The World Ends Tonight Read online

  But Derek hadn’t been one for making sense lately.

  “I’m not going with you,” Derek decided.

  “Please, Derek, don’t do this–”

  “I’m not doing anything. I’m just not going with you.” He stared absentmindedly out the window without turning back to her. “You can leave now.”

  She took a stride forward. He could feel her pained eyes reaching out to him, beseeching him. He had no doubt she understood his reasons, but she would still try and argue the contrary. It would do no good. Any attempt to persuade him would be futile.

  “Please, Derek, you must come with us.”

  “What, go with you so I can watch everyone who isn’t worthy enough die?”

  “This was how it was always going to be! You read the books, you saw when the prophecies ended. The rapture is coming, and God is evacuating his own worthy. And you have been honoured enough to be chosen as one of them. Please don’t stay on earth to die.”

  “I’m not staying on earth to die.”

  “The apocalypse is coming, we can’t stop that. There is nothing more heaven can do. Surely you can understand this?”

  “Then maybe heaven isn’t trying hard enough!” Derek screamed, hauling his entire body around until his heavy arms pointed in the direction of Gabrielle. He was suddenly panting. His heart punched rapidly against his chest as if bashing against a cage.

  An uncomfortable silence followed where all that could be heard was Derek’s heavy breathing. He was infuriated. Incensed.

  “With all that we’ve done, all the fights we’ve entered, all the lives we’ve lost!” Derek spat. “And you are telling me that heaven – that your Holy One, is just packing it in?”

  “This isn’t the first time something like that this happened, Derek.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “You think you’re the only world out here with life on it? You think you’re the only world where something evil has risen up and taken hold? We’ve done this many times. We’ve seen what it is like to fight it, and we have seen how pointless it is. We are not abandoning earth, we are being rational.”

  “That’s not what it feels like.”

  “Derek, please–”

  “Just go!”

  Derek’s fists clenched, a surge of fury firing up and down his spine, his gut filling with hate like poison. He could see it dawning on Gabrielle’s face. It was useless.

  Derek was not going.

  “This is your decision? You are just going to stay on earth to die?”

  “No, I am going to stay on earth to fight. Dying is something that happens in life. Your God created life, and he created death, so surely he’ll know that.”

  Gabrielle sighed and turned toward the door, pausing one last time.

  “Are you sure you will not come with me?” she asked.

  “God and heaven may have given up on earth,” Derek retorted. “But I haven’t.”

  With a flickering white light she was gone, leaving Derek to glare at the empty space where she had stood.

  Suddenly, he felt very alone.

  4

  Eternity begins with an earth-shattering moment.

  The jolt of two eyelids shooting open.

  The squint against blinding light. The flinch away from the vast luminosity encapsulating any mortal person’s vision.

  Eddie fell to his knees, producing a mouthful of bloody vomit, coughing it over the rough surface he knelt upon.

  His stomach was in inscrutable pain, twisting and throbbing into bumps of harsh acid, churning his vacant insides like butter.

  But there were no insides. He felt hollow, empty. But still heavy. Like he felt the weight of burden pinning him to the floor like dead weight.

  Where am I? his mind weakly wondered.

  He rotated his head, taking in his surroundings. The walls felt like they were closing in. He was boxed into a room that had barely a few yards between each wall. The walls themselves were made of large, dirty stones, fading from grey to dark grey. Against the walls was a subtle blue illumination, shading the walls with the colour of the ocean.

  Beneath his bare feet was straw. Many pieces, covering a bumpy rock surface. No matter where he walked his feet hurt, whether it was from the sharp spikes of straw or rough bumps of harsh gravel.

  Noticing something on one of the stones in the wall, he stepped forward, surveying it intently.

  They were scratch marks. Five definite corresponding lines where someone’s nails had dug in and dragged. The more he looked, the more detailed carvings he noticed. Words such as, “save me,” “God help us,” or, “no hope here,” were carved at various points of the wall, only visible when Eddie got close to them, squinting against the dark light.

  At first he went with his instinct, frantically scouring the walls for a weakness. There was no door. But maybe if he could find a weak stone, something he could move…

  He went through every stone he could reach, pushing it, prodding it, grappling with it.

  There was nothing. No escape whatsoever.

  He looked upwards, peering into the sky above that just faded into darkness. He was no doubt in a pit, but if the pit had an opening, it was far out of his reach. The sturdy walls disappeared into the darkness above, narrowing into nothing but distant black.

  He leapt up, pushing his fingers into the cracks between the stones, hoping he could somehow climb, manoeuvre his way upwards – but doing so sent a shockwave through his body and sent him firing on his back.

  He groaned in anguish. It hurt.

  Something about the stones was stopping him climbing. They were cursed somehow.

  He’d been in purgatory before. He’d been in hell before. But he did not recognise this place.

  And he was certain that it was not heaven.

  The shock he felt when touching the stone continued to fire through him, like something was inside his body, writhing like a wild creature.

