It started small; a tear in the fabric of reality, no bigger than a sliver of fingernail, appeared and hung there. As she watched it settled into a new configuration, a black oily droplet held quivering in empty air.
The walls of the cellar throbbed like a heartbeat. The black egg pulsed in time. And now it was more than obvious. It was growing.
It calved, and calved again.
Four eggs hung in a tight group, pulsing in time with the rising cacophony of the chanting. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surfaces; blues and greens and shimmering silvers on the eggs.
In the blink of an eye there were eight.
Janis had no thought of escape, lost in contemplation of the beauty before her.
Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.
The chanting grew louder still.
Thirty-two now, and they had started to fill the cellar with dancing aurora of shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the throb of magic and the screams of the chant, everything careening along in a big happy dance.
Sixty-four, each a shimmering pearl of black light.
The colors filled the room, spilled out over the circle, crept around her feet, danced in her eyes, in her head, all though her body.
She strained to turn her head toward the eggs.
A hundred and twenty-eight now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six.
As if right at her ear, she heard the fat man’s voice.
“Ye should nae fuck with anybody else’s stuff. The hoose disnae like it.”
And suddenly she remembered where she was.
She lifted her gun and fired into the eggs.
The myriad of bubbles popped, burst and disappeared as if they had never been there at all with a wail that in itself was enough to set the walls throbbing and quaking. Swirling clouds seem to come from nowhere to fill the room with darkness. Everything went black as a pit of hell, and a thunderous blast rocked the cellar, driving Janis down into a place where she dreamed of empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until she swam in a swirling sea of colors.
She drifted in a blanket of darkness, and she was alone, in a cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding chant. She saw more stars, vast swathes of gold and blue and silver, all dancing in great purple and red clouds that spun webs of grandeur across unending vistas. Shapes moved in and among the nebulae; dark, wispy shadows casting a pallor over whole galaxies at a time, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic. She was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew ever stronger she cared little. She gave herself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the stars.
She didn’t know how long she wandered in the space between. She forgot herself, forgot John and the Forensic team, lost, dancing in the vastness where only rhythm mattered.
Lost.
A sudden sound brought her back, reeled in like a hooked fish, tugged reluctantly through a too tight opening and emerging into the dim light of a cold cellar that had fallen silent again. But whatever the noise had been, it had broken whatever strange spell had fallen on her.
I’ve had enough of this.
She turned to head back up the stairs. It was dark up there now, the door to the hallway up above must have swung closed. She wasn’t worried. Not until she heard a patter of tiny footsteps in the far corner of the cellar and, from everywhere and nowhere, a deep voice started to sing again.
Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies,
The Sleeping God is dreaming where he lies.
She turned back to the stairs, but she only got two steps forward when the door at the top swung open. Whoever was there couldn’t be seen, but their shadow could, it was only small, doll sized.
I’m trapped.
The shadow up above moved, and she saw a small figure come into the stairwell before the door swung shut again leaving only darkness.
She heard footsteps, porcelain on stone this time. hen came another patter, on wood, from the far corner of the cellar.
They’re taunting me.
She raised her pistol and fired two shots up the steps, the sound almost deafening in the enclosed area, setting her ears ringing for long seconds afterward.
At least it deadens that bloody singing.
She probably hadn’t hit anything, but she’d made her statement of intent. She moved away from the stairs and headed into the junk piles. If they were going to play cat and mouse, she preferred to be the cat.
Her hearing started to come back. The deep voice was still singing, and now she thought she could pinpoint it. It was coming from a spot somewhere in the middle of the room, and it sounded slightly more tinny, more mechanical, than the version she’d heard upstairs when the gramophone played it. It sounded like it might be coming from a small radio or cheap tape player. Whatever the case, she had an idea that if she could find it and stop it, maybe, just maybe, that would also stop the dolls. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was all she had.
She headed further into the stack of junk, almost knocking over a nest of dining table chairs as she squeezed into an alleyway made mainly of books, newspapers and magazines stacked as high as the top of her head. She didn’t like not being able to see the rest of the cellar, not when footsteps, two pairs of them now, tapped on the floor somewhere out there.
But if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.
She could feel those blue eyes again though, feel them staring. She knew they were close, just as she knew that neither of the two dolls prowling in the shadows was the blue dressed one. Its stare was always fiercer somehow, and she’d know that when she felt it.
She went deeper into the stacks. The song got louder.
He dreams as he sleeps with the fish far below,
He dreams in the weeds, in the dark,
He dreams and he sings, in the deep, in the sleep,
And the Dreaming God is singing where he lies.
She had a good idea where it was coming from now, just to the left of her and beyond the alley of papers and books she was in. Something fell nearby, a heavy thud and a rustle of paper, then another. Tiny footsteps pattered. The song went into its chorus.
Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies.
The footsteps pattered along in time, and Janis was confused for a second before it came to her.
They’re dancing. The fucking things are dancing.
