Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Amy Rae Durreson

  I almost dropped the biscuit tin. “What?”

  “Martyn and Shirley didn’t like it, but Renie persuaded them that it wasn’t anything like our Eilbeck.”

  “Wait—no—how?”

  “Renie worked for child services in London, and after—after everything, we kept track of you. You were the only one we ever saved, Leon. We weren’t going to lose you after that.”

  There was the steel I had expected from her. I barely took it in. The idea was preposterous—Eilbeck had been my second chance, and now she was claiming—what? That it had been arranged by some guilt-ridden secret fairy godparents? It was absurd.

  “You—she—that’s why I was sent to Eilbeck? Not because I needed them?”

  “Precisely because you needed them,” Jeannie snapped back. “You know as well as I do how many children deserve a second chance—a real one. All we did was make sure you were one of the few who got it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you survived. You were the only one we saved.”

  From the doorway, Niall said, “Is everyone all right in here?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Jeannie was just telling me how she and her friends have been manipulating my life for decades.”

  Niall’s eyebrows rose, but all he said was, “Sounds like there’s a story there. Come and sit down again, and we’ll hear it out.”

  Jeannie nodded, heading back towards the conservatory, and Niall came over to me where I was holding the biscuit tin so hard I was surprised it hadn’t crumpled under my fingers. He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “Take a minute, love. We need to know what she knows.”

  I nodded. “I know. Just….”

  “Yell at me about it later.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “True, but I won’t blow over if someone raises their voice at me.”

  He left me there, and I took a few deep breaths. Anger was bubbling under my skin. The same anger I’d felt as a kid throwing myself against the injustice of the world that had made me into nothing more than a boy with a knife, formed of grief and defiance. How dare they? How dare they interfere in my life like this—make my loss part of their own ugly story? What right did they have?

  Then I looked round the cramped little kitchen, the tea towel with a faded picture of Edinburgh Castle, the chipped Formica worktops, and the box of budget teabags. It was so ordinary, compared to the story Jeannie was slowly letting slip, that I tried to make it my anchor. The normal world was still here.

  And the past was past. We couldn’t change it from here, and my rage would make no difference to their past actions.

  As calm as I was going to get, I went back to the conservatory and sat by Niall again. He wrapped his arm around my waist, sending Jeannie a low look. She didn’t say anything, but she did smile a little.

  “So,” Niall said, “you got Leon to Eilbeck. Was his Sir Philip in on it all along?”

  Felix? What the hell did he have to do with it?

  Jeannie was shaking his head. “He was useful to us, no more. The man lives for his school so much he never questioned why Martyn really wanted to talk to him. How else were we supposed to keep track of young Leon here?”

  Niall’s frown deepened. “And was it always part of the plan to bring Leon back here, or was that just a later development?”

  I jumped. I hadn’t put that together yet.

  She appealed to me. “We just wanted you safe. It wasn’t until we lost Renie that we thought of anything else, and even then, it was only because you were still there, part of Eilbeck. And we thought—we thought, since we were getting too old, that you might understand. That you might help.”

  “Help with what?” I demanded, though I feared I knew.

  “Stop Robin from killing again. Put him back where he came from.”

  I shook my head. “I’m a teacher, not some demon hunter. He’s been active for centuries. How am I supposed to—”

  For the first time, she looked truly frail, but her voice was clear as she said, “Not centuries.”

  Niall said, “No. I’d say since, oh, January 1944. Am I right?”

  She looked down at her hands, then admitted, very softly, “Yes. We did it. We summoned him. We let him out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  NEITHER NIALL nor I spoke, and for a moment she was quiet too, looking past us, towards the distant border. Then she said, gaining confidence with every word, “It’s strange to tell it now. I never told a soul, not even my husband, God rest him. And I never had to speak of it with the others. They were there, after all. We all knew what we’d done and what the price of it was. So I suppose the way to start is with what a terrible place it was, even for those times.”

