THE LIGHT-FATHER
Smashwords Edition
© Paul D.E. Mitchell
Published by: Paul D.E. Mitchell
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Chapter 01: Light
“The willing, Destiny guides them; the unwilling, Destiny drags them.” – Seneca
“But this is impossible!” Professor Harriet Ramos exclaimed in disbelief. “This defies conventional physics!”
Harold Norman Porter, the most experienced maintenance technician in the university, shrugged. “What can I say?” he said, patting the front of the wrecked vending-machine with a calloused hand. “The evidence is right here. Don’t worry, you won’t be the first to shake your head and walk away.”
“No, Mister Porter,” she assured him curtly. “I would not walk away from something as exciting as this! I just wish I’d known about it sooner, that’s all. Why was this kept quiet?”
“Don’t blame me,” he said defensively, reaching into his oil-stained overalls to scratch at an itch. “It happened five years ago – well before you arrived to start work on the Cynet project with Doctor Smith. The university hushed it up - they didn’t want the funders to find out that he’d been dabbling in the paranormal! The university would’ve been a laughing stock so they forced him to sign a gagging clause and work on the Cynet project.”
“Well, he is a genius in neurochemistry and computing,” she pointed out. “His research into dream states was invaluable in developing our new neural interface biochips but….”
“But how could his dream research possibly destroy a lab?” he smiled. “Oh, he got asked that a lot! In the end, the Chancellor issued a statement saying there’d been a gas explosion and told his students to keep their mouths shut or kiss their degrees goodbye. If it wasn’t for Cynet, he would be out of a job right now.”
“I can’t believe what happened was his fault!”
“They tried to blame the maintenance department!” he said angrily. “But the walls, doors and ceiling were warped, equipment and desks were twisted into weird shapes and that vending machine vanished from the rest room next to the lab then reappeared thirty metres away buried into a wall! Some of the students reckoned it was shoved into a higher dimension for a second!”
She looked up in irritation as he went to the back of the machine - with his overall pockets stuffed with devices of every size and description and a large utility belt hung around his ample waist, he clattered as he walked. “He tried to explain what happened,” she admitted grudgingly. “I told him I needed some solid proof so he sent me to see you. See this melted brick? Immense heat must have been generated when the brick-work fused with the casing.”
“They’re not melted or fused together, Professor. This machine was superimposed onto the brickwork. I’m no physicist but I think those students were on the mark - it took me and two building maintenance workers a whole day to hack it out after we discovered that we couldn’t separate the brick from the metal.”
She knelt down to inspect a small plaque at the front of the base on which the vending machine was now mounted. She read aloud the inscription: “Fusion 12 - First Prize. Surrealist Sculpture. Arts Council of Wales. Really, Mister Porter!” she chided gently.
“I prefer Harold,” he replied unabashed. “We were told to rebuild the wall, hide this thing in here and keep quiet. Recently, I realised its artistic potential and unearthed it.” He paused to help her back to her feet. “I took some samples where the metal superimposes onto the brickwork but the guys in the chemistry labs told me that the results didn’t make any sense. They said that the samples were contaminated and highly radioactive.”
“Radioactively contaminated? Are you serious?”
“It’s not dangerous now!” he qualified quickly. “I didn’t put anybody at risk when I entered it into the competition!” He swept an arm expansively at the rear of the workshop - nestling amongst all the heating units and other machines being serviced were dozens of similar ‘contemporary sculptures’ of varying sizes. “These would have all been thrown out for scrap,” he declared proudly. “So I’m recycling them and getting commissions!”
“Ah, Harriet! They said you would be here,” Professor Charles Henderson said, making them both jump - his approach had been masked by the drone of the huge air-conditioning units at the far end of the cavernous workshop.
Harold detested the immaculately-dressed faculty director and the loathing was mutual but Henderson couldn’t sack him as his technical skills were second to none. Every successful experiment in the university owed that success to him and him alone but the director still tried to catch him out when he could. “Ah, Charles,” he said sarcastically. “What can I do for you? I’m off duty right now but I would be delighted to change a light bulb for you.”
“We are not on first name terms,” Henderson snapped. “Kindly address me as Director or Professor. Both are acceptable.”
In the awkward silence that followed, Ramos picked self-consciously at the buttons of her plain blouse until Harold felt like shaking her for allowing Henderson to intimidate her.
Henderson sighed and shook his head disapprovingly. “So this prize-winning ‘sculpture’ of yours is actually Doctor Smith’s infamous vending machine, is it? Hmm, one can see why this and all his other indiscretions were hushed up.”
Interpreting the raised eyebrow correctly, Harold went to the bank of dimmer switches and raised the lighting level. Henderson found the damaged machine intriguing and dabbed absently at beads of sweat on his brow with a handkerchief - the roller doors of the workshop delivery bay were wide open but it was stiflingly hot inside and made warmer still by the air-conditioning units.
Harold seated himself on a wooden stool to watch the two mystified scientists and was glad he’d stayed on after work to tease at a few more ‘sculptures’. He unearthed a bottle of whisky from the drawer of a nearby workbench and poured himself a small glass while his two visitors continued to poke and prod at the machine, pausing now and then to discuss some minor detail.
The front of the vending machine appeared normal but behind the wall intrusion, chunks of metal were missing from the back yet there were no scorch or tool marks - the metal had been cut cleanly without any distortion. He savoured the puzzled look on their faces as they probed at the bricks and plaster inside the machine. “Here, Professor Ramos, I’ll show you the current radiation levels,” he offered, grabbing a Geiger counter and two printed sheets from the workbench. He handed the sheets to her then he ran the detector over the exterior of the machine concentrating on the areas where the metal ran seamlessly into the brickwork.
