I hadn’t intended to linger in the dark longer than necessary anyway, but none of this was good to hear.
It was then, as we drew closer, that I noticed something about the town below us. It was mainly formed of a network of narrow streets and small houses that led down to the shingle beach, but there were a few larger buildings. One of these looked a bit like a castle, and there was at least one church and a couple of what looked like warehouses which, back on earth, might have been used to store grain.
‘Is that a castle?’ I pointed at the largest structure that was set on the very highest of the streets.
‘No. That’s the basilica – it’s a big church, like a cathedral back on earth,’ Thorne replied.
I frowned in puzzlement. The only cathedral I’d ever seen before was the one in Priestown, the most important church in the County, which had a really tall steeple. This building had a square tower rather than a spire, but its size was impressive. What would a big church like that be doing in the dark?
‘Do people go to church and pray in the dark?’
‘Yes, they pray,’ replied Thorne. ‘But it’s not like back on earth where folk say their prayers to God. As you know, the dead here mostly worship the Fiend, though some pray to other dark deities like the Morrigan or Golgoth, the Lord of Winter. Well, there are altars to all of them in the basilica.’
‘There must be some who don’t bow to any god – some who are enemies of the Fiend here too?’ I was wondering if somebody might be able to protect us as we travelled through this domain.
‘There are a few who might just help us if we get into serious trouble,’ Thorne told me. ‘We do have friends here that we could call upon if our need is great enough. But I wouldn’t count on it. We can only do that if our situation is dire – we’d be putting them in serious danger.’
I could only hope that it wouldn’t come to that. But I would do whatever it took to get the dagger back to Tom. ‘So whereabouts is the exit from this domain?’ I asked Thorne next.
‘The gate never stays in the same place for long; it drifts around; I know that some of the stronger entities here can manipulate its location. Sometimes they charge a price for using it. We’ll have to search for it. We’ll sniff it out eventually.’
‘But you left this domain once before, Thorne. Did you have to pay a price then?’
Thorne nodded. ‘Blood is the currency here. I paid them in blood.’
I didn’t like to think about what she’d been forced to do, but I had to question her. I thought I should know all the details of what I might have to face. But before I could speak, Thorne had turned her back on me and was striding along at a rapid pace.
We came to the foot of the slope, and the ground levelled out. Between us and the first buildings, which showed no lights in their windows, was an area of flat soggy ground with a few dead trees and tufts of marsh grass. Thorne led the way and we squelched forward, our pointy shoes sinking deeper into the marsh the further we walked.
In the distance I could just see a few figures. The moon was behind the buildings and it was hard to make them out in the gloom, but there were both men and women. They walked along, apparently aimlessly. One was going round in a circle; I heard a faint muttering but couldn’t catch any words.
‘They’re known as “the Lost”,’ Thorne explained. ‘They don’t know that they’re dead, and their memories of earth are muddled. They’re the easiest prey of all – their blood is easy to take so they don’t last long.’
At last the ground became firmer. As we left the marsh, however, I suddenly started to feel as if I was being watched, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end. Twice I looked over my shoulder, but there was nobody there. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement.
‘There’s something over there to our left . . .’ I kept my voice low. A shadowy thing had seemed to rise up from the marsh but had disappeared as soon as I’d glanced at it.
‘Just keep walking and don’t look at it directly,’ Thorne advised. ‘Don’t worry – the things that inhabit these dark dwellings and the outer marsh are usually the ones that aren’t strong enough to survive in the town. It’s most likely a glipp.’
I had never heard the term, but Thorne explained: ‘It’s a low-level elemental that likes mud and stagnant pools. A daemon would gobble it up in an instant, and it’s probably nervous of us, but I know that sometimes they get really hungry, and that can make them desperate.’
We reached the first of the buildings – a two-storey house with cracked windows and tattered lace curtains. It was dark inside, but I spotted a curtain twitching, and then something thin and grey moving away, back into the front room.
‘That’s probably nothing to worry about, either,’ said Thorne. ‘As I said, the most dangerous entities congregate either near the waterfront, or in and around the basilica.’
I could only hope that she was right. She was the only friend I had down here.
We were now walking along a narrow alley between two stone buildings, but I could see lights ahead and hear the murmur of voices. Moments later we emerged onto a busy cobbled street that sloped upwards, away from us. Candles flickered behind windows, and there were torches on wall-brackets on the dark side of the street, which was untouched by the baleful glare of the blood-moon. But this was like no place on earth.
For one thing, rather than being grey, as they usually were in the County, these cobbles were black and shiny like cobs of coal. But the most sinister thing was the drain channel that ran beside the street, close to the houses on our left. A dark liquid trickled along it towards us. I gasped as I realized that it looked like old blood – the stuff that is swept from the floor of a butcher’s shop when the day’s business is over. I could smell it; there was a sickening coppery taint in the air.
There were people too – the dead, who shuffled along with their eyes fixed on the cobbles. Mostly their clothes were in tatters, their shoes down-at-heel. One woman with dark, matted hair had a red gash in her throat, from which protruded the hilt of a dagger; blood was trickling from it and the front of her dress was saturated.
I glanced sideways at Thorne. Her mutilated hands were still bleeding too. So, the manner of your death was carried over into the dark domain of the dead . . . If I was right, then I might soon see far worse horrors than these.