The devils footsteps, p.13
The Devil's Footsteps, page 13
One in fire, two in blood. Two in blood. It’s not real.
It is real.
Even as he realized that this was the second phase of the test, that knowledge rang hollow in his mind. The things the Dark Man did – were they real, or were they not? He didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, because they could still kill you. And how could he possibly move, when he was standing here watching himself bleed to death, the energy seeping out of him with the last of his waning life-force . . . ?
No! He wasn’t sure if the shout of defiance sounded only in his head, but it rang in his ears just the same. He bit his bottom lip fiercely, trying to cut through the terrible overwhelming numbness. Blood for blood, wasn’t that how it worked? As the thin trickle ran its way down his chin, suddenly he could move again.
He took another step.
Three in storm.
His arms were his own again, clean and whole, the skin reddened as if with sunburn – or perhaps only from his own rubbing. All of a sudden the world had grown dark, and huge globules of cold rain pelted down. His hair was flattened against his head and his clothes grew heavy with the sheer weight of water smashing down from the sky. It was coming so fast and so thickly that it hurt, that same solid impact you got from crashing into the surface of a swimming pool at the wrong angle.
Bryan started to move, and the world exploded in a flash of sound and light. Weren’t you supposed to judge the distance of the lightning by the gap before the thunder? There was no gap at all – it must have missed him by inches. As the purple blotches in his vision faded, he could see that the stones ahead of him had completely disappeared, blasted out of existence by the force of the thunderbolt. The wet air crackled with static, and it smelled like train tracks.
The path was destroyed. He couldn’t go forward, and if he stood here for a second longer he might as well be a lightning conductor. He was going to have to—
Turn back? No. No, he couldn’t. If he did that, everything was lost. And yet, if the steps were destroyed . . .
But how could they be? The steps were part of the Dark Man, part of his power, the route to the centre of it. Surely they couldn’t truly be destroyed until the moment he was?
Acting on impulse, Bryan closed his eyes. Even though his brain was telling him urgently that he was going to fall, he stepped forward. He staggered, almost fell . . . and then he was on the next step.
One in fire, two in blood, three in storm and four in flood . . .
Hey, I can do this. The solution was simple; why hadn’t he thought of it before? All he had to do was keep his eyes closed and not believe anything his senses tried to tell him . . .
Bryan cried out in shock as his feet were suddenly swept from under him, and his knees hit the rock with a violent crack. He grasped desperately for the slippery stone as water rose around him, black as midnight and smelling as if it came from a sewer full of dead things. He gagged at the stench of it, and fought to keep his head above the surface as it surged around him, trying to wrench him from the step he clung to so desperately.
His head was going under . . . The thought of getting that stuff in his mouth, swallowing it . . .
He dared to release the stone with one hand long enough to clap it over his nose, and almost slid off into the water. With a wordless howl of disgust behind his hand, he threw himself down under the surface and scrabbled for the next rock.
He found it, and then the water was gone. He straightened up, spluttering and coughing, dry but with the scent of filth still clinging to his body. Five in anger . . .
This wasn’t fair. What had he ever done to deserve this? Why should all this suddenly be resting on his shoulders?
Decade after decade of disappearing kids. All of a sudden somebody had to take a stand, and it had to be him? Who’d picked Bryan Holden’s name out of the lottery? Now he was going to get killed out here – wasn’t losing one son enough for his parents?
But why should he care about them? They didn’t care about him. Nobody cared what happened to him, so why should he care about anybody else?
For a moment he thought of Smokey’s desperation over Nina, but only for a moment. Why should Smokey get to have someone swoop in and rescue his sister? No one had done that for him when it had been Adam. He’d gone through hell for five years – why should it suddenly be up to him to make sure other people didn’t suffer?
They wanted him to take a stand now? Well, he was taking one. He was taking a stand against the universe in general, and every injustice that had brought him to this point. He was walking away. He was . . .
