Day 5

‘Sham?’ a voice cried out at the door. ‘Sham Tilner?’

The figure peered in through the darkness, spotted him in the shadows. Unmoved, starving, stinking like the worst of corpses. Sham clutched an empty whisky bottle in his hand, stared at the rotting wood of the table he’d woken up at four days earlier. The wood he’d stared at every waking moment since.

In the reflection of the glass bottle, Sham saw the figure move closer, stepping into the doorway proper. He could have responded. Could have. Didn’t.

Though he knew he sounded like a surly teenager… what was the point in doing anything? In doing anything about the situation he had found himself in? It was destroying him. The voices in his head, the things that he’d done, the things that they’d made him do…

‘You loved it, don’t deny it,’ Vigour slurred in his ear.

Sham ignored it; it wasn’t anything that he hadn’t been saying for days.

What was the point in doing all these things he’d done to break this Loop when he lost himself in the process? What was the point in trying to regain his life when—

‘Sham?’ the voice at the door said again. There were familiar, soothing tones to it. Sham almost looked up.

Footsteps announced the figure scuttling forward. ‘Oh, Mr Tilner,’ they said. ‘I heard it was bad, but…’

Sham didn’t respond. The visitor didn’t seem to expect him to.

‘We’ve seen this, before. We’ve helped others, like this. The Loop can ruin those minds that don’t accept it.’ The woman gulped. ‘Come, Sham. Let’s get you back into church.’

In the days that followed, Ariel hosted Sham in a private room in the Church of the Loopkeepers’s ramshackled village. She arranged for her flock to bring him food, to bring him tea. She sent people to check in on him, to make sure he ate at least something, to make sure he was showering, to make sure he was looking after himself. On the night of the Loop’s resetting, a church member shuffled a still-silent Sham to their main temple, where he watched on with glazed eyes as they perform their never-final ritual.

When the Loop pulled Sham back to his apartment, to that rickety wooden table, there were two Loopkeeper waiting for him. They bathed him, there, with fresh clothes, and helped him into clean green robes, and they brought him back to the church.

With time, Sham found the energy within himself to speak, on occasion. A few words at first, then full sentences, only to quieten when his mind lingered on the memory of what he’d done to Harcourt. Of what he’d been capable of doing to another man.

Sham watched from the fire, late in the next Loop, as Riot attempted to enter the compound, shouting that she wished to speak to him. Three other members of the church held her back, told her that she wasn’t needed here, that Sham was in recovery.

And he was, he hoped. In recovery.

The new voice had gone. The voice of his own broken mind had stopped somewhere between that night at the casino and the day that Ariel had picked him up. It was only the living skills—only the four voices—running around inside his brain, now.

Ariel came to check on him every day at sundown, without fail, each time offering him her ear, free of judgement. But every day Sham kept himself to himself, and the church leader eventually left. It wasn’t until a day in the third Loop since arriving, when Sham was sitting by the warm fire in the centre of the compound, that he opened up to her.

‘It wasn’t nothing to do with him,’ he found himself saying.

Ariel seemed caught by surprise, too, having on this night been staring deep into the raging fire, lost in thoughts of her own. ‘It wasn’t…’

‘Harcourt,’ Sham said. ‘It wasn’t nothing to do with him. He didn’t deserve what I did. I know I talk about wanting his sort dead and buried, but…’

‘You haven’t been doing much talking these past few weeks, Sham,’ Ariel reminded him.

Sham continued nonetheless, having apparently found his conversational stride once more. ‘Wrong place, wrong time. That’s what they say, right? That’s all it was. Harcourt, he was in front of my when I was at my worst. A manifestation of my life long war on his class. An obvious target. When my mind had finally given up. When Vigour had managed to impose his will on it. Harcourt… he was just unlucky, is all.’

As he trailed off, Ariel nodded along thoughtfully, her eyes still trained on the fire. ‘But what caused all this, Sham? What is it what has worn on your soul?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Recollection has kept it from me, only showed it to me for a moment, but… it’s gone, now.’

‘Kept it from you with good reason, it sounds like.’

‘I…’ Sham said, ‘I can feel it though. Something precious to me. Something tied up with… with all of this. I can’t… I can’t put the feeling into words, not really. It’s just…’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Perhaps it’s best you don’t dwell on it,’ Ariel said. ‘For now, at least. You have an eternity to face it, Sham. Don’t rush it. If Recollection is keeping this from you, then…’

‘You’re taking his side?’

Ariel tilted her head from side to side. ‘To an extent. These skills… I…’ She trailed off, considered her words. ‘It’s not just the Recollection vial I took, Sham. You know that? It was Magnetism, too.’

‘Explains the whole…’ Sham gestured at the church around them.

Ariel ignored this point, pressed on with her story. ‘The point is, there’s more than one voice rolling around in his head of mine.’ She tapped her temple twice. ‘I understand what a toll it takes; no brain is built for so many a being. And they are beings, really. And we may clash with them, but we still live under the same roof. None of us want our house to burn.’

‘I don’t—’

‘The skills, you see, I’ve always found they want what’s best for us, in their own ways.’

‘Vigour had me kill a man,’ Sham reminded her, moving his eyes away from the woman and onto the fire.

Ariel sighed. ‘I know. I didn’t say they weren’t flawed. I didn’t say they were always right. But your Vigour, they would have done it for a reason. You ever ask him what that was?’

‘Go on, ask me.’

‘No,’ Sham replied, ‘I haven’t.’

Ariel raised her eyebrows. ‘Do it. At some point. It doesn’t have to be now. It’s important you do, though, Sham. Open up discussions. Work together. Begin the healing process.’

