Thy Fearful Symmetry (40 page)

“I...” There was no point lying to her. “I didn't. I'm sorry. I tried.”

“Ah.” Her voice was solemn as she turned and shuffled back along the corridor, into the gloom. “Well then. That explains everything.”

For a moment, Malachi wanted to run after her, explain what had happened, but realisation stopped him dead.
 

This was the first floor. He was standing like an idiot outside Stacey's bedroom, while she probably lay inside, healed but terrified. After all, Mrs Ryland had survived. That must mean the other residents had as well, that the home had been somehow overlooked when God's angels set about their cull.

The silence of the rooms and halls around him might have given him pause, but he ignored it, reaching for the handle. The cold aluminium stalled him, the mundane physical sensation clearing his head. Malachi felt like a child, knowing he needed to do this, but still hoping that somebody bigger and stronger would come along and take over. It was so simple a thing. Turn the handle. Step inside. See if his wife was waiting for him there.

Malachi rested his head on the door, and tried to find some strength to take this last step. Was he allowed to pray, after everything he had done? Was there anybody left to hear his prayer?

Malachi turned the handle, and pushed open the door. It swung in gently, and he didn't notice that the room was dark, that the window had been shattered from the outside, that broken glass carpeted the floor, because there she was, sitting up in bed, waiting for him. Her eyes were open.

Malachi stepped forward.

Her eyes were open.

She didn't blink.

Malachi saw the hole in her nightshirt, edged with burned cloth where the angel's sword had gone in.

Stacey was dead, her ruined face in its state of final rest.

Malachi knew he was dead too, that he had died on that Glasgow street and been cast into hell.

This was hell.

Malachi stayed there for a long time, shaking and crying, until Mrs Ryland found him. Putting a gentle arm around his waist, she led him silently away.
 

James Gemmell sat cross-legged at the bottom of his driveway, staring at the dark windows of his own house. Rain started to fall around him, and he glanced up at the sky, the sight of real, normal clouds almost forcing him to shed some of the tears he was holding back, but then his attention fell back to the house. He had probably been watching it for about ten minutes, though he couldn't be sure because his watch had stopped working during the night. So far, he had seen no sign of movement.

He could go in, but that might kill his hopes. It was like that cat in the sealed box he had read about. If nobody ever opened the box, then the cat could theoretically be either alive or dead. If the box was opened then the supposition was lost, and the cat would become either one thing or the other. You killed the cat, by confirming it was already dead. Before that, there was the chance it lived. Hope made it alive.

If Gemmell stepped through the front door, which was already ajar, he might kill his family. So he sat there, waiting for them to come out, to glance through the window, to give him any sign at all. At the same time, he tried not to remember what he had survived at St Cottiers church, because that recent vision of the mercy of angels did not belong here.

Along the street, Gemmell heard somebody crying, but when he looked he couldn't see anybody. They were probably indoors, and he wondered whether they had been wounded and on the verge of death just half an hour ago, whether they were still trying to work out why they were fit and whole again. Perhaps they too had been somewhere else entirely until very recently, when they had blinked and found themselves home.

Gemmell had wasted little time thinking about it. It was only a miracle. There had been plenty of those to go around recently, and few of them so benevolent.

There was still no movement from the house, and he finally accepted that he couldn't sit it out indefinitely. Somehow, humanity had been given back the world. It was damaged and twisted, but it was theirs, and they would have to try to do something with it. Surviving would be a good start. People would group together, try to sort something out, but they would get it wrong. There would be fighting. People would need protecting from each other. Gemmell could do that. The affairs of angels and demons might be beyond him, but he was good at people, and they needed him. Whatever was in the house had to be dealt with, so he could get on with protecting people from themselves.

Gemmell climbed to his feet. Exhaustion made him want to sink back down again, but he trudged up his driveway. When he was at the front door he stopped, and closed his eyes. He tried to visualise what he would see next. Jamie would hear his steps on the creaky floorboards, and even though Barbara would try to stop him for fear of it being somebody else, Jamie would wriggle free, and barrel into the corridor. When he saw Gemmell his dirty face would light up, and he would charge towards his daddy with his arms wide. Gemmell would scoop him up, crush him to his chest, and cry.

