The Faceless (32 page)

The uniformed man stopped, shone his torch across the plaque on a door and stepped into the room. Anna stopped outside the doorway. Bright, pale sunlight streamed in through the wide window opposite. In front of it was a desk, a tattered swivel chair behind it. There were bookshelves and a pair of armchairs, split and shedding stuffing. The door-plaque read DIRECTOR’S OFFICE.

The uniformed man turned to face her: tall, thin, with reddish-brown hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and pale eyes.

Sir Charles Dace raised his hand and beckoned. Anna shuffled in; after a moment, Vera followed. Dace looked from one to the other of them. For all Anna could read of his expression, he might as well have worn a prosthetic mask. Was there sadness in his gaze, regret? Pity or contempt? She couldn’t tell.

Dace took a deep breath and pointed across the room. Anna looked, saw a print of an undistinguished country landscape. Dace gestured to the floor; after a moment Anna crossed to the picture, took it down. Dace waved her aside; he stared, unblinking, at where it’d hung. His pointing hand opened, until the exposed palm faced the wall. Then he curled his fingers into a fist.

The floor shuddered. The desk rattled. Old, loose papers drifted to the ground; a book toppled from the shelves in a flurry of dust. Powdered concrete spidered down from the ceiling as the wall began to crack.

G
IDEON – OPENING YET
another door, leading onto yet another flight of steps – stopped, cocked his head. “Now, whatever can that be?”

“What?”

“Can’t you hear it? Or feel it?”

Alan touched the wall; a faint trembling seeped through it. From somewhere in the distance came a groaning, rumbling sound. “What is it?”

Gideon chuckled. “Father, I believe. Talk of the devil. Still trying to interfere, even though it’s far too late. We’re beyond his reach here.”

“Interfere with what?”

“You’ll see, soon enough. It’s all to do with why you’re here. He can’t get to us, so he’s trying something else. It won’t work, of course. He’ll just antagonise the others, and they won’t like that at all. Silly pater. Still, he’s a big boy.”

Gideon’s smile made Alan want to run, but he didn’t. This was where he had to be. “Daddy never loved me,” said Alan. “Is that really the best you can do?”

“I wasn’t aware,” said Gideon, “that I needed to justify myself to you. Do you really think that I’ve been waiting all these years for you to absolve me? Do you really think that
your
approval is what will make the difference between damnation and salvation? If so, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Allen swallowed hard. “Shouldn’t we be getting on?”

Gideon’s smile vanished; his eyes were black empty voids like the barrels of guns, tunnels to nowhere. “I lead, not you. You, Master Latimer, follow.”

“Alright.”

“It’s this way.”

T
HE CRACK WIDENED,
spilling dust and gaping black. Dace pulled his now-clenched fist in towards his face. The room juddered; dust-streams hissed down from above.

“Oh Christ, what now?”

Anna held Vera’s hand between hers. “Easy.” Still, she was oddly calm. This was easier for her than Vera, perhaps; Anna was used to going with the flow, bending with the wind, while Vera, she was sure, was used to being in control. But the cold fact was that right now there was little she could do.

A final climactic shudder; something fell out of the crack to thud on the worn carpet, and the room became still. A few last motes of dust drifted down.

Dace’s hand dropped to his side, then gestured weakly at the object on the floor.

Sounds outside; footsteps in the corridor. Dace put a finger to his pursed lips and walked past them, out into the corridor. The door clicked shut behind him.

“Wh–” began Vera.

“Sh.”

From outside came the sound of a struggle – the dull thump of blows connecting, the thud of feet on the landing, a crash as bodies cannoned into the locked door. But no cries; not a word, not even a gasp or breath.

Finally, the struggle subsided; the plodding footsteps began to recede. With them came the sound of a heavy object being dragged away. And then at last there was silence again.

After a few minutes, Anna crossed the room. The object that had fallen from the wall was wrapped in oiled cloth. At the desk, Vera at her shoulder, she unwrapped it to reveal a battered tin box. It must have been sealed in the wall for decades, but the lid came off easily enough.

“What is it?” asked Vera.

“Some kind of journal.” A small, brown, leather-bound book, yellowed pages covered with thin, precise handwriting. Underneath was a wad of paper – several large sheets, folded several times. She spread them carefully out across the desk. “Bloody hell.”

