Falls the Shadow (17 page)

A silence descended on the room. The noiselessness of a funeral.

‘Come here Benny,’ Gabriel said. Not a request.

‘No,’ Benny insisted.

‘I said, come
here
!’

Suddenly there was a rod of agony driving through bone and muscle and tissue and sinew and nerves, piercing her spine. She felt herself go rigid, her body stiffening soundlessly. Her eyes bulged, as electrical pain surged through her nerve system. There were needles through her hands and wrists and shoulders and head and knees and feet and thighs. Invisible wires tore into her body, now loose, now taut. Her wires wrenched, she leapt to her feet in a single jerky movement. The puppet masters tugged again and she was pulled across the room until she was face to face with Gabriel.

Ace was shouting at the back of her head. Benny tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but found it impossible. The limits of the world had shrunk to include herself, her pain, Gabriel, and the space between them.

Gabriel leant forward, his fingers locking round her neck. The pressure on her body loosened. She was free but there were other pressures now, Gabriel’s thumbs nuzzling under her chin. She looked into his eyes and saw nothing. No pupils, no retina, no whites, no colour.

In that single, quiet moment Benny knew that she was going to die.

‘Hello Benny Summerfield,’ Gabriel said. ‘Remember me?’

‘I remember you.’ Talking was an effort. ‘I saw you in the cellar.’

‘You saw the whole of me. These bodies are fragments of what we are.’

‘You showed me things.’

‘We showed you all things. We can see all things. We draw our sight and power from the structure of the universe itself. All space. Omnicognition.

‘Do you know, Benny, how easy it is to kill someone?’

‘Yes.’ She didn’t speak, but Gabriel seemed able to hear her thoughts.

‘Oh, it is much easier than that. Much easier,’ Gabriel continued. ‘Life is fragile and death is final. All I have to do now is grind my thumbs, perhaps for a minute. Then you can let go.’

‘You’re not scaring her! You’re not scaring anyone!’ Ace was yelling out of Benny’s vision. Briefly Benny found herself feeling friendlier, closer, to Gabriel than her travelling companion.

‘Yes. Yes, he is.’ Benny was shocked to feel tears brushing her skin.

‘You think of hurting her and I’ll kill you! Bastard!’ Ace howled.

‘Ace,’ Benny’s voice was loud and wavering, ‘if you don’t shut up now then I will come back and haunt you.’

Gabriel was nodding.

‘You understand,’ he seemed soothing and reassuring, ‘the finality. When I press I will destroy a life. It is
that
simple. There are millions who don’t know you and don’t care about you. There is pressure and something lively and pleasant and valuable will leave the world for good. As I press you will understand what it is to die, what a terrible thing I am doing, the absolute certainty that the end of your life is here and now. Life is life and death is death. These are facts. They cannot be abrogated. Goodbye.’

Gabriel began to squeeze. It was a gentle sensation but Benny was panicking. Inside she was screaming in terror and anguish, filled with a dreadful fear of the unknown and an eternal nothing. Bedtime existential terror she’d felt before, never this close.

Oh God, I don’t want to die!

‘Stop it!’ Ace shrieked, but the voice was distant. Benny’s eyes were closing. The world was dark and airless. Ace’s voice was her last link with life. She needed to cling to it. That voice which had sounded so disgusting less than two minutes ago. She loved it now. She loved Ace. She loved life. Ace was howling. Everything was going.

Then there was no pressure. The hands were still there, clenched round her throat, but no longer pressing. Benny breathed vigorously, not daring to make another move, too scared even to open her eyes.

‘We understand.’ Tanith’s voice. ‘We understand exactly what it is to kill, exactly what is lost at the moment of death. We understand how valuable each and every life is.

‘We just don’t care.’

Suddenly Benny’s dark world was whirling and tumbling. A giddy sensation clutched her. She was falling through the darkness. She clutched herself protectively, bruising her back and shoulders as they smashed against something solid.

The pain was dull and natural. There was nothing at her neck. Her eyes fell open and she saw that she was on the floor, half‐
crouched, half‐
lying where Gabriel had shoved her. He stood over her, smiling graciously. Benny flinched, certain he was going to kick her.

‘And what about the people in the cellar?’ Ace said accusingly. ‘Did you make them understand?’

