Mike Shevdon - The Road to Bedlam

The briars behind him wound out and coiled around his legs, tugging at him. He tried to fend off the barbed strands with one hand, only to find it tangled and snagged. He yanked at the hand and it came away streaked and bloody.

"I'm not your dream, Sam. I'm your nightmare."

With an inhuman grunt, he fell sideways and dragged himself away from the briar, across the frozen grass, while the thorns tore his trousers and bit into the flesh of his legs.

"You're a freak!" he shouted. "A fucking freak!" With a wrench he freed himself and rolled away across the grass. He pushed himself up to his knees.

"There's nowhere to run, Sam, not here. And you're not leaving till I say you are."

He pushed himself up to his feet and dropped into a fighting stance, fists bunched and held tight against him. He dodged in, jabbing out fast.

I was in no mood to play games. I swatted the first punch away, stepped sideways and stamped my booted foot hard on the back of his calf. He collapsed and I hit him hard, once, with my elbow on the side of the head, making sure he went down. I hadn't trained for nine months to be sucker-punched by an amateur, and I wasn't fighting for style, I was fighting for effect.

He rolled on to the grass, curled up, groaning. I wasn't even out of breath. The violence felt good, a kind of release for the anger I had bottled up inside. He lay rubbing his temple with his hand. I could see he was watching me, though, waiting for an opportunity to lash out.

"You think that's grass you're lying on, do you?"

Taking its cue from my words, the grass began to lengthen into strands, weaving its way around him, knotting together and tying him down. Panicked into action, he tried to rise, only to find himself caught by the tangle. He fell back as the grass lengthened and wove around him.

"Agh, get it off, get it off!" He thrashed and struggled, but couldn't free himself.

It knotted around his throat and dragged him down into the fresh green sward.

"It's strangling me," he choked out.

I recalled the gallowfyre, feeling it withdraw back into the core of magic within me. The glade returned to pinpricked starlit grey. The sound of Sam's struggles faded as the shoots knotted together.

I looked down at him. "No. Once again, Sam Veldon, you do not understand. It doesn't want to kill you. It wants you alive so that you can be slowly absorbed into the ground and every ounce of you can be digested. You will be fertiliser, every last drop of you."

I walked away, hearing the struggles behind me diminish as he was wound tighter into the grass. Ahead of me the path opened up so I could leave.

"Wait. For God's sake, help me!" he croaked.

"Help you, Sam Veldon? Why should I do that? Wasn't that your phrase – you wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire?"

"It's getting in my skin! You can't leave me here. It's inhuman!"

I paused. For the first time since the moment I first discovered my fey heritage, I looked at myself and what I'd become. "What makes you think," I asked him, "that I regard that as a problem?"

There was a gargled, choking cough and then a spitting, strangled cry. "It's in my mouth. You have to help me. Please?" His voice tailed off.

Standing there, with my back turned, I could not walk away and leave him, not and live with myself. No matter how I tried to deny my own humanity – however I might like to be fey-hearted, I was not. I could not abandon him.

I walked slowly back across the glade. There was a mound of new grass, strangely like the fairy rings you sometimes see. As I got closer I found his form almost completely subsumed into the strands. They knotted and twisted, pinning him down like a grass-tied Gulliver tangled into a verdant Lilliput. His eyes darted sideways, wide with panic, but he was unable to move even his head.

"Are you beginning to understand now, Sam Veldon? I asked for your help and you told me where to go. Would you now ask for mine?"

His eyes widened, imploring me. A low mumbling sound came from beneath the grass.

"Very well. Perhaps you will consider my requests more seriously in future."

I stood back and addressed the glade. "Release him."

The briar tangles around me rustled and quivered, but Sam was not released. I had thrown it a lifeline, and granted a reprieve. With him tangled there it could survive for a very long time indeed. It would not release him easily.

"Release him and I will see to it that you are rewarded."

The words died in the still air. I could still hear Sam fruitlessly trying to struggle against the fibrous bonds.

I reached inside and released the power within me once again. Gallowfyre spilled out, dappling the glade in the moonlight. In the still air, the shifting, sliding glimmer was incongruous, as if made by the wrong kind of tree in the wrong place.

"I said, release him."

There was only further rustling. Sam remained trapped under the grass. The glade had refused the carrot. Now we would try the stick.

Blackbird told me that gallowfyre is an expression of my inner self, the core of magic that makes me fey. To me it was more like a creature that lived inside me, a creature with appetites. I opened myself to the power and my call was answered. Into the dappled light, wriggling tendrils of darkness emerged, sparking with deep violet at their unseen edges, hinting at writhing tentacles unseen.

They were shadows in shadow, barely visible. They threaded into the grass, seeking downwards into cracks in frost-hardened soil. Each was an exploring thread of power, a questing tongue. Whether as an extension of self or by some inner communication, I knew where they licked and what they tasted. I found Sam, cold and sweaty, streaked with green juices, red from weals and oozing from cuts. Beneath him was the ice-cold ground, and beneath that was a darker presence, hugging close to the warmth leaching into the soil. I drew back a tendril and then launched it, stinging the hidden presence, biting into it with cold, energy-leaching darkness of gallowfyre.

It recoiled from the touch, squirming downwards into the frozen loam, vanishing into the soil. The grass around Sam relaxed and parted. An arm came free and he tugged at the strands until he could push himself up with an elbow. He pulled grass from his hair and from across his face, then yanked at it where it tangled his legs until he was in a frenzy of wrenching and tugging, throwing shreds of grass in all directions. He rolled over on one side and then crawled away from the spot. He did not collapse back on to it, though, but knelt up, brushing the remnant shreds from the tatters of his clothes.

"Fucking grassy shit!" he spluttered.

I recalled the gallowfyre, returning the glade to its normal pallid grey, while I watched him pull every last strand away until there was not a scrap of it left. Finally he stood.

"I suppose I should thank you," he said.

"Don't put yourself out."

"Yeah. Well, thanks. I thought…" He shook his head, clearing it. "Fucking grass. I'm getting a lawn mower, a fucking big one. Better still, I'm getting me some gravel. Can't go wrong with gravel."

"You'd better leave. I'll be in touch, Sam Veldon. I want to know where my daughter is."

He stared at me for a moment, meeting my eyes. Then he looked away, and nodded.

"Go. Leave this place."

At my dismissal, he faded. I was alone in the glade.

I looked around me. The still air held no hint of presence. The frozen ground was undisturbed but for the one patch of new growth, now torn and trampled.

"It's time for me to leave." My words were thin in the cold air. "You cannot fight me. I am finished here. We're done."

There was no echo. My voice sounded flat and empty.

I walked around the glade. The thorns remained still where I passed and all was quiet. My feet on the crispcold grass made the only sound.