Spectre's Rest

by Nick Moseley

  The three shadow-figures spread out to block the corridor and began to advance. Desai reached a decision. Her vapour weapon sputtered out.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Trev was off and running before the second syllable was out of her mouth. They pounded down the corridor towards the staff quarters, the flickering lights illuminating their progress like a nightclub strobe. As they reached the corner Trev risked a look over his shoulder. The shadow-figures were following them. They weren’t running, but somehow they weren’t being left as far behind as they ought to.

  Trev took the corner at speed and bounced off the wall before righting himself. He was grateful that the lights in this section of corridor were working properly. Alongside him Desai ran with the economical speed of long practice.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ she shouted to him. Between the ringing in his ears from the gunshots, the clatter of their footsteps, and his own laboured breathing, he almost didn’t hear her.

  ‘Keep running,’ he replied. Silly question, he thought.

  Behind them the shadow-figures rounded the corner. The lights immediately began to buzz and stutter. Trev gritted his teeth and pushed harder.

  A guard appeared at the other end of the corridor. Trev recognised the man but didn’t know his name. He was middle-aged and paunchy, with receding black hair and an unflattering thin moustache. He had his gun out and was talking into his radio. He looked very surprised to see Trev and Desai charging in his direction, and for a moment Trev thought the guard might take a shot at them. Then he spotted the shadow-figures advancing up the corridor and his mouth fell open.

  ‘Vapour weapon!’ Trev shouted, holding out a hand.

  The guard continued to stare past him at the approaching shadows. They were doing the slasher-movie villain’s trick of keeping up with a running victim despite only moving at walking pace themselves.

  ‘VAPOUR WEAPON!’ Trev bellowed, skidding to a halt in front of the guard. The man flinched, his eyes registering Trev as if he’d never seen him before. He held up his hands, which were full of gun and radio respectively, and frowned at them. Trev didn’t have time to wait for him to regain his senses, so he reached down and grabbed the unresisting guard’s vapour weapon from its holster. The short hilt was made of animal horn, worn smooth by long use.

  Trev spun around. He drove a jolt of energy into the weapon and activated it. A blood-red blade flashed into existence at the end of the hilt. It was an unusual shape, its back edge angling steeply towards the point from about halfway along its length. Sparks of energy crackled from the blade, fizzling out before reaching the floor.

  Everything snapped into focus as the weapon’s calming effect took hold of Trev. He slipped into a combat-ready stance. Desai’s own weapon came to life and she stepped up alongside him. The shadow-figures came to a halt a short distance away and stood silently, watching.

  ‘This thing’s pretty funky,’ Trev said, shifting his grip on the weapon’s hilt.

  ‘It’s a seax,’ said Desai. ‘Saxon short-sword.’

  The fact that they could casually discuss the history of Trev’s new weapon having been running for their lives just seconds earlier made him grin. He hoped that it was pissing the shadow-figures off. Even if it wasn’t, he didn’t care. He had a vapour weapon again!

  ‘What are those things?’ whispered the guard, who was very conspicuously standing behind Trev and Desai.

  ‘What they are,’ Trev replied, narrowing his eyes, ‘is in deep shit.’

  And he charged them.

  Twenty-Seven

  He’d never felt quite so exhilarated about risking his life in such a reckless fashion. Part of it was the vapour weapon suppressing his fear, of course, and another part was sheer adrenaline. But a large chunk of it was the simple fact that, after spending the last few days running and hiding and whimpering, he was at last able to fight back. Whatever these shadow-things were they’d had him at a serious disadvantage, and now he intended to return the favour.

  Desai charged with him, for which he was grateful. He’d have looked pretty stupid charging a numerically-superior enemy on his own. The corridor was wide enough for them to fight side-by-side without barging into each other, and the walls posed no obstacle to their vapour weapons, which could just pass through.

  The Corbyn-shadow dropped back and let its two companions move forwards to face the attack. He might be dead, but he hasn’t changed, Trev thought. The shadow that intercepted him was the taller of the two. Like the Corbyn-shadow it had glowing green eyes in its otherwise featureless face, and misty darkness slid off it as it met Trev’s charge.

