Resonance (33 page)

Symbiote

B
oy …

Harry paused, one hand in front of the other, his body twisted like an Indian acrobat within the spiral of a tunnel.

Hello?
he thought.
Vincent?

There was nothing but silence, and Harry waited within it, uncertain. He tried again – though it had never been proven to him that the man could read his thoughts.
Vincent? Where are you?

That deep voice, usually so self-assured, sounded again, slow and dreamy as if its owner were battling sleep.
Dead … floating … go …

Go? Was he telling Harry to go?

Then, with desperate volume, as though the man had raised his head from his death pillow and yelled with his last breath:
GET OUT!

Harry was retreating before he even knew it. Hand over hand, backwards through the tunnels – determined to go. He would get back to the surface. He would grab Tina and Joe. They would battle their way past the dogs, past those kids, past the woman and those men, and run and run and
run into the snow. It was okay to do this. Whatever was happening to Vincent, it was okay. He was a crazy, unnatural, broken man. He deserved whatever he got. He was wrong, he was wrong, he was all wrong. He was wicked.

But Ehrich
, murmured Papa.
You are not wicked. And what of the Angel?

Harry stopped crawling and pressed his forehead to the faintly glowing floor.
Don’t
, he told himself.
Just leave
. But he knew it would forever haunt him – not knowing the fate he’d left Vincent to. It would forever haunt him if he didn’t try to save the Angel. With a resigned clench of his teeth, he began, once again, to pull himself forward through the ship.

He was expelled into the open with dreamlike abruptness: one moment pulling himself hand over hand, the next tumbling down through soft green light.

Rolling head over heels into what felt like a yielding tangle of ropes, Harry grasped one, hoping to stop his fall. The rope had a repulsive, fleshy texture, and it gave with his weight. Too late, Harry realised it was attached to some huge floating thing that he was now dragging towards him.

A great, blind, heavy-browed face loomed close as the curtain of ropes parted before it. Appalled, Harry kicked it away. The head twisted aside, leading its serpentine body in a slow arabesque back through what Harry now understood to be a curtain of floating tentacles. Dislodged by the movement, something uncoiled from around the creature’s neck and fell onto Harry. He found himself entangled with it, the two of them tumbling though liquid space and falling together to land with a
bump
against the membranous resilience of the far wall.

Even as he was struggling free of it, Harry knew what the thing was. There was no forgetting that disgusting curled body, nor the Medusa-like trail of snakes coming from its head. This was unmistakably the pale maggot-brother of the thing Tina had taken from Vincent’s laboratory, the sight of which had caused the Angel to rage and mourn and finally fall to its knees in defeat.

Harry kicked the thing from him and watched as it floated upwards to rejoin the tangled forest of corpses above.

Vincent’s voice sounded in his head.
Boy
…

Harry lurched to his feet. The floor curved steeply up on either side; sticky-strange and faintly luminous, it made Harry feel like a bug on the inside of a lampshade. The water here drew his hair up off his face, but it did not float him upwards as it had done the maggot creature. Instead, he had the strangest impression of being sucked gently downwards.

Was he imagining it, or was he losing the feeling in his feet?

Bending, he pressed his palm to the membrane of the floor. The skin of his fingers immediately went numb, and Harry snatched back his hand, trying not to panic.

Vincent
, he thought.
I don’t think we should hang around here.

Overhead, the tangle of corpses turned and drifted in response to minute currents in the globe. Harry gazed up at them. Could these be the demons of Tina’s vision? If so, it was hard to imagine what threat they posed. In fact, they looked very beautiful with the light shining through their translucent skin. The ballet of their movement was almost hypnotically peaceful. They reminded Harry of sea creatures – slow, stately, magnificent. He could watch them forever and not …

Boy … stand up …

Harry startled. When had he lain down? He lifted his arm and glassy threads stretched between it and the floor, releasing it slowly. He raised his head and there was a sucking feeling, as if he had been caught in a pool of jelly.

Boy …

Harry peeled himself free and forced himself to his feet, staggering from the boy-shaped imprint he had left in the floor’s gluey surface. Vincent’s voice was barely audible, just the one word repeated at intervals:
Boy … boy … boy
. Whether it was a warning or a plea, Harry could not tell. He looked around once again for the man.

It took a shift in his understanding, but once Harry spotted Vincent, it was difficult to believe he had ever missed him. Despite the membrane that had blistered up to cover him, the man’s long dark figure was perfectly visible, spreadeagled against the wall, which, as Harry trudged around the side of the globe, became the floor. Soon he was staring through a transparent covering into the face of the man at his feet.

The direction of Vincent’s dark gaze shifted towards a point directly above, and Harry looked up. The sight of the slow-coiling presence overhead almost caused him to scream. Then something clamped down hard on his calf and he
did
scream, air bubbling from his mouth and nose as he dived away. His action drew Vincent from his translucent grave, hauled forth by one strong black arm and the relentless grip he had on Harry’s leg.

Boy
, he thought, flopping limp as a newborn onto the gelatinous ground.
You came for me
.

