Again they’d clubbed him down with their narcotics; but in his dreams he rose again, and wandered through the corridors of Hell. The colony appeared in ruins, its gateways overgrown. Owls were hooting from the chimney-tower. The shadows were unquiet, full of whispering and sobs.

Dominicain advanced into the labyrinth. A creeping fear came over him – as if this were some giant spider’s lair. But something brushed his face, and drew him onward: a summons as elusive as a sigh.

He saw a light ahead of him – unfolding in the darkness like a flower. The glow was pale, unhealthy, and he wavered for a moment; then started down the passageway towards it. As he glided closer, it resolved into a face: a deathly visage, hanging in the gloom. The eyes were like two windows on the inky dark beyond.

They watched him come, those empty eyes. And then the phantom spoke.

Be patient in your cell, devoted friend.

The term of thy imprisonment is done.

Await the man of power whom I shall send.

The language was Italian – the Tuscan dialect he spoke himself. He didn’t recognize the lines, and yet they were familiar. Their richness and arrangement made him think of Dante’s work.

Not quoted this time, though. They spoke to him.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded hoarsely.

The white face didn’t answer that; instead it threw the focus back on him.

You shall become that Hound the poet saw,

Who drives the hungry She-Wolf back to Hell,

And brings the rule of justice to the poor.

Dominicain was dumbstruck. He recognized that image from the Comedy of Dante: his Inferno. He stared in disbelief – then shook his head.

‘But how can it be me? I am condemned.’

The other stayed inscrutable. He had to be a Messenger, Dominicain thought wildly. A being of light, beneath his cloak of darkness.

So who had pleaded for his soul, to win him this remission?

‘The lady who has charge of me …’ He hesitated. ‘Is she one of the blessed?’

The other seemed to ponder that; then moved his solemn head from side to side.

She owes allegiance to a darker power.

It may be she will seek to hinder you.

So you must show no pity in that hour.

Dominicain absorbed that wisdom grimly. He was just about to speak again when everything dissolved. His soul came winging back along the darkened corridors, returning to his body like a sparrow to its nest.

His dull, unfocused eyes slid halfway open, but he lay there like a dead man until morning. The apparition’s rhythmic words still throbbed in his head.

Martin’s breathing body stirred beside her, but it felt as if she was lying here alone. Nestled against his naked back, Claire tried to warm herself – but the lump of ice inside her didn’t melt. His heartbeat pulsed in time with hers; but his mind was silent, locked inside his skull.

The bedside clock said two a.m.; it might as well be lunchtime. She didn’t think she’d ever get to sleep.

If only she could tell what he was thinking. If only she could see into his dreams. Maybe then she’d understand the welter of emotions he had shown. There’d been a spark of wonder, to be sure. She’d snatched at it, ignoring the dismay. Then he’d lost his rag, and started shouting. All her fault: she’d done it just to trap him. How dare you even think that? she’d yelled back. As the fight raged round the flat, she’d realized he was scared. Frightened of commitment in itself – or by their prospects? She wouldn’t blame him, if it was the latter. She was bloody terrified as well.

But later, when he’d quietened down, the fear had still been there. She’d peeped into the living room, and seen him trying to read. His skin looked cold and milky pale; his eyes like haunted wells.

She’d had a horrid notion then. He looked like someone diagnosed with cancer – frightened for the people whom his illness would drag down. The family who didn’t even know … It couldn’t be. She’d crushed the inkling out. But two nights later, here it was – still smouldering.

For God’s sake, don’t be stupid. He wouldn’t keep a thing like that from me.

At least he hadn’t packed his bags. At least she had his body in her arms. She sniffed, and laid her cheek against his shoulder. A single tear ran down onto his skin. She’d cried at work today, as well – in front of John, who’d watched with solemn eyes. She wondered what he’d made of it. His cryptic mind was just as hard to read.

Subsiding into sleep at last, she dreamed of spiders creeping up the bed: dozens of them, all spindly legs and petrol-bloated bodies. Catching fire, they scuttled blindly forward. She felt them on her naked skin. Paralysed, she smelt the duvet burning. More of them were crawling on the ceiling: they dropped towards her face like falling stars. Her scream was just a whimper in the stillness of the room. She curled into a ball, and didn’t wake.

The sound was just a rustling at first: like rain against the flat roof overhead. Martin lay there, semi-conscious, trying to ignore it. But slowly it grew louder: a crackling noise that seemed to fill the room. Like burning wood. He sat up with a start.

