Magic Falls Part 30

Jack Whittaker stands quietly in front of the theatre crowd for a few moments, allowing them to quieten, and then begins to talk quietly.

“The question we all have, or at least that we should have now, is why is this happening here? Why is it happening in Britain?

“We’re a relatively small country, with a middling population. We’re cramped and we’re heavily populated for our size, but we don’t have anything on some other places. So why here?

“We’re a country with history, and nowhere more so than London. All these streets, when you walk them, have had hundreds and hundreds of years of history. There aren’t many cities like this. You walk down here and there has been so much death. So much history.”

He’s becoming more animated now, his hand waving about as he talks, before he runs it through his hair. 

“Do you ever wonder how many dead bodies this city is built on? You should. You should think about that. We reside on a bed of foundations made of death. When the black death happened and almost the entire city died, we stacked the bodies into the earth and we limestoned over them and we kept building and we kept living because this is London and that’s what happens.

“History seeps into the buildings. History seeps into the people. It’s impossible to walk around London and not be aware of the history. We walk through London’s streets like blood cells travelling down veins, keeping it alive.

“We’ve created monsters and legends. Here. “

He suddenly seems a little less sure of his ground, but as he continues talking, I realise it’s that he’s almost hesitant to move onto the next piece of subject matter. “Jack the Ripper butchered five women. Maybe more. Maybe less. He was never caught, and he became the most notorious serial killer the world has ever heard of.

“People who know their horror films and their grotesque histories may point to Ed Gein. May point to Elizabeth Bathory. May point to Charles Manson or John Wayne Gacy or Fred and Rose West or Ted Bundy or…” He sighs.

“It doesn’t matter. When it comes to the death and the slaughter of women, nobody has ever turned it into a mythology in quite the way that Jack the Ripper did.

“Because he was the first creation of the media, which has never found something that it could masturbate over quite like the death of young women. Journalists took a murderer who was unable to be caught and they turned him into a legend who wrote taunting letters to the police making clear that he would never be found.”

His face is ashen, and everyone can see just how much he believes what he’s saying. If he doesn’t, it’s remarkable stagemanship.

“They took a series of murders and they turned him into a sensation the likes of which the world had never seen before. They took the deaths of women, the butcher of them, and they made them romantic. The swirl of fog, the glint of a knife, a streak of crimson and a gentleman in a top hat and cape sweeps away through the night, delighting in his crime.

“For the first time, or at least the first time successfully, the media created its bastard child, and they called it Jack the Ripper, and everybody believed it, and everybody continues to believe it and everybody continues to want to know about it and learn about it and find out more about it. Do you have any idea how many books have been written about Jack the Ripper? And do you have any idea how many of them sell? That’s when the media discovered that it had that much power to not just report, but to create. To establish narrative and to make people believe that narrative.

“We prefer the story. Every time. London gets less snow than just about anywhere in the UK, did you know that? And yet the images of every Christmas are of a suddenly Victorian London covered in crisp fresh snow, because when Charles Dickens was a child, there was a cold spell, and he forever associated it with Christmas.

“That’s what belief is. It’s what we prefer to reality.

“And London thrives on this. Of course it does. It’s a cramped series of villages, with people who spend significant parts of their day under the ground, dreaming. It’s punctuated with buildings that do their best to reach to the heavens, corporate totems slamming into the sky.

“And as everybody knows, the streets of London are paved with gold.”

There’s a mild chuckle at this, although it feels more like those that are doing so are doing so because it feels like it should be a joke rather than actually is one.

“The capital of a small island on the coast of a continent that established an empire larger than the people that built the city in the first place. London is not the most likely place for anything to happen.  It isn’t the biggest. It isn’t the one with the most history.

“But it’s the city with the most belief. The most untargeted belief, as well. How many cultures has this city consumed? How many beliefs has this city fostered and fed on?

“This entire situation that is happening now is centred around belief.

“The world is changing. We’re talking to each other more and finding out more about each other and we’re stopping being scared of each other and we’re finding out more about who each other actually are. We have information at the tips of our fingers at all times.

“And we can disprove things faster than ever before.”

He smiles, back on more familiar ground of reaching out to elements that more people are likely to understand straight off the bat.

“How many people here work in offices? How many people use facebook? How many of you have seen those bloody irritating emails that people send around when they’ve fallen for another urban myth? Or a warning from the police about something that sounds just plausible enough to be real.

“How many of you believe that if you put your PIN into an ATM backwards, you alert the police that you’re being mugged? How many of you believe that jews were warned not to go into work in New York on September the eleventh in two thousand and one? How many of you believe that the police decide the best way to dispel information about murderers, gangs and rapists is by chain email?

“How often do you see these status updates and chain emails and either bite your lip or send a link to snopes.com and point out that they’re disseminating misinformation?”

There’s a more genuine laugh now, and a number of hands raised. After the intensity and length of what he’s been talking about, it’s a nice tension breaker to involve them again.

“We believe, as creatures. It’s something we’re almost hardwired to do. And this belief is swirling around, latching onto anything and everything to try to find a way to live.

“Perhaps.

“This is the crux of all of this. This is what I think is happening.

“All of this belief is turning into creation.

“And we need to understand that. We need to understand the implications of that. Especially when a sword and a stone rises in the centre of historical monarchy and democracy. Especially when it happens and for whatever reason, the authorities try to deny it. The easiest way to make people curious about what’s going on is to tell them they shouldn’t be looking, and they’ve done that with one of the most well known landmarks in the world.”

He turns in my direction, and gestures. The lights rise in the theatre, or at least they do in the front section of it, allowing the audience to better see each other.

“And now, I want to introduce you all to the man in the centre of all of this. The man who understands what is going on better than any of us.”

