Overture

Overture

Chapter 14

Resolutions

“Art thou afear’d?”

Finch’s eyes clicked open and were filled, all at once, with the sparkle of a new-laid frost. He channelled his sluggish thoughts as far as the appreciation of a cold, pitiless surface beneath him, but no further, and willing his limbs to move seemed so far beyond his capacity that the mere idea of it slipped from his grasp like a carp.

All he could do was to turn his gaze from side to side, his eyes moving on small and tentative tracks. His peripheral vision told him that he was surrounded by candlelight but, whatever else reflection may have done to that light, it had bleached the warmth from it until it glanced from the walls and ceiling like cracked ice. The room he lay in was little more than a cluttered crawlspace, and everything about it was a pale, shining grey, as if he’d woken up inside a rain cloud.

“Be not afear’d,” a melodious, curiously reassuring voice told him, from somewhere far outside his line of sight. “The isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”

This sally was followed by a haunting arpeggio. There was the chatter of small teeth, overlaid with the whistle of keen air in narrow byways. There was a breathless, broken laugh and a sharp inhalation, mingled with one another. The scratch of what sounded like steel gliding on stone carried the animal rhythm, and then Finch’s ears were plugged with silence once more.

Presently, a shape wavered over him, looking as if it were seen through glass-clear, running water. He blinked, and the image solidified, though it was none the less unsettling for that.

The figure was wreathed in a hooded scarlet shroud so vivid that it all but faded out the quicksilver wall behind it. The robe was loose, so much so that it was impossible to divine the slightest of human curves to the body beneath it, and there was nothing beneath the cowl but shadow and air.

No, wait, Finch told himself. There was something there in the dark after all. Blinking his aching eyes once more, he settled upon two glints in the infinite gloom. Blue, he added. They’re blue. They’re beautiful.

He checked himself after what felt like an hour’s worth of consideration of the delirious thought that had just fluttered through his head and, finally managing to separate his parched, cracked lips from each other, he spoke up.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, huskily. “Where is this?”

“Questions!” cried the voice from the empty cowl, with something approaching merriment. “Who, where, what, why? Every line cast from your mouth ends in a hook, Eric.” So saying, the figure stretched out its hand and described an artful curve in the air at the point of one elegant finger. Finch, watching that hand with a breed of detachment and apprehension, had a moment to study its valleys of fresh, livid scar tissue before it dipped and closed soft around his chin.

“Since they seem to comfort you,” the cowl continued, “I will employ a hook of my own. What is it that you hope to catch?”

“The truth,” mumbled Finch. He closed his eyes – the action seemed to take an age to complete – and opened them again just as languidly. When he did so, he could see slight tendrils of pale pink emerging from the creases in the robe, and some sense he hadn’t known he possessed interpreted it as the manifestation of the creature’s amusement at his reply.

“The truth, my dear sergeant, won’t be snared like that,” it said, as if it were a teacher called to correct a bright but recalcitrant pupil. “Securing the truth requires infinite patience. Wait, be still, and it will come up on you of its own free will. If you truly believe the quarry is worth the catching of it, then you’ll heed my advice.”

“You’re the one who killed those people, aren’t you,” said Finch, not a question but a bland statement, while engaging his febrile muscles in a battle to rise from his slumped position. He was gaining little ground until solicitous hands took him and helped him to sit up against the wall, which he felt crackling at his back.

“I killed footpads, cowards, wastrels and traitors. I stole from a thief,” responded the voice, perfectly smoothly. “If this is all the truth you were seeking, you scarcely needed to pursue me to find it. It was carved into your mind all along, beside that small part of you that still adheres to justice, not law.”

Finch tested the brutally sore muscles at the back of his neck by looking up at the shape standing over him. As he did so, he realised that while part of his brain was stumbling and tripping over the peculiarities of everything he was seeing and hearing, to another fragment – one he wanted desperately to deny – it all made perfect sense.

“So when do I get the truth?” he asked. The last word snagged in his throat, and he coughed mightily before freeing it.

“You are not ready yet,” was the answer. “I believe you to be a part of the process if not part of the plan and, believe me, your time will come. You, I and the human race have much to accomplish before that day, but...” it stooped, and the cowl bore in on his pale, sweat-damp face, so close that he could taste warm, sweet breath, “...you now have a choice before you, because choice is a human birthright.”