  “We’ve seen the records from the archives,” I said quietly. “We aren’t under the illusion that it was a caring home.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “Caring? I’d not have trusted them with a pig bound for slaughter, let alone a child. But it’s coming to light now, aye?”

  “The truth will out,” Niall said.

  “Oh, that’s not the saying, lad. You’ll know the older version, Leon, teacher that you are.”

  “Murder will out,” I said.

  “And murder it would have been before long, us or them. And I’m not saying it because I was a spoilt brat. My dad, before he died, would catch us a good clout if we gave him lip, but he wasn’t cruel about it. In the orphanage, they’d hit us before we’d done a thing, just to keep us in our place. And that was in town, where most of us had aunties or uncles to run crying to, or the odd do-gooder teacher or friend’s mam who might take us seriously. But when the war began and they brought us out here, there wasn’t a soul to stop them from doing what they liked to us—for our own good, of course. That’s what they’d say. We’re whipping you for your own good. Don’t want you growing up a godless slut. Got to teach you to do as you’re told. Don’t you know there’s a war on? And that was just that old bitch Matron Cairns and her priss-faced helpers—all too scared of her to step out of line—and what she dished out to them, they’d happily pass on to us.”

  The venom in her voice made me shudder.

  “But the boys had Hearn, and he was a nastier piece of work. They’d laid him off before the war—broke a boy’s arm, and though the rest of the masters backed up his story, the trustees thought it was too much. Then the war came, and all the young men joined up, and they dragged all sorts out of retirement. Couldn’t send us all off to the country without a firm hand to manage the boys, they said. A firm hand—oh, he was more than happy to provide. Some of them, you see, were unhappy and taking it out on us. Some of them, like old Cairns, plain didn’t like children. But Hearn—he was one of those that liked hurting us. He had it in for Frank in particular.” She paused, looking over us, her eyes distant, and added flatly, “Frank was a pretty lad, see.”

  “Christ,” Niall breathed, his arm tightening around me. I closed my eyes, choking down a sudden wave of sickness. Yes, I saw. I saw very well.

  “And Martyn, he would have done anything for Frank, and he was a big lad, but not big enough. I always reckoned that if there had been a gun in the place, it might have gone differently, but there wasn’t, at least none we could get our hands on, so Martyn used his fists and got whipped bloody in return, and it didn’t do any good at all. And Frank hated it, seeing his brother like that. He was a quiet lad, Frank. Bookish, mind as sharp as a knife, but he went funny, what with Hearn and seeing his brother whipped bloody. He got ideas.”

  She paused, and I tried to slot all this into what I already knew of Francis Armstrong—no, Frank, a real boy rather than the innocent face in an old photograph.

  “We worked outside a lot that first summer, picking weeds out from between the trees the forestry people were planting all along the burn. There were local people there too, and they got a laugh out of telling creepy stories to the orphans—spun us some right tales to see if they could gull the city kids. Martyn and Jim and I were ol
d enough not to take it seriously, but the younger ones lapped it up, and Frank… Frank took it seriously. Martyn and I only wanted to run, but Frank had other ideas. He said they had it coming.”

  She stopped again, her words drifting off. She looked tired, and I wondered how much more she could bear. Then she looked up, caught my gaze, and said, “And so they did.”

  “What happened?” Niall asked.

  “We planned it all. The boys had been out in the barn so much they had time to work one of the bolts loose. The masters never stayed out there with them in the cold—just locked them in until morning and went back to their warm beds. To get away, they’d only have to get Frank out—he was small enough to squeeze through the gap. He’d unbolt the door, then they’d come and get us, overpower whichever of the mistresses was with us, and we’d leg it up the river to get on the first train north at dawn. We thought we could find work in Edinburgh for a while, until it was safe to go back to Newcastle. But Frank wouldn’t go without getting his revenge, and Martyn wouldn’t deny him anything. We argued, but in the end, it was only going to be a few more minutes, and Frank had persuaded Ronnie and Renie to go along with it, and what Ronnie did, Bert did, so it was just me and Jim who didn’t like it.”

