I hold it out to the others, in the hope they can interpret it.
‘It’s a magical charm,’ the girl says.
‘For a golem,’ the dog says, glancing about him at the bodies scattered around us. ‘These things are golems.’
*
‘Golems?’
Jake has woken up. He’s standing over us.
‘Let me see, Twice.’
He holds out a hand for the charm I’m still holding.
‘Yeah, this is a charm right enough,’ he says as he studies the writing.
‘There’s another one here too,’ the girl says, holding up a charm she’s pulled from the mouth of one of the other figures.
‘They’ll all have them,’ the dog says. ‘They’re all golems.’
Jake spots the puzzlement on my face.
‘Back in mediaeval Prague, they used charms like these to give life to man-sized figures of clay, placing it under their tongues. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for figures of meat, or even wood or paper or whatever else you want to make it from, for that matter.’
Paper?
Like origami figures?
Oh no – who does that remind me of?
But surely Chris wouldn’t…
‘Twice?’
Just as Jake had noticed my puzzlement, he’s now seen that something’s dawned on me.
‘Oh, er, nothing, nothing…’
Chris’s paper butterflies.
His paper elephants.
His – on no no!
Surely not.
Surely all those people he’s given life to aren’t just golems!
*
Chapter 23
‘If they’re nothing but golems,’ Jake spits angrily, throwing the car around a corner, ‘their bodies will continue to rot. And there’ll be nothing to stop any disease, or injuries, from just festering and getting worse!’
I’ve never seen Jake as angry as this.
When I’d told him my suspicions, he’d almost accepted Nick and Kristine’s offer to break up the meeting I’d told him about. Even if it resulted in a number of horrendous deaths.
(Nick was the ‘girl’, Kristine the dog.)
‘You should have told me!’ he’d stormed.
‘I’m telling you now,’ I’d replied pathetically.
He’d calmed down enough to realise that Kristine’s presence would only add to the mayhem. We’d run to where he’d parked his car, Jake phoning Mary on the way, saying to me, ‘We’re going to need someone on our side when we end up talking to the Nyxt about this!’
There was still a part of me that couldn’t believe Chris would allow the people he was helping to suffer in the way Jake was describing it.
Perhaps he just didn’t realise that this was how it would all end up?
And how did the golem attacks fit into all this?
What had Chris to gain from them?
If he really had been responsible, why would the golems chase Mary into our alley, where I might have tried to help her?
It doesn’t make any sense.
*
The meeting we run into is even more chaotic than the one broken up by the police.
The crowd is keeping well away from the almost empty stage.
People are weeping, or wailing fearfully.
Everyone appears terrified, but seem unsure whether they should stay where they are or leave the hall.
Worst of all are the few people on the stage; their skin is white, their faces drawn. They seem unsure how to even move, either swaying from side to side in a daze, or lying as if ill on the floor.
Around them all, prettily coloured paper butterflies, hummingbirds and flamingos flap though the air.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask the nearest person to me who looks like she might be able to come up with a reasoned response. ‘Where’s Chris? The man who raises the dead?’
‘He was taken,’ she says, her eyes wide, her lips and voice trembling. ‘He was taken by the dead!’
*
‘How do you know?’ Jake demands of the terrified woman. ‘How do you know it was the dead?’
‘We saw them,’ a man close by replies. Like the woman, his eyes are still wide with shock. ‘They came in from the wings, up on the stage.’
The woman nods dazedly.
‘Like they came from the shadows. I thought it was part of the act at first.’
Another person joins in, glad to talk about what she had seen.
‘They grabbed him, started dragging him away.’
‘What about the men who protect him?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t they try and help him?’
‘He told them to stay back; he said it was the dead. They’d come to steal his soul, for daring to raise people.’
Jake frowns, like he doesn’t believe it.
‘It could be his own golems,’ he says to me.
‘If he’s controlling the golems.’
As an origami flamingo wafts past me, I make a grab at it, pulling it towards me.
I unfold it.
It’s just a sheet of coloured paper.
There’s no charm inside.
I show it to Jake, but he still doesn’t look convinced.
He begins to urgently, even carelessly, make his way through the crowd.
‘Please, please,’ he says, ‘who was raised here tonight? This is important, you won’t be in trouble…’
A man has raised an arm. He’s happily hugging a woman with an amazed yet elated expression on her face.
‘Kelly, my Kelly,’ the man says proudly, joyously. ‘She…she was raised, thank the Lord!’
I join Jake as he’s talking to the woman. I can’t hear what he’s saying over the wailing and weeping that’s continuing to dominate the hall, but the woman nods with a smile.
She opens her mouth. Jake bends a little so he can peer inside.
I look too.
There’s no charm in there.
*
‘So, Chris isn’t our golem man after all – and now he’s been taken by the dead!’
‘His soul,’ Jake says, correcting me. ‘His soul’s been taken, Twice; that’s far easier for the Nyxt to do than hold a living body somewhere.’
