The Magic Lands (61 page)

The warrior removed his hands
from the boy's stomach with a grunt, the sound of someone almost
spent and Tom saw that all that remained of the terrible wound was
a long, jagged scar, still faintly glowing with a golden hue.

MYSTERIOUS WAYS

When the scalpel had moved in
his hand, as if by another’s will, Jack had seen with perfect
clarity what his choices were.

The woman in white was still
whispering to him. "Yes, my darling. It will be so beautiful, so
exquisite. Do it now, Jack my dear. Do it!"

But Jack had his doubts.

There was a part of him that
would not let go, a faint, tenacious part of his memory that told
him that this was not the first time she had promised him rewards
for services done. He knew he had played this game before.

In his mind the woman's face
grew larger, her red lips wet and glistening. She smiled with
ferocious anticipation. "Too late now for misgivings, Jack my
sweet. We have journeyed too far for that."

Jack smiled back at her. He
knew that she was wrong. He had made his choice, for better or
worse.

Tom. I'm doing this for you.
And for Mo and Dredger. But most of all, for you.

He gripped the small blade
tightly, its tip only inches from the doctor's throat, but he did
not let it get any closer, the hand that held the knife wavering
gently with the effort.

"Do it, you little fool," the
woman in white shouted wildly, drowning his senses. "Kill the prey,
kill the prey!"

Jack closed his eyes, sweat
trickling down over his face, heat prickling his scalp and neck.
"No," he said, gritting his teeth. His hand was shaking madly now
and he struggled to control it.

"You cannot deny me," the woman
hissed, "you are far too weak."

Snarling out his denial, Jack
forced himself to fight the terrible influence she was exerting
over him, using every ounce of will he possessed to cast her from
his stricken mind. "NO!"

"You will obey!" the woman
screamed at him. "Obey! Obey! Obey!" The violence of her cries was
like so many hammer blows, smashing at his defences. He could not
resist for much longer. There was only one chance left, and he knew
he had to take it.

With one final, enormous
effort, Jack dragged his hand away and turning the blade upon
himself, pushed it hard into his own belly. Inside his mind the
woman howled, anger and frustration uniting in an ugly shriek, but
Jack barely heard it, a warm sensation spreading from his stomach
outwards, a dullness that made him feel very tired.

He took flight then and
travelled billions of miles, time passing him by as he raced
through a black void. He was rising on a jet of his own blood,
spouting high into the heavens, colouring the stars and planets
with a scarlet coat.

Am I
dead?
But he was the only one there who could answer.
He was alone with the absolute solitude of space. Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust. Heaven or hell?

Within his mind a quiet voice
was speaking, the syllables unintelligible and yet somehow potently
meaningful to him. He was being given a gift he sensed on some
profound level, a gift of knowledge, but most of all, of love. He
felt his mind changing subtly, his understanding deepening. Jack
experienced this all in some intrinsic way that he could not
define. He could not rationalise it or even fully comprehend it.
But it had changed him, although in what way he could not exactly
say.

Jack opened his eyes very
slowly and for a moment as he looked upon the two figures who
crouched over him, he thought that he saw a light that shone above
each of them, Tom's a crown of golden flame, Dredger mantled by a
sickly yellow glow.

"You'll be fine now," Tom said,
touching Jack's arm lightly.

The boy smiled up at him. "In
the end, everyone will be."

"Here," guided Dredger, making
toward a well-lit building, carrying Dr. Watson as if he were no
more than a sapling. Outside, a lantern burned brightly, the words
‘Police Station’ plainly visible.

They had made their way through
the fog at speed, driven on by a need to escape from the murk and
shadow as much to find some kind of aid. Without pausing the
warrior strode up the steps and went inside, and Tom wondered what
kind of reception they would receive.

Just within the doorway there
was a small waiting room with a partition, behind which a stout man
in a blue uniform sat reading a newspaper. As their party bustled
in he jumped up, obviously caught unawares, sections of his paper
scattering across the floor.

With an unfriendly grunt, he
looked at each of them in turn. "And what do we have here?" he
asked, suspicion in his tone.