The bedroom was in darkness – he could see no sign of flames. And yet there was a bluish gleam, infusing the dense air. He sat and squinted, baffled – then looked down.

His hands were glowing.

He raised his palms, and stared at them in frozen disbelief. His skin was radiating cold blue light. The frosty crackle sounded like a Geiger counter now. He rubbed his hands together – no effect. The light was welling up from every pore.

Springing out of bed, he stumbled over to the mirror. His face was luminous as well, a disembodied mask. The snap and sizzle of decay was growing all the time. Yet Claire was still asleep – she hadn’t heard it. She couldn’t feel the particles that soaked into her skin.

I’ve touched her with these hands; she’s kissed my face. So she must be contaminated too. Together with what was growing in her womb.

Did magic have a lethal dose? A power to deform?

The crackling reached a peak – and then cut off. The ghostly blue plutonium-glow went out. He thought he’d been struck blind again, and felt his heart freeze up; then realized he was buried in the bedclothes. The bed was hot, and stank of sweat. Claire lay snug against him, moaning softly.

He shrank away from her, got up, and blundered to the bathroom.

Waking up, Claire clutched herself; revulsion made her squirm against the headboard. Her skin was slick, her nerves still itching madly. The dream itself was like a web. It took her several moments to break free.

She slumped against the headboard with her arms around her legs. Her fringe was matted, hanging in her eyes. Shower, she thought – and realized there was nobody beside her. A fleeting twinge of dread, and then she heard water splashing. Light reflected through the open doorway. Shit, he beat me to it, she thought wryly.

Better join him.

Going through, she found him there, beneath the steaming blast – still scrubbing at his raw, abraded skin.

CHAPTER VI

Grief Riders

Daylight made the Burnt House seem much smaller.

Martin stood and watched it from across the busy road. Lunchtime traffic put it in perspective – a backdrop to the modern urban grind. The sunshine showed its cracks and crumbled brickwork; the window-boards were brittle cataracts. A blind, decrepit visage that the passing world ignored.

He’d heard that it was down for demolition. A Planning Application had been fastened to a telephone pole nearby. Soon the JCBs would come, and smash the building open like a skull. Myths matured in darkness would shrivel in the light. Emptiness would gawp from every window.

I wonder what they’d find inside my head?

He looked both ways, and crossed the road towards it. Today, there was no sense of being watched. He could picture the place as a dusty heap of rubble, perhaps with one wall standing, and a window framing sky. Its ghosts were shadows: primal fears. The only exorcists were light and thought.

Walking slowly round the house, he forced himself to think of last night’s dream. It seemed to say so much – if he would listen. His experience in Dad’s study was still damaging him now. Vibrations from the past were finding flaws inside his mind. In time, they would develop into fissures. Unless he took some action, he’d crack up.

He’d put this off for long enough: casting round for evidence of ghosts, where none existed. Trying to tell himself it was a scientific quest. Avoiding the truth like a credulous child.

He’d had some kind of episode, that night two years ago. Paralysis, a fit, hallucinations. No wonder that he’d looked for other answers. It could have been a one-off, and the lapse of time suggested that it was. But what if it recurred, from out of nowhere?

It wasn’t just his problem any longer; there was Claire. And someone else, he thought. And someone else.

He’d watched her sleep this morning, in the clear light of day. Her belly was still flat and slim, despite the hidden wonder it contained. Martin had reached out, and very gently touched her skin, stroking in a circle round her navel. He had a life ahead of him – if he could face the past. And that meant telling all, and trusting her.

Resolved, he turned and started back. The empty house receded in his wake. An outpost of his fears, destroyed by reason – like a sandcastle demolished by the sea.

Coming home, he knew he was committed. A sobering prospect – yet he welcomed it. A bridge out of the haunted past; a road towards the future. Perhaps it meant he’d finally grown up.

He hadn’t seen this far ahead two years ago, at school. Back then there’d been no call to settle down. He liked girls who were clever, but they had to have nice tits – the impossible perfectionism of Playboy and Page 3. He’d only slept with Vicki twice before they’d broken up. Other girls had come and gone (Nadine had been quite noisy on both counts). He’d never really thought of growing old with one of them.

Lyn, meanwhile, was always being asked out. He could see her now, in slinky black and made up to the eyebrows (he thought she put too much powder on, but what did he know?). He’d tease her as she waited in the hallway for a date – and feel like swearing vengeance if a boyfriend made her cry. But that was different: she was his own sister.