  A sickening convulsion of his body churned into a stiffened twitch. Every muscle in his body contorted into a fixed clench, like his whole body was a tightened fist, pressing against itself.

  He screamed, allowing the pain to escape his lips.

  It did nothing.

  It was still agony.

  He struggled against it, fought against whatever was holding him still, whatever was holding him captive.

  With a defiant shriek, he collapsed to the floor. He curled up into a ball, shaking, quivering, overwhelmingly alone. Terrified, but at the same time, hesitantly curious.

  Where am I?

  This was not his world.

  This was not somewhere he belonged.

  He dropped his head and closed his eyes, trying to will the migraine away. But the soreness of his cranium only grew greater, harder, his stolen mind beating against his fragile skull.

  When he lifted his head up there was something there. Like a screen, but with fuzzier edges. In front of him, a blurred image blaring down.

  He watched it intently as the image drew into focus.

  It was Kelly.

  Oh my God, Kelly.

  The screen grew, wrapping around his face, and played out an image like it was through his eyes. Like he was the one committing these actions.

  His hands held onto a knife.

  His hands plunged it downwards, into Kelly’s throat.

  He watched as she cried out in pain, looking up into his eyes with a helpless lack of understanding.

  The moment went into slow motion. He lived it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Just as he already had numerous times.

  Watching that look in her eyes as he did it, as the person she loved and trusted most in the world betrayed her. Then she went limp. Flopped into a heavy body uncomfortably spread out upon the floor.

  The final thing Kelly saw before she died was him killing her.

  It all came back. It thwacked him like a punch in the gut.

  The image changed. He fel
t his arms stiffen, grow, his nails elongate into claws, and within seconds he was a vast, snarling, carnivorous hellbeast.

  Then he snapped out of it. He was back in the dark, dank dungeon, completely perplexed.

  That’s when he realised.

  He wasn’t Eddie.

  He was, except not all of him.

  This body he looked down at was not his own body. It was an image of his body. He could see it clearly, but it was not his body. It was his mind inventing what he needed to make this experience make sense.

  He was merely a soul. The remains of what was.

  Eddie was in hell or on earth. Rising up as the heir and slaughtering innocent people. Preparing for the devil’s ascension. Getting ready for the rapture.

  And this is what he had been sent. That one piece of Eddie that was good, that had been left.

  His soul.

  That thing that had to be used so he could be conceived by hell.

  Trapped.

  If only I could get out, find a way back, I could put this piece of good back in my body, I could…

  No.

  It was useless.

  There was nothing he could do.

  He peered around himself. It was empty. Nothing but stone walls rising up into a dark abyss until there was nothing left.

  There was no entrance. No exit. No way in or out.

  Nothing he could visibly see.

  He had no powers.

  He wasn’t Eddie, he was just a soul. His body had changed. His face had changed. He had no real hands he could pour spells out of. He had no way to fight.

  He had to rely on his friends. Derek. Jenny. Lacy.

  They could do it.

  Surely, they could do it.

  And the dawn of realisation struck his mind like lightning.

  He was stuck in a cycle. Watching the pain of his loving girlfriend die again and again. Realising he could do nothing to stop it or save it. All because it was some part of a sick game.

  Some part of Eddie’s sick game.

  The heir of hell’s sick game.

  A way to keep him trapped. Keep him going crazy. A way to ensure his maddening state only worsened as he found no resolve that he could use to escape.

  And it was working.

  He had no idea how long he had been trapped there.

  All he knew was that his body was being used as a vessel for hatred. An entity occupied it with malice and cruel intentions.

  If there was a low point, he had far surpassed it.

  He only hoped his friends would not have to suffer.

  He knew Derek would try.

  He knew Jenny would try.

  His faith had to be put in them.

  5

  Circling a few fading ice cubes in a half-empty whisky glass, Derek sighed at the few drops of therapeutic booze he had left. The ice cubes collided with each other so ungracefully, just three little circles left crashing around in his tumbler.

  He downed the rest of the glass, grabbed the whisky bottle from the side of the chair, and filled himself back up again.

  He looked down. Open collar, loose tie, shirt untucked. A prickly beard sticking untidily off his chin like the wild hairs of an untamed animal.

  It suddenly struck him what he had once said to Eddie.

  “One must be presentable, whether you are meeting the mother or taking on the very depths of hell itself.”

  Derek scoffed.

  The irony.

  So much said to guide a wayward man, such advice that he had now neglected.

  Realising he was starting to pity himself again, he took another large swig of his whisky to numb his mind, relishing the sharp uncomfortable sting scalding the back of his throat.

  He had never been one to wallow in self-pity before.

  But his advice had never resulted in the death of so many before.

  He was not the one who gave up, who wavered in their disbelief of others, who gave in and let a single crease of shirt be unfolded.

  But recent events had debilitated him. They had gone some way to wearing down his resolve. This only incensed him further, knowing he was better than that, knowing that he wasn’t a weak man.

