Chapter Thirty-One

The Fire Beyond

 

 

31st October 2016

 

HOW LONG DID the silence last? Alice couldn’t tell. She couldn’t look away from John or his captor. It would be the work of a second, the simplest movement of a hand, as long as the blade was sharp. And it would be, of course.

John was still, teeth clenched, lips peeled back. Angry, afraid, but not so much of either that he’d do something stupid. The Red Man was silent and still.

Alice studied him; she’d seen him before, of course, but fleetingly, and with the quality of a dream. There was nothing dreamlike about him now. She could see every detail.

Close to, it was hard to believe what she’d seen him do to the ogre. His scarlet robes were tattered and frayed: grimy, worn. The white mask was scratched and pitted – she thought she saw a hairline crack in it – and expressionless though it was, it somehow looked ineffably weary. Yes, this was an endgame of some kind. The Red Man was very close to done.

Another thought: the rowan cross. She fumbled it from her pocket and thrust it towards him. The Red Man didn’t move, but the lips of the mask stirred, and that strange choral voice came out.

“That will drive back the children,” he said, “but not me.” He inclined his head towards John. “I do not wish to hurt him, but I will cut his throat if you do not obey.”

“All right.” Alice pocketed the cross and raised her hands. “Just don’t hurt him. Okay? Please?”

“This is what will happen.” The Red Man inclined his head towards the Moloch Device. “I will bring your friend here. He will sit in the chair, and you will strap him into place.”

“No. No, please.”

The Red Man motioned slightly with the knife; John gasped, blood on his throat. Alice cried out.

“A scratch only,” the Red Man said. “Listen to me, Alice Collier, and understand. I do not wish to kill. I have never wished to kill.” Was there a note of bitterness in that voice? “But my will is not my own. I have no choice. But I pledge you my word that I will help you, both – if you obey me now.”

“John?” Alice whispered.

“Do it,” he said. “I’m not dead yet.”

“He speaks truly,” said the Red Man, and marched John round the front of the chair, then – keeping the knife at his throat – pressed him down into it. “Now secure him,” he told Alice, not looking at her.

She ran forward, knelt and set to work. Her fingers felt thick and stiff and clumsy; the straps and clamps were stiff too, through age or rust or disuse. But she secured John’s ankles first, then his wrists. Then a strap around his waist, another round his chest, another still round his forehead.

She was crying again. Oh, if she only didn’t care. It would be so much easier if she didn’t care. But she did. All the times you made me laugh, John; all the ways you made me smile. The warmth of your arms. I tried to forget them, even tried to hate you, but none of it worked.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay, babe.”

His eyes were wise and kind.

“I,” she began, then “I,” again. No, that was wrong. “John,” she said. “John –”

“I know, babe. Me too.” He smiled and shook his head, as much as the strap allowed. “I never stopped.”

“I thought I had.” Her hand gripped his. “I didn’t, though.”

A tapping sound; she looked up, saw the Red Man’s blade rapping lightly on the frame of the chair. The white mask stared down at her; John tried in vain to crane his head up and see it too.

The Red Man moved round to face both of them. “You must listen now,” he said. “You will both need your courage, and your strength.” He looked from John to her. “I cannot say which of you will need it more. It will be hard – it will be terrible – for you both.”

“Jesus,” said John, “go ahead and sell it to us, why don’t you, mate?”

Alice blinked. For an instant she was sure she’d seen the mask’s lips turn fractionally up at the corners in some approximation of a smile.

“You will both be in great danger,” said the Red Man. “But if you can endure, I will help you all I can. Then, with luck, you may both survive this night.”

“If,” said Alice. “May.”

The Red Man inclined his head. “I have told you – my will is not my own in this. None of this is, or has been, by my desire or choice.”

“Only obeying orders,” said John. “Heard that one before.”

“You do not understand,” said the Red Man. “But if you live, you will. Now listen, for time is short.”

Alice looked at John, squeezed his hand again. “Okay,” she said. “Go on.”

“Perihelion approaches,” said the Red Man. “You understand the term?”

“Halloween,” said John.

“There are times and places,” said the Red Man, “at which the Fire, in one form or another, is close to this world, so close it takes little effort to reach. This is one such time; that is why it was once an occasion for worship and sacrifice. The Veil between the Worlds is easily parted tonight, and the flame revealed.” The mask turned towards Alice. “And when it is, you must step into it.”

“What?”

“I will be with you,” said the Red Man, “And I will be your guide.”

“Oh, shit,” said John. They both looked at him. “And I’m the poor bastard who’s got to open the way, right?”

The Red Man inclined his head. “I am sorry.”

“Wait a sec,” said Alice, suddenly angry. “You can’t do that – not with John. It’s got to be – got to be my child or something.”

The Red Man shook his head. “Arodias Thorne knew much, but not everything. For this he can hardly be blamed. The books he followed, after all, were only written by men, no matter what they had witnessed, no matter what inspired them. Ties of blood are unimportant. All that matters is the correct sacrifice at the correct time.”