  Trev swung the seax in a short arc, striking the shadow on its left arm as it reached for him. He expected the vapour weapon to slice straight through the creature. It didn’t. A gout of darkness erupted from the point of impact, the red blade digging into the shadow’s forearm for a split second before rebounding. Trev was caught off balance but the dark figure seemed similarly disconcerted and fell back a step.

  To Trev’s right Desai was having the same problem. Her vapour weapon whipped out, striking her opponent on the chest and thigh. Plumes of darkness spurted from the “wounds” and the creature dodged away before coming back at her. She fended it off with a flurry of quick blocks, her blade a green blur.

  Trev’s shadow sprang at him. He retreated a couple of steps, swatting the grasping hands aside with his blade and sinking its point into the creature’s knee. The result was the same as the previous hits – a flash of darkness escaped from the wound and the shadow backed away. Trev had no idea if he was doing any actual damage, but as he’d started the fight he was determined to try and finish it.

  He ducked in towards his opponent, trying to drive it back. It flung out its arms and snatched at him. Trev hurriedly switched attack for defence. He didn’t want the thing touching him if he could avoid it. That thought triggered a little warning in the back of his mind. The shadow wasn’t trying to hit him; it was trying to grab him.

  The victims in their cells, with no obvious cause of death.

  The numbing touch of the shadow in the library.

  Oh, shit.

  ‘Don’t let them touch you!’ Trev yelled to Desai. ‘That’s how they kill!’

  Desai managed a tiny nod of acknowledgement. She was holding her own against her assailant without too much trouble, though she hadn’t had any more luck than Trev had in terms of hurting it.

  Trev’s warning, however, seemed to provoke the shadows. They lunged into the attack, suddenly moving with greater speed. Their outlines lost some of their definition, making it more difficult to track their movements. The corridor seemed suddenly filled with flailing limbs and clutching fingers.

  All thought of going on the offensive was gone now. It was all Trev could do just to defend himself. His blade snapped this way and that, intercepting the shadowy hands before they could touch him. Sweat poured off him despite the cold. The flickering lights overhead and the bright glow of the vapour weapons became disorienting, and he found himself relying purely on his augmented reflexes. The red blade of the seax struck at any movement from the blurred figure in front of him. Seconds clunked past like days. And all the while, he was losing ground. Soon his back would be against the wall at the end of the corridor. When that happened, he’d have no chance.

  He couldn’t spare the time to check on Desai. The green glow of her vapour weapon had stayed in more or less the same position to his right, so he guessed that she was falling back as well. His only hope was that the guard whose weapon he’d “borrowed” had come to his senses and gone for help, though Trev wasn’t holding his breath on that score. The man had appeared so useless he was probably still standing there with his mouth open.

  The hands came at him again. Trev easily turned the left one away but almost missed the right, the hooked fingers snatching at his arm. They just grazed the fabric of his jacket. A jolt of cold seized the limb and Trev felt an odd draining sensation, as if a
sliver of his very life had been stripped away from him. Horrified he jumped backwards, gaining some distance from his opponent; though the manoeuvre brought him closer to the wall that would eventually trap him.

  He had to try something different. His current strategy was buying him time, but that was all. If he was going to die, he reasoned, it might as well be dramatic. He’d rather his epitaph read “HERE LIES TREV IRWIN. HE DIED WITH STYLE, THE MAD BASTARD” than “HERE LIES TREV IRWIN. HE GRACEFULLY ACCEPTED THE INEVITABLE”.

  He feinted away from the shadow. As he’d known it would, it threw out its hands again and he spun into a lightning-fast sidestep past them. It moved him into a less defensible position – the side wall of the corridor no longer protected his left-hand side – but it allowed him a single free strike at the centre of the shadow. The seax crackled as he forced an extra jolt of energy into it, and he brought the weapon down into the shifting darkness. He released the energy as he made contact, just as he’d done when he’d fought Corbyn’s banshee.

