“I don’t want no son of mine talking such crap!” snapped his father, then his voice quietened once more, “If I’d known about it, I’d never have agreed to let that witch Chiltern mess you kids around in the first place, but they don’t tell me everything over there. Don’t tell me much at all. Would never have let you go gallivanting around those caves if I’d known what you were up against…”

“Faye said it was a test of our abilities…”

“Yeah, wouldn’t be surprised to find she’d planned the whole thing over with Payne. As much as I respect the guy, he’s got a habit of using people, just like that Wotan did,”

“Grown-up politics?”

“Damn right it is. Don’t you ever get it into your head that it’s okay to manipulate people to get what you want. That sorta behaviour’s why we’re still trying work out what the hell happened with the whole Great Cataclysm thing. As for that monster you saw…”

No matter how hard he tried, John couldn’t suppress the image of the shaman gathering together in a mound of bleeding bodies, or the sound of their cries as they melted together like wax figurines trapped in the summer sun.

“You wouldn’t want to know some of the Hells out there,” said his father, his face pale. “I’ve seen a lot worse than that thing in my time. Once you’ve seen a few blasphemies of science and nature, I guess you get immunized to them,”

John couldn’t imagine being immune to such horrors, but then he couldn’t imagine anything worse than the hellish vision of death he’d seen born before his very eyes.

“There’re terrible things out there,” continued his father, “Ancient things oozing beneath our very noses, dredging tumours of bubbling resentment created over hundreds of years – thousands even. The horrors like the one you saw are bad, but at least they’re bound in most part to physics. It’s the things that go beyond that, the things that have become real nightmares, that you should be afraid of,”

The science of dreams and astral realities, of the fifth dimension and beings created of thought and spirit. A month ago John might have questioned his father’s serious tone, recalled how long ago scientists in the One-oh-Eight were laughed out of the collective for studying such things, but after what he’d seen and the very existence of the so-called ‘faeries’ Phantasia and Faye, he wasn’t sure what was real and what was fantasy anymore.

“I-I don’t think I can handle all this,” he said.

His father rose from his desk, strode over and placed reassuring hands on his son’s shoulders. “Sure you can. Just keep your feet on the ground and your faith in the world that lies front of you. Those things can only get to you if you’re open to them, almost like you need to believe in the first place, so so long as you don’t go gallivanting off labelling everything you don’t understand as ‘magic’ you ought to be okay. It’s the ones who do, who keep struggling to peel back the layers of reality to find something deeper, who end up looking into the Abyss. Much like that Alexis guy you recorded blabbering away. Don’t jump into the ocean before you’ve learnt how to swim first, unless you want to end up like that,”

“I’ll do my best,” said John, “I just wish the others would…”

“You worried about them getting in over their heads, huh?”

John nodded. “We’ve already started. I don’t know if Phoenie will want to stop…”

Mr Smith frowned, “Then you better keep an eye on her, son, and hope the things she’s seen tonight have dampened her enthusiasm a little…”

John managed a weak smile of hope, but he knew the chances were slim. If anything Phoenie, who had avoided much of the true horror, would already be planning her next excursion…

***

Chapter 57
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