Whisper

by Ilan Lerman

I’ve got something to tell you, friend.

Come closer. I have to whisper it in your ear.

It’s a secret.

* * *

Jordan snapped the red flag down and started the meter. The fare pulled the taxi door shut, rocking the whole cab as he sat down. The meter chattered and whirred like a clockwork insect.

It was the tenth hour and Jordan had been lurking around the transit station district waiting for a tourist or, if he was really lucky, a scientist transferring in from the West Coast. They were always big tippers; liked a chat too, made them feel safe.

The fare wore a slate-grey ill-fitting greatcoat that dropped all the way to his heels. The characteristic reek of Overlap City drifted into the taxi with him – wood-gas charcoal and the cat-piss smell of ammonia. His coat flapped open, revealing a thick, soot-black, woollen roll-neck. Shining silver buttons on the coat winked in the gloom of the cab.

‘Before we roll,’ said Jordan, adjusting his mirror to get a look at the fare’s face, ‘these are the rules, and there are no objections, or I’ll leave you cold for the sweepers to take care of. Ok?’

The fare said nothing. Jordan took that as an agreement. ‘Deposit up front, the rest on the meter. Windows stay shut. No smoking. No arguments.’ Pause for effect – Jordan waited for a protest, left hand twitching on the gas-gun strapped to his thigh. ‘Where are you going tonight, friend?’

The man leaned forward, his face carved in the shifting lights of the street. His eyes were a cloudy spectral green, mouth a deep knife-cut, crow-black hair hung lank and greasy down to his chin. He breathed heavily, causing his thick neck to expand and contract like the bellows of an accordion.

His presence radiated from the back seat, an ice-cold mass that chilled Jordan’s blood to meltwater. He was definitely Changed, Jordan was certain of that. It was always possible to tell the Changed from the rest once he got up close; the brooding intensity, the weird clothes, and the way that light bent and rippled around them, dispersing like water.

Every kind of city-freak had rolled the streets on the back seat of his cab. He’d worked over a hundred seasons as a driver and could still just about remember the world before The Change, before The Overlap, as the scientists called it, but even memory was a nebulous concept – The Overlap had affected everything. The God-nuts said it was as though He had fallen asleep and this was His nightmare.

‘Come on, pal. Where are you going?’

‘The Sepulchre.’ His voice resonated in Jordan’s eardrums like a plucked harp string. It filled the inside of the cab.

‘There’s only one way to get there, and that’s up the Ladder. I don’t like that place. My cab doesn’t like that place.’ Jordan twisted around and peered at the man through the glass partition. ‘It’ll cost you a thousand up front like I said, and the meter’s already running.’

The man fumbled in the deep pockets of his greatcoat, and then stuffed a roll of bills into the chute. They dropped into the tray on Jordan’s side of the partition. A thousand. Just like that. Nearly two month’s takings in under a minute.

‘You must have a solid gold death-wish, friend.’ Jordan scooped the bills into his lock-box and fired up the cab’s wood-gas engine. ‘But your currency is square with me. Just don’t expect me to hang around when we get there. You’ll be walking back.’

The cab rolled into the perpetual dark of Overlap City. A black and yellow cage-chassis haphazardly plated with a scorched shell of coppery metal. The cylindrical wood-gas burner trembled at its rear. Jordan squeezed the throttle, the engine snarled and the cab sped forward.

Coils of red steam looped out from the iron grates in the road, dispersing in the cab’s wake. Blackened sandstone tenements flashed past, windows gas-lit with lamps that slowly pulsed. The city struggled to breathe, with all of its light suffocated by the unrelenting poisonous dark that soaked into it from above.

‘Why the Sepulchre, friend? If you don’t mind me asking. Seems like a poor choice for a tourist destination. Wouldn’t you rather roll down to the Rose Garden, pick up a nice young lady?’

Looks like you could use one.

The man cupped his hand to his ear, hearing something beyond the fizz of the charcoal in the wood-gas burner, beyond the erratic growl of the engine or the steady, predictable click-clack of the meter.