We’d stepped outside, and away from the hall’s entrance, where people were beginning to fearfully file out into the darkness.
I thought back to how I’d seen Mary collapse to the ground as soon as the Nyxt had somehow withdrawn her soul from her body.
‘So without his soul, you’re really saying he’s dead, right?’
The only reason I can say this without breaking down in tears is because I’ve seen enough strange things going on recently to cling on to the hope that Chris is still alive somewhere.
I breathe a silent sigh of relief as Jake shakes his head.
‘Not necessarily. It depends on what the Nyxt are hoping to gain from taking his soul. If he’s dead, they’ve no longer got anything to bargain with. Then again, maybe they don’t want to bargain; maybe they just want to put an end to Chris’s tampering with the Wyrd.’
‘But how could he still be alive if his soul’s gone?’
‘I’m hoping they’ve kept him briefly alive by leaving him with a shadow soul.’
‘This is that ancient shaman thing again, yeah? But that’ll keep him alive for two days at most, right?’
‘We’re not responsible for this.’
Mary’s approach has been surprisingly silent.
I don’t know how much she’s heard of what we’ve been saying, but she seems to be aware of what’s happened.
/> I noticed that she said ‘we’re’ rather than ‘the Nyxt’.
‘One of the factions then?’
Jake says it like it’s a nice get-out-clause for everybody.
‘Possibly,’ Mary says.
‘Then if the Nyxt aren’t responsible – if it’s just a faction – they’ll be able to find and return Chris’s soul, yeah?’
‘Our world is much bigger than yours.’
Nick, the girl made up of my own hazy reflection, has now drawn up alongside us.
I’m so intent on working out how to help Chris that I’m obviously not hearing anything going on around me!
Even Kristine, the huge dog, is also here. I should have heard her arrive at least!
‘You could search for centuries,’ she says, agreeing with Nick, ‘and still not find him.’
‘Sorry,’ Nick says, ‘we came along just in case you needed our help. We’ve overheard what the people leaving are saying.’
‘But what about this Wyrd, this Life-Force you’re always talking about?’ I snap irritably at Jake. ‘Didn’t you say everything’s connected?’
‘Yes; which gives us our only chance of finding Chris in time.’
He reaches out and takes my hand in his. He locks eyes with me.
‘But you’ve got to ask yourself, Twice; are you prepared to risk your life to save his?’
‘Risk my life? How? How can I save Chris?’
‘If you love someone enough,’ Mary explains, ‘there’s a connection between you both.’
‘You could sense his presence,’ Nick agrees, ‘and the strands of the Wyrd could lead you to him.’
‘But he’s…he’s not in this world anymore.’
I’m trying to quickly work out what they’re all suggesting here.
‘You’re saying I have to go into the underworld to find him, right? But does that mean I have to die to…’
Jake shakes his head.
‘No, not die, not as long as you make it back in time before–’
‘This is that ancient shaman thing again, right? I’m going to need a shadow soul keeping my body alive while my spirit goes searching for Chris, yeah?’
They all nod,
But not one of them is smiling.
They all look grim.
‘But you only have two days,’ Mary says.
Jake grips my hands tightly.
‘And Twice; even the shamans used to get lost in the otherworld.’
*
Chapter 24
Like the last of the crowd who are being politely asked to leave the hall by Mary, I’m just following orders.
I find the hall’s heating controls, then turn them up to full.
Jake is tearing at and pulling down the stage’s curtains.
As soon as the very last of the crowd leaves, he starts leaping around using those strange powers he’d used when he’d fought with Franky. It means he can easily pull away the curtains from their rails, throwing them down on to the stage.
Kristine – who increasingly walks and handles things more like a human than a dog – fetches up some old metallic bins from the cellars. She hasn’t bothered emptying either the rubbish or various clothes and books they’ve been used to store. Instead, she sets them in a circle around the stage, punching holes in the sides that face inward, ripping at the crumpled metal to make the holes bigger.
Mary and Nick pile everything burnable they can find into the bins. That includes chairs they smash against the walls, old cupboards or tables Kristine helps them smash into splinters, and even the large speakers of an audio system. The bins are soon full, so everything else is piled instead in a circling wall around the bins.
Any flammable liquid they find – cleaners, oil, lubricants – are poured over the bins’ contents.
I just go along with all this, helping where I can. No one has bothered explaining what all this preparation is for, but I’m sure that Jake will sit me down at some point and take me through it all.
I’m wrong about the sitting down bit.
Jake lays the huge curtains down on top of each other in the centre of the circle of bins, then invites me to lie down on them.
‘What we’ve got to do, Twice,’ he says as he begins to quickly fold the edges of the curtains over me, ‘is create a massive increase in your body’s Life-Force, which your body will use to create your shadow soul when your soul leaves.’
