I’m unlikely to write anymore, so I’ll post it here. Apologies for the lack of characterisation, dialogue, etc. It’s set in an England I barely remember and is told from the perspective of a British equivalent of a mage, albeit, one who’s going slightly mad.
I grew up in and around Alderley Edge. Magic is ancient and strong there. The tunnels mined there attracted the magical and let them hide away from us, all the while keeping a weaveway to the other world. Sometimes fog and mist would weave into wisps and direct The Predisposed – the empathetic and the aware – to tunnels that weaved a path to magical states. The truth – in the form of stories, song and poetry – emanated from these magical stations. But we had forgotten how to listen and entwine with that world. Although, someone must have remembered.
I was one of The Predisposed.
I had been showing the Blue John Mine to distant cousins when I saw The Distorted in the cavern waters. Transfixed by the Magidream I saw translucent wraith beings growing out and irregular from the reflections of those people on the other side of the ripple-free cavern water. The reflections swam free in the water and warped my appreciation of reality. I looked up at the faces of those who had lost their shadows to another realm. I felt their brainweaves recombining to discordant song and broken rhythm. Those faces were rashed, were burning hot and in pain. I saw the stalactites above and behind them drip polluting fluid into their lungs. Then the stalactites and crystal formed into the hideous teeth and many limbs of The Distorted Giants. They reached out to me. I vomited. I passed out. I had become a seer, magic had revealed itself to me, The Rash was in existence somewhere in the world.
When I was sixteen, my family moved from Alderley Edge to Eyam in Hope Valley. Another abode of magic and mystery for me: barrows, ancient circles and magical architecture. The Plague Village’s border stones form the island, another name for Eyam. The village had kept itself isolated for 14 months during the Bubonic plague; we knew what to do when The Rash came. I, The Seer, knew what to keep out of Eyam and beyond the village’s borders.
Magic had hidden away from people. It did so to protect us because we had found alternative means to navigate and shape the world. The potency of evil in Magic had to be hidden from us – if builders could wend magic and technology we would be fearsome. Magic disappeared from view. But the presence of magic takes a long time to fade and magical beings still stepped into our realm. I suspect a line was crossed. Someone became fearsome, wrought death and life in the same being.
Alderley Edge and the caverns, hills, valleys and moors of the Peak District are seats of magic, reservoirs of spells and enchantments. Magic was still known and sung and told from generation to generation before it could die from memory – before the world could be truly rational and lost to Magic. There are many such Magidepths in the world. Somewhere, someone who was predisposed must have sung a terrible song, woven magic into a story and then interlaced it with the viruses of body, technology and dream. Carelessly, evil was transported across all realms.
When the rash came, I felt it again, stronger than I had in the caverns of The Blue John Mine. It was said that the ban on showing images of the Plague Boat victims in Barcelona had been taken out of respect for the families of the victims. But I saw dreams from Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Libya, saw people from North Africa and Sub-Sahara caught in a physiology altering nightmare. People had already yielded to The Rash before it washed up in Europe. From the beach to the bar to the bed, but where was it before the beach? International hubs succumbed and hurried The
Rash around the world, and somewhere a few people were saying, “What is this evil that we’ve done?”
Travel restrictions could only slow the spread, buy time. The censorship surrounding its spread and effects prevented panic. In Eyam I had the ears of the village elders from day one. I predicted events correctly, therefore they listened to me. We remade the old plague border, I sensed those who belonged to The Immune and had them work with me. We killed vermin. We stockpiled. We prepared. I was interviewed for the local TV news. Plague village becomes haven for mystic survivalists they said. Our neighbours in Buxton, Sheffield, Derby and Manchester ridiculed us for a few days.
But as the roads shut, as the communications died, as modern life shut down and ground to a halt they wished us well and hoped we could stay clean. Final communiques with medics and the military losing their sanity insisted that we shoot to kill and burn to cleanse. I knew what they meant. I drew images of the monsters inhabiting my dreams. I showed my villagers the horrors that would be approaching us. Then we blocked the roads and started to dig ditches and make earthen defences. We reinforced stone walls and rolled out barbed wire fences. We set up radio communications.
Then The Immune came: people and cats. Eyam’s reputation as the village in Hope Valley; the mystic’s realm that had closed its border meant it became seen as the safe haven it really was. Of course, we kept The Immune at bay at first and made them live in tents beyond the village border. But most had come prepared with vans and lorries of guns and goods for us and stories and pictures. We sent them out gathering more food and weapons and cats. They told us about The Distorted they had seen, fought, killed and run from. We exchanged goods for medical help. Eyam expanded as the world shrank.
In my otherrealmworld, I met other Predisposed, small bands of survivors in rural communities. People who had known what to do and who had banded together with The Immune. Via the Weaveway, we communicated images of what we had discovered and how we should act.
I Magidreamt. I weaved. I communicated. Some Rash Distorted called for help, but some I had to flee or fight in my dreams. I didn’t know which realm they were in. During my waking hours I sensed beasts coming and directed Eyam’s best fighters to kill them. We shot deer, sheep, cattle, hounds; destroyed flocks and herds. We burnt burrows, dens and warrens.
Alongside us, the cats killed vermin and small creatures like never before. They walked with us like never before, communicating their wariness to us. Then The Distorted started to appear on our borders, so we burnt the surrounding villages and farmhouses during the day, making our first enchantments to clear the fog and mist, the smoke of the burning cities.
When winter was deep and I could sense The Distorted were dying of cold or were nested inactive. I called other Magidreamers to gather in a realm and we decided on action while we could. Eyam’s Immune looted and then razed Buxton to the ground. I sensed the town's Distorted surrendering to flames and cold. We were elated. In winter I Magidreamt further afield. Other survivor communities also burnt down their neighbouring areas. Wales, Scotland, The Pennines had viable communities of survivors.
We Magidreamers were disturbed by our new ability, but necessity meant we soon learnt to use our gift. We also learnt to do magic in the otherrealmworlds or we would fallen to the dreaming Distorted, who could also inhabit these otherrealmworlds. We travelled with our soul saviours: animals that could transport us back to a safe realm from a dangerous realm; they were lucid dreamers within our lucid dreams, guiding us Magidreamers to safety.
Evil skulked out of the massive northern English cities in the spring. The Distorted shuffled, crawled, slithered, scuttled, struggled out of their first hibernation. They could sense The Predisposed. We could feel their rage and their pain. If I had known, I would have insisted that we burn Chesterfield, Stockport, Sheffield, Manchester that first winter. Of course, some parts had burnt in the uncontrolled blazes The Immune and the last of the Hazmat wearing military had set, but we still needed a directed fire and we were too few to manage it.
The Distorted began to roam far from the towns and cities in spring. They moved at night or under grey skies. I lost contact with two Magidreamers in the smaller survivor communities. I dreamt routes around cities for those wishing to join up with us. A Magidreamer showed me that the old A6 from Stockport had become a Distorted-infested route at night. So we took the most aware cats and went along that route burning houses.
When we got to the outskirts of Stockport I became numb with fear, shook with panic. Then it appeared. It was an Amalgi – an amalgamation of several Distorted. We blasted it with our guns. In the end we had to kill each head it possessed, seven in all. We set alight any building in the vicinity that we could and left well before light faded.
We won every battle but it felt like we were losing the war. Trauma and stress were overwhelming us. We were surviving, we were human, we were alive but all we had was hope. We needed a plan. We needed a future. That wasn’t my world. I had to let others take care of that vision.