“What?”

“I think these are the original plans for Ash Fell.”

“The ones that were lost?”

“I think so. Careful, they’re old. Each different building, floor by floor, and... that’s interesting.”

“Come on, Anna, stop playing games.”

“Sorry. But have a look at this.”

She tapped the centre of the plans for the Warbeck building. “Right here. See? In the middle.”

She felt Vera leaning closer. “Is that–”

“Yes. Some sort of secret chamber. In the shape of a pentagon. It’s not on the plans that were available to the public. Seems to be directly under the centre of the Warbeck building. Buried deep, too. Under the sub-basement, as far as I can make out.”

“But what for?” Vera’s hands rested on her shoulders; Anna slipped free of them.
Not now, not just yet – later, if we live
.

“Let’s see if the journal sheds any light.”

G
IDEON LIT A
cigarette. “My father was certainly a man of parts. Soldier. Businessman. Dabbled in politics at one point. He was also a student of the occult.”

“The occult?”

“Oh yes. Surprised you, didn’t it? I’m not sure where it came from; even dead, we don’t talk much. He kept it quiet, of course. Regular churchgoer. I never suspected, in his lifetime or even mine.”

Gideon trod his cigarette out. “I don’t know how seriously he took it, till after the War. He believed in the Empire, you see. Thought it was a genuine force for good, and that it was now doomed to collapse. The war had weakened it economically, killed thousands of its young men. Britain had become almost unrecognisable to him. But worse, people didn’t have faith in it anymore – not their leaders, or the monarchy, or the Empire. There’d been a great deal of social change – votes for women, the rise of Socialism. Everything was changing, in flux. My father was convinced this would lead to the collapse of the Empire, and to permissiveness, decadence, moral laxity. The last three being my favourite things, of course. Well, he was right. But you can’t turn the clock back. Can you?”

Alan wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical.

“But what to do? There were political movements, of course, but my father believed the damage was irreversible in normal terms. However, he had other options.”

“The occult?”

“Oh yes. There are spells for almost everything. Make someone fall in love with you. Heal a broken heart. Even raise the dead. But they’re meant to be used on individuals. Father wanted to affect an entire nation. An
Empire
. However, he was an industrialist; adapting a process for mass production was his business.”

“How did he do that?”

“The first problem was power. Does the phrase ‘there’s a price for everything’ ring a bell?”

“Yes.”

“Thought it might. Ritual magic requires energy, like any other process. A motor needs fuel; a watch requires winding. Some spells draw their power from the focus and concentration required by the ritual itself. But others require sacrifice. It all depends what you want. In this case, nothing less than a blood sacrifice would do, and the scale of the task meant a sacrifice on an almost unimaginable scale. And then he realised, it had already been made. Oh come on, it’s obvious.”

“The War?”

“Just so. My father realised that the First World War constituted the greatest blood sacrifice in history. Millions had died, to say nothing of those condemned to a lifetime of suffering by disfigurement or madness.” Gideon offered Alan a cigarette.

“No, thank you. But it’d already happened. How could he use it to... reverse itself?”

“He wasn’t trying to bring them back to life. That wouldn’t have worked. But he
could
use that energy to reverse some of the war’s ill effects. There was still time to harness the energy that had been released. And
that’s
why he built Ash Fell.” Gideon tapped the wall. “He paid agents to... harvest the battlefields of Passchendaele, the Somme, Loos, Mons, the Marne, Verdun.”

“What do you mean, harvest?”

“They collected items he could use. Simple as that. Earth from the battlefield. Spent bullets, broken bayonets, guns, even human remains. All of which found their way into the walls of Ash Fell.”

Something finally clicked for Alan. “Of course. It was right in front of me.”

“Oh?”

“Five blocks around a central building. Like a five-point star. A pentacle.”

“Close,” said Gideon. “But not quite. You can’t see it, because it’s hidden. But don’t worry. I’ll show you.”

“T
HINK IT’S SAFE
to smoke?”

“No idea.”

“Do you mind?”

“Go on, then.”

