by Robin Jarvis
The Ismus took a moment to comprehend what he’d done. Then he yelled at the Black Face Dames, who sprang forward. One of them pulled at the back panel, while the other hurled the Ismus to the floor and dived on top of him.
Whooping, Spencer ran for the steps. He never reached them. The explosion blew him from the gatehouse roof. Before he blacked out, he smiled. One more cliff jump.
In the realm of Mooncaster, Lee looked up. The talking fox had bid him adieu some moments ago. The cave entrance was ahead, through the trees, and his horse would go no further. A foul stench of death flowed from that rocky mouth.
The boy slid from the saddle and drew the back of his hand across his nose in revulsion.
“Why does even the bad stuff have to smell twice as strong in this damn place?” he grumbled.
Leaving the horse behind, he made his way up the forest slope. The reek of decay and rottenness grew worse and the air was thick with bluebottles, drawn to the tantalising scents of corruption.
“That is hummin’!” Lee said, coughing. “And I guess it’s gonna get a whole lot worse, cos real soon there’s gonna be one more dead thing stinking that hole out.”
He reached for the long knife at his side and gazed around warily. He didn’t want to be pounced on by that Cinnamon Bear – or anything else. Nothing better try and get between him and the Bad Shepherd. If it did, it wouldn’t live long enough to apologise.
The early rays of dawn streamed through the leaf canopy, dappling and dancing over the bracken. It flashed and winked across the burnished blade in Lee’s hand and reflected back into his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said bitterly. “You dazzle all you want, but you won’t never light up the darkness I got in me. I ain’t gonna turn back now. This party is on.”
Pressing further, he reached an outcrop of rock, a little distance from the cave mouth, and paused.
“Hey!” he shouted. “You in there – shepherd guy. I know you’re hidin’ out in that dump. Don’t make me come in there and get you – stinks bad enough out here.”
He waited a few minutes, but there was no answer.
“You me gotta talk,” he called. “Got things we need to chew over.”
There was no sign of him. Lee swore under his breath. The Bad Shepherd wasn’t going to show himself.
“Guess he ain’t so crazy after all.”
Muttering and batting the flies away, he pushed through the undergrowth and continued on to the cave.
Sucking the air sharply through his teeth, he slapped his arm and rolled back the shirt sleeve. One of those hungry insects must have bitten him. Examining the bead of blood, he wiped it with his thumb. The small wound looked more like the mark a needle might make if it was dragged roughly out of the skin.
Lee scowled, realising his unconscious body back home had suffered some injury. He clenched his jaw and hoped whatever was happening back there would allow him enough time to do what he’d come here for.
Suddenly a face appeared in the craggy entrance. It darted from the shadows so quickly, it startled Lee and made him cry out.
The last time he’d seen the Bad Shepherd that ragged terror had been a frightening sight, a sinister force, whose eyes blazed with hate. He was a psychotic madman who’d swung one of the village boys around by his feet and had attacked Lee with an axe.
Now a terrible change had come over him. The gaunt face was even thinner and those rancorous eyes were sunken in deep hollows. The grubby flesh was stretched tissue-thin over the skull and had a sickly, yellowish pallor. The long, matted hair was even dirtier than before and the straggly beard was clogged with dried gobbets of bile, phlegm and blood.
“Jesus, you look bad,” Lee uttered honestly.
The figure at the cave snarled back, steadying himself against the rock because he was so frail. The shepherd’s robes were tattered and slashed and hung loosely off his skeletal frame. Lee caught a glimpse of ribs and a distended stomach and wondered when he’d last eaten any sort of meal. That guy was beyond starving.
But the hatred was still there, in those staring eyes. He glared at Lee and clawed the air with bony fingers. The bearded mouth parted and unintelligible curses poured out.
“Yeah?” Lee goaded. “You come here and say that.”
The Bad Shepherd took several shambling steps forward, then staggered back. He was too weak to stand, never mind walk. Spitting and wheezing, he leaned against the rock and the shaggy brows scrunched together.
“That all you got?” Lee demanded ruthlessly. “This won’t take no time at all.”