‘Ah, you’ve put two and two together,’ Tanith replied. ‘It wasn’t a massive leap to that conclusion I trust?’

‘We killed them.’

‘Don’t worry. They suffered. Each killing took hours, packed with intense torture.’

‘They saw the other bodies. They understood that they were going to die. They had no illusions about that.’

‘Why?’ Ace was saying. Not shouting. Whispering terribly.

‘Those killings had a purpose, though one I doubt you would appreciate.’

‘We are not, as you may have noticed,’ Tanith took over, ‘human. We are incorporeal creatures, beings of pure energy drawing our strength from the cosmic structure itself. We could do anything in that form, but we prefer to address the human race in its own shape.’

‘We lured people to the house, killed them and removed parts from their genetic structures. And we sculpted them into containers for our essences.’

‘To all intents and purposes now, we are fully human. We have human bodies and human organs and human responses to external stimuli.’

Benny stared up at them, disgusted.

‘You said you could do anything! Why was it so bloody necessary to kill those people? Couldn’t you have grown those bodies on your own?’

Tanith nodded.

‘It was more fun this way.’

‘You’re sick!’ Ace was yelling.

‘Delightfully so.
Elegantly
so.’

There was a crash and a thump above Benny’s head. With another crash Ace leapt onto the floor by Benny’s side, her body hunched and arching forward. There was an intense animalistic feel to her movements, a predator ready to strike. In one hand she held a knife – the same knife Cranleigh had once pressed to Benny’s face. Ace must have found it in Sandra’s room.

It was motionless in Ace’s rigid hand.

‘Time for the surgical cure, sickos,’ Ace spat.

‘Oh put it away, you don’t know where it’s been,’ Tanith snapped.

‘It’s been in Benny’s socks.
Not
pretty!’

Ace said nothing. She held the knife still.

‘Melodrama,’ Gabriel said. He reached forward, locked his fingers round the blade and pulled it from Ace’s grip. He screamed and dropped the knife, his hand was curling into a fist. Benny saw the blood seeping between the cracks in the fingers onto his wrist. Impossibly white skin stained dark pink.

The pain was etched onto his face. So tangible and real, he couldn’t be faking. It had hurt him.

Benny looked across to Tanith and saw the woman shaking her head. Smiling too. She reached the knife before Ace had a chance to dart for it.

Eventually Gabriel’s scream dulled into heavy breathing. He released his injured hand and raised his head so that all in the room could see his haggard, satisfied expression. He opened his fist into a flat palm, displaying a deep red gash, still open and dribbling blood.

‘Something with more body, Benny,’ he said shakily.

Benny tried to resist. God knows she tried, but the minds of Gabriel and Tanith were too powerful for her. She sprang forward, raising her head to nuzzle against the outstretched palm. Sick with herself she began to bite at the wound, letting the blood flow into her mouth. Blood guttered into her mouth. She began to lick generously, spooning more and more between her lips. The blood was tasteless but it was the sensation that drove her on. It was electric, like a first kiss, like the first time she’d had sex.

‘No!’ She pulled her mouth from his hand, spitting bloody saliva flecks. Scowling, Benny let her body sink into a protective foetal shape. She felt dirty and degraded and violated and deprived and sickened.

‘We are leaving now,’ Tanith said. ‘You can do what you like.’

Benny didn’t see them leave.

Ace was crouching beside her, an arm hugging round her waist. Benny felt warm, as if it was her mother holding her. It was a good feeling.

‘Those two are on a power kick.’ Ace’s voice was gentle as her body. ‘Everything they do is aimed at degrading us. If they force us to do these things, if they force us to
enjoy
them – then that’s their problem not ours. We’re going to take everything they throw at us and throw it back at them. And we’re going to win. They’re never, ever, going to get away with this.’

‘Ace,’ Benny said, clutching at the collar of Ace’s combat suit. ‘They’re going to kill me. I’m not going to leave this house, not under my own steam. When I’m dead I want you to remember: I loved travelling in the TARDIS. If you see the Doctor again, tell him that I loved him. He was a git, but I loved him. And I loved you. Remember.’

‘You’re not going to die.’

‘I am,’ Benny replied as if it was a certainty. And it was.

‘No,’ Ace insisted. ‘I’m going to do something. Anything. You with me?’

