by Paul Berry
We gather round the book. I flick through the pages of A Walking Tour of New Innsmouth, which smells faintly of incense, and stop at a photo of a church steeple, its weather vane almost the same as the one in my picture – an octopus encircling an ornate key.
‘Have you ever heard of this place?’ I ask. Adam shakes his head. There are other black-and-white photos of New Innsmouth, showing dilapidated Victorian houses and families wearing austere clothes staring mournfully back.
‘Do you think you just saw the photo and drew it without realising?’ Rachel asks.
‘I don’t think so. I’d never seen this book before it fell on the table.’ I turn back to the picture of the church. On the other side of the page is an old map of Great Britain, New Innsmouth marked on the coast just below Exeter. I tear it out, feeling a pinch of guilt about the desecration, and fold it into Rachel’s backpack, shivering as the temperature in the library drops. We slide the books back onto the shelves.
‘Mission accomplished,’ Rachel says, raising the crowbar in victory. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
As we make our way back to the art room, I know that this is the last time I’ll walk the corridors of the college. I am being exiled from every place I am familiar with, every place I love – my house, the college and probably the town. Adam’s hand brushes against mine and I almost wrap my fingers around it.
We enter the classroom and Rachel shines the torch at the window. She drops the crowbar.
Someone has closed it.
‘I’m so glad you’re not dead.’
Sitting behind his desk is Mr Hewitt.
Chapter 29
‘Killing everyone at Jupiter Hill was a bit extreme, Sam,’ Mr Hewitt says, turning on the desk lamp.
‘I didn’t start the fire,’ I stutter.
‘Really? You mysteriously reappear without a scratch after it burns to the ground. You were always a terrible liar, even worse than your paintings.’ One of his hands is resting on the desk and gripping a handgun.
Adam moves in front of us. ‘He’s not responsible. It was me.’
‘That’s good to know.’ He wolf whistles. ‘Sam, your boyfriend is quite the looker.’ I almost chime back, ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘You’re part of the Syncret,’ I say. Mr Hewitt smiles.
‘Correct deduction, Columbo.’
‘Let us go. No one has to get hurt,’ I say.
‘On the contrary, you can decide who I kill first.’
‘If you kill us, you’ll never be able to find her.’
He looks at me, perplexed. ‘Her who?’
‘My mother.’
‘Your mother’s dead. This time actually dead, along with everyone else you incinerated.’
‘She’s alive.’
‘And why should I believe you?’
‘Because once she finds me, there won’t be much of the world left.’
‘You should have studied drama rather than art.’
‘I can prove it.’ I put my hand in my pocket.
Mr Hewitt raises the gun. ‘Take your hand out … very slowly.’ I pull out the crystal and Rachel shines the torch on it.
The light turns green as it passes through the crystal, bathing Mr Hewitt’s face, and his eyes widen.
‘It can’t be. The crystal.’
‘It’s broken,’ I say. ‘My mother has the other piece.’
‘Why does she have the other piece?’
‘She’s been altered. There’s something else inside her. Hastur.’ His eyes widen at the mention of the name. ‘She needs it – he needs it to become whole again. You have to let us go so we can stop her.’
‘Sounds like the plot of one of those dreadful horror films you like.’ Car brakes screech outside.
‘I can’t believe we fell for it,’ Rachel says. ‘He’s stalling us.’
‘Clever girl.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asks.
‘I’m not just some shitty art teacher. I also know the power of the Datum. It was your mother’s idea to place me here, biding my time until one of you brats revealed some potential, a sign. Guess she was hiding you in plain sight all along. Your mother is indeed a sly one.’
Adam clenches his fists, and Mr Hewitt shakes his head and points the gun at him.
‘When they take you all,’ he says, ‘I can’t guarantee it won’t be painful.’
Rachel kicks over the easel next to her and Adam jumps across the desk and grabs Mr Hewitt by the neck. There is an explosion as the gun goes off. I look around, dazed, my ears ringing.
