She found herself at the top of the ladder once more as it began to totter, threatening to fall to the city below.
Eliza reached out, finding an edge in the swirling fog, and pulled herself up. She stepped carefully across a short stone walkway towards the faint door that had just materialized. Beyond the door, a dim white light.
Eliza grasped the edge of the door, which had now become the hard cover of a book. She peeled back a heavy paper curtain, taking great care not to displace the trembling blue words jiggling upon it as she stepped inside.
Another page brushed against her, and she gently tugged its corner, stepping into the next page.
Only it wasn’t a page, but a sheet.
And then she found herself lying in her bed.
For the briefest moment, Eliza could still hear the distant cries emanating from the city far below, could still feel the Grimwytch’s curiously scented breeze upon her cheek.
She gazed at her hands. They were free of ink. “But it’s real,” she said. “That place is real. Somewhere.” Eliza reached for the bedside lamp, switched it on, and picked up The Book of Kindly Deaths.
It fell open to the next story.
11
The Wrong People
When Katherine Meadows opened the door she found the village of Tattleton covered in thick, slate-gray fog. “Damn you, David,” she muttered as she made her way down the hill.
Within moments she was engulfed in swirls of fog. Katherine shivered, wondering if she should return to the house for her coat; instead, she bunched her hands into the sleeves of her thick woolen jumper and walked on.
The sooner she found her brother, the sooner she could return to the vegetable soup her mother had just prepared on the stove. Katherine gritted her teeth as she wondered where David had gotten to. At thirteen, she was only four years his senior, and yet it often seemed as though a lifetime separated them.
As she passed through the village, its houses little more than dim, dark blocks, she strained to hear anything that could give her brother’s location away. She stopped in front of the church as, somewhere in the distance, someone shrieked.
Katherine waited, and moments later another shout came. It was instantly swallowed by the fog, but it was enough for her to change course.
The cry had come from the old bridge.
“He wouldn’t,” Katherine told herself, praying she was wrong. The huge brick bridge that ran the length of the gorge was strictly out-of-bounds—not only to David and his friends, but the whole village.
It was a place to avoid. A place best forgotten.
But now, as Katherine took the old trail leading to the bridge, she could hear voices, and they were getting louder. “Surely they wouldn’t be that stupid,” Katherine muttered. But she’d seen the recent changes in her brother since he’d made his new friends, and she knew it was only a matter of time before something bad happened to him.
As the dark bulk of the bridge loomed through the mist, the voices were clearer as they rang out below it—one the arrogant, commanding boom of Richard Tattleton, the other the rather less assured voice of her brother David.
“Get on with it!” Richard demanded.
“Go on, David, you lost. You have to do it.” A girl, perhaps Alice Westam or her sister, Claire.
“Please.” David now. “I’ll do anything. Just not that.”
Katherine ran faster as she spotted the three smudges in the fog and, looming above them, the bulk of brickwork that formed the old bridge wall. Just past the three figures, she could see a dark rectangle.
The ancient black door.
Katherine glanced at the scene of devastation in front of it. They’d pulled aside the heavy sacks and debris that had covered the door, leaving them strewn across the ground. David stood directly before the door, the others a slight distance away. His hand hovered in the air, knuckles ready to knock.
“Get away from there!” Katherine shouted.
David flinched, surprise and guilt spreading across his face. “I didn’t…”
“Just get away from the door,” Katherine said, shoving him away, but moments later Richard Tattleton pushed David back.
“This has nothing to do with you.” Richard glared at Katherine. “We made a bet and David lost. Now he has to pay his forfeit.”
“You’re not allowed to be here,” Katherine said, looking from David to Alice and finally Richard. “None of you. Do you know how much trouble you’re going to be in?”
Richard crossed his arms. “None, if you keep your big fat mouth shut.”
“How dare you speak to me like that!”
