Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

The Demon

A short story in which a demon is bothered by new worshippers. This was inspired by a reddit writing prompt and was published there first (u/radclyffewrites)

“It’s a bloody mess, that’s what it is. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get blood out of flagstones? Damn near impossible. And the chanting – I haven’t had a good nights sleep in months.”

“I thought demons liked the chanting,” my companion says.

“You thought demons couldn’t enter churches too, and yet here I am.”

The priest is sitting calmly on the pew in front of me, staring straight ahead instead of turning to look at the midnight intruder. I don’t know why. I am an average looking man, or at least I am currently residing in an average looking body. There is nothing fearsome or demonic in my appearance. But there’s something oddly comforting about not being able to see his face, a sort of lack of judgement that falls over my shoulders like an old blanket.

I take a deep breath. “The thing is, I did all that. In the old days. I fought wars, started a fair few of them myself. I did the whole sacrifices and chanting and goats – who wants a goat scarified to them for Satan’s sake? What bloody use is that?” The priest makes a non-committal “mmm” sound. It is enough to encourage me to continue. “And some of the stuff they come out with. It’s just not right. Even at the height of my power I wouldn’t have dreamed of some of the stuff these guys are asking me to do.”

The priest nods sagely. “Truly, the real demons lie in the minds of man.”

“You’ve got that right.” I sigh, leaning back against the uncomfortable wooden pew. “I miss my statue. It was cold and quiet. A good retirement for a demon who did his part. It’s not fair. You work for thousands of years to make this world a worse place, and when you finally get to retire some bastards start cutting up goats on your altar and asking you to smite their enemies.”

“You sound lost, my child.”

“Yeah. That’s one word for it.”

“Would you like to…?”

The priest trails off. I run my hands back through my hair and for a second feel the horns hiding underneath. It’s now or never. I take a deep breath, hoping the priest knows he’s in for a long couple of weeks.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been twelve thousand two hundred and nine years since my last confession.”

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

A Conversation in a Cafe, Part Three

Another day, another morning writing session. The short story continues into its third part as a father and daughter meet to discuss her efforts to save the world. If you haven’t read the other parts, please start with A Conversation in a Cafe.

“The underworld is no place for a lady.”

This is my father’s response to my plan. Sitting here, crammed into the corner of our usual cafe as though we can somehow hide from the bright lights and cheery atmosphere, I don’t feel much like a lady. I don’t remember the last time I washed my hair; I’m pretty sure, from the looks I got as I walked through and headed upstairs, that I smell. Not that I care anymore. Greasy hair and a bad smell are the least of my problems.

“Well, no one else is going to go,” I say, crumbling a piece of cookie up between my fingers, letting the chocolate melt onto my skin. “And someone has to.”

”Why?”

I can’t help a small laugh at that. My father is an all-knowing being but I’m starting to realise all-knowing is not the same as intelligent. There is only one other table occupied up here at the moment; the cafe – the town as a whole – is quiet. The occupied table has a bunch of kids at it, pre teens or young teens or somewhere on that spectrum of adolescence. They’re laughing at a video on one of their phones. I can guess what they’re watching. They’re watching someone dying.

“You know, when the books warned about the undying I was expecting zombies,” I say. “This isn’t undying. This is the opposite of undying.”

He tilts his head to the side. “How so?”

“People are dying, they’re just not quite making it to dead. Which is why someone has to go down to the underworld and see what the hell is happening.”

He smiles. “What do you expect to find, child? A blockade? It is the end times; there is nothing to be found in the underworld but more pain and suffering. Best to focus your attentions up here.”

Talking of blockades.

“There’s nothing I can do up here,” I say. I reach out to take a bite of the cookie, but end up crumbling it between my fingers again. I’m not hungry. I don’t even know why I agreed to come. “I tried. God I tried.”

”I know.”

“You know,” I say dully. “So why don’t you do something? Because you can do more than try; you can stop this!”

I’ve raised my voice. The kids are glancing over at us, but they go back to YouTube and videos of people stuck in eternal torment. I’m never going to understand what some people find entertaining. 

My father is watching me gravely. I hold his stare, even though his eyes are gold and inhuman and he isn’t blinking. I hold his stare, and know that I am not blinking either, and that my eyes have flecks of that same gold in them.

He sighs, and drops his gaze. “I cannot,” he says gently. “I can encourage you. I can support you, as my daughter. But I cannot actively be involved in this. You know that. We decreed it centuries ago -”

”And centuries ago you were wrong.”

The flood came between the blood rain and the undying. It wasn’t actually as bad as I had imagined. For one thing, it was water, not blood, and that was an improvement as far as I’m concerned. Outside, there’s a certain wetness to the air but no more blood-slicked streets. Yet the place is empty. The schools are shut, the economy has ground to a halt. Things like that happen when people forget how to die. 

“Daughter?” I glance up at him. Lost in thought for a minute. He’s smiling at me again. “You will prevail,” he says. “Of this I have no doubt.”

He reaches his hand across, and tears off a corner of my cookie. Of course. I sigh. “Why don’t you just order your own damn cookie rather than always eating mine?”

He shrugs. “There is a certain … humanity in sharing yours.” I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what to say to half of what he says. This is our third meeting in eight months – in the twenty-eight years prior I had met him only twice. Our relationship is developing. Into what? I think, Father and daughter, mentor and mentee, unhelpful god and helpless demi-god?

“You said you have a map of the underworld,” he says, drawing me back to the situation at hand.

”Yes.” I reach into my bag and take it out. He raises an eyebrow; I raise mine back, daring him to comment on the fact that I’ve taken a priceless map and folded it in half so it fits into my satchel. He doesn’t, and I am allowed to spread it out over the table in piece.

I reach for a bit of cookie; he reaches over and smacks my hand away.

“Hey!”

He looks up and smiles. “The folding can be forgiven. If you get chocolate on it, I may have to smite you.”

”You just did,” I say, waving my hand in an exaggerated manner. 

He ignores me. He’s looking at the map.  I wonder whether he’s having the same moment of awe I had when I first saw it: the intricate detail, the parchment itself woven to withstand centuries of time, the black markings of the ink in strokes so small you need a magnifying glass to read them. Unless you have golden eyes and a prior knowledge. He is reading it intently, eyes darting from the tunnel that leads to the underworld to the river to the caverns through to the pictures of writhing, desperate souls.

Then he laughs. I stare. He keeps laughing. He laughs so loudly that the kids are quiet for a moment, that the sound echoes off the walls and comes back louder than the music.

“Umm, father?”

“Oh, daughter, you did not tell me you’d seen my brother.”

I frown. “I told you, I went up the mountain and he kicked me off – but this wasn’t from him, this was from an old man in an antique shop in Lebanon, it took me ages to track down.”

”This old man, what did he call himself?”

“He didn’t call himself anything; he sold me a map, that’s all.”

I’m getting frustrated. I wish he’d just come out and say whatever it is he has to say.

“Did he have a tattoo?”

“I didn’t really look.”

“This would have been obvious. A lizard, the head would be on his neck. It would have had a blue tongue.”

My brow furrows. I feel it; can’t stop it. Because the man did have a strange tattoo. And the fact my father recognises it only means one thing. “He’s one of yours.”

“One of ours,” my father corrects. “Your uncle. Known by many different names: you would probably recognise Loki, the trickster?”

I stare at the map. “Oh God.”

”Exactly. Would you like me to correct it for you?” I nod dumbly, still in shock that such a beautiful thing could be a trick. My father lays his hand on the map. “Firstly, the entrance to the underworld isn’t one place, it’s many. And the underworld itself is similar to an office block, except each level will take you further down.” The map rearranges itself as he speaks. The kids at the other table are openly watching us now. “Upper management, so to speak, is on the deepest level. You will find who you are looking for there.”

He looks up. The map is finished. There is none of the beauty, none of the craftsmanship, but it certainly is easier to follow. 

“Daughter.”

I force myself to look at him. “Yes?”

”I would suggest you do not go looking for him.” He takes a sip of his tea. The saxophone music playing in the background jars against his words. He reaches out to take another piece of my cookie, and waves it at me as he says, “Madness lies in seeking Death.”

“I know. But if I can stop this…” I wave my hands around, trying to somehow encompass the whole world in the gesture.

He nods. “I understand.” He smiles. “So. Shall we share a cookie when you get back?”

I’m about to go on a quest to the underworld. Chances are I’m not coming back. But his question makes me smile and I find myself nodding. “Of course. For your humanity, if nothing else.”

And mine, I add silently, but from the sad look in my father’s eyes I think he hears me anyway.

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

A Conversation in a Cafe, Part Two

The second short story about a father and a daughter. The conversation in the cafe continues three months later. I’m not entirely sure where this is going, but I’m enjoying the ride. If you haven’t read the first one: A Conversation in a Cafe

“The ability of humanity to adjust and continue as before is astounding.”

My father’s voice is calm, but there’s a hint of admiration there. I don’t see anything to admire myself. The cafe is busy. Six or seven tables full up here, and downstairs packed. Today, pleasant acoustic music is playing in the background, and there’s a gentle buzz of conversation. No one seems concerned by the blood-red rain streaking down the windows, but then it’s been over a month since it started and, as he says, people adjust. 

A man at the table opposite us is typing away at something vitally appointment. There’s a couple of students holding heavy books that seem to weigh them down far more than the events in the world over the last few months. A group of women, all in matching uniforms, are gossiping about someone or other at work. It’s a normal day, in this new normality.

I lean back in my chair. I’m so tired.

My companion smiles at me. “So, it’s not going well?”

I gesture to the window. “What do you think?”

I don’t recognise my own voice. Have the events of the last eighty days changed me so much? Where did that hardness come from?

But he continues to smile. “It will. I have complete faith in you.”

”That makes one of us.”