I begin to panic, but I don’t even have time to do that properly. He points right at me.

“Darren. It’s time for you to meet the Knights of Reason.”

Magic Falls Part 23

“What do you want?” I ask the eyes in the flame, not entirely sure how or why I am staying calm. Insanity seems like the correct response as a face begins to form around the eyes.

No. Not a face. That’s not the way to describe the thing that I am looking at. It’s too… wrong for that.  It’s a huge gaping maw, and it’s the abyss itself. Death and hatred and hunger and fear all at once, looking at me out of the flame.

The words do not come fully formed. They’re in an entirely other language… something that should be unspeakable, but I understand anyway. The sounds change shape by the time my brain processes them, and change into something more coherent.

YOU SUMMONED/WEPT/PRAYED TO ME/US

I think there are words that he is saying that don’t make sense in our languge. Maybe in our understanding. 

Instead, it comes through as a combination of all of the closest words. I can feel it happening in my brain, and it feels like trying to see around a paradox.

“What are you?” Maria says to the flame, her eyes still locked on the thing behind me, and dark tears still running down her face in the darkness.

BEYOND/ABOVE/BELOW YOUR COMPREHENSION/ABILITY

“We didn’t summon you.” She says. “We were trying to perform a séance.”

A SÉANCE/SUMMONING/PRAYER FOR ONE WHO IS NOT DEAD/BORN?

My heart leaps, as I realise part of what it is saying.

“She’s alive?”

The thing looks at me, and for a moment, it falters.

NO/YES… IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO –

I look at Maria, confidence building within the terror.

“It’s possible that…” she began to say. “A séance for someone who wasn’t dead…”

YOU CALLED/PRAYED/BEGGED TO ME/US

“Beg forgiveness,” Maria hisses at me.

“I’m sorry,” I say to the flame. “It was…unintentional. We were searching for someone.”

YOU FOUND OTHER/ME

“Yes. We’re sorry for…”

YOU CALL US… YOU, THE KILLER/MURDERER OF ALL

I stiffen, like someone’s flushed ice through my veins. I feel it wash down from my brain through my body.

“I’m not that.”

THE KILLER/MURDERER OF ALL

“Why do you call me that?”

THE GOD/ME KILLER

“You don’t know who I am.”

YOU ARE THE MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING

I realise that Maria is looking at me rather than at the thing now, her eyebrows knotted in confusion.

“What’s it talking about, Darren?” She asks, and now I can see that it is blood on her face.

I look around, looking for the long limbed thing that was outside of the circle, that put us in darkness.

HE IS NOT TO BE FEARED/LOVED…. HE IS JUST KEEPING/HOLDING THE CIRCLE/SUMMONING/PRAYER, MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING… KEEPING/HOLDING YOU HERE/THERE

“Why do you call him….king?” Maria asks.

HE IS THE MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING, THE KILLER OF ALL

“Are you going to kill him?”

NO

“You sound scared of him.”

NO…NOT SCARED….IN AWE

INTERLUDE

I feel you.

From down here. Down in the centre of the earth.

My resting place.

I feel you.

Your call to me.

Your song.

I have so far to climb to reach you.

But your song, it moves me, and even in the heat, I begin to move. I begin to climb and push and tear my way through to you.

It will be slow, but I will make it.

For you.

My love.

It has been so long.

So long.

But I am coming for you.

Once again, we will be together.

END INTERLUDE

“Please,” I say. “Can you clarify… my wife… is she alive?”

I’m not comfortable with what it has been saying, but the fact that it has engaged us at all makes me feel less trapped. More like this could go somewhere.

I don’t know what it wants, but if we’re talking, I’m going to use it to try and find out more about what has been going on.

I wish I was more scared by how calm I am.

SHE IS THERE/ELSEWHERE

“What does that mean?”

SHE IS OUT OF EVEN OUR/MY AWARENESS, MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING

Maria has her eyes closed, while she tries to clear her head. I can still feel the thing behind me squirming, but it doesn’t seem to be crossing the circle.

“Can you help us find her?” I ask.

SHE HAS BEEN TAKEN/KEPT

“Who could have done this? Who could have taken her so completely away?”

THERE IS ONLY ONE, MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING…

“Who?”

THE CHILD/SON OF THE DEVIL/DEMON

Magic Falls Part Twenty-One

NOW

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

I look into the black eye, and I cannot look away. I continue to chant.

“Isis Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

It draws me in, as Maria begins the invocation.

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

The words begin to feel formless, but I keep saying them. I am unaware of what Maria is saying, but she has explained that she is calling on the dead. Calling on them to answer.

To help me find Nina.

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

THEN

“I wouldn’t have taken you as the kind of guy who believes in séances,” Maria says as she arranges the room.  Large cushions on the floor, with a candle between them. She lights a number of candles around the room while we speak, but she leaves the one in the middle alone. I have been forbidden to touch any of them. Not because of her Wiccan beliefs, but because she just does not let me touch any of her things other than those she hands to me.

“What kind of guy would you have taken me as?” I ask.

“More the arrogant atheist arsehole type,” she says without pausing. “The kind who would come up with some pseudo-psychological explanation for what actually happens if they can’t explain it any other way. Perhaps involving some patronising element about shared hallucinations or something like that.”

“Remind me why we split up?”

“We split up, my love, because we couldn’t stand each other as a couple. I’m far less likely to kill you as a friend than I am as a partner.”

“That was it. Along with you being generally annoying,” I say, trying not to smile.

“That was deliberately cultivated,” she says, closing the curtains and dimming the lights one-by-one, until we’re entirely in candlelight. The room is large – although it makes up roughly half the size of the flat. “If I’m not allowed to stab you repeatedly, I at least relish being able to get under your skin easily.”

