Brand muttered all the way. “Oh fuck, oh shit, what are we doing coming out here? Like those crazy girls in slasher movies, you know? Always chasing the bad guys instead of running from them? Asking to get their throats cut? Oh man…”

In many ways I agreed with him. According to Charley there was little left of Boris to recover, but she could have been wrong. We owed it to him to find out. However harsh the conditions, whatever the likelihood of his murderer – animal or human – still being out here, we could not leave Boris lying dead in the snow. Apply whatever levels of civilisation, foolish custom or superiority complex you like, it just wasn’t done.

Ellie led the way across the manor’s front garden and out onto the coastal road. The whole landscape was hidden beneath snow, like old sheet-covered furniture awaiting the homecoming of long-gone owners. I wondered who would ever make use of this land again – who would be left to bother when the snow did finally melt – but that train of thought led only to depression.

We crossed the flat area of the road, following Charley’s earlier footprints in the deep snow; even and distinct on the way out, chaotic on the return journey. As if she’d had something following her.

She had. We all saw what had been chasing her when we slid and clambered down toward the cliffs, veering behind the big rock that signified the beginning of the coastal path. The sight of Boris opened up and spread across the snow had pursued her all the way, and was probably still snapping at her heels now. The smell of his insides slowly cooling under an indifferent sky. The sound of his frozen blood crackling under foot.

Ellie hefted the gun, holding it waist-high, ready to fire in an instant. Her breath condensed in the air before her, coming slightly faster than moments before. She glanced at the torn-up Boris, then surveyed our surroundings, looking for whoever had done this. East and west along the coast, down toward the cliff edge, up to the lip of rock above us, east and west again; Ellie never looked back down at Boris.

I did. I couldn’t keep my eyes off what was left of him. It looked as though something big and powerful had held him up to the rock, scraped and twisted him there for a while, and then calmly taken him apart across the snow-covered path. Spray patterns of blood stood out brighter than their surroundings. Every speck was visible and there were many specks, thousands of them spread across a ten metre area. I tried to find a recognisable part of him, but all that was even vaguely identifiable as human was a hand, stuck to the rock in a mess of frosty blood, fingers curled in like the legs of a dead spider. The wrist was tattered, the bone splintered. It had been snapped, not cut.

Brand pointed out a shoe on its side in the snow. “Fuck, Charley was right. Just his shoes left. Miserable bastard always wore the same shoes.”

I’d already seen the shoe. It was still mostly full. Boris had not been a miserable bastard. He was introspective, thoughtful, sensitive, sincere, qualities which Brand would never recognise as anything other than sourness. Brand was as thick as shit and twice as unpleasant.

The silence seemed to press in around me. Silence, and cold, and a raw smell of meat, and the sea chanting from below. I was surrounded by everything.

“Let’s get back,” I said. Ellie glanced at me and nodded.

“But what about-” Brand started, but Ellie cut in without even looking at him.

“You want to make bloody snowballs, go ahead. There’s not much to take back. We’ll maybe come again later. Maybe.”

“What did this?” I said, feeling reality start to shimmy past the shock I’d been gripped by for the last couple of minutes. “Just what the hell?”

Ellie backed up to me and glanced at the rock, then both ways along the path. “I don’t want to find out just yet,” she said.

Later, alone in my room, I would think about exactly what Ellie had meant. I don’t want to find out just yet, she had said, implying that the perpetrator of Boris’s demise would be revealed to us soon. I’d hardly known Boris, quiet guy that he was, and his fate was just another line in the strange composition of death that had overcome the whole country during the last few weeks.

Charley and I were here in the employment of the Department of the Environment. Our brief was to keep a check on the radiation levels in the Atlantic Drift, since things had gone to shit in South America and the dirty reactors began to melt down in Brazil. It was a bad job with hardly any pay, but it gave us somewhere to live. The others had tagged along for differing reasons; friends and lovers of friends, all taking the opportunity to get away from things for a while and chill out in the wilds of Cornwall.

But then things went to shit here as well. On TV, minutes before it had ceased broadcasting for good, someone called it the ruin.

Then it had started to snow.

Warning: if you have not yet read Dusk, read no further! Here be spoilers!

Soaring high above Noreela, it was easy to believe that the world had ended again.

The evidence of scared, scattered communities lay spread out below, all of them illuminated against a darkness that should not be. Ten thousand faces would be searching for the sun but seeing only this unnatural dusk, and Lenora wondered what they would think were they to spy the hawk. Would they know? Would they have any inkling of what they were looking at?

She thought not. But soon, that would change.

For most of the night, Lenora had been trying to avoid the Mages’ attention. She sat motionless and silent, as far back on the hawk’s tail as she could go, two short swords buried in the creature’s hide to provide precious handholds. She watched her masters with a sense of fear the likes of which she had never felt before. The Mages had changed so much. They were strangers to her now.

For the past three hundred years, Angel and S’Hivez had existed bitter and angry, given to lengthly musings on revenge. Lenora had served them and listened — their trusted lieutenant — and over time they had become shadows of themselves: mad old things who showed only occasional flashes of their former brilliance and brutality. Ensconced in their volcano retreat on Dana’Man, they had been fading away, though they had still retained a certain power. Things that once ruled a land could never lose that. But their glories had been vanishing into history, and the more time passed, the more Lenora’s impressions of them had been dictated by memory. The Mages’ power had become a self-perpetuating myth in her own mind.

Now that they had taken back their own, Lenora no longer had to rely on memory.

Angel still clasped the body of the farm boy to her chest, like a mother mourning her dead child. She had cut open his skull, then she and S’Hivez had torn into his torso, searching for something vital amongst his brains and flesh. From that moment, Lenora had felt the raw power surging from them, and they became true Mages for the first time in three hundred years. They had moved bones and organs aside, found what they sought, and eaten it.

Then they had seemed to grow, though their size never changed. They remained silent, contemplative, and everything suddenly seemed to flow through rather than around them. And later, when dawn should have been ushering away the night, Angel and S’Hivez had cursed the sky.

Angel had been holding the boy’s tattered corpse ever since.

The hawk had died moments after they finished rooting through the boy’s insides, and Lenora thought they would fall. But then S’Hivez had buried his arms in the creature’s neck, delving inside just as he had probed the dead boy’s carcass, and the creature had risen again, bearing them northward.

Going away, a voice said. Lenora looked around, squinting against the wind. She had heard that voice intermittently since the fight with the Monks and machines, and she knew what it was: her dead, unnamed daughter’s shade still craving the comfort of her mother’s arms. Lenora buried her face in the hawk’s stiffening hide and cried tears tainted with anger. She lifted her head slightly and her tears were caught on the wind, blown into Noreela’s skies. She hoped they would spread and fall with the next rains, casting her sorrow across plains and valleys, mountains and lakes, where vengeance would be hers. They were a long way from Robenna, and it was falling farther behind with every heartbeat. But now that she knew she would return, the heat of revenge was growing brighter within her heart.

The people of Robenna had driven her out, poisoned her and murdered her unborn child. Given time, their descendants would pay.

“Dreaming of death and vengeance, Lenora?”

Lenora looked up into Angel’s eyes. The Mage had crawled back along the hawk’s spine and now sat astride its huge tail, her face a hand’s width from Lenora’s. She was beautiful. Whatever time had done to her, she had undone. The might of new magic flickered behind her eyes, and its potential seemed to light her from within.

Lenora tried to speak, but she was lost for words.

“Don’t worry,” Angel said. She drew closer still, until her blazing eyes encompassed the whole world. “So am I.”

“Mistress …”

“I frighten you?” Angel raised an eyebrow.

Lenora averted her eyes.

“That’s only right. Fear is good, Lenora. You remember the first time I touched you, casting out your pain and driving away death on that burning ship? You were filled with fear then also, but it was fear of the Black. I saved you from death to serve me, and you’ve done so ever since. But you’ve become casual about your fear, as S’Hivez and I have become blasé about our desires. We’ve always wanted to regain magic, but maybe pain grew to suit us better. Perhaps we became too used to life as outcasts.” The Mage looked off past Lenora, back the way they had come. “Do you think that’s true, Lenora?”

“No mistress. You’ve always been Mages, with or without magic.”

Angel smiled, and Lenora felt a brief stab of jealousy — she was aware of how she looked with her bald head, scarred body and black teeth — but she cast it aside.

“Lenora, you need never lie to me. You’re almost one of us. You came with us out of Noreela three hundred years ago; you think the same way about this accursed place, and you want the same thing. So we’re almost the same … except you don’t have this.” She reached out and touched Lenora’s forehead.

At first, the point of contact burned. Then the sensation changed from heat to one of intense cold — a chill that would freeze air and crack rock — and Lenora’s eyes closed to accept whatever Angel was handing her.

There was one single image: the death of Noreela. Lenora viewed it at the speed of thought, north to south, east to west, passing over mountains and valleys, deserts and lakes, and everywhere finding the stain of destruction on the landscape. A city lay in ruins, buildings burnt down into ruined heaps, streets strewn with smoking corpses, waterways polluted with rotting flesh. Farms and villages were equally devastated, their inhabitants laid out in neat lines and fixed to the land by wooden spikes. An army lay dead on a hillside, muddied armour already rusting beneath the blood spilled from the thousands of corpses. A great river was home to a hundred boats, all of them submerged, each of them filled to their watery brims with naked corpses.

And all the while, Noreela itself was suffering great traumas. A mountain range swam in fire, only the highest peaks still visible above the flames. On an endless plain the ground was cracked open, but instead of fire and lava rising up, the land’s innards rolled out across the grass, giant coils of molten earth and stone hardening in the twilight and venting scampering things the size of the largest hawk. The air turning to glass, the ground melting away, water bursting into flame … The whole of Noreela was in chaos, and at its centre pulsed a magic grown darker than ever before.

“There, at the hub,” Angel’s voice said. “That’s us.” And Lenora saw. The fleeting visions slowed, settling toward a huge wound in the land. The wound bled. In the centre of this sea of blood, floating in a boat forged from the bones of countless victims, two ecstatic shadows writhed.
The Mages, joyous with the victory of vengeance found.

Angel removed her finger from Lenora’s head.

“The future?” Lenora gasped.

“No one sees the future. I showed you what I want of the future: Noreela drowning in blood. And with your help, S’Hivez and I will make it so.” Angel paused, looked down at her hands, then continued. “You have no idea of this power, Lenora! It’s like being dipped in molten metal, yet knowing you can send that heat anywhere, to do anything. S’Hivez and I have been communing with shades, and they are working for us already. I can see what’s happening in the land because the shades tell me! We know that the Monks are dead back in the valley, and the machines are still once again. We know that the Duke’s army is weak and formless in Long Marrakash. We know that night is here for Noreela, and it is our night. I can step from one side of the land to the other simply by closing my eyes.”

Lenora was speechless. The energy came off Angel in waves, and the whole of Noreela pivoted on the Mage’s every utterance.

“Our army is yours,” Angel said. “When it lands at Conbarma, you will be there to welcome it in and arm it with the greatest weapons we can make. And then you will take Noreela.”

“You’re leaving?” Lenora asked, aghast.

Angel turned to crawl back along the hawk.

“But where are you going?”

“You question me?”

“Of course not.”

Angel laughed, as if dismissing Lenora’s query and her own stern answer. But she said no more, leaving Lenora wondering what the next few days would bring.

War, for certain. More bloodshed and death than she had ever imagined. But with the Mages leaving the Krote army to its own devices, Lenora found doubt stoking her fear.