With this, Finch looked down as something freezing was slipped into his hand, and dim remembrance kicked at his mind as he stared and puzzled. The weapon weighed his palm down, even more so than he remembered, but as the apparition took several silent steps backward, he directed a command down his arm, flicked the laser sight on and raised the gun. If his hand shook ever so slightly, he ignored it, and lifted the barrel until a single, violent firespot lingered on the figure’s chest.

“All that I ask,” it said, “is that you make your decision armed with this knowledge: I alone can lead you to the truth you’ve sought all your life. Not about me, but about you, the world, and your place in it, if you’ll only have the necessary forbearance. However,” it said, and now that voice was nothing more than a murmur, “you may, if you wish, cut me down now and take me in for a prize. Know only that you cannot claim both.”

This time, the tremor in Finch’s hand was unmistakeable. He tried his best to keep the sight steady but, at length, the gun sagged and he allowed it to drop back into his lap with a harsh sigh raked from the depths of his lungs.

“What are you?” he asked, desperately. In response, the creature stepped toward him and lifted one hand, turning it palm out. As if this gesture had at last snapped the bonds of some dire enchantment, Finch found that he was able to struggle to his feet, although with no grace at all. He slammed his back against the wall and exhaled in trepidation as that twisted hand rested upon his shoulder.

“Don’t you know me?” the voice insisted.

“You’re...” Finch paused, and snatched at the only memory, as strange as it was, that was now left in his mind; a memory that had burrowed insidiously into his mind when he was a child. “You’re the Red Death,” he said, weakly.

“Oh, I’m much more than that,” was the dark response. The hood angled away, just an inch or two, as if the animus within was growing impatient at Finch’s bewilderment. Withdrawing, the carmine robe turned its back on him. He felt a minor twitch in the hand that still clasped the gun to his slick palm, but no more than that.

“I’m the shadow beneath the bed, Mr. Finch,” breathed the figure. “I’m the monster in the cellar and the banshee on the roof.”

“I’m the poltergeist and the bogeyman,” it went on, raising both scar-tangled hands to the cowl.

“I am everything that you’ve forgotten to be afraid of,” it said, drawing back the hood and swinging around. Finch’s eyes flared, and he crammed his knuckles between his teeth to muffle a piteous whimper as this damaged nightmare drew closer to him.

“I am Setekh, Baal, Cthulhu and Samael. I am entropy. I am chaos...”

The creature struck like a viper, seeming to move without moving, and was suddenly gripping the nape of his neck. He struggled briefly and poorly as cold fingers dipped into his flesh and found vital points, and then, without further warning, there was nothing more to see, feel or hear.

...sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices that, if I then had waked after long sleep, will make me sleep again...

...and then, in dreaming, the clouds methought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, I cried to dream again...

Finch sat forward, clutching at the tail of this small, dolorous speech even as his face was bathed in honey-coloured sunlight and even as he shied away from this and blinked the sting from his eyes. The last of these words slithered from his grasp as he tried to repeat them, leaving nothing but a vacuum into which his confusion poured.

Raising his hands before his face, he studied them as if they were alien artefacts. There was a needle in his brain, some piercing but elusive memory of clear, cold flames on those hands, but like the seductive whisper that had woken him, it submerged itself and slipped away into the depths once more. All he was left with was the remembrance of a clouded gaze fixed upon his own, a gaze both pitiless and pitying at one and the same time.

Wrenching a groan from his beleaguered chest, Finch slowly turned his head, finally taking in his surroundings. Though the morning was brighter than a pearl and the skies that signal shade of winter blue tinted with gold, a penetratingly cold, razor-edged breeze was scything in through the open window of the car and encouraging prickles of condensation in the sweat at the nape of his neck. Somewhere, close by but unseen, a robin was piercing the uncaring dawn with a series of sharp alarm calls.

Moving carefully, as if hurrying might widen the cracks in a reality upon which he had nothing but the most precarious footing in any case, he pulled open his coat and found his fingers closing around the grip of the pistol, secure in its holster.