“There are times I’d rather you stab me,” I say, unable to hold the smile back any longer. “That’d probably have healed by now, whereas you’re still annoying.”

“Does she really not like me?”

“She doesn’t know you.”

“That doesn’t matter. I want her to like me.”

“Maybe if you didn’t call her a skinny bitch all the time? That’s just a suggestion, you understand.”

“Where would be the fun in that? It’s a term of endearment.”

“Skinny bitch is a term of endearment?”

“You’re a man. You wouldn’t understand. In my experience, for all the rubbish men talk about being the more logical gender, your penises seem to act as a more irritating Jiminy Cricket. Just with a libido instead of a conscience. Sit down there.”

I take a seat on the cushion to my right, where she gestures. “That’s actually not a bad description.”

“I am marvellous at descriptions. Which is why I’m going to repeat myself for a change, and point out, again, that you do not strike me as the kind of person that believes in séances. No, sit cross legged.” She sits down easily and demonstrates.

I try to fold my leg the way she has, but it seems surprisingly difficult. “I’m not. Not usually, anyway.”

“What happened? Your right ankle goes underneath.” She gets up again, and continues the preparations.

“Thanks. I spent three months in the faerie kingdom. It changes your perspective somewhat.”

“Very funny.”

“It’s not so much about what I believe,” I say. “I think it’s more about the nature of belief. And right now, I believe that this could work.”

She looks at me, and for a moment, I think she’s going to call the whole thing off. But then she bends over, and in a more dignified manner than you’d think possible, starts drawing a large circle around the two of us. 

“That’s basically what this is,” she says.

“What is?”

“The whole point of the trappings, of the ritual, everything like that. It’s about focusing belief. That’s the point of the candle and the circle. It’s not important what you do, except that it helps you to focus belief. Whatever the explanation is for what actually happens during it, a lot of it is about the shared experience.”

“That sounds like my atheist arsehole explanation.”

“Isn’t that strange? It’s almost like it’s both, isn’t it?”

“Almost.”

She sits down and lights the candle with a match. “Look, here’s the thing. Tarot cards don’t tell the future. Only charlatans and frauds pretend that. What they do is help you explore the present. One way of looking at it is that the Tarot gives you an empty canvas to project cold reading onto. Another is that, by forcing the connections between the cards, you’re forced to think more about the question you want to ask.”

“That’s what I’d always assumed.”

She looks at the candle, and, satisfied, settles back. “But here’s the thing. If I sat and tried to cold read someone without them, I don’t think I’d be able to do it. You can perform tarot with a deck of playing cards, more or less. But if I try to do it without the deck I usually use, I can’t do it.”

“But you’ve had multiple decks. I’ve seen you use different ones.”

“I know. I only use one at a time, and I have to go through a ritual for them to work. Is that because they won’t work without the ritual and the belief, or is it because my belief in the ritual stops me from being able to do it? I’ve tried doing it with different cards, and it just doesn’t work for me. Whether it’s causation or correlation, it doesn’t work.”

“Okay.”

“And it’s the same for a séance. I haven’t done one before, but if we didn’t do it properly, we’d just be sitting in a room asking ghosts to talk to us, and only crazy people do that.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.” I say, and smile. She smiles back, and reaches her hands forward.

I take them, and we hold our hands on either side of the candle.

“So,” she asks me. “Do you believe?”

I think of Nina. The rest is easy. “I believe.”

“Then look at the candle,” she says. “And the first thing we’re going to do is to call on the goddesses to protect us. So you need to repeat after me… Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

“What is that?” I ask.

“It’s the names of the Goddess. We’re appealing to her to protect us, and chanting their names to honour them while I start the ritual. Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

“Isis, Istarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Khali,Iyanna.”

“And again.”

“Isis, Istate, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Khali, Iyanna.”

“Keep doing it,” she says. “I’ll do it for a while, then start appealing for a guide to help us find someone with information about Nina… if we can’t find Nina herself on the other side.”

I do so. I concentrate on the flame, which is red on the outside, then yellow, and then black in the middle.

The black draws my eye, and I find myself staring at it while I chant.

NOW

The blackness seems to grow larger. I want to blink, but I can’t.

I keep chanting.

I become aware of Maria, who is talking.

“Are you there? Are you there? I need to find someone, and I’m asking for your help. Are you there? Are you…”

She looks at me. I can see her on the periphery of my vision, in somewhere that is not the dead eye of the candle. The words continue to form on my lips.

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

“Darren?”

I try to look away from the candle. It won’t happen.

“Darren, you need to stick to the chant. Please, for both of us.”

I try to tell her that I am, but I can’t stop myself from chanting.

And I realise that my chant has changed.

“Isis, astarte diana, hecatagen, fe’nglooee, miglu aknaf cuth ooloo, relyeh, wagar, nagal fetagen”

“Darren, stop.”

Fetagen, fengluee, mglu aknafcuth, ooloor’lyeh, wgar, nagal, fetagen.”

“Darren, stop” She screams, but I can’t.

“Ph’nglui, mglw’nafh, cuthooloo r’lyeh wgah’nagl, fatagn”

I try to move, but I can’t.

The words keep forming.

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh cthulhu r’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

Magic Falls Part Nineteen

Gemma sat in the bar waiting. She felt a long way from Fleet Street, even if the pub wasn’t all that far away from her normal stomping ground.

The pub was dark, especially in the cellar rooms where she was sat. A little alcove around and away from the stairs. Someone would have to know where she was to see her as they walked in.

She looked at her phone. Damn. No signal. No way of letting her colleague David know what was happening. She checked the time instead on the display. Exactly when he should be getting here.