“Weird how people get used to things,” Amelia Francis said. She was a lecturer in Mythology in History at the local university, and a BPRD advisor in South America. She had met Hellboy at the airport less than two hours ago. Now they were standing beside the road staring up at the dragon that perched on the outstretched left arm of Christ the Redeemer. “Ask most people now, and they’ll shake their heads and smile and say it’s a joke.”

“Even though that thing turned half of Copacabana beach into a sheet of glass?”

“People can’t believe, so they choose not to.”

“Huh.” Hellboy rolled his unlit cigarette across his lips. He’d already searched through his jacket pockets for some matches and drawn a blank. He wished Liz were here with him. “What about them?” He pointed up the mountain at the colourful speck climbing its slopes. From here they looked like insects.

Amelia sighed. “They’re not the first. The police are doing their best to deter the journalists, sensation-seekers or souvenir hunters, but it’s a big place. They can’t seal it off totally.”

“Huh,” Hellboy said again. He stared up at the dragon. “Souvenirs?”

“From … from what I know about dragons it’s …” She trailed off, staring up past Hellboy. “That’s a dragon!”

“Sure looks like it.” He glanced at the woman, looked away, back again. She’d hardly raised an eyebrow when he arrived at the airport; not the usual response he engendered. His lobster-red skin, horn stumps and waving tail usually attracted some sort of comment, even from people he’d met before. Amelia had known of him – she had imparted that much, at least – but she’d already seen something more amazing that day.

He had to admit, it was quite a sight.

“So …souvenirs?”

“You don’t know about dragons?” she asked.

“They’re lizards. They breathe fire. They’re not nice.”

“Actually they were harmless once,” the lecturer said. “Burnt crops when people pissed them off, that was about their limit. Then Christianity turned them into demons, and they became demons, and they were hunted to extinction. At least, that’s how the story goes. The story also says that if you eat a dragon’s heart, you’ll understand the language of birds.”

“Useful,” Hellboy said. “But that thing up there doesn’t look extinct to me.”

Amelia paled, leaned against the timber railing for support. Hellboy smiled and touched her shoulder gently with his big stone-like hand. Reality kept hitting her, surprising her with what she was actually looking at.

“What about the military?” he asked.

Amelia shrugged. “They’ve been to me too. And … maybe it’s my fault they’re not doing anything. I told them that the appearance of a dragon was once thought to be an omen of good fortune.”

“And is it?”

Amelia shrugged again, but said nothing.

“Well, we can’t just leave it there. I have to go up. See what that thing wants. Can’t let it fly around and burn the place.”

“How will you stop it?”

“I’ll find a way, it’s what I do. Will you drive me to the station?”

“Oh yes, you bet!”

They heard a sudden screech, then a loud roar that spread out over the city. Hellboy looked up in time to see the dragon dip its head and sweep it across the rim of the plateau. Several waving shapes burst into flames and tumbled down the cliffs, their screams too far away to hear.

“Omen of good luck,” he said. “You sure, Amelia?”

“Oh those poor people …” She looked up into Hellboy’s eyes, and for the first time he recognised her fear.

***

As Amelia drove her Jeep toward the mountain train station, Hellboy leaned from the window and stared up. The dragon was still there, perched quite comfortably on Christ’s outstretched arm, surveying the view as if it owned the place. Occasionally it stretched its wings, stood up and belched fire at the sky. Hellboy was not sure why until he saw the press helicopters hovering nearby.

So much for covert. He hated being the centre of attention.

They followed the road around the slope of the mountain, and for a while a bulk of rock obscured the view. Hellboy sat back in his seat and chewed softly on the unlit cigarette. He wished – not for the first time – that he’d listened to Professor Bruttenholm when he had told Hellboy to spend more time learning. Maybe then he would know more about dragons, where they came from, what they wanted, what species this one was … and most importantly, how he could stop it. He touched the big gun on his belt and smiled. Bad shot though he was, he couldn’t miss this sucker.

“Are you really from Hell?” Amelia asked.

Hellboy scowled. “So what’s your area of expertise again?”

“Mythology.”

“I’m no myth. Drive.”

Amelia was silent for the next few minutes, but when they finally reached the station she stopped the Jeep and turned to Hellboy, face stern. “I think it may Draconis Albionensis, a British dragon usually known as the Firedrake. Big. Strong. Weird that it’s here, as most dragons were commonly sighted in Europe, North Africa, China and Asia. I’m not aware of any dragon legends from North or South America. Very strange.”

“How do I kill it?”

“Put on a suit of armour and pick up a sword. They’re not immortal, you know.”

Hellboy frowned for a moment, then smiled at Amelia. She was not mocking him. Far from it; she was helping him. She shivered even in this heat, and he patted her leg softly. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be gruff. That’s just me and … well, I don’t really like talking about me.”

“I’ve always known about you, but in the flesh you’re amazing.”

“Hmph. I wish all the girls thought that way.” Hellboy nodded his thanks and opened his door.

“Hellboy?” He looked back at Amelia. “That’s a dragon,” she said. “And that’s impossible. A dragon … it’s myth. A story. They don’t really exist.”

At that moment the dragon roared and let fly a breath of fire at a helicopter that had strayed too close. The aircraft veered away, paint blistered and rubber door seals smoking from the heat. The creature flapped its wings, stretched its neck, then settled back onto its roost.

“I think he’d disagree with you, Amelia,” Hellboy said. “Hey, do me a favour? Wait here for me. I don’t plan on being long.”

She nodded. “Be careful.”

“If I had a last name … ‘Careful’ would be my middle one.”

***

On his way up the mountain in the deserted train, Hellboy called in to HQ. He asked to speak to Kate Corrigan, the BPRD’s advisor on the paranormal, but she was busy somewhere else. Similarly Tom Manning, the Director now that Professor Bruttenholm was dead. “Is there anyone there I can talk to?” Hellboy shouted, but the guy on the other end said something about being busy, having lots on, and the world going to hell.

“Yeah, right,” Hellboy muttered. He clicked off his satellite phone and tried to enjoy the trip.

The train clunked up the well-used tracks, taking him to a place where millions of people had gone to worship or admire, or just to enjoy the view. He would be doing none of that. He flexed the fingers of his left hand, tapped the fingers of his right hand against the metal railing. They made a musical sound; if only he could identify the tune. And if he knew the tune, if only it had lyrics that would tell him more. Then he could sing along and learn the truth.

He had been called a dragon, once. A Catholic priest down in Ecuador had fallen to his knees when he saw Hellboy, clutching his rosary beads and prattling on in Spanish, shouting and screaming and generally acting all upset. Hellboy was used to causing such a reaction, and he had smiled and shrugged and generally tried to exude benevolence. But even while he was being dragged away the priest had raged, and the only the word Hellboy had been able to make out had been ‘dragon’. That had offended him at the time, but later, sitting alone in the remains of a ruined church, he had looked at himself in a puddle of rainwater. And the offence had turned to sadness.

“Come on, dammit!” He thumped the side of the train car and left it dented. He shook his head. He hated these moments of calm before the storm, because they gave him time to muse upon his own nature. But then, he supposed that was good. Thinking such thoughts always got him in the mood for a fight.

***

Walking across the concrete esplanade, Hellboy was struck by the size of the statue of Christ. It was a magnificent effigy, beautiful, and he could only marvel at the builders who had constructed it so long ago.

Right now it was marred by the fire-breathing bastard sitting on its left arm. And below it, still steaming, dragon crap stained the hem of Christ’s robes.

“Now that’s just disrespectful,” Hellboy said. “Hey! You!”

The dragon twisted on its perch and looked down at Hellboy. It moved without making a noise, and that unsettled him. Something so big and bulky should be clumsy, not graceful. Maybe he could learn a thing or two from this creature.

“We need to talk,” he said. And for a second he thought that might suffice. The dragon put its head to one side, as if ready to listen. It dropped quietly from its perch, wings out for balance, and stepped daintily toward Hellboy, as if ready to parley.

And then it opened its jaws and sent a fireball his way.

Even as Hellboy rolled to the side he was aware of the press helicopters homing in on this new confrontation. He hated the press. If they saw him trampled and gutted and having his insides burnt out they’d film, not help. He swore that today, they’d get no scoop of that sort.

He stood and pulled the pistol, letting off a shot that punched a hole in the dragon’s wing. It didn’t seem to bother the worm in the slightest, and Hellboy saw why; its wings were giants sails, thick leathery skin strung between sinewy supports, and they were already full of holes. He’d wasted a precious round just to add another.

The dragon roared and came at him. Its claws, previously so light and elegant, scored channels in the concrete as it ran. Its tail waved behind it, ripping the steel hand-railing from the edge of the esplanade. Its head swayed from side to side as it ran, and the closer it came, the larger its teeth appeared.

Instead of turning to flee, Hellboy ran forward to meet it.

The dragon pulled up short, perhaps surprised by Hellboy’s tactic, and gushed another wall of fire in his direction. But Hellboy was ready for that, and he did a long forward roll through the flames and out the other side. When he stood, smouldering slightly, he was only feet away from the dragon’s head.

“That’s not nice,” he said, and he punched the creature square on the nose with his heavy right hand.

The dragon roared, then whimpered. It reared up to its full height – big, very big, easily ten times as tall as Hellboy – and snorted. A couple of weak flames came from its nostrils, and then only smoke. It snorted again. Blood flecked the concrete around Hellboy, and he wiped a glob of it from his eye.

“Again?” Hellboy said.

The dragon seemed to agree. It launched itself forward and fell on all fours, trapping Hellboy beneath its stomach and crushing him down into the concrete. He gasped, tried to twist away, lost hold of the pistol. And then the dragon began to move across the esplanade, dragging Hellboy beneath it.

“Crap. Crap!” His jacket was ripped, his skin scored by the concrete, and the creature above him rumbled with something that could have been laughter. “You laughing at me, barbeque breath?”

The dragon stood and Hellboy immediately punched upward into its gut. It roared in pain and stumbled sway, its swinging tail catching Hellboy across the chest as it retreated. He went sprawling, and as he came to a stop he leaned over and picked up the pistol. “That’s convenient,” he said, firing at the dragon’s head. The bullet ricocheted from the heavy scales above its eye and winged off somewhere over Rio.

That really pissed off the giant worm.

This is turning bad, Hellboy thought. Before he could stand, the dragon snatched him up in one of its claws and launched itself over the edge of the parapet.

The ground dropped away beneath Hellboy. Still clasping the pistol in his left hand, he was now loathe to use it. Kill the dragon, fall a few hundred feet with ten tonnes of dead meat right above him … that did not appeal. And besides, there were houses down there, cars, parks and people. His only hope now was to wait and see whether this thing took him over open ground. Then, perhaps, a bullet in the spine.

Looking way, way down he could see Amelia’s Jeep parked in the station car park. He waved, almost laughed with the ridiculousness of the gesture, but he could not see whether the lecturer waved back.
The dragon flew hard and fast, and it took only a minute for the land beneath them to give way to sea. Now, Hellboy thought, this is when I can-

The dragon dropped him. They must have been quarter of a mile high.

Hellboy wanted to scream, but that way he’d lose the crushed cigarette in his mouth. He wanted to shoot, but his arms were pinwheeling in an attempt to keep himself upright as he fell. And he wanted, so much, to reach the water. Because he knew exactly what was coming next.

The dragon swept down at him and belched fire. Hellboy grimaced as the flames engulfed him, singeing his hair and goatee, stretching his skin, igniting his utility belt. When the flames guttered out the dragon was already diminishing into the distance.

Hellboy had time to draw one puff on his newly lit cigarette before he struck the surface of the bay.

