The Dead Have No Shadows (32 page)

He climbed down and two of the plague doctors closed in to dissuade Mickey from trying anything else.

“Shall we proceed?” said Mr. Jolly, indicating Elena and the vicious serpent device.  The pulley rope tightened and the serpent raised its ruby eyed head, which waved from side to side on the end of the rope that supported it.

“Wait,” shouted Mickey.  An embryonic idea was growing.  Whether it would work depended on whether rules and laws were the same on this side of the death divide and whether Mr. Jolly was bound by them.

“Where is this place you want to take me?”

Mr. Jolly grinned and made a great show of pointing downwards.  The audience appreciated this.

“No,” said Mickey.  “I know that much.  Where is the entrance?  Tell me more about it”

Mr. Jolly shrugged, as if the question was irrelevant.

“There is a cave entrance.  From here everyone passes it on their way to the beach.  Well, most people do.”  Mr. Jolly laughed as he said this.

“So the entrance is on the way to the beach?” said Mickey, restating the fact.

Mr. Jolly nodded in affirmation.

“Does this entrance have a name?”

“It is called Finem
Omnium
,” Mr. Jolly replied.

“The end of all,” Mickey muttered under his breath.  He allowed himself a wry smile.  The small amount of Latin he had learnt as part of his law degree had finally come in useful.  He thought for a moment.

“Release Elena unharmed,” Mickey said slowly.  “Hand her to Pester and allow both of them to go safely on their way.”

Mr. Jolly liked that.  He roared with laughter and was joined by his crowd of followers.  “Why would I ever do that?”

Mickey paused.  He had to get this right.

 “Do what I’ve just said and I will walk with you to the Finem
Omnium
.”  He had to shout to make himself heard – but heard he was.  Mr. Jolly stopped laughing and the crowd, likewise, fell silent.

“What are you doing?” hissed Pester.

Mickey turned to his guide and winked.  “Let me do the talking,” he said.

“A deal.  A deal.  We have a deal,” cried Mr. Jolly before Mickey could think about changing his mind.  Once a decision was made though there was no retracting, everyone knew that.  Mickey was committed.

Mr. Jolly barked his orders and the serpent reluctantly lowered its head.  Elena’s bonds were removed and her gag loosened.  She stepped out of the coils of the serpent device, careful to avoid the blade edges that would easily slice through her flesh.  Once free of the torture device Elena spat at Mr. Jolly.

Mr. Jolly wiped the spittle from his face and raised his hand to Elena.

“Jolly,” roared Mickey.  “She is to be completely unharmed.  That was our deal.”

Mr. Jolly snarled in anger but lowered his hand.  He ordered Elena’s gag to be replaced.

“Elena,” Mickey called.  “Go with Pester.  Everything will be ok.”

Mickey could see the anger is Elena face.  This was probably the last he would see of her and he hoped that Elena’s fury was aimed purely at her captor and not him.  Mickey’s eyes filled and he had to swallow deeply a couple of times before he could speak again; this time to Pester.

“Look after Elena.  Help her reach the end of her journey.”

“I can’t,” Pester replied.  “I can only guide you.”

“Walk along with me then, but make sure Elena comes with you.”

Pester moved away.  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” Mickey replied. 

If I’ve got this wrong, he thought, I am so fucked.

As Pester took the escalator to the ground floor and Elena climbed down the series of ladders, Mickey and Mr. Jolly stood staring at one another, neither willing to break their stare.

Mr. Jolly’s smile broadened.  “Shall we go?”

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” Mickey replied through gritted teeth.

Mickey was already on the ground floor when Elena climbed off final ladder.  She moved towards Mickey.

“No contact,” snapped Mr. Jolly.

“You came for me again,” Elena said to Mickey.

“Yes,” Mickey replied, wishing that he could say more.  He realised that it could work against him if he did.

Elena thought that the regret she detected in his voice was aimed at her.  The anger that had begun to wane flared up again.  She opened her mouth to say something but Pester took her arm.

“Come on Lassie,” he said.  “Let’s go.”

Mickey turned away; his nerve was beginning to fail.  There was so much he had wanted to say to Elena and he wanted them to part on better terms than this.  He only took a small amount of comfort in the fact that Elena would get to complete her journey.  Mickey began to limp towards the exit.

“Come on then, Jolly,” he said bitterly.  “Let’s go for a walk.”

Mr. Jolly was almost at the foot of the final ladder.  He grunted a series of instructions and the dancers and musicians flooded down the stairs and broke into their performance around Mickey.  The plague doctors formed a perverse honour guard, keeping slow pace with Mickey.  Mr. Jolly joined the procession, keeping a handful of steps behind Mickey.

Pester and Elena moved ahead.  “We’ll wait for them outside,” said Pester.

“Why should we wait?” said Elena.  “He is a gangster.  Just like my mother said he was.  We should just go and leave him.”

“No he’s not,” said Pester.  “Mickey Raymond was never a gangster and you know that.  And he promised to help you.  You’re almost safe now.  I’m just hoping he has a plan to get himself out of this.”

“He robbed a bank,” Elena argued.

