Furnace 5 - Execution (8 page)

As soon as the contact was made, shadow against flesh, an image flashed up in my mind – Furnace, free of the tree, his eyes burning black, radiating strength. Another followed, the same boy crouched over the bodies of his accusers, the people who had crucified him, his mother included, steam rising from their corpses. Him again, older now, at the head of an army, the soldiers behind him half man and half beast. Berserkers. The visions blinked on and off, each brighter than the last. Past them I could see Furnace thrashing against the man’s touch, and I knew that he was seeing the same things, he was witnessing his future.

‘Don’t listen to him!’ I shouted, my fear overcoming my paralysis. ‘It doesn’t have to be like that.’

Without looking at me the stranger stretched out his other hand, the shadow sweeping over the clearing, impossibly far, clamping across my face. It was as if my head had been dunked in ice water, the sensation taking my breath away. Before I could recover, more images pummelled their way into my brain – this time showing Furnace and me, together, beating our enemies into the dirt, riding high over the world.

I fought to block out the images, the same way I’d fought a lifetime ago back in the warden’s screening room, the same I way I’d fought every time the nectar raged inside me, but it was impossible to deny that rush of excitement. When you’re powerless, what greater
temptation can there be than a promise of omnipotence?

YOUR
TIME
WILL
COME
TOO,
ALEX.

Furnace was struggling as hard as I was, but I could see that his resolve was weakening. He’d been shown an alternative to death, he’d been shown a world in which he was more than just a kid, more than just a victim of injustice. He’d been shown a future where he could take his revenge. I’d been there, I knew exactly how that felt.

The stranger’s hand dropped away from me. He stepped towards Furnace, cradling the boy’s head against his chest almost tenderly.

DO
YOU
ACCEPT
MY
GIFT,
ALFRED?

Furnace’s head lolled against the stranger’s body. He was almost gone. Another minute maybe and death would claim him. I was amazed that he had lasted as long as he had, his body sliced open by his own mother’s blade.

You killed my brother.
Furnace whispered.
I’ll kill you for that
.

THE
ONLY
WAY
TO
KILL
ME
IS
TO
ACCEPT
MY
OFFER.

Furnace lifted his head as best he could, his eyes glinting at the thought of retribution. The stranger continued to stroke his hair with his branch-like fingers, the same cooing purr vibrating from his throat.

JÓZSEF
DIED
FOR
YOU,
ALFRED.
HE
GAVE
HIS
LIFE
SO
THAT
YOU
MIGHT
LIVE
FOR
EVER.
IF
YOU
DO
NOT
ACCEPT,
HE
WILL
HAVE
BEEN
LOST
FOR
NOTHING.
IF
YOU
DO
NOT
ACCEPT,
I
LIVE
ON
TO
KILL
AGAIN.

The boy’s eyes were now closed. He could sense death there, we both could. And I guess that’s why he
made the decision he did – not because of his brother, not so that he might live for ever, but because when you’re standing on the edge of the void, when you feel yourself about to tumble into the unfathomable, unthinkable darkness of death, you’ll do anything to stop it. I willed for him to pass, but it was pointless. I already knew Furnace’s story, after all. I already knew what his answer would be. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.

I accept
.

The stranger’s face unfolded, shadowed petals blossoming, contracting, blossoming again. Then he threw back his head and laughed – not a sound but a sonic pulse that exploded through the orchard, splitting trees, bringing branches crashing to the earth. He stepped away, holding his left arm in front of Alfred Furnace, his hand tilted back. Then he dragged the nails of his other hand across his wrist.

Black blood began to fall to the earth, slowly at first, then gushing like an oil well. My heart recognised what it was before my brain did, my pulse beating furiously. Nectar. The stranger pulled the boy’s head back with his free hand and brought the severed vein to Furnace’s mouth. The boy choked as the liquid flowed into him, disappearing down his throat. Nectar gushed from between his lips, but not for long – soon he was swallowing it eagerly, his body demanding more, like a starving man at a banquet.

Furnace’s face was changing, his cheeks bulging as the tainted blood poured into him, surging down his
gullet. He spat out a cry, tugging his right hand until it tore free from the nail, clamping his fingers around the stranger’s arm and holding it there. He did the same with his left, the effort cleaving his palm in two and sending him crashing onto his knees. But he didn’t seem to notice the pain. All he cared about was the creature’s blood, the nectar.

My mind reeled, unable to believe what I was seeing. I knew this was a dream, taking place only in my head, but if Furnace was right, if this was a memory for him, it meant this had actually happened.

The stranger was growing weak, the dense cloud of shadow that hung around him becoming less opaque. His right arm began to crumple, folding in on itself like the tendril of a burning plant. One of his legs buckled, then the other, and he staggered to his knees. It was as if he was sinking into a vast sea trench, the pressure of the water compressing his body. With an almighty crack his head began to shrink, deflating, crushed by an invisible force, pulled down into his neck.

Furnace kept drinking, consuming every last drop of the stranger’s blood, until all that remained was a desiccated husk on the orchard floor.

The kid was crouching on his haunches, more animal than human. He shook himself, tar-coloured blood spraying from his lips, and when he opened his mouth a growl fell out of it, one that pulsed around the orchard with the same ground-shaking force as the stranger’s laughter. He cocked his head towards me, and when he opened his eyes they were vortexes of shadow, so deep
and so furious that they threatened to pull me in.

We are all puppets hanging over an ocean of madness
, the boy said, and it was no longer the whine of a child but the voice I knew so well, that thunderous whisper of Alfred Furnace.
All it takes is one simple snip and we fall.

