Chapter Three

The Ordeal of Juliet DeLore

Juliet snapped awake.

In panic, she clutched at the edge of the desk to make sure that it was still hard up against the door. Wildly, she looked around the storeroom, but nothing had changed. How the hell had she fallen asleep, knowing that Trevor was sitting on the other side of that door?

There was a scuffling sound from the other side.

Juliet clambered to her feet and braced one foot against the desk, raising the crowbar in readiness. Now she could hear sounds of exertion. A final scrape and clatter. Then low laughter.

“Trevor…”

“Did you enjoy your little snooze, my pet?”

“What are you doing?”

“I knew you were sleeping, you know. Could have bust in there any time I wanted. But I didn’t want to, did I? Got better things in mind.”

“You can’t keep me here for ever.”

“Wanna bet?”

Suddenly there was a crash against the door. Juliet cried out, bracing her foot harder against the desk-edge. Trevor began hammering at the door; repeated, methodical blows.

“I’ve told you, Trevor! You come in here and I’ll smash your head in.”

“Who…wants…to…come…in?” said Trevor, each word followed by another blow. His voice was muffled because he was speaking through gritted teeth. There were six nails in his mouth. The voice in his head had told him that Juliet was sleeping, and that he could proceed with the next stage of the plan. Quietly, he had slipped away, back into the supermarket, and found to his delight that the hardware section hadn’t vanished into the pit. He’d selected a hilly kitted-out toolbox with hammer and nails. Next, he had picked up half a dozen oak shelves; nice veneer, very tasteful. When he began to nail the second shelf across the door frame, Juliet suddenly realised what he was doing.

“Trevor, you miserable little…”

“Sticks and stones again, Juliet. My, if I’d only known how foul-mouthed you were when I first met you, I don’t think I would have let our association continue.”

Juliet lunged forward and slammed the crowbar against the door.

On the other side, Trevor flinched back—and then burst out laughing.

He continued with his task, nailing the shelves one by one across the door. He laughed again when Juliet began to yell at him from the storeroom, a barrage of anger fuelled by fear.

At last he dropped the hammer into the toolbox and backed away two steps to survey his handiwork.

“There, all neat and tidy.”

“Trevor, you shit!”

Good, said the voice in his head. Now, come. Night is here and I have things to show you.

Trevor suddenly realised that it had grown dark while he had been enjoying himself; he just hadn’t noticed. Like when he’d been a kid, playing outside, and suddenly he’d hear his mother calling that it was time to come in and—look at that!—it had turned into evening and he’d never even seen it coming.

“Got to go for a while, Juliet. Now, you be good. Tell you what. Why don’t you see if you can break out of there with the crowbar? Bet you can’t.”

Smiling, Trevor descended the stairs, making no attempt this time to mask the crunching of broken glass and debris underfoot. Immediately there was a banging on the storeroom door. Frenzied and repeated. He chuckled at the sounds of Juliet’s cries of effort, feeling as if something in his head that had been hidden for a long time was now free and unrestrained. Idly kicking tins from his path, Trevor made his way to the bread section, and the ragged cliff-edge of the chasm beyond.

The grey had become black. This time, standing on the edge, he did not feel the giddiness previously caused by those impenetrable depths. Instead, there was just a black void; and somewhere down there, the Voice calling to him. It was as if the world ended here. It was a good feeling. Trevor felt that he’d reached an important point in his life. The destruction, the earthquake, whatever; it was all the doing of the Voice, and it was an end to his old life. In that black void below there were limitless possibilities. He could feel it with a real sense of elation.

Do you know how easily I could have taken you? The Voice seemed very near, even though Trevor knew instinctively that it was also a long way down, at the bottom of the chasm. How easily I have taken others, since the First Day? The Voice went on. Trevor nodded.

“Did you see the way I took care of that little shit from Central Office?”

I did, Trevor. That’s why I’m able to talk to you. That’s why I haven’t taken you, the way I’ve taken the others. Because you’re very special. You have great and hidden talents inside. You’ve just never had a chance to develop them, to use them. Use those talents now, Trevor. Give me pleasure in the bitch’s torment. Be creative.

