Lazar (19 page)

A dreadful fear crashed into Jan and shattered
into panic.

“Oh dear God, they’re coming after me!” She let
out an involuntary scream. “This can’t be real. Why me? Why me? I haven’t
caused the storm. It’s not my fault. I am no witch.”

What was she thinking? Whose thoughts were those?
How had all this talk of witches come into her head? And what was it that
filled her so with fear? Was it a resurgence of the terror that had almost
overwhelmed her in her dreams? No. It was more than that. Much more. This was a
terror of that terror. The realisation that she was experiencing a fear that was
not her own. The realisation that there were two consciousnesses present in her
head. Hers – and someone else’s.

“What do you mean, you couldn’t stop her?” Hal’s
father’s irritation had returned and transmuted into anger. “Did you actually
try
? Or did you put her up to it? You do
realise that we’re responsible for her while she’s staying under this roof. Of
all the stupid…”

“But it’s OK,” Hal retorted, “I know exactly
where she is. I can…” He faltered as he realised just how lame his explanation
was going to sound. “I can monitor her position with this icon…”

Hal stopped again and did a double take. It was
not Jan’s icon on the screen.

Nor was it Margaret’s.

Jan was standing at the cliff top, on the edge of
a precipice.

There was someone else inside her. Someone trying
to usurp her from her very own existence. They were commandeering her emotions
and requisitioning her senses. But how could they? They were her emotions and
her senses, weren’t they?
Weren’t they?

She dropped the torch and thrust her hands into
her hair, curling her fingers tightly till it hurt. What on earth was happening
to her? What the hell was going on? This was worse than any nightmare she had
known. Even in the most terrifying dream she’d always known she was the
dreamer. But now she didn’t even have the reassurance of that certainty. She
could no longer tell who even owned the thoughts and feelings in her head.

She screamed again, this time in anguish. It was
echoed by a yell from her pursuers.

“Oh no, they heard me! I’ve betrayed myself. Oh
please, God, don’t let them catch me.”

Suddenly, somehow, Jan knew exactly what would
happen if she was captured by the mob. They would drag her to the storm-lashed
beach and drown her for being a witch – her fate to be decided by the
elements, determined by the sea.

Whose thoughts were those? They weren’t hers. They
must be Margaret’s. Yes, they were hers,
hers!

She struggled hard to hold on to the thoughts
that were her own. But which were they? This one must be hers. It was going
round and round her head with such insistent urgency.

Take
off the ring! Take off the ring!

Her fingers tugged. It wouldn’t move. She brought
her hand up to her face and stared. Two rings? She was wearing
two
rings, hers and Margaret’s, fused
into a Celtic cross bound tight around her finger. And with both rings came all
of Margaret’s feelings. Now she was at the very heart of Margaret’s fear, and
Margaret’s fear was at the very heart of her – the horror of the violent
storm that tore at the air and ripped at the fabric of the town, the terror of
being pursued.

The townsfolk, her friends and relatives, had
accused her of witchcraft and necromancy. She, they said, had brought the storm
upon their heads. She had known that it would happen. Why, she had even
foretold the time and place. But that wasn’t fair – she had tried to warn
them, to pass on the prediction she had been given by the ghost she had seen
outside the monastery.

Someone interrupted.

Those
aren’t my thoughts.
This
is my
thought. I wasn’t a ghost. I was
me
–
she
had been the ghost. I
had told
her
what had happened, I
wasn’t making a prediction. She’s not a witch. There was no necromancy, it was
just me and … just me and…
Just me…

A bolt of lightning flashed in the eyes and off
the teeth of the angry crowd of faces at the far end of the street.

“There she is, the witch,” they cried, the hatred
in their voices thrown in her face by the fierce and spitting wind.

“I must get away. I must seek sanctuary. But how?
Where can I go? Of course, the leper colony, they would not come in after me if
I took refuge there.”

A sudden shudder ran through her body.

What
was it Hal had said – half her nose and her lips were missing?

Oh
my God! That’s what she must have done – escaped the mob by fleeing to
the Lazar.

“Yes, that’s what I did.” This thought was in
another voice, a cold and vengeful one. “Better to take refuge in a leper
colony than be put to death by drowning. Ha! How wrong I was. Better to have
died a quick and painless death than spend the rest of my life shunned,
reviled, disfigured.

“Now the townsfolk shall have their witch, their scapegoat
to be cast into the sea. Now they can wreak their vengeance, and I shall have
mine.”

Margaret turned. Jan turned. But not in time.

“What’s the point of just sitting there tracking
her every move? How on earth can that help?” Hal’s father asked, as much in anxious
puzzlement as in enquiry.

“I can’t explain. The computer’s controlling
things somehow. All I know is that if she’s in trouble or things go wrong, I
only have to turn it off and everything disappears – the town, the
people, everything.”

“Turn it off, then.”

Hal’s Dad leant forward and pressed the on/off
button. Hal’s finger jabbed forward and pressed hard on his father’s.

“No! Don’t!” Hal exclaimed. “That red line
– that’s the current coastline, the cliff-edge. If we turn the power off
Jan will plummet thirty metres straight on to the beach.”

The mob was a shapeless monster; many-headed;
multi-limbed. It spat out its venom and bellowed its hate. It grabbed and it
snatched at her limbs and at her clothing as it dragged its prey struggling
through the maze of rain-lashed streets.

She could hear the roar outside her. She could
feel the scream within. While she kicked and lashed out at the mob all around
her, another battle to the death was being fought within. Like some spiritual
parasite latched upon Jan’s soul, Margaret was sucking her emotions dry and
leeching all her senses.

“What’s happening to Jan’s icon?”

Hal’s father stared over his son’s shoulder at
the image on the screen. The icon was moving erratically up the map, its motion
a series of sudden violent jolts.

“It’s like the nightmare she told me about,”
explained Hal, “she’s being dragged toward the sea.”

“Can’t you do anything about it?” his father continued.
“If there’s a one-to-one between this PC and what’s happening to Jan, can’t you
intervene somehow – get rid of the town or move the coastline or
something?”

“I don’t know, let’s see … Don’t let go of the
button,” Hal warned, “I’ll need both hands.” He moved the cursor in a circle
and highlighted the buildings on the screen immediately next to the jerking
icon. As soon as he had done so he pressed the delete key.

The grip of the fingers and thumbs that had been
bruising her wrists and elbows suddenly loosened. The angry faces turned and
gaped in awe.