‘I only ask,’ said Jordan, ‘because it’s a lonely place up there. I heard it was just a ruin now.’

‘Whispers.’ The man stroked the roof of the cab with a gnarled hand, tracing lines, as though he was plotting a map. Jordan saw white ridges of scar tissue cutting across the back of his hand. ‘Have you heard them?’

‘I’m always hearing something,’ said Jordan. ‘Been alive long enough now – if you can call it living – I’ve seen and heard a million things, friend. My wife, Sara, she used to say I was the eyes and ears of the city.’

Jordan pulled an oily rag from his top pocket and coughed into it. He kept his eyes on the road, letting it roll away the memories. He had no use for them now.

‘Hey, what’s your name, friend?’

‘Raphael.’

‘Smooth ride, what do you reckon?’ he said. ‘She’s got the latest burner fitted, self cleaning, air-fuel ratio control and everything. You still have to shovel some of the crap out yourself, but it doesn’t stall so much.’

Raphael didn’t respond, gazing out of the window into the steam and shadows.

* * *

It’ll be our secret.

Don’t tell anyone about it.

Not a soul. Not yet.

* * *

‘You hearing any whispers yet, friend?’ Jordan killed the cab’s speed and lurched up a steep incline, the wheels rattled over the cobblestone road.

They were twenty minutes clear of the city-centre, amongst the gated hovels that housed most of Overlap’s residents. The lights were just a vague shimmer, powered by the tiny trickle of electricity coming from the local ammonia-fuelled generators. The darkness was alive. It flowed down the hill and snaked around the hovels, reaching tendrils across copper-plated windows. It collected on the cab like a viscous liquid and tried to seep in through the edges of the windscreen.

‘You all right back there?’ asked Jordan. ‘Almost at The Ladder, bit of a bumpy ride. Be there in about ten.’

Jordan flicked on the cab’s toplights. The illumination bloomed out and scared the living dark away from the cab, rather than actually lighting a path ahead. He checked out Raphael in the mirror – arms folded, greatcoat wrapped around him, face in violent shadow. He was one of the oddest fares Jordan had rolled across the city; a complete lack of emotion, barely a word uttered, but his silence was heavy in the cab. It almost had a physical presence, like a pocket of excess gravity pulling at Jordan’s back.

New arrivals to Overlap city rarely had nothing to say. The place had a way of putting folk on edge. Like the frenetic scientists who would sweat, and complain about their bosses, and grip their briefcases as though they were the last solid thing anchoring them to the ground. Some of them would sound optimistic, convinced of the ability of the Central Assembly to reverse the Overlap; the rest would peer into the dark with hollow eyes and talk of the possibility of it all collapsing in on itself, and how the city would be the first to descend into hell as it sat right on the edge of the Overlap’s event horizon.

A picture of Sara wormed its way up – of her brown eyes, and her lined, weary face. He pictured her falling endlessly through space, and wondered if she was still curious.

Up ahead was the edge of Overlap City, what used to be Ocean Point, all those seasons ago. The memory of the swelling expanse of aqua blue blinded him. He tried to think of Sara standing there on the edge of the cliff. To create that picture of her: golden and hazy in the sun, but the memories wouldn’t come, only the creeping fingers of darkness that held the city captive.

He turned right, onto The Ladder, a steep, narrow path barely wide enough to allow the cab through, flanked on both sides by jagged rocks with edges sharp as flint.

‘Almost there…’ Jordan crushed the brakes, throwing Raphael flat against the glass partition. The wood-gas burner coughed and the engine stalled with a metallic groan.

The cab lights died. They left behind the vaguest impression of the figure standing on the path in front of them. A man in flowing robes fastened with twisted wire, his cowl pulled down over his eyes – the fading toplights picked up the glimmer of a steel blade, then darkness collapsed around everything.

