CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

Morgan could feel the earth shaking. They were hundreds of feet underground. If the roof caved in they'd die here, and no one would ever find their bodies.

Anya fell to her knees beside him, toppled by the violent convulsions. Behind her, the Japanese agents were scrabbling on the ground for the guns they'd dropped. Richard grabbed Morgan's shoulder, fingers clawing hard enough to leave bruises.

Morgan didn't remember making the decision to move, but somehow he was standing next to the altar, close enough to touch the body rising from it. It was a body now. As cracks appeared in the floor beneath it, flesh grew to cover the bare bones. He saw the white threads of nerve fibres crawling across the red meat of muscles and round globular yellow pockets of fat. The skin came last, tightening to draw everything else within it.

Richard was still clinging to him when Morgan turned and punched him, then grabbed his shoulders and shook. "You're doing this!" he yelled. "Stop it!"

"I can't. I can't. It's too strong." Richard's voice was breathy with fear. "She's wanted to be free for so long. I can open the door but I can't close it. I told you that. I warned you!" Even as Morgan shook him, his eyes remained fixed on the altar and the unspeakable resurrection that was happening there.

When the process had finished, the little girl was naked, but whole. She was petite and blonde with improbably soft white skin. The gold crucifix glittered against the hollow at the base of her neck.

She turned her face towards Morgan, and he saw that her eyes were still empty black sockets. He flinched in horror as they slowly grew back to a bright, crystalline blue.

"It's you," she said. "I saw you watching me as I died." She wasn't speaking English, but somehow he understood her.

He backed away. "I didn't do it. I wasn't here."

"But you're here now." And when the last word left her mouth, everything changed.

The shaking stopped. The church was clean and bright, black candles burning in the sconces lining the walls. In their light, Morgan saw that Richard was still beside him, but everyone else had disappeared. There were only two other people in the church: the little girl trussed to the altar, and Raphael.

Raphael was dressed in a priest's red vestments. His hair was nut-brown and his face was round-cheeked and unlined. He couldn't have been much older than Morgan. He was holding the same knife that Morgan had seen buried in the skeleton's chest.

Morgan staggered forward two steps and reached out to wrench the knife from Raphael's hand.

There was no contact. His arm drifted through the other man's, as insubstantial as mist.

"You can't," Richard said. "Here, we're the ghosts. It's all already happened."

Raphael didn't acknowledge their presence, gazing through them as if they didn't exist. But Morgan saw the little girl's eyes tracking the movement of his arm. She could see them. Maybe the approach of death had opened a window the living couldn't usually see through.

"Help me!" she screamed.

Raphael seemed to think she was talking to him. "It's your own fault, darling," he said. "You shouldn't have told your parents the things we did together. I said there'd be consequences if you blabbed."

She was shaking and terrified, but the look she shot him was almost defiant. "I couldn't help it! They saw the blood on my dress."

"But you told them I forced you, when you know that isn't true. It was a nasty lie, and God hates liars. He sends them all to Hell." Raphael's voice was horribly reasonable. Morgan felt his hands twitching towards the other man's throat, desperate to silence him.

"Don't pretend you didn't want it," Raphael said. "Why did you dress that way? Why did you smile at me? You knew you were leading me on." His hand reached down to touch her between her legs, his face rapt with remembered pleasure. Morgan had to look away, the gorge rising in his throat.

The little girl whimpered and Raphael seemed to come back to himself. "It's too late now. They've roused all the miners against me, and the barricade across the door won't last long. I've got no choice, I have to do this. He told me if I did, he'd save me. And since it's the only form of salvation currently available, I'm planning to take it." On the final word, he raised the knife high.

Morgan's eyes flinched shut - and when he opened them again, Raphael was gone and the church was collapsing around him.

"Did you see?" the little girl asked, sitting on the altar where she died.

"Yes," Morgan said. "I was there."

"When the mass was finished, the mine collapsed - but not on him. I saw my father and mother crushed beneath the rocks. My family survived four years of war, and he killed them all."

"I'm sorry," Morgan whispered.

"He wasn't," she said. "The next day the Red Army came. He gave them information and they gave him his life. They took him away with them, and they never made him pay for what he did."

