Ellis wanted to shout. He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip the gag out of his mouth, kick himself free of Frostfire’s grip and throttle Doctor Barkham until she recalled the creatures she had just unleashed upon his world. Hearing their calls echo out over the English countryside was enough to make his hair stand on end and his heart beat so fast he feared it was audible to the Doctor and the Spiketail beside him. Indeed, it must have been obvious, because Frostfire decided to leave behind his laconic air and say something which, for him, might have been considered verbose.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Doctor Barkham turned around and gave Ellis a scrutinizing glance. He could feel himself being tested and summed up by every movement beneath the shadow of her fringe. He wanted to squirm free now even more than before, but Frostfire’s grip only seemed to tighten. Then she glanced away briefly, apparently to ponder the nearby flock of sheep.
The countryside all around seemed terribly silent, holding its breath in fearful anticipation. Ellis could sympathise as he could see that the Doctor was planning something and the way she held herself seemed to suggest she would come to a conclusion soon enough. There was no doubt that it would be about him. Sure enough, she turned back a moment later and nodded to Frostfire.
“Remove his gag. I think I can tolerate his questions now.”
The Spiketail dutifully pulled the oily cloth free from Ellis’ mouth once more, but the Doctor shook her head. “No. Let me indulge the boy for a while, it might be… informative for the both of us.” She stepped forwards and gazed down at him. “It may surprise you to know that I don’t really have a plan for this world, as yet.” She flicked a strand of hair back over her shoulder. “With no known contact between your world and mine for ten thousand years, we have had very little knowledge of what to expect when we got here. Making plans in the face of such ignorance would simply be foolish, so instead I have merely sent out my Slatewing scouts to learn as much about this region as possible. After all, this is still very much a Philosophickal expedition.”
“Then why all the Stoneskins?”
“A Lady of my standing needs support and protection. Who knows what Evils lie in wait in this world?”
“The only ‘Evils’ here are you and your army of killer rocks!”
“Me? Evil? I’m just a Philosopher, no more, no less. More dedicated than some, perhaps, but still, just a Philosopher.”
“And once you’ve scouted the area, what then?”
“Then we start the tests.” She glanced down at her nails, twisting her fingers this way and that in the unfamiliar light. “Look,” she said at last, “I’m starting to tire of this conversation, so I hope you don’t mind if I get Frostfire here to take you back inside?” She nodded at the Lithoderm and instantly Ellis was dragged away across the pasture and back into the darkness of the Silverspire. He watched the Doctor turn around and stare out across the countryside before his own view was cut off by damp, black stonework.
You killed her, whispered the voice from the air all around her. All Siren could do was nod her head and cry. The creaking rope echoed along the corridor, filling the silences left between each whispered truth and keeping time with the exertions of the blurry, stick-figure man. You killed her.
“Yes,” she sobbed, “it was me. I killed my-
-Mother?” she called out, denying the evidence brought to her by her senses and choosing, instead, the path of the rationally irrational. “Mother, are you in there?”
She stepped forwards tentatively, feeling her way through the darkness of the kitchen towards that slow, gentle creaking. Her hand rose to cover her nose and her mouth as the smell grew in intensity.
“Mother? It’s me! It’s Klarise.”
She could make out the shadow of her even in the darkness, a solid bulk, hanging in mid-air, emanating, not warmth, but a chill miasma. She reached out her other hand, stretched it forwards to touch, to caress, and recoiled at the feeling of cool, damp, decaying flesh.
“Mother?” she asked one last time as her tone dissolved into a whine and in turn became sobs as she staggered backwards across the kitchen, not stopping until she hit a line of cabinets.
“Mother…” she managed through her tears, “Mother, I’m-
-sorry.”
“What are you babbling on about?” the thin man asked, looming over her now with a dark hole behind him. “That poison must be getting worse. Come on then,” he bent down to lift her up and she was powerless to resist his hands as they reached beneath her.
“Sorry…” she mumbled and the whispering voice replied, Don’t be. It’s all good.
“No, no…”
You are a killer and that’s just what I need.
Franck held the delirious girl tight as he turned back and made his way through the doorway he had just raised. Beyond lay yet more darkness and it was only by the light from his glow tube that he was able to see at all. At first there was just more tunnel, and Franck worried that maybe he was wrong and that there wasn’t a bunker after all. He was just about ready to concede that the hidden passageway parts of the rhyme he had been reciting could easily be true without the rest of it being so, but then the green light was no longer hitting the all-too-close side walls and instead he could feel the cool air of a vast space opening around him.
Still carrying Siren, he staggered forwards into the darkness until he reached a pillar standing in the middle of the room with a brass panel on one side. Carefully placing the still-mumbling girl down at the base of the pillar, he turned his attention fully to the panel. It didn’t take him long to work out the order oft eh switches and then the room was suddenly lit up by a bright white light and sounds of machinery whirring into action could be hear all around.
In various places stones were rising up out of the cobbled floor, revealing yet more mechanical pillars. Each ascended at a different pace, so that, for a moment, it seemed like they were building a kind of precarious staircase for someone with very long legs, but soon they all clicked into place at the same height, surrounding the central pillar in a circle. Franck surveyed them one by one from where he was standing, then glanced up to see that a line of iridescent metal bars had descended a small distance from the ceiling.