‘Shit! We’re trapped in here,’ said Jordan pushing the burner ignition to no avail. ‘The path’s too narrow!’ Jordan shrank into his driver’s seat. He cursed himself for taking this fare, cursed himself again for his greed at the sight of so much money. This is it, no sweepers up here at any hour, that’s why the streets here stay empty.

‘They knew I was coming,’ said Raphael.

‘Yeah? I knew you were trouble,’ said Jordan. ‘How are we getting out of here? I’ll have to purge the burner manually to get it started again.’ Jordan pawed at his thigh for the gas-gun and pulled it out.

‘He is a denizen of The Sepulchre. A relic monk.’

‘One of those old-tech worshippers? They’re up here now? I thought they were harmless.’

‘Whispers.’ Raphael placed the palms of his hands on the cab ceiling and started rocking it back and forth. ‘The religious fools always listen.’

‘What are you doing to my cab?’

Jordan clutched the dashboard and his stomach sank. A harmonic screech sliced through his eardrums and the air in the cab became thin. His breath caught at the back of the throat, vision dissolved into grey pixels. The cab-chassis glinted like faceted crystal and became briefly transparent. Jordan turned to Raphael just in time to see him leap from the back seat and through the roof of the cab as though it was a pool of water. Translucent waves rippled out in a circle from the point where he had passed through.

‘Who the hell are you?’

Raphael floated down in front of the windscreen and slid off the bonnet onto the road. He glowed with red phosphorescence, arcing trails through the dark.

I knew he was Changed. What the hell was I thinking? This was something new. Not the sideshow magic in the cloisters and kiosks around the Rose Garden of eyes changing colour, coins disappearing, or spark-writing in the air. There were stories told by twelfth-hour barflies and rookie scientists of people who could pass through walls as though they were liquid; people who could levitate and be in two places at the same time. But they’re just stories.

The faint outline of Raphael lunged into the dark. Jordan kept a tight grip on the gas-gun and rummaged around in his storage locker under the passenger seat. He pulled out an ammonia-battery torch and shook it to hear how much fuel was inside.

Feet skittered on gravel, the sound of a metal object struck the ground. He flicked the torch on. The beam framed Raphael and the monk in its yellow, waxy light.

Raphael towered over him, holding the monk by his cowl. He dragged the monk’s head back and revealed a gaunt, ashen face that seemed paralysed. The monk was unable, or unwilling, to defend himself.

Raphael shook his other arm down with a whipping motion. A metal hook – about a foot long – slid out from the sleeve of his greatcoat and into his hand. It looked like a giant crochet needle. He swung it down at the monk’s exposed throat and the sharp point of the hook snagged the skin. Raphael let go of the cowl and spun away from the monk.

The hook was embedded in the monk’s neck; it tugged at the flesh for a second then ripped his throat open like a burst fuel-line. Blood sprayed out and slapped across the cab windscreen. Every muscle in Jordan’s body wound up into a twisted knot.

The torch-beam dimmed, flickered, fizzed bright again then died. Jordan shook it violently, whacked it against the dashboard, and the light clicked back on. Raphael stood over the monk’s body and cleaned the blood from his hook with the corner of his greatcoat. A pillar of smoke glowing with faint blue light curled up from the dead body. It moved like it was alive, with the pulsing muscle-motion of a snake.

A sound like gas escaping hissed in Jordan’s ear, a whisper – Aren’t you curious, Jordan? Don’t you want to see what’s down there? – It was Sara’s voice. He was certain.

I’ll show you, Jordan, my love. It’ll be our secret. We can share it. We can see it together.

A hand caressed the back of his neck; breath tickled his ear. The cab shook and the harmonic screech resonated again. It vibrated the walls of his skull and every surface in the cab glistened and shifted like water.

Raphael dropped through the roof and landed in the seat beside him. The door of the cab behind was clearly visible through his head. He waved his crochet needle hook in Jordan’s face. ‘Don’t listen to them. They lie.’