“See here?” he said, showing the startled academics the meter readings. “It’s still three times above normal background radiation and those sheets there are the sample analyses from five years ago - look at the levels back then! I can tell you, Director, we were not happy to learn that we’d been exposed to gamma rays! We had to have a lot of health checks. It was all done on the QT with gagging clauses and two years pay as a bribe so like idiots we signed up to it - we won’t get a penny in compensation if we get cancer! So what do you think of those analyses, Professor Ramos?”
“No wonder the lab techs were confused!” she exclaimed. “Your samples were mainly silicon, oxygen, iron, aluminium and traces of every single element and isotope known to science! Some of these isotopes, Mister Porter, do not occur naturally.”
Harold smiled at her and lounged against the bench after pouring himself yet another measure. “Don’t you get it, Professor?” he said, pointing at the machine. “I told you the damn thing was superimposed onto the brickwork - right down to the quantum level! That’s what’s created all those rare isotopes! Like I said,” he continued indignantly after a mouthful of whisky. “We parked it a corner and piled lead sheets against it until the radiation tailed off. Doctor Smith tried to explain to the Board that he’d discovered something truly unique but they just shut him down.”
“I’m not surprised,” Henderson said dismissively. “I wasn’t a director then but I would’ve done the same to any faculty member who told me that a poltergeist had wrecked his lab!”
“Did you witness anything yourself, Mister Porter?” Ramos asked. “Anything, um, out of the ordinary?”
Harold shifted uncomfortably under her direct and inquiring gaze – her large hazel eyes and lustrous black tresses tinged with copper were weakening his resolve to never trust a woman again. “I was divorced soon after my baby daughter, Naomi, died six years ago,” he explained, swirling the whisky in his glass. “My wife got the house and as my flat was so grim, I started hanging around the campus after work. I virtually live in this damned workshop now. Anyway, five years ago I was on the way back to my flat after a drink at the student bar and I was taking my usual short-cut along the science-block corridor when that materialised.”
“What do you mean by materialised?” Henderson demanded.
“I mean it appeared out of nowhere!” Harold said irritably. “One second the corridor was empty and the next it was embedded into the wall sending glowing sparks flying everywhere. I can’t describe the sound but imagine a chainsaw with fingernails scratching at a blackboard nailed to your teeth – well, that doesn’t even get close! I thought I was going to have a freaking heart attack.”
“So what cut into the back of the machine?” Ramos prompted.
“Well, I opened a window and I saw that it was buried through the wall alright,” Harold shuddered and stared blankly ahead. “As I watched, these sparks and arcs of light appeared and whenever one of them touched any of the metal, it simply vanished. I’m a big science fiction fan so I was more curious than scared at that point - then they came,” he added grimly.
Ramos repressed an urge to scream in frustration as the distracted technician brought himself around with another stiff drink - and then another. He had to force himself to continue.
“There was this kind of… pressure,” he said slowly. “Then something appeared in the corridor. It was a floating sphere made of white metal that emitted this blinding light – like a massive arc-welding spark with black shadows swirling around it.”
“Was it similar to the phenomena that cut into rear of the machine, do you think?” Henderson said impatiently.
“No. No. No!” Harold insisted. “Imagine that arc light, okay? Floating in front of your face! Got that image? Now, imagine it staring at you! Why do you think I drink so much?”
“I just wish you’d do it off the premises,” Henderson said.
“I provide a hell of a lot of free security in the evenings,” Harold retorted. “So they tolerate me and my little hobbies. They…”
“Doctor Smith told me he saw shapes and ‘eyes’ in his lab that night,” Ramos interrupted impatiently. “He said they all witnessed a shadowy paranormal presence. Is that what you saw?”
“No. What I saw was some kind of device that scared me so much that I couldn’t move a muscle. It was definitely alive….”
“Are you okay?” Ramos asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Harold shuddered and took another drink. “Ugh! Sorry about that but the light it created was like a window into Hell itself. I could see all these dead faces in there - I saw Mam, Dad, even Naomi condemning me to eternal damnation. How can you explain something like that? I don’t have the words; I don’t think anyone has but I’ll let you into a secret, though: it spoke to me.”
“What did it say?” Henderson demanded, deeply concerned at the technician’s rapid breathing and unhealthy colour.
“I could feel it messing about up here,” Harold choked, tapping an index finger to a temple. “I could feel its hate like acid inside my brain. It told me it was going to ‘purge the world of deviation’ - whatever the hell that means! I got a load of other stuff too - weird computer sounds mixed with a music that sounded like whales being tortured until I thought it would blow the top of my head off. It came at me but a few inches from my face, it vanished in this blue-white flash. I could move again but I knew I had to go… to go and clean myself up… um, you know...”
He was so visibly distraught that Ramos pulled up a stool and sat by him, placing a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Look, Mister Porter… Harold,” she reassured him. “I happen to believe that Doctor Smith has stumbled onto something important. He’s convinced that what happened that night was connected to an unusual test subject who was asleep in the lab.”
“When I found out that Doctor Smith has gone chasing after this test subject, I was less than impressed,” Henderson said pointedly. “But his files, witnesses and that vending machine do point to a potentially exciting line of research. He has documented a man capable of powerful displays of telekinesis who claims to fight demons and visit alternate realities in his dreams! It’s a pity that our predecessors were not as open-minded as we are.”