It was then Harry knew for certain that Vincent could
not read his thoughts. Otherwise, he would have known that Harry had still not decided on rescuing him.

Feeble and uncoordinated, Vincent struggled to get to his knees. Everywhere that his bare skin touched the floor, colourless strands attached themselves, and Harry could see that membranous cover already beginning its not-too-slow crawl across Vincent’s strongly muscled body. Soon the man would again be part of the floor, subsumed facedown this time, blind and helpless to free himself.

Harry shuddered at the thought and, almost against his will, stooped to help.

Vincent rose in his arms, clinging and slippery, his thoughts a jumble.
Kick off
, he thought.
Kick off
… And Harry did, cursing himself for not having thought of it earlier.

Almost immediately a gentle weight began drawing them back to the floor, and Harry had to swim up through the viscous liquid, nearer to the tangle of dead creatures and the terrible thing that coiled and twisted in its prison on the wall above. There, he treaded water, his arms wrapped tightly around Vincent.

As the man slowly returned to his senses, Harry searched the walls for the spot where he had come in. It must have been somewhere close to that repulsive blister and its roiling occupant. Surely there would be a door visible? Some kind of indent, even? A hole?

Vincent’s curly head lolled, his legs bicycling feebly as he struggled to regain control. Suddenly he shuddered and shrugged loose of Harry’s grip. He sank only a little before summoning enough coordination to tread water.

You returned for me
, he thought.

Harry grimaced and continued scanning the wall – there was an odd discolouration around the upper parts of the globe, which seemed—

Vincent swam around to peer into his face.
How do you
feel?
he slurred.
Are you … distracted? I feel dull as ditchwater here.

He was too close, his movements loose as a drunkard’s, and Harry pushed away from him. The gesture sent them floating backwards and Harry found himself entwined once more in that clammy net of tentacles. Vincent watched with interest as he thrashed free.

What do you see them as, boy? Are they still angels to you?

Were they still … Harry spun to regard the slow-moving corpses with horror. Still
angels
?

Vincent swam around to look again into his face.
Ah, they are not.
Do you see what I see, then? Serpentine bodies? Four limbs with many joints? Spiderish paws? Tendril-shaped growths from hip and shoulder?

Harry met his eye, and the man nodded.

You do. How interesting
. He turned clumsily in place and they treaded water together, gazing up into the nest of gently rotating corpses.
No one told you what to expect here, and so you see with a clear mind. But look, what is …

Vincent pushed his way deep into the tangle. Harry hung back, staring at the now horribly, horribly familiar creatures. He felt his recollection of the underground theatre change. His vision of the Angel – the Lion of God, descending the steps in glory and despair – shifted. Like an image from a dream, his memory of the Angel resolved itself and became not Uriel the Protector, not an Angel of the Presence, but …
this
. One of
these
.

Oh, Papa,
he thought.
Where am I? What has happened to me? I cannot even trust my own mind.

Vincent had pulled himself closer to one of the big heavy heads. Fascinated, he shoved aside the chin, revealing another of those grub-like things nestled at the creature’s neck. At the sight of it, Harry realised that one memory had stayed true and clear in his mind: the Angel’s pain had remained, its sense of loss, and its terrible, grinding fear as Tina had presented her offering of one of these dead
maggot-things
.

Vincent touched the dull curl of the thing’s tail.
Why, it is the very twin of the corpse we found by the pond. The time we lured the Bright Man from the woods and had it dragged below … See how its tendrils seem to plug in at the base of the larger creature’s skull? What can that mean?
He pressed his forehead to the creature’s spongy skin.
So many questions … Tell me your secrets, Bright Man. What are you? How do I keep you alive?

Still clinging to the creature’s corpse, Vincent turned his cheek against its bulging forehead and looked about him in something that resembled despair.

Do you know what this brings to mind? It brings to mind all the creatures the crew would bring on board at every exotic bay or harbour – all the poor lizards and cavies and birds the men would dote on and cosset and in their ignorance murder with rum and ship’s biscuit and salt beef. An endless collection of beautiful creatures killed by ignorance and neglect.

Vincent closed his eyes, his voice growing dim in Harry’s mind.

They were jolly times though, eh? We had some rum times …

Harry caught the man as he slid from his perch. Vincent jerked awake, and pulled free with a scowl.
Damn this
place!
He thrust up with a strong kick, breaking through the topmost reaches of the tentacle forest, into the open space above. Harry followed, only to find the man treading water – once again rapt.

A creature was suspended before them. But this one was not like the others. The wide spread of growths sprouting from its shoulder and hip were stretched out in various directions and attached to the wall. It was raised slightly above its companions, the kelp bed of their tentacles floating about its chest and shoulders.

Do you suppose they were all once similarly attached?
Vincent wondered.

Staying clear of the creature’s bowed head, Harry swam up the taut length of one of its tentacles, examining where it joined the wall. There were dimples in the surface, and the tips of the tentacles seemed to fit into them. He allowed himself to drift along the curved wall, finding more of the same indents.

Vincent, there are dimples all over the surface. And look!
He pointed.
There is a staining over much of the wall – but not in the area where this creature is attached. I wonder …