”Daughter.” He reaches across the table. He takes a bit of my cookie, then leans back. Once again, I thought he was going to take my hand. A sign of fatherly affection and reassurance. But no, it’s always the cookie he’s after. “This world should be dead.”

”Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I say.

He laughs. It’s a weird, jarring sound coming out of his mouth. “I meant that you have slowed its demise. You feel that you are doing nothing; you are the only one doing something.”

I glance out the window. I can just about see the high street. And would you believe it, people are walking by with their umbrellas up. It’s funny how the horrible becomes the normal so quickly when there’s work to do and shopping to enjoy. But the rain is only the start of it. I know that now, with all the time I’ve spent with my nose buried in books so old they are tomes now, sneezing at the dusty pages and flinching at the graphic images.

He’s drinking his tea today. Perhaps enjoying it before he loses the opportunity.

“I have been watching,” he says calmly. “You are braver than you think.”

”Bravery means nothing when you’re up against all-powerful beings with a grudge.” I run a hand back through my hair. I’m surprised I still have hair left; I always do this when I’m stressed and there’s been nothing but stress since our last meeting. “I travelled to the mountains, like you said. I went and met my uncle. He told me to let this world burn. I told him no. The next thing I know I’m blasted back down that bloody mountain – do you know how long it takes for a human to get up that damn thing?”

“But you are not human.”

I look up and meet his eyes. Gold eyes. “No,” I admit. “But I’m not a god either.”

The steady click-clack of the keyboard at the next table slows just for a second, before beginning again with renewed vigour. The universal language for, Listening, me? Of course not. 

“What have the books taught you?”

“The books have taught me your scribe has too much time on his hands, and that library was never meant for mortal eyes, half-mortal or otherwise.” He stares at me. I sigh. “The books have taught me that after the rain will come the flood, and after the flood will come the undying, and after the undying the beast itself will appear on a wave of – and my translation was a little shaky here – but I think it said bodies.”

”Bones,” he corrects gently. “But don’t worry, we’re all a little rusty when it comes to Ancient Greek.”

“I was reading the Sumerian account.”

”Even worse.” He takes a sip of his tea. A plucky song about two people having each other has started playing. The women at the other table are laughing. The click-clack of the keyboard has resumed it’s normal steady pace. “What else did the books say?”

”They say a great warrior will rise to fight the beast.” He smiles at me, and I groan.

“I hate to disappoint, dad, but I’m not a great warrior. I’m not even a warrior.”

“When the time comes, you will be.”

He reaches across and takes another chunk of my untouched cookie. “How?” I sigh. “How on earth am I going to magically become a great warrior?”

“Because the world will need you to be.” He looks at me and for a second the cafe seems to disappear around us, melt away so that there is only the two of us, golden eyes clashing against golden eyes. “And you haven’t let it down yet.”

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

A Conversation in a Cafe

A rather random short story written in a cafe. It has the potential to be a longer piece, but for now fits quite nicely into the mythology theme I seem to have going. The fate of the world is decided over tea and a cookie.

“This is not the place for this conversation.”

I can’t believe him. He keeps his voice so calm and level, like we’re talking about the weather or some similarly mundane smalltalk. The tea in front of him is untouched. He has a weary smile on his face and instead of drinking he is playing with the mug, pushing it from side to side, one hand to the other.

He’s infuriating. I want to punch him. I want to throw that tea in his face.

“So where is the place?” I struggle to keep my voice as calm and level as his. Don’t let him see you’re rattled. That message was drilled into me time and time again as a child. Never let him see you’re rattled, because he will use it against you.

He shrugs. “Not here. This is a happy place.”

I laugh. I can’t help myself. There are only four other occupied tables in the upstairs of this airy, bright cafe. Two of them have a lone patron with a laptop and the universal harassed expression of the overly busy. One has a couple who are holding hands and smiling about something. The last has a similar couple, but leaning away from each other, and sitting in stony silence.

“This is a place,” I say. “Whether it’s happy or not depends on the people in it.”

“True.” He glances at the windows, and his smile grows a little more wistful. “But it is bright, and the music is pleasant. If you wished to have this conversation, perhaps you should have suggested meeting somewhere dark and dank and empty.”

I sigh. The urge to grab that tea and throw it in his face is getting stronger. “You suggested we meet here,” I say.

“Because I knew you would wish to have this conversation, and I knew I did not want to have it.”

He looks me straight in the eyes then. Two thoughts go through my mind. The first: I could kill him. The second: His eyes have flecks of gold in them.

The couple who are holding hands get up and leave. I watch them go. Better to watch them then watch him.

He leans back in his chair. The spell is broken; there’s no gold in his eyes now. “Eat your cookie.”

The dismissive tone is enough to test the strongest of wills. My hands have curled into fists. I want to throw this table over. I want to make a scene.

Instead, I reach out and take a bite of my cookie.

It’s good. Damn it.

I wanted to hate it, like I want to hate anything and everything he has given me. From cookies and clothes, to his attention and his powers. I don’t want those golden eyes. I don’t want to be able to feel what’s coming in my bones, so deep it’s like a crack in my skeleton. I don’t want to know what no mortal should know.

Your father is not a man, Mother used to say. Never forget that.

“When will it happen?”

“I said this is not the place for this conversation.”

“I know what you said,” I snap, and one of the lone patrons glares at me. I ignore him. “But we’re having it, just the same.”

He smiles. There’s a hint of sadness there. “Your mother always told you not to let me see when you’re rattled.”

”She did. But there’s some things I can’t hide.” I take a deep breath. I’ve let my guard down and he could have taken advantage. He could have broken straight into my mind, told me to go home and forget all about this. But he didn’t. Which means that this conversation is going to happen, and now I’m not sure whether I want it to. “When will it happen?”

“Soon.” He takes a sip of his tea. Finally. When he puts the mug back down he’s smiling. “This is good. We should have done this more often, whilst we had the chance.”

My stomach sinks. “So there’s no way to stop it?”

”I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. If that’s what you came to see me about, you will be disappointed, daughter.”

There’s nothing I can do.

I stare at him. His eyes are full gold now. “But something can be done?”

“It was decreed, millennia ago, that when the end times came we would do nothing. Every life has its course. The world is no exception to that law; we are no exception to that law.”

”So there’s no hope?” I can’t help the question. The words keep ringing in my head. There’s nothing I can do.

“Oh, I didn’t say that.” He takes another sip of his tea, and closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them, they’re entirely human. “I do like this world,” he says. “I like what you’ve done with the place, so to speak. Who would have thought that by boiling leaves you could create something so pleasant? We never would have, but then we always were rather narrow minded.” I keep staring. I don’t want to speak. Speaking now could ruin everything. He meets my eyes, and smiles, and it’s the smile of a father, proud and gentle. “We gods all agreed to do nothing.”

“To just let the end times come.”

“Yes. It is the natural order of things.” He reaches out a hand. I think he’s about to take mine, but instead he breaks a part of my cookie off. “But you, daughter,” he waves the cookie at me, “you are not a god.”

My heart skips. One of the lone patrons is openly watching us now. He’s right. This isn’t the place for this conversation.

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that if you wish this world to live, you must do something about it.” He eats the corner of the cookie, and leans back in his chair. “I hope you succeed,” he says, closing his eyes. “There is so much in this world to enjoy.”

He disappears.

I’m left alone at the table with a pot of tea I don’t drink and a half-eaten cookie. The lone patron is blinking, confused. Then he returns to staring at his screen. He won’t remember my father was here. No one will.

You must do something about it.

I rest my head back against the chair, and sigh. “Well, that’s just great.”

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

Forgotten Extract

The opening extract from my work-in-progress, tentatively named Forgotten. I struggle with openings, almost as much as I struggle with naming stories, but since I am currently 60,000 words into the work I thought it was time I gave it a go. Let me know what you think!

It was raining the day that Cayleen Jones disappeared from Connor’s life, and it is raining the day she returns. He sees her out of the corner of his eye, a flash of brilliant ginger and bright green eyes smiling at him. At first he ignores it. He has seen her a million times and more over the last seven years, always out of the corner of his eye, always just out of reach. But then it happens again. He is in the middle of folding a pile of shirts – arms back, cuffs in, fold up – when there is another fleeting glimpse of those eyes.

She’s here.

The thought pounds through his head even though he knows it’s insane, even as he turns and looks and sees not Cayleen but a window shopper, gazing in with the universal glazed interested-but-not-too-interested expression of window shoppers.

The window shopper moves on to scout other store fronts. Behind her is a stranger. For a second Connor meets his eyes and he sees Cayleen’s looking back at him, bright green and sparkling with curiosity. The vision fades. The stranger’s eyes are an electric blue, but there is a similarity. That curiosity. That spark of interest.

Connor forces himself to look away. This man is not a window shopper. He’s looking straight at Connor, like he’s never seen a sales assistant before and is dissecting him in his mind. Connor shivers. He doesn’t like where his mind’s going. It’s going to the forbidden places, the places he’s spent years training himself to avoid.

She always looked like the world was a curiosity to her. It’s part of what made her so beautiful to him.

“Con?”

He jolts; his manager is standing on the other side of the till, mouth pulled down into a frown that lies, with difficulty, somewhere between stern and gentle.

“You okay mate?”

Ben’s a good enough manager, and a decent enough man as far as Connor can tell. He has a habit of picking at his teeth when he thinks no one’s looking and he’s going through a divorce he hasn’t told any of his staff about. Connor’s noticed the lack of wedding ring, the increase in time spent in his back office, the fraught, whispered conversations to people he’s not supposed to be calling during work hours.

“Con?” Ben’s voice is amused now. “You’re drifting again.”

Connor forces himself back to the situation. Work. Folding the shirts. This is a solid reality, a reality he can work with. “Sorry.” He starts folding again, movements quick and practiced.

