The Rook: A Novel

by O'Malley, Daniel

  This whole endeavor is completely alien to the Checquy style of doing things and it is, as far as I know, almost impossible. I’m not even sure why these kids were chosen. See, the students don’t seem to have anything in common. They all come from different parts of the country, and their families are from different social classes and backgrounds. I’ve researched their families, I’ve checked their NHS records, I’ve looked into everything about them, and I can’t find a reason that they were plucked out of their homes.

  Let’s face it. If you want to look at this in as cold a manner as possible, there are plenty of children out there that can be gotten easily. Orphans. Street children. Hell, you can import them. Given how long Camp Caius has been around, you could probably breed them. But these children were taken from private British families—so you have the people of Camp Caius putting themselves to enormous trouble for no apparent reason. Doing this sort of thing is a major task even for the Checquy, so I just don’t understand it.

  Once in a while, I sit back, amazed at what the Checquy does. From what little I recall of my family life, it was pretty tight. My parents were educated people, relatively well-off, independent. And yet they crumpled when Wattleman and Farrier told them that the Checquy was taking me. You’d expect a fight from them. A word of protest. Even a lawsuit. At the very least, you’d expect them to contact the media. If the government comes and takes your kid, you’re going to talk about it. Maybe look for some support group. Instead, families keep it secret. And why?

  Well, many of the Estate students are unnatural. Think about Gestalt. Would you want that in your house? So a lot of parents are relieved to have their children taken away. In fact, some are willing to pay. For those whose families do want them, it gets uglier, because the Checquy has been doing this for a very long time and they have become very good at it. They lie, they threaten, they make promises. And they have the law backing them up. I’m still not sure exactly what story Wattleman and Farrier gave my father that last day. I wasn’t paying very close attention.

  With all of these tools, they can bludgeon people into compliance or deceive them completely. Parents are left believing that their children are deathly ill, have horrendous mental problems, are contagious, whatever. In the end, they know their children are no longer available to them and that the government is taking over their care. A depressing number of families are left feeling that they have been done a favor.

  Anyway, I’m still trying to work out what the deal is with Camp Caius.

  Regards,

  Me

  21

  Rook Thomas, at the very least you should wait for the second team of Barghests to arrive from the Rookery,” pleaded Poppat.

  “No,” said Myfanwy, her eyes fixed on the uniform someone had handed her. The outfit she’d worn to the office that morning would not be at all appropriate—she was certainly not going to trip about some haunted house in a skirt and heels.

  “But I cannot possibly allow a member of the Court to enter a manifestation site without an escort, and all the local troops…” He trailed off.

  “All the local troops have been liquefied,” Myfanwy finished for him. “I’m not certain that an escort would do me any good anyway. And if I’ve got even the smallest chance of helping our people, then”—she took a deep breath—“I have to go in.”

  Poppat gripped her arm desperately. “Myfanwy, we both know this is not your field. I can’t let you go in there alone.”

  “No” came a firm voice from behind them. They turned to see Shantay zipping herself into a Pawn combat uniform. She’d coiled her hair up at the back of her neck and suddenly looked much more dangerous. “She’s not going in alone. I’m going in with her.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Myfanwy. “There may be legal precedents for you coming along to observe, but can you imagine the repercussions if a Bishop of the Croatoan was harmed on a Checquy op?”

  “Yeah, but you’ll probably be dead too, so it’s not like it’ll be your problem.”

  “Well, then,” said Myfanwy. “As long it causes me no inconvenience.”

  “I’m not letting you go in there by yourself.”

  “You don’t get a say,” said Myfanwy tartly. “And even if you did, the voice didn’t request an American Bishop, it requested a Rook.”

  “The voice can go fuck itself!” said Shantay. “I’m sure the boys and girls you sent in there were good, but I can handle myself, and you need someone to cover your back.” Myfanwy wavered and Shantay, sensing an advantage, pressed it. “Honey, don’t take offense here, but we live in a small world. News gets around, and our dossiers on you are at least as detailed as yours on us. So I know this sort of thing isn’t your forte. You need a strong arm backing you up, and that’s going to be me.”