Behind him, Mary, Nick and Kristine are setting the bins’ contents alight, turning them into huge, blazing braziers.
‘When the fires really get going, you’ll feel the vast forces flowing through you, reaching out into every fibre of your body. You have to control it, letting that power connect you to the web of energies lying outside your body. It will feel like you’re being torn apart – but don’t worry about it. You have to project your soul along those fibres into the underworld.’
As he talks, the blazing fires reach higher and higher, throwing out their incredible heat. I’m already sweltering beneath the layers of heavy curtains, cocooned like some tightly wrapped baby.
‘And when I’m there?’ I ask. ‘What then?’
‘We all have a spirit guide; it could be a person, an animal, even an object, like a pebble.’
I laugh.
‘A pebble? Fat lot of use that will be Jake!’
‘If that’s what you need, it will be,’ he answers seriously.
‘What about Mary? Couldn’t she guide me? Or Nick or Kristine?’
‘Mary’s still too tied to our world; Nick and Kristine to theirs.’
‘Is it easier than it sounds Jake? How often have you done this?’
Jake paused, lost for words.
‘Never, Twice,’ he admits finally. ‘No one’s attempted it for years.’
‘Because it’s dangerous, right?’
He nods.
‘Do you want to stop this? Stop it before it’s too late?’
Is there a pained look in his eyes begging me to say ‘Yes’?
I shake my head.
‘Chris is my soul mate; I have to find him!’
‘Okay Twice,’ Jake says, standing up and stepping away from me. ‘But remember, you only have two days; your body will burn itself out in two days!’
*
Chapter 25
The heat flooding through me is now unbearable.
It beats at my skin, roasting it. It penetrates beyond it, rippling along my muscles and nerve endings. I could swear it’s even seeping into my bones.
I want to move away from the heat, but I can’t.
The flames leap around me everywhere, as if I’m in the middle of a vast fire, as if I’m being burnt alive like a witch at a stake.
My nerve endings tingle, almost crackle.
It was a tingling and crackling that was sinking deeper, pulsing along every fibre of my body.
I’m slipping into a daze, drifting into unconsciousness.
*
I’ve had enough of this ridiculous, pounding heat.
I get to my feet and walk away, through the encircling fire of furiously blazing bins.
Someone must have noticed I’ve left.
I hear them saying something behind me.
They’re speaking quietly though, as if they’re afraid I might hear.
I glance back over my shoulder.
No, they’re not speaking quietly.
They’re just a long way behind me.
How have I travelled this far so quickly?
What happened to the walls of the hall?
*
My nerve endings are crackling so much now that they’re sparkling, like hund
reds of little stars.
Their light flows back along the nerve fibres themselves. I can see the light passing along inside my body, like a bright, flowing electric current.
All around me now, there’s a similar maze of glowing, sharply whipping strands of current.
It’s like a gigantic three-dimensional spider’s web, only one made up of crackling light.
The strands reach out, connecting with the sparkling ends of my nerves, of my fibres.
It’s painful, incredibly painful.
The glowing threads surging through me increase in intensity, the surrounding areas becoming ever darker by comparison.
The web is pulling at me. The threads glowing inside me are pushing outwards, like they want to expand.
I feel like my body’s breaking up.
The darker parts of my body suddenly flow away, like bits of flotsam in a sea, becoming a part of the space lying between the glistening strands.
I’m nothing but glowing fibres, a figure made of crackling light.
*
I move along the fibres much as a drop of water swirls along a canal.
The areas between the glowing web is now grey and hazy rather than dark. It all hangs like a damp mist over what could be the rolling fields of a high cliff.
Behind me lies the darkness of a squally sea, fizzing and bursting with the never-ending cracks of a lightning storm.
In the frequent bursts of illuminating light, I can see odd glimpses of the living world I’ve left behind.
This is the border, I instinctively realise.
I can’t see anything I would recognise as being a soul. All I see are strange movements within the patterns of light, in the way an invisible fish would cause the strings of a net to curl and writhe.
I can’t stay here.
I have to move on.
A glowing butterfly is flying ahead of me, leading the way. It flies along one of the strands, the thread of energy glowing all the brighter, highlighting its course for me.
I can feel certain strands of the web weakly vibrating, as if something much deeper in its clutches is entangled there.
I have to let the sparkling web draw me on.
And as it does so, my fibres are rewoven, reformed.
Soon, I sense that I am ‘me’ once again.
Though if anyone living would recognise me as ‘me’, I’m not sure.
*
It’s not just me that’s changed.
Around me, everything else has also taken on a more recognisable form.
Hills. Fields. Trees. Water.
All forms of water.
Rivers. Streams. Lakes, Pools. Waterfalls.
Water flows everywhere.
Everything sparkles. Not just the water, but also the grass, the rocks, the plants.
It’s the Life-Force, lying just beneath the surface, visible in the way you see the glistening sheen on the metallic paintwork of an expertly waxed car.