Harold’s face brightened as he looked from one professor to the other. “God, it’s a relief to be taken seriously for once!” he said gratefully. He rose a little unsteadily from his stool. “I didn’t know who to feel sorrier for: Doctor Smith or myself. Anyway, I’ve told you all I know, so if you don’t mind, I want to close up here and grab a few beers at the bar before going back to the flat. If you want to see me again you know where to find me.”
He escorted them to the delivery bay and pressed the button to close the roller door which rattled down with protesting clanks and squeals. As they turned away, he stopped the door descending. “Hey!” he called. “Do you two believe in God?”
Henderson was a little offended as he crouched down to talk to Harold through the remaining gap. “No, Mister Porter, we are both atheists. Well, Professor Ramos here is technically Catholic and my parents are Baptists,” he explained patiently. “What’s your point in asking us about our faith?”
“You see, I managed to ask a question before that sphere vanished,” Harold said quickly, desperate to get it off his chest. “I asked it if it was Old Nick - you know, the Devil.”
Henderson’s eyes widened imperceptibly and although he kept his face calm, he couldn’t prevent his heart skipping a beat. “Well, what was the answer?” he said carefully.
“Well, the shadow around the light ‘spoke’ to me next. Not in words as such like the sphere but I knew it had come to tell me that I apparently have this ‘fulcrum of destiny’ that it could not allow me to fulfil – whatever that is. It told me that there was no God, no Devil, no Allah, no Buddha, no good, no evil, only sentience which it regards as some kind of insignificant disease to be exterminated. I can’t get that shadow or the hell-light out of my nightmares.”
“Possibly that was the poltergeist they observed in the lab,” Ramos suggested helpfully. “It fits the description.”
“Whatever it was, Professor, it was out of the ordinary alright!” he sighed wearily. “I now have two demons in my head for the price of one. I hope Doctor Smith gets to the bottom of it and finds out how his test subject caused all this because I would really, really like to get to sleep without having to get drunk first.”
He stood up and pressed the button to close the roller door in the face of the bemused, still half-crouching Henderson.
~~~~~
Ten minutes later, he was switching off and then double-checking the bench plugs - an obsessive habit he’d struggled with all his working life. “Why the hell did I tell them about all that for?” he berated himself. “Henderson wants to get rid of me and now I’ve given him plenty of ammunition to take to the Board. Pah! He’s such a vindictive and pompous ass!”
However, there was no denying the immense sense of relief he felt at having got that ‘light and shadow’ demon business off his chest to someone like Professor Ramos. He smiled to himself and removed his red baseball cap to mop at his forehead with a large red handkerchief. The stifling heat was building up a real thirst and he fancied a cold beer to celebrate - perhaps several…
He grimaced as he pulled the last plug from its socket because the casing was unexpectedly hot. “Shit!” he cursed aloud, dropping the plug onto the bench and fanning his fingers to cool them off. “I’d better check that circuit in the morning!”
He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as the plug and flex attached to the small lab spectrometer in front of him began to slither slowly towards the socket like a snake. He looked up as his shadow loomed on the far wall and whirled around in time to see the familiar sphere of white arc-light, surrounded by writhing black coils, erupt from the rear of the vending machine.
Light and darkness engulfed him, blinded him and filled his mind with the sound of a billion voices screaming in torment. As he was dragged towards the vending machine, Harold Norman Porter realised he was no longer insignificant: he was no longer anything.
Chapter 02: Mother Moss
“The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the
universe. One moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next
we see in them the reflection of the divine image.” - Charles W. Chesnutt
A warm but incessant rain pricked at the back of his neck as consciousness slowly returned and he realised he was not in bed but lying face down on wet tarmac with his tools and utility belt digging painfully into his chest and stomach. Worse still was the lancing pain ricocheting from temple to temple. “Damn it!” he gasped, clutching at his head. “Some bastard must’ve mugged me as I left the workshop. Help!” he cried out. “Someone help me!”
There was no reply - in fact, there was no sound at all not even the sound of distant city traffic so he forced open his eyes. ‘Wait,’ he thought. ‘I can still taste the whisky in my mouth! I’m outside in the rain but I’m not soaked through so I can’t have been out for long… so why is it now the middle of the day?’
He forced himself up onto his knees and in small pools of water around him, diamond-bright sparks of light were glittering and fading. He lifted his red baseball cap and probed gingerly at his skull but it felt intact and he could feel no bruises to his body. His wallet was still in one of the enormous pockets of his overalls and the tool-belt was still strapped to his waist so that definitely ruled out the mugging theory.
He sniffed at the air which was unusually fresh and free from the fumes and odours of the city. He stood up slowly and tried to get his bearings despite powerful waves of nausea. “I’m not on the campus but I can’t be out in the country,” he declared aloud. “So where on God’s sweet Earth am I? Hey! Is anybody there?” he yelled then he realised that the words coming out of his mouth didn’t sound right! As he focused on the words the pain in his temples became excruciating and a trickle of blood flowed from his nose. ‘What the hell’s wrong with me?’ he thought, wiping his nose and staring at the blood on his hand. ‘Am I having a stroke?’
He stared up at the featureless overcast sky above him, the light rain pattering upon his upturned face – it was murky but it was definitely daylight! His vision slowly cleared and he could see he was in a vast rail-yard dotted with the corroding hulks of steam trains, rotting sheds and neglected office buildings. The yard was surrounded by a huge black fence and in front of him there were three mouldering railway wagons parked on the middle of five parallel sidings that all ran to buffers by the great open yard gates. They’d obviously been there for some time as only a few gaudy flecks of colour peeked through the rust, mildew and ivy.
