Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

He turned away from the suit and raised his lantern higher. The light shone on stone pillars, and hinted at arches high above. Crake knew this place. It had been a vast wine cellar, before he made it his own. This was his sanctum. Here, he'd created the sword Frey carried, and the gold tooth in his mouth. Here, he'd created a golem. And here, he'd committed the crime that had destroyed his old life for ever.

This is the daemon's doing, he thought. It's playing with me. But it felt no less real for that.

Shivering with the cold, he moved back towards the echo chamber.

The room was silent. Even the electrical hum of the chamber had quieted. The tap of his boots rang through the freezing cellar.

What's it waiting for? What does it want?

He stepped around the front of the echo chamber. The door, the seal that kept the daemon inside, hung ajar.

Crake reached out and pulled the door open. He steeled his nerve and shone his light inside.

The chamber was empty.

He heard wet, clicking breaths coming from beyond the range of his lantern.

No, he thought to himself. Please not that. Don't make me see her again.

He became aware of a dripping sound, and looked down. In his hand was a letter knife with the crest of his university on the hilt. His hand and the knife were covered in blood. It dripped from the blade on to the stone floor.

He cried out in pain and flung the blade down. Something scraped in the darkness behind him. He spun around, but saw nothing.

'Curse you!' he shouted. 'You are not that daemon!'

Not the one that made him do what he did. Not the one that made him stab his niece seventeen times with a letter knife.

Then, a voice from the blackness. His niece's voice.

'Why'd you put me in there, Uncle Grayther?'

Crake looked around, teeth gritted, desperately seeking the source of the voice. He knew it to be a trick, but tears welled in his eyes anyway. He couldn't help it.

'Why'd you put me in there?' the haunting voice asked again. There was a groan of metal, and the armoured suit tipped forward with a crash, cables snapping free as it fell.

'You're not her! How dare you pretend you are!' he cried.

But despite what his mind knew, his senses told him otherwise. That was Bess's voice, who he'd put into an echo chamber while she was dying, and whose essence he'd transferred into an armoured suit. But the process had been crude and hurried and was way beyond his abilities; she hadn't come through it whole. What was left was a simple creature, more like a pet than the little girl he knew. A daily reminder of his crime.

'I'm so lonely, Uncle,' came her voice again. 'I'm so lonely and it'll never end.'

'You rot-hearted bastard!' Crake shrieked into the dark. 'I loved her!'

'It's so hard to think in here, Uncle. What did you do to me?'

Crake choked back a sob.

'You should've let me die,' she said.

'I loved you! I love you!' he protested.

'How could you?' came the whisper, from right by his ear. He swung around in alarm.

She was there, reaching towards him, sodden red, open wounds pulsing with blood. But the look in her eyes was pleading.

'How could you?'

He screamed, and the light from his lantern went out.

Hysterical, weeping breathlessly, he fumbled for his matches again, but in his haste to light them he dropped them on the floor. He went down on his knees, searching. At any moment he expected to feel the dreadful touch of the bloodied apparition. But then his fingers found the matchbox, and he managed to steady his trembling hands long enough to strike one. He touched the tiny flame to the wick of his lantern, and light returned to the freezing room.

There was no sign of Bess. But there, lying next to him like an accusation, was the letter knife.

He put the lantern on the floor. Sobs racked him, each one like a punch in the chest. He stayed on his knees. He wasn't sure he had the strength to stand any more.

'I thought I could control it,' he gasped between sobs. 'You weren't supposed to be there.'

'Sssh,' came the disembodied voice. 'You know what you have to do.'

'I couldn't let you die.'

'Sssh.'

His fingers closed around the hilt of the knife. A sense of peace filled him at its touch. Yes, it would be so simple, wouldn't it? An end to the constant, grinding agony of memory.

'You've suffered enough, Uncle. It's time to rest.'

Time to rest. He liked that. She'd given him her blessing, hadn't she? And he was so very tired.

He put the blade to his neck, angling it under the curve of his jaw. One swift cut in the right place, and he could sleep. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept well.

'Now push!' hissed the voice from the darkness. 'Push! Push!'

He felt a trickle of blood running down his throat, and realised he'd already broken the skin. He was already that far along; why not go a little further?

He took a breath, steadied his hand for the final thrust.

'Goodbye, Uncle,' said the voice.

And Crake stopped. Goodbye, indeed. With that one quick cut, he'd be leaving her. He'd be at rest. But Bess wouldn't.

And who'd save her then?

He took the blade from his throat. It fell from his hands, ringing as it hit the stone floor.

Rest. Peace. He didn't deserve it.

He got to his feet. From the dark, there was only silence.

The daemon that made him stab his niece had left him alive for a reason. It wanted him to suffer for his arrogance in meddling with forces he didn't fully understand. To spend day after day in torment. In trying to avoid his sentence, Crake had unwittingly made it worse. By refusing to let her die he'd condemned them both to an eternity of misery. He'd only served two years, but it had almost broken him.

Yet now there was a chance of release, he couldn't take it. Not while Bess was still alive. Bess needed him, and she was his responsibility.

He'd spent three months as a drunken vagrant before he pulled himself together and found the Ketty Jay. Life on board had brought a window of clarity, but once the whole Retribution Falls affair was done he'd begun sliding back again. Blocking out the pain instead of tackling it. He'd always meant to do something about Bess, but somehow it had never happened. He was too afraid of the possibility of failure. Too scared to leave the relative comfort of the crew to strike out on his own. He knew, one way or another, that this was a task for him alone, and that frightened him.

But now it came to it, now he had the chance to give up his burden of grief, he found that he couldn't. He'd never atone for what he'd done, but he couldn't turn his back on it either. So there was only one other option. He had to face up to it, and fix it.

The thought lit a flame in his breast. This was his burden and he'd bear it. Suicide was the coward's way out. And Grayther Crake was no coward.

'Look what you did to me, Uncle,' whispered the voice. Crake turned, and saw her. Lying there, just as he'd found her that day, with that same look of incomprehension and betrayal on her face. Blood-soaked, gasping, paralysed by shock.

The sight brought fresh tears to his eyes. His lip trembled and he teetered on the edge of hysteria again. But he heaved in a shuddering breath, and he made himself look.

'Yes,' he whispered. 'Yes, I did that.'

He walked over to her, picked her up, and held her against him. The sodden, slight, ragged weight of her. She squirmed in his arms, trying to push him off her, but he was too strong and wouldn't let her go. Warm blood slicked his neck and hands.

'Don't worry,' he murmured. 'Uncle Grayther will make it better. I promise I'll make it better, somehow.'

She began to squeal and shriek, thrashing in his grip. She pummelled and scratched at him. But he held her tight, tears streaming down his face, as the bloody child fought against him. The pain meant nothing to him now. He could take everything and more, as long as he didn't stop holding her.