A Gathering of Twine Read online

  A GATHERING

  OF TWINE

  A TALE FROM THE SPIRALS OF DANU

  MARTIN ADIL-SMITH

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to G & L Tate for permission to reprint the lyrics to “In Search” by Even The Lost.

  Copyright © 1978 G & L Tate. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

  Reprinted by permission.

  Published 2013 by The Accipiter Corporation

  10 Abbey Park Place, Dunfermline, Fife, UK, KY12 7NZ

  Copyright © 2013 Martin Adil-Smith

  www.spiralsofdanu.com

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Martin Adil-Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and international law.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  Dedicated to my wife, Jennifer.

  ... until our stars shine no more...

  Also by Martin Adil-Smith

  The Demons of Emily Eldritch

  A Gathering of Twine

  The Call of The Black River

  The Beggar of Beliefs

  The Shackles of A Name

  CHAPTER 1

  John 8:32

  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free

  Thursday 15th September, 2033

  A chain of events has been set in motion, Freeman reminded himself. This is inevitable. The sun rising that morning. The translated inscriptions. The body in his flat. All inevitable.

  He glanced around the crowded carriage of the London Underground train. He did not like it. He could barely move and too many people were looking at him. When he met their gaze they turned away, but he would watch their reflections in the window and They would turn back to him when They thought he was not looking.

  They. Them. The secret nightmare that crawled across the face of this world like an army of lepers, polluting and twisting wherever they went.

  They had found him. Finally caught up with him… because he knew. He felt his skin begin to crawl, knowing what They would probably do to him. Of course, They never came alone. Always in threes – all the accounts told him They would come for him in threes. That meant there were two still out there. At least two. He was so close. Just a few more stops. He could feel his heart pounding as if it was about throw a rod, and greasy sweat clung to his back like so many fat leeches. He shivered again.

  The carriage lurched and, for a moment, the lights seemed to sputter, as if whatever arcane technology was dying like a candle-flame in a draft. In that split-second, he swore that he saw Them. Their true selves revealed in the flickering half-shadows. Leering at him with those long faces, waxen and grinning, like a laughing Deaths-Head. All looking exactly like the body back at his flat. He felt his stomach clench as one of the passenger-creatures began to move towards him and... the lights flickered back on.

  A platform came into view, rushing by in a blur. The train stopped abruptly, forcing everyone forward under their own inertia. Several of those who he knew had been watching him fought their way off the train, and more passengers poured on.

  Freeman thumbed the small pendant in his pocket. He could kill again. It was not murder. Not really. Killing changes you. It makes you realise that you can do it. It was like when his daughter had been arrested for taking drugs. That had changed their relationship. It had changed him. Sometimes it changes you for the better, and other times... the change brings a certain shadow with it. A watchful darkness.

  Again Freeman looked over the passengers and wondered how many of them even had an inkling about the true reason for their existence. The lie at the heart of the world. They were all a part of it, whether they knew it or not. Each one of them, like the cogs of an infernal engine. Slaves to the snarling insatiable machine. Each playing their part in a secret show. Unknowing yet not unwilling. On they danced.

  Oh yes. They were all part of it.

  A chain of events has been set in motion.

  Freeman stepped off the train onto the platform, which heaved with bodies like the unified pulse of maggots. He stood close to the wall for a moment, clutching his satchel and rucksack tightly. At seventy-six years old, he was no longer young enough to jostle his way in this throng. Best to let it ease off a bit. Again, he thumbed the pendant absently. It gave him a sense of comfort. If They came for him, he would be ready.

  Freeman exited Mansion House Underground Station and began walking east along Cheapside, towards Gutter Lane. The sky was a light autumnal grey, reflecting his mood, and a heavy drizzle was in the air. The last vestiges of the stygian night were still fading and he was feeling his age. This weather was not helping his arthritis. Looking south, he saw the cloud darkening as a new front brought heavier rain to the polluted streets. It would not wash the stains away.

  His heart was still pounding from the scare he had given himself. Foolish old man! Of course, They had found him. The resources They had… it was only a matter of time. It did not matter how careful he had been. He had tried to cover his tracks. Used go-betweens and patsies. Dead drops and…

  They always come in threes...