  A huge plume of dark essence fountained out of the shadow. It boiled up towards the ceiling and dissipated. The creature jerked back with a shriek, the first sound Trev had heard it make. He pressed his advantage and his opponent retreated, flowing away down the corridor. He wanted to follow but couldn’t do so without exposing his back to the shadow that was attacking Desai, so instead he joined her, flanking her opponent. Outnumbered, the thing broke off from the fight and followed its comrade around the corner and out of sight. The Corbyn-shadow had disappeared. I expect he did a runner as soon as the tide turned, Trev thought.

  The fluorescent lights stopped flickering. Trev shut down his vapour weapon and leaned against the nearest wall.

  ‘They’re gone,’ he said, panting.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Desai, deactivating her own weapon. She was breathing hard, but unlike Trev she didn’t sound like she was seconds from a cardiac episode. ‘I’m sorry I doubted you. Those were the things you’ve been seeing?’

  ‘Kind of,’ Trev said. ‘The ones I’ve seen before couldn’t step out of the wall. But other than that, pretty similar.’

  ‘Good effort,’ said a voice right behind him.

  It turned out that Trev wasn’t too tired to jump halfway to the ceiling in fright. He tuned to see Oscar sitting there, staring up at him with his mismatched eyes. ‘Bloody hell,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘What, pay you a compliment?’ said the cat, all innocence. ‘All right, you’re the boss. No more compliments.’

  ‘How long have you been there?’ Desai asked.

  ‘Long enough to see the show,’ said Oscar. ‘I heard gunshots and came running. Passed a guard legging it in the opposite direction, then found you two fighting those shadows.’

  ‘You heard gunshots and ran towards them?’ said Trev.

  ‘When you put it like that, it does seem a little counter-intuitive,’ Oscar replied. ‘Still, I’ve always thought that the key to surviving a battle is to arrive late and stand behind the side that’s winning.’

  ‘Yeah, I hear they named that strategy after you,’ said Trev.

  ‘Did they? Flattering. I can’t claim to have invented it, but I have raised it to an art form.’

  ‘No shit.’ Trev stared down the corridor, flipping the hilt of the seax in his hand. ‘So, now that you’ve seen the bad guys, any idea what they are?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Oscar. ‘My best guess is still that they’re part of a larger entity, something that’s bound to the building one way or another. What that thing is though, I don’t know.’

  ‘But one of them had a distinct personality,’ Desai said. ‘Trev said it sounded like Corbyn.’

  ‘It was Corbyn,’ said Trev. ‘It had his voice, his way of speaking. And it knew who I was.’

  ‘Really?’ said Oscar. He grimaced. ‘Then all bets are off. I don’t like admitting it, but I’m stumped.’

  He looked genuinely upset. Trev knew how proud he was of his knowledge of the supernatural. Discovering that he didn’t know everything after all must have come as a real shock to him.

  ‘Here comes the cavalry,’ said Desai. ‘Better late than never.’

  Trev followed her gaze and saw a group of prison staff bustling towards them down the corridor. The guard he’d mugged for his vapour weapon was in front, with Richie, Grace Montano and a female guard Trev didn’t recognise trailing along behind. ‘They’re just following Oscar’s “turn up late to the battle” strategy.’

  ‘They’ve made the rookie error of leaving it too late,’ said Oscar. ‘You can’t wait until the battle’s actually finished to turn up. People notice.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be hiding at this point?’

  ‘I think that particular horse has bolted.’ Oscar stayed where he was. ‘If I’m going to help you work this out I’m going to need free rein to wander about and talk to people. We might as well come clean about my being here.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it can make things any worse than they already are.’

  The group reached them. Montano’s expression was one of mingled concern and irritation. ‘Mishti, Trevor,’ she said. ‘What’s going on? Dean said there was shooting and a fight here.’

  ‘There was,’ said Mishti.

  ‘Where’s that cat come from?’ said the female guard. She had a Scottish accent, and Trev remembered hearing her voice on Montano’s radio at some point. She was short and slim, with close-cropped blonde hair. Trev judged her to be around his own age.

