The Revenants

by Alec Dunn

  The reading group met at dinner. They huddled together over a map of the local area and talked in hushed voices. A fresh blustery wind tugged at the corner of the map, making it flap and jump. A junior member of the premises staff had propped open all the windows of the library, to sand and strip the old peeling paint in preparation for repairing and repainting – these are all rotten, Mr Masterton, I’m gonna have to use a load of filler – and he was busily trowelling out gloops of wood filler to patch up the disintegrating window sills – it’d be as well to get new ones, not that they’ll pay for that.

  The playful breeze swept through the library, driving out the usual stale, musty smell. The four of them stared down at the map. Tristan’s finger hovered momentarily before stabbing down onto the small line of a street. “There.”

  “Are you certain?” Gregor asked.

  “There. Tonight,” Tristan replied without hesitation.

  “Good boy, good boy,” Gregor said quietly. “It appears that we will need to go out on another ghost walk tonight. They seem to have become a weekly event. Most surprising that our little patch of land should be deluged by so many. Most curious.

  However, Lucretia, Max, I must warn you that this is not our usual fare. The creature has some knowledge and power. It will be dangerous, even for you.” Gregor singled out Tristan, “I wonder, Tristan, if it might not be better for you to stay home tonight. There’s a full moon you know, a very ill omen.”

  The idea was an outrage to Tristan, “No. I’m coming. I know where to go. I showed you where to go.”

  “Yes, yes, you did marvellously well, my boy, marvellously.” Gregor was placating, “But this is nothing like you’ve seen before. And let us not forget, it is your visions that are crucial to our group’s success. You are our eyes. It’s better to keep you safe, don’t you think?”

  “No.” Tristan was stubborn. The wind pulled at his hair and his eyes flicked across to the clock on the wall – not long to go. The hazy stench of the library seemed to seep out from the yellowed books. It caught in the back of his throat but it was competing with the smell of wood filler and the dancing wind and he coughed it away. “No,” Tristan said again as though Gregor had spoken. “I’m coming.”

  Gregor looked somewhat surprised and angry. “Well, I don’t suppose it really matters one way or the other. You may die, that’s all.” He looked across at Max, “Max, you don’t think Tristan should come tonight, do you? Ill omen, a full moon, eh? He should stay at home, yes.”

  Max’s angry eyes glinted, “It’s up to him.”

  “Really?” Gregor was angry now, hissing out his words. “Is that so? Up to him? Is that wise, Max? Tonight?”

  Max was sullen, but wouldn’t back down. “Probably not. It’s probably a stupid idea. But we need to find out, don’t we?”

  Gregor was almost shrill, “Find out? Find out what?”

  As Gregor became angrier, Max became more purposeful and certain, “Find out if he really is one of the group. Find out if he is our friend.”

  Lucretia leant over to give Max a cuddle, “Aren’t you just a sweetie?” She grabbed his cheeks in between each thumb and forefinger and was pulling them out and waggling them about. “You’re just adorable, Max, and that’s fine with me, if you’re sure it’s what you want. Besides,” she archly glanced over at Gregor, “staying home isn’t always the safer option, is it? Just look at how Bradley was attacked by that demon, Gregor. We just want to keep our Tristan safe.”

  Gregor’s hands gripped the edge of the table. He looked down, hiding his fury. His knuckles were white. He muttered so quietly that Tristan wasn’t sure he had actually said it, “You worthless, stinking currs.” And then Gregor looked up, “As you wish. On your heads be it.”

  Tristan might have given the words more care, but he was distracted by the time. The result was what he wanted. He was going and he had other things on his mind. His eyes flicked back to the slowly rotating second hand of the clock – surely the time had passed. It would be too late soon.

  The piercing, eardrum vibrating wail of the fire alarm sounded. The group looked around each others’ faces. Fire alarms often went off at Hillcrest Community School.

  “My money is on Ryan Sankey,” said Lucretia.

  “Nah, Brandon Lewis,” said Max.

  Gregor interrupted rudely, “Seven o’clock. Here. Tonight. Don’t be late. We’re not waiting.” And they rose and left the library to line up in the yard where heads would be counted and numbers tallied up.

