by Nick Moseley
The Dravine-shadow lashed out an arm in a swipe that would’ve killed Trev in about four different ways if it had landed. He rolled out of the way and the massive creature followed him. It attacked again and smashed a fist clean through one of the bookcases.
Trev dodged, narrowly avoiding being grabbed by another shadow that lunged at him from the side. The Dravine-shadow swatted it out of the way and came forwards. It flexed its huge hands and prepared to strike, but then stopped and staggered. Trev looked down and saw the wolf-shadow clamping its jaws around the giant’s leg. It tore its head away and a great gout of darkness erupted from the “wound”, sending the Dravine-shadow to its knees.
The wolf raised its head, darkness streaming from its mouth, and howled. It was an utterly inhuman noise that made Trev shudder, though its effect on the shadows was more dramatic. As one they turned to face the wolf and then charged at it. It bolted towards the rear of the library, drawing the shadows away from the struggling guards.
‘Go!’ Trev yelled at his shell-shocked comrades. He pointed at the door, which was suddenly clear.
‘Run!’
Forty
They ran.
Trev and Desai took the lead, ploughing through a pair of shadows that hadn’t yet joined the chase after the wolf. They burst into the corridor.
‘Which way?’ Desai asked. ‘Where’s the chapel?’
‘Follow me,’ Montano replied. She charged off into the dark, using her vapour weapon to light the way. The others piled after her in a confusion of jostling limbs and frightened faces. Trev wasn’t sure who had made it and who hadn’t, but there was no time to stop and do a headcount.
The chapel, it turned out, was just off the dilapidated front hall. Its double doors were covered in the same peeling paint as the walls. From the looks of things, it had been a while since anyone at Spectre’s Rest had felt in need of religious instruction.
Montano twisted the door handles. ‘Locked, of course,’ she muttered. She reached for her keys and remembered that she’d given them to the ill-fated Stewart and Matt. ‘Richie! Please tell me you’ve got your keys on you.’
The burly guard unhooked his key-ring from his belt and handed it to Montano without comment. He was still wheezing from the run. Montano rummaged through the keys, searching for the right one.
‘Conduit opening,’ said Desai, shining her torch down the corridor. Her voice was calm but the torch beam wavered a little.
Trev followed the beam with his eyes. At the far end of the corridor a black slot was appearing in the wall. A green glow formed within it.
‘I don’t want you to feel like I’m putting you under pressure, Grace,’ said Trev, ‘but…’
‘Shut up,’ Montano replied. Around her the rest of the group was backing up towards the door. A shadow emerged from the conduit, dragging itself free with an almost casual air. ‘Got it!’
She scrambled the key into the lock as a second shadow appeared behind the first, then a third. The doors opened with a screech of rusty hinges and the survivors bundled into the chapel. The shadows converged on the doors just as Trev and Montano slammed them shut. She quickly locked them again and everybody stepped away, expecting to hear the creatures trying to force their way in.
Nothing happened.
‘Bloody hell, looks like the old duffer was right,’ Trev said.
Torchlight illuminated the interior of the chapel and Trev saw that Bookbinder was one of those who’d made it. Aside from Desai, Montano and Richie, the only other survivors were Barton and Suzanne. And Oscar, who was perched on the back of a dusty pew. It was a depressingly small group.
The chapel was fairly small itself, with six rows of pews split by a central aisle and a bare stone altar with a perfunctory amount of decorative carving around its edges. The walls were panelled with wood, sporting a similar decoration to the altar. Surprisingly the room had no windows, despite sharing an outer wall.
‘Right,’ said Barton. He drew his gun and pointed it at Bookbinder. ‘Time for you to explain yourself, you gutless piece of shit.’
‘What do you want to know?’ said Bookbinder. He didn’t seem afraid of Barton. Slumped on one of the pews, his voice and posture spoke only of weary resignation.
‘What do you think?’ Barton snarled. ‘What’s going on, for one thing. And why you didn’t tell us about this place earlier, when we could still have saved everyone!’