The extensive car park to his right was filled with cars and vans of unfamiliar designs and despite the moss, mildew and the climbing plants creeping across the bodywork, they looked as though they were merely waiting for the railway staff to drive them home. “What’s going on?” he muttered, rubbing at his eyes. “Where the hell am I? There’s nothing like this in Wales!”
Scattered in a huge circle about him there were blackened fragments of metal and rubble from the vending-machine and other twisted pieces of wood and metal from his workshop including one neatly-sliced half of a spectrometer. Steam still rose from the larger pieces. “Oh, yeah, I remember now,” he said aloud. “I was in the workshop when that plug started moving by itself then there was that light… and now I’m in the middle of nowhere! I get it! That hell-light came back for me!” An inner voice added sombrely: ‘If that’s the case then you should be grateful you’re still alive!’
From a rudimentary chimney on the roof of the largest wagon, he spotted a thin column of greasy smoke smearing upwards through the falling rain and his sprits rose - at least there would be someone there who could answer his questions and maybe give him a lift back to the university. Acting on a sudden inspiration, he fumbled in one of his pockets and produced his mobile only to find there was no signal. “Why am I not surprised?” he muttered, thrusting the phone back into his pocket in disgust.
A movement caught his eye and twelve scarecrow figures dressed in worn, stained clothes slowly emerged from the dank shadows of the wagons and edged towards him nervously. He realised that they were children between the ages of six and eighteen or so but their genders were all but obscured by matted hair, filth and malnutrition. He was about to relax when he saw that every one of them was armed with knives and other weapons.
“Okay, now this is officially getting weird,” he said warily. He extracted a thin cigar from a packet in his breast-pocket and lit it after deliberately holding the lighter-flame to a thumb to prove that he wasn’t dreaming. The pain and the smoke filling his lungs convinced him that this was real as were the children slowly circling him in an unnerving and respectful silence. “Hello, children,” he said patiently. “Is there a phone here I can use?”
Finally a young girl with long braids and a hair band with black mouse-ears attached to it worked up the nerve to tug at his sleeve. “We saw you come in the holy light, Light-Father,” she said timidly, pointing at the ring of smouldering debris. “We kept the faith but the Fathers and the Tally-men have taken so many of us! We tried to stop them but they were too strong! Please don’t be angry with Mouse! Please!”
“Light-Father, forgive us!” the others said in unison and knelt reverently about the speechless technician, reaching out to touch his work-stained overalls. “Light-Father, forgive us!” they cried again in reed-thin hungry voices. “Light-Father, forgive us!”
He inhaled deeply on his cigar as he studied these bizarrely-dressed children, deeply relieved that they hadn’t drawn their weapons. Finally, he raised a hand. “That’s enough!” he said sharply. ‘Me? A father? What a joke!’ he thought savagely, remembering how he had awoken one morning to find his little Naomi lifeless and his wife staring at him – he groaned at the memory still raw and painful and put his hand across his eyes.
The tallest of the children, a thin-faced youth bearing a scar to his chin and a long mane of black matted hair, looked puzzled: “Why are you in torment, Light-Father? Why should you, a Saviour sent to us by God, suffer like this?” he asked. “Are you injured? Have you been fighting demons?”
“In a way I have,” Harold sighed, noting the sword strapped to the youth’s back. “Look, get up all of you! I’ve got to get back to the university. What’s your name, son? Where am I? Is there a phone in this dump and what the hell is wrong with my hearing?” He was completely baffled by the fact that these children were clearly speaking a strange dialect but he was somehow interpreting the words as English - his mind had registered the word ‘torment’ but his ears had heard the word ‘acquillence’. The word orders weren’t quite right either – reminding him of the Old English he’d studied once. As he thought about how their lips didn’t quite synchronise with what his ears received, that peculiar debilitating pain became worse - almost a warning - and he put a hand to his face to discover that his nose was bleeding again.
“I am Saul. Saul Dis,” the tall teenager announced. “There are no telephones working and this is Crawcester, the second greatest of the Middle Cities. I have nineteen years, the eldest, but we have no parents - until the holy light brought you to us, that is.”
“My name is Harold, Saul, I’m a technician not a bloody Light-Father – whatever that is…” he stopped when he saw the hope and adoration in the eyes of the children pressed up against him. His clothes were getting damp and he was strangely exhausted. “I need to get out of this damned rain and think. I need to find out what that damned hell-light did to me and how I can get back home. I should be in work! Saul? Is there anywhere we can talk? Can we use those office buildings over there?”
Saul looked terrified. “Saint Peter! No, we cannot, Light-Father! The Tally-men take anybody they find in there - which is why we hide in our caravans and only look for food at twilight. We gather and talk by the stove in the mail-wagon. The rain is the only time we can ever get warm - the Tally-men don’t like the rain.”
“My name is Fierce and heavy rain is our friend,” one of the children, a tall, young girl with a matted mane of blond hair tied back with colourful scraps of cloth, told him gravely. “It makes us cold and wet but it keeps the Tally-men away. We can sleep when it rains.” He shuddered a little for she had the most haunted eyes he had ever seen and before he could help himself, he had patted her cheek tenderly for had his little daughter survived, she might have looked like this grim waif. “Crawcester? Where the hell is that?” he demanded of Saul. “I’ve never heard of a town called Crawcester. Cirencester, Worcester maybe but not Crawcester.”
“As Elder Saul said, it’s the second greatest of the Middle Cities. Because it is so big, we have been able to survive here,” a tall Arabic youth said grimly. Despite the two-headed axe in his hands, there was doubt and fear in his voice. “Surely, Light-Father, if you are truly sent by God, you would know this?”
