Chapter Twenty-Three
The Truth
Gordon, Alex and Annie shuffled and paced in the garden, watching the day grow lighter and trying to think of something to say to each other that might make some kind of difference, or give some kind of general comfort. No words of comfort would come, and the fact that the answers to what had happened to them all might even now be coming out of the thing that had once been Trevor Blake was adding to their agitation. Annie had checked the generators. There would be no problem, and she was going to leave the back floodlights burning all the time, given the nature of their prisoner in the extension. Lisa was still holding the boy, casting anxious glances out at them from the back garden door of the boarding house. Damon was leaning against the back wall, still nursing his hangover and pretending that nothing he’d seen or heard that morning had anything to do with him. Alex moved back to the burned patch, where the small part of the Vorla had evaporated, and began pushing at the shrivelled grass with the toe of one shoe. He thought again of what had happened in the mini-mart, and of seeing what seemed to be the son they’d lost. Candy had retreated to the bottle and hadn’t been able to discuss it with him any more. But he knew that despite the alcohol she was pouring into herself, she couldn’t help but think about it. Neither could he. But what was the point of playing and replaying the events of that night in their heads, over and over? There was no answer.
But now there might be answers. Answers to everything.
From the mouth of the thing that had once been Trevor Blake.
“Al…Alex.”
He looked back at Gordon, and at his troubled expression.
“It’ll be okay,” he said, walking slowly back to him. “If they need us, they’ll yell.”
“No,” said Gordon. “Not that.”
“We’re all under strain, Gordon. Everything that’s happened…”
“No!” Gordon struggled to find words. “Want…Alex…”
“Okay. Do it slowly.”
“Tell…tell you…something.”
“All right, I’m listening.”
Alex watched Gordon struggling to find the words. He looked as if he might begin to weep.
Alex raised a hand, almost put it on his shoulder.
Then Gordon shook his head and whirled away; confused, angered to the point of tears at his inability, and disgusted with himself. Alex tried to say something reassuring, but couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t be mistaken for a patronising attitude.
Gordon walked to the extension, and stared hard at the door, listening for any sounds within. It seemed that he just needed one excuse, the slightest noise, or evidence that the Trevor-thing was trying some kind of trick, and he would burst in there and strangle the Vorla’s host with his bare hands. He’d wanted so much to be able to tell Alex. No point in even approaching Candy. But Alex needed to know. Needed to know what had happened the previous night after everyone had gone to bed, when the night-children had visited. And yet wasn’t there another part of him that didn’t really want to share it with anyone? Gordon shook his head, and squatted down in front of the extension door, confused.
Alex looked away from him and moved back to kick dirt over the burned patch. Annie had gone into the house once more, presumably to check on Lisa and the boy. All around, the floodlights still glowed, making it seem as if the entire house and its surroundings were on some kind of movie set.
Gordon chewed his lip.
Should he write down what had happened the previous night, and then show it to Alex? Would it help? Or was it simply going to make things even more complicated for Candy and him? Shouldn’t the others know that these potentially dangerous kids were able to come and go as they pleased, searching the house when everyone was asleep? Were they looking for something in particular, or were they merely curious? Where in hell had they come from? What did they want? Gordon was still pondering what to do when sounds of shrill screaming made him start so abruptly that he fell backwards on to the garden path.
It was impossible to tell whether it was Trevor or one of the others.
Scrambling to his feet again, Gordon looked back to see that Alex was already running towards him. Head down, Gordon threw himself at the door and burst it open. The sounds of screaming were shrill, but this time there was no agony. There was something horribly triumphant about that sound. It filled Gordon with horror as he flung himself at the interior door.
“Knew it! Tuh-trick!”
The door slammed against the wall as Alex clattered into the hallway behind him.
Something horrifying and bizarre was taking place in the room.
Trevor Blake was still in the chair, still bound. But he was no longer moving. His head had sagged forward on to his chest, and it looked as if he was dead.
Juliet was bracing both hands behind her against the windowsill, kicking at the sink unit set into the far wall. Jay was crouched on the floor beside her, yanking hard at something under the sink. Cursing, he fell back in a shower of plaster as Gordon hurtled into the room. Alex shouldered past, scanning the room for any sign of the crawling black mass. Gordon jumped over a chair and saw what Jay was doing. He had seized the pipework under the sink and had pulled a huge part of it out from the wall. Giving hoarse cries of effort, Juliet was sitting on the sill now and kicking at the washbasin with both feet. The pipework came away in Jay’s hands and he threw it down on the floor as if it were somehow alive, stepping warily back from it. Juliet skipped away from the sink unit, also standing at a safe distance.
“What is it?” said Alex, looking back and forth between Trevor’s still body and the bent piping on the floor.
Jay nudged the pipe with his foot, then stooped to look into the ragged hole in the wall beneath the unit. Juliet was leaning forward now, warily examining the sink unit.