‘I was told to keep people away from this place,’ Bookbinder said.
‘By who?’ Trev asked.
Bookbinder sighed. ‘Lysander’s people,’ he said.
Looks were exchanged. Barton’s anger subsided somewhat, replaced by curiosity. Trev knew that the Custodians had been searching for dirt on Seth Lysander for years; was Bookbinder about to provide it?
‘Leo,’ Montano said softly. ‘Just what has been happening here?’
‘This prison was built as an experiment,’ Bookbinder said, staring at the back of the pew in front. ‘The architect was a man called Hartley Banks. He’d made an extensive study of the work of Otto Funkelay – creator of the Funkelay Cage, of course – and thought he’d found an alternative use for those ideas.’
‘Which was?’
‘Well, a Funkelay Cage draws in positively-charged psychic energy and uses it to form a barrier that can contain non-corporeal beings. Demons, spirits and what have you. Banks wanted to build a Cage that drew in negatively-charged energy, and he built it here.’
‘But why?’ Oscar was following Bookbinder’s explanation with close attention. ‘What was he trying to trap in the Cage?’
‘Nothing but the energy itself.’ Bookbinder shifted position on the uncomfortable seat. ‘His idea was to build a set of conduits within the prison that would draw negatively-charged energy away from the prisoners. He believed that it would make them calmer, better behaved. Even cure them, if the energy was kept away from them long enough.’
‘Was he on drugs?’ Oscar asked. ‘That’s as daft a hypothesis as I’ve heard in a long while.’
‘Why wouldn’t it work?’ Trev said.
‘Because it assumes that negatively-charged energy is an external force acting on the prisoners,’ Oscar explained. ‘Whereas in actual fact it’s generated as a result of their thoughts and actions. Drawing it away wouldn’t modify their behaviour.’
‘You have to remember that the Victorians were only just getting to grips with that area of science,’ Bookbinder said. ‘Many aspects of it are still a mystery even now.’
‘So what happened when they fired this thing up?’ Trev asked.
‘Banks called it his “Anathema Engine”,’ Bookbinder said. ‘In basic terms, it worked. It drew in negatively-charged energy. But, as discussed, it didn’t affect the prisoners.’
Desai cocked her head. ‘So what happened to Banks? Did he try and refine his idea?’
‘He was killed in a riot here in eighteen seventy-nine,’ Bookbinder replied, ‘along with the warden and two-thirds of the prison staff. As far as I know, nobody picked up his research. It was obvious that it had failed, and I think the Custodians just swept the whole thing under the carpet and forgot about it. Spectre’s Rest was left as just a prison.’
‘How does this relate to what’s happening now?’
‘The Anathema Engine wasn’t calibrated quite correctly,’ Bookbinder said. ‘It was designed to draw in the energy and harmlessly disperse it through a grid of conduits under the front lawn. But Banks’s calculations were off. Over time more energy was drawn in than was dispersed, and a backlog began to build up.’
‘So this presence, this darkness, in the prison is over a hundred years’ worth of accumulated negative energy?’ said Oscar.
‘Yes,’ said Bookbinder.
‘But why’s it turned hostile now?’ Montano asked. ‘What set it off?’
‘Seth Lysander found out about it and sent a couple of his science chaps to investigate,’ Bookbinder explained. ‘They experimented on it.’
Bookbinder shifted position again. ‘Well, they had the idea that the presence was essentially an artificial genius loci, but without a consciousness of its own. So they decided to see if a human mind could bond with it and control it.’
‘One of them tried that? Sounds risky,’ said Trev.
‘Well, no,’ said Bookbinder. ‘Lysander supplied them with a… test subject.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. But I don’t think she was a volunteer.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Desai, her voice flat.
‘I don’t know all the details,’ Bookbinder said. ‘All I know is that she died, but her consciousness did bond with the presence. She became a genius loci, more or less.’
‘So they just fed someone to that thing in the name of science?’ said Trev. ‘What the hell?’
