Mary forced her voice to remain calm. 'I understand.'
'Good. Then take my hand. Your life will belong to me completely. Live or die, it will be my choice. And you must trust me, utterly. If you pull away ... if your eyes open even the tiniest amount to see your way...'
'I know, I know!' Mary clamped her eyes shut and stuck out a hand. 'Go on, then.'
Cool, hard fingers slid into hers; they felt almost scaly to the touch. She whispered a quiet prayer to the Goddess and then followed when gently tugged, already tripping over the minute ridges on the stone flags, her sense of balance precarious.
Mary had no idea where she was taken. She kept her eyes so tightly closed that the muscles all around them hurt and trembled. The chill hand pulled her along steadily. After the cool of the shadowy bathhouse she felt the warmth of the sun on her face and presumed that the Servant had taken her back outside, but the air smelled different, and she had the strangest sensation that she was no longer in the baths at all. That made her even more hesitant, for she couldn't begin to picture her position, or guess at what lay ahead.
At times she gasped, fearing that she was about to stumble when her foot caught against an obstacle, that her eyes would crack open instinctively on impact. And there was one terrible moment when she felt as if she was walking along the edge of an immense drop; wind currents plucked at her from the side and from below, and vertigo rushed up inside her dizzyingly. She had no idea how she stopped herself from tumbling, even if it was only an illusion; the Servant didn't slow down for an instant. She could only do what was asked of her: trust implicidy.
The frightening trial appeared to go on for hours, though it was probably only ten minutes, and then, eerily, she could no longer feel the fingers in hers. She grasped the air, unsure if she had accidentally let go, but could find the hand nowhere, nor could she sense the Servant in the vicinity. Her first thought was that it was another part of the trial, to tempt her to look and find the Servant there, staring into her face. For five full minutes she waited, occasionally reaching out, and finally she decided that the Servant had indeed gone. She opened her eyes cautiously, looking at the ground first, and found with near-euphoric relief that she was standing alone near one of the tourist displays in a subterranean corridor. Nearby she could hear rushing water and there was steam in the air: the spring itself, she guessed.
She set off in the direction of the water only to find her way blocked. A wall of what appeared to be streaming water lay across the entire width of the corridor, but when Mary tried to walk through it, it felt as if she was walking into stone.
She stepped back, puzzled, and only then did she see two masks hanging on a nearby wall. One was completely featureless, though with a feminine shape. The other was a startlingly lifelike representation of her own face. It was deeply unsettling to see it there, as if her quest to Bath had been some fait accompli decided by the Higher Powers.
After pondering what it all meant for a moment, she decided it must be another part of the trial. She was expected to choose one of the masks, and then, perhaps, the way would be opened. It seemed so obvious as to be facile. She took down the mask of her own face, which creepily felt as if it was made of real skin.
She paused just before she pressed it into place. It was too easy. What was the point of it? If it was a trial, it had to call on something in her character, surely. She sat down against the foot of the wall and placed the mask face down on the floor next to her. Arthur Lee sniffed at it curiously, then came to settle in her lap. She stroked him while she thought.
What was the meaning of the first test? she wondered. She turned it over in her mind for a little while, and decided it had to be faith. She had just put her trust, and her life, completely in the hands of the Higher Power. And she had clearly passed that test.
But this one? She eyed the blank mask, then stood up and took it down. It was cold and unlifelike to the touch.
She glanced between the two masks, and remembered the Servant's warning about the price that would be paid.
Finally she thought she had it. She steeled herself and pressed the blank mask to her face. It fit perfectly, and was cool and soothing against her skin. Two things happened at once: she heard the streaming wall of water dry up and disappear, and there was a loud pock near her feet.
She removed the mask and looked down to see with horror two spikes protruding from the inside of the mask of her face, just where her eyes would have been if she had been wearing it. She steadied herself against the wall, dizzy at how close she had come.
