Thy Fearful Symmetry

by Richard Wright

  “Imagine a life is like a light. The closer to the celestial that a person is, the brighter they shine. Demons and angels come from much the same place. We're torches in a dark room. Humans are fireflies, some bright, some barely glowing at all. Against the darkness and the little luminous bugs, my kind stand out like beacons.” There was an odd, familiar scent on the air, like meat frying. Ambrose looked round as he spoke, searching for the source. “This church though, holy ground, is a megawatt halogen search light. Its brightness drowns Pandora and me out. When they look here, the church itself overwhelms any sense of us. It's so blinding, nothing else can be seen. I'm hiding by standing in front of the sun.”

  At last, Calum understood. Nodding, he opened his mouth to speak. Wisps of steam puffed out from between his lips. Ambrose understood what the smell was, and where he recognised it from.

  Calum's sins were catching up with him. Literally.

  Ambrose didn't pause to explain. As Calum frowned in bewilderment, wiping sweat from his face with the back of one hand, he stooped, flung the priest over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, and yanked open the door.

  Ambrose bolted from the room, leaving dust motes floating around the light bulb like the fireflies of which he had spoken. For a long moment, everything was still. The curtains were undisturbed by the slight breeze entering through the door. Nothing stirred as his footsteps echoed from the stairs at the end of the corridor.

  Until Pandora opened her eyes.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Inspector Gemmell pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and stared at himself in the mirror, noting the paler than usual skin beneath his freckles. Having snatched just two hours sleep the previous night, barely enough to bother commuting home for, blue-black circles framed his bloodshot eyes. Despite a large infusion of his usual nicotine/caffeine breakfast combo, sleep still stalked a step behind him, waiting to snatch him back up.

  Running his hands under the cold tap, he splashed water onto his face and pushed damp fingers through his tangled ginger hair. Sleep was going to be bitterly disappointed, given recent events. Over the previous three weeks, crime in Glasgow had risen dramatically. As well as the usual thefts, frauds, stabbings, shootings, rapes and wife beatings, the force was up to its eyeballs in the bizarre. On his own desk alone were the multiple deaths at the Queen Margaret Union, seven apparently ritualistic murders with completely different modus operandi, numerous sightings of 'something huge' swimming up the Clyde, dozens of overexcited lunatics predicting the end of the world in a variety of colourful ways, and one teacher with a spotless record who had beaten a boy in his care half to death for no reason at all. It was this last case that had pulled him out of bed at three in the morning and hauled him back to work. Glancing at his watch, he saw it had just gone four. Another long, aching day awaited him.

  Stepping out of the gents, he marched down the short corridor and into the operations room. It was controlled chaos, just as it had been when he left it. The white board along the back wall was covered in photographs, mostly victims of the Queen Margaret massacre. Some were circled in red, and others had black lines linking them. His own scrawls filled the free spaces, illegible attempts to bring order to chaos. Later on, he'd have to ask somebody if they remembered what he had been writing, because he didn’t have the foggiest. Several plain clothes officers were scattered about the room, a couple talking frantically into telephones, another two hammering at their keyboards in frustration, hoping that some database might throw up an answer to tonight's mystery.

  Just inside the door, Detective Sergeant Jackie Summer was waiting for him, having already given him a nervous summary of the Clive Huntley problem and watched him storm off to the washroom. Gemmell stared at her, daring her to complicate matters further, but she stayed silent. “All right,” he said. “All right. Show me.”

  Some of the tension drained out of her body as she realised he wasn't going to further his reputation for explosive temperament, and she squeezed past him to the corridor. “This way sir.”

  “I know where the bloody cells are Summer.” A secret part of him was pleased to see a little of the tension creep back into her spine. “Have you sent out the call?”

  “Yes sir, Bryant and Munro are recalling everyone they can get hold of. We're also calling in as many uniformed officers as we can, but...”

  “Let me guess. It's a busy night?”

  “As usual sir. They're coming back when they finish whatever they're dealing with.”

  “Scrap that. Keep them on the streets. However he did it, Huntley’s gone. We’re not going to find him if we're sitting on our arses in here.”

  Summer went red. “Of course sir, I didn't think.”

  Gemmell shook his head. “Yes you did. Not the decision I would have made, but at least you were willing to make one in my absence.” She looked up at him, big eyes making her a decade younger than the thirtysomething she was. “Aye, it was a compliment. Sorry there was nobody else around to hear it.”

  Smiling, she picked up her pace, and Gemmell thought back over his interview with Huntley the previous day. The teacher had been confused, even shocked, at the description of what he had done. If it hadn’t been for the boy's blood still on his hands his hands, they might never have convinced him he had committed the assault at all.

  They took the stairs from the first floor to the underground level. There was a dawn hush over the building, and away from ops the station felt deserted. Entering the basement level, they turned into another corridor, passing the doors to the underground car park where most suspects would be brought in by car or van to avoid using the public entrance. Gemmell nodded at the custody sergeant manning the desk, noting his darting, nervous eyes. A prisoner had escaped on this man's watch, and he was wondering just how much trouble he was in. Gemmell didn't stop to talk to him yet, wanting to see the cell and get a sense of what had happened before jumping to conclusions. Summer had the keys to the block and opened up without a word. A clamour of voices hit them.