Gemmell opened his eyes, but kept that scene as clear in his head as he could. It wasn't a prayer as such, because God was a bastard, and Gemmell wouldn't trust his son's life to Him, but it was close.

Trembling only a little, Gemmell stepped into the house, and found his family.

EPILOGUE

Pandora remembered her madness only in flashes, but she knew that she had done terrible things. Ambrose didn't like to talk about it, for fear of setting her back, but over the last two years she had learned enough to know that she had abused her power hideously, and people had suffered because of it. She had lived with the constant fear of relapsing, of inflicting her madness on the world again.

Now the world itself was mad, so it mattered less than before. Pandora could feel the power coursing out from Calum, filling the hole left by God's departure, distorting the fabric of reality. She could feel his insanity in her pores, sickening her as it sickened the world. Calum wasn't strong enough to be the universe. Nobody was.
 

His body was suspended in the air, warm light spilling out from it, his arms wide and his head thrown back in agony. Ambrose had called to him, tried to get a response, but there was none. Calum's broken mind was no longer confined to his flesh. It was spread across everything. She would have as much chance of reaching him if she called out to the concrete she stood on, or the clouds themselves. He was there, too.

She met Ambrose's haunted eyes, and her heart broke for him. They had wanted only the simplest of things, to love one another, and the mad new world they stood in was the result. Across the city, the gateway to hell still lay open. Though the demons had retreated inside for now, they would not stay there for long. Soon they would come to claim the world from Calum and the survivors of God's cull. The dead still walked the streets, and their number would only grow. Worse, the world was changing, reshaping around the personality of the new Creator. What would it look like, in a week, or a month, or a year?

There was no way to know. Pandora was the last angel, the only one of her kind left, and there were so many people to save on behalf of her new God.

Taking Ambrose's lead, she kneeled at the feet of her Lord.

Behind them, the sun crested the horizon, throwing diseased light over a strange, new day.

Afterword

Hello there. Thank you for buying this book. A lot of time and effort has gone into writing and publishing it, so I’m glad
somebody’s
read it.

Thy Fearful Symmetry
is set in and around the places I’ve lived, particularly the West End of Glasgow, where I spent my first few years acclimatising to Scotland. If you know the city, you’ll know I’ve got it wrong. As I’ve written, I’ve bent streets out of shape, repurposed buildings, and made other adjustments to make the city fit the story. The glorious thing about fiction, is that I’m
allowed
to do it that way round. I hope you still recognise it though.

I’ve taken much the same liberties with Christian myth. As an atheist, I consider the stories of that faith to be just that - stories. Some are fantastic, others more of a struggle to get into, but it’s all great source material. I’ve drawn from it loosely, in the same way I would if I were inclined to write about the ancient myths of Egypt or Greece. No offence is intended, and please don’t harangue me about the stuff I’ve got wrong. I
know
. Like this version of Glasgow, the Christian myths in these pages are exactly as accurate as
this
piece of fiction needs them to be.
 

My first novel,
Cuckoo
, was mostly written from the perspective of a single character called Greg Summers (or, depending on your point of view, Richard Jameson).
Thy Fearful Symmetry
was a reaction to that, hence the large ensemble cast, and the much bigger scale of events. Also, I was pretty sure I wanted to blow more stuff up. Having decided I wanted to blow stuff up, I thought I might as well get it out of my system and blow
everything
up. It became a bit of a ‘summer blockbuster’ movie on that front. Malcolm McClinton did a glorious job capturing that spirit in his movie poster image, that you may have seen online, and is reproduced in a couple of pages time to close things off. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

If you did, please let somebody else know. It would be great if you could take a minute to leave a comment on Amazon as a review, post something on Facebook or Twitter, or just use your mouth to make actual noises at people who are in the room with you. You might help the novel find its next reader. Maybe even the one after that.

If you didn’t enjoy the book, may I suggest a long, contemplative period of meditative, during which you refuse to be drawn on the topic of your recent reading? Super. Thanks.

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