grave danger of losing their souls. Johanna had paid most dearly of all. Dea had cried all night when she had first read about Johanna’s murder in the papers. She had been too afraid to attend her funeral, but she had spent entire days in her local church praying for Johanna’s deliverance. It was useless to talk to the priests. Dea had tried, but they had refused to take her seriously, and their expressions showed they thought she was some kind of psychotic. People found it hard to accept the impossible. Dea knew that from bitter experience. She had been like them once, cocooned and safe in a mundane world, accustomed to believe everything she saw was real, without the knowledge that if you were developed enough, you could bend and shape reality to your will.
A man entered the cafe and Dea drew her breath in sharply. He glanced at her sitting there alone, hut his gaze didn’t linger. She was a middle-aged, overbleached, overweight invisible female. Mutton dressed as lamb, her mother’s generation would have called her. Animal print top, short denim skirt and red fishnet stockings. It still rankled with Dea that men in the street no longer looked at her. Her forties had been the start of a gradual decline into anonymity. Thank Heaven for her three cats, Licky Jo, Arthur and Snowball; at least they noticed her now where men failed to do so. She watched the stranger settle himself at a table after ordering at the counter. He spread out his paper and began to read. It wasn’t the first time her senses had been startled by dark-haired men on Sydney streets. Since Phillip’s call, her anxiety had intensified until she was seeing his face everywhere.
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