Glass Town Wars Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  CHAPTER ONE A CONJURING

  CHAPTER TWO THE ECHENEIS PROJECT

  CHAPTER THREE THE SUMMONING

  CHAPTER FOUR HIGH LAND RIDGE

  CHAPTER FIVE THE RAID

  CHAPTER SIX BATTLE LOST BATTLE WON

  CHAPTER SEVEN JOE

  CHAPTER EIGHT THE JINN

  CHAPTER NINE THE GAPE

  CHAPTER TEN FAIRISHLAND

  CHAPTER ELEVEN MCMAHON’S DANDY DOGS

  CHAPTER TWELVE PARRYSLAND

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN ROGUE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE WHITE ROAD

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN #BOYINACOMA

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN GLASS TOWN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN BRAVEY’S INN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE DUKE’S PALACE

  CHAPTER NINETEEN GLASS TOWN INTRIGUES

  CHAPTER TWENTY EACH STITCH A THOUGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE UNEXPECTED

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO AT THE SING OF THE CROSSED HANDS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE FIESTA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR PITTER-POTTERING

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE THE FIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX A VISITOR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN FLIGHT FROM GLASS TOWN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT GREAT GLASS TOWN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE WELCOME TO MY WORLD

  CHAPTER THIRTY ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE ASYLUM

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO THE GAME MASTER

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE GOTHAM CITY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR THE TAKE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE A LIGHT IN THE DARK

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX DARK WEB KINGPIN REVEALED

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN THE LIGHT WEB

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT RETURN TO GLASS TOWN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE SHAMAN

  CHAPTER FORTY THE PEOPLE’S FIESTA

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE JOURNEYING

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO DEPARTURE

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE RETURN

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR “THAT QUIET EARTH”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE THE MARGAY-THE PRETTY ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX HAWORTH

  “We Wove a Web in Childhood”

  Acknowledgements

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  To the memory of Emily Brontë (1818–1848)

  and in celebration of her bicentenary (1818–2018)

  No coward soul is mine,

  No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:

  I see Heaven’s glories shine,

  And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

  “No Coward Soul Is Mine”

  EMILY BRONTË

  NOTHING IS STRAIGHTFORWARD. Nothing is as it seems…

  As in life, so in dreams.

  To bring the two together, it was important to stay still, to concentrate, not to blink. It was a ritual, a kind of seance, conducted in the early hours, when the rest of the house was quiet, when the rest of the house was sleeping. She sat on the floor, the dog stretched out by her side, his thick brass collar gleaming in moonlight that was shining bright through the window and making patterns, casting sharp, blue shadows on the wall opposite.

  That was where she’d seen it before.

  A tower. A glass tower, glass from top to bottom, all lit and aglitter. Other lights flashed and flowed around it, red, blue and silver, like a stream diverted. In the tower was a room, all white, a white box, a white cube. Inside the cube, a boy lay on a bed, not moving, his eyes sightless. The boy was as white as the sheets tucked about him, as white as the walls that surrounded him, but he wasn’t dead, neither was he dying: he lay somewhere between unknown and unknowing, alone between two states of being, machines keeping him alive, machines doing the breathing for him, machines that she did not know or recognize, machines such as Mrs Shelley’s doctor might have invented.

  She put her hand, star shaped, against the cool, smooth glass of the window. The boy needed her help but she didn’t know how to reach him, how to give it.

  MILES. Milo Mindbender. He’d taken the name from that guy in Catch-22. Tom should have known not to trust him but what could he do? He was lying here, as helpless as a monkey strapped to a table in a lab.

  He heard him from way down the corridor, boot heels clicking on the floor. Swish of the door. Nothing wrong with his hearing; it was more acute, if anything. A displacement of the hospital air, the tang of fags and Ralph Lauren aftershave added to hospital antiseptic. They say the other senses, the ones you’re left with, kick in, don’t they? He’d found that to be true.