Tom held dear every precious memory of Steven, especially those times that affected him so much that he believed they had altered his perception of things forever. His toddler son, pointing to the sky in wonder and gasping his first word, Cloud! Older, learning to ride his bike, Tom letting go and Steven only falling off when he realised he was riding on his own. At thirteen he won a bronze swimming medal for the school in the national finals, and the photograph of his presentation showed a boy on the cusp of manhood, his expression delighted yet reserved, full of self-awareness. At seventeen Steven joined the Army, and at nineteen he was accepted into the Parachute Regiment. Tom still had the photograph of his son wearing that red beret hanging above his fireplace at home. It made him proud. It made him sad. It was the last picture he took of Steven before he died.

Tom sat staring into a half-empty glass, listening to the bustle of the pub serving after-work pints and meals, wondering whether he should go home to Jo or stay for one more drink, and Steven suddenly popped into his mind. This often happened — he had been their only child, and his loss had stabbed them with a blade that time kept twisting — but mostly it was when Tom least expected it. He blinked tears into a blur, drained his drink and tried to imagine what Steven would be like now, were he still alive. After ten years in the Parachute Regiment he would have likely seen action, either in Eastern Europe or the Gulf. He would probably be married; he had always been one for the girls, even as a youngster.

Maybe Tom would be a grandparent.

“Hello, wherever you are,” he muttered as he stood and walked to the bar. He often pictured the ghosts of those not yet born, shades of lives unlived, and sometimes he craved to be haunted by his own grandchildren. He hoped they would be proud, but he thought not.

“Same again, Tom?”

Tom had placed the glass on the bar with every intention of going home, but now he nodded and handed over a fistful of change. Glass replenished, he returned to his table, but two men had taken his place. He considered asking whether he could join them, but the thought of entering into conversation with strangers did not appeal to him right now. Not when Steven was so fresh in his mind.

It’s almost ten years. He sat in the window seat close to his original table and sipped from his pint. Ten years since he died. Jo has changed so much in that time. Gone from a lovely young mother into middle age barren of all but her hollow hobbies. And I still love her. He drank again, closed his eyes, tears threatening. She loved him too. It was strong, their bond, and passionate, perhaps the single positive outcome of Steven’s death.

He wondered just how much he had changed.

The two men were talking quietly, yet Tom could not help overhearing some of their conversation. He had never been the sort who could shut out background noise, and even if he had no real interest in what was being said, the words still found their way in.

The men were talking about their time in the Army. They looked around thirty. Steven’s age, were he still alive.

Tom drank some more ale, already beginning to regret this third pint. Jo knew he stopped off for a beer on the way home every Friday. What she did not know was that he was invariably on his own. He had led her to believe that a few colleagues from the office went along, and that small white lie did not bother him greatly. There was no reason to make her think otherwise. She would only worry. And for Tom it was just a couple of quiet pints, during which time he could muse upon the week gone by and contemplate the weekend ahead. He sometimes chatted to the couple who owned the pub, and occasionally he entered into conversation with one or two of the regulars. But more often than not this was his own time. It was when he could really think about whether or not he liked himself. The answers usually came in thick and fast, and that was why he was often home after just a couple of drinks, to immerse himself in life with his wife once again. Smother his thoughts. Bury the aching feeling that he should have done much, much more with a life so scarred by Steven’s death.

“…never knew what it was all about,” one of the men said. The other nodded meaningfully and drank from his pint. He caught Tom’s eye momentarily, then glanced away.

“Well if he didn’t know what they did there, he deserved it.”

Tom turned to the side in an effort to hear more of the conversation, but somebody hit a jackpot on the fruit machine. The celebratory clunking of their ejected winnings drowned the bar for thirty seconds, and by then the two men were sitting in silence once again.

Tom looked around the pub and felt a familiar disquiet settling in. He spent only a couple of hours here each week, and yet sometimes it seemed more familiar than his own living room. Perhaps this was the only place he ever truly relaxed. He closed his eyes and sighed, and when he opened them somebody said, “Porton Down.”

He looked at the two men. They were hunkered down over their drinks, leaning in close, but they were not catching each other’s eyes. One was staring into his pint glass, the other had found a fascinating snag of lint on his jacket sleeve.

Porton Down! That’s on Salisbury Plain where… Where Steven was killed. ‘Training accident’, they had told Tom. When pressed, they gave a few more details, and he had always wished that he had not asked. And yet… there was that ever-present doubt. ‘Cover-up’, Tom’s own father had muttered at the funeral, but he was long lost to Alzheimer’s by then, and Tom did not pursue the matter.

There came one of those rare moments of silence that haunt bars and wait to manifest, a brief second or two when conversations falter at the same time, the fruit machine falls silent between turns, the bar-staff pause for a drink or go to change a barrel, and the juke box takes a breather between tracks. And into that silence – still so quiet that probably only Tom could hear it – one of the men whispered, “They kept monsters.”

* * *

Later, Tom would spend some time musing on destiny, and what cruel fate had deigned that he hear those three whispered words. If he had gone home after his second pint he would have never heard, and life would have gone on, and perhaps he and Jo would have grown old together, their love doing its best to fill the void where Steven and his family could have been.

But by the time he thought that, he already knew the monsters of which the man had spoken. And in the face of their ferocity, regret had no place at all.

When Kosar saw the horseman, the world began to end again.

The horse walked towards the village, the rider shifting in fluid time to his mount’s steps. The man’s body was wrapped in a deep red cloak, pulled up so that it formed a hood over his head, shadowing his face. His hands rested on his thighs. The horse made its own way along the road. Loose reins hung either side of its head, its mane was clotted with dirt, its unshod hooves clacked and clicked puffs of dust from the dry trail. Only one man on a horse, and he did not appear to be armed.

How, then, could Kosar know that death followed him in?

With a grimace he stopped work and squatted. A warm breeze kissed the raw flesh of his fingertips – the marks of a thief – and took away the pain for a few precious moments. Blood had dripped and dried into a dust-caked mess across his hands and between his fingers, and they crackled when he flexed them. The unhealing wounds were a permanent reminder of the mistakes of his past.

Kosar decided that the irrigation trenches could wait a few minutes more. It had taken two years for the village to decide to commission them; another moment would make no difference to the crops withering and dying in the fields. Besides, they needed much more than water, though most would refuse to believe that was so. And now there was something more interesting to grab his attention, something that might bring excitement to this measly little collection of huts, hovels and run-down dwellings that dared call itself a village.

He stared along the road at the figure in the distance. Yes, only one man, but a threatening pall hung about him, like shadowy echoes of evil deeds. Kosar looked the other way, past the old stone bridge and into the village itself. There were children playing by the stream, diving and resurfacing in triumph if they caught a fish between their teeth. Elsewhere, drinkers sat silently stoned outside the tavern, mugs of rotwine festering half-finished in the sun, the other half coursing through veins and inducing a few cherished hours of catatonia. It was a false escape that he, Kosar the thief, would never be permitted again. At least not where any form of law still applied.

The market was small today, but a few traders plied their wares and squeezed tellan coins and barter from the village folk. Skinned furbats hung from hooks along one stall, their livers intact and ripe with rhellim, the drug of sexual abandonment. He had already seen three people skulking away, a furbat beneath their shirt and their eyes downcast. Their children may not eat tonight, but at least the parents would be assured of a good screw. Another trader sold charms supposedly from Kang Kang, banking on the fear and awe in which that place was held to make the buyers see past the trinkets’ obvious falseness. There were food sellers too, offering fruits from the Cantrass Plains. But the journey from that place was long, the route difficult, and most of the fruits had lost their lively hue.

Kosar turned once again to the stranger. He was much closer now, and the sound of his progress had become audible in the heavy air. The figure raised its head almost imperceptibly. The cloak shifted to allow a sliver of the falling sun inside and Kosar squinted as he tried to make out what it revealed. His eyesight was not as good as it had once been, scorched by decades in the sun and weakened by lack of nourishment, but it had never misled him.

The stranger’s face was as red as his cloak.

Kosar stood and shielded his eyes. His first impulse was to grab the pick he’d been using, so he could swing it up in a killing arc if necessary. His second urge was to turn and run, and this surprised him. He’d always been a thief but never a coward. It was why he was still alive now, and it was the reason he could live among people, even with the terrible unhealing brands on his fingers.

He also listened to his hunches. Instinct was for survival, and Kosar followed his as much as possible.

But not this time. Instead, he crept back along the trench towards the bridge. Every step felt heavy, each movement against good sense. Something inside shouted at him to turn and run, abandon the village to whatever fate this red man brought with him. The place had never really done anything for Kosar. Acceptance it had given grudgingly, but never affection, never any true sense of belonging. They’d put up with him because he worked for them, nothing more. He’d spent the last mid-summer festival skulking past the stone bridge while the town cabal handed out ale and food. The revelry had jibed at him as he watched the setting sun alone, even though the jibing was mostly his own.

Turn and run.

But he could not.

Turn and run, Kosar, you bloody fool!

Even though instinct urged him to flee, and good sense told him that death’s shadow was already closing over the village, there were children here, playing in the stream. There were a few women in the village that he liked, or would like to like, given the chance. And more than anything Kosar was a good man. A thief, a criminal, branded forever as untrustworthy and devious, but a good man.

The horseman was no more than two minutes away from the village. Kosar had almost reached the end of the trench where it joined the stream, the bridge a hundred steps away. The children had finished their fishing and playing and climbed the bank, and now they sat on the bridge parapet, swinging their legs over the edge, laughing and joking and watching the stranger approach. Such trust, Kosar thought, in a world where hunger and fear made trust so precious.

He was about to call out to the children when the horse broke into a gallop.

He could have warned them. He should have shouted at them to turn and run, go to their homes, tell their parents to lock their doors. Kosar had seen enough trouble in his life to recognise its flowering, and he had known from the instant he’d laid eyes on the horseman that he was not here for a drink, a meal, a bed for the night. He could have warned them, but shouting would have drawn attention to himself. And in this case, instinct won out.

The man in red dismounted on the bridge and approached the children. His horse remained where it had stopped, head bowed as if smelling the water through thick stone. The children stood, jumped around, giggled. Kosar glanced across into the village and saw several people looking his way, a couple of them striding quickly towards the bridge, one woman darting into the brothel where the three village militia spent most of their time.

For a moment all was still. Kosar paused, unmoving. The breeze died down as if the land itself was holding its breath. Even the stream seemed to slow.

The man in red spoke. His voice was water running uphill, birds falling into the sky, sand eroding into rock. Where is Rafe Baburn? he asked. The children glanced at one-another. One of the girls offered a nervous smile.

Later, Kosar would swear that the man never even gave them time to reply.

He grabbed the smiling girl by her long hair, pulled his hand from within the red robes and sliced her throat. His knife seemed to lengthen into a sword, as if gorging on the fresh blood smearing its blade, and he swung it through the air. Three other children clutched at fatal wounds, shrieking as they disappeared from Kosar’s view behind the parapet. The two remaining boys turned to run and the hooded man caught them, seemingly without moving. He beheaded them both with a flick of his wrist.

Kosar fell to his knees, the breath sucked from him, and rolled sideways into the irrigation ditch. He cringed at the splash, but the hooded man strode across the bridge and into the village without pause. Kosar peered above the edge of the trench and watched through brown reeds as the man approached the first building.

The village was in turmoil. A woman screamed when she saw the devastation on the bridge, and others soon took up her cry. Men emerged from doorways clutching crossbows and swords. Children ran along the street, their eyes widening with a terrible curiosity when they saw their dead friends. Goats and sheebok scampered through the dust, startled to the ends of their tethers, crying and choking as leather leads jerked them to a standstill. The man in red walked on, the robe still tight around his body, hood over his head. From this angle Kosar could only see his back, and for that he was glad. From the glimpse he had caught of the red face, he had no desire to see beneath that hood again.