The boy advanced with slow, measured steps and raised the knife in readiness.
He saw the unhinged rage and malice in those eyes dissolve into fear and the Bad Shepherd let out a dismal wail. With the rocky wall against his shoulders, he scrambled out of sight, back into the cave.
“Hell,” Lee hissed.
But the scourge of Mooncaster wasn’t going to come out again. Lee was going to have to go in after him, into that stinking den.
“If that’s where this has gotta happen,” he said grimly. “Don’t make no odds to me.” He just hoped he wasn’t going to find the Bad Shepherd cowering behind a ferocious Cinnamon Bear.
Lee approached the entrance. The early sunlight blinded his eyes to the gloom inside. He felt the sun’s warmth on the back of his neck and lingered briefly. What he was about to do was going to be a crucial turning point – a genuine moment in history. He felt there should be a fanfare or a drum roll to see him across that dank threshold. But there was only the buzz of bluebottles.
“That’ll have to do,” he said and he stepped into the shadow of the rocky entrance.
Keeping a fierce grip on the knife, in case a savage bear came lunging at him, he waited for his eyes to adjust. Then he shuddered at what he saw.
The cave wasn’t large. It didn’t reach far back into the wooded hill and, although the shadows were deep, it wasn’t in total darkness.
In the centre, lying on the earthen floor, was the Cinnamon Bear. But it was long dead and its dilapidated carcass had been gnawed clean. Every bone had been broken and sucked dry and the hide had been chewed of every last scrap of nourishment. This was why the Bad Shepherd hadn’t been glimpsed since the spring: he’d been living off the bear’s corpse all that time, until there was nothing left to leach out of it and, judging by the state of him, that was quite a while ago.
The cave echoed with rattling breaths and Lee looked beyond the heap of fur and bones to where the ragged man was cringing behind a boulder.
Lee waved the knife through the shadows. Even in there it gleamed. The Bad Shepherd’s eyes were locked on it and he was shivering.
“You ain’t nuthin’ like the paintin’ my gran’ma had of you,” Lee said, taking a step nearer.
“You at Heart’s Door, it was called. But you looked a whole lot better in them days. Nice shiny robe, hair by L’Oréal or somethin’ like that. Never thought you’d stink so bad. You and Yogi bones there in competition?”
He took another step.
“And your eyes ain’t blue neither. What’s that about? Man, you is a wreck and a disappointment.”
The boy spread his arms wide. “So here we is,” he said. “Just you an’ me – and I got me a damn big blade and I’m the Castle Creeper, the one who can take you out, both here and in the real place, and make it like you never was.”
The Bad Shepherd’s eyes darted towards the sunlight.
“Oh, no,” Lee warned. “Don’t you get no ideas about runnin’. You is too weak to go anyplace an’, if you try before I’ve said my piece, I’ll cut you deep and let that Holy Spirit right outta there.”
The man bared his broken teeth at him and snarled like a cornered beast.
“Right back at ya,” Lee said.
He took another step closer.
“Let me take a minute to tell you ’bout my gran’ma,” he began. “She believed in you all her life, sang your songs, lived by your words, dressed up real
extra nice to go your places on Sunday and gave them money she couldn’t afford. And what did she get out of it? What was it for? Being all wiseass one day, I aksed her and she sat me down and told me, ‘Faith ain’t no easy thing.’”
He grinned at the memory.
“I didn’t know what she meant by that so she said, ‘Lee Jules Sherlon Charles, when you think about it, really sit and think real hard, faith is batshit scary.’ Yeah, she said it just like that – had a spicy vocab, my gran’ma. Then she told me you pile every hope, every dream, your whole sorry-ass life on what could be the biggest con ever – and you bet the whole damn lot on it. If that ain’t mad scary I don’t know what is.”
The grin faded.
“I told her that weren’t scary, just plain stupid, and she’d been scammed by a book of lies, written by white guys with twisted agendas, too long ago for it to matter no more, and you know what she said back? She told me that, cos I didn’t believe in nuthin’, I wasn’t scared of nuthin’. But when the time was right, and I found my own faith, somethin’ I could believe in, I’d understand.”