“I was not sent by God. Let’s get out of this damn rain first,” Harold said. “Is there any shelter other than those wagons?”
“Only our Keep behind them is safe,” Saul said. “Come.”
Harold reluctantly followed him across the rails. Through the barbed wire jammed into the gaps between the wagons, he glimpsed camouflaged caravans that were all but invisible in the gloom between the wagons and the black-painted three-metre high boundary wall. The open gate served to hide the caravans from the entrance and a lorry trailer jammed between the third wagon and the wall completed their rectangular ‘Keep.’
Inside the musty mail-wagon, he sat down gratefully on an old rusting office chair by the largest of the four filthy tables. He finished his cigar in silence as the other children sat themselves on boxes and chairs as close to him as they could. Without a word, a bald, shy girl of nine took a small brand from the ancient stove in the far corner and reverently lit some candles. They were obviously precious and only used because it was such a special occasion yet their light made the interior only a fraction less depressing.
Saul went to the far end of the wagon and collected a large black tin from a small table which was covered with wilted flowers and drawings and placed it on the table in front of Harold with a great show of reverence but the smell that assailed his nostrils warned him that this wasn’t lunch.
“What is it?” he asked dubiously.
Saul smiled and carefully removed the lid. “This is why the Tally-men leave us alone.”
Harold recoiled in horror at the sight of the partly-mummified head of an old white-haired woman who had obviously died in great agony. “What the holy hell are you kids doing in a rail-yard with a severed human head?” he demanded hoarsely, jumping to his feet. He snatched the lid from Saul and replaced it quickly. “What are your parents thinking letting you play in a rail-yard unsupervised? What is going on here? Are you runaways?”
Saul sighed and carried the tin back to the improvised altar. “Our parents are all dead,” he explained on his return.
“Ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise,” Harold said, sitting back down. “Why aren’t you in foster care or an orphanage then? Why are you all living in this yard - with a severed head in a tin?”
Saul sat opposite Harold and placed his sword on the table. “Our parents were killed, Light-Father,” he said bitterly. “There are no orphanages. Ibrahim is right,” he added in bitter disappointment, indicating the grim youth with the axe. “You cannot be from God yet Mother Moss foretold of your coming and said you were our Light-Father! I am confused – why would she lie to us?”
“I am not an angel, Saul, just a technician. Tell me what’s going on here! Why is there a severed head in that tin?”
Saul took a deep breath and looked at the others before replying. “Our parents worked for Exodus Industries which was owned by the Order of Christ the Healer. They were making vaccines for Africa and Asia but six years ago, they found out that the Order had made something they called the Virus of Revelation in the Exodus laboratories at the Great Abbey. They said it was a cure for cancer but our parents weren’t fooled; they discovered that it was designed to rewrite the DNA of the host. They tried to raise the alarm but in vain: the whole world revered the doctors and nurses of the Order as they had cured diseases for centuries so they did not believe them capable of such great evil. In desperation, our parents stole samples of the virus to make a vaccine and injected everyone they could but the vaccine didn’t work on most people...”
“My God, why not?”
Saul looked haggard as he remembered the macabre scenes he’d witnessed. “The Order found out about the theft and the warnings,” he said, clenching a fist. “So they laced the Exodus buildings with a less contagious version of the virus. It was still lethal but the symptoms took longer to manifest so many working at Exodus had already passed on the virus to their families before the Order unleashed their Plague of Revelation...”
Harold shook his head in disbelief. “So what happened next? How did you end up here?”
“Millions died within the first two weeks and law and order broke down. Our parents learned that the Order had emerged from their abbeys and monasteries and were openly killing survivors so they brought down the caravans, painted them black then placed them behind the wagons. My uncle wedged the gates open before breaking the hinges to complete our Keep…”
“Then what?” Harold prompted.
Saul stared at him for a moment. “Then they died.”
“Not all of us were here at first, Light-Father,” a girl sat next to Saul added. Harold saw that she was as tall as Saul and athletic with her long blond hair tied back in the same manner as Fierce and guessed that they must be related. She had two knives in sheaths at her waist and a high-tech crossbow on the table in front of her. She tapped a small triangular shield with rounded points strapped to her left arm. “I am Shield – sister to Fierce and Mouse. Many parents lived in other parts of the city so those of us who survived had to fend for ourselves during the plague… many of us died…”
“As did many of the children here…” Saul said angrily. “I tried my best, Light-Father, but there was no saving them…”
“A religious order deliberately creating a plague? It must have been hell - I can’t imagine what you and your sisters went through Shield,” Harold exclaimed. “But before we go any further, Saul, I want you to tell me whose head is in that tin over there!”
“Mother Moss,” Saul whispered, glancing at the tin. “She was a powerful craft-user who rescued Shield and her sisters from the Tally-men and brought them here - but Great-Abbot Schimrian himself came as he delights in hunting those of the craft...”
“Great-Abbot Schimrian? Is that the name of the lunatic in charge of this so-called ‘Order of Christ the Healer’?”
“Yes, a good man of the cloth,” Saul replied without a hint of irony. “Mother Moss was a Wiccan and Wiccans are the ancient enemies of the Order. She came to us four years ago and lived in the offices as there was no room in the caravans and she did not care to live in the wagons. She would fight off the Tally-men with her magic and incantations but then Great-Abbot Schimrian and the Fathers came at Christ Mass Day and Inquired of her.” Saul turned away to hide his tears of shame. “She could not defeat them because they were armoured against the craft. He knew we were hiding in this wagon as they tortured her all night long in the offices. We could hear her begging them for death.”
