For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) Page 13

  William smiled and nodded. He’d taken to helping out in the general store because he needed something to occupy him. Forset had his newfound position in politics and Billy and Elisabeth had become inseparable. He didn’t mind, was warmed by it in fact, but it did rather leave him feeling like he was a spare wheel. So he filled shelves, swept floors and enjoyed the sensation of letting go of his old life and taking on something new. Abernathy, for all his harsh words, was a reasonable enough employer and they enjoyed trading information. William told Abernathy about the mortal world, Abernathy sketched him a picture of the Dominions. It was a profitable transaction for them both.

  “Hey kid,” said a gravelly voice from behind him, “where can I find something to eat that ain’t going to fight back?”

  He turned to see a dwarf ambling along the aisle, staring at the wares with obvious suspicion.

  “You got a problem with my goods, high-pockets?” asked Abernathy, appearing from around the corner and never deaf to any possible complaint.

  The dwarf looked down at Abernathy. “What’s it to you?”

  “My store, my rules,” Abernathy replied. “Come in from the mortal world, have you?”

  “Yeah, I was travelling here with friends and they all upped and vanished so I thought I’d see what I was missing.”

  “Left you on your lonesome did they? Don’t sound much like friends to me.”

  The dwarf shrugged. “You may be right. We weren’t so much friends as colleagues I guess. We were in a circus together.”

  “Circus? What, like gladiator sports?” Abernathy was thinking of the Palace of Bones, a popular entertainment spot in the Dominion of Circles.

  The dwarf looked confused. “Side show, you know, freaks.”

  “Freaks? And what were you supposed to be?”

  “Take a guess, name’s Knee-High.”

  “What sort of name is that, you lofty son of a bitch? You telling me you was in a freak show because you were shorter than lanky arseholes like him?” He pointed at William.

  Knee-High shrugged. “Where I come from it ain’t common.”

  “Freaks my ball sack.” Abernathy spat in disgust, stared at the result and then looked at William. “Fetch a cloth kid, looks like I left half a lung on the canned goods.”

  William rolled his eyes and went off to find one.

  “What’s your real name, boy?” he asked Knee-High, “because you’re sure as hell taller than my goddamned knees.”

  “Brian.”

  “Fine, come with me Brian, we’ll get something to eat and drink while the kid minds the store, and you can tell me all about these freaks of yours.”

  9.

  “WE NEED TO act!” Atherton told the gathered crowd, who hung on his every word. “We sit up here, waiting for our leaders to step in on our behalf, but they do nothing. They’re in there now, talking, negotiating, making compromises. Is that enough?”

  There was a murmur of disagreement.

  Atherton’s gaze fell on the face of Father Martin who was hanging back, his eyes down.

  “Of course it’s not. They’ve had long enough. That’s not heaven. That’s not God’s domain. We’ve seen nothing holy step out of its influence. That is Hell. That place should be surrounded by the army, guarding us against the monsters that live there. Instead the door lies open and these things are allowed to just wander out, making their way into our world. We’ve watched them, one after another, strolling off towards our towns and cities. Every minute we stand by and do nothing something else gets free. An invasion force that our leaders chose to ignore. What do they want, these creatures? What does the devil always want?”

  There were a few suggestions shouted out from the crowd.

  “He wants to corrupt,” Atherton said, “he wants to destroy. He wants each and every one of our souls.”

  He turned towards Wormwood. “And who’s going to stop him? Nobody seems to want to try. Nobody seems to care.”

  The crowd disagreed, they cared, they told him, they cared a great deal.

  “So maybe it’s down to us to show the way,” Atherton said, “maybe it’s down to us to act?”

  There was a small cheer at that and Atherton knew he had them.

  Of course, they didn’t stand a chance, as he had accepted earlier. If they attacked Wormwood it would be a massacre. But perhaps that was what was needed. Let his employers preach politics then, when the dirt was stained red. Sometimes, to get something important done, you had to make sacrifices.

  10.

  “WHERE IN TARNATION is he?” asked Governor Poynter, sticking his head out of the carriage window.

  It had been a sorely unproductive few hours, the Governor of Wormwood having indulged them with refreshments and courtesy but nothing more.

  “I think,” the man had said finally, “that I need to talk to someone who can make decisions for the whole country rather than just the state.”

  Now, with one of their party having wandered off, they weren’t even able to make a definitive exit, loitering in the street and looking like idiots.

  “He’s probably got lost,” said Paddock.

  “Or run off,” said the Senator, falling back into his seat and banging on the carriage roof for their driver to get moving. “We’ll probably find him in a dead faint a mile outside the town. We haven’t time to waste, he can make his own damned arrangements.”

  The carriage left Wormwood, one light, and by the time anyone thought to mention the fact that Duggan McDaid still hadn’t been found, they all had far more important things to worry about.

  WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?

  (An excerpt from the book by Patrick Irish)

  I DECIDED TO take a break from the Observation Lounge. There was so much to take in, so many threads to think about that I could imagine myself lost in that room forever unless I forced myself to take a step back from it all.

