The Annals of Fear

Author\'s Note: Apologies, this chapter got missed out initially this morning. Thank you to eagle-eyed Sareyva, who was comparing the AFF chapters with the MangaBullet ones and alerted me to my oversight.

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I



Century ran. Crashing through bracken and swerving at the last minute to avoid crashing into trees, he slipped and slid upwards through the woodland. He could hear the dogs. Their barking more like gnashing howls, like hounds on the scent of a fox. They could well have been foxes. He didn\'t look back to see. His Taid had told him all the old stories, when he was just a kid. He remembered having nightmares once about the Bendith y Mamau, because his Taid had told him how they stole children from their beds. His Mam had yelled at her Dad then, telling him no more stories, but, for Century, stories were the lifeblood filling his veins. They still were. He ran, but his mind soared above, trying to recall all that his Taid had said about the Cŵn Annwn, before he caught sight of their white forms.



That was it. They were huge with white fur and red tips to their ears. The further away they were, the louder their cries, full of lamentation. Up close they sounded softer, just like hounds on the scent of a....



Century saw white shapes moving out from either side of him, passing behind the trees. The night air flickered with tiny, little dots and they seemed to fade in and out of view. Slick, huge, canine shapes. Century rushed at an ash tree and tried to scale its sheer truck like a pole, but the bark shaved away and he landed on his feet after barely clearing two feet off the ground. The barking had stopped. He could hear their breathing in the air around him. "Elen Llwyddog, helpu fi!" That was his Taid again. Memory throwing up the old advice, passed from grandfather to grandson, \'Iestyn-bach, if you\'re ever in trouble out there, call on Elen of the Hosts. The old girl will see you safely home.\' His back to the tree, it became almost like a chant. "Elen Llwyddog, helpu fi! Elen Llwyddog, helpu fi!" Always with the image of Jan Pettersson in his head. Torn to pieces out in this wood. "Elen Llwyddog, helpu fi!"



There was a bright flash, which lit up the woodland all around him. Century stared. In that brief illumination, he had seen nothing. No dogs. No foxes. Not the Cŵn Annwn nor anything sent from folklore or Hell to get him. A trick of his eyes? Century peered upwards, hearing the rumble of thunder an instant before the skies opened and rain poured down. Century pushed away from the tree and ran.





II



The glass jar shattered in Matt\'s hand, cascading shards, liquid, nails, tacks and all the other sharp objects inside, down onto his head. They bounced off his goggles and cut his nose and cheeks. Only now did he realise that the liquid had been urine. He leapt back off the ladder, spitting and cursing. His glove, after he\'d raised it to his face, then shone a torch onto it, came back bloody. It had been a stupid, stupid thing to try and use that jar as a hammer. Matt had known that, if he could just hit hard enough close to the nails, then he could prise the floorboards up and escape. But his hands, under the gloves, were both bruised; the candle had just flaked and bent out of shape; and he hadn\'t bothered trying with the skull.



Matt stepped back into the darkness. His torch picking out a circle on the floor, showing most of the symbol. He prised his left hand out of the glove and explored his face some more. Blood was trickling, not pouring. It was probably just a few scratches that stung like Hell. He shook his head and more nails and glass clattered to the floor. It was in his hair. There was nothing he could do about that. He put his glove back on and shone his torch back onto the ladder. If Mello was here, he\'d probably do something acrobatic, like hang upside down and kick the floorboards out. Matt had briefly attempted that, but he didn\'t have the Parkour toned, upper arm strength. Mello could dual fire Berettas, Matt couldn\'t. That was the difference between a fitness freak and a geek. Matt rolled another cigarette and smoked it.



He shone a torch to the corner and followed it to sit down in it. Nicotine was calming. Matt touched the collar around his neck and deliberately recalled Mello\'s promise to him, \'I will always come for you, Mail.\' What concerned Matt most of all was not that Mello hadn\'t come per se, but why Mello hadn\'t come. The Slav had been antsy and paranoid out there, bordering upon obsessive. Matt had reasoned it out and Mello should come, because he was possessive. Mello saw Matt as something belonging to him and so sheer pride should have him running back to find him. Matt further deduced that Mello would have come, even if it was only Deontic or Century trapped here. Mello viewed himself as the general on this case and therefore wouldn\'t leave anyone behind enemy lines. Matt paused, revisiting that theory. Mello had left people to fend for themselves on at least once occasion. The night that the Japanese officers stormed his Mafia hideout, Mello had looked after number one. Matt knew, because Mello had told him.