A woman, mad with grief, tried to run past the man to hug her dead child. His arm snatched out and buried the sword in her stomach. He jerked it free without breaking his step, the woman’s blood splashing his robe. Her scream wound down like an echo in a cave. There was another shout from the village, and the whistle of a crossbow bolt boring the air.

It struck the man in the shoulder. He paused momentarily -

This is when he goes down, Kosar thought, and then they’ll fall on him and he’ll be torn to shreds.

- and then continued on his way. The bolt protruded from his shoulder, pinning the cloak tighter to his body. The shooter re-primed his crossbow, loaded another bolt and fired again, his eyes blinded with grief but his aim still true. This one struck the man in the face. Again he paused, his head snapping back with the impact. And again he went on his way once more. His pace increased, dust kicking up from beneath his red robe, clotted black with his own spilled blood.

Someone stumbled from the door of the brothel further along the street. It was one of the three militia, naked, flushed and erect from his regular afternoon dose of rhellim, yet still of sound enough mind to bring his longbow with him. A whore staggered out after him, frenzied from rhellim overdose, grabbing at the soldier’s crotch even as he strung an arrow and sighted on the red-robed man. He nudged the whore aside with his knee. She sprawled in the dust and shouted her rage up at him. The soldier let loose his arrow.

It thudded into the man and burst from his back. He stood for a moment like a red butterfly pinned to the air. The first man with the crossbow ran at him, raising his weapon to strike the murderer around the face, but the aggressor moved so quickly that Kosar barely saw the sword shimmer through the air. The crossbow spun across the road and into the stream, closely followed by its owner’s head, mouth still wide in a scream.

Another bolt struck home, fired from somewhere beyond Kosar’s field of view. Another, then another. The man barely paused this time, as if becoming used to the impact of wood and iron, his body adjusting itself around the alien objects puncturing and shredding it. He reached the tavern where the regular drinkers were stirring from thoughtless slumber and slaughtered all six of them. He did so slowly, seeming to relish every thrust and slice of his sword, oblivious to the bolts and arrows pounding into his red robed body.

The other two militia had emerged from the brothel and all three now stood in the street, ridiculously naked and sweat-soaked and hard on rhellim. The whores huddled back against the brothel wall and watched as their men plucked arrows from their quivers, strung, fired, strung and fired again. Each arrow found its mark, and the nearer the man in red came to the militia the more damage they did.

One shaft struck his throat and exited the back of his neck, carrying a stringy mess of gristle and veins with it. The air was thick with blood. Kosar could not believe what he was seeing; the man should be dead. He was a walking cactus – there were two dozen arrows and bolts peppering his body, and more hitting home every few seconds – and yet he walked. He swung his sword, hacked at the villagers, and their bodies spilled blood into the dust. Kosar watched aghast as the man in red reached the militia. They stood their ground as they were trained, wide-eyed and terrified. They took up their swords, engaged the arrowed-peppered figure together and died together. One was split from throat to sternum by a twitch of the blade, another lost his rampant genitals before his guts followed them to the ground. The third, mad and brainwashed to the last, ran at the enemy with the intention of wrestling him into the dust. The robed figure spun at the last instant, and the soldier was impaled on his own arrows.

With the militia dead, the massacre of the villagers began in earnest.

The man in red still wore the hood over his face. His hands barely seemed to move before another body fell to the ground. And arrows and bolts still thrummed into him.

Time to leave, Kosar knew. He glanced at the bridge, queasy because he had not gone to help those children. But at least this way he still had the stomach to feel sick.

He turned and made his way along the trench on his hands and knees. Each splash in the shallow water was accompanied by a scream from the village, or a groan, or the thud of another useless arrow finding its mark. He’d seen some things in his time, some strange, some unpleasant, some weird and wonderful. But he had never seen a man fighting with thirty arrows letting his blood and twisting up his insides.

He stared to pant, and realised only then that he was panicking. The sounds from the village were receding as he lay distance down behind him. They were worse than before – the screams of children once more – but they were quieter now. Certainly not easier to hear, but less of a threat.

Kosar paused for a moment and lifted his hands from the muddy water. The ground was clay here, hardly ideal for planting crops but perfect for coating unwary crawlers with a blood-red deposit. He hung his head until his long hair dipped in as well, perhaps willing himself to be blooded. He had done nothing. Those children on the bridge, innocent, ignorant only because their parents were ignorant, so alive, so trusting…

He had done nothing.

“Oh Mage shit,” he whispered wretchedly.

The noise from the village stopped. No more screams. No more shouts. No more crossbows twanging, arrows whistling through the air or swords met in sparkling fury. Nothing but the slow, methodical footsteps of one man.

Kosar held his breath and raised his head slightly, looking back over his shoulder, the only sound now the thick water dripping from his hair. His hands were slowly sinking into the mud at the bottom of the ditch, his wounded fingertips stinging under the cold caress. It felt as if they were pressing into spilled guts and the image horrified him. He was a thief, not a murderer.

How would he know what spilled guts felt like?

And then he realised. As his eyes drew level with the dried grass and he saw the man in red strolling among the dead, he knew. He knew the feel of guts because he had seen them spilled, smelled their tangy scent, heard the screams of their owners as they tried to catch them. He knew because he had stood by and watched those children die, when he could at least have warned them that this man was danger, this man was death. And because a sick realisation suddenly dawned and he knew this man, who he was and where he was from. He’d heard whispers of legends, listened to outlandish stories by campfire light or the smoke-hazed atmospheres of taverns a lifetime from here.

The stranger was a Red Monk.

Which meant that somewhere in the land, magic was living again.

After all he had been through – the exotic places, the violent encounters, the disappointments and victories – this memory should have been a bland speck in his seas of experiences. There was just him, and some trees, and the man with a snake in his eye. But the image was important, because it was the last time he could remember having any sense of excitement or hope for the future. Then he had been a man with a family; now, he was barely even a man. It stood out from all his other memories as the moment when his soul had been corrupted by three simple words:

Feed your hate.

* * *

The fallen oak was Gabriel’s favourite place. He often came here from the village, seeking time alone to think, muse on life, watch nature go by. The forest went on for hundreds of miles in every direction, and though he had seen much of it, he had never found anywhere to match this place and the atmosphere it gave him. It was a part of the forest marked by the past, and rich with it. The trees that still stood around the clearing were scarred by strange symbols and sigils, evidence of old, old magic. Beneath the fallen oak lay a smooth flat rock, split in two by the tree when Gabriel was a child. He could still remember that storm, when the greatest bursts of lightning and thunder seemed saved for its very last breath; the moment the great tree had been struck. Some said the stone was a sacrificial altar. His wife often claimed to dream herself to the clearing at night, watch events unfold, bear witness to ghastly sacrifices. But for Gabriel it was just another left-over from old magic. It was sad and broken now, but still imbued with some ethereal power, rich from the pain that must have soaked it over the centuries. A bush grew from the moist places underneath, fat roses hanging like drops of blood always ready to fall.

Gabriel absently nudged one of the roses with his foot, and this was where his recollection froze. Every time he dreamed or summoned the memory whilst awake, this was the point at which everything changed. Perhaps it was as he noticed the man with the snake in his eye approaching through the trees.

Or maybe it was the precise moment when his family was being butchered.

The swaying of the rose came to a halt. Gabriel looked down at his swinging feet, felt the cool moss on the old bark beneath him, and his hand crawled for the knife at his belt. A second later he looked up and understood why he was reaching for the blade.

He slid from the tree and landed beside the split rock. The knife was in his hand. The man stood at the edge of the clearing, swaying slightly as if mimicking the rose bush, inviting Gabriel to kick him as well. Gabriel was suddenly aware of his own breathing, fast and shallow with shock. Not fear, not yet. A stranger travelling through the forest was not unusual. But this stranger… there was something about him, something wrong, something that Gabriel had never seen before. A myth that he had only heard of in tales, whispered at night when fires kept darkness at bay.

The old man was a conjurer. Around his waist, a belt of tiny bones. Across his shoulders, a black pelt filled with tricks and charms. And in his eyes, the look of a snake.

“Who are you?” Gabriel asked. “Do you need shelter? Food for the night? We have little, but what little we have we can share.” You’re so trusting, his wife said on those occasions when he brought a stranger home. But none of the travellers had ever given them trouble. In truth Gabriel liked listening to their stories, and if it weren’t for his family he would have once become a traveller himself. He had always known that there was more to see than trees and the spaces in between.

The man shook his head, and the light reflecting from his eyes seemed ancient. Dirty, Gabriel thought, dirty light.

That was when he smelled fire.

He glanced away from the old man and back over the fallen oak, in the direction of the village. Above the forest canopy, heavy black smoke rose lazily into the sky, as if the wood itself were bleeding to the heavens. The sight of it seemed to alert his other senses; he tasted smoke on the air, smelled burning flesh within the tang of flaming wood. And finally he heard the screams.

“No,” he said. He leaped the oak and readied himself to run through the forest.

“Too late,” the old man croaked. Gabriel was not certain whether he heard mockery or sadness in that voice.

“My family,” Gabriel said, but something made him pause and look back.

The conjurer shuffled sideways for a few paces, his movement grotesque and animalistic. He never took his gaze from Gabriel’s face. When he came within reach of an old beech tree he tapped at a sigil with his knuckles. It must have been carved into the tree centuries ago, but the old man touched it without looking, as if he had put it there himself.

“Feed your hate,” he said. Then, with something that may have been a cackle or a cough, he turned and disappeared into the forest.

Gabriel ran. The words stuck, but subconsciously. Right then all he knew was the fear, stench and cries of the dying village.

Cain had few possessions, even fewer memories, and no family. Nowhere seemed a perfect place to begin his new life.

The taxi dropped him at the kerbside and left him sitting on his suitcase, several plastic carrier bags scattered around his feet like bloated dead pigeons, real birds chattering from gutters and telephone lines, irate at his intrusion. He turned to the wooden chest beside him on the pavement and grabbed its handle, hardly surprised when he found he could lift one end from the ground with ease. Its weight seemed to vary with his own moods. Today, he was happy to be here.

The street sign announced itself as Endless Crescent, but some wit had daubed Nowhere across the name in bright blue paint, ironic vandalism that would likely confuse more than amuse. Such skewed intelligence was hardly in evidence in other graffiti that decorated walls along the street, occasional proclamations such as, ‘Darren woz yer’, and ‘Mandy has a wet pussy’, and ‘Follow me for the Way’. Some of the perpetrators had imagined themselves as artists, the vandalism taking on colours and shades and shapes that were meant to bestow individuality. Such ego was a nonsense, as the work was always done in secret. Cain stared at one of the names sprayed across the side of a garage in great green swathes, ‘Kelvin’, the tails of the ‘K’ turned up into crude wings, the dot of the ‘i’ a hooded eye, comical when it was intended to be threatening. He wondered where Kelvin was now, what he was doing, and whether he even knew himself.

Someone had once tried planting trees in an attempt to turn Endless Crescent into an Avenue, but their efforts had been led nowhere. Thin stumps protruded from squares of removed paving slabs, snapped off at waist height or lower, kicked and scarred, and blackened with dog piss and rot. The ground around them held more life, weeds sprouting as if in mockery of the trees’ doomed attempts at existence.