Sweat ran from Jordan’s forehead. The torch dimmed again, casting exaggerated shadows on the ceiling of Raphael and a trail of undulating blue smoke that seeped through the roof behind him. But it wasn’t smoke. It was alive and it was whispering to him – he wants to kill you. He wants to rip your throat out and gut you.

Jordan squeezed the trigger of the gas-gun. Two compressed-air rounds thumped into Raphael’s stomach.

* * *

Beware the man with the hook.

He is the only one that knows the secret.

He must be stopped.

* * *

Raphael hadn’t moved for several minutes.

He wasn’t dead. His neck pulsated, the hiss of his breath escaped from his nose. Jordan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The blue smoke and whispering voice had disappeared.

The torch beam had faded to a muted candle-glow. It only penetrated a few inches into the mass of living darkness outside. As far as he could see, there were no more monks lurking in the dark.

The cab felt solid and real again. He pushed the burner ignition, heard the spark, but felt no contact. The charcoal mass was blocking the airflow. There was no alternative – he would have to go outside.

He pulled the cord from the back of the torch, hung it around his neck, wound the driver-side window down and wriggled out of the cab. He managed to pull himself up onto the roof and unhooked the torch from around his neck then dropped down to the rear of the cab. Shining the torch at the wood-gas burner, he realised the gas-gun would have to be holstered if he wanted to purge the excess charcoal and get the thing going again. He shone the torch back inside the cab. Raphael was still slumped against the passenger door. He holstered the gun in his thigh strap and started to flip the latches on the burner plate. The metal burned his fingertips making him shake his hand and suck on his fingers.

Icy fingers stroked his neck, whispers fluttered in his ears.

A blue mist formed over his eyes and coalesced into an image of Sara, not long after the Overlap, right at the start of her obsession with it. She had wanted to know what was beyond the event horizon, what lay in the heart of the dense blackness beyond the cliff, deep in what was once the bosom of the ocean. She had loved the certainty of the waves, the clarity of the water; she hated the unknown – come, Jordan. Join me.

She whispered in his ear. She slid her hands over his body. She entered his mind, penetrating into his memories, but it wasn’t her. The memories were never that vivid. Usually, when he tried to recall anything before the Overlap, his mind clawed at a mesh of darkness.

It can’t be her.

He wrenched himself far enough out of the stupor he had fallen into and thrust his left hand into the white heat of the charcoal embers – the skin on his hand shrank, pulling tight, blistering. His scream was echoed by another inside his head, Sara’s voice, descending into a hoarse, inhuman shriek. The blue mist rushed past his head and up into the sky, carrying the shriek with it until it was smothered by the dark.

Jordan swapped the torch into his burnt hand which had stiffened into a claw. He fought back the pain-nausea that rushed up his throat and flashed the torch beam into the cab.

The passenger seat was empty. A spike of panic pierced his chest and he whirled around trying to find where Raphael had gone. There was only the writhing darkness closing around him like a shroud.

He turned back to the burner and flicked open his multitool to scrape out the filter. His breathing was laboured as he frantically shovelled out the jammed charcoal. Pinpoint lights sparked at the edge of his vision. Shadows were everywhere, grasping for him with skeletal fingers.

Raphael swooped out of the air, greatcoat flapping behind him, and pinned Jordan to the rear windscreen. His face was as grey as dust, eyes like cracked emeralds; blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

‘Why did you shoot me?’

‘You’re a maniac!’ Jordan grimaced, waiting for the hook to fly up and tear his throat out. ‘What did you bring me all the way up here for?’

‘I needed transport. You were the most favourable choice.’ He loosened his grip on Jordan and clutched his stomach. Blood was matted into his rollneck.

‘Lucky me.’ Jordan considered going for the quick draw with Raphael badly wounded, but held back.

‘I need your help,’ said Raphael. His voice had weakened, the resonating bass-tones crackled. ‘I have to finish this.’

‘I’m going straight back into town, as soon as I get this burner started.’