Matt considered it, drawing heavily upon his cigarette. Blood dripped down from his face to his thigh, just one large splodge of it. Matt surveyed it, then wiped an arm across his cheeks, mouth and nose. The sleeve of his striped shirt came back moderately bloody. He wasn\'t actually bleeding to death, but there were more cuts than he had imagined. Mello would hate that. Matt rolled another cigarette immediately. The thing that worried him most of all was that, logically, for Mello not to have come, then Mello must have been waylaid himself. Matt dreaded to imagine the nature of something that would stop Mello coming for him right now. That meant that something must have priority.



Facts threw themselves into Matt\'s mind. He had abandonment issues. That was official. He chemically could not believe that Mello would come for him. That required more oxytocin than Matt could produce. Mello always took every opportunity to state that he would never leave him again. \'I will always come for you, Mail.\' Mello said things like that with such passion and emotion, as if he thought that by feeling it too much, he could somehow make up for the deficiency in Matt\'s ability to grasp it. Matt considered the fact that Mello would come. Definitely. It was a rational conclusion. All he had to do was wait.



The torch was starting to dim. Not a great deal. It wasn\'t as if the batteries were about to run out right now. Matt sighed. He switched it off to conserve energy. In the sudden darkness, he heard a new sound. A pitter-patter and a scratching. Matt inhaled a huge gulp of cigarette smoke, as he sprang to his feet, taking out his gun. Rats. There were fucking rats in here.





III



Mello sat on the step, third from bottom, drawn into himself and shaking. He still clutched his gun and his broken rosary, but his mind was ablaze. He didn\'t know what to do. He just had this tremendous sense of being in such big trouble. Outside the world flashed and raged and he couldn\'t tell if it was the war come back or just a thunderstorm. His reason was throwing up conflicting explanations. He didn\'t know if he was down here still, in the darkness with the gunpowder, because it was the safest place to be; or was it the most dangerous area? Should he should be fleeing from here? Most of all, he had no idea if he was mad or sane anymore. It was too overwhelming. It was pressing down upon his psyche and he had run out of places to run inside his head. His lips wouldn\'t even form the words of prayer, though he tried. "Zdravo Marijo," was as far as he got, before the shivering overtook him and he sat coiled into himself.



"Have you even checked to see if there\'s a light in here?" A female voice spoke suddenly from a few feet away.



Mello leapt on his stair. His gaze shot up from where it had only vaguely been focused upon the ground between his feet. His sensibilities reeled at putting a name to the familiar voice, "Nathalie?"



"Yes. Bit of a shocker there, I warrant." The darkness replied. There was the clipping of stiletto heels on the cement floor. "Two possible theories to my mind. The first is that this house is a psychic pressure cooker, allowing anything through. The second is that you\'re hallucinating, based on Deontic\'s comment earlier that I could have handled you far better than she can. You\'ve glimpsed the ghost of a Wammy kid before, when you\'ve been under extreme stress, so it\'s a distinct possibility."



Mello gaped. He peered into the shadows, trying to discern her, but none of them moved. "When I saw L, he didn\'t answer back."



"How do you know? You were mad."



Mello gripped his crucifix so hard that he could feel it digging in, even through his leather glove. "I broke my rosary."



Nathalie snapped, "Yes, you did, Mihael. Now are you going to revert to infancy and blart over it or are you going to put on the light, find the bead, have a look around, then go and find Matt?"



"There was someone firing a gun out there. If I put a light on, that person will know my location."



"Have you heard another shot since?" Nathalie countered. She was by the wall, he could hear her heels as she paced. He could smell mints over the top of the sulphur. "Do you even know that the gunman was an enemy? Since when did you cower from gunfire? Rod Ross would have loved that."



Mello stood up, uncertainty creasing his brow. "How do you know about Rod Ross?"



"Finally!" Nathalie sneered. "Mello is using his brain. There might be some resolution in this situation after all." Silence filled the distance between them, solid in its tension. Mello could feel a scream starting to rise up inside. Nathalie sighed. "You told me. You told us, in my flat, before Hollow put a bullet in my head."



"Is it a storm out there or Dominovski Rat?"



Her response dripped sarcasm, "Oh! It\'s Yugoslavia in the middle of sodding Wales!" She warmed to her theme. "Did you know that there\'s a cleft hill in Gwent that was purportedly split in two at the moment of Christ\'s crucifixion? If the events of the Middle East can impact there, I\'m sure that a civil war in Eastern Europe nearly two decades ago could make it here just fine."



Mello could hear the thunder now. It sounded nothing like bombs dropping. "It\'s a storm."



"And?"



"I might have hallucinated the gunshot too."



"So?"



"I need to find Matt." Mello took a step upward, but fear was still making his legs feel leaden. He could see through the triskele carving now. It was raining hard, but the mountain was illuminated by lightning. Only lightning. He paused, his heart pounding. "Are you really here, Nathalie?" No reply. "Why would you come? You hated me."



