five

The rising sun fanned its rays across the meadow, igniting the breeze-blown stalks of grass and burnishing the surface of the stream to a pale copper. Sandor’s face glowed with sweat. His brow was furrowed from the effort of dragging his wounded leg for over a kilometre across rough ground. But as he and Estelle stood there on the bank of the stream, arguing about their next move, he refused to act the victim. To her frustration, he also refused to acknowledge the importance of finding a place of refuge where he could rest and regain his strength. He was, to his core, a soldier and a tactician. And stubborn. As far as Sandor was concerned, their next move should be to return to Barbara Wallace’s house and force her to reveal what she knew. Perhaps there was some merit to the idea in theory – if they’d been carrying weapons and he was fully fit. But they weren’t, and he wasn’t.

He was also being irrational. Barbara Wallace’s soul shadow had advised them to seek help from a man in the village, Carl Henrison. Sandor’s instinctive hostility towards soul shadows had led him to dismiss this suggestion out of hand. His prejudice prevented him from seeing that it might just be their best hope.

Estelle had used all the arguments she could think of, and a few choice insults – she’d called him pigheaded and illogical – but he remained implacable. So Estelle took the only option left to her. It was unsporting, she knew it, but what choice did she have? She turned on her heel and began walking towards the village.

“Estelle!” Sandor shouted. “Come back here.”

“Try and stop me,” she called over her shoulder, knowing full well that, in his current condition, he didn’t have a hope.

“Where are you going?”

“To find Carl Henrison.”

“You’re going to trust the word of that monster-woman?”

“Yup!”

“I’m warning you, Es! This is a very bad idea.”

Estelle gambled that, whatever she meant to him personally (and that remained an open question), Sandor would never actually abandon her while he believed she was in danger. Glancing back, she observed with a mixture of relief and guilt that he had reluctantly begun hobbling after her. She slowed down enough to allow him to catch up a little, while taking care to remain just out of his physical reach. They followed a route to the south-west, roughly parallel to the main road, heading for the village through a field dotted with buttercups.

“I take back what I said before about wanting you in the army,” she heard him grumble. “This kind of insubordination would not be tolerated.”

“And who put you in charge?” challenged Estelle, secretly amused.

“You asked for my help, Es…” He paused, breathing heavily as he levered himself across a small ditch. “It’s my fault, of course,” he added. “I should have laid down the ground rules at the start. You want my help, then you have to do things my way.”

She stopped, angry now, and turned on him. “Sandor, I’m not a fourteen-year-old kid any more, so stop treating me like one! I called you because… because you’re the bravest and truest friend I have. I needed you, and you came, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am. But now you’re acting like I’m some private in your platoon. I’m your friend…” She came closer, wanting to reach out to him, but still fearful of how he might react. “I feel so guilty,” she said. “You’re supposed to be home on leave. I know you’ve had your own nightmares to deal with from your time in Afghanistan. You didn’t need this. And now… And now I sort of see it as my duty to get you out of here – to get us both out of here. We’re not fighting a battle. This isn’t warfare. It’s survival. Going back to that woman’s house and confronting her is not going to get us out of this.”

Tentatively, she touched his arm. He didn’t pull away, but after a long moment, he smiled. “You have grown up, haven’t you, Es?”

She gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. “Let’s go.”

Crossing a stile, they entered a field of green, unripe wheat, bordered by a heavily rutted track. They followed the track past the line of giant silver silos Estelle had glimpsed on her first morning at the cottage. By now, Sandor was panting with exhaustion, but he waved aside her suggestion that they stop and rest. They passed a barn and some storage sheds, but saw no one. Estelle’s plan was to try and avoid the main street of the village, where they might be spotted, and head straight for Carl Henrison’s house, if she could only find some local person who could give them directions.

The path eventually took them alongside some garages and then a garden behind a dilapidated stone house. A blonde lad of about seven was inside a wire mesh chicken house near the back of the garden, collecting eggs in a basket. Four or five chickens clucked and strutted around his feet.

“Morning,” Sandor called out to him.

The boy stared at them.

“Are your mum or dad about?” Estelle asked.

“They’re in bed,” said the boy shyly.

She smiled, trying to put him at his ease. “You don’t happen to know where Carl Henrison lives, do you? I’ve heard he has a house somewhere in this village.”

The boy shook his head. “I could ask my dad?”

“Ask me what?” came a gruff shout from the patio next to the house. A short, stout man stood there, still in his dressing gown and pyjamas, and just lighting his first cigarette of the day.

“Good morning to you,” said Sandor amiably. “We’re looking for Carl Henrison.”

The man frowned. “What do you want with him?”