‘We have to contain them,’ said Raphael. ‘To stop them spreading into the city. We have to send them back where they came from. The monk was infected. His mind belonged to the whisper.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Jordan.

‘The blue mist. I know you saw it.’

Jordan remembered the breath in his ears, the images in his head of Sara calling him. It had seemed so real; the brush of fingertips on skin.

It couldn’t have been real. He had seen her disappear into the blackness, watched her fall until he hadn’t been able to see her anymore. There had just been her scream, echoing long after she disappeared from view.

His head felt dirty, as though it was full of charcoal dregs like the burner. Something had been in there, only for a few seconds, but long enough to leave a stain.

‘Help me get this cab rolling again,’ said Jordan, ‘and I’ll drive you up there. Shit, I don’t fancy blind-reversing back down the hill anyway. But I’m kicking you out the second we arrive and not looking back. Understand?’

* * *

We come from the other side.

We are the scratching in the walls.

We are the voices in your head.

Join us.

* * *

The wood-gas burner lit with a muffled boom. The cab rattled into life. Jordan took hold of the throttle with his burnt hand and held the steering wheel with the other. He longed for a glass of ice-water for his hand, and a glass of grain-whisky for his head. All the cab’s lights hummed and gave off a murky glow, barely managing to push back the dark.

‘Hold on tight,’ said Jordan. Raphael was hunched over in the back seat breathing hard, his long hair stuck to his face in clumps like wet leaves. ‘Are you even able to fight these things? You don’t look so good.’

‘Just get me there.’

Jordan opened up the throttle and the taxi jumped and bounced, clattering over the cobblestones and up the narrow path to the top of the hill.

‘Where did you come from?’ asked Jordan. ‘I mean… you just show up in the back of my cab.’

‘I’ve always lived here. I was born here.’

‘You were born here. So was I, but I can’t do that thing. When you’re there one second, then you’re gone…’

‘I was Changed by The Overlap. I have always been able to… use it to manipulate solid things.’ Raphael flattened his hand against the glass partition, steadying himself against the turbulent ride. ‘I am as much part of it – The Overlap – as I am of this world. I was born with it inside me.’

‘You understand it, the darkness? The Overlap… you know what it is?’ Sara’s words. Jordan bit his tongue. Her obsession had been difficult to forget.

‘The old scientists started it. They opened a seam in the fabric of the universe. Two universes slowly knitted together into each other, one overlapping the other.’

‘Sure. I’ve heard that one a million times from a million scientists sitting in that same seat. You’re just as deluded as the rest of them.’

‘They are not real scientists,’ said Raphael. ‘They have no understanding. They apply ancient, obsolete logic to something which they do not understand. The threads are woven through everything. They will never see that.’

The cab crested the hill and rolled out onto an expanse of dead grass, withered and flat, all the life dried out of it.

The Sepulchre stood in sharp silhouette against a vitreous dark that gleamed with the lustre of a polished gemstone. It flowed and folded in on itself like a vast pit of tar – Jordan knew it was the event horizon of the Overlap. It was the second time he had looked into it.

The Sepulchre jutted out like the prow of a ship, a gently curved structure of steel beams and panes of glass that were all smashed. Once it had been a tourist centre. There had been a café; a gift shop; a deck to stand on and admire the view. It had been a place of discovery – a monument to a time when whimsical notions could be acted upon, and love was a static, tangible thing that didn’t want to throw itself from a cliff into the endless darkness.

Now, as close to the event horizon of the Overlap as possible, it was a temple to an age of trinkets and gadgets – to superficial ephemera whose only purpose was to distract with light and colour, and masquerade as purpose. It was a place of worship for insane monks who locked themselves away in bouts of paranoia and prayed over circuit boards, microchips and fibre-optic cables for the return of the old world. They named it The Sepulchre and hoarded as many old-tech relics as they could find.

Don’t trust him. He lies.

‘They’re here.’ Jordan shook his head, wriggled his finger in his ear. ‘Get out of my brain!’

Jordan, my love, I found what I was looking for.

