Page 99 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

He needed to be returned to Pitch’s side. But it certainly felt as though they were headed to the centre of the earth.

‘Do you truly know where you are going?’ Silas was waspish, unsettled by all his worries.

You can hear ’em, can’t ya? ’Course, I’m going the right bloody way, you tosser.

Silascouldhear the whispers, but only if he strained to do so. They were far less coherent than before, a jumble of murmurs like a hive of bees somewhere up ahead. Perhaps they’d spent all their energies on reaching him the first time, urging him to their rescue. A tug of guilt took him. This One Limb Jack fellow was not wrong. Saving souls was what an ankou ought to be doing, and Silas had perhaps not tried hard enough to reach them. Scampering about, as he’d been reprimanded, trying to find the daemon. But they’d be damned grateful for his scampering if it got him to Pitch before the daemon loosened his rage on the Sanctuary.

A violent quake gripped the passageway, strong enough to shudder great chunks of stone from the wall above.

‘Shit.’ He dove forward as rock toppled, the cut of stone glancing at his heels. With a thump, he landed on his belly on the packed earth, the breath shocked out of him.

He was barely on his feet again, still catching his breath, when the melodies came.

Three teratisms at least, with perhaps another tune mingling there, lighter than the rest. But it was clear enough. He was being hunted again.

‘Oh, Christ almighty. This place is a nightmare.’

The songs of the teratisms were harsh and shambolic, curt notes, sharp as blades. Just like those of the Blight-born creatures he’d already dispatched.

Keep going, not far now. Come, come. Hurry up.

‘I’m hurrying, damn it.’ Silas felt like he’d not stopped hurrying in days.

The roar from earlier found them anew.

And fresh peals of terror came from his ghostly guide.I’m going to die, I’m going to die. I’m going to die and be shat out of a hungry one’s stinking arsehole.

‘Let me deal with what arrives.’

I intend to, believe me.

Silas decided against pointing out the very obvious. That death had already visited the ghost child when he was stuck in the chimney, choking on soot. He had been offered a chance then to bow to the scythe and escape all this, but the sweep had defied death. There were always consequences. One way or another.

Stonework fell around them. The Sanctuary groaned and creaked and showed itself to be no less happy than the ankou. The ground was damp here, as though water had washed through and the packed floor had not yet dried.

The hungry one came out of nowhere.

Well, not precisely. It lurched out of the wall, right alongside the ghost child, who only had time for one note of a scream before he was stifled.

Silas broke into a run, covering the short distance between them quickly.

The hungry one’s name belied its appearance, for it was stout rather than gaunt. Its rotund belly ploughed into George first, and they fell in a terribly messy collision of limbs which saw the child crushed beneath the weight of the hungry one. Silas could just see one small foot poking from beneath the more mammoth body of his assailant, a fellow bloated by his hunger, like the carcass of an animal inflated by sun. The beast was filled to popping with murderous intent, rage gone absolutely mad. Hungry ones were touched by evil, one that warped them in life and pushed them to terrible acts. This creature’s head was swollen to a grotesque size, making his neck seem reedy and far too delicate to hold the weight, with thighs and calves like bulging pillows, his feet nearly captured in the folds of flesh. There was nothing beneath the garish, mottled grey skin, Silas knew. The hungry ones were hollow, and always seeking to fill the void at the heart of their evil natures.

Ankou!George screamed.Help me, you sod!

Silas halted a step back from the writhing bundle of ghostly bodies. The hungry one either did not know, or, more likely, did not care that an ankou stood so close, with its ravenous hunger superseding all sense. All the hungry ghost knew was the desire to devour a soul so that his own might be filled. A foolish endeavour for certain. To feed upon a lost soul only meant filling themselves with angst and regret, anger and despair. Hollow food indeed.

Silas straddled the pair. The ghost child stared up at him, face awash with naked terror. The hungry one pushed its sausage-fat fingers into the child’s mouth, using its other hand to pin the wriggling, desperate soul to the ground. Instinct drew Silas along with a rush of powerful certainty. He planted his hand to the back of the hungry one’s head and dug his fingers in. His nails sank in through the stretched flesh, puncturing holes.

The hungry one fought a bit, but it was as though it knew itself done in. The struggle was a token gesture, an instinctual thing that was snuffed out quickly.

Silas’s touch, thegoddess’stouch, drained the soul from the puffed and malformed shape it had taken, reducing it to a limp and boneless wreck. He felt the movement beneath his skin, the drag of death through his veins.

Wrinkled fingers slid from the child’s mouth, and George retched.

Get it off me, get it off me.

‘Let me finish.’ Silas felt the chill at his fingertips, the rush of frigid air that escaped the body, the cocoon the hungry one had made for itself. Silas inhaled deeply, dragging in the precious scent of mortality, even its faintest, vilest strains as they vanished for good.