She pushed faster through the papers, knocking them aside and toppling columns, no longer caring about giving away her position. The song kept going.
No matter how many piles of papers she knocked over, it always seemed to be just out of her reach.
The Dreaming God is singing where he lies.
Janis forced herself to calm down, she was hyperventilating, close to panic and feeling exactly like the frightened child she’d once been, cowering under covers from the scary things in the cupboard. She’d worked long and hard to get rid of that scared kid, devoted her life to helping equally scared people in scary situations, and she wasn’t about to let all of that go because of a couple of dancing dolls and a spooky voice in a cellar.
The source of the song sounded closer than ever now. She pushed over one last pile of magazines, National Geographic, more than 20 years old and soggy with damp, and stepped over into a cleared area that seemed to be in the center of the cellar. An old radio, Sixties vintage by the look of it, sat on an empty patch of floor. The song was coming from its cracking, tinny speaker. Janis bent down, intending to switch the machine off. As she did so, two shadowy figures came at her at knee height, like excited puppies welcoming a master home. They were at her legs before she could move or raise her gun. A green dressed doll started to climb and when Janis looked down all she saw was a face full of pointed teeth and a smile, eyes too blue, cheeks too red.
It was too close, too tight to her for her to chance a shot, so
she clubbed it, hard across the face with the barrel of the gun, caving the head in all across the left side and leaving only half the jaw in a lopsided smile.
The doll kept climbing, and the second one was at her ankles. She felt a sharp pain in her left heel. She’d been bitten, and was now being chewed on.
The green doll was now at her waist. She grabbed it with her free hand and held it out at arm’s length where it struggled and squirmed like an angry cat. It bent at the waist, trying to reach her hand, teeth clacking in a loose jaw. Janis put the pistol in its mouth, turned her head away, and blew the head to glittering fragments that exploded like a bomb. She felt shards of porcelain spatter on the side of her face but when she turned to look, ears ringing again, she was holding the still, lifeless, and headless, body of a tattered old doll.
She tossed it away, and kicked out, hard, at the red-dressed doll at her feet, catching it full in the body and sending it, like a perfectly struck punt, soaring high and away over the stacks of papers to hit the brick cellar wall with a satisfying thud. It fell away out of sight.
The radio still sang.
Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies.
The Dreaming God is singing where he lies.
“Dream about this you fucker,” Janis said, and put two shots into the speaker. The radio died with a crackle and hiss that she put an end to by stomping on it until it went quiet.
She stood there listening for long seconds but there were no more pattering feet and no more singing.
“Right,” Janis muttered, “let’s see if we can do something about fixing this house and finding out what the fuck is going on here.”
She raised her weapon ahead of her and, limping slightly on an ankle that was sore and bleeding, headed back toward the stairs.
20
John had no idea how long he had been descending the stairs in the dark, only that he’d been walking for a long, long time. There was no sense of tiredness, no hunger. The wounds in his belly throbbed every so often but that seemed to be the only thing to remind him he was actually alive and not just locked in some tortured dream.
He did know it was getting colder still, and there was now a dampness in the air. The dark sea, that had seemed so distant when he had seen it from atop the tower, must now be close by. He didn’t need to see it to know, for the walls, and the stone underfoot, were wet and dripping. Green weed, almost slime, coated sections of it. He was so intent on just putting one foot ahead of the other and making sure he didn’t slip that he almost walked into the first obstruction he’d come to in his long descent.
He raised the pistol to let its glow show him what was ahead. He wasn’t really surprised to find another doorway. His heart rate thudded up through the scales as he recognized the white, peeling paint, and the number, six, on the front.
I’ve done it, I’ve found the way home.
He didn’t pause for thought. He stepped forward, turned the handle, and opened the door, expecting to see the room in the apartment, either the crime scene, or the battered armchair room, at that point he didn’t care which.
It was a place he recognized, a place he’d never forget, but it wasn’t the room in the apartment. It was an alleyway off George Street and it was still bitterly cold. Snow fell, impossibly, from the ceiling above to drift in a wind that obviously whistled down the alley, but could not be felt from where he stood in the doorway.
A darker mound lay slumped against the wall of the left-hand building. It looked from here like a discarded bag of rubbish, but John knew better. The wounds in his belly throbbed, remembering the pain, remembering his mistake.
And I won’t be making that one again.
He had no intention of trying to pass through the door. He’d failed with all the other doors, and although there hadn’t been a bursting egg in place to form this one, he was pretty sure the same rules applied.
More snow fell, and now he could clearly see that the hunched mound against the wall was warmer than the surroundings. Flakes fell on it, and immediately started to melt, although it was only a matter of time before hypothermia set in and the fallen man succumbed to a St. John’s winter.
Still, John stood in the doorway. He knew this wasn’t real, it was some kind of recorded broadcast, it had to be. He wondered if he was going to be forced to watch himself being stabbed. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that.