The houses in the street were all large, an unusual mix of modern and Victorian, mostly three-storeys, and over half of them had been converted into flats. The unmistakeable signature of student accommodation marked some: open windows blaring a heady mixture of rock and dance music, bikes chained to garden fences like dangerous pets, uncurtained windows displaying half a dozen scenes of domesticity gone awry. Most of the houses were in a good state of repair, though one or two looked as if they should have been condemned years ago. Indeed, one house directly across the street from where Cain sat seemed to have been surrendered back to the wilds. Its render had blown and been shed right across the front façade, and its windows were smashed, boarded up from the inside. The front garden was a riot of weeds and unkempt roses bushes. Cain could see the house’s name plate bolted to the wall beside the corrugated iron front door: ‘Heaven’. A joke, surely. He closed his eyes and shook his head, and when he looked again the sign still read the same.

A shout sounded from somewhere out of sight, a woman’s shrill voice calling some missing kid in for lunch. Perhaps it had been missing for months and the woman tried this every day, hoping that continued normality would bring her child scampering back to her from whatever unknown distance it had travelled.

Cain looked down at his feet. Narrowing his field of vision helped him to calm his nerves. He shifted slightly and the suitcase flexed beneath him, threatening to burst open and spill his clothes across the street like fabric guts. He should go. He should stand and drag his possessions along to Number 13, his new home, his new life, or so he had been told. It’s time to stand on your own two feet, the Face had said, handing him another pill.

Two children ran along the street, laughing and swearing, and laughing again at their secret rebellion. To Cain they seemed easily old enough to be in school, and too young to be out on their own. They stopped a few feet from him and sized him up, their eyes far too mature for their age.
All Cain could remember of his own childhood were the dreams.

“Hey mister!” the taller of the two kids said. “You wearing that coat for a bet?”

Cain glanced down at the duffel coat, up at the sky, the sun burning its way through a haze of clouds. “It was cold where I came from,” he said.

“Where’s that then, the fuckin’ Arctic?” the short kid said, and they both laughed.

“No, not that far away,” Cain said, trying to remember the name of the home, but there were only feelings and sensations — rough sheets on his bed, sterile décor, dirty floors — and the Face and Voice giving him advice and pills, food and comfort.

“I like your new sitting room,” the tall kid said. “Where are we, then, in your kitchen? Where you going to sleep, in the box?”

Cain smiled. “It’s a chest,” he said, “and I’m sure I’d never fit in there.”

“Bet I would,” the short kid said.

“I’m sure you would.”

The three fell silent for a few seconds, a silence loaded with something uncomfortable that Cain could not quite pin down. Had he issued a slight threat? Had the kids perceived it that way? Or were they threatening him?

“I’ve just moved here,” he said, “from somewhere else.”

“The fuckin’ Arctic!” the kids said in unison, giggling at their humour.

“Shouldn’t you two be in school?”

They looked uncomfortable at that, avoiding his eyes, kicking at a crushed tin can and giving the street another note to its urban theme. Cain wondered if the sounds around him made up the whole, or whether the street would have been exactly the same without them. He doubted that. Tin can rattling, distant music blaring, mothers shouting, a dog barking, cars grumbling, kids screaming, pans crashing, doors slamming… he was somewhere unique, a place set apart from anywhere else by its own distinct sounds, sights and smells. He tried not to sense too much.

“There,” Cain said. “That’s my new place. At least, a part of it is.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the letter of introduction, already crinkled and grubby from many readings. Afresh Respite Home, Tall Stennington, the letterhead read, and he knew where he was from.

The kids looked to where he was pointing and laughed, punching and grappling each other as they turned and ran away from Cain. “So you’re another fuckin’ nutter then!” the tall one shouted over his shoulder, running faster as if to escape the words.

“What?” Cain stood from his suitcase. But the kids slipped into a lane between two houses and were lost to him, leaving behind only an echo in his mind…another fuckin’ nutter… “We’ll see,” Cain said. He looped his finger through the carrier bag handles, lifted the suitcase, hefted the chest with his other hand — it still felt very light, almost empty, and he could move it by dragging one end along the ground — and approached Number 13 Endless Crescent. “We’ll see.”

The front gate swung open when Cain nudged it with his knee, and he was able to negotiate his way through and kick it shut behind him without having to put anything down. There was a path and a planting bed and that was it; no lawn, no gravelled area. The plants were waist-high and lush, their leaves dark green, big, spiked, like something from a rainforest instead of a suburban front garden in South Wales. And although there was variety here, all the plants must have belonged to the same family. Some leaves were larger than others, a slightly different shape, an alternative shade of dark green, but they were all spiked, with bright orange flowers hidden down at the leaf stems as if hiding away from the sun instead of seeking it. The many bees harvesting their pollen were fat, heavy and lazy, providing a low background drone. It was strange, but Cain did not know why. The only other garden he knew was at the Afresh Respite Home, and that had consisted of a huge, square lawn with a few random shrubs at its edges and a summer house in one corner.

Functional and easily maintained, with nowhere for mad folk to hide.

As he approached the front door, Cain realised that the garden was louder than the street. Leaves whispered in a slight breeze, bees bumbled from one flower to the next, and down beneath the waist-high canopy something was scurrying around in the shade. Birds, perhaps. Or mice. But all these sounds were somehow louder than the occasional car passing beyond the gate, the woman still calling her child’s name in vain, the music polluting the summer day from open windows. It was as if coming through the gate had moved him on a great distance.

For the first time Cain felt truly alarmed at being out here on his own, away from what he knew. He had been thrilled when the Face told him it was time to leave, invigorated, proud of his soon-to-be independence. Although his father’s death and much of Cain’s existence from before were little more than dreams — like the memory of a book read long ago, someone else’s life and experiences — he felt strong and fit and ready to begin again. He knew he was ready, he was certain of it… and yet he craved that Face, and that soothing Voice. The cool hand on his brow. The calm void of drug-induced sleep.

Natural sleep was when it hit him the most. Then, so the Voice had said, Cain’s mind tried to compensate for his lack of memories by creating false ones. Never trust them, he had said, they lie, and dreaming is going to hinder your recovering mind as much as aid it. Cain had his doubts, but the Voice knew what it was on about, he was qualified. Cain shook his jacket and heard the comforting rattle of pills. Here, the Voice had said quietly just as Cain was leaving, don’t tell… but take these. They’ll help you to settle in with only reality as your bedfellow.

“Help you?”

Cain spun around, letting out an involuntary squeal.

“Whoops, sorry!” The man in the doorway held up both hands and stepped back into the house. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”

“I’m not spooked,” Cain said. Strange choice of words. “Just a bit startled. Sorry. I was admiring the garden.”

“Ah yeah, the plants. They look a bit severe but they keep people to the path.” The man came forward again, down the small front door step so that he was on a level with Cain. He was only Cain’s height, but something about his bearing made him appear taller.

“I’m here for the flat,” Cain said. “I have this.” He handed over the crumpled letter from Afresh, and the kids’ parting shot echoed once more in his mind, another fuckin’ nutter…

The man opened the letter, smoothed it several times as if the creases contained hidden messages. There were none — Cain had read it a hundred times on the way here — but still he was nervous at what would be found.

“That seems fine,” the man said. “I’ve had the flat ready for a couple of days, wasn’t sure when to expect you. Come on in and I’ll show you up.”

“That’s it?” Cain said. It all felt so easy.

The man gave him a frank up-and-down inspection, as if looking for scars or something less visible. “As I said, I’ve been expecting you. The people who sent you appear to be very good payers, and everything’s sorted. I’m not going to make anything hard for you with the deal I have with them. You stay here for a whole year, I get paid. You do a bunk at the end of the first week and disappear, I still get a year’s money. Not bad, eh?”

“Not bad,” Cain said, impressed, confused, flattered at the Home’s confidence in him.

“I’m Peter,” the man said, holding out his hand.

“Cain.”

“Pleased to meet you, Cain. First name? Last?”

“Just Cain. It’s easier to remember.”

Silence hung heavy for a few seconds, backed by buzzing bees and rustling beneath the plants that kept people to the path.

“So what happened? The letter says you’re been in the Home for quite a while.”

“My father died.”

Peter raised his eyebrows, expecting more.

Cain frowned, looked down, and he could remember nothing.

“No worries, just me being nosey,” Peter said. “Never could keep my nose out of other people’s business. Comes with being a landlord, I guess. Come on in.”

Cain heard something in Peter’s voice that told him he would be questioned again later. How would the landlord take the answer?

I don’t really know what happened to me, Cain would have to say. My father died, but before that there was only loneliness, and time, so much time. I don’t remember much of it except in dreams. And most of those are bad. Would Peter want someone without a past in his building, good deal or not?

Peter took the suitcase and left Cain with his carrier bags and the chest. Cain hefted the latter up over the front door step, and for the briefest instant it felt heavy, heavier than was possible, as if suddenly filled with lead. He grunted and let the chest hit the floor, then tried again. It slid easily across the quarry-tiled lobby.

“Hot day,” Peter said. “You warm in that coat?”

“It was cold where I came from.”

“Tall Stennington?” Peter headed for the staircase, head tilted slightly awaiting the answer, but Cain offered none. The landlord dropped the suitcase unceremoniously at the foot of the stairs, then turned around and grinned at Cain where he struggled with the chest.

“No lift, I’m afraid,” Peter said. “Almost had one put in a couple of years back for a guy who lived on the second floor. He used a wheelchair, so I’d have got a grant from the council. Then I could have charged more because I’d have been disabled access compliant. But he didn’t need it in the end.”

“Did you give him a flat down here?”

“No, he died.” Peter stared at Cain, obviously expecting a reaction. But Cain was not surprised at the revelation. It hardly seemed important. People die, he thought, and his own lack of concern chilled him.

“So where’s my flat?” he asked, glancing up the staircase. The lobby and stairs were wide, bright and airy. The walls had been decorated a pale yellow, and over time they had been scuffed and chipped from people walking up and down, apparently leaning against the wall for support. The vinyl flooring was the same colour. Lovely, he thought.

“He was killed. They found him on Rich Common with half his stomach eaten.”

Cain frowned, shook his head, avoided Peter’s gaze. “How do they know it was eaten?”

“Sorry?”

“How do they know?”

Peter shrugged. “Teeth marks, I suppose.”

“Right,” Cain said. This fool was trying his best to be antagonistic. All Cain wanted right now was to see his room, make it his own for the future, unpack, lie down and spend his first night in… ages. Ages, he thought. It’s been ages since I slept free.

“Room five, attic room,” Peter said, suddenly bright and casual again. “Come on, I’ll give you a hand with that!” He grabbed for the chest handle, and for a second Cain was going to lash out. Leave me alone! he thought, but it made no sense, and by the time he realised that Peter had lifted the chest and started climbing. It thumped from tread to tread. The tapping Cain thought he heard in accompaniment must surely have been an echo.

“Come on!” Peter said, pausing on the sixth stair, looking down at Cain and smiling. “And don’t mind me. I’m a bit morbid at times. Watch too much shit on TV.” He laughed as he started up again.
Cain hefted his suitcase and carrier bags and followed his new landlord. “So who else lives here?” he asked.

“Ah yes,” Peter said, paused on the first floor landing. “I should have given you the tour. Oh well, maybe later. There are a few things I need to show you — laundry room in the basement, fire escape, alarm board, post boxes, that sort of stuff. But for now… well, who else lives here.” He looked at Cain and smiled again. Then he giggled.

“What is it?”

“Well, mate, you’re sharing a house with some odd folk, that’s for sure.”

Another fuckin’ weirdo, the kid had said. “Odd? How so?”

“Where to begin?” Peter said. “Follow me up and I’ll talk you through your new neighbours.”

Cain felt uncomfortable at the thought of Peter describing his neighbours out here on the stairs and landings. Any of them could be listening, and he did not want their opinions of him to be tainted by what their mutual landlord had to say. But no doors cracked open, no shadows revealed lurking residents, and he thought that maybe they were all out. At work, perhaps. Or wherever it was they went during the day. Freedom was not something Cain was used to, and he could not imagine anyone not taking full advantage of it.