  He hurried on. He knew this place. He knew he should stop. Pay his respects as he always did whenever he went by… It had been what... three years? It didn’t matter how many times he passed this spot, he could never get used to the absence of St Paul’s Cathedral. It was like the loss of a most constant friend. Even after the initial period of mourning, you still look for them in familiar places. Freeman supposed that this was how New Yorkers must still feel, and that was what? Just over thirty years ago. He could still remember watching the television that September day. The numbness. The pillars of smoke and ash. How unreal it all felt. But not today. No time for remembrance. Head down. Walk on. Quickly. They were coming for him…

  The sound of heavy building works startled him, reminding him of the sound of his flat door exploding inwards only a few hours earlier and the Thing that came towards him... He hurried on to his publisher’s offices. Moira’s Merit was one of the first tower blocks to rise out of the wreckage of London’s worst terrorist atrocities. At nearly three-hundred storeys high, for a whole three months, it had been the world’s tallest building. But the rebuilding works in Washington, Moscow, and Berlin soon eclipsed it. There was even talk that the rebuilding of Edinburgh City could see a skyscraper to rival all other capitals. Few people believed it, but at least hope was still alive in these desperate times.

  Freeman marvelled at the sheer scale of this shard of darkened glass, remembered the film of Scott some fifty years before, and smiled at how life mimics art. Of course, that movie was now passé by modern standards, but the old man still held the old-style flicks in sentimental affection.

  Such pretty lights.

  The ground floor of Moira’s M
erit had the usual retail offerings: bitter coffee made with over-chlorinated water; sandwiches that tasted of nothing but wet cardboard. And of course the obligatory Net Station. Freeman paused to catch his breath and looked around him. No-one was following him.

  He still did not see the attraction of the Net Stations. It was a young person’s fad. For hours they sat in front of screens – rows upon rows of them – furiously clicking away at whatever the latest game was. Of course, they had not ‘clicked’ for years. Whole body sensors and Full Immersion Technology had seen the human form become the controller. Freeman marvelled at it and then shook his head.

  Layers upon layers, always insulating us. Pretty lights blinding us.

  Even at this time of the morning, the Station was full of slack-jawed youths, and there was a small but notable queue of punters outside, all itching to get their next fix. He could not blame them. It was not that things had become really bad, although they had.

  It was that no-one could see how to make things better.

  So why not? Plug in, log on and drop out of this world into some fictional realm where you could at least pretend to make a difference. And when you were paying by the minute to use a terminal... well, it was a convenient way to keep the kids off the streets, locked away in their own private domains, where they could not see what was going on around them. More accurately, they did not want to see what was going on around them.

  He caught sight of a distorted reflection in the glass and his heart kicked up a gear. He turned sharply, seeing the figure on the other side of the square. The Second. The Second had found him. Despite the throng of commuters, It was coming straight towards him. It had followed him.

  A chain of events has been set in motion.

  He took a breath and plunged through the large revolving glass doors of the ground floor reception.

  This was always inevitable.

  Exiting the lift at the two-hundred-and-twenty-first floor, Freeman worked his jaw a little. The speed of those damn things always made his ears pop. He shivered – the air conditioning, as usual, had been set far too low, but Freeman was sure that his doctor would remind him it was just his poor circulation. Of course, it was years since he had been able to afford a checkup, but he could still hear the quack’s voice.

  Freeman’s publisher, Danielle Kamal, was waiting for him in reception. He had never asked her age, but he guessed she was in her late twenties and still retained much of the youthful pertness of her earlier years. Freeman wondered if she had surgery or any of the myriad of cosmetic procedures that were now available – she seemed to barely age.

  “Freeman! Great to see you,” Danielle said offering her hand and the toothiest of plastic smiles. “I got your message. Come through to my office.”

  Freeman took the woman’s hand with his own cold one and muttered a greeting, feeling her long fingers wrap around the back of his own. He shivered and pulled away a little too quickly. He knew that Danielle - it was never Danni - was a necessary evil in the world of publishing, but in his not inconsiderable experience he found that the level of diabolical intent was directly proportional to the toothiness of the grin. And Danielle Kamal was one of the toothiest people Freeman had ever met. But today was one of trading a certain evil against another.

  “Here, let me have your coat. Please, take a seat.”

  Freeman sat down in Danielle’s office. His heart-rate was returning to a more normal speed, and he tucked his flapping creased shirt into his grubby jeans. They would not try to get in here. There was security everywhere. It would be too high-profile.

  As much as he disliked his publisher, he always enjoyed the views from her office. He had been at a book launch here many years ago, when it had belonged to another editor, and remembered how close he had felt to the stars as if he could reach up and pick them out of the sky.

  The heavy clouds were descending on the city, like a lover’s embrace, giving an effect of spires lost in some kind of magical smog, twisting and fading away, losing solidity, until they were just dreamlike forms without definite edges. As he took in the panorama, his eyes were drawn to a shimmer in the corner of the office. A water cooler?

  Danielle followed the old writer’s line of sight as she sat down behind her desk, and unbuttoned her black jacket. “Beautiful, isn’t it? They installed it when I was made partner last month.”