Richard stepped towards her. Despite being a year her junior, he was big and strong and he knew it. “Like I said, this is nothing to do with you. David made a bet, we all did. And he lost. And now he has to knock on the door. And if he doesn’t, the whole village will know about it.”
“And then everyone will know you’ve been here,” Katherine replied. “And apart from the fact that this place is forbidden, look at the mess you’ve made.” Katherine pointed to the debris strewn across the ground.
“I don’t care,” Richard said. “I can take punishment. It’ll pass, but David’s going to be known as a coward for the rest of his life. No one will trust him. No one. And he knows it, which is why he’s going to knock on the door.”
Katherine looked to her brother. He gave a slight nod, his face a mask of misery and fear.
“I don’t know what’s so scary about that stupid door, anyway,” Alice chimed in. “Unless you believe the stories, and I don’t. They just tell them to make us do what they want.”
“So why don’t you knock on the door, then?” Katherine asked Alice, who simply shrugged.
“Because she didn’t lose the bet,” Richard said. “Ignore your sister, David, and get on with it, because I’m getting bored now.”
David nodded, walking towards the tall black door like a man condemned to execution. As Katherine watched him, she felt a terrible conflict. On the one hand, she wanted to grab David and lead him away from the door, but on the other she knew that if he didn’t follow through with his forfeit, his reputation in Tattleton would be forever blackened.
Richard Tattleton’s parents were well-respected within the village, indeed they were the village’s founding family. Their opinions were listened to by everyone, even though, to Katherine, most seemed to be deeply malicious. The Tattletons had driven many people from the village over the years, for anyone who disagreed with them soon found that their status fell lower than that of a mongrel dog. Only last month, a farmer whose cow had given birth to a two-headed calf had been accused by the Tattletons of communing with the Devil. He’d fled in the night as someone had set fire to his farmhouse, engulfing it in flames.
As David raised his hand before the door, Katherine shouted, “Don’t! I’ll do it.”
She swallowed. All eyes were on her.
“Really?” David asked.
Katherine felt sick as she nodded. “It’s just an old door. But the bridge is unstable. You shouldn’t be near it. I’ll knock on the stupid, bloody door, and then the three of you can put all this stuff back across it. And we’ll never speak of this again.” Katherine looked at Richard. “Agreed?”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter. If you want to take his place, then so be it.”
Katherine bit her tongue. She didn’t want to take David’s place or be anywhere near the door. Just the sight of it, uncovered now, was making her flesh creep. She peered at the large keyhole set into the dry, cracked black paint and held her breath.
Had she heard someone on the other side giggling?
Katherine looked over to Richard. “This is ridiculous…”
“Your sister’s a chicken, David,” Richard said. “So you’d better go and knock on the door right now. Or your family will be ruined.”
Katherine held up her hands. “Leave him alone. I’ll do it. It’s only a door.” But as she approached it, the legends abo
ut the people on the other side began to tumble through her mind.
The Wrong People.
“Get on with it!” Richard shoved Katherine towards the door and stepped away.
She swallowed, raised her hand, and before her mind could talk her out of it, brought her knuckle down. Katherine flinched as a huge cracking sound filled the air, as if the heavens were being rent in two. She clamped her hands over her ears as brick dust rained down upon her head.
Behind her, the children were walking away, their faces full of horror while David’s was ashen. Katherine turned back to the door, her heart thumping wildly as she looked at the woman who stood within the doorway.
She was clad in a black dress and wore a battered old hat with a dead flower drooping from its band. Greasy black hair framed her face, and her skin was like old, yellowed parchment. The woman grinned at Katherine, revealing rancid black teeth as she used her hand to shield her ditchwater-gray eyes. Something squirmed below her lip.
A maggot?
An obese man waddled out from behind her; he, too, was clad in black, his bald head the same waxy yellow. He raised an odd-looking brass device to his lips and began to blow. Music filled the air, its sound low and melodic in a distinctly broken way. There was something deeply hypnotic about the sound, and as Katherine listened, all ideas of running away left her mind.