Vera settled back in the least ratty armchair and lit a Sobranie. Calmer now. Christ, she’d dealt with Walsh and that bastard priest, faced Fitton down. “Was he mad?”

“I’d have said yes before today.” Anna adjusted her reading glasses and turned another page. “You’d have to be to believe in this.”

“He reckoned he could change the whole world to fit what he wanted. Sounds pretty mental to me.”

“There was a lot of it about, in those days.” Anna turned another page, studied it. “Good grief.”

“What?”

“According to this, there’s a small fortune in silver in the walls of this place.”

“Silver?”

“It’s how Dace designed it. Every patient’s cell, every treatment room, was designed to capture human suffering.”

“He did what?”

“What it says here. He didn’t just build relics of the victims and the battlefields into the walls. He went one better than that.”

“The patients?”

“Not just the remains of the dead and the weapons that’d killed them. The actual, still-living victims of the war. Especially in D and E Blocks, where they were never going to get out. Each one was like blood sacrifice in slow motion.”

“So where does the silver come into it?”

“Magic properties. That’s what he’s put here. There’s a thin silver plate under the floor of each cell. Looks like Gideon never even twigged. That’s why Dace hid the original plans. Too much of a temptation, anyone knowing about it.”

“So the silver plate, what, catches the patient’s suffering?”

“Yeah.”

“And then what?”

“There are silver wires leading from the plates, down through the walls and connecting to these.” Anna tapped one of five thick black lines radiating from each vertex of the pentagon. Each was jagged, like a lightning rune.

“What are they supposed to be?”

“I think that’s – wait, yes – some sort of silver rail. Below sub-basement level. See, they all converge on–”

“The hidden chamber.”

“That’s right. And...
Jesus
.”

“What?”

“Look.
Look
at it. Can’t you see it?”

“They all zig-zag. So, what, did he get the angle wrong?”

“Vera, they’re lightning runes. Five lightning runes, intersecting at a single central point. Sound familiar?”

“No. Yes. Wait...” Allen. Something about Allen. “That symbol they showed us. On that picture of him they found at Shackleton Street.”

“The Black Sun. That’s what he called it. A pagan religious symbol. That’s what this is, Vera. Ash Fell was built as a gigantic Black Sun.”

T
HIS CORRIDOR WAS
cold and damp; the air clung wetly and stank of mould.

“We’re now below Warbeck’s sub-basement,” Gideon said. He pointed at the floor. “The silver rail’s under the floor. Can you believe that? A small fortune. Actually, not so small. I was sitting on a fortune, and I never knew. Not until it was too late, of course.”

“After you were dead?”

“Oh no, before. You don’t think I remained here out of choice?” Gideon looked around. “The former occupants of this place made certain that I couldn’t leave. I’d lose all sense of direction, become violently ill, if I went too far away; I’d always end up back here. So, yes, a solid silver rail, directly underfoot. Channelling all that misery down here, towards the centre.”

“And is that where we’re going?”

“Of course. Where else?”

And what then? Could anything Gideon Dace wanted be a goal Alan should help achieve? Or was Gideon serving out some sort of penance? He hardly seemed repentant.

Unless, of course, the energy Ash Fell had stored had to be dissipated before it caused further harm. Like defusing a bomb, or shutting down a runaway reactor. That must be it. He couldn’t understand what else it might be.

“What my father failed to consider,” Gideon said, “is that there’s a lot of anger out there in the netherworld. You’re a long time dead, and believe me, the tales you tell your audiences don’t even come close to the truth. No Heaven or Hell, no Elysian Fields, no eternal rest or reincarnation. Just a cold, dark place of ashes and dust and stagnant water.”

Gideon trod out his cigarette. “All that’s truly valuable is in the world of the living. If you’re lucky, you get to walk among them, see this flawed, befouled but beautiful world yourself, but even then you’re like the poor child outside the sweet shop, nose pressed up against the glass. You can see, hear, smell even, but never touch, taste,
feel
. And the living don’t realise. The lines of communication are so chancy. Besides, people hear what they want to hear. No-one wants to be told what’s
really
waiting. The dead wouldn’t have even the brief contact with the living they have. You’re not unique, Alan. There are others like you, so sure they know everything when they know
nothing
. Nothing at all.”