  It might not have been Thomas’s forte, thought Myfanwy, but I’ve got a few tricks of my own. Still, she didn’t like the thought of going into that house alone.

  “Fine,” she said finally. “You can come.”

  “Like there was ever a question,” sniffed Shantay, pulling out an extremely large handgun and checking it over.

  “Excuse me, but what the hell is that?” asked Myfanwy.

  “What?”

  “That bloody cannon in your hand!”

  “It’s my gun,” said Shantay innocently.

  “Where on earth did you get it?” asked Poppat. “There’s nothing like that in the armory.”

  “It was in my purse.”

  “Your purse?” repeated Myfanwy. “How did you get it through Customs at the airport?”

  “The airport? Honey, we arrived at the embassy. Why do you think Bishop Morales was so tired? She stepped us between the cities.”

  “Oh,” said Myfanwy, momentarily stunned by the strangeness of the world she’d been born into.

  “Now what kind of gun are you going to take?” asked Shantay.

  “I am not taking any kind of gun.”

  “You are definitely taking a gun.”

  “Is that a fact, Dirty Harry?” asked Myfanwy, eyeing Shantay’s weapon.

  “Honey, I can punch my fist through a tank if I put my mind to it, and I am taking a gun.”

  “Fine, I’ll take a gun. But nothing that weighs more than I do.”

  Poppat tried to insist on accompanying them, but Shantay pointed out that it was needlessly cruel for him to leave all responsibility to some poor schmo of a second-in-command.

  “Actually, I’m the poor schmo of a second-in-command,” Poppat confessed. “The head of the Bath section, Pawn Goblet, called in sick yesterday. Flu.”

  “Talk about sucky timing,” Shantay commented. The American Bishop was cracking her knuckles and her neck in a very military manner. Myfanwy was having difficulty bending her arms—the jacket she’d been given was her size but was made out of Kevlar, leather, and plastic and felt like it had been constructed of wood. “You know, it’s been years since I did anything like this,” remarked Shantay. She and Myfanwy were standing on the doorstep of the house, being given a final check-over by the techies.

  “Oh, yeah?” Myfanwy was trying to figure out how she had suddenly acquired two knives and a large pistol. “How many years?”

  “One and a half,” confessed Shantay.

  “Indeed?” replied Myfanwy. “What’s this?”

  “Pepper spray. Don’t you want to put on a pair of gloves?”

  “No. What’s this?”

  “Taser,” said Shantay.

  “Amazing. Well, I guess we should do this then,” said Myfanwy with a palpable lack of enthusiasm. She put her hand on the doorknob, turned it, and they walked into the house.

  “Charming,” she said, and noticed Shantay looking at her strangely. “Well, aside from the massive blanket of fungus covering everything. But if you look beyond that, it’s really not in bad taste.” Shantay carried on staring at her. “Oh, shut up. Do you see any sign of the Barghests?”

  “No,” Shantay said in a stage whisper. She was holding
her large pistol in her hand and looking very tense.

  “What is wrong with you?” Myfanwy whispered back. “You look like you expect someone to grab your ass.”

  “I’d be okay with that, as long as it was a person,” whispered Shantay. “It’s when it’s the decor reaching out to cop a feel that I get nervous.” She kept turning around, scanning the room.

  The air was hot and wet, as if they’d stepped into the lungs of some giant jungle beast. Baroque curves of fungus swept up from the floor and down from the ceiling, and Myfanwy couldn’t tell whether they’d crawled up from the cellar or poured down from the upper floors. In some places, the mold was a smooth, featureless blanket that clung tightly to the wall. In other areas, it was jagged and lumpy, as if it had been slapped on like mortar. There were also thick ligneous branches that coiled down and hung oddly in the air.

  A thought occurred to Myfanwy.

  “Why are we whispering?”

  “Because I’m concerned that eldritch forces will rip my face off,” said Shantay. “I don’t want to disturb anything.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Myfanwy looked around again. “So I should whisper too?”