Sandor looked quizzically at Estelle.

“We’re old friends,” she said quickly.

“If you’re old friends, you’ll know where he lives.” The man was slowly approaching them across his shabby, yellow lawn, his face creased with suspicion.

“We wanted to surprise him,” said Sandor. “We haven’t seen him in years.”

The man stopped when he reached the fence, and treated Sandor to a mean stare. He barely came up to Sandor’s chest, but he more than made up for it in girth. He turned to the boy. “Off you go now, son. Take those eggs inside and help your mum make us some breakfast.”

As the boy made his way back to the house, his father returned his gaze to Sandor, entirely ignoring Estelle. He leaned in close, so that his nose almost touched Sandor’s chin, and said under his breath: “I hope you don’t mind me being blunt with you mister, you bein’ a friend of his and all, but we don’t much like Carl Henrison around here. We don’t like the way he goes around stirrin’ up trouble about the Facility. What Carl Henrison fails to appreciate is that that place has been good for Delhaven. It employed a lot of people from the village during the construction, and it’s going to employ a lot more now that it’s built.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, keeping his eyes fastened on Sandor. “I’ll grant you, there were some accidents. A few people got hurt. And we’ve all heard the rumours about them things in the forest. But the people at the Facility have taken steps to make things safer, and the village has decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. Life’s been tough around here since the factory in Edgebourne closed. The village has been slowly dyin’. So when a new employer pitches up offering jobs, we’re not goin’ to give them the cold shoulder, understand me? We’re not going to make a fuss over a few accidents, or call in the press like Carl Henrison was threatening to do. We’re going to take them at their word.” The man nodded to himself, then turned away and began plodding back the way he came. Halfway up the garden, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Sandor. “You can tell Carl Henrison from me, Jack Hollins, that he’s not welcome here. If he stays, I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”

“Where can we find him, so we can pass on your message?” asked Sandor.

“Church Street, third house on the left,” said the man as he trudged back towards the house.

Staring down at them from an upstairs window was a woman Estelle recognised from the previous afternoon: Mrs Hollins, the woman in the Facility canteen.

“Looks like you were right, Es,” murmured Sandor. “Henrison sounds like our man.”

He peered down the lane. “I guess this eventually joins with the village high street. From there, we should be able to find the church and, presumably, Church Street.”

“We’ll be quite exposed,” said Estelle.

Sandor shrugged. “I can’t see we’ve got a lot of choice.”

They continued past several more houses before reaching a junction with the high street. On the far side of the road, past a small grassy traffic island with a signpost perched on its summit, stood a church. It had an uncared-for look, with its steep, mossy roof, black, arched windows and weathered old gravestones in its yard, many of them stunted and tilting at odd angles, as if gradually sinking into the long grass. To the right of the church, almost opposite to where Estelle and Sandor were standing, was a narrow road lined with brick-terraced dwellings. A small sign near the corner of the road confirmed that it was Church Street.

Sandor swiftly grabbed Estelle’s elbow and pulled her behind a low wall. “What is it?” she whispered.

“I saw a couple of those blackshirts further up the street.” He nodded to his right.

“Blackshirts?”

“You know, those guards in charge of security at the Facility. They must be searching for us.”

“How will we get across the road?”

Sandor peered out from their hiding place. “We’ll have to wait for them to move on.”

He kept lookout for a further two minutes, then gave her the signal to run for it. She dashed across the road, stopping at the far corner. Visibility was better from this side. After a quick look up the now empty high street, she beckoned for him to join her. Sandor hobbled across as fast as he could.

The third house on the left was not unlike its immediate neighbours with its blue door, single lower-storey window and two upper-storey windows – but there the similarities ended. While the houses to either side boasted polished brass door-knockers and letter boxes on their shiny doors, and pretty window boxes beneath their sash windows, the third house on the left was a mess. Its dirty bricks had been crudely daubed with some words, no longer legible. The panes of the sash windows were all smashed, and the windows had been boarded up from the inside.

The sound of a vehicle in the high street diverted their attention from the house. Sandor limped across the road and planted himself at the corner. “It’s OK,” he called. “It’s just a van delivering newspapers.”

Estelle tried knocking on the dirty blue door. “Hello-oo!” she called brightly. “Anyone at home?”

No answer came.

Then she noticed a button on the wall to her right, and below it a small speaker. She pushed the button and waited.

Again, no answer.

“Blackshirts approaching,” Sandor called in a low voice.

Estelle looked around for somewhere to hide. There were no convenient alleyways on the terraced street. She pushed the button again, as Sandor cast an exasperated glance in her direction.

