Nightside 02 - Agents of Light and Darkness

sniggering and giggling and elbowing each other in the ribs as they thrust people into Hell.
    There were four of them, so alike they might have been mass-produced, with perfect bubble gum pink skin, perfect flashing white teeth, and immaculately styled hair. Hair color seemed to be the only way to tell them apart. They all wore spangled white jumpsuits, cut away in the front to show plenty of hairy chest. They looked almost glamorous, until you looked closely at their faces. Each had the look of a dissipated Adonis, their once handsome features now marked with lines of cruelty and indulgence, like the fallen idols they were.
    The franchise had become Panic Attack Central. People howled and screeched and sobbed bitterly as they were suddenly and irrationally afraid of spiders, of falling, of the walls closing in, of open spaces of enclosed places. If they could only have gathered their thoughts for a moment, they would have known these fears weren’t real, but the hysteria that filled their heads left no room for rational thought. There was only the fear, and the horror, and no escape anywhere. Some of the franchise’s staff and customers were made terrified of really obscure things. The Boys liked to show off. And so there was the fear of genitals shrinking and disappearing, the fear of people suddenly speaking in French accents, the fear of people showing you their holiday photos, and the fear of not being able to find your jacket.
    Some of that was almost funny, until I saw one customer digging long bloody furrows in his bare arms with his fingernails, as he tried to scrape away all the bugs he felt were crawling all over him. Another man tore out his eyes with clawed fingers, and threw them on the floor and stamped on them, rather than see what he was being made to see. On the floor, people writhed and cried out in the grip of strokes and heart attacks and convulsions. The Bedlam Boys looked upon their work, and laughed and laughed.
    “This is too much, even for me,” Suzie said flatly. “Give me the Speaking Gun, Taylor.”
    “Hell no,” I said immediately. “Save that for the angels. It’s too big, too dangerous to risk using on anything else. Don’t be impatient, Suzie. I know you’re eager to try the thing out, but it didn’t come with a user’s manual. We have no idea of the side effects or drawbacks.”
    “What’s there to know? It’s a gun. Point and shoot.”
    “ No , Suzie. We don’t need the Speaking Gun to deal with cheap punks like these.”
    “Then what do you suggest?” said Suzie, with heavy patience. “I can’t open fire with my shotgun from here. Too many innocent parties in the way. And we can’t risk getting any closer, or the Boys’ power will affect us too.”
    “What do you have a fear of, apart from tidying up? They can’t affect us, as long as we shield our minds against them.”
    She looked at me dubiously. “Are you sure about that?”
    “Actually, no. But that’s what I was told. And we can’t just stand here and do nothing.”
    But even as we stood there debating the point, one of the Bedlam Boys looked round and spotted us. He cried out, and all four Boys turned their power on us, reaching out to the very edge of their range. Their spell fell upon us, and fear stabbed into my brain like so many shards of broken glass. Concentration and willpower did me no good at all.
    I was alone, standing in the ruins of London, in the Nightside of the future. I’d been here before, seen this before, courtesy of a Timeslip. A future that might be, of death and destruction, and all of it supposedly my fault. For as far as I could see in the dim purple twilight, I was surrounded by tumbled buildings and seas of rubble. There was no moon in the almost starless sky, and the still air was bitterly cold. And somewhere, hidden in the deepest, darkest shadows, something was watching me. I could feel its presence, huge and awful, potent and powerful, drawing steadily closer. It was coming for me, with blood and worse on its breath. I wanted to run, but there was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to hide. It was close now. So close I could hear its eager breathing. It was coming for me, to take me away from everything I knew and cared for, and make me its own at last. The terrible shadow that loomed over everything I did, that had dominated my life ever since I was born. Close now, vast and powerful. A great dark shape, threatening to unmake everything I’d so painstakingly made