alone there, far beneath the road where no one would ever hear him if he yelled, but the thought kept creeping back.
The mushrooms turned the echoes of his footsteps into percussive bursts rattling off the confining walls in a syncopated rhythm that rose and fell, grew and receded; there was something about the quality of the reverberations that didn't seem quite right and in the brief snatches of silence that lay inbetween them he was sure he could hear other disturbing, muffled sounds. He didn't pause to listen too closely. The air grew dank as he moved deeper into the heart of the Close's system of ancient bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens, where families of ten or more were forced to live together in abject poverty.
After a while he stopped to try to get his bearings; the last thing he wanted to do was get lost down there. In the darkness that lay beyond the beam of his torch he thought he could see sparks of light swirling like fireflies; he dismissed it as a trick of his eyes, although it continued to nag at him. The atmosphere was even worse than he had anticipated, alive with dismal emotion and sour memory, brooding for centuries, ready to lash out with bitterness.
Shavi attempted to maintain his equilibrium. His gradual understanding of the Invisible World told him that whatever power lurked there away from the light would see anything less as a sign of weakness; and that could, very possibly, be a fatal mistake.
He sprayed the beam around. He was in a small room next to an old fireplace. The plaster on the walls was cracked and flaking. There was nothing out of the ordinary until something caught his eye in a flash of the torch beam: one corner was filled with an incongruous collection of dolls, teddy bears, photos, dollar bills, Tamagotchis: a pile of offerings left by those who had been there before him. It was just rubbish, but there was a strange, eerie atmosphere that surrounded it.
The place was starting to affect him; his breathing had grown shallow. A compulsive desire to flee came in waves, forcing him to grip the torch tightly as he fought it back. Briefly he stared at the torch, trying to clear his mind; despite years of meditation, in that spot, it was almost impossible. His heart was pounding so wildly, the throb of his blood made his head ache. But somewhere he managed to find the reserves of strength for which he was searching. He switched off the torch.
The darkness was all-encompassing.
His breathing stopped suddenly, until his head spun and he thought his lungs would burst. And when the ragged inhalation did come, it sounded so loud he wanted to tear the air from his throat for fear it would mark him out. Cautiously, he lowered himself to the ground and sat cross-legged, and through an effort of pure will he managed to calm himself a little; at least enough to remain in that awful place.
The dark gave him the destabilising sensation that he was floating in space. There was no up or down, no here or there, just a sea of nothing, with him at the centre of it. Gradually his other senses became more charged to make up for his lack of sight: distant, barely perceptible echoes bounced off the walls which seemed, unnervingly, to have no particular point of origin, but which he attributed to changes in the temperature of the building fabric; the floor was dusty and icily cold beneath his fingertips; his nostrils pierced the cloying mist of damp to pick up subtler smells which intrigued him-tobacco smoke, perfume, leatherwhich he confidently told himself were the fading memories of visiting tourists.
But he knew what he was really sensing: the smells and sounds and textures of the resting body of that place, which was, in a very real sense, alive, more than an amalgamation of bricks and mortar, a creature bound together with the bones of pain and the blood of suffering, guts of despair and the seething, sentient mind of hatred. He knew. And he knew he was there at its mercy.
For nearly half an hour, he sat in the deep dark, listening to the sound of his own breathing. He had just started to wonder if the place would keep him there in torment without presenting itself to him when his nerves began to tingle; his heightened senses had picked up a subtle change in the atmosphere. The temperature had dropped by a degree or two and a strange taste like milky coffee had materialised beneath his tongue.
There was no sound or movement, but he suddenly felt an overwhelming presence looming behind him. His mind demanded that he turn round, defend himself; somehow he managed to hold still. He could feel it, he was sure; it wasn't his imagination. Whatever was there seemed to rise up over him, poised to strike, still silent but radiating a terrible force. It hung there, his hair prickling at faint movements in the air currents. The effort to turn round almost drove him insane, but he continued to resist. And in that instant he knew, although he didn't know how, that if he had turned, he would have been struck dead immediately.
Although it was dark, he closed his eyes and concentrated. He could feel it above him, frozen, waiting for him to make any move that would allow it to attack. Shavi sensed oppressive, primal emotions, but not what it truly was.
And then, when he thought he could bear it no longer, it receded like a shadow melting in the dawn sun, slipping back and back until Shavi felt alone once more. He released a tight breath of relief, although he knew it was not the end.
He didn't have long to wait. At first he couldn't tell if the odd movement his eyes registered were the purple flashes of random nerves sparking on his retina or if it was some external phenomenon. White dots sparkled in one spot, like dust motes in a sunbeam, but moving with a life of their own, coming together almost imperceptibly, coalescing into a shape. His heart began to beat faster.
The shape glowed with an inner light, took on a pale substance, until he realised he was looking at the form of a small girl. Her blonde hair was fastened in pigtails, her face as big and white as the moon, from which stared the darkest, most limpid eyes he had ever seen. She wore a plain shift dress and had her hands clasped behind her back. More than her presence, it was what she brought with her that truly disturbed Shavi: an atmosphere of suffocating despair. It didn't simply make him sad; he felt as if it was being curled into a fist and used to assail him.
'Hello,' he said in as calm a voice as he could muster.
Her eyes didn't blink. The more he looked into them, the more he felt they were not human at all: alien, demonic, too dark and deep by far.
'I hope you will help me,' he continued.
'Ye shouldnae have come here.' It was not friendly advice.
Knowing what was at stake, Shavi arranged his thoughts carefully. 'I understand your pain. I recognise the wrong that has been done to you. But I come to you with open arms, seeking aid. Would you turn your back on another who walks the long, hard road?'
Shavi's heart seemed to hang steady in the long, ringing silence that followed. He couldn't tell if the girl was ignoring him or if her dark, luminous eyes were coldly weighing his presence.
Eventually the glass sliver of her voice echoed once again. 'You're a wee hank of gristle and bone. There's no a handful of meat on ye.'
There was something about her words that made him shiver.
The little girl looked away from him into the sucking dark. 'I can hear Mama calling. Always the same. `Will ye no come here? Marie. Marie!'' Her voice rose to a sharp scream that almost made Shavi's heart stop. 'But I've no had any food for days and my poor belly hurts! And then the night closes in and still Mama calls!' Her face filled with a terrifying fury. 'And now the men with the choppers are coming, with the sound of squealing pigs in their ears and dirty old rags tied across their faces!' She turned the full force of her regard on him and his head snapped back involuntarily. 'Are ye sure ye wish tae lay your heart afore us?'
Her question was weighted with some kind of meaning he couldn't discern, but he felt he had no choice. 'I am.'
There was another unnerving period of silence and then she suddenly cocked her head on one side, as if she had heard something. A few seconds later Shavi heard it too: a sound like chains rattling. It was accompanied by the overpowering, sickly-sweet stink of animal blood.
The little girl looked back at him. 'They're coming. Ye better run now. Ye better run.'
And then she took a slow step back and the darkness folded around her until she was gone.
The appalling claustrophobic atmosphere of pain and threat grew even more intense. Shavi realised he was holding his breath, every muscle in his body rigid. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was abruptly aware he was no longer alone. He couldn't see who was out there in the dark, but he felt that if he did perceive their forms, he would go instantly insane. He swallowed, unable to ignore the feeling that his life hung by a thread.
'Welcome,' he began.