Whether it was Sara’s actual voice or not, Jordan’s chest ached just to hear her speaking again.

‘What are they?’ he said, shaking his head vigorously.

‘They are demons from the other side. They have always been here – inside paranoia, depression, grief; The Overlap gives them form to prey on the vulnerable, those who are most susceptible. They whisper exactly what you want to hear.’

‘So, let them. They never bothered me until you dragged me up here.’

‘You don’t understand. If they possess human consciousness there will be no reversing The Overlap. If we beat them, fight them wherever they are, then we have a chance of restoring things.’

‘You don’t believe that, do you? It’s impossible.’

‘We must try.’

‘It’s pointless. You’re deluding yourself.’

Come to me, Jordan. We can be together again.

‘They’re in my head again…’

‘You must not listen to them,’ said Raphael. He rose from the seat and stretched his arms across the width of the cab. The lights picked out a group of hooded monks walking towards the taxi.

Jordan opened up the throttle and sped straight at them.

‘They’ve got shotguns!’ he shouted.

Two of the monks raised their guns. They burst with white flame – a reverberating boom that ripped the air. The cab windscreen imploded, showering Jordan with glass fragments. He threw his arms up in time to shield his face, and then spun the steering wheel hard to the left. The cab skidded on the gravel path and across the dry grass.

‘OUT!’ Jordan screamed at Raphael. ‘End of the line. Journey over. Get out of my cab!’

Raphael shimmered with rainbow colours, becoming transparent again. The harmonic screech built from a low oscillating tone, scaling up and up into a frequency so high and so piercing that it dug right into the roots of Jordan’s teeth.

‘I need your taxi…’ said Raphael. His voice came from a thousand miles away, shattered into echoes. The air was as thick as oil. The living darkness weaved across Jordan’s vision and the cab’s chassis melted around him.

‘Why? Why my taxi?’ Jordan’s voice lagged behind the movement of his mouth.

‘Armour…’

‘You were always lying…’ Jordan looked down, right through the transparent floor of the cab. They were rising off the ground. Raphael had merged with the substance of the taxi and was floating it off the ground with Jordan still inside.

‘Just hold on. You’ll be all right,’ said Raphael.

The leather of the seat beneath Jordan and the throttle in his hand were still solid; he was still in the cab, but his mind grasped at air as he tried to comprehend it. It looked as though he would simply tumble down to the ground if he tried to move.

The monks pointed their shotguns up and fired. Jordan let go of the steering wheel and balled himself up instinctively. The shotgun blasts dispersed into the transparent wall, briefly illuminating the warped, liquid outline of the taxi.

‘Don’t let go!’ shouted Raphael.

The liquid layers of the cab spilled past Jordan’s ears as he dropped. He smashed into the ground, bounced, and rolled across the grass.

Raphael dived into the group of monks like a winged predator and scattered them, his hook flashed through the air. The bright flare of shotgun blasts lit the grass around Jordan, but there was no sound. Only a flat buzzing in his ears. His back was arched and stiff, and something in his left elbow wasn’t right, it wouldn’t move in the direction it was supposed to.

The red outline of Raphael whirled through the monks; a fiery dance in front of the Sepulchre. Several crumpled bodies lay on the ground. The hook glinted in the dark – it punctured skin, tore out throats and freed the blue smoke of whisper demons into the sky. They spiralled like ribbon out into the blackness, twisting into the heart of the Overlap.

Something else cast a light onto the melee; an insipid yellow glow that could only be the cab’s lights. Jordan turned to his right and, there it was, sitting there as though nothing had ever happened. At a second glance, the vehicle was still partially transparent – a wave-ripple passed over it, from the wood-gas cylinder to the bonnet.

Jordan crawled in the direction of the cab, staying as low as possible and used his only good arm to pull himself along the ground. The grass was dry and brittle; it flaked away in his hands. Beyond the soup in his ears came the muted thump-thump of twin shotgun blasts.