“Ground floor,” Peter said, “Flat One. Sister Josephine. Don’t ask me if that’s her real name. Bit of alright beneath her habit, I reckon, but as I’ve never seen her not wearing it — never — I wouldn’t know. She thinks she’s a bit special.”

“What’s a nun doing living here?”

“Who said she’s a nun?”

“Well, her name…”

“Yeah, but I just said don’t ask.”

They walked along the first floor landing, past two doors, heading for the flight of stairs to the second floor. The idea of inhabiting a dead man’s flat did not disturb Cain as much as it should. At least I’m out, he thought. Peter dropped the chest, glanced at his hand as if in pain, folded his arms and nodded at the closed doors.

“All strange,” he whispered. “It’s the number of the house attracts them. Number 13. Some streets don’t have it at all, you ever noticed that? Evens on one side, they’re fine, but odd numbers… seven, nine, eleven, fifteen… mad, eh? Surely number fifteen would really be thirteen, so it’d be just as fucked up?”

“I’ve heard some buildings miss out their thirteenth floor,” Cain said.

“Ah yes, but do they? Maybe the floors are all there, home to government agencies or alien corporations. Ever thought of that?”

“Not really,” Cain said, although he had read books containing that theory many times. He had no idea whether Peter was serious with any of this, or just testing him, dangling bait of various tastes and textures to see what he bit. Odd folk, thirteenth floor, a nun who may or not be. The landlord seemed just as strange. His face was old before its time — he looked fifty, whereas Cain was certain he was no older than thirty-five — and the lines and crags in his skin hid true meaning like an abstract poem. It would need deciphering, concentration. Cain would need to know it.

“Well, don’t forget it,” Peter said. He laughed again. He seemed to do that a lot, although Cain had yet to hear true humour there. Perhaps after so long in the Home he had become inured against wit.

“So who’s here?” Cain asked. The door he had just passed held a number Four, while the one next to him held a vertical word Three, the ‘T’ hanging askew from where a screw had popped free.

“Well, maybe we should get you to your room first,” Peter said, glancing at Flat Three, at Cain, then back at the door.

I’m too tired for this, Cain thought, too confused, too overawed. I need to sit in my new home and take out my book and read. He had read ‘The Glamour’ a dozen times already, but he never tired of it, always found new messages hidden between chapters, beneath lines, behind paragraphs of exquisite prose and mysterious metaphor. On the surface the book was about invisibility, and Cain could relate. He felt so unseen by the world.

“Yes, maybe that is best,” Cain agreed. He moved past Peter and headed up the flight of stairs to his attic room.

“Oh!” Peter uttered behind him, but Cain had taken the lead. He reached a small landing with two doors leading off, one marked Flat Five, the other bearing only long, deep scratches for its entire height, as if something large and fearsome had tried to get through. Unnerved, he waited for the landlord to reach him.

“Flat Five,” Peter said as he reached the landing, panting with the effort of hauling the chest. “Cain! Not such an odd fellow, perhaps.” He laughed again as he took out a key and unlocked the door, dragging the chest through. He looked at it as if it could contain proof of all the lies he had so recently uttered.

Cain stood on the threshold for a few moments, unsure of what was about to happen. Was his life really starting afresh? Were all the bad times behind him? Would those memories — those torturous dreams of being hurt and alone — ever fade away to give him the peace he craved? He felt the lump of the pill bottle in his jacket pocket, and remembered the Voice’s secret smile as it had pressed them into his palm. Avoidance, Cain thought. I can go on avoiding the truth for ever. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t always there, just as my father is always there. He hurt me, but he loved me. That’s what the Face and Voice said. I have to come to terms with the fact that he simply didn’t know what love was.

“Nice views,” he heard Peter say from somewhere in the flat. Cain stared down at the chest where it sat just inside the door. I’m in there already, he thought. I beat myself in.

“You can see the cathedral to the east, and north are the mountains outside the city. Wintertime, you can see snow on them from here.”

“This is my new home,” Cain whispered, not loud enough for Peter to hear. “I can do what I want in here.” He leaned through the door without setting foot inside, and rested his right hand on the chest. The wood felt warm, but that must have been the weather. “And I’ll never be alone again.”
“Cain?” Peter said, emerging from a room on the left. “You need a hand?”

Cain forced a smile, and then surprised himself by realising that force was not required. “Please,” he said. “I don’t have much stuff, but sometimes it’s heavy.”

“No problem.” Peter lifted one end of the chest and dragged it through the hallway. “I’ll put this in the living room.”

Cain entered his new home and closed the door behind him.

The hallway was large and bright, lit by a rooflight. It was painted entirely white, and hung with contrasting black and grey landscape paintings, surreal, beautiful scenes of dead trees reaching ragged fingers for the viewer. The floor was a pale timber, scored here and there with deep scratches. Three doors led off from the hallway, and Cain was stunned at the scope of his new home. At Afresh he had lived in one room — bed, settee, books, small bathroom leading off to one side. Here, faced with three doors, he felt a sudden rush of panic. What if he got lost?

The second door on his left swung inward again and Peter peered out. “Like it?”

Cain could not speak. His throat felt hot and hard, and he was afraid that if he opened his mouth he would cry. He had cried a lot in his life, but he did not wish to shed tears in front of Peter. He could not say why. Perhaps now, alone in the world, he did not want to appear weak.

“I chose the pictures myself,” Peter said. “I love dead trees. They’re so filled with expression. It’s as if shedding their leaves opens them up to view. What do you think? Do you like dead trees?”

Cain glanced at one of the pictures and nodded.

“Forgive the scratches,” Peter continued, tapping the floor with one foot. “Vlad used to tear the tyres from his wheelchair wheels just to make as much noise as he could.”

“Vlad?”

“The dead guy. An old Russian circus performer, so he said. Broke his back falling from the trapeze. Vicious, horrible bastard he was. Nickname.”

Cain wanted to explore his home, but something kept him motionless. He was a tree waiting to be swayed by a breeze, and the breeze was his own freedom. He had not yet fully grasped it. His father was still there in the background, a shadow standing beside him, holding him still and not for a second allowing him to bend. Pure Sight, a voice whispered, and it was not the Voice. It must have been his father muttering in his mind, come to haunt him now that there was a home to haunt.

But that was plain crazy.

He’s dead and gone, Cain thought, and behind one of the dead tree pictures he saw his own terrified reflection.

“So can I have the tour?” Cain asked.

“Absolutely! You’ll love this place Cain, believe me. I’ve never been to Afresh, but I’ve been places similar. And not to belittle it, but… well, you’ll be free here. Never alone.”

Cain frowned at that — how does he know!? — but followed Peter through the door on the right.

“Bedroom. Big, bright, great views, it even has a small balcony facing out into the back garden.”

“It’s nice,” Cain said. And then he smiled at his understatement. Nice? It was luxurious. The bed was a large double, white sheets and duvet already folded back. The iron bedstead was glossy black, setting off the cream of the walls and carpet. The sloping ceiling was dotted with a dozen inset lights. One entire wall was comprised of glass sliding doors, leading out onto a balcony with decorative wrought iron railings and potted plants softening its harsh lines. Fine net curtains were held back from the windows by metal hooks, affording a view out onto the large back garden and the houses in the next street. The sun was just striking the windows, splashing the floor and already moving in toward the bed.

“It’s fantastic,” Cain said.

Peter shrugged. “Thanks. New carpet. Vlad wore out the old one. There’s a TV in the cupboard there, remote’s on the bedside table.”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“En suite. Let me show you.”

The bathroom was small but perfect, containing a shower stall as well as a bath and lit, like the hallway, by a rooflight.

Peter took Cain back through the hall and into the living room. This was furnished with various pieces of new furniture, none of it exceptionally expensive but all tasteful and functional. The kitchen was open plan, separated from view by a flowering plant climbing a network of stainless steel wires. The units were glass-fronted, displaying a whole range of cooking and eating utensils, and one cupboard contained a welcome pack of food: tea bags, biscuits, bread, sugar, rice, pasta, some jars of sauce. A door led out to the hallway. And there were more paintings, this time stark representations of animals set against muddy brown backgrounds. Nothing detailed or intricate, just a few white brush strokes revealing enough form and shape to identify. It took Cain until the third painting to realise that they were all depictions of extinct animals.

The living space was large enough to accommodate a dining suite as well, which sat below the wide dormer window facing the street. The walls held yet more paintings, but if they were by the same artist as the others, he or she was extremely adaptable. These images were more abstract, mostly constructed of many-angled shapes interconnecting or hovering within a hair’s breadth of touching, all of them black and white.

Through the large window Cain saw the cathedral as promised, and in the distance he could make out the mountain between office blocks and chimneys. He would sit here and eat breakfast, letting the early morning sun stream in to keep his toast warm. Perhaps the window would be open, letting in birdsong from where birds would roost on the roof around him. He would be alone, but alone with his new life. At Afresh he was never really alone, but he had felt empty and useless. Here, free, he would be able to revel in his own company.

The dreams, he thought, the dreams might still be there. But he would face them. Standing in his new living room, he promised himself that he would not take a sleeping pill tonight. The Voice had given them to help, but now it was time for Cain to help himself. He had spent far too long since his father’s death relying on other people to take care of him.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. “I never expected it to be like this.”

“Well, I admit the outside is a bit of a mess,” Peter said.

“No, no, I just never thought I’d have somewhere like this. Live somewhere wonderful like this. Such a blank canvas.” Cain trailed off, aware that he sounded like a child in a toy shop.

“I’ve done a lot of work on it,” Peter said. “Vlad left it in a hell of a shape. Contentious old bastard.”

“How did he live here?”

“Sorry?”

“How did he survive? The stairs? The cupboards on the wall in the kitchen? The shower? You said he had a wheelchair.”

For a second — an instant so brief that Cain may have imagined it between blinks — Peter seemed enraged. But then he smiled that humourless smile again and shrugged.

“Well, I helped him. He paid me. Up the stairs, down the stairs. He could stand, just, when he really wanted to, and in time he may have been able to journey up on his own. But most of the time he chose to stay in the chair. He was… awkward.”

“Eaten, you say?”

Peter raised his eyebrows. “So it’s said. Strange… they never even found his wheelchair.”

Cain walked back through to his bedroom, opened the sliding doors and stood on the balcony. He glanced down into the garden, hoping to see some of the other residents down there, but it was home only to insects, birds and bees. The garden itself was somewhat wild, but weeds were kept down and paths and paved areas were well maintained. It looked like a place where he could be at peace. Sit and read. Enjoy being alive. Even at Afresh that was something he had never done.

“I like it,” he said.

Peter had followed him through and was standing at his back. “Good. I’m pleased. And I’m glad my talk of Vlad didn’t put you off. And anyway, it’s not as if he actually died here.”

Cain turned around. “It wouldn’t have bothered me if he had.”

Peter’s smile faltered, just for an instant, and Cain was pleased. You’re your own man now, the Voice had said. Time to make your mark on the world.

Peter left him the front door key and a phone number to call if there were problems. And when the landlord closed the door behind him, Cain ran from room to room, in and out, kitchen living room hallway bedroom bathroom, back again, filling the flat with himself so that it came to know him.

He opened the dormer window above the dining table and, leaning out, watched Peter cross the street. The landlord stood on the pavement for a few seconds, chatting with two children that may or may not have been the ones from earlier. And then he walked into the unkempt garden of the house named Heaven, prised the corrugated iron front door to one side and vanished within.
Cain went to the shops. There were a lot of things he needed, and he had the money that Afresh had given him to start out on his own. There was a bank account, his father’s money sitting there waiting to be claimed — he had not died a poor man — but for now, Cain did not wish to dwell on such affairs. He had a new life to find first. Then he could pick up the loose ends of his past, confront them, and end them.