"I will," Morgan said. "I'll make him pay. I promise."

He could hear screaming behind him. He thought it might be Anya, but when he looked around he saw that it was one of Richard's men, pinned beneath a fallen statue. The deformed stone face was pressed against his, which panic had twisted into an expression almost as hideous. As Morgan watched, another of the men ran to help him. He pulled on his arm and the trapped man screamed.

Morgan realised someone was pulling on his own arm. It was Anya, face drawn with shock. "We have to get out!" she shouted. "This whole place is coming down!" Her eyes swept through the little blonde girl sitting on the altar, and he realised for the first time that Anya couldn't see her.

"Come on!" she screamed, dragging on his arm.

He pulled back, heels digging into the soft salt rock of the floor. He wasn't finished here, and he knew it.

"Tell me your name," he said to the little girl.

She smiled, as if he'd finally got something right. "I'm Marya." Blunt little fingers fiddled at the back of her neck, and then the gold crucifix was in her hand. She held it out to Morgan.

He stared at it. His flesh cringed at the thought of touching hers.

"Take it," she said. "To remember your promise."

He held out his hand, cupped beneath hers. She tipped her fingers and the little cross dropped into his palm.

It burned fiercely. Morgan scrabbled at the pocket of his jeans with his other hand, dropping the crucifix inside as soon as he could. He expected the sensation to be a phantasm, like the girl herself, but when he looked at his right palm it was burned an angry red. He looked back up at Marya, meaning to ask what it meant.

She was gone. Only her skeleton remained, lying pinned to the altar where she'd died.

"Morgan!" Anya shouted. She'd released his arm but remained a few paces away, looking back at him. He could tell she was on the cusp of running. If he didn't follow her now, she'd leave him behind. She wouldn't stay just to die beside him.

And if they stayed, they would die. Morgan could see that now. The exit from the church was already choked with rocks, more tumbling down as he watched. Soon it would be blocked entirely. He took one last look at the altar and the pathetic skeleton huddled on it, then turned and ran.

His feet kicked something solid that rang metallically as it clattered along the floor. A gun. One of the Japanese agents had dropped it. Morgan stooped to pick it up, losing precious seconds in his flight.

He vaguely registered that Richard was running beside him. The other man was panting in wheezing gasps, older and less fit than Morgan. A second later, and still two feet from the door, he stumbled to his knees.

If Morgan had had time to think about it, he would have left him. But instinct took over. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans, hooked an arm round Richard's back and heaved him to his feet.

Richard let out a grunt that might have been gratitude or simply pain. He stumbled a few steps forward, then tripped and would have fallen to his knees again if Morgan hadn't wrenched him up at the cost of a sharp pain in his own back. Richard's ankle was probably sprained, maybe broken. He wasn't the person you wanted with you when you were trying to escape a collapsing mine.

But no one else would help him. There was no sign of the other Japanese agents. Morgan wasn't sure if they'd escaped when the collapse began, or lay crushed beneath one of the growing heaps of rock. Anya was already at the steep pile of scree that now filled the exit.

She paused at the top, reaching back a hand to help drag Morgan over. The rough stone tore through the thin material of his t-shirt and grated the skin beneath. When he looked down, he saw a dark face leering back at him. He cringed back before he realised it was one of the statues which had once lined the walls. Its beard had scraped his skin. Now it was smeared with blood, as if the statue had been chewing on his flesh.

Morgan blinked his eyes shut as a spear-sharp stalactite fell from the ceiling and impaled the debris inches from his nose. When he looked behind him he saw that the altar was already hidden beneath a heap of rock, Marya's body buried at last. Another few seconds and there would be nothing left of the church.

Richard was almost a dead weight beneath Morgan's arm. Morgan set his teeth in a grimace of effort and dragged him doggedly on. The gap at the top of the rock pile was barely shoulder-width now - and narrowing fast. If Morgan wedged himself in he could be stuck for good. A cold sweat stood out on his skin. He'd always hated confined spaces. They reminded him of those terrible moments in the dark water of the lake, when his sister had died and he thought he might too.

"We have to chance it," Richard gasped. He gave Morgan a weak shove towards the gap.