  Real stories never begin or end, it’s all just different lives crossing over, bouncing off one and another and heading off in new directions. We writers try to hide the fact, we finish our tales with happy resolutions and pretend a line has been drawn under events. But if our fictional characters were real we would only find closure on their death beds. The happy marriages that close our books, the great escapes, the celebratory feasts, the silhouettes growing smaller on the horizon, they’re all a nonsense. You never reach the horizon, you just keep riding.

  I wanted to find out what the ultimate result of Wormwood’s presence would be but, in that, I feared I was asking the impossible. I could spend an eternity watching the ripples as they expanded outward from that defining moment. God, even were he alive, had no interest in typing the words ‘The End’. I could—and certainly would—continue to follow the various threads Alonzo had presented but I wanted to stretch my legs and contemplate everything I had seen thus far. Uppermost in my mind was that elusive suggestion of Alonzo’s that not only would I find myself increasingly occupied with the things I saw in that room but I would also wish to influence them.

  I failed to see how such a thing was possible. I had crawled on my hands and knees above the rain-soaked Thames, eavesdropping on that conversation outside the Houses of Parliament. I had pounded at the floor, absurdly struck by how much I missed the recognisable comforts of my home, however grey and miserable it might appear. Still, I was an observer, held at a distance by the structure of the room that was, however invisible, as impermeable as stone. Watching the trains of people as they flooded towards Wormwood, the reporters and the men of power, I had felt almost close enough to breathe on their hot necks, the angle of vision bringing me down and into their party as if I were riding alongside them. But it was illusion; I could no more reach out and touch them than I could embrace my old friends, intercede on behalf of the unfortunate Duggan McDaid or hurl a stone of dissent at Atherton the rabble rouser. I was a ghost, forever removed.

  As I left the room I experienced a momentary fear. I hoped that, having thoro
ughly interacted with the place, the act of finding it once more would be simple enough, but what if I was wrong? What if I closed the door on it now, never to cross its threshold again?

  I decided upon an experiment. I left the door open, crossed, the corridor and focused on a closed door on the opposite side. I visualised that room, showing Atherton in the mountains above Wormwood, filled with a false evangelism. I gripped its handle, my eyes closed, and opened the door. I was, once more in the Observation Lounge. Looking over my shoulder I could see the door I had left open behind me, I could even glimpse the movement of its visions in the wall beyond. It was as I had hoped: the room was not a fixed point, it would be wherever I wished it to be. Reassured, I closed the doors on both and set out to find fresh air and my companions.

  When I had first entered the Observation Lounge I had found it disorientating, set adrift above its visions. Now, the reverse was true. Walking on the solid, blank walkways of the Dominion of Clouds, everywhere felt too empty. After the chaos and noise of Wormwood, the silence was unnerving. I felt like a man who had lost one of his senses. All the more reason, I decided, to try and limit my exposure to the Observation Lounge. The very last thing I needed, being in the process of trying to curtail one addiction, was to add another.

  I made my way out into the garden, hoping that the feel of real grass beneath my feet might ground me. It worked its magic. I lay there for a short while, running through what I had seen in my head, following each string of events as if they were narrative threads, guessing at their possible conclusions, imagining where they might yet intersect. The situation in Wormwood was clearly coming to a head and I couldn’t imagine how it could be successfully resolved. With antagonism on both sides and the political ramifications of Wormwood’s location, violence seemed inevitable. World politics is a balance of interest versus power; you use all the power you have to gather as much as you want, imported goods, money and, most importantly, land. The bigger you became, the more power you had. Until the arrival of Wormwood, nobody could rival the British. Now my home country was bordering on obsolescence. While one could understand their wish to see that situation change, I couldn’t help but feel a genie cannot be re-bottled. This was Atherton’s mistake. However much he hoped to force Britain’s hand, there was little they could do. An attack on the Dominions was likely to be met with such an overwhelming force of retaliation that the casualties would outweigh any possible victory. Surely the British government would see that? Indeed, it was to be hoped that every government would, including the Americans, in whose country the forces of the Dominions now resided. The only safe solution was acceptance. Not something politicians are noted for. It was to be hoped that the quality that did define them, self-preservation, would outweigh their natural bullishness.

  Time would tell. Already I was itching to return to the Observation Lounge and find out but I was determined to limit myself a little, find Soldier Joe and Hope, perhaps eat something (it was hard to judge how long I had been in the Observation Lounge but, unlike a natural resident of the Dominion of Clouds, I was a mortal man with mortal needs and my last meal had been somewhat interrupted by the death of God during the main course).

  After a few moments gazing up at the building and wondering quite how I might locate my colleagues I realised I could summon up an orb to lead me; hadn’t I seen Veronica explain as much to Arno? Perhaps there was even a quicker method, might I be able to use the same trick that allowed me to find the Observation Lounge? I walked out of the garden and into the cloisters, stepping up to the first door I came to, the faces of Soldier Joe and Hope Lane as fixed as possible in my mind. I opened the door and found myself face to face with a plate of sandwiches on a small table. I was still not thinking clearly enough. I took the sandwiches, reasoning that consuming them would help quiet the inner voice that was diluting my focus, stepped back outside, closed the door and tried again.