  The girl stopped reading. She was a friend of his sister’s, part of a rota of people who came in to talk, read, play music, even sing songs to him. Anything to try and get through. That was the idea but Tom found most of them tedious, what they did pointless; he wanted them to go away as soon as they came through the door. She was different. He couldn’t remember her name—there were a lot of things he couldn’t remember—but he liked it when she was here. Just her and him and the chunk, beep and chirp of the machines, as regular as heartbeats and breathing, which was what they were there to monitor and do. He liked to hear her. It gave him a peaceful feeling. He was annoyed at the disruption that Milo would bring.

  Milo was tall and skinny, dressed in a black suit: slimfit, tailored with narrow trousers, narrow lapels, over a white shirt and narrow black tie. How did Tom know that? Because that was what he always wore.

  He came close, casting an eye over the machines that were keeping Tom alive. He was a whizz at electronics. Tom hoped he wouldn’t fiddle with anything, or think of making a few little adjustments…

  Milo walked round the bed, hands in pockets, his fingers turning over coins.

  He stopped. Spun around. He always moved like that. Still, then quick and jerky. Each movement unexpected.

  “Get us a coffee, love, would you?” The chink of coinage. “There’s a machine down the corridor. White. Two sugars. Get one for yourself while you’re at it.”

  “Why should I?” The girl’s voice was low and even, but not because she was the mousy quiet type. There was a yawn at the back of it, as if she didn’t care a whole lot.

  “Because I’m asking!” Milo didn’t like “No”, especially from girls. “Give us a bit of guy time. Boy talk, you know?”

  “They’re not even sure he can hear anything,” she said.

  “That right? So why are you here boring the arse off him with that book?”

  The book snapped shut; the chair scraped on the floor.

  “I’ve got money, thank you,” she said.

  Milo pocketed his change.

  The door opened. Closed.

  There was just him and Milo.

  “How ya doin’, Big Man? Not so good, from what I hear. Natalie’s doing a great job on social media—thought you’d like to know. You’ve got a ton of followers. I mean, Hashtag heroinacoma is going even better. She’s even raising funds. Not sure what they’re for. I’ve tried to get her to invest in MiloMindbender but so far, no dice. Here’s the thing…” he said, coming closer. Tom could smell the smoke on his clothes, the mint on his breath. There was a rustle as he took something out of his pocket. “You’re lying here not doing anything and I’ve got a little something that might fill those empty hours. It’s real small. Practically invisible. It’s called Echeneis, named after some kind of magic fish. Made from this wonder substance. Even I don’t understand the science. All you need to know is that it works like so…” He was very near. Tom felt something go into his ear. “At least, we think it does.” Tom heard the shrug in his voice. “We don’t really know.”

  What is it? Tom wanted to yell at him. What do you mean,
you don’t know how it works? What have you done? But he couldn’t move, couldn’t even blink, and it was in there now.

  Tom felt Milo step back, watching, as if he was waiting for something to happen.

  “The potential is huge,” Milo went on when nothing did. “It will take gaming to a whole new level.” He carried on talking, filling the time, waiting to see what the result might be. “I mean, we’ve been gaming since we were little kids, right?” He laughed. “Xbox and all that. I always won.”

  Of course he did. He was a genuine genius. He passed A level Maths and Computing when he was twelve. He didn’t play games any more—he wrote them. He was a bitcoin millionaire well on his way to becoming a real one. He ran his own software company from his garage, MiloMindbender and Associates. There were no Associates. He made a ton of money hosting sites where people buy and sell things, although he never said what exactly: “Oh, you know, this and that.”

  “Well, here’s the thing. What you’ve got in your ear, it’s gonna make the gaming we’ve got right now look like old-style Atari ping-pong. You’re always on the outside, right? Looking at your console, your computer, your tablet, or phone, or whatever. But what if you could be actually inside the game?” His voice went dreamy. “What if you could be living it? Not just hear and see but feel, smell, taste it—just like in the real world. What if it can become your real world? VR headsets? Nowhere near this… It will take you places, bro. Give you experiences…”

  This thing in his ear, it was something to do with games and gaming. Milo’s new project.