Ben doesn’t leave. He’s watching Connor’s hands. Connor watches them too, and realises they’re trembling.

“You okay?”

Connor forces a smile. “I’m good, just a headache.”

Ben nods. He looks relieved. He can work with a headache. “Let me know if you wanna go out back and grab some paracetamol.”

Connor risks a look at the window. The stranger has gone. He feels the relief like a physical weight slipping off his shoulders. “Actually, if you don’t mind…”

Ben raises his hands in dismissal. “Go, grab a drink and a five minute break. I’ll man the till. If there’s a sudden rush I’ll call you back.”

Connor laughs out of habit. It’s an ongoing joke. The shop gets by, in the kind of way that most chain clothes shops get by. Much of their business is online. Especially the men’s, and they are a men’s branch. He’s been offered a job as manager at another shop, a busy shop with high footfall in the centre of Birmingham. He turned it down. He has his little corner of the world, and he is content with that.

The back of the store is a mix of narrow corridors, a large stock room with very little stock to fill it, and a sorry-looking staff room that Ben’s been talking about patching up for as long as Connor’s worked here. He grabs a glass of water but doesn’t bother with the paracetamol: it’s not going to help what’s wrong with him. Instead, he goes to the cramped toilet and braces himself by the sink, splashing cool water on his face.

When he looks up, he sees her eyes in the mirror.

He swerves. There’s no one there. Of course there’s no one there. But his heart is pounding like crazy and he staggers back to the break room to sit down before he falls down.

This is bad. It hasn’t been this bad in a long time. Usually, he sees her once a day. He shakes the sight away. He knows it’s impossible for her to be here.

Three times in one day is unusual. It’s what his sister Bethan would refer to as a ‘bad day’. He hasn’t had many bad days in the last few years. They were very common immediately after she disappeared, but he has worked hard to make them less so.

He rests his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. His thoughts are a broken record, scratching the same name out over and over.

Cayleen. Cayleen. Cayleen.

“She isn’t here,” he whispers. “I didn’t see her.”

Her green eyes. That ginger hair. Ginger, never auburn, never red. She was proud of it. He saw it so clearly. He saw her so clearly.

Cayleen. Cayleen.

“She’s not here.” He presses his hands over his eyes, encasing himself in a darkness where he can be the voice of reason to his own thoughts. The voice of reason always sounds a bit like Bethan to him. He likes that. It grounds him to reality, to the here and now.

Cayleen.

“She can’t be here.”

Why not?

“Because she doesn’t exist. She never existed.” Acceptance was one of the final stages of his therapy. It’s a stage he returns to time and time again on the bad days. “Cayleen Jones wasn’t real.”

But the name keeps repeating in his head, and in the darkness behind his hands he sees the stranger with the blue eyes watching him.

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

Soul-Snatcher

A short fantasy story about a thief and a necromancer with a long history.

There are many ways in which a man may be judged, Vincent thinks as he stares out over the audience. Theatre is one, of course. Everyone likes a good spectacle, and heckling a bad one is almost as fun. Sport is another, the joy of cheering for the underdog until your voice is hoarse.

Public execution, he’s decided, is a strange mix of both. The drama of the theatre; the uncertainty of sport that makes gamblers so gullible. Money exchanges hands below him. A small child with wide eyes is munching on a salted treat. There is the sort of buzz he associates with the races, just with a little more bloodlust.

The noose itches. He wonders if they’d untie his hands so he could scratch, but decides ultimately it would make little difference.

The constable asks if he has any last words.

Vincent shrugs. “Would it make a difference?”

“No, but we have to ask.” At Vincent’s blank expression, the constable adds, “It’s tradition.”

“Tradition is what got me into this mess in the first place.”

“No, stealing ceremonial plates is what got you into this mess.”

“It’s not stealing if they were yours to begin with.”

The constable ignores him. The plates are hundreds of years old and they belonged to the old gods that the town only remembers twice a year.

Hanging seems a bit extreme, but apparently they take tradition very seriously in this town. Seriously enough that the lack of evidence – there is never evidence – is not enough to deter them from passing the sentence.

He sighs. This is not the way he intended to die. Then again, to be fair, he never intended to die at all. Maybe, when he had reached his millennium, he might have decided to rest. But six hundred and twelve is no age at all.

They pull the lever.

The hatch drops.

Vincent stands to the side of it, looking in mild bemusement at the constable who shoved him out of the way. He mutters apologies to the crowd as he loosens the noose, and drops his voice a reverential whisper. “Milady of the shadows wishes to speak with you.”

“Hang me,” Vincent says, completely deadpan. “If milady wishes to speak with me, she can raise me when I’m dead.”

“Don’t be like that Vincent.” A gentle, familiar voice from behind him. He shivers. The small boy with his snacks is gaping at the side of the makeshift stage. There are no more yells of annoyance, no more buzzes of anticipation. A woman in a long white veil has joined the spectacle and there is silence. The madam of necromancy tends to have that effect.

He is released into her custody. She has a driverless carriage waiting. It pushes into a smooth, calming motion the moment they’re both sat down.

“Honestly Vincent,” she says, pushing her veil away to reveal a delicate tanned face and deep honey hair. “Can you go one century without getting yourself into trouble?”

“What’s with the get up?” She frowns. He gestures to the veil and the dress. “The bride of death look. It’s new.”

She sighs. “It’s been seventy years, dear, I was bound to have a new outfit. And people expect a certain look these days when they meet the head of necromancy. Pallid skin, black hair, dark eyes. I’m afraid my healthy good looks rather disappoint.”

“Head of necromancy.” Vincent shakes his head. “There’s enough of you to have a leader now.”

“Oh do grow up Vincent. We choose different paths to suit our different powers; you don’t hear me judging you for stealing your way through life.”

“And what is it you want me to steal for you?” She stares. He smiles. “Melissa, you wouldn’t have saved me unless you needed me. What does the mighty necromancer need from the lowly thief?”

Melissa holds his gaze before, finally, lowering her pretty blue eyes. “I need you to steal a soul.”

***

Melissa lives in a grand chalet on the corner of four countries that don’t quite meet, so that she is in a country all her own. It’s a world away from the cell Vincent’s spent the last few days in. With the Holy Wars raging, necromancy has become a booming business: there are hordes of mourners wanting to talk to their loved ones, and a fair few powerful men wanting soldiers who can’t feel pain.

He takes his time washing away the dirt of his near-death experience. It’s only the third time he’s been caught. The last two times he was young, just testing his limits, and he was sloppy. This time he was overconfident. He didn’t make his shadowy replica of the plates substantial to the touch, so when they went to use them in their ceremony their hands passed through the whispers of his magic. A foolish mistake. He would have been fine, except after he used his powers to escape his last death sentence and condemned an entire town to the shadows he promised himself next time he was caught, he would remain caught.

Fate stepped in. This time, he promises himself there won’t be a next time.

Melissa is waiting for him. She’s ditched the bridal get up and instead is resplendent in a long navy skirt and a loose white top, a world away from her milady of the shadows persona. She passes him a glass of some strong-smelling, dark liquor as he takes a seat opposite her. The smell makes his nostrils itch. He takes a sip, and makes a face.

“What proof is this?”

“Ninety percent.”

“It burns.”

“It cleanses. Can we dispense with the small talk? I really am on a tight schedule here.”

Vincent lowers his glass, a slow grin stretching over his lips. “I haven’t seen you this worked up since the coast lands declared all magic witchcraft and all witches terrorists. What’ve you got yourself into?” She bites her lower lip, working at it in a way that reminds him of when they were children, both under a hundred, and the towns were plains and the people were tribes who worshipped them. His smile disappears. “Lissa? Tell me about this soul.”

She waves a dismissive hand, but her smile is a little half-hearted. “It’s a soul. We necromancers deal in souls, don’t you know?”

“Lissa.”

She sighs. “It’s all just rather embarrassing. I’m being blackmailed.”

“Blackmailed?” He raises an eyebrow. “You’re the most powerful woman in the world.”

“And you’re the most powerful man, yet you were about to be hanged.”

“Okay, okay.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “Tell me what happened.”

“It’s stupid.” He holds her stare until she sighs, slumping back in her seat. “This war. It’s just the longest in a long line, and I’m tired. So I’ll help the widows and orphans talk to their loved ones, but I won’t raise the dead to fight another battle. I can’t do it anymore. The thing is, there aren’t any other necromancers who can do what I do.”

“Bit conceited.”

She smiles, a cold, hard smile. “Show me another necromancer who can stand at the edge of the battle and raise all the dead soldiers to fight for her, and I’ll apologise.”

He nods. “Fair enough. Carry on.”

“The various warlords –”

“They call themselves kings now.”

“- they’re all trying to persuade me the error of my ways. They shower me in gifts, rubies and emeralds, the occasional hematite. They all want me on their side. They tell me about how they fight for truth and justice, how theirs is the just war because it is holy, and I smile and nod and show them the door, and that’s fine. But one of them decided to take a different tact.”

“The blackmailer.”

“The blackmailer.” She sighs. “He has a group of necromancers working for him. Together, they attacked. And now I am down one rather important soul.”

“Whose is it?”

“Does it matter?”

He shrugs. “I’m just curious. Do you keep them all in jars somewhere? How exactly does soul rearing work?”

She stares him down. “Suffice to say they have something that belongs to me, and they are holding it as leverage.”

“And you want me to steal it?”

“Yes.”

There’s a tremor to her voice. He has a sneaking suspicion: there was a man once. There have been many men and women in both of their lives, but he was her fairy tale ending. He withered, aged as mortals are wont to do, and she mourned him like she had never mourned before. If there was any soul precious to her, it would be his.

“These holy wars,” he says, shaking his head. “We were the first religion. Do you remember? The wastelands to the east, the tribes who bowed to us.”