Finally, the speaker next to the door crackled into life. “Yes? What do you want?” came a frail, well-spoken voice.

“Hello, is that Mr Henrison?”

“It might be,” came the wary reply.

“Mr Henrison, we desperately need your help. Can you let us in please?”

“Who the devil are you?” The voice quivered with fear and distrust.

“We’re… we’re refugees” – it was a word she’d often heard on the news, and it seemed to fit their circumstances – “… from the forest. We’re being hunted by people from the Facility. We were told you could help us.” She looked briefly at Sandor, who was frantically signalling at her.

“Look, I’m sick and tired of your games, you people,” said the voice. “I just want to be left in peace, alright?”

“They’re going to be here any second!” cried Sandor in a hoarse whisper. “Tell him about Barbara’s soul shadow.”

“We met the soul shadow of Barbara Wallace,” shouted Estelle, unable to keep the panic out of her voice.

This elicited a short, surprised exclamation, then: “Nonsense. She must be dead by now.”

“She is. But she… she told us about you before she died. We rescued her from the real Barbara’s house.”

“You rescued her?” The voice now seemed full of wonder.

“Let us in, Mr Henrison. Please!”

She heard footsteps approaching the corner of the street. At the same moment, there came a sound, behind the door, of latches being drawn back – at least three of them, and keys being turned in locks.

Estelle signalled to Sandor, and he began lurching back across the street, his face pale with anxiety.

The door opened a crack and Sandor shoved it back further and bundled Estelle over the threshold. He followed her in and slammed the door.

They were in a very dark corridor. The place smelled of unwashed laundry, pizza and cats.

“I say, how dare you barge your way in like this!” cried the frail voice from somewhere below her. She could just about make out a narrow, foxy face at about the level of her waist.

Was it a man or an animal?

His eyes seemed big and shiny – until she realised they were a pair of round-lensed glasses, and he looked small because he was in a wheelchair.

“I’m afraid there are a couple of black-shirted security guys coming,” Sandor warned him.

“Oh-hh dear,” quailed Carl Henrison. “Quick, in there both of you.”

Estelle felt a pair of bony hands pushing her through a doorway. Thin, dusty shafts of morning light shone through knotholes in the wooden boards covering the window. They left most of the room in shadow, but illuminated enough to show that Mr Henrison lived in pretty dismal conditions. The only furniture was an armchair positioned near the fireplace and a battered old television in the corner. The chair’s fabric had split in several places, exposing the internal padding. Beneath the pizza cartons and soft-drink cans that littered the floor was a threadbare rug. From the far side of the room, a cat gaped at them, then went back to licking at a smudge of sauce on one of the cartons. Unlike Barbara Wallace’s sleepy, pampered feline, this was a thin, lank-haired, nervous-looking creature.

There came a loud knocking at the door. Estelle jumped. She sidled into the shadows, closer to where Sandor was standing, taking care not to trip on a carton. She felt better, as always, standing close to Sandor. A small sizzle of electricity ran through her as his hand closed around hers. He still liked her! Even after she’d forced him into following her plan, and after their little row on the meadow. She allowed her body to rest lightly against his.

That’s all right, isn’t it? If we can hold hands, we can also lean against each other. It doesn’t mean anything.

“Go away and leave me in peace,” she heard Carl pleading through the front door.

“Open up please,” came a calm, authoritative voice.

“What do you want from me?”

“We’re from Securicus, Mr Henrison. We believe two people we wish to question may have entered your property.”

“There’s no one here,” shouted Carl. “No one ever comes in here. You must be mistaken.”

“You have nothing to fear, Mr Henrison. We only wish to talk with them.”

“Like you wanted to talk with me the other week, and I ended up with two broken legs.”

Estelle shivered on hearing this. She pressed herself more deeply into the shadowy corner, pulling Sandor with her. Unfortunately, this caused him to fall backwards into a bookcase. An avalanche of heavy books thumped and clattered to the floor. The noise was tremendous. Her heart stopped. She squeezed his hand so tightly, she heard him moan.

“There are people in your front room,” said another voice. One of the knotholes at the window went dark, and Estelle could almost see an eye peering through.

“That’s uh… Fraser, my cat,” said Carl.

There was another pause. Then the original voice returned, no longer bothering with its veneer of politeness: “OK, Henrison. But if we find out you’ve been lying to us, we’ll make sure you never walk again. Understood?”

Footsteps slowly receded up the street. After a moment, Carl appeared in the doorway. His head was mostly bald, with some gingery tufts above his ears and some more growing in an uneven goatee beneath a long, pointed nose. He was ghostly pale and his hands, resting on the push-rims of his wheelchair, were shaking.