‘And she’s been taking revenge on all of us, hasn’t she?’ said Barton. ‘Lysander and his cronies created this thing, and now they can’t stop it.’
Bookbinder shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s her.’
‘Why not?’
‘After the… experiment, the scientists studied the presence for over a month. It shifted around the conduits, but it wasn’t hostile. At least until that bloody vampire was brought in.’
‘What, Corbyn?’ Trev asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘The presence became very agitated. It gathered itself in the conduits around Corbyn’s cell. After a while, it shorted out the power and then killed him. It pulled out his soul.’
‘But you don’t think it – she – is the one who’s been attacking the rest of us?’ said Montano.
‘No,’ said Bookbinder. ‘It’s him. Corbyn. When she killed him, she drew his consciousness into the presence with her, and I think he took over. His strength of will must’ve overpowered her.’
‘And he’s gone on a rampage,’ said Trev. He sat down on a pew next to Desai. ‘That wolf-shadow is Lysander’s test subject, right? She’s still loose.’
‘Looks that way,’ said Bookbinder. ‘She got away when he took control. The others haven’t been so lucky.’
‘Every person he kills adds to his power,’ Oscar said. ‘He’s got a bunch of souls in there with him, all under his control.’
‘Yes.’
‘And if he gets out of the prison, he could just keep on killing until he’s spread across the whole country.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘I think I speak for us all when I say “Oh shit”,’ said Trev.
‘You knew all this was going on,’ Barton said to Bookbinder. The Custodian had lowered his gun but he hadn’t put it away. ‘You could’ve called us and stopped it at any time.’
‘No,’ the doctor replied. ‘No, I couldn’t. Lysander wouldn’t have allowed it.’
‘What hold has he got over you?’ Montano asked.
‘He… knows things about me,’ Bookbinder said. ‘From my past.’
‘Such as?’
‘I haven’t worked here all this time because I enjoy it, Grace,’ said Bookbinder. ‘I have certain… appetites I find hard to control. It’s safer for me to be here, away from everyone.’
‘So you sat on your hands and let everyone die, just so you could keep the skeletons in your closet?’ demanded Barton.
‘I didn’t bloody know this would happen!’ Bookbinder shot back, finally showing some animation. ‘They told me they’d deal with it, that I just needed to keep people away while they sorted it out!’
‘Pathetic,’ said Barton. He holstered his gun and stalked away, shaking his head.
‘Why did you have to keep people away from this room?’ Desai said.
‘The Anathema Engine is beneath us,’ Bookbinder said. ‘That’s why it’s protected. There’s an entrance in here somewhere, but I don’t know exactly where.’
‘You’ve never looked for it?’
‘No. I was told to stay away, remember?’
‘Right, let’s find it,’ said Montano.
‘Yeah, good luck with that,’ Trev replied, parking himself on the back row of pews, next to Desai. ‘I need a rest. I’ve had it.’
Montano scowled at them, but when they didn’t move she gathered Richie and Suzanne and the three of them began a search of the chapel.
‘What do you think we should do?’ Trev said, watching them knocking on the walls and pushing at the altar.
‘Wait until it’s light outside and get out of here,’ Desai replied.
‘I’m with you a hundred percent there,’ Trev said. He was going to make a comment about how calm she always was when he caught sight of her eyes. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Are you?’
‘No,’ Trev admitted. Without the distraction of Bookbinder’s explanation his mind was replaying the horrors of the evening so far. ‘I hope I never experience anything like this again.’
‘I hope nobody does,’ Desai said. She took a deep breath. ‘All those people.’
Oscar wandered across the aisle and leapt up into her lap. She jumped. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s well known that humans suffering from stress find having a cat on their lap relaxing,’ Oscar said. He sprawled onto his side. ‘You may stroke me.’
‘This is just weird,’ Desai said. She patted him gingerly.
‘Did the heating come on?’ Trev asked. ‘Feels like it’s getting warmer in here.’
‘You’re right,’ said Oscar. His whiskers twitched. ‘And I can smell burning.’