The blank mask, she decided, was symbolic of her acceptance of a lack of identity, or humility in the presence of the Goddess. Faith and humility - two things she would need in the hidden sanctum.
Now extremely cautious about what other trials might lie ahead, she rehung the blank mask on the wall and moved along the corridor. It sloped downwards, illustrated scenes from the history of the baths decorating the walls.
As she rounded a corner, she caught her breath when she was confronted by a figure. At first she thought it was the Servant, but this figure was short and hunched, wearing rough grey robes and a hood that plunged all features into deepest shadow. In fact, from Mary's perspective it looked as if there was no face in the hood at all.
'Two trials have you passed,' said the hooded figure, an old woman from the sound of her voice. She held up two gnarled fingers. 'This third is final, and the most important. One simple question. Answer wisely and you shall pass. The wrong answer will condemn you to death, and worse, damnation: the ultimate fate. Your spirit will never pass to the Grey Lands. Here in this place you will remain, forced to live out what might have been and never can.'
Mary took a deep breath, knowing it was too late to back out. One simple question didn't sound like much, but Mary knew it would undoubtedly be the hardest of all the trials: the final hurdle. 'Go on,' she said anxiously.
'As you wish. What is the darkest secret in your heart?'
Mary brought herself up sharp, all the potential pitfalls lining up before her. Of all her secrets, how could she possibly know which was the darkest?
The hooded woman appeared to read her thoughts. She wagged her finger in caution. 'No little secret will do. No second-darkest secret. But you know, in your heart of hearts, what is the worst - one you have never dared tell anyone else for fear they would hate you. One you have never dared admit to yourself. Choose wisely.'
Mary closed her eyes and thought. Behind the panic, she realised she did know; and she had never been able to face up to it.
'Speak.'
‘I can’t.’
'Then die.'
Mary gave a juddering sigh as she struggled to contain her emotion, and then, with cracking voice, she let it rise for the first time. 'My mother was dying. We hadn't got on for a long while. I was a little rebel, always saying and doing things I knew would annoy her. If I had sex with a boy - even a one-night stand at a party - I'd tell her, just to shock her. Or if I took drugs. It was the sixties. We all used to do things like that back then ... at least, that's the excuse I've always told myself. It is an excuse. We're all responsible for our own actions. We can never blame anyone else for anything.' She was talking to herself, but it sounded as if someone else was speaking about a person she didn't know.'I look back on myself as I was then and I hate myself. I thought I was so sophisticated, so clever ... cleverer than my parents. They didn't know anything about this whole new world we were carving out for ourselves back then. How naive. How fucking naive and callous! I thought I was so smart, but I was more stupid than anyone!'
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Her eyes had filled with tears, but she wasn't looking at the hooded woman. Her vision was turned in on that time, sundrenched and long buried. 'I'd walked out a while before, telling my mother I didn't need her holding me back any more. The woman who raised me and sacrificed everything for me! I didn't need her! And she called ... she told me she was dying.' Her words choked in her thr
oat; she didn't think she could continue.
'You must speak it all!' the hooded woman prompted.
Mary calmed herself, but it felt as if there was a rock in her chest. 'I told her I was going away with this boy. She said it was urgent. I told her not to be so dramatic ... she was always being a drama queen. I said I was going away and I'd call her when I got back. We went off to some free festival, took lots of drugs, had lots of sex, and then I came back and I still didn't call her. The secret? I hadn't forgotten. I just didn't want to deal with all that death stuff. A bummer. I was having too much of a good time to be brought down. And I wouldn't miss her - I mean, we didn't get on at all!'
She stared into the middle distance, watching the dreadful scene play out before her. 'I remember where I was when I got the call that she had died. I was in my flat, high on acid, listening to Love play "Alone Again Or" with some boy whose name I didn't know. And I laughed. I laughed and laughed and hung up the phone and told him I was free.'
Mary covered her face for a long minute.