It had taken Claire to match the angles up. She made beauty everyday, and sex a part of something so much greater. He’d never lived so close to someone else, or shared so much.

So grab her with both hands, and hold on tight.

The flat was quiet, full of stagnant sun. Today was her day off: she might be spending it elsewhere. He’d been morose this morning – still shaken by the dream and his reaction. Perhaps she’d gone round to a girlfriend’s, for a moan.

But no: he found her curled up on the sofa, catching up on lost sleep from last night. An open book still rested in her lap. She had her faded jeans on, and an England rugby shirt. Kneeling down, he leaned across, and blew the wispy fringe back off her forehead. She frowned to herself, and opened bleary eyes. A pause – and then she smiled at him. ‘Hiya …’

‘Sorry about this morning,’ he said softly.

She stretched, and shook her head. ‘’S … all right.’

‘And last night,’ he insisted. ‘And the past however many weeks it’s been.’

She looked at him more shrewdly. ‘It’s okay, Martin. Really. I just wish you could talk about whatever’s on your mind.’

‘I’m going to,’ he said.

She frowned again, and raised herself. Still kneeling there, he took her hands and gripped them.

‘I know you’re going to take this like a psychie nurse,’ he muttered.

‘Take what?’

Martin swallowed, staring at their hands. ‘Two years ago … I had some kind of fit. I couldn’t see, or move … it lasted hours. I thought I heard and smelled things in the house – but it was empty. And I had a sort of vision, in my head.’

‘What of?’ she prompted quietly.

‘A wasteland of some kind. A haunted place.’

‘How often has this happened?’

‘Just the once. It screwed me up completely, I left home because of it.’ He managed a wry smile. ‘It’s why I’m here.’

‘Was it voices that you heard?’

‘Lots of them – a real psychobabble. I’ve tried to tell myself that it was something paranormal: as if that sort of crap was really true. But now I want to face the truth. I reckon that I owe it to you both.’

That last inclusion wasn’t lost on her. She nodded, looking thoughtful.

‘So – what?’ he said, and forced a laugh. ‘You think I’m going nuts?’

‘Oh, Martin: no I don’t. You’ve got your moods and hangups – so have I. But I’ve known your for six months now, and I think you’re very normal.’ She smiled, a little slyly. ‘And quite gorgeous.’

‘I was dreaming of it last night. I was scared that I’d contaminate you somehow …’

Her hands were still clasped tight in his; but now she squeezed him back. ‘You know I’ve seen a lot of psychie cases. I don’t think you’re one of them at all. Lots of people have hallucinations. The mind’s a weird thing, you know, even when it’s healthy.’ The briefest pause. ‘It did just happen once?’

‘Yeah. But can you trust me?’

‘I trust you, Martin. Want to know how much?’ Leaning down, she kissed him. ‘Come to bed.’

‘Now, wasn’t that a waking dream?’ she asked him afterwards.

Martin grinned, still short of breath, and let her snuggle closer. She laid her cheek against his chest; her smile was warm and smug. But after a pause, her soft eyes grew more thoughtful.

‘This is how a doctor once described hallucinations. It’s like you’re in a fire-lit room, and looking through the window. While it’s light outside, you see the garden and the sky. But as it gets dark, you start to see reflections of what’s with you in the room. The furniture you’ve got inside your head. Your mind’s the fire – and sometimes it flares up.’

‘And that’s quite normal?’

‘For lots of us, at some point in our lives. Visions, voices, even smells …’

He smiled at her, and stroked her hair. She purred, and closed her eyes. The light was evening-golden now, like syrup on her skin. He felt a deep, delicious calm – much more than just the afterglow of sex.

At last he glanced towards the clock. ‘Listen … That’s twice I’ve spoiled your beauty sleep, so let me make us supper. What’d you like?’

‘Just salad would be fine …’ she murmured.

‘Reckon I can manage that.’ He slithered out of bed and dressed, and went into the kitchen. The lettuce in the fridge didn’t look too wilted. He found a tin of anchovies; a jar of pitted olives. And something he could spoil her with: a chocolate Viennetta for dessert.

He was chopping up ingredients when a knock came at the door. The wood resounded, hollow in the hallway. Martin glanced round irritably, and almost kept on working. But the blows had been insistent, and the silence was too pregnant to ignore. Somebody was waiting for an answer. And maybe they would go away – but then he’d be no wiser.

