by Amanda Fleet
Panic rippled through her voice but I turned my head away. How could I return after all that had happened?
“It isn’t a plague.”
Her voice was suddenly calm and I looked back at her. “What do you mean?”
She bit her lips together. “Just like last time. The Outsiders think it’s a plague, but it’s Aegyir, gathering vitality the slow way. He’s going to kill you. Come home.”
“I am home.”
She grasped my hands so hard it hurt. “Read the book. If you won’t come home, you’ll have to stop him, before he kills everyone.”
Her voice ricocheted around my head as I woke. I rubbed my palm over my face and peered around the bedroom. The night light was on and the room was bathed in a comforting glow. There was no one in here with us. How could there have been?
Aegyir. The Guide who had turned into a monster and begun stealing people’s life-force. The thing Toby Hall had turned into. Toby Hall who was now dead.
Aeron. My name in my dreams. The name Aegyir had called me at my interview. The name whispered by the beech hedges. The name in the book.
How did Reagan Bennett fit in?
I had to finish reading the book. Work out what the hell was going on. Whatever Finn thought, I hadn’t written it myself while sleep-walking.
***
I’d been on a short shift spanning lunchtime and was now back home. Finn and I had already had a fight about this, but I couldn’t spend every minute I wasn’t at work cowering in the staff-room or hiding out at the library, or Stephen had won. That said, I locked the door and put the bolt and chain on. My dreams still circled my brain, so I grabbed the laptop and a large mug of tea and settled in the bedroom, where no one could see me if they peered in the windows.
I spread out the laptop, my notebook and the mysterious book on the bed and sat cross-legged on the faded duvet, chewing the end of a biro. I definitely hadn’t made this book and nor had Finn, so someone had brought it to the cottage. I had to believe they’d done that for a reason, along with leaving the charm-bracelet. Who though? Lilja? How did someone from my dreams manage to leave me things? But who else could have left them? I ran through my thin list of friends, discounting all of them. None of them apart from Lena would just walk in and leave things – certainly not without also leaving a note. And no one knew about my dreams apart from Finn.
Okay, so if I accepted that these had come from Lilja – however that was possible – could I also assume that what it said in the book was true and that what she told me in my dreams was linked to it?
“The plague is not a plague. Just like last time. Aegyir is gathering vitality the slow way.”
Aegyir could steal your life-force either from a light touch that drained you or by ripping it out which killed you instantly. If he was gathering it the slow way, people would be dying from what seemed like a plague. The only plague I could think of was the Black Death, but people were covered in sores or lumps with that, weren’t they? I fired up the laptop and searched for information on the Black Death. Much of it was as I remembered from history lessons in school – millions of people died, the population was decimated, it was indiscriminate in who it killed. Then my eye snagged on a link to ‘pneumonic plague’ and I clicked on it. No buboes; people died within a few days; symptoms very similar to flu in many ways. I caught my breath, my heart missing a beat.
Flu.
I pulled up some news pages to see how bad the current flu outbreak was. Bad. And centred around here.
“You wouldn’t need a terrorist event to bring the country to its knees. You’d just need a flu epidemic.”
A link at the bottom of one of the articles took me to the major flu outbreak in 1918. Unusual in that it killed the young and the fit. I chewed my pen, feeling queasy. If I was going to steal someone’s vitality, I’d go for those who seemed to have the most. Was the 1918 outbreak actually Aegyir? And now Aegyir was taking vitality again and was coming to kill me. According to Lilja.
If I had to choose, which would I go for? Quick and painful? Or long and lingering? Probably long and lingering. Give me a chance to say all the things I wanted to say to people before I died. But there would be several days of fear; of knowing this was it. I wasn’t sure how I would cope with that, so maybe quick and painful was better after all. I fingered the drawings in the book. Aegyir ripped the ball of light out of a person and then they were dead.
The bodies at the quarry. They’d all made my charm glow. And then Toby Hall, who should be dead by the time of my interview, turned into Aegyir.