"This man is in need of medical
attention," voiced Dredger gruffly. "See that he gets it."

"Now just a minute," said the
desk sergeant, opening a hatch in the wooden partition and stepping
cautiously through. "Not so fast. I'll want some answers
first."

"There is no time for that,"
responded Dredger, becoming impatient, but the sergeant was not
about to let anything get in the way of procedure.

"Now then," he announced,
turning his attention to Dr. Watson, still unceremoniously slung
over the warrior's shoulder. After briefly examining the injured
man, he took a step back and eyed Dredger carefully. "Just how was
this gentleman hurt?" he questioned, throwing occasional glances at
the two boys, his expression cynical.

"It was the Ripper," spoke up
Jack.

The policeman looked at the boy
with surprise. "The Ripper! And what makes you think that,
youngster?"

"We saw him," Jack
answered.

"That's right, officer," added
Tom. "Jack the Ripper attacked us, but it's all right now, Dredger
killed him." He glanced over at the big man for confirmation but
the warrior merely glared back at him.

The sergeant seemed to ponder
on this for several moments, rubbing a large hand across his chin.
"Killed Jack the Ripper did you now?" he mused.

"This man needs a surgeon
immediately if he is to survive," Dredger stated abruptly, moving
across the room and carefully laying Dr. Watson down onto a wooden
bench that ran the length of one wall.

"All right, I'll call for a
doctor, but you still have a good deal of explaining to do," the
sergeant determined, eyeing the blood that had soaked through the
wounded man's clothing.

"Actually," Tom told the
policeman, feeling stupid as soon as he had spoken, "he is a
doctor."

The sergeant gave a grunt as he
returned to his desk. "Well he's not much use at the moment, now is
he, youngster?"

This brought a hot flush of
embarrassment to Tom's cheeks and he was quite put out at being
referred to as a youngster. He didn't feel very young anymore. A
lot had happened since he last thought of himself as just a boy. He
had changed so much it was difficult to remember his old self. It
was as though he had both gained something and yet lost something
too, for he was undoubtedly wiser than he had been before coming to
this strange world and perhaps stronger also, in body and spirit.
But he had forfeited his innocence, a part of himself he had not
even suspected had existed until now, when it was gone. Now there
was an empty place inside him, and there would never be anything
that could fill that void. He had learnt that happy endings were
not possible in an unequivocal sense, that sometimes you had to
give up something in order to gain something, and when it came
right down to it, he supposed what that really meant was that you
inevitably had to make sacrifices, some big, some small, but every
last one of them painful.

The voice of the sergeant
intruded upon Tom's thoughts and brought him back to the current
situation. "Yes," the policeman was saying, speaking into a
hand-held walkie-talkie, "there's an injured man here, knife wound
by the looks of it. Could you come over immediately?" A muffled
voice answered an affirmative.

At Tom's side, Jack was rather
confused. Something was bothering him a great deal, and the more he
thought about it, the more bewildered he became. Prodding Tom in
the ribs, he leant close to his friend's ear. "That shouldn't be
here," he whispered, nodding toward the sergeant still holding the
walkie-talkie. "They didn't have them in Jack the Ripper's
time."

Tom had never been very
interested in history lessons, but he knew at once that Jack was
right. "What does it mean then?" he asked, keeping his voice low,
surreptitiously looking at the radio the sergeant held, the man's
voice as he continued to speak and the occasional buzz of static
drowning out their own hushed conversation.

"It means that this isn't
real," Jack answered firmly.

"Yes, but we already knew that,
didn't we? But why put something here that doesn't fit? Everything
else has been right. It doesn't make any sense."

"Maybe it's another test," Jack
suggested, "maybe the Wolf is playing with us again."

Tom glanced up at Dredger and
noticed that the man had moved closer to them and had been
listening intently to their exchange. "A trap?" the warrior
questioned.

Tom shrugged. "Another game."
The sergeant had turned his back to them, still conversing with
someone on his hand-set. "And who's he speaking with anyway?" Tom
asked, mistrustful now. "He's already called for a doctor."