“Hello, Darling,” the man said walking towards her. He held a pint in his hand, and he put it down on the table, sitting down with a flourish of his leather jacket. He had a shaved head, alight blonde goatee, and was wearing dark glasses.

“Jamie?”

“Don’t recognise me, luv?” he said, with a smile that somehow managed to be both open and warm and tight and cruel at the same time.

“Quite the image change,” she said. “David said that trenchcoat of yours was practically a second skin.”

He laughed and took the glasses off. “He should have seen me years back. Nah, I just like to change my image every now and then. You know that old thing about how all your cells have completely changed every seven years or so?”

Gemma nodded. “Everyone’s heard that one.”

“It’s something like that. That appearance suited who I was then. Doesn’t suit who I am now.”

“And who are you now?” she asked.

“Who I need to be,” he replied, the smile gone. “Now, you called me. You screwed up with the fairy story…ha! The fairy story. I like that – and you wanted to call up Uncle Jamie to come and clean up after you.”

“We didn’t screw up the story.” She said, her hackles raised.

“That means I must have slipped into a coma and not realised. I thought I’d been asleep for just the one night, but it had obviously been a couple of days, because I figured a story about a bunch of little kiddies going missing and being found, and a whole load of magic crap around it might – just might – have constituted a story. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it isn’t Alex Ferguson retiring, I get that. But, y’know, I don’t think my journalistic radar is that – “

“Our editor wouldn’t run it.”

Jamie’s lip curled. “Really.”

“You burned us on the Shane Smith thing,” she said.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I promised you an exclusive interview, and I arranged it exactly as I promised. I saw how many comments that thing received. I know exactly how popular that story was. I delivered exactly what I said I would.”

“You turned David into a laughing stock,” she said. “Everyone thinks he got played by Shane Smith’s PR department.”

He drank and looked at a poster behind her. “I can always take this elsewhere, you know.”

She waited for him to look back at her. “But you haven’t.”

He looked back at her, and for a  moment, she wondered if she had overstepped the mark. She was also very aware how isolated she felt. She suddenly felt like he was very dangerous. “No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

The moment broke and he smiled, all charm again. But Gemma felt the danger remaining underneath, simmering under the surface of his skin. “Just a fan of the paper, obviously.”

“Well, whyever,” she said, as he returned his focus to his drink. “We still got burned. Smith’s story was just too unbelievable.”

“That’s because you had something that was one person’s word against another. You need something with verifiable facts, I reckon.”

“Facts are always good.” She said. “But we need something with dates, actual papers. Something like that.”

He sat back and drained the last of his pint. “You might be in luck, then.” He said.

“Why?”

“Our agendas might just be crossing.”

“What’s your agenda?”

“Messianic. What’s yours?”

“I just want the truth.”

“Okay, how about this. Look back at the lottery results for the last six months. Since January, anyway.”

“The lottery results? Are you kidding?”

“No. And then – “ he moved his hand over to her, turned it flatside up, then down again, and when he turned it up another time, there was a business card in it with a yin-yang inside a pentagram. “- and then check out what this woman was putting in magazines and online. Then do some cross-referencing.”

“That’s all you’re giving me?”

He laughed. “You want me to write the article for you? Or just hold your hand and mop your brow the entire time and tell you what a wonderful little writer you are?”

“Fine,” she said. “But this had better not be a wild goose chase.”

“Pass me your phone.” He said, standing up.

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

She did so, and he held it for a moment, then gently kissed it and returned it to her.

She raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

"Have you ever heard the saying that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?"

"Yes."

"Works both ways."

"What?"

“You’ll work it out. Now, I’m a busy man. I have a lot to arrange, and it’s going to be a while until you see me again.” He stood up. “But when you do, it’ll be just in time.”

“For what?”

He smiled one last time. “For the coronation. The big one. Trust me, you’ll know.”

She looked down at her phone. “I don’t know what you’re – “  She glanced back up, but he was gone.

She drew out a small pattern on the screen to unlock it, and then saw it.

Full signal. She blinked a couple of times. 

Definitely full signal.

Magic Falls Part Seventeen

“You….what?” I ask, totally off-guard.

“mercy we want mercy”

“I…who from? From me?”

“yes from you mercy from you we beg darrenoneill we beg for mercy”

They seem to now have completely shrunk in front of me. The two aspects of them that I could see earlier, the two perspectives, have now deadened. The glamour is no longer there, and now I just see some small, desperate fairies making brainwashed children dance.

There aren’t too many children. Five..no, six. But they’re crying and exhausted, all of them. And underweight visibly.

“Let them stop.” I say, feeling my own anger rising in my voice.

“we…i…we cannot for long we need them to – “

“LET THEM STOP!” I roar at them, lost in my own fury. “They’re children!  They’re exhausted! Let them stop, now!”

They hesitate again, but when I take a step towards them, they cower back.

“we stop them we stop them we stop them we do as you ask we stop them”

As if their strings have been cut, the children drop to the ground, exhausted.

I walk over to them.

“no we stopped them you must speak to us now not them leave – “

“Shut up,” I say, ignoring them. “I’m speaking to them first.”

For the first time since I woke up in there, there are no other noises other than gasping and whimpering from scared, exhausted children.

“Kids….hey, kids,” I say.

Some of them look over at me.

“This is going to be okay, I promise. Okay?”

They look scared.

“Is one of you Andrea Whittaker?”

A little girl with brown hair raises her hand. I walk over to her and kneel in front of her. “Hi there,” I say. 

“I’m a friend of your daddy’s, and I’m going to take you home to him as soon as I’ve finished with the people who took you, okay?”

She sniffs and looks up at me with reddened eyes. “I want to go home.” She says, flatly.

“I’m going to get you home as soon as I can. All of you,” I say looking around at the others. “We’re going to be out of here very soon, so just sit still for a few minutes. Can you do that for me?”