  He was everyone’s rock.

  Well, sometimes he got tired of being a rock.

  Tired of training Eddie.

  Guiding Martin.

  Being heaven’s bitch in each and every one of their battles.

  He retched at the thought of the glorious angel of Gabrielle being sent from his Almighty, with the intention to fetch him away from earth. To remove him from a war he had been waging for years. Because he was supposedly special. Because he was worthy.

  “Hah!” he grunted, and took another big gulp.

  Worthy?

  He shook his heavy head, dropping his pounding, drunken mind, and directing his absent gaze to the crumbs ingrained in his carpet.

  How was he worthy?

  He remembered the words he’d said to Martin. What he had told him.

  They had lingered by the side of the field, waiting for Martin to decide whether or not the army should fight the heir.

  Derek had declared that they would follow Martin.

  Derek had believed in Martin.

  Derek had known it was the right decision.

  Turns out he had known nothing.

  Now they were all dead. The army they had gathered, the powerful, supernatural forces recruited from around the world. Dead. Slaughtered. Pulled apart by a demonic, genocidal maniac.

  The world had lost the only people with the power to resist what was to come.

  And all because he’d told Martin to keep going.

  He had to be Martin’s rock. Martin was inevitably inconsolable following the army’s death. Following the loss of Jenny. But Derek couldn’t let that cause him to falter.

  There was too much resting on his young shoulders to let him think he was to blame.

  “It is not your fault,” Derek had reassured him. “And you can’t let it be your fault. Self-doubt is a bigger enemy than the heir; you need to believe in yourself.”

  Derek snorted.

  What bullshit.

  The only part of that Derek truly believed was that it wasn’t Martin’s fault.

  Because it was his.

  He had told Martin to make the decision. He had followed the call of a delinquent seventeen-year-old without thought or hesitation. Because he thought it was right.

  Now look where they were.

  He finished his whisky. Grimaced as he poured too much down his throat. Withdrew the bottle once more and filled himself up to the top. Stared at it. Circled it, watching the whisky temporarily stain the inside of the glass as it whipped around seamlessly.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Sorry, Jenny,” he whispered.

  He lifted his head back and chugged a large gulp of whisky down his sore throat. He relished the sting, relished the pain, relished something breaking this absent knowledge of what they needed to do.

  “Sorry, Eddie,” he whispered.

  Glared at his glass.

  Swilled it in another circular motion.

  Downed it.

  Filled his glass up.

  Downed it once more.

  Closed his eyes.

  Tried to dream. Tried to think. Tried to rid his tired head of all the justified negativity.

  After a few more glasses, he passed out.

  6

  21 March 2003

  Three years, three months since millennium night

  An abrupt crash into the wooden bench sent broken shards of wood bashing against the back wall of the house. The garden was a mess of splinters, wooden wreckage lying across the grass like small pricks of failure.

  Martin sighed. It wasn’t working. He’d been at it for hours.

  But if he was to become the heir’s equal…

  He must have a range of spells.

  Fuck a range of spells. Cannot be arsed.

  But he knew that, despite h
ow assertively he may think that, he did not believe it.

  It took hard work. Patience.

  The only problem was that Martin had never been one for patience.

  “Right, again,” he demanded of himself.

  He stuck his right hand out, spinning his finger in a small, circular motion. The faster he got, the more a spark ignited, a golden flash echoing his movement. As the flashes grew more frequent he increased the radius of the circle he was creating more and more, until he had created a circle of light that turned from flickers to a fully formed circular edge.

  Watching carefully, ensuring he picked the exact correct time, he plunged an open palm forward. The circle flew across the garden with apt precision and, for a moment, Martin was hopeful.

  Half of the circled wrapped itself around the bench, then the other half ignited into a fiery mess, exploding planks of wood to shatters in the process.

  “Argh!” Martin growled, turning his head to the sky and collapsing on the floor. “For fuck’s sake!”

  I’ve been at this for hours!

  He’d gotten the basic spells down; conjuring elements, throwing fireballs, plunging a gust of wind into an opponent. But the last time he faced the heir, these spells had proven useless.

  He had to learn something better.

  He had to be better.

  It was just so bloody difficult.

  After huffing with exasperation, Martin lifted his head to glare at the remains of his attempts.

  A restraint spell. Conjuring a circular edge out of condensed fire, throwing it forward and trapping your opponent. If he could do this, he could temporarily hold the heir, then hit it with lethal attacks.

  But who was he kidding?

  The heir would not allow itself to be trapped in this shitty excuse for power.

  Martin allowed his mind to wander, stumbling upon memories of school. His so-called friend, Simon. Kristy, the girl he fancied more than anything.

  He wondered what they would be up to now.

  Simon would probably be down the park underage drinking or hanging around outside McDonald’s, intimidating passers-by.

  Kristy would most likely be getting off with whatever guy she let take her around the back alley of Primark.