Everything is still apart from a glass jar rolling across the floor past the crystal, which I dropped. Adam is lying on his side, a pool of blood spreading around his head. I stumble over and touch his face, but his eyes stare ahead, unblinking. Behind his ear is a dark hole where the bullet entered. Rachel runs over to me.
‘We need to go now!’ she shouts. Voices echo down the corridor. She picks up the gun next to Mr Hewitt, who is sprawled lifeless next to the desk, a pair of scissors jutting from his neck.
‘We can’t leave Adam here like this,’ I say, my voice constricted with hysteria.
‘There’s nothing we can do for him.’ I stand rigid in disbelief, convinced I’m having a nightmare.
‘Move!’ she shouts, breaking the paralysis. The voices grow louder and torch beams shine behind the glass panel of the door. Before we climb out of the window, I grab the crystal and stuff it into my pocket. Adam’s dead eyes stare back at me.
We sprint around the carpark to the front of the college. A car tears through the entrance, its tyres squealing across the tarmac. It stops next the other black Mercedes and Rachel grabs the top of my arm, dragging me onto the tree-lined grass verge. We squeeze between the carpark wall and a tree as the car’s doors snap open. We crouch down as two men get out and run towards the glass entrance doors. I recognise the face of one of the orderlies, the one who accompanied Smith when they took me to the cell, his white uniform replaced by a black suit. There is yelling from inside the college and the crashing sounds of tables being flipped over.
‘Should we try and get to your car?’ I whisper into her ear. Rachel shakes her head.
‘Too risky. They could just shoot through the windscreen before we drive off.’ She points her finger at the carpark entrance. ‘That way. They might spot us if we try to climb over the wall.’ We stay crouched and shuffle towards it, our shoulders flanked by wall and trees.
A beam of light pools next to our feet.
‘They’re here!’ an orderly shouts. Gunshots crack as we approach the entrance, the tarmac sparking beside us, and a tree trunk a few feet away explodes with splinters.
‘Take one more step and the next bullet will take apart your skull.’ We both freeze as torchlight dazzles us. Rachel reaches for her jacket pocket where she stuffed the gun.
‘I’ll shoot off your hand before you even fire. Come out and get down on the ground, hands behind your heads!’ We both walk onto the tarmac and kneel down, my palms instantly numb as they sink into the filthy slush. Four men surround us with torches. They are all orderlies from Jupiter Hill.
‘You can’t do this,’ Rachel says calmly. ‘The police are already on their way.’
An orderly shakes his head. ‘Stupid bitch. The police have been told to stay away. Everyone in this town belongs to us.’
‘Should we kill them now?’ one of them asks.
‘Not yet. I’m sure we can find ways to make them more cooperative.’
There is the sound of whistling. A figure in a suit walks across the carpark towards us, its face obscured by shadow.
‘This is police business,’ an orderly shouts. ‘Stay back!’ The whistling is familiar, a lullaby I heard as a child to soothe me when I awoke crying after a nightmare.
‘Things are about to g
et a lot worse,’ I say to Rachel.
An orderly raises his gun and shines his torch on the figure. ‘What the fuck are you doing here? You’re dead!’
My mother smiles back.
Her hair is now cropped and slicked back. She adjusts her tie and vanishes into the darkness.
‘Where is she?’ Something pulls one of the orderlies into the shadows. He starts screaming and there is a wet tearing sound. My mother walks back into the light, her face smeared with blood.
Another orderly fires, the bullet ripping open her cheek. She staggers slightly and frowns. The wound seals shut and she lunges forward and grabs his head, bending it sideways. His neck cracks and she drops him to the ground. Before the next one can fire, she punches him in the face, her fist disappearing into his forehead, and she pulls out a glistening handful of bone and brain. The last orderly fires two more bullets into her. She flinches, looks down at the red holes in her shirt and tuts. She walks up to him and he presses the gun muzzle against her temple.