“Too late,” said Jay at last. To Gordon, it seemed like an echo of Trevor’s agonised words that morning. He looked at Juliet, as if for confirmation. She leaned back from the sink unit, shaking her head.
“Gone,” she said.
Annie suddenly appeared in the doorway, gasping for breath.
Wearily, Jay and Juliet moved away from the sink.
“Come on, everyone,” said Jay. “Let’s go outside. I think we need some air.”
“Trevor?” asked Alex.
“He’s dead,” said Juliet. “At last, he’s really dead.”
“And the Vorla?”
Jay gestured back to the sink unit.
“It all came out of him. This time it…or should I say they…learned from their mistake outside in the light. Headed straight for the one place it would be dark, the one place that would take them back to the Chasm. I should have thought about it before. Straight down the fucking plug-hole, down through the waste pipes and into whatever’s left of the sewer system. All it needs to do is follow the sewer to where a broken underground pipe sticks straight out of the side, over the Chasm—and it’s home.”
“Did he…I mean it…?” Annie relaxed in the doorway, running a hand through her hair. “Oh, shit, I mean…did the Vorla tell you anything?”
“Get the others,” said Jay. “Outside.”
Alex, Gordon and Annie stood looking from Jay to Juliet, as if there were some kind of answer to everything on their faces. They both looked tired beyond words.
Jay saw their expressions. He nodded again.
“Outside,” he said again. “There’s a lot to tell…even if I don’t understand half of it myself.”
“I think I know why Trevor wouldn’t start speaking until everyone else was out of the room,” said Juliet at last.
Both Jay and herself had been trying to find a way to start when everyone was assembled in the back garden. Neither felt comfortable going back inside the Rendezvous, as if their ability to come to terms with what they had heard would be somehow inhibited by the enclosed space. Even outside, under the alien sky, they were feeling claustrophobic and stressed. Jay leaned against the garden wall and waited for her to continue. The tension emanating from the others was palpable.
“The Vorla wants to cause us as much misery as it can,” Juliet went on. “I think even at the last it wants to split us up. What it told us is so crazy…well, so crazy that you might not believe us. I think it wants that. If we’d all been in there with him, you would have felt the truth of it…” Juliet dried up and looked at Jay for assistance.
“Go on,” he said.
“Christ, I don’t know where to start.”
“All right, let’s start at the beginning. We wanted to know where everyone’s gone. Why no one’s come to help us. The answer’s the other way around. They haven’t gone anywhere; the world outside Edmonville hasn’t gone away.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” asked Damon.
“They haven’t gone away. We have.”
The others looked at each other and shuffled. Jay could feel the sky pressing down from above.
“What hit Edmonville was more than an earthquake. Even the Vorla couldn’t explain what kind of earthquake. Not only did it smash the town up the way we can see it all around us now, but it…it…well, it smashed Edmonville right off the face of the earth.”
“Off the earth,” said Alex, in a hollow voice. “What do you mean, ‘off the earth’?”
“I mean what I said. The whole of Edmonville has been uprooted…literally. The entire town has been shattered, and transported somewhere else.”
No one spoke.
“For God’s sake,” said Jay after a while. “Somebody say something.”
“You mean…” Lisa let the boy go. He began to play in the bushes; unhearing, unaware and unconcerned. “You don’t mean…like…well, you know. Outer space, or something?”
“No,” said Juliet. “Not outer space. Nothing like that.”
“Then where?” asked Annie.
“To what the Vorla calls a No-Place,” said Juliet.
“Look around you,” continued Jay. “We’ve seen how Edmonville has been split apart. These bloody peculiar peaks and crags. We know the way the town has been cracked up can’t be natural. And the Chasm on all sides. Now we know that’s impossible. But think about what’s beyond all that. Sometimes where we can see gaps between the crags. What can we see past them? Nothing—except the same grey nothingness that’s up there.” He pointed up. “That’s because there is nothing out there. Edmonville, all that’s left of it—that’s all there is. The real world just doesn’t exist any more.”
“Duh-dimension?” asked Gordon.
“Something like that,” said Jay. “Whatever this earthquake was, when it hit Edmonville, it shifted the entire town out of reality—I mean, out of the world we know. And it slammed it right down here in this other place. This No-Place. This different…dimension, I suppose we’ll have to call it. Like Gordon said.”
More silence.
“It’s working, isn’t it?” asked Juliet hopelessly. “You don’t believe any of it. That’s just what the Vorla is hoping for.”
“And what the hell is the Vorla anyway?” asked Alex.
“It lives here,” said Jay. “It’s been living here for thousands and thousands of years.”
“Yes, but what is it?”
“It’s us,” said Jay.
“Christ,” said Damon. “You two been swigging bottles in there or something? None of this makes sense.”
Jay looked at Juliet. “You think you can handle this part? I’m still trying to get my head round it.”