Where did you think it would be, he asked himself, gingerly, neither expecting nor receiving an answer. Instead, he picked the car keys up and stared at them, turning them to and fro to play spears of reflected light over his face. After a time, reaching the conclusion that he didn’t trust himself to drive right at that point, Finch wound up the window, pocketed the keys and got out of the car.

As he did so, a stray bullet of recollection smacked into his brain. Rats, it told him. There were rats. He remembered the pinpricks of claws and the rip of yellow teeth; remembered suffering bites and scratches wherever the beasts had found flesh. He brought hesitant fingers up to his face, seeking marks, or pain, or blood, but there was nothing to be found.

Turning his face up to the iridescent sky, he bathed in light as he struggled with the rest of his fractured memory. I alone can lead you to the truth...I’m the shadow beneath the bed. I’m the monster in the cellar and the banshee on the roof.

“But who are you?” muttered Finch.

Every line cast from your mouth ends in a hook, Eric...securing the truth requires infinite patience. Wait, be still, and it will come up on you of its own free will.

“Then I’ll wait,” he responded, a little louder, “but I’ll find you. One day. I’ll find you.” That said, he dropped his head, turned and walked away from the sunrise.

Finch was staring out across the Serpentine when McLennan found him, coat drawn tight against a violent chill that the dawn had failed to subdue. For a while, both men stood in silence, studying the pale golden cast over the water, the somnolent shimmer disturbed only briefly as a flight of ducks swung in to land upon it. Finally, McLennan cleared his throat gently.

“I made your excuses yesterday,” he said, evenly, his breath condensing in front of him. “Don’t worry about that. Are you all right? You sounded...disturbed on the phone.”

“Have you ever had a dream,” said Finch, without turning his head, “that changed everything you thought you knew?” McLennan pinched the bridge of his nose, suddenly seeming very weary.

“Finch, I know we’ve both been under a lot of pressure lately,” he said, vaguely, “but I really don’t think...”

“Just a question, sir, that’s all,” said Finch, still gazing at the nodding willows on the far bank of the lake.

“If I can’t understand the question, then how are you going to understand the answer?” asked McLennan. This time, the sergeant’s head jerked around, and McLennan took a step back. Finch’s face was a pale, frozen mask, his eyes hollow, ringed with shadow.

“I didn’t say I was looking for an answer. I only wanted to say it aloud,” said Finch, and turned back towards the glass-calm lake, hunching his shoulders and sliding his hands into his pockets. Beside him, McLennan frowned helplessly.

“Finch...” he said, and then stopped, a little unsure of how to proceed. Clearing his throat slightly, he regrouped. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked. “I know we haven’t known each other very long,” he went on, still hesitant, “but you’re a damned good copper. Anyone with half a mind can see that. The problem I have, right here and now, is that I have to choose between what’s best for my force and what’s best for you. I’d rather like not to have to make that distinction. You understand?”

Silence ensued, in which McLennan found his gaze drawn out across the lapping, corpse-cold Serpentine in search of whatever it was that Finch was studying with such eerie, detached intensity. After a while, he reached the conclusion that whatever it was, it wasn’t in the lake; it was behind the man’s eyes, and rooted in a far darker, colder place.

“I should get back,” he said, awkwardly. “It’s not as if the Commissioner isn’t watching me closely enough already.” He paused, still waiting for a response of any kind, but Finch didn’t even stir as a stiff breeze whipped at him. Eventually, quite out of words, McLennan backed away.

Finch’s fingers closed on something small, right at the bottom of his coat pocket. Turning it around, pinching it tight, he withdrew his hand and brought the object up to his face, where it glimmered defiantly and fired rainbow-tinted lances of light into his eye as he moved it around and around. Drawing in a short breath, he called out.

“Sir?” he said, closing his hand. McLennan, some way down the path, pulled up and turned back.

“Yes?”

Not now, something whispered, not in his mind, but over his shoulder. Your time will come. He lowered his hand once more, shaking his head gently.

“Never mind,” he said, his voice flat.

The minutes ticked past. Finch remained by the margin of the lake until McLennan had disappeared, and stood as still as a blind-eyed mannequin for quite some time after that. The sun, as weak as milk as it disappeared behind a diaphanous veil of cloud, cast no more than the suggestion of his shadow onto the water. Finally, uncurling his fingers, he drew back his arm and let fly.