Only a few more metres to the taxi. Jordan clenched his jaw against the shards of pain in his arm – if I make it out of this alive, I’m going to take early retirement.

He launched himself at the cab’s passenger door, wondering if he would just melt right through it, but his fingers gripped the handle and the door opened.

Out in front of The Sepulchre, the melee had turned against Raphael. He swung his hook in circles. Monks descended on him from all sides. Some of them had old computer parts strapped to them as armour, with fibre-optic cable and microchips strapped around their arms and foreheads like phylacteries.

One of them ran from the steps of The Sepulchre holding a bullet shaped canister. He charged at Raphael, mouth open in a fanatical scream that Jordan couldn’t hear above the buzzing in his ears.

Jordan, I’m waiting for you.

Trails of blue mist curled in the air above the cab. He dragged his broken body onto the driver’s seat and clicked the ignition for the burner.

Take me home. Don’t leave me out here in the dark.

The cab roared into life.

Light exploded from the patch of ground in front of The Sepulchre. Jordan’s eyes prickled and squeezed shut, images of the sun burning in the sky over Ocean Point filled his mind. Images of a time long passed.

He opened the throttle up and reversed blind.

Don’t leave me alone.

The force of the blast hit the cab and Jordan jammed the brakes, spinning the taxi around. He opened his eyes; red spots blinked in his vision. He stamped on the brakes again, but the wheels were locked – they slid on the paper-dry grass. The cab slipped down the hill, towards the edge of the cliff.

‘Sara wasn’t the first to be driven over the edge by the Overlap,’ said Jordan. ‘She won’t be the last.’

Join us.

Jordan pushed open the driver’s door and rolled out onto the grass. The lights of the cab faded from view as it rolled over the edge of the cliff and into the dark.

Threads of flame spun into the sky from further up the hill. Jordan dragged himself back up toward the road. The skeleton of the Sepulchre was visible behind the flames. Orange and crimson light flickered over bodies on the ground.

He pulled himself up and onto his knees. Pain stiffened into his muscles like shards of rusted metal, but he managed to crawl toward some of the dead bodies.

There he found Raphael, squirming in the dark on the dead grass. His body was a cascade of colours – sparking lines of energy that coursed from his head to his feet. The grass beneath him was perfectly visible.

‘Happy now,’ said Jordan.

Raphael’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, but he could only expel air.

‘You made me lose my cab, you bastard.’

Raphael’s arm shot out and grabbed Jordan’s collar. He spoke in a single hissing breath. ‘…Get out of here. They will return…’

Jordan tried to pull Raphael’s hand from his collar but it dissolved in his grip. The living darkness bloomed from Raphael’s face and wove itself through his body, draining the colour and any semblance of human form until he vanished. The darkness swirled and dissipated into the mass beyond the cliff’s edge.

He tried to walk, but his legs wouldn’t carry him, so Jordan lay on his back. The swell of blackness above him was impossibly vast and impenetrable. It folded in on itself in a series of intersecting layers; a loom of darkness that continually knitted itself.

It’s just a broken arm, at least you made it out alive. You can get a new cab. Start again. Never too old. Just need to get away from this place…

A wisp of blue smoke trailed down from the sky.

The stiffening cold of paralysis spread from Jordan’s broken arm across his chest. Gravity drew him into the ground, held him in its grip.

He whispered Sara’s name into the void.

She whispered back.

* * *

Soon, there will be many of us.

Pass on the whisper wherever you go.

Are you comfortable back there?

Then I have only one question before we roll.

Where are you going tonight, friend?

About the Author

Ilan Lerman is a writer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. By day he sells expensive shiny things to old Edinburgh ladies. By night he writes dark fiction in a corner of his living-room under the unforgiving glare of an Ikea lamp. He’s been a writer for several years, but only started taking it seriously in March of 2008 and since then has had stories accepted for publication in places such as Hub Magazine, The Harrow, Neonbeam and Dark Tales.

©2010 Ilan Lerman