Juliet cleared her throat nervously, as if she were having to deliver a difficult lecture on a subject about which she knew nothing in front of thousands of people. And her life depended on it. A flush had risen around her throat. Her hand played there while she spoke.
“Basically…well, basically it’s Evil. With a capital ‘E’. Every evil thing that’s ever been done on our…on our side. I mean, our world. Well, there’s more to it than that. But I think it means that every act of violence, every killing, every massacre has much more of an effect than we think. I mean, apart from the people who actually suffer from it. It’s as if there’s an energy released when that act takes place. An evil energy, like electricity or something. And that energy doesn’t just dissolve or disappear, it’s drawn or pulled…”
“Or maybe just dumped,” continued Jay. “In this place. In this No-Place that we’re in now. The Dumping Ground.”
“Not just the big things,” Juliet went on. “Like killing and rape and murders. But even the smallest things. Spitefulness. Meanness. Everyday cruelty. Harsh words. Aggression. I don’t know…maybe even kicking your dog.” She tried to laugh. It didn’t work.
“It all creates this ‘energy’,” continued Jay. “And for thousands of years, maybe from the first day humankind walked upright on the earth, it’s been released and ‘dumped’ over here.”
“Those names,” said Annie. “The graffiti that we saw splashed all over the place in blood…”
“Madmen, murderers,” said Jay. “That was the Vorla, taunting us with a few clues.”
“Then the Vorla is…it’s their souls?” said Annie.
“No,” said Juliet. “I don’t think so. Not if we can believe what Trevor…I mean, that thing…was telling us. It’s the evil that they created, the energy that was released by their cruelty and their horrors. That’s what’s down there in the Chasm. The acts, the consequences, maybe even some of their personality. But not them. That’s what makes it so difficult to understand when the Vorla talks about itself in the plural all the time.”
“There’s a great big bloody sea of that Black Stuff down there in the Chasm,” Jay carried on. “And somehow, all that evil energy—whatever you want to call it—knows what it is. It’s become alive. Over the thousands of years, it’s grown and grown and it’s evolved. Like those amoebas and things they used to talk about when I was at school. You know, how life began and all that stuff? Well, somehow that blackness has become a living thing. Alive enough to even give itself a name: the Vorla.”
“Why the Vorla?” asked Lisa. “What does it mean?”
“We don’t know,” said Jay. “We just know that by some incredible accident, a hole’s been ripped in the life we knew and we’ve been transported to a place where humans have never come before.”
“And the Vorla’s glad,” said Juliet. “Glad that we’re here. Don’t you see? It really is a part of us. The evil side. The bad side. And here we are, the very things that create it—dropped right on top of it in its dumping ground. Right from the beginning, it’s been on its own. Growing and growing as more and more of that energy is dumped here. But all it’s had has been itself. All the evil and the cruelty and the hate. Seething and feeding on itself, with nowhere to go. Nothing to take out its horrors on.”
“But now,” said Jay, “it has us.”
“So this…” Lisa held her arms wide. “…is a kind of…limbo?”
“The Vorla said something, just after you left. It said: ‘If there wasn’t a Hell before, then there is one now.’ It’s got the opportunity to create one for us.”
“Then how do we get back?” asked Damon. His Adam’s apple was wobbling; he looked as if he might burst into tears at any moment. “I mean, how do we get out of this fucking place?”
“We don’t,” said Jay.
“We’re here for ever,” said Juliet. The flush around her neck had risen to her cheeks.
“The petrol won’t last for ever,” said Annie. “The generators won’t work indefinitely. And we could end up burning every last scrap of wood on this plateau. After that, what happens?”
“Not to mention food,” said Alex.
“This is crap,” said Damon, and he turned away to walk down the garden. At the bottom, he vaulted the wall and vanished from sight.
The boy began poking in the dirt with a twig.
For a while, nothing more could be said about these revelations; not until everyone had had a chance to think.
“What about Trevor?” asked Juliet at last. “What are we going to do with…?”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Jay. “We can’t have him lying around, when night comes again. Just in case…well, you know.”
“Petrol?” asked Alex.
Juliet turned away.
“No. We need every last drop of it from now on. Annie, we’d best have the floodlights and streetlamps turned off now. We’ll have to check out the meat mart and see if there’s any petrol left, though I doubt it. We’ll also have to make sure that we don’t have any of our night-time friends left there. But I guess the petrol for the generators is the most important thing.”
“Then how…? Trevor, I mean.”
Jay looked at Juliet, who was still turned away.
He gestured towards the Chasm, and made a diving motion with one hand.
And then, confused, bewildered, stunned, lost in their own thoughts, trying to come to terms with what they had heard, they went back inside the Rendezvous. Now that it was all out, there was no claustrophobia. Only a tenuous security, an imitation of normality when the door was shut and they were turned from the window.
The greyness of the sky pressed down, hard and relentless.