The diamond glinted just once as it reached the zenith of its arc, and Finch watched, quite without passion, as it plunged into the embrace of the lake.

Tendrils of silence crept through the wine cellar on cats’ feet, thwarted only by the occasional muted thunder of a passing Underground train and, just here, by the subtle hiss of a candle wick wrapped in an amber flame.

The light from this flame, though it threw a warm circle about itself, didn’t do any more than hint at the figure that remained, perhaps deliberately, outside its sphere of influence. It was as if the candlelight was, though necessary in this subterranean chamber, something of a blasphemy.

The only other light in this vaulted nave came from the panel of a jukebox in a far corner, which was spilling out a haunting refrain. Lulled by this, the figure stretched out a hand and lifted the head of the luxuriant crimson rose that stood before it. The bloom, quite alone in such alien surroundings, picked up what little light it could and bore a gentle glimmer on the velvet of its curved petals.

The figure half turned as, somewhere behind it, a door clicked open. Smiling gently, even though this couldn’t be seen, it waited.

V stepped through the narrow arch and into the cellar proper and, all at once, paused at the sight of the lit candle where he’d expected darkness. Dropping one hand to his belt, he drew a dagger quite noiselessly, and advanced upon the flame.

“I must say,” said the voice from beyond the circle of candlelight, “it makes a change to see you surprised, for once.” V froze, disconcerted, as Gordon slipped into view, wearing a small, irregular smile. At last, the blade was replaced in its sheath, and V straightened up, studying his unexpected guest.

Gordon was still clad in the tuxedo he’d been wearing the previous evening, though it was now in a sorry state; wrinkled, smeared with grime from the train tracks and spattered with rats’ blood along the cuffs. His tie hung askew and his shirt was, he knew, probably quite beyond saving. Aware that he was under close examination, Gordon glanced down self-depreciatingly.

“This feels like the morning after the strangest party in human history,” he observed, apropos of nothing in particular, looking back up and cocking his head at V, who let out a small laugh.

“Our revels now are ended,” said V, and Gordon couldn’t help but hear a warmth in his tone; a warmth that had never been there before. “These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. But tell me,” he added, “what brings you here?”

“A resolution,” said Gordon, a shade cryptically. “There’s that, and more simply, I didn’t think this should be concluded in any less than civilised surroundings and under any less than civil conditions. My state of dishevelment aside,” he added, with good humour.

“I understand,” said V. “Are you well?”

“Not long ago, that would have been an absurd question,” replied Gordon, “but now...? I feel vibrant. I should feel wretched, but I don’t. I wonder if that’s because dancing with death is the best reminder of how alive we are?”

“No,” said V, very gently. “Human life has value to us not in spite of death, but because of it. It’s the daily struggle against the inevitable that makes all of this seem worth our while.” Gordon, after a thought, nodded sagely.

“What happened to that policeman?” he asked, changing tack.

“I...” V began, and then hesitated momentarily. “I know that you believe my actions to have been impulsive, Gordon, but I have done as best I could. Detective Sergeant Finch is no longer a problem, but...”

A long, crowded moment went past in silence before Gordon cocked his head quizzically. “But what?” he asked, feeling his stomach tighten with apprehension.

“Every deck of cards has a Joker,” V finished, and turned his head aside for a second. When he resumed his study, he went on. “Do you know the history of the Joker?”

Gordon thought for a second, struggling to work out where he was being led. It had been a long, crippling night, his skull felt as if it were stuffed with feathers, and he faltered, shaking his head at last.

“The Fool,” said V, “is the first of the Major Arcana in the Tarot. He is a symbol, nothing more, but believe me, symbols can have power of their own. Much as you would imagine him to be, the Fool is a blank slate and, as such, his influence can prove troublesome. He is unpredictable, a wild card with the potential for movement in any direction. And that,” sighed V, “is Sergeant Finch.”

“Would you tell me something?” asked Gordon. “This time, without any allusion or misdirection?” He waited until V nodded curtly, and then continued. “If I hadn’t followed you, would you have killed him?”

“It’s sufficient that that is what you believed,” said V. “I have no easy answers for you, I’m afraid. You were the fulcrum of last night’s act; I merely played my part.”

“You could have just asked, you know, instead of speaking in riddles.”