To be honest, from the state of exhaustion they’re in, I don’t think they could go far.

“They need water,” I say to the fairies.

“we….we will….”

“I’m taking them away from here.”

“NO!” they scream at me this time, and they attempt to push their glamour harder, turning themselves into enormous demons staring down at me.

I stand and look at them, and start making my way towards them, challenging them. The glamour doesn’t last, and they shrink in on themselves like they’ve deflated, their snarl caught in their throat.

“Why me?” I ask. “Why did you want to talk to me?”

“…..”

“You want mercy, you want to, what, negotiate?” I say.

“neeeee-goa-teeee-aaate”

“Then you start by explaining the deal. And if I were you, I’d start fast, because I’m about to walk out of here with the children.”

“no not the children please not the children please not - "

“What do you need them for?”

“……we hunger”

“You feed on them?”

“….no we do not feed on them no we feed….. we feed from them…..feed from their work their effort their dancing we feed”

“And when they can’t go on any more?”

“we......we find more”

I turn back to the children as I continue to speak to them.

“Then what makes you think that I’d be in any way interested in negotiating?”

“the war is coming and we know what you lost what you will lose”

They say it slyly, creeping towards me. I stop, frozen, thinking about Nina.

“Don’t you dare.”

“we know what you lose what you lost and we can help we can help you save it”

I think. I wait.

“all we want is the children that is all just them just enough just to feed just to be remembered”

“No.”

“please all we want is to be remembered magic is falling it is falling and we fall with it if we are forgotten please just mercy when they tell your legend - ”

“You don’t get mercy. You feed on children.” I’m scared of what I’m giving up. I’m scared of walking out of the deal. But I have to. “You don’t get to be remembered.”

I walk to the children, and I take Andrea’s hand, and I tell the rest of them to follow me. Now the glamour has fallen, I can see my way back to the circle… or at least to a circle. It may be ill-judged confidence, but I can feel their panic rising as I walk away from them.

“you will die but you will die after her after she dies screaming after your child dies”

I hold the children’s hands, and we stand in the circle.

“Nobody will ever use this circle again. And every circle I find, I’ll destroy,” I say, my anger at them refusing to fall. “You know who I am. You know what I am. You tried to threaten me, and I can take that. I even know that you feed on children because you’re desperate, because you’re hungry. And I may not be able to blame you for that, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t try to stop you.”

“no please we did not mean it please stay just leave one just leave one just one child please just leave one”

“You want my help to be remembered. To survive. To feed. That’s all you want, isn’t it?”

I can feel the circle letting us through now, beginning to send us back to Bretton.

“yes all we want is to survive please just leave one child please let us survive please let us feed”

“No.”

“but you will kill us if we cannot feed on the children we must feed on them we must”

“You don’t get them. You don’t get it, do you?” I say, as their world begins to fade from site and I can begin to see the trees around the circle back in Bretton again.

“This is a war and you aren’t on our side.”

And then we’re back in Bretton.

And Jack is there, and he runs over and he holds Andrea, and she holds him, and I feel so exhausted right now.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” he says to me.

“I…” The rest of the kids make their way out of the circle and gather. “They need help. They need to go home.”

Something about Jack is bothering me. Why does he look so different?

“I came every day,” he says holding Andrea. “I didn’t give up.”

God, I’m tired. Why does Jack have a beard? He didn’t have a beard earlier.

“Jack…how long was I down there?” I ask.

“….you…” he looks at me, and everything begins to swim. 

"....how long?"

“You were down there for three months.”

I pass out.

Magic Falls Part Sixteen

“What have you done with the children?” I ask, trying to ignore the music which is edging its way into my brain.

“dance with us do it dance with us”

My vision splits again, and this time, it seems like I’m looking at them surrounding me, stood perfectly still, while also being aware that they’re all dancing. All of them. Some of them just bobbing mildly, but others whirling around frenziedly.

And I look around for a moment, trying again to process the conflicting images in my eyes and head, and then I see the children.

There are maybe a dozen of them, and they’re all dancing. Some of them are crying. They look exhausted, and I wonder if one of them is Andrea.

Seeing them like that snaps me back into my own head for a moment, and gives me something to distract myself from the constant thumping of the music.

“You’re hurting them!” I shout at them.

One of them (or is it all of them?) replies:

“no not hurting just dancing they dance with us forever we keep it fun for them”

The music is back, stronger than before, and now it begins to hurt my head. Throbbing in time with the beat, which makes me want to join it, to dance.

The pressure in my head feels like it wants to explode out of my ears, eyes, nose and mouth in a torrent of blood and bile. I struggle against it, still trying to make sense of them.

“What happens when they can’t dance any more?” I ask quietly, sweat dripping down my face.

They start their light laughing again, which gives me some irritation to focus on at the very least.

“they don’t stop why would they stop they keep dancing until they can’t dance no more can’t dance no more”

“Why… why do you force them to do that?”

“no not force never force just let them dance let the music do its work”

God help me, I can feel the music.

“What do you get out of it?” I ask.

For a moment, the music falters as they hesitate in answering.

“they make us stronger their dancing it feeds us it nourishes us it makes us…more”

They feed on them. The children. Of course they do. They use the music to force them to dance, and then they feed on them like leeches.

My body wants to join it, even if my mind is rebelling against the music. It can feel it, mirroring my heartbeat, and wanting to join it, wanting to throw myself in and forget everything, just be part of the stream of music.

I can feel the dance beginning in my heart and infecting the rest of me, and I try to focus on Nina, on Maria, on Jack, on Andrea, even on bloody Jamie bloody Moore….

“dance with us dance with us join our dance dance with us”

No, there’s something else, isn’t there?