Running away.
I can’t believe you! You’re such a wuss! Oh, man, you totally chickened out!
Adam’s voice echoed in his head, and suddenly the white-hot flame of his anger turned inwards. Didn’t deserve this? Of course he deserved this. None of this would ever have happened if he hadn’t been a coward in the first place. If he hadn’t chickened out on those last two steps and forced Adam to take his place on the road to doom. It was all his fault, every bit of it.
The tide of fury at his own uselessness swept over him, and somewhere in the middle of it, he took another step.
Six in hate.
The flame of self-hatred burned, igniting five years of guilt and self-disgust. What was he doing here? Did he think he was supposed to be some kind of a hero? He was nothing but a coward; that was the real truth. That was who he really was.
He was still the same boy he’d been five years before; the boy who’d stood by and let Adam follow the footsteps, knowing what it meant. The boy who’d turned and run away, not even waiting to see what happened to his brother, not even trying to save him from the Dark Man’s clutches.
The boy who’d seen what was happening to his parents, and never said a word. The boy who saw how the kids were still disappearing, and never lifted a finger to stop it. The boy who’d never even thought of trying to fight the Dark Man until Smokey and Jake had come along and told him to.
The boy who was still Adam Holden’s little brother, and still had a job to do.
He took another step.
XXVII
Five in anger, six in hate . . . That made this the seventh step. The halfway mark. Halfway to meeting the Dark Man on his home ground. Seven fear . . .
I’m already half dead.
He didn’t want to die! He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to finish this.
Better surely just to stay frozen here in the middle. Unable to go back, unwilling to go forward . . . He’d been frozen ever since Adam disappeared. Trapped outside time in a world where it felt as if none of them were living.
And shouldn’t he feel that he would rather die than live like that? But he didn’t. He might have only a bitter slice of the life he’d once enjoyed, but he was hanging onto it grimly with both hands. He was afraid to let go.
Afraid to let go, even to grasp at the chance of something better. If he wanted to escape, then he had to let go. Even if that meant the fear of falling.
He took another step.
Evil eight.
The dark descended so suddenly that Bryan truly feared he’d gone blind. The space closed in around him, and he sensed he was trapped, down in the dark, utterly alone . . .
You’re still in the woods.
Was he still in the woods? On some level, perhaps, but he was in the Dark Man’s domain now. Perhaps everything he met was nowhere but in his own head . . . but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
He reached out his hands, and met brick walls. Abruptly, he knew where he was. He was under the earth, down under the old orphanage, with the air running out and the walls closing in and nowhere to run or hide . . .
He looked up, but no sunlight spilled in to alleviate the darkness. The boards they had broken to get in had been replaced; or perhaps here they’d never been broken at all. This was the underground chamber in another time and place, someone else’s memory.
This was the underground chamber when you were down there in the dark, waiting for someone to come and get you.
He could hear laboured breathing, and he wasn’t sure it was his own. Was he alone down in the dark? He was afraid to reach forwards and find out.
Was this the next step? How could he step anywhere? He was trapped, he couldn’t move, and something was coming . . .
It didn’t matter if the something had a name, or a shape, because down here in the dark it made no difference; down here in the dark it was just a faceless, featureless evil coming to get you. All your fears, given shape.
The Dark Man.
There was a creak of hinges as the trapdoor was thrown open, but it let in no light, only cold, rank air. Every instinct in him was urging him to shrink back, to hide . . . but there was nowhere to go. He could only wait, huddled in fear, for the Dark Man to come and get him.
No, that wasn’t true. There was one more choice: he could go up before it came down, and face the Dark Man on his own terms.
No more cowering. He’d been waiting for the Dark Man to come and get him for the past five years; it was time to stop hiding down in the dark. He stepped forward, reached for the unseen rungs of the ladder he knew would be there, and hauled himself up—
– Back into the light.