‘Try healing from this.’ He squeezes the trigger, but there is only a dry click. My mother laughs, a sound like two laughs in unison, one echoing from a far-off place. Tentacles burst from her face. She raises a clawed hand and slashes it down. I close my eyes at the last moment but hear a sound like a melon being ripped apart. When I open them, the orderly has collapsed forward, part of his head missing. She bends down and picks him up, clamping her teeth onto his neck, and I watch, transfixed, as she gulps down his blood.
Rachel stands and pulls me up. ‘We need to leave. Now.’
My mother tosses aside his body. She pulls out a handkerchief from her breast pocket and wipes the gore from her mouth. ‘Your father is alone and screaming in the Datum. Open a doorway and I’ll save him.’
‘First let my mother go.’
She shakes her head. ‘She doesn’t want me to.’
‘You’re a god, the King in Yellow. Open the door yourself.’
‘If you insist on being recalcitrant, we’ll have to do it the hard way,’ she says, the tentacles on her face writhing furiously.
There is a gunshot and she shrieks, a ragged hole appearing where her left eye was. Rachel is holding the gun, her knuckles white around the handle. ‘Move!’ she shouts.
We sprint across the carpark and out through the entrance, my mother’s enraged screams tearing the air around us.
Running down streets, we turn random corners to put as much distance as possible between us and the college. It feels like we’re in a giant maze, but this time deliberately trying to get lost.
Eventually, the burning pain in my lungs becomes too much. ‘Stop … please.’ I collapse onto the kerb and try to catch my breath. ‘We should go back to your house, figure something else out.’
Rachel sits next to me, panting. ‘That’s the first place she’ll look. And more of those Syncret goons are probably already there.’
Car tyres screech around the corner.
‘It’s her,’ I say.
Rachel pulls me to my feet, her gaze darting around, and she looks behind us. ‘Get into the hedge.’
‘The hedge?’
‘When I used to play hide and seek as a kid, they were the only places my friends could never find me.’
We hold our arms in front of our faces and push through the thick branches. The middle part is hollow, so it feels like we’re standing between two leafy walls, and we bend the branches back to conceal the gaps we made. Behind us is a small garden in front of a bungalow. She grabs my hand as twin pools of car headlights slither along the road towards us.
A black Mercedes stops next to the hedge, the reverberations from the engine making my cheeks vibrate. The driver’s window slides down. My mother looks in our direction and sniffs, the tentacles on her face clutching at the air as they try to detect our scent. My lungs are burning and I realise I’m holding my breath, my hand throbbing as Rachel grips it tighter.
The engine roars and the car drives away. I gasp, coughing as I swallow strands of spider web.
‘Won’t she just create more vampires like you were?’ Rachel asks.
‘I don’t think she’s strong enough. There’s only part of Hastur inside her. The crystal sent most of him back.’
Light shines through the branches into my eyes. Standing at the front door of the bungalow in striped pyjamas and a dressing gown is an old man holding a small torch.
‘Come out from there!’ he orders nervously. ‘Come out now before I call the police!’ I make a move, but Rachel shakes her head.
‘I can see you both,’ he says. ‘Why are you inside my hedge?’
‘I can’t run anymore,’ I say, pushing my way through the branches into his garden. Rachel sighs and follows me.
‘We’re sorry,’ I say. ‘Someone tried to attack us, so we had to hide.’
The man nods. ‘Jupiter Hill. I know what they do to you kids. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn you in.’ He walks back into his house and beckons from the doorway. ‘Come inside and stay for a while, at least until it’s safe.’
‘Let’s go in,’ she whispers, tapping the pocket with the gun. ‘If he tries to call Jupiter Hill, I’m sure this will dissuade him.’
We walk into the house. Photos of a young family are dotted along the hallway walls. He is waiting for us in the kitchen, rattling cups as he arranges them on saucers, the soothing grumble of a boiling kettle in the background.
‘Milk and sugar?’ he asks. ‘And call me Randolph. Not my choice for a name, but my parents had a strange sense of humour.’ We introduce ourselves and shake hands.
