The plague demons swarmed around the feet of the spider-thing, not slowing, but dancing, twisting, cruelly in every aspect of their tiny forms.
'Back!' Matt whispered, mesmerised by the sheer number of the approaching demons.
'What?' Jack said, dazed.
'Back!' Matt thrust the boy the way they had come. 'Don't let them touch you. They're something to do with the plague.'
'The Whisperers-'
'I know!' Matt snapped. 'But I saw another way… I think.'
They ran as fast as they could until Matt halted at a slit in the meaty walls.
'What is it?' Jack asked.
Matt stuck his hands into the slit and pulled back flaps to reveal a gap. Jack hesitated, but the sound of the swarming plague demons approaching rapidly concentrated his mind. He forced his way into the slit and pressed on, the meat folding around him. Matt followed.
They emerged into a chamber filled with a pale grey light emanating from a source they couldn't see. Instantly, the atmosphere in the room hit them like a wall. They both experienced a grief so deep it felt as if their hearts were being torn open. Tears welled up in their eyes unbidden, burning tracks down their hot cheeks. In a sudden rush, Jack had an overwhelming sense of his mother, though that memory was impossible. He felt her joy at his birth, swooping, swirling, transcendent, and then the bitter, brutal comedown into devastating misery when he was stolen from her by the gods. Bereft and directionless, her death came soon after, violent and pitiless. Every negative emotion cut him like a knife. He saw it through her eyes, felt it as she did, and in some way he was convinced he was responsible for it all. The full force of the emotion came like a storm; he wanted to kill himself.
Matt gripped his arm so tightly he squealed. 'Focus on me. Don't feel anything. This is why they call it the House of Pain.' Matt dragged him across the room.
When they reached the other side they saw plague demons forcing their way through the meaty flaps. They weren't going to give up, ever.
'We don't stand a chance,' Jack whined.
'Shut up,' Matt snapped, 'or, God help me, I'm going to punch your lights out.'
'Don't take me into another room like this,' Jack pleaded.
There was another slit nearby, but Matt ignored it. Instead, his attention was drawn by a small orifice halfway up the wall. Beyond it was a tunnel barely big enough for them to squeeze into; it pointed upwards.
'There,' Matt said. Before Jack could protest, Matt boosted him into the opening, then pulled his way in afterwards. 'Don't hang around!' Matt yelled. 'Those little bastards aren't going to slow down!'
They had to force their way along the tunnel, dragging with their fingers and pressing with their toes, wriggling like snakes and driving their shoulders against the resistance. It felt like crawling through hot flesh, so tight all around that there were moments when they thought it would close in and suffocate them. It pressed hard on their backs, their heads, and every second they choked for air, terrified it would soon close in completely and they would be trapped, unable to go forwards or back.
It was unbearably hot and pitch black, and they had no sense of direction. The tunnel undulated and twisted, at times so sharply they had to fold in two to get around corners. And all the time, Matt could hear the sound of frantic scrabbling behind him. Only the desperate fear of what was coming at their backs prevented them from losing their minds in the nightmarishly claustrophobic environment. They lost all sense of time; there was only the furnace heat and the feeling that they would suffocate and die at any moment.
It could have been an hour later, or fifteen minutes, when the sound of pursuit faded away. They continued dragging themselves on for a little while longer and then the temperature eased slightly. Soon after, Jack forced his way past the final flap and emerged into a large room. He stretched his mouth wide and sucked in a huge gulp of air, not caring that it was still hot. He realised he was shaking and crying.
It was a ten-foot drop to the floor, but they were so keen to get out of the tunnel that they jumped instantly without even trying to lower themselves. At the foot of the wall, they lay on their backs, scarcely believing they had made it through the ordeal.
'Never again,' Matt said. 'I'll let those things give me the damn plague next time.'
When they had recovered a little, they sat up and looked around. They were in a room the size of a cathedral, the roof lost in the darkness overhead. A thin green light illuminated the lower reaches.
As their eyes adjusted, they made out two figures like ghosts in the gloom; one was Caitlin, the other a boy.
The boy looked up with big, troubled eyes when they neared. 'I don't know what's happened to my mummy,' he said. 'She won't talk to me.' Caitlin sat cross-legged, her head bowed. She was rigid, her eyes wide and staring, unseeing.
'Mummy?' Jack repeated. An image of his own mother hit him hard, accompanied by the terrible grief he had felt in the last room. He wondered if it would be like that for the rest of his life, the two things now inextricably linked. 'Dammit, she really did it,' Matt said in amazement. He dropped down next to Caitlin and checked her. 'Pulse is fine. Looks like she's having one of her episodes.'
Jack took Liam to one side. 'Don't worry — your mummy will be fine. She's a great lady… a heroine.'
'My mummy?' If Caitlin could have seen the innocent hero-worship in his face, she would have cried.
Matt held her head up so he could peer deep into her enlarged pupils, so black they almost covered the entire eye. 'I wonder what's going on in there,' he said. The wind blasted across the Ice-Field with such force that Caitlin was in no doubt that a storm was coming. She shivered behind the insubstantial shelter of the rocks, peering through the gap across the gleaming white sheet to the black sky at the horizon. She was bewildered; she had spent fifteen minutes talking to Liam, and hugging him, and kissing him, and then suddenly it felt as if hooks had been driven into her flesh and she had been dragged back to this terrible place.
'You've done it now.' Amy stood behind her, her singsong voice laced with judgment. 'You're going to be sorry.'
'I won,' Caitlin said. 'I got him back.'
Brigid cackled bitterly. 'You won? You lost it all! Can't you feel it?'
And she could; the heat was draining from her, so that she felt more acutely the biting cold. 'What's happening?' she asked.
'You're a stupid bitch,' Briony said. She sat on a rock, staring into the Ice-Field, smoking neurotically with the look of someone who had accepted defeat. 'We counted on you… everyone counted on you… and you let us all down. Selfish. So bloody selfish.'
'But-' 'Don't start making excuses! We warned you not to give in to despair. You were supposed to rise above it,' Briony continued.