In this man were rested all their hopes of salvation!

“They’re going to kill me,” Carl Henrison observed, staring at the cold ashes in his fireplace. “This time, they’re really going to kill me.”

“We’ll leave,” said Sandor, moving past him into the narrow entrance hall. Estelle followed.

“No!” said Carl. He turned himself about and looked up at them. Behind the thick round lenses of his spectacles, Estelle saw the fear in his green eyes, but also a desperate kind of excitement. “You may be able to help,” he said in his high, quavering voice. “They’ve cornered me, you see? Like a rat in a hole.” He tapped his legs. “I can’t escape. They’ve cut off my phone and internet access. No one outside the village knows I’m here. One of these nights, they’re going to come in here and kill me.” He looked at Estelle. “But you, young lady. You’ve still got your legs. You could make a run for it. Head for Little Darrow or North Dene, even Edgebourne. Get word out to the newspapers, the police.” His hands were shaking more than before, but his cheeks had become flushed. His eyes were feverish.

“Estelle isn’t going anywhere,” Sandor calmly asserted. “The streets are crawling with blackshirts. There’s a checkpoint at the northern end of the village, and I’m sure they’ve got them at every other exit. Besides, why do we need to go elsewhere? There must be someone in this village you can trust. Someone with a phone, who can –”

Carl shook his head. “The Facility owns Delhaven. They’ve bought its soul.”

Sandor stared at him disbelievingly. “And you? How come you’re different? How come they want to kill you? Who, in fact, are you?”

Carl didn’t reply, only wheeled himself further down the corridor towards the back of the house. He beckoned to them, and they followed him into a kitchen-dining area. The kitchen units and surfaces were stained with ancient grime. Only the coffee stains on the table, and the water in the cat’s bowl, looked reasonably fresh.

“Well, if you don’t believe you can escape from here, young lady, you and your boyfriend may as well make yourselves comfortable.”

Estelle blushed. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Really? I think you’d make a handsome couple.”

She rolled her eyes at Sandor as if to say, “Is this guy nuts, or what?” Sandor only smiled, though whether his amusement was due to the nuttiness of Carl Henrison or the notion that he and Estelle could ever be a couple, she couldn’t be sure.

“I doubt we have more than a few hours’ grace before they come back here in force,” said Carl. He pointed to Sandor’s blood-stained jeans. “That, sir, needs seeing to. Young lady, there are fresh bandages and antiseptic in the bathroom. Meanwhile, I shall sort you out some breakfast.”

Carl manoeuvred himself around the kitchen, opening cupboards and extracting bowls, spoons and cereal boxes. Estelle was relieved to observe that he seemed calmer, now that he had practical concerns like breakfast on his mind – or perhaps he was just resigned to his fate. She went into the bathroom. It wasn’t too bad compared to the rest of the house, if you ignored the stains in the bath and the nasty-smelling pile of laundry in the corner. In a cupboard above the sink, she found what she needed, then returned to the kitchen, where Sandor already had his jeans off and leg up on a chair. The original bandage was dirty and heavily stained with blood. She carefully unwrapped it and was pleased to see that, although the wound was bleeding again, the flesh around it looked a normal colour. She knew what to do this time, and got to work boiling up some water in one of Carl’s unused saucepans, then mixing the antiseptic with water.

Meanwhile, the men ate their dry rice munchies and slurped black coffee – Carl’s hospitality did not extend to milk – and Carl told his tale.

“You may find it hard to credit, looking at me now,” he began, “but I was once a respected physicist, a University Research Fellow of the Royal Society and a professor at the University of Edgebourne. For ten years I worked with my colleagues Barbara Wallace and Robert Mitchell, researching new forms of radiation, with the aim of improving medical radiography. One of the wavelengths we looked at lay between that of infrared and visible light, at around 790 nanometers or –”

“405 terahertz?” chipped in Estelle, as she carried a bowl of antiseptic mixture to the table.

Carl glanced up from his rice munchies. “How did you know?”

“Someone at the Facility told me. Although he claimed it was a natural thing, this weird light – that you discovered it in Delhaven Forest and then set up the Facility to research it. Are you telling me you created it artificially, in a laboratory?”

Carl nodded. A dreamy, almost nostalgic look had entered his eyes. “Those were exciting days. We were a real team back then, motivated only by the thrill of making new discoveries. The breakthrough occurred one day about three years ago. I was working in the lab late one evening, experimenting with different ways of refracting this light, when I chanced upon a particular chromatic aberration. I can’t claim credit for it – the truth is it was caused by a faulty lens. Anyway, I shone it on a lab rat and… out of the sawdust in the cage next to this rat, grew… a second rat.” He looked up at Estelle. “I suppose you already know that this particular light – this zeta radiation – produced the creatures that Mitchell later christened soul shadows.”