She found herself walking towards the door. Behind the obese man and the lady, other shadowy figures lurked, one of them tall in the gloom.
Katherine stopped and turned as she thought she heard someone calling to her. There were three children behind her, one of whom looked quite familiar. They seemed to be shouting, but she heard nothing, only music.
The smiling lady in black guided her through the door, and Katherine knew, distantly, that she was walking into a place that was very different from the world behind her.
A very wrong place.
The tall man appeared in the gloomy passage beyond; he was so tall he had to stoop. His long, greasy black hair was plastered to his yellowed, papery face and as his gray eyes found hers, he offered a crooked smile and bowed.
Behind him stood an elderly man with a long black beard and a thatch of wiry hair. His eyes, already huge behind his broken spectacles, grew even larger as they settled on Katherine, and he gestured for her to hurry in.
Katherine could see little in the passage, but she could smell it and her stomach turned. Despite her thumping heart, all Katherine could focus on was the swell of music. She watched numbly as the tall man took an immensely long key from his pocket, threw the door shut behind her and locked it.
The last thing she saw was a boy whom she now recognized as her brother, screaming and yelling as he stood in a bright white mist.
“You’re a Keepsy now!” the elderly man said as he snapped forward and prodded his finger into her forehead, as if drumming his words into her mind.
And then the music stopped, its spell broken as the obese man put his instrument into his pocket and gave Katherine a theatrical bow.
“Where am I?” Katherine asked.
The woman in the hat brushed her hand against the side of Katherine’s face. “Home now,” the lady said, stroking her cheek once more.
Katherine glanced at the passageway with its crumbling brickwork coated in moss and pungent black fungus. The overwhelming rot and other odors that Katherine preferred not to focus on made her retch. She leaned against the wall, flinching as her fingers sank into a soft, cold, slimy patch of fungus. It broke, covering her hand in a vile, sticky substance.
“No eat,” the obese man told her. “Food at new home.”
“You think I want to eat that stuff? Do you eat it?” Katherine’s stomach convulsed again.
“We do not eat that,” the elderly man explained. “Not good. You learn things now you’re Keepsy.”
“Not Lendsy!” the tall man said, patting Katherine’s head with his immense hand. “We got a normal. Real normal!”
“You belong to Eiderstaark, now,” the elderly man told her.
“I don’t belong here. And I don’t know anything about the Eiderstaark. I just need to get home, through that door.”
“We are Eiderstaark!” the lady announced. “Old family. Very old. Live in Greshtaat district. Take you there. Take you home. For cakes and rain.”
“Cakes and rain,” the elderly man repeated. “Then work.”
“I just want to go home,” Katherine begged. “Please!”
“Will go home,” the obese man told her, mopping his sweating forehead with a filthy rag. “New home.”
“Come!” The elderly man gave Katherine a shove in the small of her back. She sprawled into the darkness. A pair of bright white eyes flashed in the murk as a haggard old lady lurched towards her. She was hunched, her face a mass of lines, her intense white eyes gazing into Katherine’s. The old lady opened her mouth, revealing a set of fangs, and lunged forward with surprising nimbleness, her clawed hands outstretched. “New blood for old bones!” she cried.
The tall man batted her hands away from Katherine. “Get back, vympaar. Get back! Girl Eiderstaark, not blood drink.”
The old lady hissed, her eyes flashing once more before she vanished into the shadows. As Katherine passed her, she remained where she was, the Eiderstaark clearly outnumbering her.
Katherine felt numb as she walked, but shuddered as the old man clamped his hand around her shoulder and whispered, “Keepsy stay with us. Safe that way. But if Keepsy run, worse things than vympaar in Grimwytch.”
They left the murk of the passage, emerging on the crest of a hill.
The sky above was filled with stars. Katherine gazed at them, shaking her head. “That’s impossible. It’s only afternoon.”
