Mike Shevdon - The Road to Bedlam

Shelley wasn't looking for the moon. She was shaking her head and saying, "No, no, no," over and over again.

"The dark of the moon. You hear? The spirit of the sea shall rise and claim his bride, taking her to him for life and love, so that the town may thrive once more. A maiden shall walk among them, a queen, crowned of the deep, and she shall live long and happy and have many children to follow in his line. Thus the town is reborn. There, d'ya see? You can't fail."

Shelley shook her head. "You're mad. You're fucking mental, all of you."

Ted answered her. "No lass. We're sane. We're the only ones with the guts to do it. The rest of them are spineless, gutless, feckless. They'd rather stand and watch the town die than do something about it. Well, we're doing something. We found the cure. It's not far. You'll be home in time for supper. All you have to do is step over." He steered her by the shoulders to a gap in the rail opened up by Jake in front of her.

It was time to intervene. I knew what had happened to Gillian and Trudy. I knew what they'd done to them. I knew why I would never find them. I was unarmed but for what I had to do I didn't need weapons. I thought of Gillian's photo, her hair framing her head like a halo. I thought about what they had made her do and it was all I could do to control the anger that boiled up inside of me. I wanted revenge, and I wanted Gillian to share it.

It's not that hard, once you have the knack of it. Glamour is like a comfortable skin. Gillian was not as tall as me, nor as well built, but my anger fuelled the change and I did not find it hard. I only had the one photo, but after weeks in the water it didn't have to be accurate.

I visualised the unconscious grace. I took the image captured by the flash of a camera. I held that image close and embraced it, drawing it to me. To that I added the sallow pallor of death and the blue-lipped pout of a bloated corpse. I tangled sea-weed in her hair and made her clothes ripped and ragged. I left the water dripping from her, fresh from the deep. The Gillian I made was beyond life, beyond hope.

The men were intent on the girl, backs to me so that my climbing down to the deck would have gone unnoticed even had I not been cloaked in magic. Only when I stood behind them did I drop the concealment and reveal myself. The voice I imagined was soft, cracked by salt, hoarse from the water.

"Leave her alone."

The words were softly spoken, but they came from where no one should be standing. They all turned, snapping around at the sound.

The closest made the connection first.

"You. It can't be. We drowned you." He pointed, but his finger shook.

"I came back. Let her be." The voice was a hushed whisper, a sibilant accusation.

Shelley's face was frozen in a rictus of absolute horror. She put her hand up to her mouth and bit into her finger to stifle the scream.

"You did wrong," I whispered to the men. "Let her go."

Shelley did the one thing I did not expect.

She pulled away and jumped into the water.

They must have seen the change in expression as surprise and shock crossed my face when Shelley jumped. It changed the mood in an instant. Freddy, the one who'd said the others weren't worthy, pulled at his belt. A wickedly long blade emerged. "'Bout time you went back where you came from," he said.

He leapt forward, driving the blade upwards into my stomach in a gutting stroke. My training kicked in, and I swivelled sideways from the blade and caught the wrist, twisting it so that he gasped with pain. There was no time for finesse. In the water, even in the middle of summer, Shelley would not last long. The well of power within me opened and I felt my muscles flood with heat. I flicked my wrist and felt the bones torsion, then snap.

"Aieeee!"

The knife rattled to the floor.

Using his broken forearm to turn him to me, I pivoted and hit him hard with the flat of my hand under the chin. His head snapped up and he catapulted backwards. Catching the rail with the back of his legs, he tumbled over into the water. There was a splash and his scream was silenced as he went under.

As fast as he vanished, Jake and Ted moved either side of me, Ted wielding a heavy crowbar and Jake holding a long wooden-handled pole with a steel hook at one end. Jake moved first, making the mistake of trying to swing the pole at me rather then using it to thrust. I stepped inside the swing, twisting around and turning him so it put him between me and Ted's crowbar. I punched the shaft of the pole back into his throat. There was a crunching noise and he gagged and coughed. His hands went slack on the pole and I used his momentum to swing him around so that he crashed sideways into the rail. A shove with my shoulder and he joined Freddy in the water.

I half saw the blur as the crowbar swung down at my head. Twisting sideways, I felt the air shiver against my cheek as it flew past my face, slamming with a loud clang into the rail where I had been a moment before. Ted was so close his spittle spattered my face as he roared in animal rage. He dropped the crowbar and grasped at my throat, forcing me back on to the rail. I grabbed his wrists, his arm muscles bunching under my hands as he tried to close his grip on my windpipe and thrust me over the rail.

There was no time to wrestle. I summoned gallowfyre, the dark power of the wraithkin.

My skin fell into blackness and the air suddenly chilled, all semblance with Gillian falling away. Flickering moonlight covered the deck where there was no moon, swimming and swaying, exaggerating the movement of the boat.

His face registered shock as a hungry tide swelled within me and coursed down my arms into the skin of his wrist. He shrieked as the cold bit into him, jerking in spasms as he tried to wrench his hands away. My hands clamped on to his wrists, leaching dark power into his skin. He tried vainly to headbutt me but suddenly his strength failed him. The grip faded as black threads of power found his veins and followed them to his heart. His skin sank inwards upon his frame and he fell to his knees, all colour blanched from his skin as it withered on his skeletal frame. I released him and he fell backwards, all life sucked out of him. I kicked what was left through the gap in the rail and it fell with a light splash and sank.

The deck was clear. Three men, less than thirty seconds. My heart pounded in my chest, but I was not breathless. It wasn't a fight. It was a massacre.

I pulled myself back from contemplating what I had just done. My body felt fuelled, burning with energy, but I had just killed three men. They might have de served it, what they'd done might justify it, but I had killed them. There was no time to think about what that made me.

Turning back to the rail, I searched the water. I could hear splashing away to my left as the boat rocked on the swell, the grunts and shouts identifying them as the men who had gone over. I could not see Shelley. The moonless night cast flickering starlight on to the water, made worse by the glimmering gallowfyre. I recalled the power and it slid back within me like an ocean creature sliding back beneath the waves. The worst of the shifting glimmering vanished, but I still could not see Shelley. She had jumped straight in, but surely she hadn't swum far?

I ran back to the cabin. They had all this radar and technology, surely that would show me where she was? There were banks of switches and battered console screens arrayed behind the wheel, but I had no idea how any of it worked. It looked as if it was all switched off and I could not see an obvious way to activate it. Even if I turned it on, would I understand what it was telling me?

I ran back to the rail and worked my way along it, looking for signs of something in the dark water.