He held his ruined hands up to his face and I could see the flesh there knitting back together, the stranger’s blood healing him. When he turned back to me his mouth had flopped open into a cruel imitation of a smile.

Now you know.

He threw himself across the clearing, running on all fours, his black eyes seeming to pump out their own impossible light which corrupted everything it touched. I saw trees crack, the bark splitting, apples disappearing beneath growing tides of mould, dead birds decomposing into tattered skeletons, all in a blink of the boy’s nightmare gaze.

With a laugh he vanished amongst the trees, but his voice floated back to me on the breeze, as clear as if he was standing right next to me, whispering in my ear.

Now you know how it all began
.

I woke to the sound of my name.

At least, I think I woke. Almost completely drained of blood and nectar, teetering between insanity and death, I could no longer say for sure what was real and what was a dream. I was sitting in a chair in a small cell, almost identical to the one I’d first woken up in. My torso was bound once more with wire, but my body felt numb – except for the memory of the orchard floor against my feet, the stranger’s touch on my forehead.

It was almost as if this world was slowly losing itself, dissolving into my imagination, becoming a dream.

There was something else, too, a muted pain in my head. I shook it from side to side and that dull throb seemed to shift, sliding back and forth over my brain like there was something trapped in there.

My name again, spoken with an American accent. I opened my eyes to see a blurred shape by my side. Was it Panettierre? Something had happened, hadn’t it, before I slept? Something about a pit, and a berserker. Had it been another test, like the one the warden had
given me back in the prison? I couldn’t for the life of me remember.

‘Alex, are you in there?’

I blinked, focused, realised that the person in my room wasn’t Panettierre at all. It was a boy. More memories, but there was so little nectar left in me that they were like fish dying in the bottom of a leaking barrel. One managed to leap up above the rest, hanging there just long enough for me to grasp it.

‘Zee?’

The boy’s face opened up, his smile almost dazzling. He looked different from the last time I’d seen him – a time which seemed like aeons ago – cleaner, his hair washed and brushed. He was wearing a set of overalls, and for a second I thought they were Furnace stripes. But they were green rather than dirty white. Army fatigues. I felt his hand on my shoulder, a reassuring squeeze. It was only then that I realised my arms were laid out on a table, secured in place. I wiggled the strange protrusions on my left hand. The blackened stumps hadn’t changed. I guess there wasn’t enough nectar to work with.

‘Good to have you back, Alex,’ he said. ‘I was getting worried. You looked like you were about to die in your sleep.’

‘I was dreaming,’ I muttered, shaking my head, trying to wake up, to work out what was going on. ‘What are you doing here?’

Zee’s smile wavered.

‘Is that any way to speak to your best buddy?’ he
asked, and then the smile fell away completely. He glanced over his shoulder, the cell door shut, then he looked up at a camera on the wall, pointing right at us. ‘Let’s see if I can make you a bit more comfortable.’ He stood and bent over me, straightening my gown, his back to the camera. When he spoke next it was in a whisper. ‘They’re listening, so don’t say anything that they won’t – you know, won’t like.’ I started to protest but he cut me off. ‘This place is messed up, big time. It’s almost as bad as Furnace, only these guys don’t know what they’re doing. The only reason you’re alive is because you can still talk. But that won’t save you for long.’

He sat back, his voice returning to normal.

‘There, that’s better. I told them that you’d listen to me, that you’d tell us how to find the people behind the invasion.’

‘But I don’t—’

‘You don’t remember, I know,’ Zee interrupted. ‘But it will come back to you, right?’ He winked at me, nodding furiously. ‘If they’re patient for a few more days then it will come back to you.’

I took the hint, returning his nod with one of my own. Zee seemed to relax, crashing back in his chair. There was a moment of quiet, filled only by the growl of a truck’s engine from outside the window and the distant whump of helicopter blades. He flicked another look at the door, leaning in and lowering his voice again.

‘I told them everything, all about the prison, what was going on there. They believed me. Not that they
had a choice. I mean, they’re losing this war, getting torn to pieces. The only thing they won’t accept is the stuff about Alfred Furnace. They think whoever built the prison is somebody else, somebody using his name.’

I told Zee about the nightmare, the words falling from me in clumps like rotten fruit dropping from the branch, sounding even more insane than they had in my dream. Zee sat there patiently, his head cocked.

‘It
is
Furnace,’ I said when I’d finished. They say the child is father to the man, and if anyone could have spawned the monster behind the prison, the creature whose dark thoughts blossomed in my head, it was that kid.

‘I know,’ Zee said. ‘I heard him too, remember. The phone in the warden’s office.’ He shuddered so hard his chair rattled. ‘But there’s a problem. They’ve looked into it and the only Alfred Furnace they can find was born, like, in the eighteenth century or something. In Hungary.’

‘What?’ I asked, thinking of the orchard, wondering if that’s where it was. I couldn’t even picture where Hungary was on a map. ‘Seriously? Hungary?’

‘No thanks, I’ve just eaten,’ Zee replied, that contagious smile back on his face, seeming to make the room twice as big. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t resist it. Anyway, I tell you he was born over three hundred years ago and it’s the
Hungary
bit you don’t believe?’

I could see what he meant, but it made perfect sense to me. I mean, if the warden had fought in the Second World War he had to have been well over a hundred, and it made sense that his boss was even older. What was
a century or two when you had nectar in your veins? I shrugged as best I could and Zee carried on.