  “Christ almighty, how many people have we got in here?”

  “Cells are full sir,” Summer said over her shoulder. “It's been like this for most of the month.”

  “Since that bloody building exploded.” That was when all the strangeness had begun, the night a tenement in the West End had blown up for no credible reason the fire service could identify. That case had also landed on Gemmell's desk, but was currently buried under more immediate crimes and misdemeanours. He would have to dig out the file. The explosion had been like a clarion call for the madness which had since been marching through his city.

  “This one sir,” Summer stood next to the open door of a cell at the end of the row. Gemmell dug his hands into the pockets of his raincoat, which he had not yet had time to take off, and examined the heavy door. “It was locked when we found him gone. We can't see any signs of tampering.”

  Gemmell grunted, bending low to look at the lock, then straightening up to slide the eye line shutter back and forth a couple of times, as though Huntley might have squeezed through that. “When is the forensics team getting here?” There was no answer, and he turned to his sergeant. She stared at him, eyes wide. “That was not a rhetorical question.”

  “Sir, I…sir, we haven't contacted a forensics team yet. I didn't think to.”

  He shut his eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again. “Do it now, Summer. You're standing in a crime scene. Treat it like one.”

  “Yes sir.” Summer marched back along the row of cell doors. There was something about the uncanny that made ordinarily efficient men and women forget their training and common sense, and stand around gawking and panicking.

  Leaning into the cell, worried about disturbing any evidence, he glanced above the door to see why the only light was coming from the corridor behind him. There was a hole punched through the glass cover, and he scanned the room until he saw shards of broken glass against the far wall. Why would Huntley smash the light? Unless… />
  Gemmell crouched in the doorway, leaning further in and craning his neck. It would take a closer look to confirm it, but glass scattered on the opposite side of the room suggested the light had been broken by something inside punching out, rather than somebody whacking it from the outside. Besides, this was reinforced glass, and should have been resistant to a little vandalism.

  Two new puzzles, each contradicting the other, and not yet five in the morning. How could something get behind the sealed glass covering to smash its way outwards? How could a man break reinforced glass with his bare hands?

  Not to mention, how could a teacher escape from a locked cell, underground in a police station, without anybody noticing?

  Gemmell rose, and marched down the corridor towards the custody desk.

  “Summer! Tell forensics that whatever they're doing, this takes priority! I want a team down here ten minutes ago!”

  Malachi Jones checked his watch. Six in the morning. For the past seven hours he had roamed the frozen streets in the West End of Glasgow, doubling back on himself, crossing his own trail, memorising the layout of not only the streets, but also the gardens and back alleys. Though his body was tired, he would be able to catch some sleep that evening. Orloch had been able to tell him only that Pandora lived in this part of the city, and so Malachi would become as familiar with it as he could. With sunrise still three hours away, he knew more about how this little slice of Glasgow was laid out than many residents.

  A car drove by, one of several vehicles heralding the wakening of the city, as he leaned against a streetlight outside the closed Hillhead underground station on Byres Road. When his train had got into Central Station drinkers were still cavorting, and he had watched pub after pub empty as he roamed the streets. At around three he was alone but for the occasional black cab crawling by in the hope that he might be looking for a lift home, and a smattering of reeling partygoers who didn't know when to quit. Having had a few hours of peace, it looked like the city was now stirring.

  Malachi crossed the road behind the car's red taillights as it glided away, and headed for the Internet kiosk beside the empty taxi rank. Pulling open the Plexiglas door, he stepped in and slipped a couple of pound coins into the slot. As he typed the web address for a directory enquiry service into the browser, he glanced out, feeling exposed in the brightly lit kiosk. As far as he could see, the street was empty.

  Turning his attention to the screen, he typed in the surname that Orloch had given him. P. Numen. A younger Malachi would have smiled at that.

  There was a pause while the database was searched, and then her name came up. Pandora shared a contempt for humanity with her demonic brethren, and it galled him that they were largely correct in their assumption that hiding in plain sight was the most effective way to conceal themselves. Humanity didn't believe in demons. Even those Christians who believed in the Bible as a literal truth, and were certain that demons were real, laboured under the delusion that such creatures spent most of their time in some otherworldly Hell, plotting against the weak and foolish, appearing on this plane only briefly and occasionally. Even a moment's thought shattered the idea. Why should they plot and scheme from so great a distance, when they could spend most of their time getting their hands dirty?

  Grinding his teeth together, he pulled a scrap of paper and a ballpoint pen from his coat's inside pocket, and scrawled down the address on screen. As he did so, he again felt eyes on him, and his heart began to beat in earnest. Trying to keep his posture relaxed, he inclined his head slightly, trusting to his peripheral vision to scan the pavement opposite. There was no movement, so he turned more obviously, leaning against the clear plastic to get a better look. Nothing. If it weren't for the peculiar nature of his mission, he would assume he was being paranoid. Given the situation though, he was glad to have that sick, icy trill of adrenaline running through his veins, even if it amounted to nothing.