“Please…can I see you?”

There was silence now, and Trevor worried that he’d spoiled everything.

“I can hear you,” he went on, now unsure. “It’s just that…I need to see your face.”

I have many faces, Trevor. Which face is it you want to see?

Trevor struggled to respond, not understanding.

There was laughter in his head. A dry, brittle, crackling sound.

“There’s something about your voice. Something deep down, inside my head. Something vaguely…”

Familiar?

“Yeah, familiar. I can’t explain. Don’t really understand.”

You don’t need to understand, Trevor. But you do want to see? You want to look on my faces?

“Yes…”

The Voice didn’t respond, but Trevor was aware of movement. Again, even though he knew that the Voice was physically deep in the pit, it was still also very close inside his head. Even now, the Voice was catapulting up the nearside of the Chasm like a speeding elevator. Gathering speed as it came, racing up the ragged cliff-face; swarming up over ragged fissures of stone and clay.

Trevor stood trembling on the cliff-edge, knowing that something great was about to happen; something that he had been waiting for all his life. As the Voice came swarming up towards him from the pit like a racing black cloud, he could feel a door opening inside his head. He’d never been able to fully open the door. Sometimes it had opened a crack. Once, when he was ten years old, and for no reason at all he’d shoved a kid into the canal. He still remembered the thrashing of water, and then the stillness with only the fishing rod floating on the surface. And then the door opening a little again when he’d overheard his father reading out the item in the newspaper about the local child who’d drowned. Again, when he was fifteen, the girl in the park. The door edging open again when he’d seen the Identikit picture depicting a face that was absolutely nothing like him at all. There had been many other occasions over the years, but the door would only open so far and no more. At last, with the Darkness below almost out of the pit, he could feel the door opening wide to the wall. At last, he would find the real Trevor Blake, the Trevor who’d struggled to be free all these years.

He felt the cliff-edge tremble, but he did not stagger back, stricken with vertigo as before. He knew that the Voice was here at last, just below the ragged rim; now flowing up all around the edge, like…like…

“Treacle!” giggled Trevor, and remembered joyfully how he’d poured a tin of the stuff over his two-year-old sister’s head, then blamed his four-year-old brother when his parents had come back from the pub. Sister and brother had been slapped about until they were black and blue. (Black from the treacle and blue with the bruises, laughed Trevor inside.) And he’d just sat watching the television (A black-and-white movie!), smiling while the screams had come from the bedroom.

“They had to shave her head, you know,” said Trevor.

I know, said the Voice. And Trevor could feel it pooling around his feet. It spread thick and fast in the darkness. Trevor could hear cereal packets and tins and loaves of bread falling from shelves as the blackness slithered into the supermarket all around him, surveying the remains of the building and making its plans.

The Door was open in his head now.

For the first time, he could be himself.

“Your face,” croaked Trevor. “Your faces. You said I could see.”

First, said the Voice, know our name.

“Yes…yes…”

I…we…have called ourselves…

“Yes? Oh, please, yes.”

The Vorla, said the Voice. But this time when it spoke, it spoke with a hungry voice. Say it. Say my name.

“Vorla,” said Trevor. “Your name is the Vorla.”

Now see my faces, it said.

And a great ebony tidal wave, darker than the night, suddenly reared up over the cliff-edge in front of Trevor. It glinted black in the darkness, the spreading waves of black which had flowed around his legs and beyond also swirling and rising behind to cocoon Trevor in a rising black funnel, of which he was the centre.

The Door was well and truly open.

The Darkness had found him, had shown him what he really was; the person he’d been fighting to find, ever since he was a kid.

The real Trevor Blake flung wide his arms to embrace the glinting black mass that surrounded him. It shimmered like liquid velvet before his face. But it did not descend, did not roar down upon him like a tidal wave. Trevor trembled, waiting for the moment that would transform him, would make sense of all those dark dreams and hideous deeds. 

The Vorla engulfed him.