The Weight of Souls (28 page)

The bus shuddered to a halt and I staggered. The lights that glared into the window were red. The Darkness advanced more quickly.

“I wish you hadn’t had to hear that back there, about your friends.”

“They weren’t my friends.”

The seeping shadows seemed to be taunting us, surrounding us on all sides, but not yet closing in.

Suddenly the bus lurched and sped up. I glanced out of the window. We were finally on the Westway, able to move much faster.

I held my breath and the Darkness slid back as if it were a blanket being yanked off a bed.

“We’re beating it.” Justin punched the air.

We stood beneath the fluorescent lights in the centre of the aisle and when sound returned to the world I threw my head back, closed my eyes, bathed in the racket and tried to forget that it was impossible to outrun the Dark.

 

At the end of my road we leaped from the bus straight into a sprint and hurled ourselves directly towards my house.

“Nearly there.” Justin pulled ahead and half dragged me behind him.

We ran through the pools of orange light cast by the streetlamps. Light-dark, light-dark. Each time we left a circle of brightness I caught my breath, fear clutching at my throat as my foot landed outside the glow and pitched me into the twilight of the spaces between.

I didn’t know why I was running for home. The Darkness would find me there as easily as anywhere else. I only knew it was the only place I’d ever felt safe, and my Dad was there. Part of me needed to hide behind him, but really I wanted to say goodbye.

We pounded up the steps and I fumbled with my key as Justin watched the road behind us. “Tay.” His voice contained a warning, but I knew what I’d see if I turned around: the shadows linking the streetlamps growing murky and starting to flow together.

“Quick.” I grabbed his hand and dragged him through the door. Then I ran for the study. “Dad!” For the first time I burst inside without pausing at the threshold.

I staggered to a halt. It was bright in the study, electric lights blaring yellow as sunshine. Dad was bent over a microscope. As I entered he straightened and a smile cracked his face. “Taylor, what good timing.”

“No more samples.” Automatically I put my hand behind my back.

“Not that. I’ve got good news.” He rolled back from the desk. “Look at this.” He gestured towards the slide beneath the scope and I glanced at Justin then released his hand. I put my face to the eyepiece then blinked. “What am I looking at?”

“Now look at this.” He slid another slide underneath.

Red shapes blurred and curled under my vision.

“Are they meant to look the same?”

Dad grinned. “Yes. No. One is your blood and one is mine. Normally you’d be able to see a difference. But now you can’t. Know why?”

I shook my head.

“I’ve successfully injected some of your mitochondrial DNA into this sample. Now my blood here is just like yours.”

“What does that mean?” My heart thudded.

“
Your blood changed mine
. It
infected
it. It makes what you have communicable.”

“We’re back to this.” I stepped away from the slide. “If you were going to catch this, you would have.”

He grabbed my elbow. “You aren’t hearing me. It’s incredibly hard to catch, to do this I had to put your mitochondrial DNA straight into mine and that was hard enough even with medical equipment. That isn’t the point.” His eyes glowed. “Listen. If your so called ‘curse’ is communicable that means
it is a disease
. And that means there has to be a cure.” His mouth opened on a happy grin. “Don’t you see? I was right all the time.”

“Dad…” My mouth emptied of words. How could I tell him he was too late?

“Taylor.” Justin’s voice in my ear was quiet, but it made me turn as if I was on a spit. Inside our room, light still reigned, but in the hallway the Darkness had arrived. It pressed against the door like a dammed tidal wave, a wall of blackness past which I could see nothing.

“What
is
that?” Dad started to roll towards the door.

“Don’t.” I pushed him back with my clean hand then I showed him the stain on my other one. “It’s the Darkness, it’s come for me.”

The air itself inhaled and a familiar pressure began to build in my ears. Sounds that I hadn’t even been aware of faded away: the hum of the fridge in the distant kitchen, the constant exhalation of the central heating, the mechanical whir of Dad’s computer, the sound of our breathing.

“Taylor.” Dad shook his head. “The Darkness is all in your head.” But he didn’t move any closer to the doorway and he kept shaking his head as if his ears had filled with water.