Something I’m forgetting.

Something Jamie said.

Think about who they prey on. That’s what he said, wasn’t it?

I try, one last time to ignore the pounding in my head from the music, and concentrate on that.

What did he mean?

They prey on children.

Why do they prey on children? Who preys on children? In the wild, who preys on baby birds, on eggs, on cubs, on….

I breathe in and out slowly for a moment, trying to stop fighting what I’m seeing and hearing.

They are beautiful and horrible. I am drawn to them and repelled by them.

“dance with us”

But now I have their measure. Now I know what they are.

“No.” I say, as I allow the music to wash over me, and I decide not to dance to it. That easily. I just decide it.

“but you want to you want to dance with us”

And now there’s a tone in their voice that there wasn’t before.

Fear.

“No.” I say again, and I walk towards them now. “No. I thought you were powerful, but you’re not, are you?”

They withdraw from me, and they now look so much smaller than they did earlier.

“You prey on children, because you’re not strong enough to prey on adults. Are you?”

“no not true not true we are powerful do not test us we are more powerful-“

I laugh at them, bitter and full of scorn.

“I’m standing right here. Bring me down if you want to, but I don’t think you can. I think you have to try and trick your way, and that’s why you work on children. But you brought a child of a friend of mine here, and you did it to speak to me.”

The music has stopped now, and they’re all regarding me carefully.

“So, I’m here.” I say. “What do you want?”

And then they do something I am not expecting.

They fall to their knees.

All of them.

“mercy”

Magic Falls Part Fifteen

                                changes

                                                and

                                                                                                it’s

just        too

                                much                   

to

take                                     

                                                                                in

                                and

                I

   pass

out

                                                                                .

I wake up and I can’t see anything. It is dark in front of my eyes, but it’s like the darkness carries a physical weight, making everything heavier.

I raise my hand in front of my face, but I can’t see it.

I am lying on the ground, but it doesn’t feel hard. It feels soft, as if I’m lying down on the grass in a park on a summer’s day. It’s comfortable and warm.

I climb to my feet, a little unsteadily. At least the spinning sensation that overwhelmed me when I stepped into the circle is gone.

“Hello?” I say quietly. I look down and I can’t see what I’m standing on. “Hello?” I say again, this time noticing more of an edge of panic in my voice.

I grope around blindly, looking for…I don’t know. A wall, maybe. A wall means a door somewhere, and right now, a door sounds like a useful thing.

What is scaring me the most right now is how comfortable everything seems. It may be dark, but I’m warm and enveloped in the darkness. It feels almost like I’ve returned home to the womb.

Well, I think, with the first smile since I’ve woken up, I worked out a way out of there…

Moving forward carefully with my arms outstretched, it strikes me that I must look like someone doing a bad Boris Karloff Frankenstein impersonation. I wonder if I should say “Frie-e-e-nds” while I try to find my way, and the idea makes me want to giggle.

Some survival instinct deep inside me kicks in, because I stifle the giggle. Don’t laugh, it tells me. Laughter leads to laughter. Laughter to hysteria. Hysteria to madness, and if you go mad here, you’re lost forever.

“Hello?” I shout this time, and this time, I hear other voices responding.

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

Most of them are young, and some of them are panicked. They feel far away and close at the same time but as more and more answer, I realise that something else has joined them, and there is something else in the darkness that is repeating it and calling out, mocking us.

But it’s given me some sense of direction. Some sense of where the voices are.

And the mocking makes me angry, and I move towards it.

“What do you want?” I shout, and the voices respond to me. The voices of children first.

“Hello?”

“Who’s there?”

“Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Hello?”

“I’m down here!”

And then the other voices, speaking more as one now.

“we want you don’t you know that we want you just as you want us”

“What have you done with them?” I shout, anger beginning to blind me more than the darkness. “What have you done with me?”

“we brought them where they wanted to be where they wanted to be where they wanted to be”

I am now running towards the voices, with no idea what to do when I reach them.

“What do you want with them?”

The voices begin to laugh now.

“just to dance”

And now I have them, and they feel so close.

I stop running.

“What are you scared of?” I ask. “Why the secrecy?”

“we are not scared no darren we are not scared”

“So let me see you.”

“is that a command?” they ask and then they laugh again.

“Let me see you.” I say, and this time, I try to make clear to them that a command is exactly what it is. My anger and my fear are lending me more strength than I realised.

And then the lights come on.

I am in something that appears to be the inside of a dark cave, with deep crevices in the cracks in the walls…no, roots, that’s what they are, roots… stretching upwards, but it also seems to be like I’m standing in the middle of a field on a summer’s day.

Everything feels near and far at the same time, and I can feel my brain trying to make sense of what I’m looking at.

“it is difficult for your sort to see us do not push against it easier if you let it be”

I try to stop fighting the illogic in what I’m looking at, and just accept it. And then I see them more clearly. They are standing around me.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands maybe.

They stand in crowds around me, both larger than I am and smaller than I am, and they line up in the crevices in the roots, and now I can hear the music, which is underneath everything.

Everything.

“dance with us”


Continue to Part 16

Magic Falls Part Fourteen

I march over to him, wanting to slap the cigarette out of his hand, but restraining myself at the last moment.

“Who the hell are you?” I snap at him.

“I’m Jamie Moore,” he says. “Old friend of Jack’s, in’t that right, Jack?”

“I’ve known Jamie for a long time,” Jack says. “A lot longer than you, Darren.”

I look back at Jack. “Then how have I never met him?”

“I’ve only just bloody met you,” he replies.

“I know,” I say. “But…” How do I explain that I’ve already known him for months and months before now? 

I know he accepts the idea, but how do I explain how well I already know him?