Morgan gulped in a lungful of air, then used his elbows to drag himself in. He had to drop Richard's arm, but he could feel a warm body pressed against his own as he squeezed further into the rock. The Japanese agents' lanterns were long-destroyed and Anya had taken the torch with her. Within seconds Morgan was totally blind, and he felt a moment of sick panic. What if he was going the wrong way, sideways or even backwards? Would he ever find his way out?

"Calm down," Richard hissed, and Morgan realised that his breath was coming in desperate ragged pants. "We're nearly there, I can see light ahead of us."

When he opened his eyes, so could Morgan. The hope of an end gave him extra strength, though the gap was so narrow he could do little beyond clawing himself forward with his fingernails. Grains of rock stuck beneath them and two or three tore off, salt stinging sharply in the wounds.

Five agonising minutes later he was through, tumbling down the shallow incline that led to the mine's floor. Richard fell a moment later. His shoulder thumped into Morgan's ribs as he landed.

Anya knelt beside them, putting a testing hand against Morgan's throat as if she was afraid he might have died. He gently moved it aside and lay on his back, getting his breath under control and enjoying being alive.

After a minute or less he was breathing normally, but the tunnel was no quieter than when he'd arrived. The same low grumble he'd heard in the church was audible here too.

"Shit," he said, pushing himself wearily to his feet.

"It might just be the final collapse inside," Anya said, though there wasn't much conviction in her voice. A moment later it was clear the sound was growing louder. And then the first flecks of rock began to drift down.

"We've got to get out!" Morgan said.

No one argued. The tunnel was barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. It wouldn't take much to block it completely. It would be far too easy to get trapped here.

Morgan reached out to grasp Richard's arm again, but the other man shrugged him off.

"I'm okay, you'll slow us both down."

That was fine by Morgan. His legs felt like lead, but he forced them to drag him forward, one painful step at a time. Anya was behind him and Richard ahead, each locked in their own grim battle for survival.

At the first junction Richard turned left. Morgan wasn't sure if he really knew the way, but he followed anyway. So did the rumble of falling rock.

No matter how fast they ran, the sound kept pace, and with it needle-sharp splinters of rock and the constant threat of much worse. As Morgan watched, horrified, one black zigzag crack broadened and spread in the floor beneath his feet.

And something else was following them. At first, the sound was buried beneath the deeper rumble of falling rock. But slowly it grew louder, until it couldn't be mistaken for anything but human screams. And then Morgan could see them.

They were running alongside him, ahead and behind. Their clothes were sturdy and dark, faces streaked with sweat and rock dust. Miners, Morgan guessed. They were shouting in a language he didn't understand. But again and again he heard the name "Marya". And then one of the crowd ran through him, and he finally knew who they were.

Of course the little girl wouldn't be the only spirit in these caves. Many more people had died here, thanks to Raphael.

"Richard!" Morgan gasped, stumbling to a halt.

"I can see them," the other man said through gritted teeth, still running.

And as he ran, the ghosts ran with him. The ghosts, and the destruction that Morgan could now see they brought with them. The last insubstantial figure marked the outer perimeter of the damage.

Anya pushed against him, trying to get him moving again. He used his left hand to block her. With his right the pulled the gun from the waistband of his jeans.

"Stop! he shouted.

Richard didn't seem to hear him and he was drawing further ahead. Morgan grabbed Anya and began to run after him.

With the other man's injured ankle it didn't take long to catch up. Morgan barrelled past him, dragging Anya along with him. Then he stopped, blocking the path ahead, and raised his gun.

Richard almost ran into it before he realised it was there.

He looked up, bemused. "For god's sake, what?" The ghosts were crowded close around him, and his hair sparkled with the silver fall of salt from above.

"Back away," Morgan said.

"Is this really -"

"Back away!"

Richard frowned and took two steps back, then another two when Morgan fired a shot into the rock at his feet. He held up his hands. "Listen, whatever this is, can't it wait till we're out of here?"

"You're not getting out," Morgan said.

"Morgan." Anya rested a hand against his gun arm. "He's right - we can deal with this later."