  Freeman looked back at his publisher, almost disbelievingly. “Congratulations,” he muttered.

  “Would you like a glass?”

  Freeman blanched. “Seriously?”

  “Of course. Come on, you’re one of our most valued contributors.” Freeman knew that was a lie, but went with it. Hell, there was a glass of water on offer, and the stars alone knew how thirsty he was. “Now I will say, it’s not fresh,” continued Danielle, “but it is guaranteed to be not more than third recyke. Here,” she finished, handing Freeman a glass.

  “When do you make fresh?” Freeman asked laconically but knew it would be wasted on the young upstart. How many editors had this publishing house provided him? Fifteen? Twenty? They always moved on after a couple of years. Sometimes less.

  “When I make Equity,” she replied and then changed the subject. “I was surprised that you wanted to have a meeting. You’ve missed a few deadlines. Is your manuscript ready?”

  “That’s what I’m here about,” muttered the old man.

  Danielle leaned across the desk a little, hands clasped, with another award-winning plastic smile. “You’ve finished? We’re all very excited. So have you got it?”

  Freeman choked on his water. He did not remember when he had tasted water this pure. The supply at the flat was off the mains. That was ninth or tenth recyke at best. And that was when the supply was running.

  “Ahhh... not quite. It’s nearly there, but...”

  Danielle’s countenance darkened a degree. Imperceptible unless you were looking for it. Freeman was looking for it.

  “I... I just need to finish the last few chapters... but I need to do it here.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Here?”

  “Yes. I can’t do it at the flat.”

  “Why not?”

  Freeman thought about telling her the truth. I’ve killed... something and its body is in my flat, and now I’m being hunted. I need sanctuary!

  “The electricity... so unreliable.” That sounded more plausible.

  “Freeman, Freeman, Freeman,” sighed Danielle, sitting back in her chair. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Just let me stay here. A few days. A week at most.” Freeman said weakly. “I’ve got all the rough notes. I just need to put them...”

  Danielle sat back and crossed her arms. “You’re already three months over your last deadline. Now you want to live in our offices? Use our water to shower?” She sniffed, obviously able to tell that he had not washed that morning. Or probably yesterday either.

  “Please. I wouldn’t be asking if...”

  “Look, I like your work.” Freeman doubted Danielle read anything other than her monthly makeup invoice. “Your readers love your work. But it’s been more than ten years since your last book. Sure those documentaries count for something, but we need to keep the momentum up. We need pace. If you want to stay here to finish your latest work, we’ll have to come to some kind of... commercial arrangement. You understand?”

  Freeman nodded. “We’re on sixty-forty at the moment. I’ll give you eighty percent. I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign... right now. I just need to finish this.”

  Danielle agreed. “Ok. Let me put it to The Board.” She pressed her Plex-Pad and sent the request. “In the meantime, why don’t you give me what you’ve got so far? Help take off some of the heat the guys upstairs are giving me.” Freeman knew well enough this was not a request. This was not the first deadline he had missed, and he knew how to play this game.

  Making the customary faces of “Well... it really is a just a draft,” and the obligatory huffings and puffings
of “Only if you insist,” Freeman produced a collection of papers from his battered satchel, and put them on Danielle’s desk.

  “Wow. Freeman. That’s a lot of paper. You remember that you’re only contracted for a hundred-thousand words, right?” She did not have to say more. Her expression was one of disbelief that the old man did not trust the Digital Information Service to safely deliver his manuscript. He was a creature of habit and he had always done it this way. No voice-interface-conversion for him. He prided himself on being old-school and insisted on typing his own work. On a screen.

  Freeman shrugged. “That’s about two-hundred thousand words there. There is probably another fifty, maybe sixty-thousand to come. But I’ve got the research and the outlines with me.”

  “Freeman, this is great. This is serialisation. This could be a three or four part-er.” Danielle was getting excited.

  “No,” said Freeman firmly. “It is one book,” and looking Danielle in the eye, “just one,” he repeated. He needed to get the message out there. He had promised. He had to flush the truth out, wherever it was hiding.

  “Ok. We can talk about that later. So what have we got? Proof of your theory? Proof of an advanced ancient civilisation? Alien technology? Tell me.”

  Freeman took a breath. “No. This book is part confession. I don’t think that there ever was an advanced civilisation. At least not the way I thought.”

  Danielle’s jaw hung slack. She closed her mouth. Opened it again. And then closed it once more. The effect was one of a stunned fish. “Freeman,” she said. “You have a readership in the tens of millions. You can’t just change your mind. You’ve built a whole career – what, fifty years? – on your theories. You can’t just scrap them. I mean, look at what happened to Alford when he tried that. No-one read another book he wrote.”