'What I did back then broke me. It turned me into a different person. That was the price I paid for my actions. I did miss her. I missed her more and more with each passing year, and if I could go back and make amends I'd give up everything, even my life. But I can't, so I have to live with it, knowing I'm a terrible person, knowing what I lost by being so stupid and selfish and cruel ... and worthless. I missed a few hours with a person who loved me in a way I would never be loved again, someone who sacrificed everything, who devoted her whole life to raising me. And that's the most valuable thing in the world ... the Holy Grail ... and I threw it away. I deserve every terrible thing that's ever happened to me. I deserve to be lonely and unloved in my old age.' She drew herself up to her full height and looked into the shadows of the old woman's hood. 'That's my darkest secret. And now I've admitted it I don't care if I live or die. I don't care if you condemn me to some eternal damnation. Could it be any worse than my life now? I don't think so.'
The hooded woman remained silent for a full minute, her head turned towards Mary, swaying a little from side to side. Then she said in a voice so gentle it was shocking, 'Welcome, sister. You have proved yourself to be a true and good person, filled with faith and humility, able to shine the light of truth into the darkest part of her heart. You have no secrets before what lies ahead. And she loves you, as your mother loved you. And she will care for you.'
Tears sprang to Mary's eyes. She felt like a child, unable to control herself, not knowing what she really wanted any more.
'Come, sister,' the hooded woman said, drifting slowly backwards down the corridor without any visible contact with the floor. 'You are filled with pain. Your journey has been long and your spirit is weary. Now is the time to rest. All is open to you.'
She gestured down the corridor. The sound of the spring was louder now, and Mary could feel the sticky heat in the air from the hot water forced up from deep beneath the ground. As she looked ahead, she could see a faint blue
light. The corridor was fading away, and a warmer and more enticing place was appearing.
Mary blinked away the tears and walked towards it.
chapter seventeen The Queen of Sinister
'Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.'
Julia Ward Howe
Madness and despair leaked from the black walls of the House of Pain as Caitlin, Matt and Jack moved cautiously along the corridor leading away from the entrance. The building was filled with an oppressive gloom and a suffocating tropical heat, without even the slightest air current to give respite.
Despite appearances, they couldn't shake the feeling that they were inside a vast, living creature. Odd vibrations ran through the floor and walls as though a vascular system was at work, and on the very edge of their hearing was a faint lub-dub that could have been the beating of a massive heart.
'We've got to be careful we don't get lost,' Matt cautioned.
Caitlin's voice floated back to him. 'I shouldn't worry. The chances of any of us getting out of here alive are pretty slim.'
'Yep. Let's all look on the bright side,' Matt muttered.
Jack hurried to pass Matt so that he was walking between the two of them. 'This place,' he began queasily, 'it's even worse than the Court of the Final Word.'
'Do you have any idea where we're going?' Matt asked. 'This place is enormous. We could wander here all day... except I've got this feeling we won't be allowed to roam for long.'
'Maybe there won't be any guards,' Jack said hopefully. 'Whoever's in charge couldn't have expected us to get past the Lament-Brood, so they might not have set up any second line of defence.'
'You see, why can't you take lessons off him?' Matt called after Caitlin. 'He always looks on the bright side.'
In Caitlin's head, their voices became the buzzing of flies. Feeling herself slipping away again, she managed two last words of warning: 'Something's coming.' Then her vision shifted to red, the shadows sucked back and the interior of the House of Pain fell into sharp relief.
Matt gripped Jack's shoulder to prevent him from advancing.
'What is it?' Jack said fearfully. 'What can she see?'
'Look at her!' Matt said.
Caitlin's outline was hazy, as though swathed in fog. Shadows formed on her skin, slowly separated, growing fast as they flapped and swirled all round her.
'Crows!' Matt said in quiet awe. 'There are crows coming out of her.' The birds emerged in a frenzy of wings until Caitlin was almost obscured.
The truth dawned on Jack with horror. 'The Morrigan! We have to get away from here! The Morrigan has her!'