“The God of Illusion and the Goddess of Death.” She smiles slightly. “I never liked being an object of worship.”

“Do you remember what they used to say about us?”

“We were omnipotent, and omniscient, and all other sorts of oms.”

“No. They said that we were benevolent, until wronged, when we would fill with righteous anger and strike down our enemies.” He smiles. His eyes sparkle. “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty damn full of righteous anger right now.”

***

The king lives in a grand castle in the centre of his realm, and he may call himself a king but Vincent can see why Melissa insists on calling them warlords. There is no opulence or glamour in this court, only dour faces and armoured men on battlements that are built to withstand an army. Vincent isn’t sure which religion these men are fighting for, what God has made their war so just, but he understands the wariness and weariness in their eyes. They find no joy in conflict, not anymore.

He keeps his head bowed as he passes through the gates with other travellers. There is a constant ebb and flow through the castle’s courtyard. He wonders, for a man so used to war, whether the king has ever considered attacks may come from a single traveller, not an army.

He is able to walk through undeterred, until he turns and attempts to walk into the kitchens. A guard is there in seconds, his movements quick and trained, the spear blocking Vincent’s way.

Vincent sighs. “Can’t a man get some bread in peace?”

“Not from here,” the guard says sternly. Everything about him is stern. “Move along.”

“Yessir.”

Vincent steps away. At least, half of him does. The other half walks around the guard unnoticed, a shadow flitting over him just for a second, and into the dark halls of the kitchen. He can still feel the substantial half of him walking away, before it pings back to him. There’s a sudden snap, like an elastic band against his skin, then he is whole again and striding through the kitchens.

He grabs a bit of bread, and winks at the young girl standing beside it.

The inside of the castle matches its gloomy exterior. A couple of centuries before there had been real kings, kings so fat they couldn’t walk, kings with so much gold it weighed them down. Those kings died in horrid uprisings that filled the land with blood and fire, and the cycle began again. Vincent liked the old kings. They were corrupt and greedy, but they had a sense of humour. These new kings are too serious for their own good.

The soul is in a tower, locked away and defended by those pesky necromancers. This much Melissa was able to tell him. How she knew, she refused to say. Once upon a time they told each other everything, but he supposes seventy years is a long time to go without seeing someone and their different paths have pulled them apart.

Until now.

He walks in shadows, tiptoeing on the very edge of sight. Not that there’s anyone around to see him. It seems to be assumed that no one will get past the stern guards outside. He can hear the muffled sounds of people moving through the courtyard beyond the walls, but it’s like he’s hearing it from underwater. Otherwise, there is no sound. Just the very light footsteps of a thief, too quiet for human ears.

The necromancers are easy to spot. They wear long black robes and hoods and symbols that mean nothing but are probably supposed to be occult. There are three of them at the foot of a stairwell, sitting around a small table with goblets in their hands.

“It’s not that I’m complaining,” one of them says as Vincent tiptoes closer.

“Bill, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“Look, we’ve been stuck here for days. If she was gonna come she’d be here by now.”

Oh Bill. Vincent grins. The fear in his voice gives the poorly-named necromancer away, and Vincent moves closer, unseen, unnoticed, until he’s so close he can lean down and whisper in Bill’s ear. “She’s already here.”

Bill pales. He looks around, looks straight into Vincent’s eyes, but sees nothing.

“Sod this.”

The necromancer gets to his feet. One of his friends groans; the other laughs.

“The king’ll have your head if you leave your post Bill.”

“She’ll kill me if I stay.”

Bill runs. One down, two to go.

Vincent touches a hand to the tower’s wall. There’s the sound of footsteps. The necromancers share a glance. The footsteps are coming down towards them and the tension in the necromancer’s shoulders tells Vincent no one is supposed to be up there. He smiles, and makes the noise a little louder, a little more intruding. He waves his hand, and Melissa’s voice teases down the stairs.

“Ready or not…”

The necromancers flee.

Laughing, Vincent drops the shadows around him and starts up the empty stairwell. This is going better than he could have hoped. The necromancers don’t know his kind of magic; as far as he’s aware, no one else does. Melissa may have decided to teach others to use her gifts but he was never inclined to do the same. Now he just has to replicate the soul, take the real one and get out of here in time for Melissa to shout at him for taking too long.

He stops dead at the top of the stairs.

The tower glows.

In the centre of the circular room, on a plinth of diamond, is the soul. It’s not in a jar, it’s just there. Floating an inch above the plinth. Glowing a gentle gold that pulses through the room.

“Oh Lissa,” he says softly.

Her soul responds to his voice. He feels it, a sudden intensity in the pulsing, a brightening in the glow. It feels warm. It feels familiar. It feels like a childhood spent running in the wilds, when there was only the two of them and they had no idea why they came to be or how they had these powers but they were sure one day they’d know. It feels like the old days, when answers still seemed possible and everyday was magical.

He moves closer, and reaches out. The soul spins in the air, gossamer threads of gold entwining and expanding. His hands cup around it. It shrinks down into his palms and he clasps it to his chest, where he can feel it like a second heartbeat against his skin.

Getting out of here may be trickier than he thought. He hopes no one comes up to the tower as he’s leaving. He hopes the necromancers don’t come back with reinforcements too quickly. Replicating a normal soul is easy; replicating Melissa’s is impossible.

Footsteps pound on the stairs.

He sighs. The soul is bright under his fingers; he reaches down and pops it into his pocket, where it burns through his trousers against his skin. But he needs his hands. His trembling hands, he notices, raising them slightly. That’s new. Trembling is the thief’s undoing, but now his fingers won’t stay still and he knows why.

“They took her soul,” he whispers.

Righteous anger. That’s what the first tribe used to say about their gods. They are benevolent, until wronged.

The necromancers are dead before he’s fully turned to face them.

He strides down the stairs and into the castle proper. He doesn’t bother to hide in the shadows. The soul is too bright, and hiding relies on being unnoticeable. Instead he walks through the corridors of the castle, his feet barely touching the ground. No one bothers him. No one seems to want to. He sees one guard, but the guard turns away and pretends not to have seen him, this stranger who drags shadows behind him like a cloak.

The king is in his throne room. There are guards there too, but their spears stay by their side and they stare open-mouthed at the stranger. The cloak is clear now; it shimmers with darkness, twists and turns as the shadows move inside it. It’s how he hides in plain sight, but today he is not hiding. He allows it to be seen, allows himself to be seen.

The king stands up. “Seize him!”

Vincent is in front of him, one step carrying him from the edge of the hall to the throne itself. The king gulps. He is a small man, smaller than any king has a right to be, and he trips back into his throne as Vincent looms over him.

“I don’t like violence,” Vincent says softly. “I’ve made it a habit in my life to do no harm. But your necromancers are dead. There will be no more soul-snatching.”

The king whimpers. His guards are useless. No one seems to want to move.

“And you will lose this war.” Vincent’s voice deepens. The world seems to tremor with it. “When the army’s come, you won’t see them. They will be hidden in my shadows. And they’ll thank their gods, whoever the hell they may be, and your people will cry that their gods have abandoned them. And that’s fine. Because you’ll know it was me. You’ll know that this is judgement, and I have found you wanting.” He straightens up. His voice, when he speaks again, is back to normal. He even manages a small smile. “Sorry to ruin your fun.”

***

They watch the battle together on a cliff some miles away. They can only hear the occasional distant clash, the rumble of war. Melissa holds her soul in her hands, staring at it with her head tilted to one side and a small smile.

“It’s so much warmer than I thought.”

“Why didn’t you tell me it was your soul?”

“I knew you’d worry.” She glances at him. “I didn’t want to put you under too much pressure.”

“How long could you have survived without it?”

“Another day. Two, at the most.” She sighs, and the soul sinks into her breast. Her skin brightens. Her eyes sparkle. “There. Good as new.”

He snorts in disgust, shaking his head. “Can’t you go one century without getting yourself in trouble?”

Melissa laughs, and curls up to lean against his shoulder. Together, they watch the battle raging. The army came under cover of darkness, a darkness deeper than the night itself. The king and his castle stood no chance. The battle now is an afterthought, a final push from the defenders that will end with the invaders triumphant, declaring the victory for their gods.

“Do you ever think we should intervene?” Vincent says.

Melissa shakes her head. “There will always be war. We’d make peace once, and it’d happen again within years. Months, even. Let them fight. Ultimately, it’s up to them to make peace.”

“And what about us?”

“What about us?” Melissa gazes up into his eyes. “You will go back to thieving our once prized possessions, I will go back to my chalet and my veil. Or…”

“Or?”

“The east is lovely this time of year.” She smiles. “Perhaps we could go home.”

Vincent holds her stare. In the background, the fight rages on, but there is always a fight raging on somewhere. He puts his arm around her and looks into her beautiful blue eyes instead of at the fighting below.  “Home.” He smiles. “That sounds good.”

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

Beyond the Diamond

A short fantasy story about a young girl in a dystopian world who has the power to change everything.

Magic is forbidden. At least, that’s what the glaring signs and men in suits say, but Nola has never believed in magic, not in this world. Her father says it’s a common enemy to keep the common man revolting; her mother says it is a lie within a fairy tale. There is nothing magical about Nola’s days on the motor expressway cleaning clutter out the gutter for a coin an hour, and nothing magical about the tiny house she returns to each evening, deep in the Outskirts of the Diamond State.

She is the youngest of seven children, all still in that house, all working to bring coins to the family. Once they have enough coins, her father says they will leave the Diamond and head to the country, where there is room for them all and the air is clean and the nearest expressway is ten miles away. Once they have enough coins.

Another lie, another fairy tale.

Summer is Nola’s least favourite season. The sun makes the garbage smell and the buildings in the centre of the Diamond sparkle enticingly. On the expressway, the tarmac is too hot to touch and the clutter burns her fingers. Today, the sun is high and many of the vehicles flying past have their roofs off so there is a constant background noise of shrieking and laughter and snippets of conversation whisked by too soon.