Estelle looked up from Sandor’s leg in time to observe a proud little smile forming on the man’s weasel-like face, and a cold fury descended over her. “You created those things,” she shouted. “It’s all your fault!”

“No!” Carl rebutted with even greater vehemence. “Whatever you may think, I am not responsible for what has happened. I did not create those demons in the wood. It is true that I agreed to move operations here, to Delhaven Forest, because of its remoteness. But it wasn’t because I thought our experiments were dangerous. It was because what we had discovered was so momentous, so revolutionary, I needed to be sure that we could continue our work in absolute secrecy. In those days, the Facility was little more than a few cabins in the wood, and the experiments took place inside the buildings. The zeta radiation was never allowed to leak into the woods. Our plan was to exploit this new technology to try to create spare organs for transplant. That, I assure you, was the limit of our ambitions. The first soul shadows – I hate that term, but I suppose we must use it – the first soul shadows were benign, fragile, short-lived creatures. But the further we went with our research and the more we refined our zeta ray transmitters, the stronger and more durable the soul shadows became. And with strength and durability came intelligence, and the desire inherent in all organisms: to adapt and survive. They found a way – somehow they discovered a means – of surviving in the absence of zeta rays, by sustaining themselves instead on human flesh…”

“Ow!” Sandor gave a yelp of pain as Estelle dabbed at his wound a little too aggressively.

“I’m sorry!” she cried. “It’s just… I can’t believe you people could be so irresponsible!”

Sandor, still flinching from the pain, turned to face Carl. “Yeah, so what exactly did you do, Carl, when you discovered you were breeding killers in your little cabin?”

Carl fiddled with his teaspoon. The pride he had displayed earlier had evaporated. “My colleagues, Mitchell and Wallace, were fascinated by the new, stronger soul shadows. I was fearful of them. I believed we were meddling with forces we didn’t understand and couldn’t control. We decided to go our separate ways. It was a perfectly amicable divorce. They continued with their work in the wood, while I transferred my base of operations to a lab at my Alma Mater in Edgebourne. It was all fine for a while. But then I heard they were building a permanent Facility, and there were rumours of trouble on the site. Radiation had apparently leaked into the forest and soul shadows had been seen there. There had been some accidents among the construction crew, all of them people from this village. I was horrified. I felt partly responsible and believed it was my duty to do something. First I tried talking to Mitchell and Wallace, but they didn’t return my calls and emails. So I called a village meeting. I urged them to campaign to have the Facility shut down. The denizens of Delhaven weren’t interested. They’d been promised jobs at the Facility, and received assurances that things would be safer from now on. Of course I knew that these assurances were worthless. Mitchell and Wallace had no idea how to control the soul shadows once they’d got out of the lab. I threatened to go public with the story, which is when I started facing harassment from the villagers – smashed windows, excrement through the letter box, obscene messages – really charming stuff! Even worse were the black-shirted thugs hired by Mitchell and Wallace. They cut off my phone and internet, smashed my mobile, beat me up. I became frightened to go out – stopped going to the lab, or even the local shop… And this is how you find me today, my friends: wheelchair-bound, cut off from the world, surviving on takeaway pizza.”

He pursed his lips in an expression of resignation. “I believe we’ve reached the endgame now, though. They’re going to come for me soon, maybe even tonight – they’ll come for you two also – and they intend to finish the job.”

Estelle had now cleaned the wound and applied a fresh dressing. While she helped Sandor put his jeans back on, Carl wheeled himself out of the room. He returned a minute later with a pair of crutches, which he offered to Sandor. “I have another pair,” he assured him. “These’ll help you keep the weight off that leg.”

“Thanks.”

Carl moved back into the corridor. “Follow me, my friends,” he said. “I have a secret I want to show you, which Mitchell, Wallace and the boys in black know nothing about. It’s a forlorn hope, maybe, but it might just prove our salvation.” Estelle and Sandor followed him out. They watched as he leaned forward and pushed open a door beneath the staircase. Behind it lay a small cupboard containing a broom, a mop and a few other cleaning implements. Carl backed himself into the cupboard and applied his brakes.

“Why have you gone in there?” Estelle asked, fearing that their host might just have lost his final toe-hold on reality. He didn’t reply, just made an odd sucking sound with his lips. A moment later, Fraser emerged from the front room and hopped onto his master’s lap.

“You expect us to hide in there with you?” wondered Sandor.