Matt spun Jack round to peer into his face. 'What are you talking about? Tell me!'
'The Morrigan is one of the gods!' Jack said. 'But she's worse than all of them ... much worse. Her thing is war, and blood ... and ... and other things, too! But it's the killing! They say nothing can stop her ...'
Matt looked back at the furious murder of crows moving forcefully up the corridor with Caitlin's tiny figure the heart of them. 'Then it's a good job she's on our side.' A pause for thought. 'She is on our side, right?'
What Matt and Jack couldn't see, but which was as clear as daylight to Caitlin, was the thing taking shape further down the corridor. To Caitlin, it looked as if it was pushing itself out through the wall in a hideous mockery of birth, dripping with mucus and contorted by natal pangs. But as she drew closer, it became clear that it was being formed from the stuff of the wall itself. And that's when Caitlin realised that the entire House of Pain really was some kind of entity and that they were working their way into its belly.
The thing shuddered, growing larger as it added to itself, its skin the shiny black of vinyl. Finally it unfolded, rising up on two legs in the shape of a man; but it was a shape created by something that did not really know what a man was or how one worked. It staggered away from the wall, leaving a trail of dripping slime, and stepped towards Caitlin. When it looked at her, the whiteness of its eyes was piercing in contrast with its face.
Caitlin felt a shadow move across her mind as it probed her consciousness. It sickened her, but the Morrigan was unmoved. Her muscles flexed, ready to attack.
'Youuuuuu ... drag-onnnnnnnn ...' Though the thing's mouth didn't move, the sibilant words came into Caitlin's head like beetles swarming through her brain.
Seeing only death through the red haze, the Morrigan attacked.
'Boyyyyyyyyyy...'
Caitlin came to an abrupt halt. One word, but she knew what it was saying to her. And in that instant the Morrigan was gone, consigned to the desolate lands in the shadows of Caitlin's consciousness by Caitlin's love for her son, perhaps the only thing that could have defeated the Morrigan's control.
'Is he here?' Caitlin asked in a fragile voice. Her chest was so tight that she barely dared ask the question for fear that her heart would burst.
'Don't let it trick you!' Matt came running up and grabbed her, but she
threw him off.
'Is he here?' Her voice cracked with anguish.
With an awkward movement, the creature gestured further down the corridor. In the shadows waited a small figure with a pale face. His features were too indistinct in the half-light, but Caitlin was convinced it was Liam. All her beaten-down emotion gushed out with such force she thought she was going mad.
'Liam?' she said in a tiny voice.
The shiny black thing reached out a hand. Caitlin knew what was expected of her, and though every fibre of her being was filled with revulsion, she could not resist. Matt knew too, and tried to drag her back.
Caitlin broke free and clutched at the monstrous hand, which felt like warm steak in her fingers. In an instant she was moving down the corridor, though her feet did not appear to be touching the ground.
'Do something!' Jack pleaded. Caitlin rapidly receded into the shadows in the grasp of the thing's unpleasantly long fingers. There was nothing they could do.
The journey was a haze. Caitlin had the impression that she was not only moving through the House of Pain, but above it and around it; and she sensed that it was accurately named. The enormous creature was filled with the darkest emotions of human suffering. Empty rooms echoed with the cries of torture. Another chamber was potent with the familiar cutting edge of all-consuming grief. A further room was bitter with abandonment, then loss, abuse, agony, hopelessness; and finally she came upon the sickening reek of despair, and she knew instantly that this was where the Lament-Brood originated. Each room could produce something real and palpable from its empty, echoing chambers and send it out into the world. In the end it proved too much and she blacked out.
She woke in a room that at first glance looked and smelled like black meat, but which quickly reshaped itself into something with which she could cope. The floor became obsidian flags, the walls gleaming black, too, the stones rising to a vaulted roof that reminded her of a cathedral, though it had no warmth or hope within it.
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