  “You know? I’m almost jealous…” Milo was saying.

  Almost. Not quite.

  “It’s, hmm, experimental. A prototype,” he was saying. “Yeah. Not one hundred per cent certain what the effect might be but I figured you might as well do something useful while you’re lying here.” His voice lost its easy, bantering tone, and dropped to a menacing purr. “Let’s face it, you’ve got nothing to lose, have you? Hey!” Tom heard the rustle of the shirt inside his sleeve as Milo reached across him. “I wonder what this does?”

  Just then, the door opened.

  Milo moved quickly away from the bed.

  “Gotta go,” he said. “Things to do.”

  “Your coffee?”

  “Another time, maybe.”

  Tom started fitting.

  The coffee hit the deck.

  Alarms went off.

  “That’s very cool.” There was a laugh from Milo as the girl ran out to get help. “I like to know how things work. See you, bro.”

  “You’ll have to leave now,” a female voice said—one of the nurses.

  “No problem, darling. I’m off.”

  A doctor came in. Adjustments were made to this, to that, but Tom wasn’t there any more. He was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere he’d never been, never seen, never known. It was something to do with Milo, he did know that. What had he done to him? And now Tom was here—wherever “here” was—how was he going to get back?

  THE MOON HAD GONE from the window. In the unsteady light of a candle, the drawings on the wall opposite seemed to move and flicker. The longer she stared, the more she would see, until the rest of the room became insubstantial, as easily erased as pencil on a page, and ceased to exist at all.

  “Play nicely, children,” Aunt would say. “Play nicely!”

  They never played nicely. They fought up and down the Parsonage stairs with sticks, broom handles, anything they could find. Then, when their roaring got too much, with Tabby shouting for them to “stop their racket” and Father complaining from his study that he couldn’t hear himself think; when the house became just too confining, they barrelled out and on to the moors, into the wind and the sun. Running, always running, over the hills, hiding in the deep glens, waiting, scarcely breathing, ready to leap out in ambush and renew the battle. They dammed the little streams and rills, creating lakes and seas. Finally, out of breath and tired, they would throw themselves down and lie in a circle, heads together, making kingdoms in the clouds, palaces and towers, white and shining, sunlit and glowing, or grey and glowering, ever-changing at the whim of the wind. They were making a world for the Twelve, for them to voyage and explore. The Twelve had long stepped from the box given to Branwell by Papa; they were no longer just wooden soldiers, as they were no longer just children. They were the Genii, creators of worlds.

  They were as one then. All together. Only later did they begin to bicker and squabble over how this new world should be. The game had come back inside the house and inside the head. She and Anne, the two youngest, sided together in natural rebellion at being bossed by the older two. The game was changing in ways they didn’t like, with Branwell’s endless wars, battles and tiresome politics and Charlotte’s obsession with handsome but cruel, cigar-smoking heroes and long-suffering, simpering heroines whom she threw together in unlikely romances.

  In greatest secrecy, Emily and Anne had begun to plan their own world. It would be discovered by Parry and Ross, their soldiers from the Original Twelve. Led by Emily’s character, Augusta, they would establish a new territory and call it Gondal.

  Therein lies the difficulty…

  The candle flame bent, as if in a sudden draught, and she knew she wasn’t the only one awake in the house. It might have begun as a game that they played when they were children, but they were no longer children and this was no game. She sensed him, felt his intention, his power seeping out like the light from under his door. Charlotte, his ally, was absent, but that didn’t matter. They had been scheming, conspiring, reading each other’s writing, spurring each other on. Emily could feel his fury, his arrogance and ambition, sense his excitement.