She stops for a second, runs her hand over her brow. It comes away soaked with sweat. She clenches her hand, just for a second, and a wave of coolness washes over her like a sudden breeze.

Nola doesn’t believe in magic. That’s not to say she doesn’t know it exists.

Her walk home is a long one, past posters with “Wielders Forbidden!” and “Speak out against magic” emblazoned across them. There are a few shops that do not allow magic wielders in; she passes through them, spends her coin on bread and milk.

Her mother says the crusade against magic is pointless. If the wielders exist, ever existed, they would look just like you and me, and there’d be no stopping them coming and going as they please. When Nola was a child, her grandpapa had put her on his knee and whispered, “You are special, my little firecracker. But remember: no one will see unless you want them to see. To the world, you must be ordinary.”

She is thirteen now, and grandpapa is long dead. The days are hard, the hours seem long, and now and again she finds herself looking at the sparkling distant buildings and thinking, I could be there. One day.

The sun sets late that evening, disappearing behind those buildings so they glow.

Her sister Mila is the second youngest. She likes to remind Nova of her place. “Stop staring,” she say, pulling down the cloth blind so Nola can’t see the towers anymore. “The Centre isn’t for people like us.”

“Why not?”

“Because we are workers. The Diamond relies on us, Nola. The Centre is for the idlers, but we can’t all be idlers or nothing would ever get done. So we stay here, and the idlers stay in the Centre, and the middlers in the Rings, and it works.”

“What about the wielders?”

“The outlands are for them, far away from good people like us.” Mila’s expression softens and she pats her sister on the arm. “It’s a phase. We all go through it. You dream of those sparkling buildings and you think they must be paradise, but it isn’t. We have our roles to play in the Diamond, just like the middlers and the idlers. Be proud of who you are.”

Nola doesn’t sleep that night. The room she shares with Mila and two of her four brothers is unusually quiet: the second brother has had to stay out, working to get the new expressway finished in time for that weekends Clarity Festival, and she finds she misses his snoring. Awake, she stares at the ceiling and thinks of what Mila said.

Be proud of who you are.

The Clarity Festival celebrates the founding of the Diamond State, when three brothers toiled to make a home for themselves and their families. One worked, one kept the books and one coordinated. They became the three levels of the Diamond and, though no one talks about it now, all three were wielders. It is said that when the Diamond was finished, the three brothers and their families came together and broke bread in celebration. That tradition is gone. In the Outskirts, they will break bread with their neighbours and mark another successful day; in the Rings they will hold dinner parties that last long into the night; and in the Centre, they will have opulent balls and feast on rare beasts Nola’s only ever read about.

Work cleaning the expressway is in overdrive in preparation. Mila has been pulled in, along with several hundred other workers from non-cleaning industries. They pick their way through the gutters together, Mila complaining all the way: she has already done her years as a gutter trawler and she resents being demoted, even for a day.

It only takes a second for everything to change. Mila isn’t looking at what’s she’s doing, distracted by the heat and her annoyance. Her foot slips; she falls sideways, heading for the tarmac and the racing vehicles. Nola acts on instinct. Her hands clench. A wave of air slams into them and they fall back together into the gutter.

“Lunatics,” Mila says, pushing herself back to her feet and brushing herself down. “Imagine how fast they had to be going for the air to knock us down!”

She didn’t see. She doesn’t know. But Nola stays frozen. This wasn’t a small breeze to cool her down. It would be a miracle if no one noticed.

Ahead of them, a car has slowed to a stop.

Nola’s hand trembles. Mila is chatting away, back to complaining, unaware of how close she came to death and how close Nola’s come to discovery. When she sees her sister still on the floor, she looks down, her hands on her hips and a frown on her lips.

“Nola? Did you hurt yourself?”

Nola shakes her head, hurrying to stagger upright. She keeps her eyes on that parked car. A door opens. A tall man steps out into the gutter.

Mila frowns. “What’s that idler doing?”

He’s coming towards them, Nola thinks. He’s coming for her. They lower their heads as he approaches. The man is handsome, refined; he wears a suit and a tie and a smile Nola doesn’t trust.

It’s aimed at her.

“I saw what happened,” he says. He has a deep, calming voice. “Are you both all right?”

“We’re fine, thank you sir.” The response trots off Mila’s tongue without hesitation. Nola doesn’t know how she’s able to speak; her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“It was a miracle that you were saved.” The smile grows. He’s still looking at Nola. “Magical, even.”

“We were just lucky, sir,” Mila says.

The man nods. “What is your name, child?”

He’s still looking at Nola. Mila glances at her, gestures for her to speak, and finally sighs. “Her name’s Nola.”

“Nola. I would like to invite you to the Clarity Ball in the Facet Tower tonight.”

Mila gasps. Nola stares. Her tongue unsticks. “Why?”

“Nola!” A sharp elbow from her sister. “She’d be honoured, thank you sir.”

Mila talks to the man. The man talks to Mila. But his eyes remain on Nola and she’s convinced they keep flicking to her hands.

That night, excitement flavours their small home. He has had a dress sent for her. It’s silk and floaty and all pale shades of blue, and when she looks at herself in their one mirror she feels like a princess. Her mother does her hair; her father bemoans the charity of idlers and their pity invites and smiles and kisses her cheek and calls her his sparkle.

The man comes in a vehicle driven for him, but he holds the door open for her himself, and smiles at her parents, reassuring them she will be back safe and sound.

In the car, she sits in silence in her princess dress. The man asks, “Do you know who I am?” She shakes her head. He smiles. “Suffice to say I am important. Do you know what you are?”

She looks up. What. Not who. “I am a wielder.”

“You are.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

The question is remarkably calm. She is being brave. But the man laughs her bravery away. “Kill you? Because of an antiquated idea of right and wrong? No, child. This once-great state was founded by wielders; only wielders can make it great again. I want to show you what your life could be.”

“I don’t understand.”

He waves a dismissive hand. “Enjoy tonight. Dance, eat, drink. We’ll talk later, and I’ll explain.”

Nola has never been to the Centre, let alone the Facet Tower. She stares out of the window at the gleaming buildings and sparkling pavements. The tower ascends in brilliant shards of light. A man holds the door open for her, and bows.

Inside, there is dancing and eating and drinking. People twirl in beautiful gowns as intricate as the tower itself to music chiming in pure melody. A large table groans under the carcasses of those rare beasts she’s only ever read about. There are hundreds of people here, and they all sparkle.

The man leaves her. He says he will find her at the end.

Alone, she is quickly embraced by the opulence. The drinks fizz on her tongue. The meats are delicious. The dancing is free and structured all at once. So she dances, and eats, and drinks.

At the end, he is waiting. He takes her to another floor in the tower and smiles at her.

“You look happy, Nola.”

“It was amazing, sir. Thank you.” She hesitates. The question has been burning at the back of her mind all night. “But why?”

“I wanted you to see what life could be like if you lived here, with me. Every day will be amazing. You will want for nothing.”

Her eyes widen. She doesn’t understand.

“You are special, child. But remember: no one needs to see unless I want them to see. To the world, you’ll be my ward. And that will give us immense power over that world.”

“But, I am just a worker, sir.”

“Never say that you are just anything. I am descended from the first worker; my great-great-great grandfather was one of the three brothers who founded the Diamond. Unfortunately, I did not inherit his other abilities. But you – you are a wielder, perhaps the last in this foolish city! Together, we can make things better. I will be president, and you will never have to work another day in your life.”

She frowns. “Then what would I do?”

“Whatever you like!”

“And my family? The others?”

“We can build a better Diamond State together, based on the founders’ vision. No more workers, idlers and middlers.”

“But there will always be workers,” Nola says. “And there will always be idlers.”

“Not if we are in charge, child.”

“But it isn’t the workers that are the problem. It’s not even the idlers. It doesn’t matter what you call them, people will always have a role to play. The problem is these diamond buildings and rings and the outskirts. It’s the fact that from the moment we’re born we’re taught that there is an enemy, and that enemy is anyone who isn’t like you.”

“Child.” The man smiles, the kindly smile of a teacher explaining to a slow pupil. “We cannot change how people think. But you don’t have to worry. Your life will be here, far away from all that.”

Nola stares. The man still smiles, and she still doesn’t trust it. She thinks of the dances, and the shards of the Facet, and the table groaning under the weight of so much food. She could live here. She could follow this man and help him change the Diamond State. Except he doesn’t really want change, just control. She glances down at her beautiful dress that her mother helped her put on and Mila helped tie.

“No.”

“No.” The man laughs. “Child, you don’t understand. This is your opportunity to be more. You are a wielder: be proud of who you are!”

She smiles.

“I am.”

The dress falls to rags as she walks away, and the shards of Facet Tower crack when she leaves. Those sparkling buildings gleam as they dissolve into nothing, just diamond dust in the air swirling around confused people who moments before had been safe in their towers, and she walks through the clouds they leave behind with her ruined dress and slight smile. By the time she leaves the centre and the rings and reaches the outskirts, she is barefoot and covered in dirt.

There are sirens in the distance. Her smile falters only a little. They will come. And that’s okay. Magic is, after all, forbidden.

And she thinks, for the first time, she knows why. Not for a common enemy, not for a fairy tale. Magic is forbidden because the wielders have one power amongst all others that terrifies everyone from the working man to the wealthiest socialite. They have the power to change things.

The sirens are closer. They will be here soon, and she will wait. Not to bow or to beg or to cry, but to say, “I am a worker and a wielder, and I am proud of who I am.”

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

Time of Devils

A short fantasy story of a young woman on a journey for answers.

