Judgement (The Twelve) (6 page)

“We live in them until they fall down then move on.”

Chris glanced back at the house. It was
an old red brick pre war
construction,
with its original wooden sash windows,
“That’d ta
ke at least seventy years or so, you’d all be dead by then!
”

No one answered, but he was given some strange looks.
Okaaaay!
That didn’t make any sense just like everything else Chris had seen
or heard
today.
It was
still pouring with rain
only now it was
daylight.
But
as they set off everything
turned
the same
dull
grey colour.

Chris whispered to Patch
, “
what
the hells happened to the colour?”

“The In Between
is the
place we move in. It’s just out of sight from a normal human. The blind can sometimes see us.”

Chris pondered that
answer. It seemed that
his questions only created more
questions and that any answers actually
made no sense.
As they walked through
the
old backstreets in a run down area, occasionally one of two people or a car would pass them by without so much as a backwards glance.

“You sure they can’t see us?” Chris asked as a man hurried past, head down, collar raised on his overcoat.

Patch sidestepped to avoid him, “
No one but the Shades and The Dark.” (She whispered the last name as if someone or something would over hear her.)
But we can still make contact and that’s not nice
. They sort of slice through us, to them it feels as if someone’s walked over there grave, to us it stings.
Of c
ourse
a soul
can
see us
,
but
they can’t touch us
t
hank
s
be to God
.
”

That made a whole lot of sense!
Not.
But Chris had another question to ask, “Where are we going?”

Anvil
answered.
“Back
t
o the road where you used to live, where the old man was killed.”

Chris didn’t like the way he said, used to live. But before he could ask another question, he found they
had arrived
at the junction with his
old
road and a
narrower
side street. Christ they had travelled far and fast. His home was down near The Thames in Soho and he was sure the
ir
house had been all
the way across
in Hammersmith when they’d started out.

Chris was about to ask how that was possible, when Huntress placed a hand on his shoulder
. Q
uietly she pointed with her bow down the road. Through the greyness of the pouring rain, Chris could see police tape criss-crossing the road in front and behind his home and Wally
’
s. A tent was erected over Wally
’
s card
board
box
. Poor Wally that was the driest he’d ever been. Men in white suits moved back and forth between two forensic police vans and the tent. Three squad cars blocked the road. Two on this side one on the other. Several uniformed policemen and woman stood around in the rain, talking amongst them
selves. But it wasn’t any of them that Huntress was pointing at.

The hair on Chris’s neck stood on end! Standing there in the rain was poor old Wally. He wasn’t covered in blood
now;
maybe the rain had washed it off, maybe he hadn’t been as badly injured as Chris thought.
Maybe he’d just been hysterical and imagined it all.
But
i
f that was the case, why had
n’t
he been taken to hospital and why were the police ignoring him. Surely they should at least let him sit in one of there cars, out of the rain. Then Chris shuddered, the rain was passing right through Wa
ll
y and bouncing o
f
f the wet road service.

“Is Wally a…
S
hade now?”

Anvil
shook his head, “No He’s just a
soul
. He may
ascend
at any time if he’s led a good enough life and he’s ready to go
but if he’s been really bad he
descends. If its touch and go he will pass over to another place, some call purgatory. The
re
he will remain until he’s…..judged. H
e
will either ascend or
descend or
will be
reborn to try again. That is the normal status quoi. But if a
Shade
takes
his soul,
then
The Dark
will
turn him into a Shade.
His soul will be trapped in a putrid slime covered shell here on Earth
, forced
to do evil.
Th
at
cannot be allowed and that is where we come in.  We destroy Shades where ever we find them and release the souls.”

“Chris shook his head, “Why can I suddenly see
these
Shades and dead people? What’s going on?”

Anvil
looked Chris up and down, “Puberty. Your hormones change as you develop.
What are you fifteen?
”

“Almost seventeen.”
He replied indignantly.

Patch
giggled
,”
Yer
like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly.”

Huntress called for quiet, “Look here it comes!”

Chris was about to ask what, when he saw the same Shade that had taken Wally’s life, or at least it looked the same. The thing slide down the side of a building head first. It was fixed on Wally, like a cat stalks a bird. It moved slowly, carefully.
Clinging to the wall like a slug.
The thing reached the pavement, slid off the wall onto its belly
. S
lowly
it
came upright.
It was the same Shade
,
minus a hand
.
Approaching Wally’s ghost, the Shade stretched out one of its bone thin fingers towards him. Nothing was said but Wally turned to look at it. Then head cast downwards he started to shuffle slowly across to the Shade.
Chris could see that Wally’s
transparent
soul was crying now.

Huntress had one of her black arrows in her hand. Chris hadn’t seen her take it from her quiver. Slowly she placed it
on her bow and started to draw back on the bow string.

Patch whispered to Chris, “A young Shade,
an older o
ne
would
know bette
r than to
return to the scene after
a
confrontation with us.”

Anvil
whispered, “Leg or arm.”

She let go with a twang, “Leg.” The arrow flew true and struck deep in the creatures left thigh. Instantly
its
hold over Wally was released and Wally turned to shuffle away. For a second Chris thought
Wally
he saw him and raised a hand in farewell before vanishing upwards in a beam of white light.

Rage pounded the gro
und
with a fist, “Good he’s
ascended!
Now
let’s
get that slug!”

Anvil
was already moving, faster than Chris thought possible, he was already
fifty feet
nearer to the Shade
,
which was screaming in rage and pain as it tried to pull free the arrow.

Huntress smiled
, “
Barbed
arrows
c
an’t pull them out
. A
lso
they’re
b
lessed with Holy water
. M
ust be burning like hell.”

Rage took off after
Anvil
, moving like a large ape. Patch took Chris’s hand, “Best stay back.”

But Chris wanted to know what the hell was going on. Carefully he removed his hand from Patches grip and without thinking suddenly found himself next to the Shade. He’d covered over two hundred feet in
three seconds in th
is
strange grey In Between place.

Chris shouted at the screaming Shade, “Why did you kill Wally!”

The thing turned
its
sunken pale face towards
him;
red dots were
its
eyes should have been stared at him with hatred.
It sniffed him and turned
its
head at an angle
to look him up and down, sizing him up
.

I
t screamed once more
directly in his face
before
blubbering,
“
You took hand before I take meat and soul
!”
The voice sounded like it was coming from a throat filled with water or mud.

Rage muttered, “Not hear Shades speak very often.”

Chris remembered what it had done to Wally and shouted,
“The
old man
you killed
had a name. He was called Wally and…….” Chris swung a punch
,
lightening fast towards the centre of its face, “He wasn’t meat just a
harmless old
man!”