Trev stood up and walked towards the doors. He sniffed. ‘I can smell it too,’ he said. He touched the left-hand door and snatched his hand back. ‘Bloody hell, the doors are hot.’
‘Er, doctor?’ said Oscar. ‘Just how, exactly, is this room protected from Corbyn and friends?’
‘Hmm?’ said Bookbinder, slipping out of his reverie. ‘It’s the doors, I think. They’re built with something in them that diverts the energy back into the conduits.’
‘So the doors and the walls form a sort of circuit,’ Oscar mused. ‘The doors must have inlays built into them. Pretty clever. If a shadow tries to strike the door, the energy its fist is composed of will just disperse before it can make contact.’
Trev held his hand near the door, feeling the heat coming off it. ‘So why are the doors getting so hot?’
‘I think Corbyn’s found the flaw in the doors’ design,’ Oscar replied. ‘He’s throwing all his energy at them, overloading the inlays. They’re heating up like light-bulb filaments. Sooner or later, they’ll melt or the doors will catch fire, and the circuit will be broken.’
‘And then Corbyn can just stroll in here.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Crap.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Grace, the doors aren’t going to hold!’ Desai called out. ‘Any luck with the secret entrance?’
‘Not yet,’ the warden replied. ‘How long have we got?’
‘Not long,’ Trev said. The paint on the doors was beginning to blister.
‘Help us then!’
‘Is this secret door going to be protected as well?’ Trev asked Bookbinder as they hurried down the aisle to assist Montano’s group.
‘I bloody hope so,’ the doctor said. ‘I think it’ll probably be hidden in the wood panelling somewhere.’
They went to work on the walls, knocking on the panels and feeling around the edges in the hope of finding a hidden switch or catch. Trev’s efforts uncovered nothing except a large quantity of dust.
There was an ominous cracking sound from the doors at the entrance. ‘They’ll be coming through in a minute,’ Richie said. ‘Someone ought to be ready to hold them back.’
Barton put a hand on Trev’s shoulder. ‘Come on then.’
‘What? Why me?’
‘Because you’ve got two weapons,’ Barton said. ‘Don’t pan
ic, I’ll be backing you up.’
‘Oh good.’
They took up a position in front of the doors. Heat was radiating from the wood, along with the smell of melting paint. The cracking sounds came again, followed by a muffled thump. Then another, and another.
‘They’re breaking in!’ Trev shouted. He had The Twins in his hands but didn’t intend to activate them until the shadows started coming through. There wasn’t enough energy left in his system to keep the weapons running for more than a few seconds.
A chunk of wood broke free from the left-hand door and clattered to the floor. A section of the metal inlays inside the door was revealed, glowing red-hot. The shadows continued to pound on the other side, and the wood cracked and splintered. A hole appeared, through which a green glow entered the room.
‘Steady,’ said Barton, readying his own weapon.
‘We’ve got seconds left here!’ Trev shouted to the others. ‘Find that door!’
‘We’re trying!’ Desai shouted back.
‘Try harder!’
A dark hand smashed through the hole in the door and snatched at Barton. He activated his vapour weapon and batted it away. It withdrew, but more gaps were opening up as fists and fingers worked away at the charred wood. Trev couldn’t hold back any longer. The Twins came to life and he thrust them at the clutching limbs as if he were playing a particularly dangerous “whack-a-mole” machine.
‘Got it!’ Richie shouted from behind him.
Trev flicked a glance over his shoulder and saw the big guard hauling open a section of the panelled wall. There was darkness beyond.
‘Get ready to run for it,’ Barton said. He swiped at a shadow and his vapour weapon stuttered and went out. ‘Shit! Out of juice!’
‘Go!’ said Trev. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’
‘Right,’ Barton replied. He broke away and ran down the aisle.
Trev was almost out of energy himself. Caladbolg flickered as he used it to swat an arm away. He shut it off and carried on with Tyrfing alone. The doors were disintegrating rapidly. Judging that he’d bought Barton enough time to get to safety, Trev turned and ran after him. Tyrfing winked out as the last of his energy was expended.