Might be something interesting. Just might. Tucking in his granddad shirt, he ambled through to see. The door loomed up, he opened it – and felt a punch of shock: so brutal and abrupt it left him winded.

He saw a face as rugged as a crumbled granite cliff: all bony cheeks, and jutting brows and lichen-bearded jaw. The eyes were narrow, deeply-set: a clear, ferocious blue. One of the cheeks was scarred beneath its thatch of dirty gold. It turned the baleful stare into a sneer.

Cutthroat said a cold voice in his mind.

He’d never seen that face before – and yet his heart leaped up in recognition. The man was dressed in brown and black: clothes for the road, from his army boots to his greasy drover’s coat. But Martin knew at once where he had come from: those medieval battlefields he’d seen. The visions Claire had said were from inside.

And Claire was lying naked in the bedroom, unsuspecting. A gout of fear went through him, and he tried to block the doorway. The other’s gaunt expression didn’t change.

‘What do you want?’ hissed Martin frantically.

The watcher flicked his coat-tail back, and Martin glimpsed a sword. It seemed more like an answer than a threat.

‘Follow,’ growled the man, and stepped away.

Martin stumbled forward, off the threshold. Rational objections burst like bubbles. Past and present melted into one. The street was full of shadows; the evening hush polluted by their prayers and lamentations. Suddenly he was a stranger here.

No time to say goodbye to Claire. He didn’t even pause to shut the door. By opening it, he’d wrenched his life completely out of joint. Claire was disconnected now. She might as well have been another pin-up on his wall.

The swordsman led him off down greying streets, past lamps that sputtered on in ones and twos. Martin’s chest was breathless, but he matched the other’s pace. It felt as if he’d joined some kind of underground resistance. The people they passed were refugees; non-combatants who hadn’t heard the curfew.

Three streets away, he knew where they were going.

With the sun now gone, the Burnt House looked totally charred: a stark, black wreck against the fading sky. The swordsman crossed towards it, with Martin at his heels like a dog.

They slipped in through the back way, like before – and Martin froze. An eerie phosphorescence tinged the kitchen, as if some glowing entity was waiting in the passageway beyond. He remembered that same aura from the decomposing Chart. But scar-face was behind him now, he had to keep on going. Onward and inward: through into the hall.

A new constellation had been born in this dead house. Flames glowed in the cinders, like small ghosts of the roaring beast that had devoured the place. Night-lights lined the blackened stairs, ascending like the stairway to a shrine. Another man was waiting at the bottom: crouched there like a hunter, with his back against the wall. His figure seemed unearthly in the half-dark. The light showed up an atavistic face.

Martin came up short again; the swordsman nudged him forward. With nauseous reluctance he went over to the staircase. The second man stayed motionless, enjoying his discomfort. His nose was broken, scarred across the bridge. It gave his grin a stupid, sneering cast.

Martin tested the first step. The brittle wood creaked dully. A voice upstairs was speaking into silence. Murmuring, monotonous: a language that he couldn’t understand.

He started up. The swordsman followed. He heard the hunter climbing to his feet. The disembodied voice kept up its dirge. Two more men were waiting on the landing. They moved aside to let him pass; he did so with his heartbeat in his throat. It felt like he was stuck inside the hospital again – beset by human faces, alien minds.

The voice had died away. He heard them breathing.

A gaping doorway loomed ahead. The darkness had the pull of an abyss. He knew it was the black heart of the house – its crematorium. The thought brought bile seeping up; he swallowed it back down.

The furnace was as cold as ashes now. The murk was thick and soupy, like a sewer. But as he reached the threshold, a rustling movement came from just ahead. The dank air shifted faintly. Somebody was waiting in the room.

Martin tried to back away – and found the other men were all behind him. Their clothes smelled ages old. He looked from face to stony face – then quickly turned his head.

The shape inside the room was coming forward.

A mane of pale hair grew clear; the highlights of the face. The mask of shadow peeled away, revealing pallid skin; but pools of darkness lingered in the sockets of his eyes.

It was the face he’d seen before, of course: the figure who’d looked back. The one with eyes like somebody insane.

‘So,’ he said, ‘the Summoner, at last.’ The voice was harsh, but there was humour in it. A grim amusement, bleak as bone. He reached out with one finger, prodding Martin in the chest. The shock of contact gave the touch the impact of a blow: a hammer-stroke against his pounding heart. Martin had to gulp for breath. The other merely smiled.

‘You woke us, and we came. We always answer. Has it seemed long, the waiting for the Ravens to return?’