Mark Chadbourn - Darkest hour

The faint breeze that came with the dawn stirred the stagnant air with a hint of freshness. He stretched the kinks out, then walked back to look over Ruth. Her sleeping face gave no signs of the terrible things he had seen during the night. Her chest rose and fell with an incongruous peace. She was beautiful, he thought, inside and out; it wasn't fair that she was suffering. For a moment he drank in that innocence and then a jarring thought crept into his mind: he could do it there and then. Smother her with the sleeping bag. Strangle her, gently at first so she didn't wake. It would be perfect; he wouldn't have to look into her eyes; he could remember her this way instead of twisted by the torments that were sure to come. It wouldn't really seem like murder at all, would it?

The thought hovered for a second and then he felt a twist in his gut so sharp he thought he was going to vomit. He couldn't do it now-he was too tired. But later, certainly; he had, at last, accepted it was an inevitability.

As he turned away so he wouldn't have to look at her, his eyes fell on the insane scribbling that covered the wall. From a distance the minute writing resembled some intricate pattern; swirls and waves like a Middle Eastern carpet. Only up close were the hidden messages revealed, incomprehensible, but with some sort of intelligence behind them. There was something in this observation which tugged at him, but he didn't have the energy to start getting philosophical. Instead he blanked his mind and allowed himself to be drawn in by the mesmerising scrawl, a Zen meditation where obvious meaning was discarded for an overall sense. He stayed in that state where all the words blurred into one mass for what must have been minutes, feeling the stresses of the night begin to slough off him, until he gradually realised he was becoming aware of certain words rising out of the morass. It was almost as if the wall was speaking to him. And what was it saying?

I love you.

A nice sentiment, he thought ironically. Perhaps Ruth had been wrong about something bad happening there. The house may have been a place where forbidden lovers trysted, or was that his stupid, sentimental, romantic side coming out? He thought he'd finally eradicated that on the hilltop overlooking Skye.

Church.

His breath stung the back of his throat, hung there, suspended. The word seemed to glow, then fade, so that he couldn't quite be sure it was his name he'd seen.

Marianne.

This time he felt sick. His head began to whirl and he thought he might pitch forward. Marianne, speaking to him. A tingle ran along his spine, warning him not to analyse what he was seeing too much or the spell might be broken. Just wait, he told himself. Be open to it.

For a moment or two he saw nothing else. His eyes started to burn from the effort of not concentrating on what was before him. He had that queasy feeling he always got when he looked at Magic Eye pictures.

Then: Be brave.

Be wary.

The end is

coming soon.

There was a cold sweat stinging the back of his neck. He wanted to ask questions, make some kind of direct contact, but he was afraid it would break the moment.

You have it

within

you, I always knew

that.

Don't fear for me. Don't

hold on to me.

Face the future.

Go forward.

Church wondered how long the words had been there, hidden in the garbled, idiot pattern, and he had never seen them till now; by accident. At the moment he needed them most. He knew what Tom would say: no accidents, no coincidences; there was meaning in every little thing. But if only he had seen it before, how much strength he might have drawn from it during the long, painful days they had waited there.

I

can see you even

when you

can't see me. We all

can.

There's a

reason

for everything, Church.

You just

have to see

it.

In that moment he wanted to break down and sob, all the repressed feelings of the years since she died, all the strangled emotions of the last few months, ready to burst out in one rush. But all he managed were a few, brief tears that burned his eyes and were easily blinked away.

I may be

trapped,

but they can't

hurt me.

And I'm happy now

they can't

use me to control

you.

Don't worry, Church.

I love you.

The message began to repeat like one of those tickertape electronic messages that run around buildings in New York. He stayed a few minutes longer, just to be sure, and then walked out into the pale sunlight, his cheeks still wet.

Her words had been few, but there was so much to take in; an entire worldview. He was overjoyed that she wasn't suffering, that the resilience he had admired was still there, but more than anything that she was still around, like an old friend, keeping an eye on him. And not just her; she had said.

We all can.

What did we all mean? He walked towards the edge and looked down at the flickering shadows moving across the landscape. For him, right there, at that particular moment, it meant the world. Never give up.

There's meaning in everything.

There's a reason for everything.

He only had to see it.

Church skidded over the grass and rock down the tor. He felt consumed by a renewed sense of purpose, almost courage, although he had never considered himself brave. Risking your life meant nothing when everything was meaningless; but now there was meaning. The clues had been around him from the start-even before-but he had never pieced them all together to accept the sublime patterns. Even the Fomorii, the antithesis of it, proved its existence. Tom had subtly attempted to guide him towards that illumination, Church realised, and now he had it, he realised why: the world looked different.

Now they couldn't afford to lose; not just for humanity, or life as they knew it, but for something so big it made even that seem insignificant. An awareness of that responsibility would have crushed most people; Church felt enlivened by a new sense of direction.

Halfway down the tor he paused at a huge boulder and slowly crawled out on top of it so he could survey the countryside beneath. To most eyes, the rolling fields would have looked a little darker than usual. Strange shadows flickered on the edge of vision, but beyond that everything appeared normal. Church's heightened perception, however, picked out the Fomorii's half-seen shapes for almost as far as the eye could see. It was as if an army had massed at the foot of the tor, ready for a siege on some mediaeval castle. For a moment he blanched at the prospect of what lay ahead; then he drove all thoughts from his mind and hurried down the tor.

His target was relatively easy to find in the stillness of the countryside where no cars moved, no birds sang. Waves of golden light washed upwards like some strange aurora borealis, gilding the surrounding trees; occasionally strange booming noises echoed among the hillsides as if a jet had passed over. Church kept beneath the level of the hedgerows as he progressed along the lanes towards the epicentre. He had judged rightly that there would be little or no Fomorii activity in that area. The fact that even they were scared should have given him pause, but he kept driving forward, working at the plan that had started to form in the back of his head. The risks were great-even being there was ridiculously dangerous-but at that stage bold action was the only thing that could work.

Close to the golden light the air was filled with an unpleasant charred taste. He dropped to his belly and wriggled forward until he could peer through a break in the hedge, every muscle tensed to flee in case he was seen.

Maponus roamed around the field, his path apparently random, but, on closer inspection, forming strange geometric shapes. A scattering of bloody bones radiated out from him in what looked like a blast zone. Church guessed when Niamh had plucked up the Good Son and deposited him here she had brought some of his victims in the backwash. Church watched intently. Sometimes Maponus dropped to his knees and scrabbled wildly at the turf. Other times he stopped to throw his head back and howl soundlessly. The chaotic rhythms of his madness were eerie to see: oblivious to the outside world, trapped in a repeating loop of thoughts. Occasionally they became so intense his face would dissolve into a swirl of wild activity in which Church saw snapping jaws, writhing things, razor-sharp blades glinting in the sunlight, then just a globule of unbearable light.