I rubbed my eyes. This couldn’t be real. I tried to see it all how Finn would. I was tired. I’d been stressed about the job interview and about Stephen. Okay, the charm and the book were more than a bit weird, but the rest was surely the result of an overactive imagination colliding with a lack of sleep. Of course I was dreaming about evil things coming to get me and to get revenge – I’d had Stephen put away in jail and now he was out and threatening me. The book was a collection of myths and fantasies, nothing more. My head was muddling my fears about Stephen being released with these weird stories. But however hard I tried to write it off, questions stung at me like a swarm of bees.
How was Toby Hall still alive in the afternoon of my interview? The police seemed to think he was dead before then. And why did the charm-bracelet keep glowing blue? The temperature hadn’t suddenly changed while I was in the library, or any of the other times it had glowed, so it wasn’t temperature-dependant like a mood ring. What was the danger?
I turned to the picture of me – Aeron. Everyone had a doppelgänger, didn’t they? Perhaps Aegyir just thought I was this person. Perhaps Lilja did.
So why did I dream of her and of the Realm so much?
I stretched out my legs and punched the pillows into a heap behind me.
“Come on, Reagan, you’re smarter than this,” I muttered to myself.
I sipped my tea, staring at the book and the laptop. It felt as if I had all the pieces there, but I didn’t quite know how to put them together because I didn’t know what the picture was.
“Well, I don’t know where Aeron is supposed to be returning to and I wouldn’t go, even if I did, so apparently I need to kill Aegyir and stop him from stealing everyone’s energy. Should be simple, right?” I mocked.
The Black Death lasted a few years with odd outbreaks afterwards, but it came in phases. I pulled up the pages on it again, navigating to some citing documents from the time.
“Oh. You thought cats were the problem,” I said, scanning the pages. “Anything more useful? Like red-eyed demons being involved?”
I clicked on links to manuscripts in the British Museum, hoping there would be translations, since my knowledge of medieval Latin was zero. Nothing. I kept reading. My tea went cold.
There was nothing in the least bit useful linking to the Black Death so I went back to the 1918 flu epidemic. Spanish flu, though it had nothing to do with Spain. I found pictures of enormous rooms containing hundreds of people lying on camp beds. As I flicked through them, a shadow caught my eye, and I enlarged the picture. Was it just a smudge on the lens? Or a flaw in the negative?
My mouth went dry as my brain made sense of the shadowy mark. A Guide, with its hand over the chest of a man. A ball of light being stretched thin, emerging from the man’s chest, bony fingers pulling it towards the Guide. The more I looked at the pictures, the more of them I saw – Guides stealing from the men, the nurses, the doctors… I swallowed. Was another epidemic as terrible as 1918 about to hit Britain?
A hammering on the door coincided with my phone pinging, making me jump.
“You need to take the bolts and chains off,” yelled Finn from outside.
I checked the time, surprised to see just how many hours had passed. I closed everything down and bellowed down the stairs to Finn that I was coming, then pounded down to open the door.
“Hey,” he said, giving me a lopsided grin and a kiss.
“Hey.�
�
He paused in the hall, sniffing. “What have you made for tonight.”
Shit! Shit, shit, shit! I was supposed to have been making a cake to take over to Billy’s.
I winced. “Um. Nothing. Sorry. I clean forgot.”
Finn dropped his kit-bag on the floor, still studying me. “Oh. Okay. Maybe we can pick something up on the way over.” He shrugged out of his jacket and put it and his bike helmet away. “So what have you been up to all afternoon, if you weren’t baking?”
“Erm…” He wasn’t going to like the answer.
He leaned back out of the kitchen, looking down the narrow hall to me, a frown crossing his brow. “Rea?”
“I was trying to work out something.” He was still staring hard, and I stretched my back. “I think Aegyir is behind the deaths at the quarry. And the flu outbreak.”
Finn still hadn’t moved. He stood in the doorway, one hand on the door-frame, his eyes locked on mine. Slowly, his posture tightened.