Five in anger, six in hate, seven fear and evil eight. Nine in sorrow . . .
The sunlight was blinding; it brought stinging tears to his eyes. And once they’d started flowing, he couldn’t seem to make them stop.
When was the last time he’d truly cried? Bryan was shaken to find that he couldn’t even remember. He hadn’t shed a single tear over Adam. His brother had been wrenched away from his world so quickly and completely there was no room for grieving in the chaos that followed. And afterwards . . . well, how could he cry afterwards, when he never had before?
Adam hadn’t even had a funeral. Funerals were for people who died, not those who were just gone. Bryan might know his brother wasn’t coming back, but his parents didn’t have that certainty, and maybe that was eating away at them even more than it ate at him. If you didn’t have a funeral, you didn’t have an end – and without an end it just went on and on for ever, never changing, never getting any better.
He was crying now, but he didn’t feel any relief; only a never-ending well of grief being dredged up from the centre of himself. Grief for Adam. For his parents. For himself. For all the others—
All the others.
He suddenly looked up through his haze of tears, but the clearing was empty of everyone but himself. He was alone.
No, you idiot, you’re not on your own. They’re there. You can’t see them, but you know they’re there. Jake and Smokey, waiting for him, trusting in him. Nina, taken over by the Dark Man and waiting for him, him alone, to walk the path – and, one way or another, to break the spell.
So for God’s sake, don’t just stand there crying about it!
And he took another step forward.
Ten in pain.
The racking sobs that had overcome him subsided into heaving breaths, each one threatening to rip his insides out of him. His heart was hammering away inside his ribcage so fiercely that he thought it was going to explode.
Oh my God, I’m actually having a heart attack.
Bryan fell to his knees, clutching his chest even though the pain went further than that now. He wanted to crawl away from the footsteps, jump down and surrender – anything to make it stop.
Until he thought, What pain? This pain? This pain was only physical: it was his body under torture, not his mind and his feelings and the whole centre of himself. Wasn’t he used to living in pain? So he ought to be more than able to take this.
Thinking wasn’t doing, but in this place of challenges, strength of will meant everything. He forced himself to his feet, and pushed forward through a barrier of pain so tangible it felt like a wall.
And then it was gone.
He stood for a moment, breathing heavily. The world was eerily still and silent; where was the next challenge? He knew he hadn’t come through thirteen steps. He risked closing his eyes for a moment, and mentally counted.
One in fire, two in blood,
Three in storm and four in flood.
Five in anger, six in hate,
Seven fear and evil eight.
Nine in sorrow, ten in pain,
Eleven death—
His eyes flew open. The eleventh step. The death step. His step, the one where he had lost his nerve and fled five years before. The buck stops here. Except . . .
There was nothing. No sourceless pain, no dangerously real illusions. No external force gripping hold of his emotions and turning them against him. Nothing. Nothing to prevent him from just moving forwards, and passing on to the next step.
Bryan started to move— And screamed.
Adam’s corpse stared sightlessly up at him. It was like that nightmare in the room at the top of the house on King’s Hill, only a million times worse. That had been a shadowy, barely glimpsed scene of horror, but this . . . this was Adam. More vivid than any memory or waking dream, more finely detailed than a photograph.
After that first instant of complete and utter shock, Bryan was thrown by the peacefulness of the scene. His brother’s still form looked completely at rest; but for the open eyes, he could have been sleeping.
Bryan didn’t know how long he stood there. A tiny fraction of a second? A few million years? What was time, in a world where nothing moved and no one lived?
I’m alive. He told himself so, but it didn’t seem to mean anything, didn’t seem to matter. He felt beautifully lethargic, as if he were on the edge of that Sunday morning state where you were lying in your sunny bedroom, knowing that any second sleep would come back to claim you.
I don’t have mornings like that. When was the last time I had a morning like that?
It was hard to resist the allure of that unfamiliar peace. Why not just let it take him, sink into that numbness and truly rest for the first time in years?