“Jamie’s the guy that put me in touch with you in the first place,” he says. “I know I shouldn’t have thrown away your paper, but you have to admit that your story was….well, it was weird, and then Andrea went missing, and Jamie told me you were key to it all.”

“Relax, mate,” Jamie says, walking around me and towards the circle. “The issue here isn’t me. The issue here is this thing, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Jack says.

“Y’see, Darren – “ he gestures around the circle. “A bunch of poncy art students sculpt stuff that mean that every kid that walks through these trees, in this secluded part of ground in a secluded area of West Yorkshire is thinking about fairies when they do it.”

He begins to walk around the circle as he talks, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up. “And this is an area of highly concentrated potential for magic. There are a few of them dotted around the country. But areas where ley-lines converge in this kind of number? There aren’t many of them. Bretton Hall is one. Trafalgar Square is another. Glastonbury, Stonehenge, Avebury, the Rollright Stones...there are a handful more, but Bretton? Bretton’s the one everyone forgot about.”

“You’re walking around it widdershins,” I say to him.

“What is that?” Jack asks. “Jamie said it earlier. What is it?”

“Just means anti-clockwise, Jack, that’s all,” Jamie says, continuing to walk. “So, you’ve got this place with this high potential for magic, and then you take all of this concentrated belief of little kiddies believing that fairies live in the area. And that gives off a very bad signal.”

He stops walking. “What kind of signal?” I ask.

He lifts his foot to step into the circle. “The kind the faerie folk listen to.”

He puts his foot down and steps into the circle.

Nothing happens.

“But, see, they don’t want to speak to me.” He says. “See, I reckon Andrea is safe, because the faerie aren’t stupid. They haven’t been doing this because they suddenly got hungry or something.”

“So why are they doing it?” I ask. I’m still rankling at the feeling I’ve been manipulated, but if Jack’s daughter has been taken, then that comes first.

“They’re doing it because of you, Darren.”

Everything suddenly seems very quiet. Very still.

“What?”

“They’re doing it because of you.”

“What the… what do you mean?”

“Did Darren have something to do with Andrea’s disappearance?” Jack asks Jamie.

“Not quite, mate.” He replies. “But think about it. They take the daughter of his best friend. Of one of the Knights. That was sending a message, that was. And one that had to be delivered loud and clear.”

“Jack and I have only just met.” I point out. “How can they know about…”

“Don’t play stupid,” Jamie says, with a thin smile, and he starts walking towards me. “You came back. The faerie, they exist with a… different perception of time to us. So from their point of view, it’s already happened, and it never happened at the same time.”

“You know I came back?”

“I know. They know. Others know.”

I can’t help myself any more, and I rush him, tackling him to the ground. My hands find their way to his collar as I pin him down and shout at him. “Who are you?”

Despite the fact that he landed roughly, he isn’t winded. He just laughs in my face. “Talk about an awkward bloody question.” He says, as he pushes me gently off. “Who I am doesn’t matter. It never mattered. But you’ll find out, don’t worry.”

The laugh takes the wind out of my sails, and I slump back. “How do I know if you’re on our side?”

“You don’t.” he says, lighting another cigarette. “But you don’t have much choice. Look, if it makes you feel better, I don’t have much of a horse in this race. I’m more about keeping the status quo, and that means pushing a few things into the right places. Putting square pegs into round holes, for example. And right now, you’re a square peg, and that circle is looking awfully bloody round to me.”

“You said they want to send me a message,” I say.

“He’s a fast learner, this one, isn’t he?” he says to Jack.

“What message do they want to make clear to me?”

“I’m not sure, but I suspect they want to negotiate. Y’see, they know all about this war that’s coming, and they want to make sure that whichever side wins, they’re not on the losing one.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“Nothing. It’s against the rules.”

“There are rules?”

“There are always rules. All I’ll tell you is this. Just think about who they usually prey on. Think about it, and otherwise, do what seems appropriate.”

I look at the circle. “Why me?”

“Because of what you are.”

“What do you mean ‘what I am’?”

“Sorry,” he says, standing up. “I misspoke. Obviously. I meant to say ‘who you are’, didn’t I?”

Didn’t he, indeed. I look over at Jack, who is looking… well, is looking completely out of his element.

I think of Nina, and I know what I have to do.

“How do I do this?” I ask. “I need to walk around it, or, say something, or…”

“For most people, sure,” he says. “If they want them. They’re absolutely sodding gasping to speak to you though, Darren. So I reckon all you have to do is to step in.”

“Will this get Andrea back?” Jack asks.

“No guarantees, my son,” Jamie says. “It’s all down to Darren, now.”

They both look at me as I walk to the circle.

I can feel a crackling around it. Like static.

I lift my foot to step into it, and then put it down inside the circle.

As my foot makes contact with the ground, it happens. I just have time to close my eyes

           and                                   

                                            then

                                everything                                          






Continue to Part Fifteen

Magic Falls Part 13

Back to Contents

I’m sure that Bretton would be rather pretty by day, but between the endless winter that’s been causing consistent dark clouds and the fact that afternoon is slipping towards evening, and it just feels desolate and cold.

We drive down past some grey buildings, and park near the bottom of them. Fields with strange sculptures sweep out to our right towards the main buildings, but I can see further out, and the fields go on and on. There’s a river in front of us.

The Hall itself is a large, imposing building. As we walk towards it, Jack points between some of the smaller buildings. “That’s the pillar I was telling you about.”

“Convergence of ley-lines?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are the police?” I ask. “If there have been kids going missing, shouldn’t this place be… I don’t know, under lock-down or something?”

“There’s nothing here, Darren,” he says. “That’s part of the problem. They’ve not found a bloody thing.”

I follow him as we walk past the hall and down towards the river.