“So, instead of making the thing we promised to take to Billy’s tonight, you spent the afternoon thinking that a mythical creature, that only you can see, and only you can read about, is murdering people and giving people flu?”
I scratched behind my ear, screwing my toe into the thin beige carpet of the hall. “Er. Yeah.”
“Is this all because of that book?” He sounded calm, but from the tightness in his shoulders and jaw, I knew he wasn’t happy.
“Mm.”
“You do know the book isn’t actually about you. It isn’t real.”
“Except the woman in the book who looks just like me is married to a guy called Faran, who looks just like the guy I’m married to in my dreams, who is also called Faran.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “Says the only woman who could have drawn the pictures and who can read the book.”
I strode towards him, breathing hard. “I swear to you, I did not make that book. Are you calling me a liar?”
He held his hands up, standing his ground. “No. I just don’t think you know you made the book.”
“I didn’t make it, Finn! The runes are printed and the drawings only look like mine.”
Finn leaned his broad back against the door-frame as if scratching his spine. “So what are you suggesting? That the book was brought here by someone from your dreams? That it is you in the pictures? That there are life-stealing demons going around murdering people?” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, closing his eyes. “Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m not fucking drunk!”
His eyes opened wide and his brows rose. “For real? So you genuinely believe all that?”
“Yes! No… I don’t know.” Cold, logical reasoning said it couldn’t be true. But I didn’t seem to be running on logic any longer. My face scrunched. “I’m sorry I forgot about dinner at Billy’s.”
He sighed, his head dropping back against the door-frame. “Yeah, well, it won’t be the first time we’ve taken a bar of chocolate from the late-night garage to pot-luck.” He reached out a hand and caught hold of my fingers. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I don’t know how the book got here, but it’s still just a book and your dreams are still just dreams. Real life is me and you and the gym and your new job. Don’t lose sight of that.”
“I won’t.”
He drew me to him, his body warm against my cheek. He smelled of the gym, and I tilted my face to him, wrinkling my nose. “Don’t take this the wrong way but you need a shower before we go to Billy’s.”
He laughed. “You saying I stink, woman?”
“Yep.”
I went to move away, but he held on to me. “Serious question. Have you been drinking?”
“No!” I shoved him away from me.
“Good. ‘Cos then you can drive and I can have a beer.” He grinned at me, ducking away from the mock punch I aimed at his head.
***
Half an hour later, I turned the bike into the supermarket car park and waited while Finn scooted in. Every few weeks, Finn and I had a pot-luck dinner with Rick and Billy, where we took it in turns to make either the main course or the dessert. It rotated through the three houses. I hoped Billy wouldn’t mind that we were going to bring a rubbish cake from the supermarket.
It turned out not even to be that good. Finn jogged back out a few minutes later clutching a multipack of Mars bars.
“No cakes left,” he said as he slid his leg back over the bike and tucked the pack into his jacket.
“Not even a pudding in the freezer?”
“Oh.” He took his helmet from me. “I didn’t think to check that. Oh well.”
His arms settled around my middle and I set off.
Billy lived on the opposite side of town. I cut away from the town centre which could get snarled up, even at this time, and looped round the outskirts, going through the streets where the less well-heeled shops were – the bookies, the cheap phone places and the shops selling vaping stuff. Much as I liked taking the bike out on my own, I preferred it with Finn on the back. The bike behaved differently – more weight going into the corners for a start – and the feel of his arms tightening as his body shifted with the movement of the bike always made me feel snug and secure.
We reached Billy’s and I parked on his drive, surprised that Rick’s car wasn’t there. Maybe he walked. He lived closer than we did.
Billy’s house was a typical suburban semi: door to the right of a bay window downstairs; two windows upstairs; front area paved as parking with a few pots of plants clinging to the periphery. Some early dwarf irises poked out blue heads next to yellow miniature narcissi. Since Billy didn’t have green fingers, I suspected he’d bought the pots ready-planted from the garden centre.