Remembering the Confession, Alice felt sick. “Then everything he did to Mary Carson...”

“Unnecessary,” the Red Man said. “Although it doubtless gratified him in some way.” Again, Alice was sure she heard something like bitterness in his voice. “Before you say it, yes: John must be embraced by the Moloch Device in order to part the Veil.”

“No –”

“Listen to me. There is something that must be corrected, and that can only be done by entering the Fire Beyond. I cannot do it alone, else I would. When you have done what must be done, I will bring you back. As long as John is still alive, there will be hope for him.” The Red Man pointed to the waters of the Collarmill Spring. “I will help you heal him, and then you are released.”

“How can I trust you?”

“I cannot answer that. I could say that I have saved your life, but –”

“You did it for this,” said John.

“Yes. I can only give you my word, and tell you that it has never been broken.”

“And if we refuse, we die.”

“Yes. I will be compelled to.”

Alice swallowed hard, looked at John. Die for certain, or risk what might be worse? At last, she nodded; a moment later, he nodded back.

“Okay,” she said, and stood. “What do I need to do?”

“For now, only wait.” The white mask turned to contemplate John. “His task comes first.”

John took a deep, shuddering breath. Almost gently, the Red Man touched his shoulder. “Are you ready?”

“No. Yes. Fuck. I’m as ready as I’m ever gonna be.” John gritted his teeth; his bound hands balled into fists. “Do it.”

The Red Man motioned to Alice. “You must.”

“Oh God.”

“Do it,” John said again.

Her hands shook as they grasped the lever, then pulled. At first she thought it wouldn’t move, that it was rusted into place and that the whole horrible contraption was dead, broken beyond repair, just an ugly relic of Arodias Thorne’s cruelty and madness, but then it shifted, with a gritting, grinding sound. With a dull, solid clunk, it slotted into place.

Cogs and gears ground. Below the chair, the machinery of the Device stirred and moved.

“Don’t look,” said John. “I can handle it if you don’t look.”

“Look instead at the spring,” said the Red Man. He came to Alice’s side; his hand rested on her shoulder. “It will not take long.”

“Depends on your point of view,” she said. She could hear John breathing harshly through his teeth.

“You are thinking of the boy Mary Carson saw die in this chair,” the Red Man told her. “Do not. That was a long way from perihelion, and Arodias Thorne had nearly fourteen years after that to perfect the efficiency of this device. It parted the Veil in minutes when he put her child in there.” He bowed his head, as if in shame. “But there was no-one here to stop the Device once its work was begun.”

She heard the sound of other parts moving now, as the Moloch Device’s battery of implements were set in motion and went to work. John grunted and growled through his teeth.

“Watch,” the Red Man said again. “Be ready – when the Veil parts, we go through. If you care for him, every moment is precious now.”

The water bubbled and trickled.

John screamed. A sob burst from Alice’s throat.

“Watch!”

She wiped her eyes, focused. John screamed again, and again, and the Moloch Device’s cogs and gears ground on.

How long now? How long? What if it didn’t work? Arodias’ victims had only been children, but John was a grown man – wouldn’t he be more resistant to the pain, less ideal a subject?

As if in answer to the thought, another scream ripped the air behind her.

“Watch.”

The gears and cogs ground and the screams rang, on and on and on. This was Hell, this was how Hell would be, an eternity of this – except of course that there were worse torments, there had been the loss of Emily, there would have been (she forced herself in desperation to think it, to make this bearable) the torment if Emily, had she lived, had been in the chair instead of John. She tried to hold the image in her head, but it was too vile to stay and no imagining, however bad, could compete with the reality taking place behind her, the one she could only hear but had to fight not to turn around and face. It would go on forever, or at least until John was dead.

And then the waters of the Collarmill Spring burst into bright blue flame.

It was that same pale lambent glow she’d seen in the kitchen. It lit the inside of the cave, and she could see all the way to the back of it. It was small, Alice realised, reaching back no more than ten or twenty feet. From the stone face at the back of it, she saw the water gushing out, burning bright and flowing along the cave floor, flickering off the damp stone walls. As John screamed again, the flames brightened and intensified further, streaming upwards, until the spring, the chamber – and yes, even the screams from behind her – seemed to dim and fade, to became shadows and the breath of the wind.

The only real thing was that column of blue fire, and this, she realised, was what Arodias Thorne had sought his whole life, had perfected the Moloch Device in order to see. The Fire Beyond, close enough to touch, real enough to enter and to pass through, to whatever lay beyond. It had taken years – years, and how many children’s lives? Surely more than the ones Alice had seen. Maybe they were just the vanguard of a spectral, suffering army, united in their need for vengeance.

The Red Man stepped forward: at last, something almost as real as the fire. He held out a hand to her. “Quickly,” he said. “Now!”

Alice reached out and took his cold white hand. The blue flames flared brighter. Her gaze was drawn to them, and they seemed to grow and encompass her; so much so that she barely noticed when the Red Man strode forward and, drawing her after him, walked into the Fire Beyond.