  Even though the library was very close to the yard, for some reason Tristan couldn’t explain to Mrs Parks, he arrived late and out of breath. He stood close to Stephanie and discretely, arms hanging by their sides, they held hands.

  At seven o’clock they set off for the street Tristan’s finger had stabbed down on in Gregor’s cramped Ford Fiesta. Tristan amused himself by asking if they were taking the ‘mystery machine’, like the van in Scooby Doo.

  No one laughed.

  The journey was again silent. The four of them were pressed together, uncomfortably close and they were tense. Tristan watched Max in the front passenger seat. He was twitching. Making small movements, contained bursts of aggression. Little ritualistic jerks that Tristan realised was Max practising. Max was rehearsing his fight. The fingers clenched and the arm twisted. Take that. His body lunged momentarily. A head butt?

  Next to him in the back sat the long legs and tumbling black hair of Lucretia. She was motionless, almost frozen, apart from once when she reached out her manicured hand, squeezed his thigh – too high up – and said calmly, “We might be killed tonight. Is there anything you’d like to do?” Her grin flashed, wild and wicked. “Exciting, isn’t it?” And it was. And he realised that she was savouring the moment, enjoying the anticipation.

  He looked at the back of Gregor’s head and could smell the age and decay from the old man. The back of Gregor disturbed him somehow – Joshua, that was it. Gregor’s back was always hiding something. Gregor always had his back turned. He was always hidden. It wasn’t Gregor’s back though. It was Gregor. Gregor was disturbing.

  They arrived and the sun was sinking in the sky. A yellow light filled the air with a soft fire. It was rich and heavy against the dark clouds that threatened on the horizon.

  Tristan knew the building without hesitation.

  It was like his faculties were fully alive and the world was a part of him. It extended around him and from him and he knew this place like it was his own body.

  To one side the gold and black painted cursive writing of a solicitor’s was splayed across the windows of a building. Square silver plaques and small neat writing stating offices, businesses and a dentist matched to a row of doorbells on the side. The whole street was deserted. Square, solid houses of old red brick, stone and wood were empty. They stood as monuments, marking the world of daytime and life, but now they were empty and silent and dead.

  He knew the heavy dark stones of his vision and the iron bars that still rested firmly in place. He knew the building before them as though he had walked down its corridors. He had walked down its corridors – in his dreams, in another life.

  The large sign outside on the black painted spiked metal railings announced that it was a museum. That was new, but the building brought back old memories. He remembered the hunger and the pain. He remembered the raw cold of the gaol in winter and feeling his wife, Angela, turn cold in his arms. And Tristan knew that inside was the creature, feeling what he was feeling, suffering from the same memories, in pain from its memories and treasuring the pain and the suffering because they were memories of Angela.

  “It’s inside,” he said.

  “C’mon, Lu,” said Max. “It’s time to go.” And Max stepped forward, ready to go to work.

  “Wait,” Gregor’s word filled the evening and held them back. “Let me speak to the creature first. It may be that we can reason with it.”

  The others said nothing, Max and Lucretia exchanged glances,
but waited. Gregor waited too and then cleared his throat, “And now withdraw from this place, my young and impetuous counterparts.” He seemed embarrassed to have to state the obvious. “It would be best that if I fail to persuade the creature to desist its unlawful and harmful activities within our specified territory with my flawless logic and salient rhetoric that your arrival is a surprise. You will be the cavalry to ride in to my rescue, the Sir Galahad to my damsel in distress as it were, so pray don’t withdraw too far.” He smiled warmly at them. “Just far enough that you won’t be apparent. Besides, it’s rude to listen in on other people’s conversations.”

  Lucretia and Max said nothing as they backed across the street to the shadows of an alley, but they did not look happy.

  Tristan too was not happy.

  Reason with it? What the hell was this all about? You don’t reason with a monster. You can’t ask a carnivore not to eat meat. Specified territory? Just ask it to leave? Would you mind going and killing the people somewhere else? Oh, go on, please.