“The raid failed,” said Pester.  “You saw for yourself that he was forced into it.  It was his loyalty to his friend that trapped him.  It’s his loyalty to you that’s got you released.  That kind of loyalty is rare in people.”

“So do you think he still wants to do more to help me?”

“Aye, I’m certain of it.  And not by sacrificing himself just so that you can go on.  You would make it on your own from here but I don’t think Mickey is done with you yet.”  Pester held the door open and Elena left the mall and stepped outside.

When the procession reached the exit the dancers formed a corridor for Mickey to walk down.  They played and danced as he progressed.  The armed guard moved ahead, forming a funnel to guide Mickey to the outside.

Mickey paused by the exit door.  He had a choice to make here – stay or go.  Staying would bring him what? – nothing.  The mall would become a perpetual prison for him until his body failed.  Mickey supposed that when that happened he would just become a pile of bones in a corner of the mall.  Going outside would take him one step closer to the end of his existence.  It was an inevitability that Mickey had to face.  Pester and Elena were watching him from the outside. 

Mickey took a step forward and pushed the door open.  A warm breeze fluttered across his face.  It brought with it the scent of living grass and a hint of the sea.  Mickey realised that this was the first time since he’d arrived in this strange land that there had been any wind.  Everything before had been static and dead.  The breeze was a welcome sensation.  He gratefully accepted it, knowing that it wouldn’t last for long.  He stepped outside.

The sword guard of plague doctors followed and quickly formed up around him.  Then came Mr. Jolly and finally the dancers and musicians, who fanned out and began their routine again.

Mickey glanced over his shoulder, questioning Mr. Jolly.

“Walk straight ahead,” came the response.  “You will soon see where you need to go.”  Mr. Jolly was smiling but it was a greedy, avaricious smile, totally devoid of humour or humanity.  Then he laid a hand on Mickey’s bare arm.  The sensation sent a shudder through Mickey’s body.  He felt as if he’d been coated in ice.

“Answer me this before we go,” said Mr. Jolly.  “Why?  Why give yourself up so easily for her?  She means nothing to you.  You were never going to get anything from her.”

Mickey turned and smiled.  “Didn’t Jesus sacrifice himself for the people he loved?  People he didn’t even know?”

There was a stumble in the music and dance.  Mr. Jolly’s self satisfied smirk faltered and didn’t quite return with its previous full vigour.

Mickey’s smile broadened.  Maybe he’d been wrong about there not being a God after all.

A small paved area gave way to a carpet of grass.  After so much time spent walking over rough ground Mickey found the feel of the meadow soothing on his feet.  His trainers had split on the sides and soles and he could feel the blades of grass stroking his feet.  An underlying dampness seeped into his socks, cooling his feet.

The ground was gently undulating but not uneven so the going was fairly easy for him.  Each undulation raised the ground level slightly and Mickey was surprised by how high he’d climbed when he looked back over his shoulder.  He was also surprised that the huge grey wall and the dead forest were nowhere to be seen.  The meadows ran beyond the mall for as far as Mickey could see.  He was certain though, that if he’d been able to walk in that direction he would have been confronted by some invisible barrier that would have gently but inexorably steered him back in the direction he was intended to go.  He knew that from now on every step he took would be one step closer to the coastline.  He wouldn’t be allowed to ever increase the distance between himself and the beach.

The ground crested a rise and began to slope gently downwards into the shallow, u-shaped valley.  The valley floor looked like a pedestrian motorway.  There was a steady flow of people all heading in the same direction, from left to right.  The flow was growing in number as people joined from the surrounding hills.

Most of the walkers were in pairs and Mickey guessed that one of these would have been a guide.   Large patches of bare ground was showing through the grass that had been trampled flat by thousands of feet all carrying their owners to the sea.  The valley opened out onto the wide sandy beach which, strangely, given the flow of bodies towards it, was deserted.

Mickey began to make his way down the slope to join the flow of bodies below.  The plague doctors and dancers went with him.  Pester and Elena let most of the group go then followed along.

“What is happening?” said Elena, pointing at the back of the group.  The musicians and dancers had stopped moving.  As the group spread out down the slope the musicians and dancers began to sit down.  The colour in their faces and clothes faded away and the defunct bodies rolled over or slumped into piles of bones covered in dirty rags.

“These are
Wights
, just like the ones that captured you before,” Pester explained.  “Mr. Jolly will have brought them from the Underworld to serve his purpose.  Now he has no more use for them; so he’s abandoning them.”

More of the musicians and dancers were dropping out and were joined by some of the plague doctors.  Mickey had been concentrating on what was going to happen next but even he began to notice that something was different.  The music now sounded disjointed and incomplete, as if some instruments were missing.  He looked around to see the debris of spent bodies trailing off at the back of the procession.

By the time that Mickey reached the bottom of the slope all of the musicians and dancers had become untidy cairns on the hillside.  There were only three doctors left and one of those had dropped his sword.  The other two were dragging the tips of their weapons along the ground.  As they moved onto flat ground, Mickey felt the pain in his damaged thigh lessen, but not by much.  It still felt weak and Mickey wasn’t able to make any great pace.  This annoyed him as he was sure that he could have outpaced the weakening swordsmen who now looked as if they were ready to drop.