  They’d found out about Gondal. How? Although she wouldn’t admit any such thing, Emily suspected that Anne had told Charlotte, tricked into it by her older sister’s interest. Anne would have found it impossible to resist her; Charlotte was good at wheedling and cozening and finding things out. Whatever the way of it, they knew and, now they knew, they would use every means to prevent her from leaving. They meant to crush her for once and all, and that meant war.

  Anne was too young to get involved in such bloody business. She had to be protected from the wars and fighting. Emily had set her to drawing maps and making plans, sketching the characters that she’d invented. Anne was quite happy and didn’t bother Emily—well, not too much anyway. The odd “Yes, that’s nice. That’s good” sent her away satisfied. Emily’s most common response was “I’ll look at it later”, but she was always sure to thank her younger sister and, for the most part, Anne went off happy in her dreams of lords and ladies, doodling their hairstyles, designing their dresses, and left Emily to fight alone.

  SHE WAS STANDING HIGH UP, under a wide sky just turning towards evening, rain blowing into her face. Fir trees grew around her, their dark needles feathered with fingers of bright new leaf. The full force of the Glass Town Federation, a mustering of the Founding Twelve, was sweeping across the plain towards her like a summer storm. Her own men, Parry and Ross, were far away in the distant North, exploring the frozen regions, their ships bearded with ice as they voyaged to ultima Thule in search of the fabled North-west Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Many had died in the attempt to find it, but she was sure they would succeed and enable her to escape for ever. She should have gone with them and braved the frozen ocean, the mountains of ice. Staying here, even this long, was a mistake.

  A high ridge in a desolate landscape. Drear and drab, all browns and greys, and it was sluicing with rain. The narrow path was stony, fast turning into a stream as it wound between gorse bushes, low wiry clumps of heather, thin spiky rushes and tufts of coarse grass. He looked up through the water dripping in front of his eyes. Not far to go by the looks of it. He slowed. The ground was slippery and he didn’t know what might be waiting over the other side. His head felt heavy, strange. He was used to his body giving him weird sensations: of being too big, or too small, or not there at all, but th
is was different. He put up a hand and found that he was wearing some kind of furry helmet, like a bearskin, but smaller, square, and on the side was something that felt like feathers. A sodden cockade. He looked down at himself. He was wearing a uniform with frogging across the front of it, the wire threads tarnished and rusty from the rain and dampness; under his cloak, the green wool jacket was dark and soaking, the wet seeping through, meeting the sweat from his body. He pulled his collar closer to stop cold water from trickling down his neck and to keep the moisture inside, heated by his body, so that his uniform acted like a kind of woollen wetsuit. How do I know to do that?

  If this was a game, like Milo said, he’d have expected to be in combats—light and comfortable, breathing with the body, water repellent—sitting in an armoured car maybe, or a hummer, riding across the desert somewhere, sorting out jihadi warriors; or in an urban landscape, some kind of futuristic scene, full of dereliction, with burnt-out buildings, broken-down bridges, smashed-up carriageways strewn with corpses, bodies in ditches on either side of the road. That kind of thing.

  He wasn’t expecting this. He was on a horse, for Chrissakes, with boots up to his thighs, a rifle at his knee and a sabre hanging down by his side. He couldn’t even ride but he was managing fine and his horse, a big bay gelding, didn’t seem to mind. The horse plodded along, picking his way carefully, ears pinned back, mane streaming, enjoying the rain about as much as his rider.

  Tom shook his head, attempting to get the water out of his eyes without dislodging his hat. He rode on, trying to figure out exactly who, or what, he was. Some kind of avatar, although you didn’t get cold and wet in any game he knew. He’d have to tell Milo about that. Telling would not be that easy, of course. Telling would be problematic. Telling would be the difficult thing. Which was why this was happening…

  The big horse shifted under him, snorting and lifting his head, his ears flicking as if sensing his rider’s sudden fear.