  “And Shirley?”

  Jeannie’s face softened. “Shirley wasn’t meant to be there, but she’d dropped her bread on the floor at supper, marg and all, so she was in for it too, and we couldn’t wait another night. She was willing enough, once she knew what was up. She was younger than Frank even, but she wasn’t a squealer. Now, where was I—oh, I forgot. Martyn had broken the circle, of course.”

  “The circle?” I prompted as she frowned, clearly trying to catch the trail of her thoughts.

  “The circle that bound old Robin, up on Larriston Fells. You did not think it was the stones that bound him? It was cold iron, in every story, but iron rusts. Martyn and Jim, they worked with the Timber Corps girls every afternoon. That day they deliberately hitched a ride on the wrong truck—and got whupped for it when they got back. They went up to the circle and dug around a bit until Martyn found the old iron chain rusted into the mud. He broke a bit off and brought it back, just like Frank had wanted. And we had to do it, then. We’d crossed that line.”

  “Just like that,” Niall said. “He just dug up a few links.”

  “Maybe that was enough,” Jeannie said. She sounded very tired now. “It wasn’t all we did, though, and I tell you, I didn’t believe any of it, not until then, but standing there in that chapel, that horrible dark little room, with that little cow Gwen Jenkins flat on the floor where Martyn had clocked her—I believed then. And I knew it was wicked—we all knew it was wicked—but we didn’t care. They already hated us. They already said we deserved to be punished, so I just thought, fuck them.”

  The profanity, in that frail elderly voice, jolted me, but Jeannie seemed to have forgotten we were there.

  “We put that rusty link down on the altar, and we stuck a pin in our fingers and bled on it, and we called him down, called him three times by name, and Frank started laughing. Then Renie got the giggles and we were all laughing and laughing at the thought of it, of them getting what they deserved while we finally escaped. But then that bastard Hearn came lumbering into the middle of it, grabbing at us all, and we fought back this time, eight of us to one of him, and I’ve never felt anything like it. I would have ripped his eyes out, torn his face off with my nails, and that’s—that’s when I got frightened, see, because it didn’t seem natural, that. I wanted him dead, no lies, but I never wanted to be him. I never wanted to enjoy….”

  She trailed off again, but neither Niall nor I moved. The rain thrummed against the glass behind us.

  Jeannie said, “That’s when I realised there was someone else there, someone who found it even funnier than we did, and I was scared then. I was so scared, because I knew. Even then, I knew we’d done something terrible. And I screamed at them to run, and Martyn was hollering too, and Hearn was down and bleeding, and suddenly it was all we could do to run, as if the hounds of hell were after us. They were, I suppose. We’d called them down upon us, but now we were running, each of us for ourselves, all except Frank. He was still laughing, still laying into Hearn, but Martyn grabbed him and dragged him out of there, away from that grinning, bloody thing in the chapel. And then… and then the glass came down.”

  She stopped, swallowing hard. I said, as gently as I could, “We read the report. We know what happened next.”

  She bowed her head, but not before I saw the tears running down her cheeks.

  I couldn’t move, was too overwhelmed by all of it and what it meant for me. Niall, though, rose and went to her, knelt down to take her hands and say, “Easy now, Jeannie. That took courage to tell, I know, but we need a little more from you. Is there anything else we need to know, because there’s a wee lad missing in Blacklynefoot right now, and we need to find him.”

  To my shame, I’d forgotten Mac, too caught up in old horrors.

  She froze and whispered, “Missing? Are you sure it’s Robin? Again?”

  “There were riders on the storm yesterday and a deer stripped bare on the chapel step this morning. But he’s only missing right now. We have a chance.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. We never found out where he took the missing ones.”

  Niall sighed and rose to his feet. “We’ll do what we can, then.”

  She looked up at both of us. “You have to stop him. You can’t let this carry on. You have to do what we couldn’t. Stop the killing.”