Carl ignored him and pushed a button in the wall next to him. A hissing sound followed, and the section of floor he was parked on, along with the wheelchair, Fraser and Carl himself, began descending slowly out of sight. Carl’s voice called up to them: “I’ll send it back up for you.”

The platform soon returned, and Estelle stepped onto it, crouching slightly in the confined space. She pushed the button and began her own descent, smiling at the bemused Sandor and blowing him a cheeky kiss as she disappeared through the floor. The platform, which turned out to be supported by a hydraulically powered metal pole, landed in a brick-walled Victorian basement, filled with very modern-looking, high-tech equipment.

Carl pressed another button and the platform began to rise once more to pick up Sandor. Estelle recognised some of the equipment from the lab Derek had shown her at the Facility. She was relieved that Carl did not share Derek’s tendency to want to explain how everything worked. In fact, he didn’t say a word, merely waited for Sandor to arrive, then led them through the mess of boxes, cables and precarious metal stands to an arch-shaped opening at the far end. To Estelle’s surprise, this turned out to be the entrance to a dim, narrow brick-lined passage.

“This is still the basement to your house?” asked Sandor, sounding similarly amazed.

“Not strictly,” said Carl over his shoulder as he led the way along the underground passage. “I discovered it not long after buying this house. It connects to… well, you’ll see.”

He pushed open another door at the far end and entered a spacious yet low-ceilinged room of stone walls, pillars and arches.

“We must be in the crypt of that church across the road!” exclaimed Sandor.

“Clever boy!” applauded Carl. “Strictly speaking, we’re in a disused annex of the crypt – one that, luckily for me, has been forgotten about for at least a generation. The door to this room was inadvertently concealed by a poorly placed tomb in the main crypt, and, as far as I know, the current vicar has no idea the room exists.”

Estelle turned to ask Carl something and was astonished to find him out of his wheelchair. He walked towards her, beaming. “Surprised, my dear?”

Sandor nearly dropped his crutches when he saw him. Then his gape of surprise turned to anger. “What sort of game are you playing with us, Henrison? Why did you lie about the broken legs?”

“I didn’t,” said Carl, though strangely his lips didn’t move.

At that moment, another Carl emerged from behind a pillar, this time in his wheelchair. “I’m so sorry!” he sniggered. “I don’t get many visitors, and I’ve been dying to play that trick.” He gestured to the other, standing Carl. “May I introduce the other Professor Carl Henrison, or, as I call him, Shadow-Carl.”

Shadow-Carl bowed graciously.

“He created me in his laboratory,” said Shadow-Carl, “and this is where I live, sustained by the zeta radiation in this room.”

For the first time, Estelle became aware of the now familiar yellow tinge to the light, only this had a warmer tone than the pallid glow of the forest. She eyed her own faint shadow nervously.

“It’s alright, my dear,” Carl reassured her. “The light in this room is sustaining, but not reproductive. Your shadow will remain a normal shadow.”

“Is this one safe?” Sandor enquired, looking charily at Shadow-Carl.

“I’m perfectly safe,” Shadow-Carl replied, without a hint of indignation. “The focus of Carl’s work since he established his laboratory here has been to make the soul shadows strong, while retaining our original benign natures.”

“Have you created others?” Estelle asked Carl.

He shook his head. “I worked by myself, so I didn’t have access to other progenitors – people, in other words. And I couldn’t create multiple copies of myself. This form of zeta radiation – I call it zeta-pro – is so powerful, it’s dangerous to expose people to more than one dose.”

“There was someone else, though, wasn’t there?” said Shadow-Carl. “I wish we knew what happened to her.”

Original Carl sighed. “That’s a sad story. I’m afraid she’s dead.”

“Oh, too bad!” said Shadow-Carl. He went and sat down by a pillar. Estelle thought he looked lonely, bereft almost. Fraser suddenly appeared from somewhere and nestled next to his legs. Meanwhile, a second Fraser was contentedly rubbing his back against another pillar, close to original Carl.

“I gave you a copy of my cat though, didn’t I?” original Carl pointed out.

“I suppose,” conceded Shadow-Carl, idly stroking Fraser or Shadow-Fraser – there was no telling which one it was. “But you can’t talk to a cat. Tell me, how did Barbara die?”

“Wait!” Sandor interrupted. “Are we talking Barbara Wallace here? Is this the lady – the creature – we met?”

Carl nodded.

“Then would you please start from the beginning. How did you ever get to make a copy of that woman in the first place?”