Lee took a breath and moistened his lips.
“Well,” he continued, “I guess this must be that time, cos right now I is the scaredest I ever was. I dunno if I’m dumb, crazy or both, but more than all that, Lee Jules Sherlon Charles is terrified.”
Looking down, he ran his fingers along the sharp blade.
The Bad Shepherd spat at him.
“See,” Lee said. “I could take this and carve you a Peckham smile and tailor you right outta your skin. But… my special girl, my Charm, she had the sweetest nature I ever met. She wouldn’t want me to do that. I knowed just what she’d say. I hear her – all the damn time.”
He thumped his fist against his chest.
“In here!” he said. “She’s with me in here. She makes my heart so big I don’t know how it stays inside. But it hurts like nuthin’ I ever knowed before, and here’s the thing – I don’t never want that pain to stop. Cos that pain is proof my feelin’s for her is real and that’s my reason for everything.”
Lee snorted and shook his head. “I don’t trust that Ismus psycho,” he said. “Not for one minute. That weren’t my Charm lying on that pimped-out bed he showed me. That were just some painted doll and all that bull about the ruby thing – more dreams, more lies. My special girl is gone and he can’t bring her back. Maybe you could, back in the day, I dunno, but not him. I made a promise to her one time: I wouldn’t let her be turned into no freak in this world if anything happened. So that’s why – I ain’t gonna do what the Ismus wants.”
The Bad Shepherd glared at him suspiciously.
“So why am I here, right?” Lee said. “Little while back, a good friend of mine called Maggie, she aksed what my favourite Christmas carol was. I told her to shove it. Yeah, I so do not deserve no friends. But there is one – about the snow an’ frost an’ ice an’ stuff – in the winter. My gran’ma used to love that – she even used to sing it in July to cool herself down. That carol said it don’t matter if you don’t have nuthin’ to give, no sheep, no wise man gold and stuff…”
The boy frowned as he concentrated, trying to remember the words.
“What can I give him? Give my heart. Yeah, that’s how it went.”
Lee turned the knife about, with the hilt towards the trembling man crouching before him.
“And that’s it,” he explained. “That’s why I’m here. I weren’t never gonna stick you. If you’re really who the Ismus says you is, and you’re all inside out and opposite, cos that’s the way you have to be in this world, then here I am, givin’ you my everything, givin’ you my life – and I don’t know what else. This is what my gran’ma was talkin’ about. This here blade is how much trust I got in you. This is the batshit-scary faith part. I’m gonna hand this over to you now. Take it and do whatever, cos I am done here. I wanna be with my girl again, but not his way. If you really are who he says then I’ll take your way, if it’s still available. Please?”
Leaning forward, his own hands were rock steady, but the emaciated, dirt-encrusted fingers of the Bad Shepherd were shaking when they came reaching. Then, as they closed round the hilt, the murderous fire was rekindled in those sunken eyes.
The haggard face contorted with a sneer and angry, malignant sounds, that weren’t words, spewed from his bearded lips. Rising, he seemed to draw strength from the dagger in his grasp and he turned on Lee.
The boy didn’t move. He didn’t try to escape, or defend himself; he offered no resistance. He merely stood there, calm and ready, with his hands clasped tightly behind his back. Total surrender. He’d been waiting for this for too long. Closing his eyes, he summoned his favourite memory of Charm in his mind’s eye and he smiled.
The knife came stabbing down. It sliced through his shirt and into his chest. The Bad Shepherd shrieked with vicious joy. Again and again the steel slashed and cut through Lee’s flesh until he slumped to the floor.
Then the starving man, the bane of Mooncaster, the haunter of nightmares, knelt beside him, carved out his beating heart and devoured it.
29
IN THAT TORMENTED other world, at the construction site of the White Castle replica, the Ismus stirred on top of the gatehouse.
The dead weight of a Black Face Dame was on top of him. The Ismus heaved the body off and raised his head.
The master console was destroyed and the second bodyguard had been flung from the roof in splattered pieces.