Finn rang the doorbell and pulled the pack of Mars bars out of his jacket, shaking his head at me.
“Don’t give me that face,” I said. “We could have brought ice-cream!”
Billy swung the door open and welcomed us in. Inside, we stashed our helmets and Billy took our jackets. Finn handed over the chocolate bars. “Pudding. Sorry.”
Billy poked his tongue into the side of his mouth, mirth wreathing his face and Finn shook his head, closing his eyes. “Don’t ask.”
Billy looked from Finn to me and back again. “Trouble in paradise?”
Finn gave me a pained look, then glanced around. “Rick not here yet? Isn’t he meant to be doing the main course?”
“No.” Billy’s tone was curt, his posture rigid, even for him. “He’s not coming.”
Billy ushered us through to the lounge, and we sat on a beaten leather sofa to one side of the wood-burning stove.
“Everything okay?” I asked, frowning. Rick never missed these evenings.
“Dinner will be a few minutes yet. Let me get you guys drinks,” said Billy. “Who’s driving?”
Finn pointed to me with a smirk.
“Beer or wine? Or something soft, even if you’re not driving, I guess.” Billy smiled, but it was faked and tight and didn’t reach his eyes.
“Beer, thanks.”
I opted for an elderflower cordial, and Billy left us to go and get them, his back straight, his broad shoulders tense.
“Where’s Rick?” I whispered. “What’s happened?”
Finn shrugged. “Dunno. He didn’t say anything to me. I thought he’d be here.”
Billy returned with the drinks before we could talk any more and plonked himself down on the matching sofa on the other side of the fire.
“To Rea, and her new job,” he said, too brightly.
“Yeah, cheers.” I lifted my glass. “Billy, what’s happened? Where’s Rick?”
Billy’s gaze dropped to the floor, and he breathed deeply, rubbing his thumb over the side of his glass. “Have either of you seen him since Sunday?”
We both shook our heads. Had Billy not seen him, either? They might not live together, but they saw each other most days.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“He’s been w
eird over the last couple of days. Like he doesn’t know me.” He ground to a halt, and his shoulders hunched. “He’s not been to work. The place is all locked up.”
“What, he’s not got Bruce to cover?” asked Finn.
Billy shook his head. That was different. Rick loved his work. Bruce worked in a town about an hour away and came in if Rick was ill or wanted some holiday, and both of those were pretty rare. Maybe Bruce wasn’t free. But in that case, why would Rick not be there, and why would Billy not know?
Billy sipped his beer. “Do you think he’s taking drugs?”
Finn’s head shot up. “Who? Rick? Er. No.”
There was no doubt in Finn’s voice, and I wondered why Billy was asking. “Billy, do you?”
“I don’t know. I thought it might explain why he seems to barely know me and be acting so weird. He hadn’t replied to any texts, so I went over last night to see him. It was as if he didn’t even recognise me. He stood in the door and looked completely blank. He was really odd. When he finally let me in, he asked loads of questions he knows the answers to. About you two.”
My brow creased. “Us?”
A log popped in the stove, releasing sparks and Billy glanced across at it before replying.
“Mm. How long you’d been together. Who Stephen was. How I knew you… it was completely weird. The way he was talking… it was like he was someone else entirely. If I didn’t know better, I’d have wondered if he had a twin. I didn’t stay long. When I went to kiss him, he backed off and was horrified. I’ve tried texting him today and he hasn’t replied. I’m almost hoping he is on drugs in some ways. Otherwise, it seems like he’s had enough of us and doesn’t have the guts to tell me.”
Rick had his faults, but running away from something that needed to be said wasn’t one of them.
Finn shook his head vehemently, stretching his long legs out over the blood-red rug in front of the fire. “I can’t see it. He’s always been anti-drugs.”
“And he’s not talked to either of you about anything?”
I shuffled in my seat. “I talked to him on Sunday about whether you two would ever move in together and he said he needed his own space,” I replied. “But I certainly didn’t get the impression that he was wanting to call things off.”