The mesmerising darkness became claustrophobic. He was flying, he was falling. He was hearing voices singing from the void, fading, rising again in anger or despair. There was Marianne, his Marianne, saying, "So the real Dale is still in the Black Lodge?" He scrubbed at his ears and it went away.
To his right he saw a dim golden glow pulsating with the beat of the blood in his brain. As he drew near, figures separated from the light, all shining, all beautiful. He recognised faces he had seen when the Tuatha De Danann had swept to his rescue at the Fairy Bridge on Skye. Lugh stood, tall and proud, reunited with his spear, which he held at his side. And behind him was the Dagda, a starburst from which features coalesced, alternately ferocious and paternal, always different; his own father appeared there briefly. And there were others who seemed both benign and cruel at the same time; some were so alien to his vision it made his stomach churn. They were talking, but their communication was so high-pitched and incomprehensible it might as well have been the language of angels.
He almost stumbled among them, but they were oblivious to his presence. He had the sudden urge to lash out, a childish desire born of his own powerlessness, but he knew it would be futile, and so restrained himself, if he admitted it to himself, there was some fear there too.
But were they hallucinations? Or was the potent energy drawing him towards real moments plucked from the flow of time? As if to answer his unspoken question, Lugh pointed to an image which coalesced among them. It was Veitch, obvious despite the mask that covered his face, clutching a shotgun, his nervousness masked by anger. Church knew instantly what he was seeing: the moment when his friend had his life torn from him. Veitch waved the gun back and forth. In the background the building society was still, tense.
One of the Tuatha De Danann Church didn't recognise leaned forward and said something in the angel-tongue. On cue, Veitch whirled and fired the gun. An elderly man was thrown back as if he'd been hit by a car, trailing droplets of blood through the air.
Ruth's uncle, Church thought. The act that brought on her father's heart attack. Two lives ruined by the arrogance of power.
He watched the faces of the Tuatha De Danann expecting, hoping almost, to see cruel glee or contempt there, but there was nothing. It was an act inflicted on beings so far beneath them that there was no call for any response; it was nothing more than a brushing away of a dust mote.
Sickened, he turned and hurried away.
He hadn't gone far when an idea struck him. If what he was viewing was random, such a turning point in all their lives would have been too much of a coincidence. In some way the events were arriving before him like lightning leaping to the rod on a church steeple, summoned by his subconscious, or some other vital part of his being.
Maybe we're operating on the quantum level, he thought, where everything is linked. But if that was true, what did the first terrifying image mean? Maybe I can make this work for me.
He concentrated until he dredged up images from his subconscious, some so painful they brought tears to his eyes. He remembered how Tom had used the blue fire to warp space before, drawing them along lines of power from the stormy sea off Tintagel to the top of Glastonbury Tor in the wink of an eye.
Do it for me now, he wished, feeling like a boy, not caring.
For long moments nothing happened. And then, suddenly, he was falling. When the descent stopped he was standing in his old flat. But it didn't have the familiar look of bachelorhood, the secret layers of dust, the scatter of magazines, piles of videos and CDs, and odours that wouldn't shift. It was before. When Marianne lived there.
His heart leapt, but that was just the start of a complex flood of emotions that overwhelmed him. He breathed in deeply. He could smell her! That brought a fugitive tear, which he hastily rubbed away.
Stay focused. This is where you find the truth, he thought. If you can bear it. If you can feel your heart ripped out, see things that will scar your mind for the rest of your life.
He wished he could let it go, move on, but Marianne's death had destroyed him and not even a saint could turn the other cheek to that. Here was something he could believe in: revenge. Cold and hard.
The flat appeared empty. One of her acid jazz CDs played innocuously in the background. And then he could hear her moving around, humming to the music, at peace with herself and the life they had.
Don't cry, he told himself futilely.
He remembered where he had been at that moment: in the pub two streets away, drunk on booze, drunk on life, singing old Pogues songs with Dale and thinking what it would be like to be married.
Don't cry, he told himself futilely.
He wiped his face, forced himself to stay calm in the centre of a room a lifetime away, when he had been whole; listened intently. Soon. Soon.
Marianne singing now, in perfect harmony with the track. Leaving the kitchen where she had been washing up. Crossing to the bathroom. He strained to see, then averted his eyes at the last moment. Then regretted it a second later.
The bathroom cabinet opening. She was taking out something. Bath oil? No taps yet. There had been no water in the bath.
There it was: the bare, brief click of the door. Nausea clutched his stomach.
"Church? Is that you?" Her voice; he couldn't bear it.
Take me away. His eyes were flooded, blurring everything.
He took a step forward. A dark shape flitted across the hall towards the bathroom. The damp ebb of his emotion was replaced by a cold hatred that surprised him; but it was better, definitely. It allowed him to act.
He moved quickly. He was going to find out who the bastard was who had destroyed everything. It didn't matter that he was a puppet. He was a killer of dreams and he was going to pay the price.
Don't scream, he prayed.
Marianne screamed. And then he was running, and running, but the bathroom was a million miles away, and he knew if he reached it, what he wanted most in the world would destroy him. Every sight, every experience stays with you forever; that one would ruin him for all time.
I have to see, I have to see, he pleaded with himself. And still he ran, but he knew he couldn't bring himself to do it. And then the bathroom, the flat, everything that had ever mattered to him was receding, and he was falling, upwards this time, yelling and crying, like some drunken fool, brutalised by the pain of his emotions.
And then he was back in the dark once again.
He wandered for what seemed like hours. If that were the case, the cavern would have been enormous, but he had the unnerving feeling he was no longer walking through that place; his meanderings had taken him much, much further afield. He didn't dare think too hard about that; the chance that he might be lost and walking for all time hovered constantly at the back of his head.
Sometimes he thought he was about to break through into another solid place; shadowy figures moved in the distance, lighter than the surrounding dark, but he never seemed to draw near enough to reach them. Sounds continued to burst through the void, fading, then growing louder, as if they were being controlled by a mixing desk: psychedelic aural hallucinations. Briefly, he heard Ruth calling for his help, but it was lost the moment he thought he recognised her voice.
And still he walked, until he heard something enormous moving away in the dark, circling him. A chill insinuated itself into his veins. There was a sound like the rough breathing of a wild animal and when he turned suddenly, he glimpsed a giant wolf. He knew instinctively this was the thing that had taken Ruth and attacked him in the library. But he also knew, although he did not know how, that it was not really a wolf, nor any kind of supernatural creature; it was mortal, and more, it was someone he knew.