Better the devil you know, the old saying goes. But Ella knows some devils too dark to mention, and has always questioned the validity of old sayings and the people who say them. What if the devil she doesn’t know is better? Perhaps the devil she has never met has answers.

She keeps track on her bedroom wall. The devils she’s met. The devils she has yet to meet. Gods and goddesses, demons and angers – all devils to her. She’s met them at crossroads and places of mystical power. She’s met them at bus stops and cafes and, on one occasion, the checkout at Primark. And every time she meets one she asks it the same question.

”Why am I?”

The devils are tricky. They answer what and who but not why. The great god Woden told her she is both human and not; the erudite Apollo told her she is a twenty-seven year old humanoid of magical descent. The what is answered. In Japan, a Kami spirit told her her name is Eleanor; another cut in that she is curious and determined. The who is answered. But not one of the devils will answer why.

The closest any have come was a tribal deity deep in the American south, who shrugged with a gruff, “The Greeks were always procreating.”

Always procreating, perhaps, but the important word is ‘were’. Belief has waned. The devils rest. She is the first Demi-God in six centuries and all she wants is to know why.

As a child, she had simply enjoyed it. Things happened when she was around. Lightning danced for her. Clouds separated. The ocean waved. But then the devils closer to home started using words like freak and abomination, and she sought out the old devils for answers.

Her next chance was hard to find. He no longer keeps to the old ways; her usual channels could not reach him. In the end, whispers of her search found him and he approached her.

They meet in a rundown Wetherspoons in a busy British town. He is older than she expected, grizzled and grey rather than chiselled and blond.

“Sister,” he greets her.

The Greeks were always procreating. She has no idea how many brothers and sisters she has.

She takes the seat opposite him, not looking away from his eyes. The devils play tricks. But his expression is warm and his smile is kind.

”You have a question for me?”

She asks her question. The man nods.

”An intelligent question. Or an incredibly stupid one. You are because an old man met a young woman and thought he’d give love one last chance.”

There has to be more. She must have a purpose.

He smiles. “You are because the time of gods is over.”

Now is the time of devils.

“No. Now it is simply time. The gods and the devils, they have no place in this world now. But there is beauty, and that is why you are.”

She doesn’t understand. The devil-god smiles.

”Once, I delivered messages across the skies. I saw such beautiful, magical things. I miss that. But our father, he saw beauty and magic in the everyday. He saw it in the budding trees and the changing seasons. He saw it in the humans.” He leans closer, and for a second he looks younger, brighter. More godly. “You are because the time of gods may be over, but our father is content to be a man.”

So she has no purpose. No reason to be.

”Your purpose is to exist.” Her brother smiles. “Isn’t that enough?”

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

The Cities Extract

The opening extract of my novel, The Cities. DI Susan Dethridge is called out to the third in a series of bizarre crime scenes.

There is a darkness in the Third City. It crawls through the corridors and scratches against people’s doors, a creeping assailant that travels between towers and attacks at random. The papers are calling it a serial killer. The worst murders in the history of the cities. But that would assume that the darkness is human, and Susan Dethridge has taken to assuming the opposite.

The phone ringing doesn’t wake her. She was already awake. These days, sleep is something other people do. She rolls over and answers before the shrill call can wake Richard.

“DI Dethridge.”

“Dethridge, we’ve got another one.” Chief Inspector Carroll, head of the Third City’s police force, greets her in what’s becoming the usual manner. “Fifty-ninth floor, Friary Tower.”

“I’m on my way, sir.”

He hangs up. Susan rolls over and slips the phone back into its cradle. Richard’s shifted ever so slightly. She kisses him on the forehead and slips out of bed.

We’ve got another one.

The sinking feeling in her stomach gets worse as she dresses. There’s no window in her apartment so she can’t look out to see the damage to the nearby tower – and there will be damage, of that much she’s certain.

Susan glances into the room her children share. They’re both asleep. Lost to the world. She scribbles a note in the kitchen, and lets herself out into the corridor. Here, on the forty-seventh floor of Battenburg Tower, Third City, there are fifty apartments, and usually there is so much noise it hurts. Tonight it’s silent. Everyone is sleeping. There are no sounds other than her own footsteps as she strides to the nearest lift.

It takes her to the floor below, and she manages to hop on a tram. The driver’s working the graveyard shift. He tells her no one should be working this late as though this is a fact and somehow they’re both in violation of it. Susan nods and smiles, and tries to make sense of the jumbled thoughts in her head.

Another one.

The station is just as quiet, but the circular train that goes by all the towers is regular through the night and she jumps on the next one. The seats are shabby, the paint peeling, but Susan likes the trains because she can look out into the world, and watch it go by.

She still can’t see the tower in question, but she sees so much else. The lights in the sky above. The smog below, a hint of it outside the window here giving the world that false orange glow she grew up with all the time in the Fourth City. If she tilts her neck, she can see the glittering lights of Ravensdale, Kensington and Belmont, the only three towers to continue all the way to the dizzying heights of the Upper City.

The train jolts to a stop. Susan doesn’t want to leave it. She doesn’t want to give up the sight of the stars and the glittering lights for the darkness.

Carroll is waiting for her at the station. His large face is wrinkled into a frown and that pit in Susan’s stomach digs deeper. Few things unnerve Carroll.

“Susan good, you’re here.”

Her boss has a booming voice. The entrance to the Third City level of Friary Tower is a large open space with benches and open-plan shops, and Carroll’s voice fills it, bounces back off the walls and comes back to them, if anything, louder. Susan winces. With the echo, his voice seems to tremor.

“What’s going on, sir?”

“Best to see for yourself, I think.”

Susan falls into step behind him, trying not to frown, to let anything show.

“Tell me about the others, Dethridge,” Carroll says.

“This is the third attack,” she says. “There have been false alarms but only two confirmed.”

“And?”

“Seventeen dead in the first. A hole was torn through the floor in the forty-seventh floor of Belmont.”

“No survivors?”

“No credible witnesses.”

Carroll glances back at her. “Meaning?”

“The five survivors were judged incapable of giving testimony.”

Carroll makes a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “That’s a polite way of saying they’re all nutters. Up here.”

They turn into a lift. Susan stands with her hands neatly clasped in front of her. She doesn’t speak, but waits for Carroll to key in the floor number.

“Do you know much about this tower?” he asks when the lift jerks into motion.

“I know the apartments here are cheap.”

“This is as high as it goes. The Second City can look down and see the roof.”

Susan hesitates. “Are we going to the roof, sir?”

“Don’t worry. We’ve got smog masks up there.”

It isn’t what Susan was worrying about but she doesn’t push for more information. She’s been outside perhaps two times in her life. Usually you stay in the towers, on the trains. This case has already taken her so far out of her comfort zone; this latest push just seems like another imposition in a long line.

Nineteen floors pass in a jolting second. Susan glances at the sign. Fifty-ninth floor: residential.

“End of the line,” Carroll says with forced joviality. “Out we get.”

They step into a war.

Or the remains of a war. Susan lets her eyes take one quick sweep of the narrow corridor ahead of them. It seems wider because of the gaping holes in the walls on either side. Like something’s gouged the bricks out of place.

The overhead lights swing in a breeze, casting darting shadows over the scene. Susan takes a step forward. Her foot crunches; she tenses, pales.

“It’s all right,” Carroll says. “Just debris.”

There’s a certain heaviness to his voice. Susan looks down at the plaster she stood on, then lets her eyes go back to the corridor. A hand falls limply out of one of the holes. She doesn’t go closer, doesn’t need to. If someone is still attached to that hand, they’re long past help.

“Where does the damage start?”

“Apartment eight. The other side of the corridor.”

“So it came down here -” Susan turns and looks up at a staircase leading to an open door. The breeze she’s noticed is coming from up there. “- And then up onto the roof.”

“That’s what we were thinking.” Carroll pauses. Clears his throat. “Any idea what it is?”

Susan shakes her head. Crouches down. A trail of black dust lines the floor and when she touches it it has the same rough, grainy texture she’s noticed at both the other crime scenes. It’s a sign that this is definitely one of her cases. “We need to analyse this,” she says.

“Already happening. But the other scenes – they didn’t show anything?”

“No, sir.” She pauses again. Carroll hasn’t been working on the case. She’s been in charge. But today he came all the way here before her. “How many dead?”

“Thirty-two.”

Carroll’s tone is hollow. Susan straightens up. Shakes her head. “The roof?”

“Seventeen bodies down here. Fifteen up on top.”

“Can I take a look?”

“Why do you think I called you out here?” Carroll smiles weakly. “Apparently you’re the expert on this.”

“I’m having to learn quickly, sir.”

An officer ties a smog mask over Susan’s mouth. She doesn’t move. Stays so still she hardly breaths. But she hates these things. The air tastes disinfected through them and they itch. Necessary, though, if you’re anywhere below the Second City and you’re going outside.

They climb the stairs together, her and Carroll, and like a gentleman he holds the door open for her at the top.

Susan wishes he hadn’t. She wishes he’d let it slam on her, let it push her back down the stairs.

She freezes in the threshold, looking out over the rooftop. The smog swirls. Shifts, like a living entity. It catches the lights from the cities above and reflects it back to them twisted, distorted. And the empty eyes stare back at her out it.

The bodies rise out of the smog like graves. Heads twisted. Eyes unfocused. Some are pierced through the skull. Some have broken necks. All dead. Gone.

Something scrapes across the rooftop, the only sound in a silent night, and Susan steps backwards into the building.

“Detective? Is it like the others?”

Susan nods. Carroll shuts the door gently, looks down at her with concern. She clears her throat. “Yes, sir.” Her voice is hoarse. She doesn’t like it. She tries clearing her throat again, but it doesn’t seem to want to work. “But  well – bigger, sir.”

“Bigger?”

“More damage. More deaths.”

“So whatever this is – you think it’s getting worse?”