“Yes, this is it – truly, an ancient precursor to the Holtzmann cage!” He stepped away from the pillar and from Siren, who was oblivious to all around her but the whispering voice in her head. “I assume that I just need to activate each of these pillars to close the cage and charge it up.” He walked over to the first pillar, found the brass panel with its switches and began flicking them all to the ‘on’ position. Cue more whirring, clanking, clicking and humming as the bars of the Holtzmann cage, or whatever they had named it ten thousand years ago, began to descend a little further form the ceiling. In turn the pillar rose until it had locked into place in a recess far above, completing part of a circuit. Looking up, Franck allowed himself a moment to admire the system’s beautiful engineering, before moving on to the next pillar.
“I killed my mother,” Siren whispered through her tears. Her voice was hoarse and weak. It felt like there was almost nothing left of her, “I killed my mother.”
You are a killer. Your gift to the world is death.
“I killed her. I am the rope. My hands still feel the burn. I killed her.”
You are a killer. Your burden in life is death.
“I killed her. I look in the mirror and see-
-blonde hair framing a face stained with tears, eyes rubbed red, raw. The tap is running, senselessly pouring water down a drain; water which has served no purpose between the two. She looks down at her hands and sees, once again, the burn marks from the rope. Her mother’s body had been heavier than she expected. She had always heard that bodies were made lighter in death, but when she untied the knot and the corpse fell freely that rope had scored across her hand with a heat and speed she had not been anticipating. Now the red lines seem like the mark of a branding iron. Putting them together they almost make an M, for Murderer. They are the closest thing she has to the blood she feels ought to be there instead.
She glances at her face again. The golden glow of her hair seems like a mockery. She looks so much like her mother – it’s wrong to see such a likeness after such a betrayal. her eyes skim the shelves until she sees what she’s looking for. A bottle. Black.
She pours the thick liquid out onto her hands and then rakes her fingers through her hair. The action is unnatural and harsh. She is tugging at the threads, almost hoping they will pull free, but instead the black liquid runs between each strand, clinging to them, spreading down their length. She is careless at first and black splotches form all over her blouse, dot the edge of the basin, swirl into the vortex of the running water, but she begins to find the rhythm soothing and soon her hair is streaked with black. It doesn’t take her long to extinguish all that remains of the golden glow and before she bends down to the basin to rinse away the sludge that now clings to every strand, she stares at herself once more time in the mirror.
Red-eyed, tired and worn, dripping darkness from the matted threads that crown the shadow of her face, she sees it.
She’s-
-a monster.”
You are a killed. Your purpose in the Plan is death.
Do it.
Do it now.
Franck was nearly finished with the pillars. Only one now remained to be activated and all the others had risen into the ceiling, creating an inner sanctum for the central control panel. The bars of the Holtzmann cage had nearly reached the floor and it was clear now that there were slots in the cobbles that each was designed to insert into. They hummed with an unknown energy, their iridescent surfaces reflecting and bending the light in ways which defied all Physickal laws, sending it rippling, writhing even, up the walls and along the floor towards him with photon tentacles. It was almost as if the light had been given life and awareness and it was all Franck could do not to be distracted by the wonder of it.
“Have to focus,” he said to himself in sing-song tones, “no point worrying about what the light might or might not be doing until the cage is prepared. As uncle Lothar always said, ‘Focus on going through the tunnel in front of you before worrying about the tentacular monstrosities with teeth for eyes and acid bile, suckering their way along the walls behind you’. It was good advice that, saved his life in Labyrinth. Shame he was too senile to remember it in the Temple of Losthope.” He flicked the first switch quite casually. “We never did reclaim his remains, but I suppose the Gargantulid did win them fair and square.”
“I’m a killer,” whispered a voice in Franck’s ear.
“Oh, you’re up, are you?” he replied dismissively, flicking switches one by one as he went, “Well that’s nice.”
“My gift is death.”
“That’s nice. I’ll look at it in a minute when I’ve sorted this.” Flick, flick, flick.
“Goodbye.”
Suddenly Franck felt a hand grip his shoulder and wrench him back away from the pillar, leaving one switch left unflicked. He stumbled backwards past Siren, who was standing in an oddly hunched, feral posture. He saw her eyes for a second reflecting his own startled expression and there was n unfamiliar light within. He hit the cobbles.
“You will die,” Siren said, in a voice which no longer sounded like her own. Instead, it was layered with many other voices and tones, like a mad choir all speaking at once, “You have trespassed on my demesne and I will suffer you here no longer, so first you will die, then everyone up there will die and then, lastly, this troubled little girl will die.”
Franck tried to sit up, rubbing at his back where a sharp pain was now beginning to bloom. He looked up at Siren with sad eyes. Her black hair was dripping down her face and those inhuman eyes were staring out between the strands in defiance of the personality within.
“Oh, Siren, dear Siren,” Franck began as he staggered to his feet, “I’m sorry, I should have been paying more attention, I should-”
He felt the back of Siren’s hand crash against his cheek, too strong even for her enhanced abilities and he fell backwards to the floor once more. He coughed.
“-I shouldn’t have let it get this far,” he said as he rose once more, “but I’m flawed,” he continued with a slight smile, “and I didn’t know how else to trap you.”
Then he darted past her with surprising swiftness and flicked the last switch.
Siren screamed.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY: I've presented Siren here as a much more tragic character than she often appears. I always intended for her to have a tragic background right from her first appearance back in 'Haste and Hospitality' and that deliberate decision was made, primarily, to give her plenty of depth beneath her otherwise quirky appearance. I enjoy writing Shadow, much of the time, because of these quirky characters, but I never want their external charcter traits to get in the way of a real emotional heart underneath - even if these aspects have been underexplored so far. I know that Siren is one of the more popular characters in the story so far, so I hope that these last two episodes have helped to build the character in intersting ways for her fans. We don't know it all yet, though, so expect some more of Siren's past in future episodes.
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