Benny stared at her shaking hands. They didn’t seem like parts of her body. They were distant things, parts of a distant creature.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t…’ Ace began.

‘I’ll tell what we’re going to do.’

Benny stared mutely at Sandra. Her clothes – the clothes she’d put on not half an hour earlier – were scuffed and dirty and stained grey with vomit. Sandra herself was in no better condition, but there was a new hardness in her eyes.

‘I’ll tell you. We’ll go down to the cellar, get the pyramid going, and get Dad back – and your friend.’

‘We can’t!’ Ace was scornful. ‘Only Truman knows how to use the bloody thing. And he’s dead.’

‘No, he’s not,’ Sandra replied, her hardness becoming something cheerfully manic.

Moore Wedderburn held the broken orchid stem between finger and thumb, sighing as he inspected its wounds. The flower was weak. Wedderburn saw how close to death it was and felt something cold brush his soul.

He placed a finger in his mouth and tore repeatedly at the skin with his canine tooth until he drew blood. Gently he rubbed the blood into the broken stem. The plant writhed rhythmically. Wedderburn felt warmer as he imagined it singing. The chattering of the other orchids drew his attention. They had scented the blood and were hunting its source. Wedderburn pulled his finger away hastily.

‘Did she scare you?’ he whispered to his plants. ‘Blundering in here like some mad elephant. Were you frightened?’

The plants danced to a wave pattern.

‘Blood for you tonight,’ Wedderburn whispered, thrilling himself with the extent of his morbid fantasy. ‘A whole carcass. No, two! I promise.’

The orchids swam, tied to the flower beds. They indulged his imagination and Wedderburn was grateful. The real world intruded suddenly – a sharp knock on the door. Wedderburn shook his head wearily.

There were two at the door, neither known to him. Rather glossy and unattractive like characters from some unspeakable American soap opera. He glanced anxiously between the two.

‘Good morning Mister Wedderburn,’ the young man said with restraint and politeness. ‘Jeremy said we would find you here.’

‘Forgive our appalling lack of manners,’ the woman said, edging in before Wedderburn could speak. ‘We both studied under Professor Winterdawn. He invited us to an evening here but until now we’ve been forced to decline.’

‘My sister and I were impressed by your book.’

‘A page‐
turner. I couldn’t put it down.’

Wedderburn laughed at this and the young couple joined in.

‘May we come in?’

‘I’m afraid that might be awkward at the moment…’

‘No, we understand. A scientist and his work should not be separated.’

‘Goodbye Mister Wedderburn,’ the woman smiled and suddenly she and her colleague were gone. Wedderburn closed the door after them, feeling slightly nonplussed. The list of people stalking the corridors of the house without his knowledge was becoming voluminous. The Doctor and his friends, the woman with the gun (
he found he couldn’t quite visualize her properly… her image blurred in his head… had she ever been there at all…
?) and now this pair. Whatever their names were.

He shambled back to his work table, to his books, to his seeds, to his meticulously cleaned tools, to the neat brown packages of raw meat.

Cranleigh glanced from woman to woman with dull eyes. His sanity was focusing sharply, but the tiny packages of clarity were coming less frequently and disappeared with greater speed. The final descent was coming soon. The line of madness that, once crossed, could not be passed again. He half‐
welcomed the prospect of permanent insanity.

Sandra he regarded coldly and without affection. The understanding he had gained when Truman’s mind had burst in upon his own was uncomfortable. The woman before him had openly scorned him. So many things she had said about him, so many of them true. Truman’s mind was an uncomfortable growth, a tumour on his mind, screaming at him from the inside of his skull. He had his enemy’s experience and knowledge. Sandra knew this. He knew that he could operate the tetrahedron for them. But he didn’t see why he should have to.

Sandra was clutching the side of the sarcophagus, steadying herself against oncoming blindness. The woman called Ace stood beside her, silently clutching the tetrahedron to her chest, her fingertips running along its sharp edges. Then there was Bernice, sitting in the corner, casting suspiciously round the room – a shadow of the fierce spirit he’d met before.

‘Will you do it?’ Sandra was asking. She had asked this several times already and was beginning to sound like a jammed record.

‘Why?’ His voice had the texture of sandpaper.

‘Dad and the Doctor are trapped. They can’t get out unless you help.’