  ‘I’m not just any cat, of course,’ said Oscar, winking at her. She gasped and took a half step back.

  Montano pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘What is he doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Just lending a hand,’ said Oscar. ‘Nice to see you, Grace. It’s been a while.’

  ‘This is a joke, got to be,’ said the female guard. ‘One of you is throwing his voice, right?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Montano. ‘Aside from the fact that this prison is on lockdown and nobody – human, feline or otherwise – is supposed to be getting in or out, when were you going to tell me he was here?’

  ‘He’s only just arrived,’ Trev lied. ‘We were coming to tell you when we got jumped by the shadows.’

  ‘Really,’ said Montano, her voice flat.

  ‘I got here just in time to see the fight,’ Oscar said, attempting to steer the conversation back on track. ‘I think you’ve got a serious problem here.’

  ‘No, I’ve got several serious problems,’ snapped Montano, ‘and I’m looking at three of them right now!’

  ‘They’re not lying, Grace,’ said the male guard. ‘There were three… well, I don’t know what they were, but they looked like living shadows with glowing green eyes. They were trying to kill us, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘They might not be lying outright, Dean,’ Montano said, ‘but as usual they aren’t telling me everything. I’m fed up with being drip-fed snippets of information.’

  ‘To be honest, “snippets of information” are all we’ve had up until now,’ said Desai. ‘We found some stuff in the library that you might want to look at. I wanted to show you earlier, but you were resting.’

  ‘If you can call it that,’ Montano grunted. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Plans of the building,’ Desai explained. ‘The structure of some of the walls is a bit unusual.’

  She told Montano about the sections of wall marked on the plans, and the apparent movement of the dark energy around the prison. The warden’s face remained blank throughout. She wants there to be a simpler explanation than this, Trev thought. Can’t blame her. I think we all do.

  ‘And as far as we can tell, it’s these shadow-figures that are responsible for the deaths,’ said Desai, wrapping things up.

  ‘One of them just grazed me,’ said Trev, ‘and it felt like my arm was going to fall off.’

  ‘Living shadows,’ said Montano, apparently unconvinced.

  ‘I saw them,’ said Dean,
with a vacant nod. Trev didn’t think the bloke was going to be a contestant on Mastermind any time soon, but nevertheless it was useful to have him as a witness.

  ‘And here’s another thing,’ said Oscar. ‘How many murders have there been so far?’

  ‘Three,’ said Desai. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the cat. ‘But here’s another question: how many of those shadows attacked you just now?’

  ‘Three,’ said Desai. She frowned as she realised what Oscar was getting at. ‘Wait. Are you saying that every time they kill someone, that person becomes another one of them?’

  He gave a feline shrug. ‘I’m throwing it out there.’

  ‘Corbyn was one of the victims, and he was also one of the shadows,’ Trev said. ‘It makes a weird kind of sense.’

  ‘I need to see these plans you’ve found,’ said Montano. ‘Then I need to make a decision on what to do next.’

  ‘Evacuate the prison and get a Custodian clean-up crew in here, that’s what I’d do,’ said Oscar. ‘If you don’t, you might be responsible for the deaths of everyone in the building.’

  An uncomfortable moment of silence followed. The two guards looked at their shoes and Desai cleared her throat.

  ‘I love being the one who always tells it like it is,’ Oscar said with satisfaction. ‘It doesn’t make you very popular at parties, but at least everyone knows where they stand.’

  ‘Your opinion is duly noted,’ said Montano, ‘though I don’t think we’ll be pushing that panic button just yet. Evacuating the prison is a last resort. Trying to move any group of prisoners en masse is risky, and when they’re as dangerous as the ones we have here…’

  ‘We should at least have a contingency plan in place,’ said Desai. ‘Anyway, I’ll go and get the blueprints.’

  Trev nodded. ‘Right. And I’m going to go and fetch the one person in this prison I’m pretty sure knows what’s happening.’