He did not see anyone on his way downstairs. He passed by Flat One, wondering whether Sister Josephine was praying in there even now. He had passed Flats Two, Three and Four with no idea of who was inside, and after Peter’s allusion that every occupant was odd, Cain found the silence strangely loaded. There were peep holes in each door and he wondered who was watching him pass by, the lens distorting him into someone new. Perhaps he would knock on Heaven’s door on the way back from the shops, ask Peter the truth.

He left the house.

The front garden fell silent to mark his passing, whether in reverence or disdain Cain could not tell. Probably neither, though ignorance was worse. As he closed the gate the spiky bushes rustled, the bees began to hum, and he was back in Endless Crescent again. The vandalised sign now read wrong; he was not Nowhere. For the first time in his life, he was somewhere he truly wanted to be.
He bought a bottle of wine, an Indian takeaway meal, and a packet of fruit jellies. He planned an evening of indulgence to mark the start of his new life. He felt that was more positive than celebrating the end of the past.

The past…

Cain’s father had never been good to him, though perhaps he was too mad to be truly bad. He had seen Cain as a project, his own subject for experimentation. Cain had tried his best to block those many terrible memories, and they had receded into his dreams, driven underground by his efforts at Afresh. The physical evidence of his past — the impossibility of what had happened to him — was locked away in the chest. He would never open it again, but he knew that he could never lose it completely. Having independence was another step toward creating a whole new life for himself.

Still, those dreams.

Walking back from the shops, Cain took time to really assess the neighbourhood. The buildings were a surprising mix of styles and periods, ranging from Victorian town houses — much like the one housing his new flat — to brand new modern executive homes; five bedrooms, large gardens and four-wheel-drives in the double garage. There were clutches of council houses mixed in with unique self-built homes. A terraced street backed onto a court of luxury apartments. It gave the whole area a surreal atmosphere, as if it had never known itself, nor what it wanted to be. A young businessman in a sharp suit walked along the pavement, talking into a hands-free telephone wrapped onto his ear. Cain nodded but the suit was too busy to reciprocate. Minutes later a gang of youths approached and asked if he had a light. Cain shook his head, unnerved, and they drifted off with a polite, “Thanks mate.” Halfway home he decided to sit and watch people pass by. He used to enjoy doing this at Afresh, but there the strollers were mostly mad.

He found himself outside a small park — little more than a fenced-in area of grass and shrubs, and some tattered play equipment — and sat on a bench dedicated to ‘Dear Jack’. The takeaway meal was going cold but he had a microwave, and besides, the air this afternoon smelled so much fresher knowing he did not have to return to Afresh that evening. No more day passes, no more weekly evaluations, no more prodding and poking, no more trial journeys, no more mornings with the Face smiling down as he woke up, no more evenings with the Voice asking how he was, where had he been, who had he seen. His time spent at Afresh since his father’s death — years, though he had lost track of just how many — was a good time in his memory. He had been treated well and, for the first time in his life, allowed to join in with the community. Interaction was good, they were always told. Whether he had actually wanted to join in, he was still not sure.

The street where he sat was quiet, salubrious, well kept. The few houses facing the park were all slightly different, extended and renovated versions of the same original plan. The cars in their driveways were new, high performance models. His father’s house had been a little larger than any of these, isolated out in the country. That’s where they had found Cain.

A man went by walking his dog. Cain smiled, the man averted his eyes and hurried on, tugging the dog on its leash so that its nails skittered across the pavement. Cain opened his fruit jellies and started eating. He had developed a liking for them at Afresh, and they were still the only sweet he remembered ever having tried.

A woman approached, searching through her handbag, muttering to herself and cursing, quietly at first and then louder. A few steps away from Cain she dropped her bag. Its contents spewed across the pavement; lipsticks rolled, tissues fluttered, notebooks and pens and purse collided and stuttered into the gutter. A mobile phone span on its end and then hit the ground with a crack.

“Fuck!” The woman squatted and began gathering her belongings. She did not appear to be aware of Cain’s presence.

“Need some help?” he asked.

“Shit!” She jerked upright and almost fell over backwards, eyes wide and startled, and her thoughts were a stew of nasty, vile images, ideas that should have driven Cain away, but they were seen and experienced by another part of him.

“Get away from me!” she said.

“I was only offering to help.” He went to kneel down, reaching out for a lipstick that had rolled his way.

“I said get away! I don’t need any help, not from you!” The woman hurriedly gathered her things and shoved them in her bag, pocketing the phone after a cursory glance at its cracked face.

“Really, I’m only trying to help.” Cain felt stupidly ashamed, as if this woman’s reaction were his fault, not her own. The need to explain himself was annoying, but he did not want her thinking bad of him. Not that vileness, that pure viciousness which scored her eyes from the inside out, unpleasant in the extreme.

She stood and stared at Cain for a moment, and he was sure that she was about to apologise, offer tales of missed meetings and lost phone numbers, an empty apology that may at least make him feel a little better. But her face did not change. A big car cruised by, adding a roar to her voice.

“Keep… the fuck… away from me!” She hurried away the way she had come, not glancing around once. Cain watched her go, and it was like saying goodbye to a bad smell. His mind cleared, the taint of her thoughts — expressed through her eyes, her voice, her stance surely, how else, how else could he know? — burned away by the afternoon sun.

“Well, someone needs to work on her manners,” he muttered. A bird landed on the railing behind him and sang its agreement. Cain turned slowly, careful not to scare it away, and he listened to its song, watching its chest vibrate with each warble until it flew into the park.
Back at the house, the other residents still kept themselves to themselves. Cain stood in the downstairs lobby for a while, listening, hoping that one of them would emerge from a flat or come home from work and meet him. He wanted them to accept him, to know that he was living here now, a part of the house’s small community. He still felt strangely unwelcome, as if the house would reject him at any moment. Perhaps it was the silence — he hated silence — and the crazy idea that seconds before he had entered the front door there had been TVs blaring, laughter, doors slamming as people moved from one flat to another, mixing and mingling and being involved in each other’s lives. And yet he also remembered a story he had read once, in which everyone in a block of flats was so reclusive that they ignored a brutal murder in their own courtyard. For them, everything was somebody else’s problem.

The lobby was still. If this was the heart of the house, his entering had caused it to miss a beat.

He started upstairs, and halfway to the first floor landing he paused as something annoyed his ear. Shaking his head, scratching with his finger, swallowing hard, none of these cleared the sensation. It was as if a fly had flown in and was hovering against his eardrum. He moved on, and two stairs later realised that he was hearing music.

Cain paused. The sound came from so far away that it must surely be outside the house, beyond the street, aimless. He held his breath, expecting the music to recede as a car moved away, but it was still there. He moved up to the landing, stood outside Flat Four and knew that the music was coming from inside. He could almost see the timber in the door shimmering and shifting as it transmitted the sound, becoming fluid under such relaxing notes. It was pan pipe music, the type the Face would play at Afresh to calm someone gone wild. The music of the elements; soulful, soothing, evocative. There was no particular tune, no identifiable melody, but it held an allure that bade Cain stay and listen. He remained on the landing with his Indian meal cooling in the bag, bottle of wine in his other hand, dusky sun shining through the landing window and lighting dust motes dancing to the music. The pipes continued. Cain began to think about energy and how it formed, the subtle vibration of the universe all around him, how matter did not matter, and that was not his way of thinking at all.

The music stopped. He shook his head again, this time trying to recapture the tickling against his eardrums. There was a thump from inside Flat Four — a door slamming, perhaps — and then total silence once more.

Cain walked up to his flat, glancing at the scored door next to his before entering. That was a heavy door, and those were deep scratches. He would ask Peter about them tomorrow. There was much that Peter had yet to reveal. But time was on Cain’s side — time was his, now — and with freedom the likes of which he had never known beckoning, there was no reason to rush things at all.
Occasionally when Cain knew things he should not, he tried to attribute it to nothing more than observation. Anything else was too frightening. He had read a lot since his father’s death, fiction and non-fiction, and sometimes he could close his eyes and read people like an open book.

They saw them in the distance, loping along the beach, crawling through the sand, ducking and diving in the air, leaping from the sea where waves dashed whitely against the shore. The curved bay was wide, the approaching shadows at least a mile distant, and this far out the threat could only exist in the minds of the observers. But after all they had been through they were attuned to dangers, both apparent and potential. They had come to expect the worst.

“We haven’t seen any walking dead since you got here,” Janine said, looking accusingly at Jack and his father. “But no walking living, either…” She trailed off with the same note of subdued panic that Jack had come to recognise amongst the adults. Nothing they could do, no one they could turn to, no one in charge.

“This looks different,” Oscar said. He was a tall man, middle-aged, physically and mentally strong, and he’d quickly become the leader of their group. They stood on the slanting deck of the beached ferry and Oscar was the calmest. He hadn’t lost anyone, he told them, because he’d had no one to lose.

“I can hear them,” Jack said. The sea hushed onto the beach, a sound he had already become so used to that it became background. But now between each surge there was something else, a distant whisper like a storm approaching in the night. He held his breath and closed his eyes, trying to make it out.

“I can’t hear a thing,” a man said. Jack thought his name was Steve, although he rarely spoke.

“Whatever it is, I think we should get inside,” Oscar said. “Lock all the doors and windows. Batten down like we’ve discussed.”

“But I thought it was all over,” Janine said. “I thought it was just a case of waiting!”

Jack took a final look across the bay at the advancing threat. In the night, lit only by moonlight, it looked like waves of shadow twisting and flipping towards them, one end splashing in the sea and breaking its natural rhythm, the top edge grasping at the sky and blocking out the stars. There was a definite sound now. Splashes, a rhythmic flapping at the air, the dull impacts of feet on sand, running. And behind it all, something else. Jack strained, hoping for voices. He heard growls and grunts instead.

“Its them,” he whispered, grasping his dad’s hand, needing to feel safe. Safe was somewhere he had known once, safe with his family, but with half of them gone the word had lost meaning. Safe was a fantasy place now, like Narnia or Never-Never Land or Middle Earth.

“It might not be,” his dad said, still so full of doubt and dread.

“Inside!” Oscar hissed. Nobody argued.

There were noises now, strange cries in the night. Jack listened as he hurried along in front of his father. Sometimes, beneath those screams, he could hear voices.

The ten people filed across the uneven deck and through the open door. Oscar slammed it behind them, shutting out the hush of the sea and the violence in the noise slowly drowning it.

“We need to lock as many doors and windows as we can,” he said. “Then we’ll meet in the bar and shut it up. We’ve got the guns. We’ve got the gas canisters. If it is them, we can hold them off-”

“It isn’t,” Jack said. He was panting with fear, sweat tickled his sides and his father’s hand squeezed his shoulder. “Not them, not the walking dead. Something different.” He closed his eyes and wished he could scream. The dark behind his eyelids bulged and swam with threat, and his spine seemed to stretch with an awful promise of pain. “Something worse,” he said. And then they heard the first of the long, dreadful screams from outside.

“What the fuck was that?” Nathan said. He was a young lad, little more than sixteen, but to Jack he seemed all grown up. He smoked and swore, and swore he’d screwed Janine.

“Doors!” Oscar said, trying to control the panic that buzzed around them. “And windows!”

“Come on,” Jack’s dad said. He held onto Jack’s arm as he moved away. “We’ll close up this way. Meet you all in the bar.”

“I think we may have three or four minutes,” Oscar said, and then another scream came, closer, higher, already victorious. He looked at them all where they stood silent and cold, and whispered: “Let’s hurry.”