With a fluid movement Dredger
drew his sword, his eyes on the policeman.

"Yes," continued the sergeant,
"it seems there is a problem. Clever boys know what’s what. It is
reassuring to know the young are paying attention in class. It
makes the lesson all worthwhile." As he said this the man began to
turn, Dredger readying his sword, but not even the warrior was
prepared for what they now saw, for instead of the chubby features
of the policeman, now a white faced clown with a huge red nose and
black lips, dripping spittle, glared at them, the cruel mouth
stretching inhumanly wide. "Clever, clever," it snarled at Jack and
involuntarily the two boys recoiled from it, wanting to get as far
away from the malevolent creature as they could. "Don’t be afraid,
young ones," the clown said sweetly, putting out a pale, gloved
hand and beckoning to them. "A clown is a child's best friend."

Dredger, who had stood his
ground, gave a tight smile. "The children may be afraid, but I am
not."

"Of course not, fighting man,
you are far too brave for that."

While the clown was speaking
Tom felt Jack nudge him, the other boy indicating with a nod the
place where Dr. Watson had been laid; but the bench was empty. The
man was nowhere to be seen.

"I tire of your performance,"
Dredger said casually. "I think it is time I brought it to an
end."

The clown merely grinned at
this, revealing a set of sharp silver teeth, which to Tom looked
suspiciously metallic. "I'll eat you," it chuckled, eyeing both
boys, clamping the teeth together with a sound like a steel
trap.

"Enough!" bellowed Dredger,
thrusting with his sword, aiming at the creature's throat, but fast
as the warrior was, the clown was able to nimbly side-step the
attack, leaping up onto the counter with incredible ease.

"Naughty, naughty," it
admonished, wagging an oversized finger, "you really ought to be
more careful, you might have nicked me!"

Dredger regarded the creature
warily, as it cavorted along the desktop, assessing possible
strategies, weighing up his chances of defeating this opponent.
"Come down and face me," he challenged, but the clown put that same
large finger to its chin and shook its head at him, a coy smile
disfiguring its already hideous face.

"Now why would I want to do a
thing like that? You must think me quite foolish, but looks can be
deceptive. You should know that by now." Suddenly, the clown
assumed an expression of mock seriousness. "But I can't stand
around here talking to you all day. There's a lot to do and I've
only got so many pairs of hands." No sooner had he uttered this
than several sets of arms began to snake out of his torso, white
gloved hands waving maniacally. "Wave bye-bye," the clown called,
launching itself from the counter toward Dredger, who brought up
his sword instinctively to protect himself. "See you in dream
land."

And with that, it was gone.
There was no puff of smoke, no flash of light. One second it was
there, writhing arms grasping for the warrior, the next it had
completely vanished, Tom and Jack left staring into space.

"Let's get out of here,"
suggested Jack, the first to react, immediately heading for the
door. Neither of his companions hesitated in following, all three
exiting the building at speed and once out in the darkened streets
again, there was no doubt in any of their minds that the Wolf was
there with them, in every stone that was the foundation of this
counterfeit city, in every shadow that moved around them.

The three companions wove their
way through silent back alleys and lanes, crossed damp courtyards
and deserted squares, and every step they took the mist dogged
them, refusing to disperse.

"Where are we going?" Tom
questioned, looking about him and then at Dredger for an answer,
but it was Jack who offered a reply.

"I have a feeling," he said,
"that we will be shown the way."

Hearing this, the warrior
nodded his agreement. "The boy is right," he attested, "this is the
final game. The Beast will lead us further into the deep core of
its corrupted spirit. It wants us to reach our destination no less
than we do."

"But why?" Tom asked. "Why
would the Wolf want to help us find the way?"

"You must remember," Dredger
explained, "that all of us, everyone you have encountered since
coming here, are a part of a greater thing. Each of us knows we
have a role to play, and to resist this knowledge would be futile,
but the Beast understands this better than most and uses it to its
own advantage. We must learn to accept the road we must take, yet
at the same time strive to make our goal the utter annihilation of
our enemies."