Well, what was so bad about that? Why would it be such a terrible thing to just surrender, and—
You’re not chicken, are you?
I’m gonna show you how a real man takes a dare, Bry. Follow me – come on, kid, I’ll go first.
Bryan’s eyes flickered open, and it was only then that he realized they’d been closed. He saw the world around him, saw it clearly, instead of through the hypnotic haze he’d been drifting under. And he saw Adam.
What did it matter, if he looked peaceful? It wasn’t truly Adam, just the shell he’d left behind; his brother was gone. His brother was dead. Ten years old and dead. And there was nothing right about that.
He had to go on – and that meant stepping over Adam’s body. He screwed his eyes shut . . . Then he opened them again. This wasn’t something to be blocked out and ignored, something to pretend away. It ought to be more than that. He owed Adam more than that. He had to pass his brother’s corpse if he was going to continue on his road – but he didn’t have to do it easily or lightly.
‘I’m sorry, Adam,’ he said quietly and bowed his head. Then he walked over to his brother’s body, and stepped over it.
And Adam’s corpse reached up, and grabbed him by the leg.
XXVIII
Bryan screamed, the sound shattering any last remnant of peace the scene possessed. He backed away in disbelief as his brother sat up. Adam stretched, cat-like, and snickered.
‘Man, I really got you there, Bry.’ He grinned. ‘I got you good!’
Bryan backed away from him instinctively, eyes wide with shock. ‘A-Adam?’ he stuttered out.
‘B-Bryan?’ Adam mocked him back. ‘Hey, what’s up?’ He moved in on his brother, laughing at the way Bryan scrambled out of his way. ‘Hey, relax, I’m not gonna bite!’
‘You’re dead!’ Bryan exclaimed.
‘I know!’ Adam shouted back. His face contorted in the fury that Bryan had always known had to be there, the dark rage at the terrible fate he’d been abandoned to. ‘You killed me!’
‘I – I . . .’ Bryan didn’t know what to say. What was he supposed to say? He couldn’t say, ‘That’s not true!’ could he? Because it was true. He’d left his brother to die, and it was all his fault.
‘You left me to die, Bryan!’ Adam shouted at him. ‘You knew he was coming for me and you ran away. How could you do that to me?’
‘I – I – I didn’t mean to—’
‘You didn’t mean to?’ Adam demanded in disbelief. ‘Whoops, sorry, accidentally killed you there?’
‘It wasn’t me!’ Bryan shouted back. ‘It wasn’t my fault!’
‘You knew it was gonna happen! Did you try and stop it? Did you try and help me? No! You just ran away. You just ran away and left me!’
‘I told you! I warned you!’
‘It was a skipping rhyme, Bryan! It was a stupid skipping rhyme! How was I supposed to know it was real?’
‘Well how was I?’ Bryan shot right back, on the defensive.
‘But you did,’ Adam said pointedly, holding his hands out imploringly. ‘You knew, Bryan. You felt it. And you didn’t say anything.’ His tone had changed, and Bryan felt his own fury drain away, leaving him feeling empty.
‘You wouldn’t have believed me,’ he said pleadingly. What was he begging for? Forgiveness, understanding? He didn’t know. ‘You would have just laughed at me.’
‘I would have laughed?’ Adam snorted, a bitter, hollow sound. ‘You didn’t try to save my life because I would have laughed?’
Bryan closed his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t have believed me,’ he said again, with all the quiet conviction he had left.
When he opened his eyes again, Adam was looking up at him – up, because Bryan was the taller now – and shaking his head sadly. ‘What . . . what’ – he moved away, pushing his straggly blond hair back in a gesture that was achingly familiar – ‘what do you want me to say, Bryan? What do you think I can possibly say?’
‘I . . .’ Bryan looked at his feet. ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged and laughed, a shallow, broken sound. ‘Honest to God, I don’t know.’