‘Why have you invited us in?’ Rachel asks. ‘We could be burglars that like to hide in hedges.’
‘I saw that Mercedes from my bedroom window and the face of that woman driving it. She was a monster.’ He pours water into a teapot and carries a tray to the kitchen table.
‘You don’t seem very surprised by any of this,’ I say. We sit down and he puts a plate of biscuits in front of us.
‘Last year my grandson was having problems, sleepwalking, kept waking up in strange places. My daughter was persuaded to take him to Jupiter Hill. They promised to cure him, but I never saw him again. My daughter also disappeared when she tried to get him back. The police told me she’d run away with him. Liars, the lot of them.’
‘They’ve been taking us for years,’ I say to Rachel. ‘Trying to find someone who can operate the crystal.’
‘Do you think your mum knew about it?’
‘I think she was the one who ordered it.’
‘At least she was trying to protect you by not telling them it was you they needed.’
‘She’s nothing but a kidnapper and a murderer.’ If they had got to me sooner, it would probably have saved Tim from being taken and whatever terrible fate befell him.
I pull out the torn page with the picture of the church from Rachel’s backpack and smooth it out on the table.
‘Do you know anything about this place?’ Randolph squints at it and shakes his head.
‘Never heard of it, although something about it seems familiar. I’ve never travelled much outside Preston. My wife, rest her soul, was the adventurous one.’ He turns over the page and looks at the map. ‘It’s on the southwest coast. You could hitch a lift, but it’ll be too dangerous. You’ll have to take a train. Why are you going there?’
‘My dad, he was taken. I think the only way to get him back is to go there.’
‘That woman, that thing in the car, why is she looking for you?’
‘We have something she needs – another reason to get far away from here.’ I suddenly have a terrible realisation. ‘Fuck. I left my drawing behind in the art room.’ I cover my mouth in embarrassment at swearing in front of him. Randolph smiles. ‘We have to go back for it.’ I already know that’s impossible.
‘We can�
�t. They’ll catch us,’ Rachel says. I thump the table, rattling the teacups, furious at my stupidity.
‘It won’t take much time for her to figure out where we’re going.’
Randolph stands up and picks up a set of keys from a glass dish on the dresser. ‘Take my car to the train station. I hardly use it anyway. Unfortunately, the old girl’s on her last legs, so she won’t make it all the way to New Innsmouth.’ He hands the keys to Rachel, then pulls a wallet from the drawer and offers me a wad of notes. I shake my head.
‘I won’t accept no for an answer,’ he says. ‘You’ll need money if you’re going there to get your dad back.’
‘Thank you,’ Rachel says, taking the money instead. There is the dull blare of police sirens in the distance, no doubt investigating the massacre at the college.
‘Best stay here for a while until things quieten down,’ he says. ‘And there won’t be any trains till morning.’
We half-heartedly play cards with Randolph until the night sky outside the kitchen window starts brightening into dawn, drinking endless cups of tea, our sparse conversation avoiding anything to do with monsters.
‘Just promise me one thing,’ he says as we prepare to set off. ‘When you’ve found your father, do what you can to stop Jupiter Hill. I think the fire only destroyed the building. You need to destroy its roots and then its seeds.’ I have an image of Jupiter Hill as a monstrous plant, pumping its venom into the town.
We leave the house and he pulls open the garage door. ‘My home is yours any time you need refuge.’ I shake Randolph’s hand, and for the first time I can remember, the touch of a stranger doesn’t make me recoil. Rachel gives him a hug and we both get into the car. As she reverses down the driveway, he sadly waves us off.
‘You knew his grandson, didn’t you?’ Rachel asks.
‘The boy in the photos … it was Tim.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘He still has hope that his family’s alive. I didn’t want to kill that too.’
Chapter 30
Rachel drives to the town centre and parks in an empty side street near the train station. She leaves the keys in the ignition.