"Then why did I invite you to my house?"



Mello gulped, his mouth dry. "You wrote a whole thread on a forum about how it would make your day to discover that I\'d died horrifically."



Nathalie chuckled. "Oh Mihael, don\'t you know that we were raised to demonise each other? You were not real until the moment you walked into Linda\'s gallery. I respected you for that. It couldn\'t have been an easy thing to do."



A spark of pride lit up in Mello\'s core. It was like a lone flare of hope in the middle of his terror. He turned to look back, trying to see her. "Thank you."



"You\'re welcome."



"What do you think I should do?" Mello felt the question hang in the air. It sounded like stalling because it was. It had occurred to him that Nathalie might not be real. She had said that he could be hallucinating her. He was so scared. "I\'m asking you, as a genius, as one of L\'s successors, what would you do if you were me, Nathalie?"



Nathalie sounded subdued. "I can hear you. I\'m still getting over the shock that you have consulted me. I thought my intellect was nothing to you." Mello didn\'t know how to respond to that, so he said nothing. "Ah! I see." There was a slight scraping as her stiletto dragged across the cemented floor, as she paced. "I\'d put on the light, so you can see what\'s down here. Then I\'d go and find Matt, Deontic and Century, because if you\'re in this mess, then what kind of crap are they in?"



Mello exhaled loudly. "Oh my fucking God! Mail!" He raced up the remaining stone stairs, his hand up on the wooden doors. As he touched them, the basement behind him erupted into light. Mello gasped and span around, his back against the door. He could see the whole room and he was alone. There were no boxes, just a massive heap of coal piled up in one corner, spreading out across half of the basement floor. A spade and a pair of gardening gloves were laid upon them. No gunpowder, no bombs. He hadn\'t felt coal under his feet, but the dust was all over his boots and clothes. He must have knocked over the spade. His gaze took in the whole expanse. There were no nooks to hide in. There was no smell of sulphur anymore. There was nothing but himself, the coal, the spade, the gloves and an overpowering scent of mints.





IV



Rain poured like a monsoon down upon the river, sending up splashes that drenched Deontic to the bone. Her feet still found purchase upon the rocks, but water was rising, crashing around them as rapids. She was sobbing so much that her throat was ripped raw and her glasses steamed more heavily than the mist itself. All around her was the howling of dogs or foxes or the Cŵn Annwn or Mallt-y-Nos or Gwrach-y-Rhibyn or... she didn\'t know. She didn\'t know. She just heard them keening, barking, howling, echoing from unseen banks through the mist, and it broke her heart. Century was out there somewhere and he\'d said that they only went after the Welsh. Not some insignificant Malaysian girl, a long way from home, who had spent her entire life failing.



The urge to just let go and throw herself into the waters was very strong now. Deontic shuffled slightly, almost losing her balance, her hand going down to touch the rock. So wet to the touch. Saturated. She imagined how her body would feel, frozen in the river, bashing up against the rocks broken and drowned. Was this how Maja Gustafsson went? Even now there was competitiveness. Deontic wondered how far her own body would wash up? Could she beat the distance of the Swedish woman? Could she finally win something?



She toppled and almost fell, landing instead on her backside. All she had to do was lean backwards and she would be in. She would be gone. And the howling went on. She could hear her own voice inside her head, one last desperate cry, \'Run, Iestyn, run!" Deontic swayed, trapped by the monsoon, breaking on the rocks. And in the howling, she could almost hear words. Screeching, keening, screaming words in a language that she didn\'t understand. She projected with all of her might the thought, the sentiment, \'Run, Iestyn, don\'t let Mello catch you.\' Mello, the monster of her teenage years, whom Hal said was secretly just a scared, little boy.



Hal.



Deontic fumbled with sodden fingers at the zip in her coat. It opened bit by bit, half sticking on the fabric, but it was enough. She inched the mobile \'phone out and couldn\'t see the screen. So much rain, so many tears. Her thumb found unlock on the thirteenth try and she bowed her head to cry some more. It took more strength of character and will than she thought she possessed, but Deontic, by touch alone, found her speed dial. She didn\'t dare hope for a signal. Not down here, trapped in a river. But Watari had its own telephonic system. It was attached to a powerful satellite. It rang out.



Deontic barely heard Hal\'s voice, distant and muffled, before she gushed out, amongst the sobs, "Come and get us! Come and get us! Come and get us! Come and get us!" In the mists, Deontic saw a hideous woman rising, withered arms longer than they should be, face contorted in a ghastly wail. Deontic screamed and screamed.