  “We’ll try,” I said and rose up at Niall’s beckoning hand. It didn’t feel right to leave her there, fragile and distressed, but Niall was already striding away. I fumbled in my pocket for pen and paper and scribbled my number on the back of a receipt. “If you think of anything, call me. Even if it’s just to talk to someone who knows the truth.”

  Niall was by the door, waiting impatiently. I followed him to the van.

  “What’s the rush?” I asked as we climbed in.

  “She can’t help us any further, and we’ve a lost boy to find.”

  “That poor woman,” I said as we pulled away from the kerb. “Carrying all that for so long.”

  “And no more than a child herself when it happened,” he agreed soberly. “But you’re the one who says we cannot change the past. We need to think of young Mac now, and those that will come after him.”

  “Unless I stop him,” I said and let out a shaky laugh. “Fuck, I feel like Harry Potter.”

  That made him snort with laughter. “Bit old for Hogwarts, aren’t you?”

  “They always need new teachers, right?”

  He laughed, and a little of the tension eased. Then he said softly, “You okay? She upset you, I thought.”

  “I’ll manage. Wasn’t expecting all of that.”

  “It’s one hell of a story.”

  “Literally,” I said, and he huffed another laugh.

  “Let’s go and find Mac, and we’ll worry about the rest when that’s done.”

  BUT WE didn’t find him, not that day nor in the days to come.

  Chapter Thirty

  THE SEARCH went on for three days. By the time we got back to Blacklynefoot, the search helicopter was out, and a team of mountain rescue volunteers were gathered outside the guesthouse, conferring with the police team in low voices. Other officers were working their way between the few houses in the village. The rain was still coming down, muffling everything. It felt strangely unreal.

  As we pulled into the lodge, the helicopter went sweeping overhead. Niall looked up and said, “That’s probably the best chance of finding him.”

  We’d had kids run away from school before, and I knew more about this than he did. “Only if he’s on open ground where the cameras or infrared can pick him up. They can’t see into tree cover.”

  Niall looked round at the forested hillsides in every direction and shot me a slow disbelieving look.
“Lot of good that is.”

  “It might eliminate some ground,” I said.

  “Do we honestly think they’re going to find him with modern technology?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. It came out sharper than I intended. “I’m not an expert on ancient demons or whether they show up on heat sensors. I still can’t quite believe any of this is happening.”

  The look I got then was incredulous, but Niall sighed and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get out of the rain. Maybe if I kick the generator we can get enough power to boil the kettle.”

  He did, and with the returned power came a Wi-Fi signal, and my phone came to life. Felix and the trustees had seen the news reports and wanted updates, and no sooner had I finished filling them in when someone showed up from the electricity company to make the fallen pole safe, then another woman in a van who removed the ragged deer carcase for proper disposal. By then the broken line had been removed, and I was promised power back to Vainguard within a few days—“Lines down all over, mate. I’ll do what I can, but—”

  “One house out in the middle of nowhere isn’t top of the list. I understand.” I had no desire to set foot in Vainguard again if I could avoid it and was more than happy to be given an excuse to avoid it.

  By then the sun had come around, so the front of Vainguard was fully in shadow. I cast my eyes over the ruins of my car and only then realised that I should probably phone my insurance company. The details were on my laptop, which was still inside. I made it three steps through the front door, into the dark, still-bloodstained barmkin.

  And right by my elbow, a child sighed. I slammed my torch on, but of course there was no one there.

  My laptop could wait until morning.

  BACK AT the guesthouse, the atmosphere was tense. The search was still going, but the hours of daylight were running out. The sun would set just after nine, and full visibility would be gone soon afterwards, especially on a rainy, moonless night. The Elliots were in the parlour with a police liaison officer. They looked up hopefully as I came in but sagged as they realised I wasn’t bringing news. Lyall shot me a hostile look, and I wondered what they had been told about the finds at Vainguard.