“Justin,” I whispered. He threw his arm around me and didn’t even suggest running. He knew we’d come to the end of the line.

Abruptly he pressed his lips to mine. To Dad I must have looked crazy, but I didn’t care. I threw my arms around Justin’s neck and kissed him back for all I was worth.

Suddenly my knees went weak and I half collapsed against his chest.

I was exhausted, I was terrified, but I’d never fainted in my life before today.

Finally my ears registered Dad’s shouts. “Taylor, what are you doing? And who’s that?”

I pulled free of Justin’s lips and half turned in his arms.

“Y-you can see him?”

“He wasn’t there before.” Dad wheeled slowly forward. “What are you?” He was speaking to Justin.

Justin looked at me, his brown eyes wide. “Your Dad can see me.”

“Tamsin could too, after the last time we kissed.” I looked at Dad. “Dad, he’s a ghost. You can see him?”

Dad’s chair lurched forward. “Get away from my daughter.”

Justin half jumped back and I clutched at him with arms that felt like spaghetti. “Justin, I think I know what’s happening. Kiss me again.”

“Your Dad–”

“Do it,” I hissed with one eye on the door.

Justin kissed me. I opened my mouth against his and the room swum. My legs went altogether and Justin had to hold me to stop me from collapsing to the ground.

He pulled back. “Tay, you’re too weak.”

“You’re taking my life force or something. Every time you kiss me, I get weaker and you get less ghostlike.”

“More alive,” he whispered.

“Get away from her.” Dad rolled towards us, murder on his face.

“No, Dad.” I grabbed Justin’s face. “Keep kissing me. Take it all.”

“What?” I wasn’t sure who cried out the loudest, Justin or Dad.

“The Darkness is coming for me.” I gripped Justin’s biceps urgently. “I failed. Don’t you understand? Without me you’ll never be able to move on. I’ve seen ghosts stuck here for
decades
waiting for justice. They’re trapped until their murderer actually
dies
. Pete could live till a hundred.”

Justin’s face paled.

“If you do this you’ve got a chance. It might not work, but it might, you could live again.”

His chest rose and fell under mine. I knew he wasn’t breathing, was he trying not to cry?

“Tay, I’m not going to kill you.”

“I’m dead anyway, or near enough.”

“Taylor, get away from him.” Dad’s chair banged into the back of my legs and his arms went around my waist. He started to drag me back, but I clung to Justin’s shoulders.

“Do it Justin, kiss me one last time. I
have
to do this for you.”

He hesitated, lips trembling then he kissed me. On the forehead. Light as a feather. With firm fingers he unlocked my hands from around his neck and pushed me away.

I didn’t have the energy to do anything other than fall into Dad’s lap. I struggled, trying to rise, but he held me in an iron grip. “He’s doing the right thing, Taylor.” Dad’s voice was tinny and distant.

“Let me go,” I insisted.

“No,” he growled.

“It’s OK, Dad, I can’t
make
him kiss me. I just need to stand up.”
I have to be away from you when the Darkness comes
.

I turned and pressed my lips to his cheek. “I wish Mum was here,” I whispered. Despite the muffling effect of the Darkness he heard me.

“I know,” he replied. Momentarily his arms relaxed and I staggered to my feet, moving quickly out of his reach. I looked from one beloved face to another then stepped to the centre of the room.

I opened my mouth to say goodbye, but it was too late.

The Darkness crashed past the door like a wave that had been too long held back and hit me like a hammer.

I threw my arms out and the pure blackness eclipsed my last sight: Justin diving towards me with tears streaming down his face.

 

30

 

SO MANY HAD BEEN SENT INTO THE DARK

 

Silence surrounded me, as oppressive as snow. The feeling of being watched was intense enough to make my skin prickle, but I couldn’t see a thing.

Heart hammering, I tried to haul in a breath, but the silence was suffocating as an avalanche and I couldn’t raise my chest against it. I needed oxygen. Sparks burst in the blackness behind my eyes as my brain frantically fired off electrical impulses.

