I'm through to the living room, and gagging with the stench of rotten flesh. It's the first time in a while that it isn't alcohol or shift induced. And I can't quite believe what I see: two twitching bodies, tied to the ceiling, flies coating their flesh. Maggots carpet the floor beneath, a squelching, writhing mass. The spaces of the Stirrers' skin not fly-coated or maggot-bubbling are marked with symbols I don't recognise, but which none the less drive icy nails of dread through me. It doesn't stop there, though, there's something not right with the geometry of these ceilings, the way their corners meet – or don't – something that baffles my vision like the seeds of a migraine. I can smell stale smoke, too. The ceiling above, near the edges of its warped geometry is black with scorch marks.
The bodies jerk and spasm. Eyes flick open. Lips curl with the most cunning of smiles. 'You'll all be screaming by the end,' their mouths, bearded with flies, whisper simultaneously. 'It's coming.'
The air is charged with a wild electricity. All over my body, hairs lift. My mobile phone crackles in my pocket. In the far corner of the room, a webwork of electricity sighs and hisses in the air. A living, shivering net. It slides towards me; maggots pop and bubble on the floor beneath it. My first instinct is to run. Instead, I slap the nearest body hard. The Stirrer's soul passes through me like a ball of barbed wire. And the electricity fizzles out, as though I've broken the circuit.
The second Stirrer snaps at my hand, ducks my strike, and somehow manages to scuttle across the ceiling. The length of the ropes that bind it limits the creature's movement. It blows me a kiss. 'She'll be dead, they all will, and you'll know what's coming. And you won't care,' it hisses. It starts to chew on the ropes. But we both know it doesn't stand a chance.
I swing a bloody fist at its face, and it's just a body again. It's another rough stall, though. I drop to a crouch with the pain of it. They have been in these bodies for weeks. Their souls have grown thorns and tangles. My sparrows are hard at work, too. Their pomps are quick on the tail of mine.
Lissa stumbles into the living room. She looks exhausted. 'Now, I stayed in some dives back in my uni days, but none as bad as this. Even when I ignored the cleaning roster.' She nods at the bodies. 'There's a Stirrer in every room.'
'You got them all?'
'The ones that your sparrows didn't get to before me.'
'What the fuck is going on here?' I do my best to ignore the flashes of my Avian Pomps devouring the corpses, tugging out beakfuls of flesh.
'Something ceremonial,' Lissa says, distracting me from their feast. 'Maybe the Stirrers were trying to create a life-unlife interface.'
'Ah, one of those.' I can almost hide the sarcasm in my voice and the annoyance at another gap in my knowledge.
Lissa shakes her head, as she binds her palm. 'You haven't got a clue what I'm talking about.'
I kiss her forehead. I'm just happy that she's all right. 'Not really. Hey, at least I'm being honest.'
She submits to the kiss. There's a line of blood across her cheek. I brush it away as best as I can, but really just turn it into a smudge.
'I know. Look, Steve,' she says, 'I've been doing some research. If we weren't so distracted, so damn busy, I'd have told you by now. A life-unlife interface would draw the living to Hell, and the unliving here. Sort of like a door, more like a carousel, and the more Stirrers there are the faster it'd spin.'
'So this would let someone enter Hell?'
'Yeah, if they were crazy, and protected somehow.' I think of those arcane tattoos on my failed assassin's chest and arms. 'They'd have to be a Pomp though. It's a neat way of avoiding the use of one of the Recognised Entities. I mean, you couldn't imagine Aunt Neti or Charon allowing this sort of thing.'
Maybe this explains just how Rillman came back from the dead. It would certainly explain how my shooter managed to be hanging outside my office with a squeegee and a pistol.
'Well, that's one interface destroyed at least,' says Lissa.
'Yeah, but they're great at hiding them. Could you feel it before you walked inside?'
'Not at all.'
'What's Solstice playing at keeping this secret?'
'Maybe he doesn't trust us. Maybe he was curious to see what we'd do about it,' Lissa says.
'We're going to have to be particularly rigorous then.'
We walk through the house, checking that each Stirrer is still. Then I start opening cupboards, Lissa behind me. There's nothing in the kitchen, just ancient pizza boxes, and more maggots. I'll have to hose down my boots. The bedrooms are empty too, but for the corpses above us.
'Do we call and have this cleared?' Lissa asks. Each city has a team set up for removing Stirrers caught out of morgues.
'No,' I say. 'Solstice and his team were aware of the house. Let them clean up the mess.'
In the hallway ceiling there's a trapdoor to the roof. I drag a chair over to it, push it open and peer into the ceiling recess. Something crashes at my head. I throw up my hands. And then it is gone, whatever it is, and the ceiling's all wooden beams, dust and heat.
'Are you all right?' Lissa asks.
'Yeah, just jumpy. Must have been a trapped bird.' I look into the ceiling recess again. Here I can see the rough welds that hold the aerials to the roof. There's no wiring. They're attached to nothing but corrugated iron. And yet, I'd seen lightning dance towards me across the living room floor. I climb back down, scratch my head.
'What I want to know is how they managed to get into the living world without us feeling them,' Lissa says.
'Thunderstorms,' I say. 'We've been having a lot of thunderstorms. The electrical activity can shield almost anything. And look where they set up house.' I point out a window at the transformer station nearby. 'That and the aerials have gotta pump out a lot of distortion. What did Alex say they called it? A grid? Suggests to me there are more of them.'
Lissa leans over and pecks my cheek.
'What's that for?'
'You seem to be learning things at last.' Then Lissa's eyes widen. 'Where is Alex?'
A dog's barking somewhere, and then it stops. A shot rings out from the backyard.
We both spring to the back door. It's bolted shut.
I try and fix on my Avian Pomps, but they're gone. The three crows and dozen sparrows I had out there aren't watching Alex anymore. I realise, then, that they're dead. I try and catch their memories, but there's nothing. In the confusion of battle I'd not noticed I'd lost track of them.
The door might be dead bolted but it doesn't look too sturdy. I kick it hard. On the third leg-jarring belt with my boot the door bangs open.
Two Stirrers have cornered Alex in the backyard. My Avian Pomps are bloody lumps of feathers around him. A Stirrer has Alex by the wrist with one hand and it's swinging out at him with a knife. Alex is doing his best to keep his distance, but the Stirrer's pulling him in. The other Stirrer reaches out a hand to grab him. This one must be newer; its movements are clumsy, its hair and neck draped in spiderwebs.
Lissa and I race down the stairs from the back door towards Alex. I take the one with the knife, slap a bloody hand around its neck, another around its waist, and jerk it backwards in some mad parody of a dance.
The other Stirrer gets a moment's notice and it swings its head towards Lissa. Alex punches out with his now free hand, and as it stumbles, Lissa stalls it. The Stirrer falls.
Mine shudders in my grip. I hold on as its rough soul scrapes through me. It's a dreadful sensation; this Stirrer's been around for a long time. Once it's hurled back to the Deepest Dark, I drop to my knees.
'You OK?' I demand, looking at Alex.
'You took your bloody time.' Alex is shaking, but he manages an unsteady smile.
'I'm sorry,' I say. 'I didn't expect the strongest Stirrer to be out here. There's been more than a few surprises today.'