V took several paces forward, stepping light on his toes, bringing the mask to within a foot of Gordon’s waxen features. Gordon was too tired to back away and, besides, he had a nagging feeling that this was what exactly was expected of him. Instead, he shrugged vaguely and waited.

“You would have come?” said V, his voice velvet and curious. “Had I asked, you would have followed me into the depths? I know very well what primal nightmares you faced in the dark, but you had to confront them of your own volition.” He paused, drew a whispering breath, and went on. “Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed.”

This last statement rang in Gordon’s ear like a finger dragged around the edge of a wineglass and, this time, driven by naked reflex, he moved back. He opened his mouth and managed to exhale a breath he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding, but there were no words to accompany it. He grasped for something, anything at all, but for all that he could find the power of articulation, Gordon felt that his mind might as well have been scoured.

V, in response, simply grinned. This expression poured through the mask and out into the space between them as if it were vapour, so powerful was it.

“Had it occurred to you, Gordon,” he said, “that there are two Jokers in every deck?”

V unbuckled his belt and slipped the knives from around his waist as Gordon continued to stare. Stretching out a hand, he dropped the belt onto the piano, where the bright blades clinked against one another in a brief, discordant toccata. Gordon’s eye was caught by the glare of candlelight along one razor edge, and when he glanced back, he saw that V was still engaged in a slow, careful study.

“I wasn’t part of your plans either?” he asked.

“No,” V told him, “you weren’t, until you elected to be. I’ve a long road ahead of me, but it won’t be easy. I could do a lot worse to take what I find along the way and, if I can, put it to good use.”

Gordon reflected on this idiom for a moment, as it seemed that V was content to allow him time and space to form his conclusions in peace.

From one end of this curious ride down through Wonderland and into Hell, he realised, he’d learned that he had more power over his fate than he’d ever contemplated. He’d learned that he had the facility to choose well once he understood that he had that choice. He’d learned that there was in fact a perfect balance to be struck between duty and responsibility, and that the two were not, as he’d always assumed, one and the same thing.

As he fitted these considerations into his contemplation, Gordon sealed one last understanding, which was that he had no need to explain any of this to V; somewhere between the two of them, he already knew.

“The rose,” he said, indicating the flower with a tilt of his head. “It’s not going to live long down here, you know.” V turned, subjected the bloom to a long, even gaze, and then refocused his attention.

“You would be surprised at what thrives in darkness,” he said, and Gordon heard a wry smile in V’s voice as he spoke. “Nevertheless, it won’t be here for much longer. I intend it for...an old friend.”

Something in the tone of these last few words struck Gordon straight down to the bone. It wasn’t that they were angry, or venomous, or even forthright; they were, rather, delivered in the softest melancholy he’d ever heard in his life. He looked into a pair of black eyes that were firmly fixed upon him, waiting and perhaps even hoping for a reaction.

All at once, Gordon understood that he had no mark from which to place judgement upon V, no adequate frame of reference, and no point of contact whatsoever. Over the past few weeks, while he’d come within whispering distance of many truths about V, most of which he still felt he’d have been happier without, he remained light years from appreciating the man in the mask. Perhaps, he concluded, that was all for the best, too.

“I came to say goodbye,” he said, stepping forward, “for the last time. This time, in good spirits.” He extended a hand. After a long pause born of careful consideration rather than hesitancy, V grasped it firmly.

“You have more courage than you’ve ever allowed yourself to believe, Gordon,” V told him. “You will need it in the years that lie ahead.”

“Are things really so bad?”

“Not yet,” was the grave response.

“Perhaps all you need is hope,” said Gordon, though he turned his gaze down as he did so. “Nothing has to happen. None of this is set in stone. Take care of yourself, V.”

Gordon headed for the stairs, a seraphic smile crossing his face in spite of his near-complete exhaustion. Just before he closed the door behind him, however, he heard the jukebox stir and then flick over onto a new track. He stood, frozen, as the words of the song echoed up the stairwell and spun a web about him.

Don't you understand what I'm trying to say?

Can't you feel the fears that I'm feeling today?

If the button is pushed, there's no running away

There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave

Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you boy

And you tell me over and over and over again my friend

You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction...

Very slowly, Gordon’s smile faded away entirely.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4