He grabbed her hand and used it to pull her back another ten paces, till Richard was at one end of the stretch of tunnel and he and Anya at the other. "There won't be a later if he comes with us," he said. "Look."

She frowned and he remembered that she couldn't see what he and Richard could. The ghosts clustered tight around the other man were invisible to her.

"It's him," Morgan said. "He's causing it."

"Don't be ridiculous - why would he do that?"

"He can't help it." He met Richard's eyes over the distance separating them. "Can you?"

Richard looked at the rock, cracked and splintering above him. At the ghosts, clustered to either side. Then he looked back at Morgan and smiled sadly. "No, it appears I can't."

"I'm sorry," Morgan said. He meant it.

The other man nodded. Then he staggered, as the floor shook beneath his feet. Where Morgan and Anya stood, it was motionless. He saw her eyes widen as she finally began to understand.

"Come on," Morgan said, turning away from the other man. "We can get out of here now."

"Wait!" Richard shouted.

Morgan didn't.

"Morgan!"

He ran another few steps, but his pace slowly dragged to a halt. He couldn't condemn the other man to death and refuse to even watch it.

Richard smiled when Morgan turned back to him. His face was tight and chalky with pain, and Morgan could see a deep gash in his cheek where a rock must have struck him, but he looked almost peaceful. "Do you know why there's evil in the world?" he said.

Morgan shook his head.

"Because God gave us a choice. Remember that, Morgan. You always have a choice."

Morgan would have liked to deny it. He wanted to say that he didn't, that it was all of them die or just Richard. But a choice between two terrible options was still that.

He opened his mouth to explain, and his words were drowned in the rending sound of stone tearing away from its foundations.

Richard didn't scream, just let out a choked gasp as the rocks hit him. Then he was lost to Morgan's sight, hidden behind a cloud of dust and salt.

 

Tomas couldn't believe the sea held so much life. It was seething with it, brown and green and silver bodies boiling to the surface in a mass of slick wet flesh.

Anya crouched on the deck, shaking with fear.

"They can't hurt us!" Tomas shouted, but he wasn't so sure.

He'd forgotten how big the things that lived in the deep ocean grew. And there were so many of them, their bodies were roiling above the surface. They'd drown in air within a few minutes, but it wasn't stopping them. Tomas felt the first pin-sharp bite of teeth in his foot as a wave of the creatures washed over the sides to slither onto the deck.

Tomas stamped on the soft body, killing it instantly. Anya was doing the same, letting out little, desperate gasps every time her foot came down. The deck was red with blood, but there were always more of them.

One leapt up in front of Tomas, jaws snapping shut around his knee. He swore and prised it off, leaving its teeth buried in his flesh. After that, he gave up stamping and started scooping the creatures up, flinging them over the side in great armfuls. Anya stooped to do the same, and he shouted at her to stop. He could take the damage, but she couldn't. Every armful left him with bleeding bite marks in his arms and chest, tearing into muscle and deep beyond where his chest wound still gaped open.

He bent down to gather another armful, and the boat veered sharply to starboard, staggering him. Another swerve back to port and this time it tumbled him to the deck. Now the creatures were within reach of his eyes. He clasped his hands tight over his face to shield them, but it left him no leverage to lift himself up. He could feel the creatures slithering above and below him. The fish stench of them was overpowering. They began to gnaw at his fingers and he could hear the grate of teeth against bone.

He'd have to risk his eyes if he wanted to save anything. He forced his body into a roll, crushing as many of them as he could. Then, before he could think better of it, he got his hands beneath him and levered himself up.

He didn't think he'd make it. The weight of creatures attached to his body by teeth and suckers dragged him down. It took all his strength not to fall straight back to the deck. He stumbled, braced himself, and rose with one final heave.

"Christ, Tomas!" Anya yelled.

He felt her fingers scraping at his face, and a moment later her hand came away with a small, snaggle-toothed creature that looked like it came from the dark depths of the ocean. In the second before she flung it over the side he saw a scrap of what might have been his eyelid clenched between its jaws.

Anya's face was covered in a fine tracery of blood from a jagged gash in her forehead. "The captain's dead," she gasped.