Susan glances at the closed door and tries not to consider what’s on the other side. “Yes, sir. I think so.”

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

The Tower

A short story from a series I wrote a few years ago based loosely on fairy tales. A young woman’s hallucinations may be more real than her carers want to believe. 

They call it the tower, though it’s been so long since a tower actually stood there people forget why. Now it’s just a concrete block in a city of concrete blocks, a hospital with white walls inside and out that bears no resemblance to the red brick watch tower that once stood there. Legend has it a princess jumped to her death from the top of that tower, but Nate’s never believed in legends. The legendary rarely do.

He arrives to a fanfare of camera shutters smothered by the smog. The manager waits to greet him. She’s serious – grey suit, grey hair – and when he smiles his trademark smile she doesn’t smile back.

The tower doesn’t open its doors to non-residents.

Nate’s father says this is an exercise in political likeability. Nate thinks of it as an exercise in futility. The manager is irritable, unhappy with her role as guide, and the patients’ just stare. But he smiles and shakes their hands and makes small talk.

They break. He corners his PR man. “This is a bloody waste of time. Half these people don’t know who they are, let alone know me.”

The man shrugs, apologises, mutters something about Nate’s father and likeability, and Nate throws his hands in the air in exasperation.

They go upstairs and everything changes.

Nate’s supposed to be following the manager, smiling and shaking hands and making small talk, but a flash of red catches his eye and his footsteps falter. Most of the doors up here are closed. These aren’t communal areas. One swings open in the breeze and he looks through it at a girl.

She kneels on the floor, wide green eyes staring back at him. She looks early twenties, but he guesses she’s older. It’s the hair. The bright red hair so long it spills onto the floor around her. It makes her look younger.

He tries his smile. Says, “Hello.”

She tilts her head to the side and her lips curve slowly, seductively. “Hi.”

“Mr Harper?” The manager’s heels clack against the wooden floor as she races back. “Cayleen, is everything okay?”

The girl – Cayleen – glances to her side, like she’s listening to someone. “Fine,” she says, looking back at Nate. “Thank you.”

The manager closes the door. Turns away. Leads Nate further along. His footsteps drag and he sees Cayleen’s smile in his head and he asks, “What’s wrong with her?”

The manager bristles. “I’m not at liberty to discuss individual patients.”

“No, of course not.” He glances back at the door. “How long has she -?”

“Cayleen’s parents left her here when she was a child. It’s been twenty-two years.” The manager stops abruptly and scowls back at him. “She’s still a child, Mr Harper. Maybe not physically, but she’s still a child where it matters.” She taps her head.

The PR man says it could have gone better. On the ride home, he outlines where Nate went wrong, but he brushes over the Cayleen episode. He hardly mentions it at all. Nate leans back and closes his eyes and plays her smile over and over in his mind.

Nate’s father has a motto: if something doesn’t work, forget about it and move on. He doesn’t believe in lingering in the past. Nate must forget the tower. They have other tactics to secure his political future. Kissing babies is American cliché; he is British, therefore he must have a puppy. The voters like puppies.

“I like kittens,” Nate says, and his father shakes his head as though he’s disappointed him in the worst possible way.

The next day, he mentions visiting the hospital again and his father forbids it.

“The manager wasn’t happy. The last thing we need is an irate mental health representative telling the entire bloody world you hit on a sick girl.”

“I hardly hit on her. I smiled. I said hello. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

“I don’t care what you did, I care what she says you did. Don’t go pissing this woman off, Nate. Stay away from that place.” He smiles. Warm. Fatherly. “We’ve got a Q and A. Try not to fuck it up.”

Nate sits alone backstage at a large venue in his city. The smog’s come right up to the door, like it’s knocking for him. There are a hundred people out there. And cameras. There’s always cameras, they follow him like storm flies, clinging to his every move. The smog has an orange glow. It makes the entire world seem a little bit off key.

He does the only thing he can think of to ensure he doesn’t mess up his answers. He leaves.

The smog swallows him but he knows his way around like a map is seared across his eyes. They’re used to the clouds of pollution here. This is a city of industry. Always moving forward. That’s his campaign slogan. He’s not sure who came up with it.

The tower may not be a tower any more, but it rises out of the smog and calls to him.

The manager doesn’t like him. He knows that. So he’ll go around the back, to the small garden blocked on all sides by buildings. He’ll count the windows. He’ll climb the walls. He’ll –

She’s in the garden, sat on a bench, and she grins at his expression. “They do let us outside, you know.”

The smog gives her an otherworldly glow.

He forgot how beautiful she is.

“I’m Cayleen,” she says. “I live here. What’s your name?”

“Nate.”

“Hi Nate.” She glances back at the building and when she looks at him her smile is playful. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I don’t really know why I’m here,” he admits.

Cayleen shrugs. Then tenses. She twists away from him, whispers something to the air over her shoulder, and then snaps back to her visitor. “I’m sorry. They don’t like you.”

“Who?”

“My hallucinations.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, but there’s a slight dryness to it. A nod to her own opinions on the matter. “They say you want to take me away.”

He laughs. “I only met you yesterday.”

She spreads her hands out over the bench to lean closer. For a second he can’t breathe. Everything slows. She smiles that beautiful smile and says, “But you came back to meet me again.”

It’s easy after that. She makes him comfortable. She laughs and jokes and even though she hasn’t left the tower since she was a child, she’s an adult now, in mind as well as body.

“They can’t stop you growing up,” she says, glaring at her unseen friends. “Hard as they might try.”

He’s himself. For the first time in months there’s no one telling him what to say or how to say it. And Cayleen is so easy to talk to. She has this habit, this nervous tic, of tucking her long hair behind her ears. To listen to him. To listen to the other voices. He doesn’t care which.

When he leaves, he turns his phone on and lets it ring to its heart content. He lets it ring until the sound can’t get any shriller, until surely, surely, there can be no sound in the world more annoying. His PA’s voice proves him wrong. He’s in trouble. His father’s on the warpath. Does he know what he’s put her through?

His father told the media and voters Nate was taken away by a sudden illness. Tomorrow, his miraculous recovery is planned.

Behind closed doors, he’s not so forgiving. “Where the hell were you? Do you think this is some sort of joke?”

Cayleen talks to the air, but she’s the sanest person Nate’s met in a long time.

* * * *

He wakes to the phone. Not his. Ever since the election started his father and mother have forced him to move back home. They like to be a part of it. They like the bustle and the planning and the cameras. Nate’s happy to indulge them, but the PR team and PA and everything in between are driving him mad and when the door opens and his PA peeks in he has to choke down the urge to chuck the pillow at her.

“Yes?”

“It’s the hospital.”

“What? What’s happened? Mum –?”

“No, Mr Harper. Not that sort of hospital.” She smiles uncertainly. “Not that type of call.”

It’s still dark out. There’s nothing to see but the glow of street lamps adding to the glow of the sky. Nate grabs his car keys and tells his PA to let his parents know he’s taking the day for himself.

The tower is calling.

He drives dangerously. Speeding. Swerving. His wheels shriek and he doesn’t care. Cayleen’s smile is clearer than the road ahead. They’ve met twice. Just twice. He was with his ex for five years and he never, in all that time, had this heart-clenching pain.

The manager meets him outside. She’s still not smiling but her eyes are softer.

“We found her a few hours ago,” she explains, leading him in. “She keeps asking for you.”

“What’s wrong?”

“An episode. She has them some times.” The manager shuts the door to the outside world and everything is deadly quiet, like the smog has wrapped itself around the tower and smothered any noise. “Never this violent. It looks like – but she was in a locked room, Mr Harper, we know she was alone.”

“She asked for me?”

“She’s still asking.” The manager smiles wryly. “Whatever you said when you snuck back here yesterday must have made quite an impact.”

Cayleen’s been moved to the secure part of the hospital. It’s a single ward. Six beds. Restraints. There’s a security guard on duty, and a nurse. Any of the four doctors working overnight are easily reachable at the touch of a button. She’s in safe hands.

The bed’s too large. It swallows her.

Nate sits down in the chair beside her. Her hair spills down the side of the bed and onto the floor, a waterfall of fire. Or blood. He’s not sure which. Yesterday he would have said fire but today, with her face so pale, he thinks of blood.

When she sees him, she smiles. “Hi.”

“Hello.” Nate glances at the manager and nurse and security guard. All watching. Waiting to see what he’ll do next. He clears his throat. “How are you?”

Cayleen laughs. Her hand goes to her stomach and before he can stop her she pulls her top up. He’s halfway to yanking it back down again when his eyes land on her ribs.

A bruise.

A footprint.

“They think I did this,” she whispers, nodding at their audience. “But I’m not a contortionist.”

“Or a size nine.”

It’s all Nate can think of to say in his deadened, dulled state, but it makes Cayleen laugh, properly laugh, and she lowers her top and takes his hand as he just stares.

“I’m all right.” She clenches his fingers and her grip is the most natural thing. “But I didn’t do it.” She raises her voice. Looks over to the manager. “I couldn’t have done it.”

“Cayleen,” the manager says, “You were alone in a locked room.”

“I told you, Nate, I told you.” Her grip tightens. Almost painfully. He’s shocked back to her, back to the present, away from the memory of that horrible vivid bruise. “They don’t want me to leave.”

His eyes widen.

The manager shakes her head and moves closer. “Cayleen, they’re not real.”

“I told them I wanted to go. To see the world. To see –” Her eyes flick down to the bed; her cheeks flush. “To see you. But they won’t let me go.”

“It’s not like that,” the manager tells Nate. “We’ve told her she has to stay because of the visions, and now she believes her hallucinations are physically making her stay.”

Her voice is weak. Her blue eyes tremble.

She’s not sure any more.