Beneath the dirt, Harold could see the youth’s face was white with the horror of it. “She screamed and she screamed while they kept laughing and asking her the same questions over and over again. We wanted to fight them…”
Shield placed a hand on Saul’s arm as he fought back tears. “She told us that they would come for her and that we had to hide in this wagon,” she said. “It was the only time that she was ever angry with us. She said that if we tried to save her the Fathers and the Tally-men would kill us all…”
“So we just sat here and covered our ears and cried,” Saul sighed, staring down at the table. “Then, when the morning-light crept into the sky and the screaming stopped, Great-Abbot Schimrian came over to leave the tin by the door.” He shuddered and began to weep openly. “He said that she could stay to look after us until his Fathers returned to Redeem us but something has happened and only the Tally-men come on their patrols as they did before. We leave the tin outside whenever they enter the yard and they leave us alone.”
Harold was about to speak but the lid clattered onto the floor and a shaft of brilliant white light erupted from the black tin. The children cowered by the door but he was drawn against his will to look inside. He thought his heart would stop as those dead eyes slowly opened and the dead mouth of Mother Moss formed words that he could hear inside his mind:
‘I saved you from the Light of Azrael and the Shadow of the Fallen One and brought you here,’ the voice within him whispered enigmatically. ‘The Order of Christ the Healer has all but emptied this world of human life as the Fathers and their Tally-men seek out and ‘redeem’ the last of the impure before their shallow and ruinous Eden can begin.’
“But why me?”
‘I felt your pain when your child died a thousand worlds away, Light-Father; I heard your heart break across a thousand veils. I have given you this destiny in the hope that you will one day forgive yourself for the death of your precious child by saving these children. We have fought this Order for centuries for we knew this Plague of Revelation would come to pass and in doing so we have incurred the wrath of their God - as you can see, He has punished me mightily for my sins...’
“Why? What do you mean by the Light of Azrael and the Fallen One? This is a parallel reality, isn’t it?” he demanded, tearing his eyes away from that dreadful sight as Saul joined him. “Tell me - where the hell am I?”
‘We cannot foresee beyond our own deaths but I know that you are exactly where you need to be. Save my children, please, I beg you, or all my suffering will have been for nothing...’ the telepathic ‘voice’ faded but the light flared, near-blinding them with its intensity. When Harold and Saul opened their eyes and peered into the tin, they saw that it was empty but for a death’s-head moth that fluttered past their faces and out into the rain.
Saul collapsed into a chair and sobbed bitterly into his hands and as Harold comforted him, he understood that somehow, this frail, brave teenager had kept all these children alive against unspeakable odds. He looked into their eager expectant eyes and, for a while a least, the questions died upon his lips.
Chapter 03: Fierce Has Thirteen
“There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way
in which it treats its children.” - Nelson Mandela.
Fierce sat in the open doorway of the mail wagon with her legs dangling over the edge having become bored with the strange conversation between Saul and the Light-Father. She had her full thirteen years today so this was her birthday present to herself: to watch, still full of childish wonder, as a large flock of pigeons circled this way and that above the yard.
She sighed heavily as she gazed up at the grey sky and retied several of the rag strips in her matted hair. The drizzle had beaded everything including her eyelashes with drops of moisture but there was now brightness to the western sky where the sun was trying to break through. She detested sunshine and dry weather of any kind for that was when the Tally-men were at their most dangerous; breaking from their routine patrols to carry out sudden and unexpected sorties into the yard and across the city.
“Happy Birthday, Fierce,” Harold said as he sat awkwardly next to her. She wrinkled up her nose at the smell of oil, spirits and cigar-smoke still clinging to his peculiar clothes. “Saul has just introduced me to all the children and you’re the last. Your sisters won’t tell me your real name so Fierce will have to do even though you don’t look all that fierce to me.”
“Fierce is good,” she said simply and he blinked to find a sharp knife at his throat and the point of a thin sword pricking at the gap between two of his ribs. She returned them to their sheaths in two fluid motions then pointed up at a small speck circling high above the pigeons. “See? I am as fierce as that kestrel! Now,” she whispered hungrily, craning her head forward. “Kill!”
They watched the kestrel suddenly stoop and dive into the panicking pigeons. Predator and prey tumbled through the air in the fatal timeless embrace of the hunt before the kestrel righted itself with powerful wing-beats to bear its prize away. The panic-stricken flock quickly reformed and headed westwards.
Fierce wiped at a tear trickling down her grimy cheek. “They cannot speak but they must be sad,” she said quietly.
Harold thought his heart would break despite the shock of being threatened so casually by such a young girl. “Birds are practical creatures with small brains,” he said kindly. “They’re probably glad it wasn’t them but they know as long as the flock survives, one casualty will not make much of a difference to the species.”
“I suppose so,” she shrugged. “But surely it is better to be predator than prey, is it not?”
He knew that the three sisters had somehow survived in the city for almost two years but not even eleven-year-old Mouse would say what had happened to them except to say that they’d been rescued from the Tally-men by Mother Moss and brought here. “I wouldn’t know,” he said after a thoughtful silence. “Come inside by the stove, Fierce - you’re drenched - you’ll catch a cold.”
“No. I’m used to the rain but tell me: when I die, Light-Father,” she said, screwing up her face in disgust at the increasing daylight. “Will the sky cry for me? Will it miss me?”
“I think your sisters would,” he said gruffly to hide his feelings. “Tell me, what happened to the three of you out there?”