But impossible or not, the night sky was above her. Amidst its weave of blinking white stars, a huge red moon leered down. Katherine had never seen the moon so large. Below the moon was a city with thousands of buildings of all shapes and sizes, a mass of slate-gray roofs pouring smoke into the air. Through the smoke, seven great towers rose like shards of black flint.
Something about the sight of the towers made Katherine shiver.
“What is this place?” she asked, “And how can it be under the bridge?”
“Midnight City. Heart of Grimwytch,” the elderly man replied. “Greatest city there is. We live in Greshtaat district.”
“Told Keepsy that already,” the obese man huffed.
“Yes. Told Keepsy that already,” the elderly man agreed, prodding Katherine in the back once more. “Question less, walk more.”
They made their way down the slope, the grass wiry and sharp. As Katherine tried to focus on the hill and the city, she found she couldn’t quite take it all in. It was as if her mind couldn’t comprehend its immensity. And impossibility.
For a moment, she thought of running back to the door, until she recalled the thing in the passageway, the thing thirsting for her blood. And besides, the door to Tattleton was locked.
They entered a warren of narrow streets, the cobbles as black as tar. All around, buildings reared up, each one different from the next, like a set of mismatched teeth. She found window frames placed over brick walls, while dimly lit figures stared from empty holes. Front doors opened up into the street while people left their houses via pulleys and ropes, or simply dropped from the holes where windows should have been.
Alleys bisected the streets, curls of thick fog licking from the darkness. Perhaps, she thought, this is where the fogs that plague Tattleton come from. Her thoughts were interrupted as she spotted a huddle of figures watching from the shadows, their eyes flashing red in the gloom.
I need to be able to find my way out of this place, she thought, searching for road signs, but there were none. Panic began to grip her as she realized she was already hopelessly lost within the tangle of streets.
As they walked on, they passed other pedestrians, and while most had the same waxy, yellow skin and grime-encrusted faces as the Wrong Peo
ple, some were unlike anything she’d ever seen.
Or ever wanted to see again.
Like the stick-thin boy who appeared to be missing a mouth, who darted into an alley. Or the pair of colossal figures with human bodies and the heads of wolves who swished their walking canes at Katherine in disgust.
And then a squat creature with a head so red it looked as if it were ablaze weaved through the wolf-headed figures. It was dressed in fine scarlet clothes, and as it spotted Katherine, it cried, “Who would have thought it? The Eiderstaark have finally found their normal and brought it into the Grimwytch!”
The elderly man held up his finger, warding off the creature. “No show now.” He swept his hand towards Katherine. “Show tomorrow.”
They turned a corner, walking into a dead-end street. At the end stood a group of derelict houses, their walls coated in soot, their ramshackle roofs looking as if they’d fall in at any moment. As soon as she saw these higgledy-piggledy buildings, she knew they must surely belong to the Wrong People.
“Home,” the woman said, tittering as she released a blast of putrid air from her mouth.
“You will like,” the obese man told Katherine, his cheese-like face full of pride. “Very own cellar.”
“Lucky, Keepsy.” The tall man winked at Katherine.
They led her to a series of uneven stone steps. The tall man loped up them, pulling two old wardrobes aside to reveal an entrance into the house. “Come.”
Katherine stepped through the hole in the wall, her spirits sinking as she saw the state of the house. It must have lain derelict for years, its walls bare but for patches of peeling wallpaper, its hole-ridden floorboards coated in dust. A set of stairs led up into darkness, their boards spotted with the same black mold that dressed the ceiling.
The tall man ushered Katherine into a large room. A series of crates was set in a circle, illuminated by black candles flickering in their seats of wax. As Katherine smelled the bitter stench rising from the candles, she wondered what the wax was made from before realizing she’d sooner not know.
The Wrong People filed into the room, the woman guiding Katherine to sit upon a crate that was just as hard and splintered as it looked. The elderly man stood before Katherine and gave her a bow. “First night for Keepsy. So Keepsy eat with us. After tonight, no more luxury.”
The Book of Kindly Deaths Page 10