  Max and Lucretia had gone further into the alley and were holding a terse, muttered conversation that Tristan couldn’t make out. He stood in the grime of the alley and listened and again that sense of unity with the world flooded through him.

  The creature was in the cell where it had held its dying wife. He knew it.

  He was shaking because the gaol was cold. His wife was on his lap and she was cold.

  His vision went beyond sight. The world breathed into him and his nerve fibres extended out into the world. The thunder clouds hung heavy in his nostrils. The sinking light sang in his bones. The stones were cold within his heart and grief emptied him like the tide emptying from the shore. His wife was in his arms cold and dead, but she wasn’t there. She was a memory. And Tristan was in the cell with Earnest. He was Earnest and he watched the spot of yellow stained light climb the wall. The day was leaving. Again.

  The light is blocked by a shadow. Again.

  He looks up and knows who it is.

  The silhouette is at the bars again, whispering again. It is a rasping voice, like dried grass in the wind.

  Gregor’s voice is whispering, “Earnest, my boy, what remarkable feats you have performed, what wonders you have achieved. Look on my works ye mighty and despair, what. I should say.”

  “Gregor, I’m tired. Leave me… in peace.”

  The outline of Gregor’s shoulders and head at the bars was growing cloudy against the approaching dark. He seemed to press closer to the bars, squeezing his face between them, “Earnest, where haven’t you been in all these years? What haven’t you done? I’ve heard, my friend, the voices carry to me here, even here, even here in this land of clay and dirt I have heard of your exploits.”

  “What haven’t I done? There is much that I haven’t done yet. I have yet to topple the crowns of the five kings, to master the land of shadows and to work clay to my will. I have not yet found the doorway to the land where the dead reside and I have not yet been revenged upon you.”

  The familiar voice hissed in whisper, “But you have done great things, great things. You have cast down the mighty and plundered the secrets of the guardians. You have passed between the worlds and you mean to do so again, what. You have wreaked your vengeance upon those who cast you down and killed your wife. And as to revenge upon me, why, let us not speak of such matters. Let us be friends. Where would you be without me?”

  “Dead, Gregor. Dead and at peace. I have killed many innocents. I have tortured and broken their bodies and minds.”

  “They are not important. Dust beneath our feet, Earnest. They are clay to be moulded. All is forgiven, my boy. You have shone so brightly, blazed across worlds. What are they compared to you? Cattle goes to the slaughter, my boy, wheat to the scythe.”

  “Perhaps.” The weight of his cold wife in his lap held him in place. “Or perhaps, like my Angela, they were innocents, and beautiful. I’m sorry, my dark father, my maker, I know what you want, but it is mine. You are too slow. You are too cautious. You will hold me back with your schemes and plans and your webs and lies.”

  “You will not share?” the whisper was strained and harsh.

  “This much will I share, whisperer in the darkness, get out of this world anyway you can. I came here tonight for a last farewell to a memory. I go tonight and I will tear apart the pillars of all the worlds to find her again. I am set on ruin and destruction. If you stay here and play with your clay things for much longer, you will die with them old man, for I have seen the devourer of worlds and it is close. It is trying to get into this world and I do not think it will be long before it does.”

  “You seek to frighten me with tales of the ancient ones? I created you! I created you and you betray me! Give me the amulet. Give me the amulet, or I will take it from you.”

  “Gregor, go. I do not wish to kill you, not here. This place has seen too much pain. It is sacred to me. You cannot stop me. I am too powerful. I have simply outstripped you, father, and left you behind. I’m sorry.”

  “MAX. LUCRETIA. THE CREATURE MUST DIE!”

  Tristan dully felt his own body knocked against the sandpaper brick of the alley as Max and Lucretia raced past him. Earnest sat unmoving on the bed of the cell, waiting for the attack. His hand was stroking the empty black darkness, stroking his wife’s hair. Farewell, my darling, farewell.

  Tristan brought the world back to himself. He drew in the vision from the world and allowed him to just be him, small and limited. He felt the stinging graze the brickwork had left upon his cheek. Across the road he saw the open door of the museum, waiting. He staggered over the road, coming back to himself, and followed them inside.