She shook her head, her eyes haunted. “I remember a party,” she smiled wistfully. “The year before the great plague when I had my six years! There was a wonderful party in the garden with grilled meats for the adults who drank mead and beer and sang funny songs to me. There was a play-tent for us children. I remember how hot the sun was then – it’s rained so much since everyone died and it’s getting colder every year and if it starts to snow, Ibrahim says it will go on forever.” She looked down at her feet. “Am I bad person, Light-Father? I can remember the presents and Mouse eating so much that she was sick and Shield, being the eldest, scolding her… but I can’t remember the faces of our parents!”
“I’m no psychologist, Fierce,” he said, undoing his utility belt. “Ah, that’s better! But you were taken by these Tally-men, this Order killed your parents and you lived out there for two years so all these shocks will blank everything out including their faces but, trust me, they will return to you in time. I think you three sisters have something we call post-traumatic stress. Many soldiers where I come from suffered with this for years after the wars were over: they’d have nightmares; their moods would change suddenly and they would become very violent.”
“I see – so we’re all soldiers,” she said simply, edging closer to him. “So will you be leaving us now?”
“I don’t think I can, Fierce,” he said, scratching at his cheek – his sideburns were itching in the humid warmth. “I’m either in a mental institution or I’m in a parallel reality - this isn’t my world or even my language so I guess I’ll have to stay with you until I can figure out how Mother Moss brought me here.”
“But if you aren’t from Heaven, you cannot be from another world, Light-Father, for you speak like a Middle-City man,” she retorted as she studied the treacherous clouds.
“I’m not from this world Fierce! I don’t even know how I can speak and understand your language - I think it was programmed into me like a computer which is why I have this damn headache. I haven’t got a clue how she did that because there are no Wiccans like her in my world,” he admitted with a wry smile. “Oh, we do have Wiccans but they’re all sad old bats who think dancing naked around a black candle is a cure for cancer. If I hadn’t seen that hell-light before with my own eyes, I would have taken all this with a pinch of salt,” he said sweeping a hand across the rail-yard and the ranks of rotting cars and vans.
“What do you mean by a hell-light?” she said, drawing her knees up and resting her chin upon them. “I think you are teasing me about coming from another world. It is not possible. You must have come from heaven if Mother Moss brought you to us.”
He sighed and rubbed at his eyes wearily. “Trust me, I haven’t come from Heaven, Fierce, but another world much like this one with its own wars and disasters,” he shrugged. “Some of our scientists believe that millions and millions of realities exist side by side and obviously they were right because here I am! I was very lonely there because all I do all day is fix machines in a workshop. I only go home to my empty flat if I can get drunk enough to fall asleep quickly. I have no family left.”
“Huh? Do you not have children, Light-Father?”
His hands clenched until the knuckles were white and he drew a deep shuddering breath. “I had a little daughter called Naomi but she died in her cot. She was… she had nine months when it happened. We woke up one morning and there she lay - my beautiful angel - looking as though she was just fast asleep with a smile on her sweet face. My wife, Andrea, picked her up but then she screamed because Naomi was as cold as ice…”
“I see,” Fierce said quietly. “Your wife was not strong so she blamed you for the death and not herself or Fate for allowing the child to stop breathing in the night. You are better off without her. Maybe this is why Mother Moss brought you to us.”
“She said as much,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Apparently, she wants me to save you all so that I can forget about Naomi and Andrea. It’s my destiny she said. I…”
“Shhh!” she hissed, clamping a hand on his leg. She reached down to unsheathe her wicked-looking hunting knife and rapped the hilt on the doorframe three times. “They’re here!”
“Who the hell is h…?” he said before Shield came up behind him and clamped a filthy hand across his mouth. He almost gagged as all the children stank and the sweat from her sudden fear made Sheild’s stench unbearable. He noticed a long knife in her other hand and he could hear the younger children were all busy extinguishing the stove and the candles.
“Be quiet and get out of sight, Light-Father!” she whispered into his ear. “May Lucifer burn me for this - it was my turn to keep watch behind the gates! Look! On the far side of the cars by the last engine shed over there – can you see them?”
Harold got up and retreated into the dark as Fierce drew her sword. He shielded his eyes and gazed in the direction Shield was pointing. “I see them. I take it that those are Tally-men?”
“Yes! I want to kill them!” Fierce hissed but Shield grabbed her by the collar and dragged her bodily away from the door.
Harold watched as five large men flitted from cover to cover one after the other. They wore long black hooded leather greatcoats over their black clothes and boots. Saul tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a small pair of field-glasses so that he could see that the Tally-men were all bald and carried fearsome-looking spears - long jet-black staffs with a blade at one end and a spike at the other. A sudden beam of bright sunlight bathed them and reflected off something metallic attached to their skulls just before they were lost to sight behind the engine-sheds.
“Will they approach these wagons?” he whispered anxiously.
“Yes,” Shield whispered back. “Saul will lay the tin on the tracks in front of us and we will close the door so that they can’t see us. They opened the tin the first time but Mother Moss taught them a lesson. They’re not intelligent but they always remember the pain she gave them - they’re terrified of her!”
“I hope this still works,” Saul said as he jumped down onto the tracks to place the black tin ten metres in front of the wagon. He climbed back up to snuff out the last candle and check that the fire was out as Shield slowly closed the sliding door behind him.
“Even though they come at different times when it’s dry, they always follow the same patrol route that the Fathers gave them,” Fierce explained, getting to her feet and glaring at her sister. “They’ve already checked the site office on the other side of the gates, they’ll walk through the four repair sheds and the stores then they’ll check the forges and the smithy and finally they check the offices where you appeared.”
