Connie's words stopped me. I had to be alone with this, had to allow that the eye-brain link was overwhelmed, set to doing the only thing it could: imposing order, treating this as something real, even as crisis, but rigorously dealing with it. Of course there were shadows, optical tricks. Of course there was fear, feelings of disquiet and alarm. What we'd said about the night related to eyes and mirrors, too. Just as we were completing our connection with night, so too we were changing what eyes, what brains, needed to do. The darklands seemed to be growing, pushing from the two-o'clock focus into the mirror rooms at one and three. Behind, everything remained as bright and steady as ever. It was in that two-o'clock spread that it was happening.
"Let it come!" I spoke the words to hear myself say them, aware of what an ominous line they would make on the audio track. I took more video footage, more photographs. I filled the time with deeds, filled with the dying of the light.
The flame sank closer to the rim.
My mobile rang. Thank God! Paul offering a reprieve!
But it was Connie.
"Andy, do you know what sciamachy is?"
Not now, not now, I wanted to tell her, but the word held me.
"Say again, Connie. What what is?"
"Sciamachy. Not mancy, machy!"
"Not offhand. Something to do with shadows."
"Fighting shadows, Andy. The act of fighting shadows. Imagined enemies."
"Okay. Look, I'm nearly done-"
"Andy, what if it's a sciamachium?"
"Hey, look, thanks." I wanted her to go. I didn't want her to go. "Connie?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks. I mean it. I'm doing it. Alone. I'm doing it."
"I know. I know, Andy. But a sciamachium. Just call me when you're done, okay?"
"Promise."
She had known, I realized as I put the phone away. She was a natural and she had known.
The shadowing beckoned, teased at two, flexed dark fingers. Look at me, look at me! Everywhere else the rooms were bright and constant, seemed to be. I sat watching the darklands, wondering how they could exist, finally convinced myself that they spread only when I glanced away. It was using my mind, my eyes, to build itself.
I held the darkness with my eyes, daring it to slip into new rooms, consume new Andys. With all the bright rooms at my back, I held it at bay with my eyes and Connie's words, Connie's skipping song running through my mind. Urging me. Connie the natural urging me to turn around. I did so, looked over my shoulder at the eight-o'clock wall. And there was dead-black night filling the glass, night the hunter pressed to it like a face at a window. The shadowing at two had been the bait. I tipped forward in shock, slammed hard against the floor, reached for the first thing I could find-the candle stand-meaning to angle it up, to fling it at the dead-black wall of glass.
But stopped in time. Barely managed. Do that and I'd be in darkness when it shattered. Night would be everywhere, flowing out. I scrambled to the eleven-o'clock corner, reached for the tiny button. Yellow light filled the rooms. Most of the rooms. The black wall held at eight like onyx, obsidian, a membrane about to burst. The darklands shadowed off at two, but just the lure, just the distraction. Now I flung the candle stand. Now it struck the glass, crazed and shattered the wall. The pieces clashed down, left dead-gray Besser brick beyond. At two o'clock, the darklands were no more.
When Paul arrived fifteen minutes later, Connie was with him. They found me standing by the front gate in the wind and rain, cold and shivering.
"Janss didn't know he had to turn around," I told them as I climbed into the back seat. "He never turned around."