  Nineteen : What Remains

  Tristan careered through the museum and he knew where to go. The stone steps down to the cells were the same as before. He clattered down them two at a time, reckless in the smooth black of total darkness. He ducked the low beam that he couldn’t see automatically and rounded the corner to the cells.

  The stone corridor was filled with a ghostly half light, a blend of the failing evening lancing through the barred windows of the cells and an eerie glowing green safety light, marking the location of a fire exit.

  The shaft of light piercing the windows was the merest sliver of day. In the cell where Earnest sat, the spot had crept up the wall as the sun had set. The small stain of light was no longer the healthy yellow of day, but the red of a failing sun.

  The door to the cell was open. Gregor was outside, leaning heavily upon his walking stick, one hand held out like a bad mime pretending to lean on a wall, face strained and sweating. He was chanting.

  Inside, Lucretia struggled in the grasp of Earnest. His large hands gripped her wrists, locking her arms together. She was trying to resist him, braced herself, slid backwards, boots scraping against the floor. She was forced backwards, bent slowly backwards, to where the creature wanted her to be.

  All the while, Earnest was talking, “Gregor, you and your surprises. I should have known you had brought others to do your bidding. You were ever the cautious one, ever careful. She’s a young one, though, father. Did you make her?” It snorted with amusement, “Does that mean she’s my sister? Are we family?”

  Max sprang into the struggle from the doorway. Where had he been before? Tristan felt like shouting. Max would sort it out. Max was invincible.

  Earnest barely released his hold on Lucretia’s arm to flick out his hand at Max and his grip was regained. Like a swatted fly, Max flew back, half hitting the doorframe, spinning through the door, almost hitting Gregor, to end up rolling across the stone floor and lie crumpled on the floor.

  Tristan looked up and saw the fear in Lucretia’s eyes. She was looking at the heap of Max on the floor, she was twisted back further. Earnest loomed over her in victory.

  She looked at Tristan and he saw the fear. She could not stand against the creature alone.

  “Come, sister,” Earnest was polite and welcoming, “let us kiss.” His fa
ce dropped to her neck and his mouth sank into her flesh.

  Tristan moved forwards, already knowing it was futile. What could he do now? He was too late. Lucretia would be dead in seconds.

  Lucretia to his surprise was less worried about being bitten than he had thought. She was composed even. She looked over at Tristan, no, behind him, and said, “Max, stop looking stupid and get your sorry arse in gear. I can’t hold him long. He’s strong. This is one race I won’t win.” She threw her head back and her mouth gaped wide, and he saw fangs, long white fangs stretching out, before she plunged her teeth deep into Earnest’s neck, and they stood there, draining blood from each other in a macabre family embrace.

  A race, Lucretia had said, she wouldn’t win.

  The creature is what you would call a vampire.

  How could she race it? It would be sucking the blood from her veins.

  She was racing it.

  They were racing to drain each other’s blood.

  Earnest was a vampire.

  And Lucretia had fangs.

  And that meant that she was…

  Max stumbled past him, fell to one knee and lurched forwards onto both feet again. He fell again as he approached the cell, onto his hands and knees. Smashing into the doorway must have really hurt him.

  The last sliver of daylight was gone now; the only light was the eerie green radiance from the fire exit. Max looked back over his shoulder and his face was contorted, animalistic. His shoulder looked broken, a bulging section made him hold his arm unnaturally. Blood ran down his face and dripped from his chin. “Tristan,” Max sounded hoarse, guttural, in pain, “Get Lu out. Get her out and close the door. Do you understand? Get her out now!” And he turned back to the perverted version of an embrace and was off his hands and knees with a vicious lunge and a cry.

  With one hand around the creature’s throat and the other bearing into its stomach, Max broke the couple apart from their destructive clinch. Tristan followed Max into the cell and saw it all. Blood ran down Lucretia’s mouth and chin and he could see the frenzy in her eyes. He grabbed her arm, terrified of what she might do, and pulled her, dragged her, through the door. Throwing her to the floor, he pulled the heavy door closed behind him. He shut Max in with the creature, pulling the door tightly and turning the ornate metal key in its lock. Only then did he look back through the small, barred window in fascination and horror.