The wind continued to whistle and snow continued to fall. It started to lie across the shoulders of the hunched figure, John even remembered the pattern it made, like white wings on his shoulder blades. At the time, he’d wondered if the fallen man was already on his way to Heaven. Now he wondered if maybe he wasn’t being prepared for somewhere else, some other Burden.
Won’t be long now, I’ll be along any second.
A figure seemed to sidle out of the right-hand wall near John and walk forward into the alley. Only it wasn’t himself, those months of pain and hurt in the past, instead it was his sergeant, Janis. She wasn’t dressed for winter. It looked like she was wearing exactly what he’d last seen her in, just before he’d lost her in the foggy doorway, however long ago that might have been. It seemed like an age.
The sergeant stepped forward, weapon raised, at least she’s doing better than I did, and moved toward the slumped body. John’s wounds throbbed, hot and red then went cold as a lancing pain, one he remembered only too well, hit him hard. He stumbled in the doorway; the gun hit the rock of the wall and was knocked from his hand. It tumbled away somewhere, lost in the dark, but he had no time to fumble around looking for it. Janis was now leaning over the hunched body. He knew what would happen next: she was going to touch the shoulder and tug lightly, and then it would happen: the knife would flash, blood would flow, hers, not his. He couldn’t let her suffer what he had suffered.
He pushed forward into the doorway, expecting to meet the same resistance he had met in the previous encounters, but this time he went straight through, and was so astonished that he stumbled again, almost fell. Janis bent closer to the hunched body and tugged at the shoulder. John saw the supposedly dead man wake, and turn, the blade already in his hand. Time seemed to stand still and he saw it all again as it had happened the first time. The man, sleeping, not dead, turned, and his eyes went wide. All he would have seen would have been a shadowy figure leaning over him, and he slept with a knife in his hand for just such occasions. He screamed an incoherent cry of rage and surprise, and his arm tensed, ready to strike.
“No!” John shouted, and threw himself forward, knocking Janis aside and falling over the moving man just as the knife came around and stabbed, twice, then sliced, just once, but once was enough.
The pain flared like a bomb going off in his gut and in his head and John was blown away, down into darkness, into the black.
He blinked and the Reaper was there again, sitting at a table with the chess set laid out in front of him, but John had no time for studying the lie of the game. He was looking at the view over the robed figure’s shoulder.
He had reached the bottom of the tower. He stood on a balcony, some ten feet above the black sea, only now that he was here he could see that it wasn’t a sea at all, but a throbbing, swelling mass of the black eggs. Hundreds of millions of them filled the view as far as he could see, all the way to a distant horizon where they became lost in fog. The mass of black seemed to quiver and thrum, and there was a distinct, not unpleasant, vibration that ran through John like a weak flow of electricity. Every so often one of the eggs floated slightly above the surface and popped. Images and sounds and muffled voices swam in John’s head, but were quickly subsumed as the vibration rose to a higher pitch, blocking out the vision and preventing him from being overwhelmed by it.
“Singing helps too,” the Reaper said casually, but John still wasn’t ready to pay attention to him, was still taking in the scene around him.
More fog swirled overhead, so close that he thought he might be able to reach up and touch it. He had a wall a
t his back, but didn’t turn to look. He had a feeling there might be a doorway there, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to go through it yet.
The Reaper motioned to the empty chair at the table.
“I believe we have a game to finish, and you’d better pay closer attention this time, we’re getting to the sharp end.”
John couldn’t take his eyes off the sea of eggs.
“What is this place?”
The Reaper laughed.
“Everywhere, nowhere, the dreams of a Singing God? Who really knows? All I know is that I am here and I can go somewhere else, taking you with me, or leaving you behind depending on the result.”
“My fate depends on a chess game?”
“No, John. Your fate depends on you, same as it ever was.”
John sat down at the table and by instinct fished in his pocket for the smokes. It was only then that he noticed he no longer carried the pistol. He looked up in alarm and the Reaper smiled.
“Don’t worry, you only had it as long as you needed it.”
John found the Zippo, but only an empty pack of cigarettes. It didn’t stay empty for long, the pack swelled in his hand when the Reaper waved a finger, twenty new coffin nails now filling it snugly.
“I need you relaxed for this next bit,” the Reaper said, lighting his pipe with a long matchstick as John tapped out a smoke, Camel Filter, his brand of choice, and lit it.
John looked down at the game, and noticed immediately he was in trouble.
“Your first instinct is to preserve your Queen,” the Reaper said. “And you’ve just seen that for yourself, had it proved to you.”
John’s wounds throbbed in agreement as the Reaper continued.
“But that often leaves you, the King as it were, open to attack, open to someone like me taking advantage of your vulnerability.”
The Reaper moved a pawn forward to directly attack John’s Queen. He saw that he could save it, but it would indeed leave his King vulnerable, not immediately, but definitely leaving a gap that his opponent might exploit later. But not to do it would mean the certain loss of his Queen, his most powerful piece. He moved a pawn of his own forward in defense.
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