  The room had transformed itself and I found myself stepping into the garden. It was a small orchard of trees—their fruit would have been unrecognisable had I not watched Arno and Veronica pluck their like from similar branches. Thoughts of those two lovers made me realise I might be about to intrude on my friends in a similar state; it also, strangely, made me realise quite what an invasion of privacy I had committed earlier. That sense of dislocation I had complained about with the Observation Lounge, of never quite being able to be part of the action, had another effect. I had watched two strangers make love right before me and not for one moment considered the moral implications of doing so. I had simply looked on, like a member of the audience at a theatre. I had seen men die, and others conspire to further slaughter. Acts that, I now realised, had marked me no more than had I viewed them on a stage or read them in a book. These lives I witnessed were not lived for my entertainment, the unfolding saga was history, not fiction. I had known that in my brain but not in my heart. The realisation actually made me fear the room and what further horrors it might show me, though not enough to stop me returning to it. However disturbing, I simply had to see what the future held.

  My passing concerns as to whether I might be intruding proved unfounded. Soldier Joe and Hope were paddling in the stream and only too pleased to see me.

  “The writer finally steps outside!” Hope laughed. “Have you finished spying on the world?”

  “Not quite,” I admitted, removing my boots and socks and rolling up the cuffs of my trousers so as to join them. “I can’t resist knowing what is to happen to everybody.”

  “Well,” said Soldier Joe, “we’ve decided what’s going to happen to us.”

  “Not much!” said Hope. “For a long, long time.”

  “What’s the point of being in Paradise if you break a sweat?” Soldier Joe asked. He looked at me. “Do you think that’s selfish of me? No doubt, back in the real world it’s all panic and fighting but I’d hardly be much use, would I?”

  I was by no means sure that his health would return to its previous state simply by his stepping outside the Dominion. I thought it likely that Alonzo had bestowed a permanent cure, much as he had with Henry Jones’ useless hands. That said, I appreciated the possibility that it offered him the perfect, guilt-free justification for leaving the fighting behind. Soldier Joe had seen a good deal of misery in his life and I, for one, begrudged him his happiness not one jot. Let him believe he was making a logical decision, a man is entitled to his pride.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “It would be foolishness for you to leave here, so why not make the most of it?”

  He nodded and smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “I was beginning to wonder if I was being a coward.”

  “Hardly, you’re making the only sensible decision. Put it from your mind.”

  “I’ve been telling him that for hours,” said Hope. “I’m glad he’ll listen to you at least.”

  “I listened,” he said, “but it’s good to hear it from someone else.”

  “Have you explored far?” I asked.

  “Not really,” said Hope, “we’ve just been walking around out here.”

  I told them what I had learned about the place from watching Arno and Veronica, about the orbs they could summon and the adventures they could experience within the rooms of the Junction. I told them about the couple’s mission to retrieve other souls and bring them back here.

  “I think there’s probably room for a few more,” said Soldier Joe, “we don’t mind sharing.”

  “Who knows if we’ll even notice?” I said. “There are other souls here for sure, not everyone ended up in the Dominion of Circles, but we’ve seen no sign of them as yet.”

  “This place is even bigger than we realise,” agreed Hope. “I think it’s personal too.”

  “Personal?” I asked.

  “You know, you meet the people you want to meet, see the things you want to see. Maybe we’re surrounded by other souls but we don’t see them because they’re all in their own, private Heaven.”

  “Maybe. Alonzo talked abo
ut the fact that all our lives are personal. He was talking about time but I suppose it extends into everything. We all walk our own path then we interact with others and our paths synchronise with theirs. To be honest he lost me rather...”

  “He lost me from the minute I met him,” Soldier Joe admitted.

  We continued to paddle for a short while but eventually I felt I could delay my return no longer. The compulsion to find out what came next was too strong. Looking around, I realised that the door I had travelled through was now gone so I decided to try Veronica’s trick with the orb. I closed my eyes and visualised one hovering in the air before me, hoping that this time I was suitably focused as to not force a bottle of gin to appear in thin air. I opened one eye and was relieved to see that it had worked.

  “There you are,” I said. “Take me back to the Observation Lounge, please.”

  I said goodbye to Soldier Joe and Hope, promising to come and find them later, and followed the orb out of the garden.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ANIMAL CALLED MAN

  1.

  THE PLAIN OF Salt crowned the peak of Mount Noma, a flat acre that glittered with crystals, allegedly formed by the gallons of tears that had been shed there. While this was doubtless theatrical myth-making, the plain had certainly seen its fair share of activity over the millennia. At its height it had bustled with the presence of penitents, great crowds of human souls desperate to feel the prick of barbed wire or smell the barbecue tang of their own flesh burning. What made the plain so perfect for the task was a little piece of magic that flourished on its surface: whatever atrocities were committed there, however violent, however debilitating, they would vanish at the end of the day leaving the sufferers whole, unblemished and ready to start all over again. This drew people from considerable distances and the locals, disinterested on a moral level but only too wise to the ways of commerce, had been quick to offer their services as torturers.