“I didn’t,” said Carl. “I was out walking in the meadow – this was back in the days when I still went out from time to time. I found her there, Shadow-Barbara. She was dying. She’d strayed too far from the forest and suffered exposure to the sun. I took her back to my lab and revived her with a dose of my benign zeta-pro radiation. She recovered, and at the same time acquired a very pleasant nature. She and Shadow-Carl got along very well, didn’t you?”

Shadow-Carl nodded ruefully.

“Far better than your progenitors ever did, at any rate… Naively, I decided to show her to her original. I set up a meeting with Barbara Wallace and took Shadow-Barbara to her house. I wanted to show her what could be achieved with my new zeta-pro radiation. Barbara seemed impressed. She gave me tea, but it must have been drugged. I woke up the next day in the street outside my house. I don’t know what happened to Shadow-Barbara. But you two told me you rescued her from Barbara’s house?”

Sandor and Estelle exchanged glances. Estelle crouched down next to Shadow-Carl and touched his shoulder. “She was a lovely lady,” she said gently. “She died very bravely… saving us, in fact.”

There came a strident banging from upstairs.

“They’ve arrived,” said original Carl, suddenly going pale. Estelle noticed with alarm that his hands were shaking again.

“What’s the plan?” asked Sandor.

“Plan?” asked Carl, who seemed to have aged ten years in a matter of seconds.

“You said you had some secret that might help us defend ourselves.”

“Did I?”

The thump of distant footsteps could now be heard.

“Ah yes! We must make shadows of you two, and fast! We can use them as decoys.”

“Shadows? Of us?” Sandor didn’t look at all comfortable with the idea.

“It’s a good plan,” Estelle said. “You’ve seen Shadow-Carl. He’s harmless.”

Sandor still didn’t look sure.

“Follow me!” said Carl, wheeling himself back up the passage that led to his basement lab. “They’re bound to find us soon, so we haven’t much time.”

In the laboratory, they were directly beneath his house, and the sound of footsteps above was frighteningly loud. They could also hear clattering and smashing sounds as if the place was being violently ransacked.

Sweat was now pouring down Carl’s face as he led them to the back of his lab. A tall object stood there. It looked like a large shower-unit, with frosted glass walls. “This is my shadow-maker,” he said in a trembly voice. “In you go, young man. Quickly now.” Hesitantly, Sandor slid open one of the glass panels and, with a final, nervous glance at Estelle, hitched himself awkwardly into the unit. The door closed behind him. Meanwhile, Carl positioned himself at a nearby control panel and began pressing buttons. “We won’t have time to create a detailed copy,” he said. “He’ll lack your mannerisms, your self-awareness, and his vocabulary will be… basic. But it should hopefully be sufficient to fool those brutes.”

The unit began to glow with a yellow light. Estelle crossed her arms and her fingers. Next to her, Carl was a blur of feverish activity at the control panel, pushing levers, adjusting dials and studying displays of flickering figures. Upstairs the noisy mayhem continued. She didn’t imagine there could be much left to destroy.

Eventually, she heard a small hissing sound and the glow faded from the unit. The door opened and out limped Sandor… followed by another Sandor.

Estelle ran to the first one, ready to embrace him, but then stopped. “Which one are you?” she asked him.

His face broke into a grin. “I’m the original.” And then he frowned. “At least I think I am.”

Carl looked up distractedly and nodded. “Yes, yes, you’re the original. If you were the shadow, the wound would be on your right leg.”

Sandor looked at his leg, and his smile returned. He turned to his double and grasped his hand. “Very pleased to meet you… me… whatever!”

“I’m… I’m Sandor Watts,” the other Sandor muttered.

“Welcome!” cried Carl. “Happy birthday! Let’s all have a party!” His face looked like it might explode with tension. “We haven’t any time left people! We have to be quick! Now you, Shadow-Sandor, go down that corridor into the Sustaining Room, before you get sick.” He pointed to the door that led to the crypt. Then he turned to Estelle. “You, young lady, step inside the shadow-maker.”

Estelle stepped in and closed the door. A thick, glowing yellow fog swiftly enveloped her. She thought she might choke, but found she could breathe normally. It may have looked like gas, but it was actually just a very intense kind of light. It wasn’t entirely inert, however. She felt its effect very faintly as a kind of pulling against her skin and even deeper than that, as if something – some essence – was being studied, copied, drawn out. It wasn’t unpleasant, just slightly disconcerting. And it was over very quickly. As the strange light faded, she saw, standing next to her, herself. She held out her hand to it. “Pleased to meet you, Estelle.”

Her double stared at her hand and then tentatively raised her own and shook it. “Pleased to meet you, too… Estelle.”

Shadow-Estelle was identical to Estelle in every way. Looking at her was like looking at her reflection in a mirror, except that this reflection didn’t move when she did.