Nate runs his thumb along Cayleen’s fingers. Not really aware he’s doing it. Not thinking it strange. She has to sleep. That’s what the nurse says. But Nate doesn’t want to go far and he lingers on the edge of the opposite bed, watching her heavy eyelids flicker until her breathing evens into dreams.

The manager perches beside him.

“Mr Harper?”

“Yes?”

“The doors are locked.”

“What?”

“The doors. To the street, the garden. Even the windows in the bloody kitchen. They’re all locked.”

Nate tears his eyes away from Cayleen. “I don’t understand.”

“No one on my staff locked them, Mr Harper.” A touch of hysteria now. “We’ve been trying to get them open ever since you arrived but they won’t budge.”

He looks back at Cayleen. Peaceful. Sleeping.

“Can we break them down?”

“They’re like steel. I don’t understand how. Those doors are old, half the time I’m worried the slightest bit of wind will blow the damn things off and now they’re trapping us.” She pauses, seeming to think over her words. “They’re trapping her.”

He darts a look at the manager. “Are we still talking about the doors?”

She tries a smile. “What else would we be talking about?”

In the flickering light, with the smog wrapped around the building, it’s easier to believe in ghosts than the world outside. Nate tries the doors. He thumps against them until his shoulders ache. HE tries his phone. It burns his fingers and won’t wake again.

Trapped.

The word is a whisper, teasing against his ear.

The manager makes him a drink and he goes to sit back with Cayleen. There’s nothing he can do downstairs. Here, at least, he can keep a vigil.

“I’m sorry,” the manager says, sitting down beside him. “I don’t know what’s going on but I’m sure we’ll sort it out soon enough.  I know you’re a very busy man.”

He smiles, thinking of his father and mother and the poor PA trying to fend them off.

“Not as busy as you might think.”

The lights dance overhead. The manager shuts her eyes, but Nate looks up at the ceiling to watch. Flickering lights don’t scare him. He’s more worried by what might be lurking in the dark they leave behind.

* * * *

Cayleen’s surrounded by figures. Shadows. They writhe and twist around her, touch her, whisper to her. They’re kind and gentle but when they look at him their eyes are fire and the writhing shadows grow more solid and their hate is tangible in the air, suffocating, all-consuming. And Cayleen’s lost somewhere behind that hate. She’s trapped in the tower.

“Nate!”

He jerks awake. The scream rings in his ears. He doesn’t know whether it was dream or reality and now his eyes are open but the darkness still surrounds him. The lights have given up the ghost. It could be night outside; the smog’s so thick it’s like a wall separating them from reality.

Cayleen’s bed is empty.

Nate staggers to his feet. He’s alone. The guard, nurse, manager, all gone. He’s not used to being alone. Between the PA and the PR team and his parents and the cameras and the public, alone-time has become a thing of the past. Now he wishes someone was with him. His PA. His mother. Even his damn father. Anyone to hold his hand and lead him into the darkness.

The corridor is another world. The ghostly glow of smog haunts it. Yells from patients rooms – confusion, anger, madness – echo around him, smothered into a dull quiet. Their doors are locked. He tries a few but none of them budge and the sound of the handles rattling is too loud in the eerie quiet.

“Cayleen?”

His shout’s swallowed by the darkness.

He doesn’t know the manager’s name. He’d call for her, but he never asked, she never offered, his PR man’s not here to remind him.

“Anyone?”

Every twist and turn takes him further away from the ward and further into the unknown. The manager showed him around only two days ago. Now the place is a maze and the maze is unkind. He starts running, like a man possessed, determined, desperate, to reach some sort of familiar territory.

A thump. He sprawls across the floor.

“Nate?”

Nate’s eyes open to the side view of Cayleen’s pale face.

“Thank God – I thought –”

“Shh.” Her hand presses over his mouth and he realises she’s whispering. “They’re everywhere.”

Slowly, silently, he sits up. His heart thumps so quickly he can’t feel the separate beats but it slows as he pushes back against the wall and puts an arm around her.

She nestles closer. “I’m so lost.”

“I know. It’s a maze.” Her wide eyes look up at him in shock. “What?”

“You see it too?”

“I see it.” He glances over her head and into the darkness. “Not that there’s much to see.”

“They’re hiding,” she whispers. “Toying with me.”

“What do they want?”

“For me to be like them.” She smiles but there are tears in her eyes. “They like to have new company every now and again, you know?”

Nate tightens his grip on her.

“What do you mean, like them?”

“They want me to jump. Like the princess in the story.” Cayleen shakes her head. “Only she wasn’t a princess, she was just a girl who lost her husband and then her baby.” She lowers her voice until he can hardly hear her. “And then she jumped. Because she was lonely. And the others jumped too, because she didn’t want to be lonely anymore. But it’s not enough. She wants me.”

She’s shaking. Nate grasps her shoulder. Tries to wrap his head around the situation.

“We should find a way out?”

Cayleen nods and takes his hand and lets him lead her forward like he knows where she’s going.

“Do you know what happened to the manager?”

His voice is swallowed by the dull silence.

“No. I think … maybe …” A deep breath. “They got her. I think they got her.”

He nods but doesn’t say anything. Just keeps striding forward and hoping they’ll find something. The sounds of the other patients have faded now. They pass a corridor he’s sure he recognises; he tries a door and it opens and there’s a body on the other side. He slams it shut before Cayleen can see.

The only constant is the hush of her hair dragging behind them and the thump of their footsteps.

And then the hush stops.

Cayleen tugs at his hand. Nate falters, lets his footsteps fade so there’s only the silence.

“What is it?”

He looks over his shoulder.

It’s not Cayleen looking back.

He tugs his hand away; the smiling face jumps back. Cayleen. He hears now and when he looks past the creature she’s there, on the floor, being dragged away from him. He tries to follow. The creature blocks his path. And with every second that smiling face is becoming more real, more solid. Harder to shake away as imaginary.

Her teeth are bloody. They cut through her skin. But still she smiles.

Nate stumbles backwards. He can hear Cayleen screaming as she’s pulled away from him but he can’t do anything. The creature casts her own shadow now in the orange glow of the smog. She’s real. She’s there. This is the creature that Cayleen knows, as alive and solid as he is.

One gnarled hand reaches out. The closer it gets, the smoother and younger it becomes.

He can’t move.

Her eyes are bright blue. They sparkle. In a face matted with blood, they’re so brilliant they blind him. He can’t fight. He doesn’t want to. Her smile is pretty now. Her face re-knitting itself.

“Nate!”

“Nate.”

She whispers the name. There are others around them now. More shadows. More creatures. But they, too, are becoming solid.

He’s going crazy. Or maybe he’s dying, and becoming one of them. Just like Cayleen said.

The hand is a millimetre from his cheek.

“Nate, move!”

Cayleen.

He staggers forward. Dives out of the way of that groping hand, that grotesque bloodied figure. Cayleen grabs his fingers and pulls him into a run, their feet pounding against the hard floor.

“What are we -?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Cayleen yells, her voice high, panicked. “I’m making this up as I go along.”

The shadows writhe around them, threatening to take form.

“Cayleen.” She’s there. The shadow princess. No longer bleeding and broken and grotesque, but beautiful, ethereal, her blonde hair trailing down the stairs to the entrance as she blocks their path. Her lips curl into a seductive smile and she whispers, “Cayleen.”

They could be twins.

Cayleen’s grip tightens until it hurts. She juts her chin out, stands tall, squares her shoulders. “I’m leaving.”

“No.”

It’s just a whisper, but it crawls over Nate’s skin and he turns, vomits. His insides writhe. He wants to scream but can only gag. Somewhere above him Cayleen sways, but she doesn’t fall. Just stands there. Facing her hallucination.

“You can’t stop me.”

Nate claws at the ground in front of him. He can’t see straight. Everything’s blurred and Cayleen and the princess who always watched over her become one, then separate. Blonde hair; red hair. The two blur, the only thing setting them apart merging.

“I’ll never be like you.”

Cayleen strikes. The princess twists out of the way but Cayleen grabs her hair. The creature screams. Even though he’s bent over, unable to look, he hears it a thousand times and that’s just as bad. The scream. The sound of hair ripping out of the scalp.

And then there’s only Cayleen standing there. Alone. Lost. Confused. The limp blonde hair still in her hands.

Nate staggers to his feet and pulls her down the stairs.

The doors are locked but the light in the lobby is on. There are people here. Real people, just as lost and confused as Cayleen.

“She’s gone.” They reach the bottom step and Cayleen drops down onto it, dragging Nate with her as the blonde hair dissolves into dust in her hands. “She’s actually gone. I can’t feel any of them.”

“That’s good, right? It’s over.”

Cayleen’s bottom lip trembles. “It’s so quiet.”

“Then I’ll make some noise. I’ll bloody well sing if that’ll make you happy.”

She leans forward and rests her forehead against his. “I want to leave now,” she whispers. “I want to leave with you.”

The doors open. There are cheers, sobs of relief, screams at the suddenness. Nate hardly hears them. There’s only Cayleen.

“You can leave with me,” he says. “We’ll go together.”

“Is it always so quiet? Out there?”

He shakes his head. “Most of the time it’s too noisy.”

Cayleen looks into his eyes. “I want to get my hair cut.”

“I can do that.”

“I don’t know if I trust you.”

He smiles weakly. “I’ll pay someone to do that.”

She nods. Lets him pull her upright. “Are we leaving now?”

“Yes.”

No compromise. No hesitation. They’re leaving, before the doors slam shut and she’s trapped here forever.

“And you’ll sing?”

“If it’ll make you happy.”

Cayleen smiles, and leans into him. “Yes,” she says. “I think it would.”

He carries her though the doors, her hair dragging behind. She’s weak. Exhausted. The clash of the doors swinging shut slams through them and Nate’s sure, distantly, he hears an angered scream.

Cayleen hears it. She doesn’t look back.