Sham nodded, locked his eyes on the church leader’s for a moment. Their gaze lingered on one another as they silently agreed.

‘I’ll leave you to consider,’ Ariel said, pulling her eyes away and turning away from the fire.

Sham stared into the flames, alone.

The days began to blur into one. Life became a near-monotony of chores for the church, of attending sermons in the evening. Riot didn’t come to visit again, and Sham truly felt that the only people left to him were his brothers and sisters of the church.

He hadn’t heard from the voices in his head for a couple of Loops, by this point. He was healing, as Ariel kept telling him. He was asserting power over the beings that lived in his mind. He was able to do that, more and more, with every day that passed.

And he hadn’t had a drop to drink in weeks. He missed it still, of course, but it wasn’t a raging yearning like it had been in his past. He would always need to fight it, but for the first time in a great many years, he believed that he would be fine—or as close to “fine” as was possible—without it.

There was a greencloth here that Sham had noticed often setting her eyes upon him. She sat with him in near-silence some evenings, staring into the fire and trading only fleeting anecdotes. He fell into bed with her once or twice, neither of them acknowledging it as anything but a manifestation of their loneliness.

The monotony of life morphed into routine. Morphed from a life that Sham treated with detached contempt into one that Sham began to look forward to. One that had him hurry out of bed in the morning, in order to get on with his day.

For the first time in more years than Sham could count, he felt hope.

And then news of Riot came.

It was late one night, when the fire in the centre of the courtyard was turning into more ash than flame. A fellow greencloth sat at his side, stared silently into the fire for a few moments. And then the man turned to Sham.

‘I have news of your friend,’ he said. The man spoke with a lilted accent of the Sunrise District, and Sham caught himself be surprised that the church could attract members from all walks of life. ‘Of Riot.’

Sham turned to the man, pulling his gaze away from the lazily dancing flames.

‘Ariel suggested that I shouldn’t tell you, but…’ The man sighed. ‘She remembers the Loops. Anything that happens to her does not get un-done in two days. Therefore… it’s important.’

Sham licked his lips, then realised that he was acting out one of Riot’s mannerisms. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘She’s… she’s in trouble. The Loop is getting to her, I think. She needs the support of the church; that’s the only way that some can deal with eternity. Including you, I think.’

Sham nodded. ‘What did she do? Did she hurt someone?’

‘Herself,’ the greencloth replied. ‘We don’t know that it was intentional, but… It happened. People don’t often step in front of trams by accident. People… even when they know they will wake up again, they look both ways before crossing a street. You understand?’

Sham nodded and returned his gaze to the fire.

‘Good chap,’ the man said, clapping him on the shoulder then leaving him alone once more.

The flames dances their unique dance, and Sham wondered, for a moment, just how he’d got to this point. Just how Riot had got to the point of stepping in front of a tram. Just how many other people his bad decisions had affected.

He thought of Harcourt.

‘Why, Vigour? Why did you make me do it?’ Sham finally asked.

‘Kill the posh guy?’

‘Yeah. Why? Why did you need to make me do that, make me do such a terrible thing?’

‘There’s a lot of anger in you, Sham. It’s been getting in the way, init? Half the time the answer is right their in front of you, but you ain’t seeing it cos you got a chip on your shoulder about one thing or another. Getting it out of your system… I thought it might help.’

‘I did tell you it wouldn’t,’ Perspicacity added.

‘Well I ain’t see you trying anything.’

Sham sighed, placed his head in his hands. The truth hurt. Not because he was worried about the control that these vials had over him. Not because he resented what he’d done to Harcourt. But because, though Sham had been trying to pretend otherwise over these past few weeks… it had helped. He felt better in that regard. The anger had lifted, some.

But he’d had to own up to who he’d become. Who this man who thought these things really was. And Sham wasn’t sure he liked the face that stared back at him in the mirror.

‘This can all be over, Sham,’ Recollection said. ‘All you need to do is… let us in. Let us help you.’

He rose from the dwindling fire.

Walked across the Church’s makeshift courtyard, his eyes fixed on the centre of town.

Sham had lost himself. It had happened. He knew that. That couldn’t be un-done.

But there was someone else, now, going through the same thing. Someone that he cared about. More than he cared to admit. And as he’d given her the vial—as he had been the one to make her aware of the Loop—it was his fault. It was his fault that Riot was in trouble.

And he didn’t know if he could live with that.

The light of the fire gave way to shadows as he left the church behind him. For good, this time. He paused for a moment, looking up at the twinkling lights of the city before him, and prepared himself to enter the breach once more.

As he stepped forward, a figure emerged from the darkness and blocked his path.

‘Out of my way,’ Sham growled.

[COMMAND] GRANT PASSAGE: FAIL

No. This woman has invested too much in you, now. She won’t give up without a fight.

‘I can’t do that, Sham,’ Ariel replied. ‘Not after how far we’ve come. You’re making great progress. You’re healing. You just need to—’

Sham stepped forward, pressing into the woman’s personal space, staring down on her.

‘Sham,’ she said. ‘Don’t.’

‘I’m going, Ariel.’

‘Sham…’

‘I’m going,’ he said again.

Ariel considered for a moment, her eyes piercing into his, and then, eventually, stepped aside.

Sham felt her gaze on his back as he went.

‘Sham…’ Ariel said one last time.

The change in her tone was enough to give Sham pause, to make him stop mid-step. ‘Yes?’

‘I haven’t been honest with you.’

‘Who has?’ Sham replied, accompanying his words with a shrug.

‘Do you want to know how this all started? How this church came to be? Do you want to know why I want to help you?’

Sham turned.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Ariel said. ‘Just give me a moment to explain.’