“It’s not really good conditions for this kind of thing,” I say. “Wouldn’t we be better doing this in the daytime?”

“I want to show you where she went missing, that’s all. We can start looking around the rest of it tomorrow, but before we do anything else, I want to give you a sense of it.”

I nod. “If that’s important to you.” I don’t fully understand, but I do want to help.

“I…” he hesitates. “It just seems important. To see that bit, and then you have some sense of it.”

“Okay,” I say quietly.

He starts walking again, turning right and up a field, away from the path. The sculptures begin to get less abstract, and more defined.

“It’s not far from here,” he says. “See those trees?”

There’s a sculpture of a man crouching, but it’s giant. He’s set apart from the trees themselves. “Yeah.”

“It’s just the other side of there. This was part of the area the students got to design and build years ago.”

There are strange details, as we walk closer, including a tree in a phone box. Sculptures built into walls and paths and ponds, and utilizing the nature around them.

“I would not want to be drunk around here,” I say. The sheer strangeness of the area means that I miss the village.

“Look down,” Jack says quietly, and I do, towards the foot of the fir trees we are near, and I spot them.

A series of doors, windows and buildings carved into the trees themselves. I drop to one knee to take a proper look. “Wow.”

“I know.”

“They’re impressive.” And they are. A little fairytale village carved into trees. They look functional. “They… look like they fit.”

“They do, don’t they?” he says. “Like they’re meant to be there.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve seen it before, but…”

I stand up. “Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Why am I here?”

“What?”

“Seriously, what’s going on? There’s something here you’re not telling me.”

He looks away. “Jamie said you should be here.”

I don’t know what Jamie filled his head with, but I’m worried that Jack’s built me up as definitely being able to do something here. I feel like I’m an observer in a play, suddenly being asked to take a lead role, but with no knowledge of what’s meant to happen. Or even what my part is.

Wait.

An idea forms and instantly takes hold.

“Are you telling the truth about Andrea, Jack? I will kill you if – “

“Yes.” I see fear creep across his face, and I almost instantly lose my anger and indignation. “Yes, I’m telling the truth, about Andrea and the others. I just… Jamie convinced me that you’d be able to help, and…I’m desperate, Darren.”

“Okay.” I say. “Okay.”

The area is freaking me out slightly. More than slightly, actually. It feels like it’s…been allowed to grow wild.

“The last time she saw Andrea, she was standing here. She walked over that way – “ he points towards a path. “- for a minute, and then looked back and she was gone.”

He walks over that way and then looks back. I look around, and realize that while there are trees around, there aren’t many places to hide.

“It’s quiet enough here that if someone was around, we’d know about it, I reckon,” I point out. “Someone would have to be actively hiding to have snatched her.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jack says. “If Lorna didn’t see her, then she’d have heard something. She said she was singing a little bit to herself, and then it just stopped.”

One of the plus points about the fields surrounding this area is the comparative lack of hiding places. There are paths leading into another part of the forest, though, and I’m about to look further into them when Jack calls me back.

He points down towards me on the ground. “Look at that,” he says. “That’s strange.”

I look down. The dark, cold and rain are not sharpening my observational powers.

"What is?" I ask.

"Look at the ground. It's different around here."

I try, but for the life of me, I can't see whatever it is that he's talking about.

"What am I meant to be seeing?"

"No, not there," he says. "Take a couple of steps back, and then look again, but don't try to focus on any one part of it."

"You're making it sound like a magic eye painting. I could never do them either."

He gestures around in a circle. "Look. You see it?"

I don't, but I try to do what he says. Instead of looking intently, I try to look more generally, and take in the whole picture rather than a series of details.

And then I see it.

A darker, slightly raised piece of grass, with some mushrooms growing in it. It isn't strong, and it isn't obvious, but once you spot it, it's very much there.

"Strange, isn't it?" He says.

As I look at it, everything I know about it comes immediately to mind. All at once, unbidden.

"It's a fairy ring," I say.

"I don’t know what that is."

"You never heard about them when you were a kid?"

"I didn't pay much attention to things as a kid. I can tell you a lot about TV at the time, but not things I was told."

"They're supposedly planted by fairies. They're how they travel between their world and ours. And if you get trapped by one..."

He looks concerned all of a suddden, and I almost kick myself. "What?"

"...I don't remember. There's something though." Don't tell him about the dancing, I think.

“You know we’re both talking seriously about this, don’t you?” He asks me.

“Are we?”

“Well, I am,” he says. “I know it sounds stupid, but I am. I’m not ruling anything out. Whatever it takes to find Andrea… or…you know…what happened to her.”

I notice the effort he takes to stop his voice cracking. “Then we’re taking this seriously,” I tell him.

“So tell me what it is that happens.”

I take a moment before I do. “They’re traps. By the fairies. For children. You walk around it three times, or five times, or…whatever. It’s like ‘Bloody Mary’. Or ‘Candyman’. Something like that. You… I don’t know, you’re supposed to say a rhyme or a verse or something, and walk around it before trying to cross it."

"Widdershins." A voice that I don’t recognise says.

"What?" I look around, trying to see where it came from.

"You have to go round it widdershins. Or it doesn’t work." the same voice says.

I look behind me, and it takes me a moment to see him, and once I do, I wonder why I didn't see him earlier, as he's standing right there.

"Jamie!" Jack says, with a look of relief.

He's in his forties, I'd guess, and has dirty blonde hair. He looks smart and scruffy at the same time. He's wearing a white shirt and black tie, but it's loose and looks like he hasn't taken it off in days, and it's covered by an old, battered brown mac. He takes a drag from a cigarette. The smoke swirls around him.

"Hello, squire." Jamie says to me. "Been wondering when you'd finally turn up."