The lightning was fizzling from the sky. The steel cranes were no longer crackling with electricity and, as he stared out over the surrounding landscape, he saw the huge predators sputter and vanish. Across the castle, by the West Tower, Mauger’s attacking roar was already fading on the air and a bloody Martin Baxter was being nursed by Carol.
Anxious, the Ismus turned to look at the Keep. To his unbounded relief he saw his Sovereign Prince was still presiding there. The destruction of the Bakelite device had not diminished His brilliance. But the Ismus could sense displeasure. The fierce intensity of those eyes beat down upon him and he scrambled to his knees to bow his head and offer his sincere apology and to implore His indulgence and forgiveness.
“The way shall be opened again!” he vowed. “I can build a new transmitter. There are already many lesser devices in this world. This is only a brief hiatus. Within a week, all shall be as it was and Your gates will be cast down forever more.”
That colossal, mordant anger was not appeased and he felt shrivelled and scorched by it. Then, suddenly, the baleful stare shifted away from him. It was like the door of a furnace closing.
The Ismus straightened his back and was alarmed to see the Dawn Prince rising from the throne. Immense fiery wings unfurled and the huge arms covered His face, shielding Himself.
In disbelief, the Ismus turned his gaze to see what could possibly be assailing his Sovereign Lord.
Up on the South Tower, where Lee’s dead body lay on the hospital bed, a tall figure was now standing beside him. The man’s head was bowed in humble prayer, and he gave thanks to the boy for releasing him.
It was the shepherd.
But now that face was no longer withered and skull-like, as it had been in Mooncaster, and the wild, uncontrolled savagery had left those eyes. It was the face of one at peace.
“You don’t belong here!” the Ismus screamed, jumping to his feet. “You have no part to play now.”
The shepherd looked over with the gentlest of smiles.
“My place is always here,” the warmest of voices said.
“No!” the Ismus screeched. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s too late!”
“Have you forgotten?” the shepherd asked. “I too am an isthmus.”
Looking down at Lee, he reached into the horrific wounds in the boy’s chest and his hand closed round an object that shone and sparkled through his fingers.
There was the Healing Ruby, where it had always been.
The shepherd raised it a
bove his head as a beacon. Its pure, steady light pierced the oppressive glare of Lucifer’s wrathful fire. On the Keep, He let out a deafening roar of pain and defiance that rolled under the sky and boomed beneath the oceans of the world. His flames ripped up into the dark clouds.
The Healing Ruby shone even brighter.
Outstretching His great wings, Lucifer rose into the night.
“You shall have no dominion here,” the shepherd said. “Our strength has been renewed.”
A flash of violet light rippled out across the heavens, accompanied by an almighty clap of thunder that shook the castle walls, and three towers split apart.
The Ismus recoiled and covered his eyes. A violent tremor tore through the earth and the air was shredded by a piercing scream.
When he removed his hands and blinked away the dots that popped around his vision, the Ismus saw shreds of red flame falling out of the sky, on to the melted wreckage of the Waiting Throne.
A cold December wind blew across the castle and silence descended. The top of the South Tower was deserted. The shepherd had gone – and the hospital bed was empty.
“No!” the Ismus raged. “This does not end here! I am Austerly Fellows. I go on! I am not defeated! I am—”
Before he could finish, he heard a different voice raised in righteous condemnation.
The Ismus looked back at the Keep. Something was rushing towards him, flying through the air at tremendous speed. He saw a golden star, glimmering above a halo of streaming white hair, as a figure came swooping down over the battlements. He thought it was an avenging angel until he saw the uniform and heard those proclaiming words.
“I am a human rifle. A human bomb, a dagger of your hand!”
With one hand holding on to witchcam, the girl who now called herself Arirang came shooting across the castle like a rocket on a wire. In her other hand she held the thing she had smuggled out of the mountain base wrapped in a blanket. It was the real wand of Malinda.
When the Ismus recognised the danger, he turned to run, but it was too late.
Zooming towards the gatehouse, Arirang let go of witchcam and jumped, wielding the wand like a spear.