My last breath tinged the void with its tiny warmth and nothingness pressed on my eyelids like deep water.

So it
was
death that waited in the Darkness.

 

Abruptly I was in freefall. I spread my arms and dropped like Alice down the rabbit hole. There was no sound as I descended. No rushing of air around me, no breath from my own body.

Then I landed, with bone jarring force, on a hard floor.

 

I opened my eyes to find that I was still shrouded in Darkness. I was no longer breathing, so I lay motionless, on my back, waiting fearfully for oblivion to take me.

Nothing happened.

After a while I rolled onto my front. I had no need to inhale and where there had always been a thudding in my chest, now there was nothing. Otherwise I felt like myself. The blackness was absolute but I patted myself down with trembling hands. Everything else felt normal. I just wished that I could see. Finally, skin tingling with anticipation, I groped around me.

The floor appeared to be made of stone. As I swept my arms in widening circles, my fingers sent something rattling. Immediately I pulled my arm in, waited for silence then reached out once more. My hand closed around a thin strip of metal and I pulled it towards me. A heavy object rasped along the stone floor. I took the shape onto my lap and frowned; it felt like something I’d seen before. Mum had once shown me pictures of our ancestor’s expedition and I was certain this was an old lantern.

I had no way of igniting it, but it represented light so I clutched it to my chest, as if to remind me that there must be a way to banish the Darkness.

 

I don’t know how long I crouched, there was no way to tell, not even breaths to count. Finally though, I stood and started to walk. Strange as it seemed, I held the lantern out in front of me and moved like a kid in sand, pushing my toes along the ground. As I progressed I knocked
things
clattering across the ground. They sounded like dice in a box. Once I toed something large and solid, and carefully skirted around it.

Eventually though, the empty lantern knocked into a wall and I felt along it with my fingertips. Bumps and grooves told me the stone was carved, but with what? Again my mind went to Mum’s old pictures and I thought about hieroglyphs, and wondered where I was.

There was no way to know but at least the wall gave me something to follow.

My calves started to ache and I realised I’d been walking downhill. Suddenly the wall I was tracing ended and I stumbled. I froze immediately, sensing the edge of a cavernous space. I hefted the lantern and wondered whether to enter. On the one hand I didn’t know what was waiting for me but on the other, I had nowhere else to go.

 

A few paces into the space the blackness surrounding me started to turn grey. Half a dozen more steps and the light had grown stronger. I peered up to find the source of the illumination, but could see nothing. Puzzled, I looked down and shapes resolved themselves into a silent crowd.

I opened my mouth and stared. The word “crowd” wasn’t sufficient to describe the horde massed in front of me. I couldn’t count them but there had to be ten thousand men and women ranged in rows.

Barely perceptibly the darkness continued to lift. I strained my ears. With so many people ahead of me, surely I should be hearing something.

Pimples burred my skin but I took yet another step. Each face I could see was turned in my direction. The wordless regard of the horde chilled me and although the cavern was blanketed with quiet, animosity pressed upon me like a rock-fall.

All were differently dressed yet there was something indefinably uniform about the stances and facial expressions. Another word for the throng occurred to me: army.My eyes flicked around the cavern in search of an exit. Now I took the time to look I could see that the walls were riddled with black spots that could only be other tunnels. My fingers fell open and the lantern dropped to the floor with a clatter that sounded like the end of the world. I was standing in the entrance to one of what must be hundreds of tunnels.

I was at the centre of a labyrinth with no idea how to get out.

 

For an age I stood, trembling, in front of the army then I saw a face I recognised: James. I ran forward, kicking the lantern and sending it clattering. Then I stopped in front of him. He was posed like a Greek statue, not a hair out of place. Only his eyes burned with hatred deeper and stronger than a black hole. Abruptly I jumped back, almost afraid of being sucked inside.

He didn’t chase after me. He was awake and I was certain he was aware, but something was holding him in place. I recalled the look on his face when I Marked him. His face was still red where I’d slapped his cheek, but the Mark was gone.