“Then they walk along the path on the other side of these sidings and back through the gate,” Shield added. “They know we’re here but it’s best if they don’t see us or hear us.”
“Why do they go away?” he asked. “Surely they would have seen the stove-smoke from the other side of the wall?”
“Yes, they do,” she said. “But they never show any initiative to investigate because they are not made that way. All they are told to do is capture plague survivors and take them to the Great Abbey. They’re still very dangerous which is why we close the wagon door and wait in the dark – they only take fifteen minutes to circle the sheds and offices and then they head on into the city.”
“What do you mean by ‘not made that way’?” he demanded irritably. He felt claustrophobic in the fetid dark, the choking smell made worse by the heat and the terror coursing through twelve unwashed bodies. He noted every child was holding a weapon in their hands and some had two. “Are these guys zombies?”
He could see Shield frown as she peered through one of the knot-holes in the door. “Zom-bees?” she said. “I know not this word. No, they are merely the Unworthy. As Light-Father you should know that they are the failed novices and prisoners of the Order who have been made into Tally-Men. They have certain parts of their brains removed so that they will obey the instructions the Fathers give them through their Guides.”
“What do you mean by Guides, Shield? I didn’t see anyone guiding them out there.”
“No, the Guides are metal devices,” Saul said quietly as he too came to the door – a thin shaft of light illuminating part of his face. “They are driven into their skulls. It’s why they hate the rain – even with their hoods up, the Guides hiss and crackle and cause them agony when they get wet. Now be quiet, Light-Father – they’re outside! I pray they don’t realise Mother Moss is gone.”
Harold peered through the remaining spy-hole as one of the younger children whimpered in terror behind him. The five Tally-men had finished their rounds, their black leather coats flapping in the rising breeze as they strode along the path towards the gates. They were in single-file and his heart missed a beat as they stopped suddenly at an unspoken command and left-wheeled to face the wagon. They were only twenty metres away and Harold could see that all five men were expressionless and in the centre of their foreheads and on each temple were the Guides, glinting in the late afternoon sunlight now streaming across the yard.
The five men readied their weapons and stepped across the unkempt grass and weeds until they halted at the empty siding tracks. Harold watched in morbid fascination as their eyes fixed upon the tin and they began a most peculiar dance – walking forward one-by-one only to double over suddenly, their heads thrust forwards to utter wordless howls of fear and loathing before retreating backwards to the path. The youngest of the five was the most animated and his wordless cries were deeply disturbing – almost screams of anguish and loss. This went on for about ten minutes as the younger children cowered in sheer terror in the dark with their hands pressed over their ears.
Then suddenly it stopped and the Tally-men formed up into a single line to march through the gates without a backward glance. Saul turned to the children: “Be at peace,” he declared, opening the door to let the welcome light flood in. Three children remained huddled up on the floor and were crying, their tears leaving clear tracks down their filthy cheeks. “Shhh! They’re gone for today. Go to your caravans and rest, all of you. We have had no food for two days so we must search for food as soon as it’s dark.”
“I don’t want to,” Mouse protested as she ran into Shield’s protective embrace. “That’s when the Tally-men get us.”
“We haven’t lost anyone for a long time, Mouse,” Saul assured her, sheathing his knife. “Not since I’ve been Elder and now we have the Light-Father with us.”
“I’ll come with you,” Harold said, gazing thoughtfully at the huge metal gates. “Where do you get food?”
“We go to where the big shops are,” Saul said, pointing to the piles of metal scrap on the other side of the gates. “We hide the tins in there so that the Fathers and the Tally-men do not see them.”
“Aren’t the shops and stores of food watched? You can’t take all these children foraging into the city with you after dark,” Harold protested. “Surely it would be safer to leave them here?”
“My cousin, David, was Elder,” Saul said, shaking his head. “But shortly after Mother Moss died, we left the youngest here in one of the caravans while we went searching for food. They were attacked by Ferals and Andrew’s brother and sister, Eliza and Jacob, were taken but we do not know what happened to them.”
“Ah I’m sorry but what are ‘Ferals’ – and why does that word sound so strange?” Harold muttered, rubbing at his brow. The pain vanished and he smiled down at the children who were filing out to their caravans and touching his overalls for luck on the way out. One of them handed him his utility belt. “Thank you, Amos! Okay, Saul, what are Ferals? Are they dogs? I assume all the cats and dogs have gone wild since the plague.”
“We still have packs of wild dogs but they are not as dangerous as the Ferals,” Saul said grimly. “Ferals are children who survived the plague without a vaccine but the Fathers ignore them as they are genetically damaged. They don’t even bother killing them as they consider them to be nothing more than animals.”
“So where is your cousin now?”
“David never forgave himself and he searched for his missing siblings night and day but one day in February, he was returning from the woods when he was captured by the Tally-men.”
“Then what happened to him? What do these Fathers do to the people that they capture? Ah, I take it that these Fathers would consider him to be one of the ‘unworthy’?”
“Yes. Do you remember the youngest of the Tally-men?”
“You mean the strange one that was really howling?”
“That was David.”
Chapter 04: Vaccine
“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body,
but you will never imprison my mind.” – Gandhi
Harold was sitting in an old office chair in between the tracks watching the sun slowly sinking in the west and enjoying the warmth of the sunlight upon his face. He felt inexplicably at peace despite his peculiar situation almost as if someone or something was rewarding him for his acceptance of this strange destiny. He removed his baseball cap to mop at his brow as the evening air was warm and muggy. “It’ll rain again soon,” he said aloud, gazing up at the clouds. “No wonder there’s so much moss and mildew.”