Tomas could see him through the glass wall of the cabin, slumped over the wheel. Without him to steer it, their boat was following a curving course, cutting a broad circle through the sea. The other boat was out of sight. But it had only been a few minutes and theirs was the faster vessel. They could still catch up.

Tomas began to wade through the carnage on deck towards the cabin. Upright, the fish could only slow, not stop him. He was halfway to the door when the first attack came from above.

The bird's dive was too steep for recovery. Its beak gouged a track through his cheek and then it struck the mass of creatures on the deck with a wet thump. The next one came seconds later, hitting his shoulder this time. When Tomas looked up he saw that the sky was dark with them, seagulls with their wickedly curved beaks and hateful black eyes.

He could feel the blood flowing freely from a thousand cuts and he knew even he couldn't survive this long. Behind him, he could hear Anya screaming. It was a horrible sound, but he dreaded still more the moment when it would stop. He reached back to pull her against his chest, curling his body around hers to shield it.

Their progress was agonisingly slow, an inelegant stumble that constantly threatened to spill them both to the deck and the heaving mass of life there. For a moment, Tomas saw the cold eye of an octopus glaring up at him. Its tentacle lashed out to dig suckers into the already exposed skin of his leg. He brought his other foot down on it bulbous body, bursting it. The tentacle tore away, still dangling from his leg as he took another dragging step nearer to the relative safety of the cabin.

By the time they reached it, his legs were a gaping mass of wounds. The floor was awash with creatures, a jumble of them blocking the door. He used his feet to kick them aside, then squashed the few that remained into a bloody pulp as he slammed it shut.

Instantly, a muffled series of bangs detonated above them. The birds were flinging themselves against the glass roof of the cabin, sacrificing themselves mindlessly in their hunger to reach them. As Tomas watched, a spider-web of cracks spread from the last point of impact.

He looked at Anya, and read the same defeat in her eyes. Then he grabbed the wheel and grimly turned it round, taking them back towards Germany.

 

When Morgan and Anya finally stumbled out of the mine, coated in rock dust and blood, the emergency services had already arrived. Morgan stood numbly compliant as a paramedic tended to his cuts. Once the sterile dressings were in place, the paramedic gestured towards the ambulance, miming that they should get in.

"We're fine," Morgan told him.

The man didn't looked convinced, but when Morgan pushed him gently away he shrugged and went to tend to someone else.

"We need to get out of here," Anya said, "before someone starts asking too many questions."

Morgan nodded, but he only walked as far as the nearest wall before collapsing to the ground at its foot. After a second, Anya sat down beside him.

"What did Richard mean," she said eventually, "that you were born out of Nicholson's death?"

He thought about lying, but he found he wanted to share this. He needed to. "I was adopted," he told her. "Never knew my real parents. Didn't know who they were - until we found that book, and I saw my dad's name written in the front."

She shifted to face him, jeans grating along the gravel. "Nicholson's your father?"

He nodded. "He died before I was born. I think that's what Richard was talking about."

"Christ. No wonder you were so keen to translate it."

"I wanted to understand why I'd been sent on this mission. Someone must have known about me and Nicholson, whoever got me assigned. It's too much of a coincidence otherwise, isn't it?"

"Probably." Her eyes studied him too keenly. "And you wanted to know your father, as any boy would. Somehow, I don't think you like what you've found."

"No." But that he couldn't bear to talk about. He levered himself to his feet. "We should phone Tomas."

Anya looked like she wanted to ask him more, but something in his face stopped her. She shrugged and handed him the phone.

Morgan let it ring and ring, but when it went to voicemail he snapped it shut.

Anya took the phone back and pressed some keys. "This is Anya's number," she told him. "It's probably better if you talk to her."

As she handed it back to him there was a crackle and then a voice saying, "Who is this?"

"Anya?" Morgan said. "It's me. Morgan."

There was a silence on the other end during which he could hear strained breathing and what sounded like the cries of seabirds. Then she said, "So you're alive. Do you have the book?"

"Yes." Morgan looked at his Anya, thinking of all the other things he could add to that. He sighed and said, "It's safe."

"Well," she said. "Then it looks like we're all going to St Petersburg."