Jack and his dad dashed away and turned the first corner in the wide corridor, checking windows, slamming and locking them where necessary.

“How do you know they’re not the walking dead?” his dad said as they hurried from window to window.
Jack checked a catch and moved on to the next one. “Just do. It’s … obvious.”

“To you.”

He nodded. “Yeah, to me.”

His father had reached a door that hung half-open. He pulled it shut and twisted the catches at the head and foot, kicking it once to make sure it was secure. “Your mum always said you had a touch of your grandmother’s insight.”

“It’s nothing like that!” Jack said, surprised at the anger in his voice. The last thing he would do, could ever do, was to hurt his dad. Even disagreeing with him felt bad since his mother and sister had died. But this … Jack was scared. He felt things, knew things he didn’t want to know, and he had no idea how.

His dad looked at him and smiled in the weak light. “Down to the next floor. Then the bar.”

“Will we hold them off in there?” Jack asked. When he’d closed his eyes earlier he’d sensed something out there, a raw power born of desperation and hunger. He wondered how determined something would have to be to get in. As he glanced at the door his father had just bolted, the thin metal handles of the locking plates, Jack thought of those fluid shadows they had seen rolling along the beach.

Another cry from outside, as if in answer to Jack’s thought. It was a scream in the dead of night, too loud and powerful to belong here. Jack shivered, coolness flooded his spine and for a brief, awful moment he thought he was going to piss himself.

“How far away-?” his dad said quietly, but when the thing struck the metal bulkhead outside, they knew.

“Dad!”

“Keep still!” Something solid scraped across metal, screeching in places, scoring, testing. They heard a snort or a heavy breath. Then, nearer and louder than ever, another screech.

Something began smashing against one of the small windows they had just locked.

They heard shouts back along the corridor – Oscar or one of the others. Jack couldn’t tell what they were saying, if anything at all.

“The bar!” his dad said. “Quick!”

The window obscured and the next impact drove something through — something long and ridged, solid as stone, fresh scrapes along its length a muddy golden colour.

“A beak…” Jack said. And then his father picked him up and ran.

“Thousands of them!” Bill said. “There’re thousands of them dead out there!”

Smith stood against the mud wall of the trench, rifle resting across the backs of two empty ammunition boxes. Its barrel was still hot. “Five thousand,” he said. “Maybe even ten.”

The nearest dead Hun lay only a stone’s throw from their forward trench — seemingly untouched, Smith noticed, as if he had simply laid down and gone to sleep — and stretching back from this corpse was a sea of grey, a frozen ocean tableau where the highest waves were made of piled corpses, and the troughs were where old craters held the dead in their watery embrace. There was little movement; an eddy here and there where a limb twitched, a head raised, a hand clasped at the air for help. A strange silence lay over the whole shattered landscape. The German artillery was still, and even the rain had ceased.

Smith hauled himself up the side of the trench and stood at its lip, walking forward a few paces, stepping over a rotten body from a battle weeks before. He could not tell whether it was British or German.

“Delamare, back here you bloody fool!” Bill hissed.

Smith took no notice. He was looking at the sea of dead, aware suddenly of what he could not see. There was mud and water and the pale faces of the dead, hair adrift in puddles and limbs askew and lost rifles smoking their last … but there was no blood.

No blood, anywhere.

He was used to the smell of it by now. The taste of blood misted the air after an artillery barrage, it had dried on his face and neck after one vicious hand-to-hand fight in a German trench just the week before, and with this many dead men before him he expected to be gagging. But the blood of these Germans remained just where it belonged: inside them. Stopped now, stagnant, already clotting and giving itself to rot.

Smith turned and looked back across his own lines. The pale faces of his mates stared at him from in their trench, and further back more trenches crissed and crossed, mud banks here and there like boils on the earth, a skeleton of trench supports pointing at the sky to his left where a shell had erupted within. He saw bodies — hundreds had died over the past couple of days, and there was never enough time or opportunity to bury them properly — but there was no hint of whatever had come to help them. No footprints, no disturbances in the smoke drifting slowly from left to right across the battlefield, no shadows disappearing back towards the rear. Only silence, and stench, and the mangled evidence of futility.

“There’s no way I saw what I just saw,” someone said from further along the trenches. It sounded like he was crying. “No bleedin’ way at all.”

“I saw nothing,” another voice piped up, but its owner stared out at the sea of dead and repeated, “No way,” sounding as if he were arguing with himself.

“Angels,” Bill said. “I saw angels.”

Smith walked forward until he drew level with the first dead German. He looked barely old enough to bear arms. His helmet was lost somewhere in the mud, his rifle lay inches from his outstretched hand, and his eyes… they were wide, deep, amazed. Smith knelt down and touched the dead boy’s neck, just in case. Nothing. He was still warm, but as dead as the million other men melting back into this hungry earth. His uniform was muddied and wet, but it showed no signs of damage, no point of impact. There was no blood. The boy’s face … those eyes…

Smith heaved the corpse over. The muck relented unwillingly, and the sucking sound startled Smith so much that he stumbled over his own heels, fell into the mud. His hands sank down and touched old, hard things below the surface.

How old? he wondered. Days, weeks or ancient? Too old to know of machine-guns and gas, perhaps?

“What’s up, Delamare?” someone shouted from the trench behind him, but Smith did not answer, and the men had enough of their own disbelief and fear to contend with to pursue the matter.

He ran his hands across the dead German boy, lifting his leg, pulling apart the lapels of his greatcoat, tipping his head back to that he could see his neck. In the end, Smith stood and gazed out across the field of dead.

Only a few minutes earlier, he had seen the sky darken with cloud after cloud of singing arrows. He’d heard the hiss of longbow strings as the shafts were released. And now that the battle was over, and the dead could not come back to tell their story, there were no arrows to be seen.

None at all.

The only proof of what Smith had witnessed was ten thousand dead men.

A clock struck one o’clock somewhere unseen, and he realised suddenly that he had somewhere else to be.

He walked around the shaded park twice before he saw the sign for Ashley Street. It was a lane rather than a street, and an alley more than a lane, home to a few squat fast-food shops, a couple of porn palaces and a chop shop that stank of blood and desperation. A couple of its regular clients hung around outside, bad advertising if ever Tom had seen it: the woman had no nose or eyelids, but bled profusely out of open veins above her eye sockets; the man displayed his mutilated genitalia, balls the size of footballs and a dick like a joint of uncooked pork.

“Need something doing?” the man asked.

“Leave him, he’s a fake,” the woman said, dismissing Tom with a bloody glare.

“Doesn’t look like one.”

Tom walked by, feeling their pained eyes on his back. They were wondering what he had, he knew. Secretly craving a look beneath his skin and flesh. Well … they’d be surprised. In a way he too was chopped. The Baker had seen to that.

He passed Hell’s Bookshop and found the alley Honey had mentioned. Its walls were so close together that Tom’s arms brushed them as he made his way along, stepping over a vagrant who may have been dead. Before him — the shadow at the end of the alley, a great wall of black concrete pointing at the pink sun — stood the whorehouse.

Tom was amazed to find the back door open. It wasn’t as if such a salubrious establishment needed a rear entrance for shady patrons.

As he opened the door and a flush of smells came out at him — the tang of sex, old greasy cooking, smoke, drugs, the sparkle of ozone from an illegal charger somewhere — he realised that he had not yet seen Hot Chocolate Bob.

Not out on the street, working his patch.

Not down in the dead park watching the incredible puppeteer.

Which meant, very likely, that he was inside.

Tom closed the door behind him, but he made sure he knew where the handle was.

He thought he could remember where to find Honey’s room. It was on the third floor, facing out onto the street. He hurried along the dark corridor, stepping on things that cracked or snapped and, in one case, squealed. He tried not to look down because he didn’t want to see, didn’t want anything to mar this moment, this occasion when he would do the most valiant thing of his life: rescue his love from the purgatory she had been created for, and which she endured still. Why she endured it he did not know. It was something he may ask her … one day.

He reached the stairs and quickly moved up towards the third floor. At each landing he sensed doors opening around him; just a crack, wide enough for the inhabitants to see out. A couple of times he heard a relieved sigh when they saw him walk past.

There were many sounds permeating the air, turning the dank stairwell into an echo-chamber for the whole building. A blasting television here, a whining drill there, the screams of a child from far along one refuse-strewn corridor, the grunting of sex, a soft mumble somewhere else, as if someone was trying to talk themselves out of this hellhole. And smells as well, even worse than those that had hit him upon opening the door. Shit, piss, cabbage, saliva, rotten food, death, spunk, cordite, smoke, drugs … very little good, hardly any sweet. Neither belonged here.

Honey was both, and her time in this place was now numbered in minutes.

Tom had found her door. He ran up the last flight of steps and stood before it, surprised at how nervous he felt, how terrified that she’d only mock him when he opened the door. She’d be sitting there with her legs open and her hand held out, ready to scan his card and take her ten measly percent.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. No. She’s better than that. She meant it. No.”

Someone pushed him from behind. He spun around to look into the wizened face of an old man, tall and angular where he had been chopped in an attempt to avert aging. “Yes,” the old man said. “Yes. Don’t torture yourself son, do it. She’s sweeeetttttttt!” His voice rose into a bird-like cackle. Tom leaned back against the door as the old man stumbled away along the corridor, laughing to himself and shrilling “Sweeetttt, sweeettttt!”

The door opened behind him and Tom stumbled into the room.

“Tom! You came!” And there was so much relief and joy in Honey’s voice that Tom knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the love was not his and his alone.

Here was hope. Here was trust. Here was the rest of his life.

Honey had caught him in her arms and he twisted around to kiss her.

“No time for that!” Honey said, kicking the door shut. “I thought you’d be here half an hour ago. Hot Chocolate Bob will be back anytime, he knew I wasn’t going out, he’ll be here to have me. We have to go. We have to go now!”

“Come on then!” Tom said. Honey had a rucksack over her shoulder, and today she wore no make-up. He didn’t know how he could ever have forgotten her face. He saw her for what she really was and loved her more. Years of abuse with her face pressed into pillows and against walls had given her skin a pale sheen, but he had enough money to sort that out. He’d give her new skin. He’d give her anything.

“You’re going to have to do something for me, Tom,” Honey said. “It’s the only way we’ll get out.” She swung the backpack his way and quickly stripped.

Tom went cold.

“You want me to… ”

“If anyone sees me out of this room with you — anyone — they’ll tell Bob. He’ll be on us in seconds, and… I’ve seen him kill before, Tom. He wouldn’t hesitate today.”

“But it’s so dangerous.”

“I know. Tom… let me down. Turn me off, let me down and get me out of here.”

Tom knew that this was a drastic step. Reinvigorating Honey would take hours, and he’d heard that half of the plastic artificials this was done to never came back. They weren’t designed for this. It was like killing a human in the hope that they could be resuscitated.

She put her fingers into a fold beneath her left breast. Tom saw the muscles on her wrist tense. “I’ll do it myself if you don’t. But I want you to do it.”

Honey removed her hand. Tom reached out and slipped his fingers inside the fleshy slit, felt her Christ valve — so named for its artificial powers of death and resurrection — and twisted it sharply to the right.

Honey gasped and slumped into Tom’s arms. “I won’t watch,” he said. He closed his eyes and felt her wrinkling lips pass across his mouth, heard a hissing exhalation of love as her weight lessened. Folds of flesh hung over his arms, a warm rush ran down his legs as she voided herself, steam rose around him and stung his nostrils as he breathed in sharply …

And it was over so quickly.

He tried not to see Honey’s flattened, lifeless face as he rolled her up and stuffed her and her clothes into the rucksack.