'I think we should go and see.' Matt stood up. Beyond the window, they could see people running down the street.
'I think I'll stay here, if you don't mind,' Crowther said, looking to the bar for another beer. 'Keep me informed if it's anything to be concerned about.'
Matt and Caitlin made it to the door, then Caitlin turned back and beckoned for Mahalia and Carlton to follow.
'I thought you were going to leave us with that prat,' Mahalia said, though her face showed no gratitude.
Flitting shapes moved down the steeply sloping streets towards the walls, searching for some vantage point. They acted like people tasting the uncertain edge of fear for the first time.
'In here.' Matt caught Caitlin's arm and pulled her into the entrance to a tall tower. The door was open, and they quickly made their way up spiral steps worn by what must have been thousands of years of feet. At times the steps were so precarious that they threatened to plunge any climber back down to their deaths. At the top, the steps opened out on to a small balcony running around the circumference of the tower, far above the confusion of slate roofs. The rain had abated and there was a clear view to the plains beyond the walls.
They knew instantly what was there before seeing any detail. 'Oh, no,' Caitlin said dismally.
Mahalia came up beside her, and when Caitlin looked into her face the hardness had dissipated, and for the first time she saw the desperate, innocent girl trapped within. 'They're never going to leave us alone, are they?' The girl's small voice was caught by the wind and whisked out towards the battlements beyond which a purple mist coalesced, filled with despair and the end of all hope. Mary's head throbbed and her throat felt as dry as the dusty road along which she walked. Delirium tremens made her feel like an invalid, or fifteen years older than her true age, and although she'd washed profusely in a stream, she still couldn't get rid of the occasional whiff of vomit. She'd got through the bottle of whiskey and cleaned out all the other alcohol she could find in the house — some cider, a couple of bottles of beer brewed by one of the villagers, some sloe wine (no alcohol lasted for long and she was lucky she had that amount) — but she still yearned for more, while at the same time hating herself for the desire.
It's not a problem, she said with the alcoholic's deranged conviction, while the real her that lived at the back of her head looked on with impotent despair.
She hadn't wanted to leave her cosy cottage and carefully structured life to venture out into the chaos of the world — it was too dangerous, filled with night-terrors even in the midday glare — and for a while she had almost convinced herself that it wasn't her responsibility to try to find some way to help Caitlin, that there was nothing she could do anyway, so what was the point. That had been the way she had lived for so many years, existing with a fear that had grown out of self-loathing; what had happened to her at the end of the sixties had contaminated the rest of her life. In some people's eyes, her transgression might have been only a small thing. To her, it was a blinding revelation of who she really was, and that terrible disappointment was something she thought she would never get over. Even now she couldn't think about that single moment; it remained, unconsidered, like toxic waste polluting her subconscious. And so her thoughts had naturally turned to Caitlin, unable to say goodbye to the husband and son she loved, and Mary had felt the heat rise within her: Caitlin would never suffer as she had suffered; Caitlin would not see her life dribble away in might-have-beens. Mary was more determined than she ever had been about anything else before.
She would never be able to live with herself if anything happened to Caitlin that she could have prevented. And so she had steeled herself with the alcohol — while knowing that steeling was just an excuse — and when she was too drunk to consider the fear she took the old rucksack she had packed, with Arthur Lee poking his head out of one side, and set out on the road.
It was going to be a long journey, certainly the first leg, and she guessed there would probably be more after that — these kinds of things never went simply — so she'd also secreted several weapons about her person. Food would be a problem, but she knew enough about wild herbs and plants to find herself some sustenance, but she would really need protein and the chances of her catching a rabbit or a bird were, she guessed, slim.
She paused on the brow of a hill and surveyed the green fields stretching out into the glare of the morning sun. It had taken her a long time to decide on her destination, involving much pondering, more attempts at communing with the powers that be, many of them failed. It quickly became apparent that she would need to seek guidance from something more potent.
And that was only really available in the old places, the sites that had been marked out by the ancient people in the dim dawn of mankind, when humans were more sensitive to what was around them, not dulled by civilisation's many drugs. She considered Stonehenge and Avebury, wondered about venturing even further afield, but she decided she needed something specific to her predicament. She needed to talk to a god. Not one of the gods rumoured to have returned with the Fall, but something higher. An old, old archetype; a power from the very beginning of it all.
Further down the road, there was a crossroads. From a distance it had appeared as deserted as the majority of the surrounding countryside, but as she approached, a figure had mysteriously become visible, standing next to the old wooden signpost that marked the crossing of the ways. She squinted, blinked; it was as though she was viewing the scene through a rippling heat haze. But after a few more steps, her vision cleared and she realised it was a man in old tattered clothes, leaning on a strangely incongruous staff that had some kind of worked shape to it. His grey hair was wild and wispy around his head and as she neared she saw his skin was filthy with the mud of the fields.
She slipped her hand into her pocket to grasp the handle of the already open penknife. At the same time, she felt a ringing in her teeth and a dull ache at the back of her head that reminded her of the unnerving sensations she had experienced when the stranger had visited to set her on this path. She still hadn't come to terms with who he was, or more precisely what, but she knew without a doubt that his kind scared her on some fundamental level.
As she neared the crossroads, her senses screamed at her to run. Whatever it was that she sensed about the man made her stomach turn and her thoughts skitter frantically; it felt like two magnets of opposing polarity being forced together. It was clear that he was waiting for her.
Even when she was a few feet away she said nothing, even tried to slip by, but his eyes widened with a hideous warning, forcing her to a sharp halt.
'Are you here to help me?' she asked, queasily.
Those filthy lips moved, but there was an unnerving second-long dislocation before the sound actually emerged. 'You must beware. You have been noticed.'
'Who's noticed me?' Mary thought she was really about to vomit; she desperately fought back the bile.
'The… Void.'
Mary had the impression that the stranger wasn't used to speaking English, wasn't used to any kind of language she could comprehend. 'The Void? What's that?'
His eyes grew wide once more and she backed away a step, unable to look him in the face. Fear engulfed her and she thought she might faint. But when he spoke again, his words were measured. 'Each day, your lives play out in rhythms, lat-dat, lat-dat, lat-dat, without change, without significance. And then, one day, a break… awareness… direction. Import.'
'I've been noticed… because I'm doing something important. And something's going to try to stop me.' Her fear changed, became deeper, colder. What was the stranger hinting at? Who had noticed her? Who was after her?
She suddenly felt tiny, manipulated by powers beyond her understanding, and from that came the question to which she dreaded the answer. 'Where do you come from?'
There was a long, trenchant pause, and then, 'I come from above…'
'Above?'
'… behind, beneath, beside…'
His words made her shiver, and reminded her explicitly of something she had heard when she was learning the Craft: 'There are beings around us all the time. We can't see them, but they can see us. They can see what we've done. And what we will do.'
'Go!' The word boomed out, and Mary almost fell to her knees. There was a terrible rage in the stranger's face. 'Go… and beware!'