  Glad to be stepping out of the bright kiosk light, he strode purposefully into a cobbled alley running alongside the Underground station and into Ashton Lane, passing the pubs there and following the short street to where it emerged in a car park next to a University building. Jogging now, a precaution against any pursuit, he crossed the car park and pushed through the knee-high shrubbery bordering it, on to University Avenue. Finally, he turned left and walked back down to a junction crossing Byres Road a few hundred feet from where he had begun. There were a couple of people on the street now, mostly suits wandering slowly towards bus stops. As far as he could tell, nobody had followed him.

  According to the directory enquiry information, Pandora lived five minutes from where he stood, and he debated whether to reconnoitre the building now, or leave it until he had rested. Temptation proved too much, and he turned left. To his surprise, he realised he had broken out in a light sweat, and thick nausea was treacling in his stomach. Anticipation, he supposed. To be so close to the creature now, after so long, was maddening, and he would have to be careful not to act in haste. Pandora was supernaturally powerful, several times more so than Orloch had been, and in a face to face encounter she would rip him apart.

  When he reached the bottom of Byres Road, he realised immediately which building Pandora had been staying in, and a vast rage melted his willpower away. Could somebody have got to her before him? Could fate be so cruel as to take her away from him like this? As he broke into a run, the image of Stacey staring at the grounds of St Dymphna's floated ghost-like in front of him. Was he damned to perfidy, about to break the only promise he had ever made that mattered? If he couldn't end Pandora's existence, what was the point of his living?

  The building was a hollow, blackened shell, the wall of the bottom flats having been totally destroyed. The three storeys above looked as though they were balancing precariously over nothingness, creating the impression of a looming, ancient tomb. Police tape and warning signs provided a flimsy barrier to anybody foolish enough to seek entrance, telling him that whatever had happened there, the investigation was ongoing. There was no other reason for the block not to have been demolished as a hazard. Malachi's first guess was that another of Pandora's enemies had blown the place sky high, and if his anger at being robbed of his vengeance could have been unleashed as physical force, it would have torn the rest of the building to the ground.

  Catching his breath, he forced himself to think. Could she have survived? Hope buzzed in his chest. She might well have done. Everything he had read, if it was to be believed, told him that her kind were almost impervious to physical harm. He had imagined that meant knives, bullets, and other weapons. It had never occurred to him to think on the scale of explosives, let alone explosives powerful enough to do this to a building. Had she been near to the source of the explosion when it went off? Would it have made a difference if she had been on the fringe of the blast?

  Grinding his teeth again, he made himself relax. There was still a chance.

  Malachi's jerked his head up as movement caught his eye, deep inside the ruin of the ground floor, a shadow shifting against shadow. Malachi glanced up and down the street, then ducked beneath the police tape before he could think better of it. Uncertain of his footing amidst the scattered debris, he pulled out his torch as he moved carefully into the building. It occurred to him that he was doing exactly what he had promised himself he wouldn't, letting hot blood spur him into haste, but this shell that was once a building represented a dead end for him, and he didn't know what else to do.

  Releasing the breath he hadn't realised he was holding, he thumbed the torch on, sweeping it in a wide, fast arc before him. There. To his left. Movement, ducking behind a flimsy supporting wall. Malachi followed, picking his way between bricks and chunks of ceiling. The building smelled of dust and smoke, and the way it creaked made him flinch. Amidst the destruction, he found occasional signs of the people who had lived here, curiously untouched. An outdated Paulo Nutini poster, burned only at the edges, a coffee mug declaring the owner to be the Best Dad In The World
, smeared with soot but undamaged. Malachi tried to hope they had survived the inferno that had swept through this place, but was ashamed to find that he didn't care.

  Moving silently now, disturbing nothing, he crept to the supporting wall, where he had seen movement. The doorway was untouched, though where the door that had filled it had gone he couldn't guess. On the other side of the wall he heard frightened, hurried breathing, that reminded him of his confrontation with Orloch.

  Was that really only the previous day?

  Pulling his knife free, he focussed his mind on the present, and stepped through the doorway, his torch held high. There was a shriek, a blur of movement, and then the creature was on him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Clive couldn't feel his freezing fingers. Whatever the angel had done to free him from the police cell had not involved the return of his belongings from police custody, forcing him to sleep rough in the clothes he had been teaching in. Without his keys he had not been able to enter his flat, and he still had no idea how Heather had reacted to his actions the previous day.

  With a little laugh, he realised that wasn't true. Clive knew exactly what Heather, his friends, and very likely his family by now, would think. Perversely, though he had no sensation in his fingers, he still had almost perfect recall of the dying heat of Jamie's blood between his knuckles, in the grooves of his fingerprints, beneath his fingernails.

  Shivering with cold and self-pity, he turned back to the front entrance of his tenement building, ignoring the students sauntering past on their way to early lectures and subsidised breakfasts at the University Café down the hill. Where he stood, in the doorway of a building devoted to Theatre Studies, he tried to make himself invisible.