When she stepped out of the unit, followed by her double, she saw Sandor and Carl staring at a monitor on the far side of the lab. Sandor looked bleak, while Carl looked demented with anxiety. He was pulling at the reddish tufts of hair on the sides of his head and moaning. “I don’t believe it. Oh, calamity! Disaster!”

Estelle quickly told her double to head for the Sustaining Room, then raced over to join Sandor and Carl.

“What is it?” she asked.

Sandor pointed at the screen. It showed flickery images of the front room upstairs. “This is live footage,” he explained. “Carl installed CCTV cameras in each of his rooms.”

The boarded-up window had been smashed inwards, its shattered remains spread across the floor, along with Carl’s takeaway rubbish. The television and armchair had been pulled apart, their broken carcasses and innards adding to the mess.

“I’m so sorry,” she said to Carl, placing a hand on his shoulder.

He looked up at her, frowning. “Sorry? For that? I don’t care too hoots about that. They can trash the whole house for all I care. What concerns me is who’s doing the trashing.”

The screen changed to show the kitchen, and there, for the first time, Estelle caught sight of one of the perpetrators of the destruction. It was a black-shirted soldier who was in the process of ripping a cupboard door from its hinges. But he was moving strangely, his limbs warping as if without bones. He turned slowly towards the camera, and Estelle leapt backwards, her hand clamped to her mouth, as she caught sight of the man’s eyes and teeth.

“He’s a soul shadow!” she cried. “They’re using soul shadows!”

“Those criminals!” screamed Carl. “Those gangsters! They’ve found some means of controlling the creatures, and now they’re using them to inflict destruction and – I’ve no doubt of it – murder!”

“We can still carry out our plan though, can’t we?” Sandor urged. “We can send the decoys up there. The real blackshirts must be waiting outside the house, and they’ll nab them, thinking they’re us. Then we can make our escape.”

Carl shook his head. “I’m not sure. They must have filled the upstairs with the bad type of zeta radiation. If our doubles are exposed to it, they may turn bad, too. And they’ll lead them all down here.”

Then an idea struck Estelle. “What about escaping through the back way? You said there was a forgotten door to the main crypt. We could get out through the church.”

Again Carl shook his head. “I told you, it’s blocked by that tomb. The space is too narrow. We could never get out.”

Estelle was getting a little tired of his defeatism. “Let’s just try, shall we?” She strode out of the lab and into the corridor, pleased to hear the clatter of crutches and squeak of the wheelchair behind her. In the Sustaining Room she spotted the three shadow creatures sitting facing each other on the floor. Shadow-Carl was saying something, but all three looked up when she entered. She smiled at them, hoping inwardly that the door did turn out to be accessible and these kindly creatures wouldn’t have to be sacrificed.

Carl raised a curtain at the back of the room to reveal a low, oaken door with a big rusty key in the lock. With some effort, he turned the key and pushed open the door. It creaked open no more than thirty centimetres before hitting a large stone surface. Estelle peered through. Sandor joined her.

“There’s no way we’d get through there,” he said bleakly.

“I could,” said Estelle, and before anyone could say another word, she squeezed herself through the gap. It was bone-crushingly tight between the stone monument and the wall behind, but within a few seconds she had wriggled herself through it and was standing in the main crypt. She stared triumphantly back at Sandor, but he just shook his head sadly.

“I can’t get through there, and I can’t let you go alone,” he said. “We have to stick together. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

“It’s OK,” she assured him. “I can run to another village and get help. Anything’s better, surely, than staying down here, waiting to be captured and killed.”

“No!” said Sandor. “For once you have to listen to me, Es. The exits to this village are being watched, I’m sure of it. They’ll catch you.”

Estelle suddenly got impatient with him. “You don’t like me playing the hero, is that it? You want me to stay down here with you, so you can live up to your self-image – so that you can try and protect me in some final, pointless act of self-sacrifice!”

“No, that’s not it.” Sandor bit his lip. “It’s just… I’m scared that we’ll die not knowing what happened to each other.” She felt the intensity of his gaze and it surprised her. “If they get us, I want to be with you, Es. You see, I –”

“Wait!” shouted Carl, butting in just as Estelle thought Sandor might be about to say something very interesting indeed. “I’ve just had a crazy idea. If Estelle could break open that tomb, we might be able to make multiple soul shadows of the corpse. We could use these to help us fight the evil soul shadows upstairs!”

Sandor stared at him. “Make a soul shadow of a corpse? Would that work?”

“I don’t know,” spluttered Carl. “I’ve never tried it before. But there’s no reason why it shouldn’t!”