  “Not if you don’t want to,” said Shantay testily.

  “No, it’s fine. Well, I suppose we should go upstairs?” Myfanwy suggested. “That’s where that damn chanting is coming from. Hold on a sec, though,” she said, an idea having just come to her. She went down on one knee, and with her bare fingers spread out, she reached down.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked Shantay in horror. “Don’t touch it!”

  “Trust me,” whispered Myfanwy. “I think this will work.” As soon as she’d entered the house, she’d sensed the place tingling around her. She could feel the vitality humming through the room, but it was blurry, like a guitar string that has just been plucked. She couldn’t focus on it, and it nagged at her. So she laid her hand palm-down onto the floor and connected herself.

  Instantly, her senses snapped into place. The sensations she’d been picking up were crisper, more defined.

  “I see what the problem is,” she said. She had been looking for a single shape when in fact the impression consisted of many patterns merged together. It was as if a dozen layers of transparencies had been laid one on top of the other. They complemented one another but didn’t quite match.

  It was almost… choral.

  “What the hell are you doing?” exclaimed Shantay, forgetting in her consternation to whisper. Myfanwy blinked and concentrated on looking out of her actual eyes. From under her palm, little ripples were spreading out through the sheets of mold.

  “Sorry.” She stood up, wiping off her hands on her pants. “I was getting some very curious vibes off this room.”

  “Like what?” asked Shantay.

  “It’s like a lot of voices all together.”

  “Voices?” Shantay repeated dubiously.

  “It’s got a distinctly human sound, but there’s something else mixed in.”

  “Great,” said Shantay darkly.

  “You’re a very glass-half-empty person, aren’t you?” observed Myfanwy.

  “That’s experience talking,” said Shantay. “In these situations, the glass is always half empty.”

  “Always?”

  “Always,” confirmed the Bishop. “Right until it fills up with some sort of spectral blood that grows into a demonic entity.”

  “It’s probably just as well that I went into administration,” remarked Myfanwy. “So, shall we head upstairs?”

  “Yeah, sounds good.” Despite their casual tone, the two women were looking about nervously. Shantay hefted her pistol and flexed the fingers of her other hand. Myfanwy realized that she was grinding her teeth. When they reached the stairs, both paused, waiting for the other to go up. Myfanwy went first, one step at a time, her booted feet sinking slightly into the fungus. The dim violet light cast an eerie glow on their faces. Looking down at her hands, Myfanwy was taken aback. They looked like the hands of a corpse. She and Shantay slowly proceeded, the chanting continued, and Myfanwy found herself becoming hypnotized by it.

  “Myfanwy” came Shantay’s voice behind her, shocking Myfanwy out of her reverie. She gave a little scream and clutched at the fungus covering the banister, which peeled off in her hands.

  “What? What?” the Bishop exclaimed, looking around frantically for some supernatural horror to shoot.

  “Nothing! Just… don’t do that!” snapped Myfanwy irritably.

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t suddenly blurt out my name when I’m concentrating on not dying.”

  “Sor-ry,” said Shantay, not sounding sorry at all.

  “So what did you want?” asked Myfanwy.

  “I have a really bad feeling about this place. It’s giving me the creeps, and I’ve been in a lot of weird places.”

  “You don’t like it?” said Myfanwy. “I’m the one who’s going up the stairs first! You’ve done all these ops. What happened to the chick who was all ‘I’m going to kick some ass’?”

  “That was before we came into the house that smells like some giant porcino mushroom. How do we know that the landscape isn’t going to just swallow us up like it did all those Pawns?”

  “It asked for a Rook. Do you want me to give it a warning?” Myfanwy yelled up to the next story. “Hey! You asked for the Rook! Well, I’m here, so don’t try any shit!” She turned back to Shantay. “Satisfied? Why are you looking like that?” She followed Shantay’s gaze to the wall, where the fungus appeared to have spontaneously remodeled itself. Where previously there had been an irregular surface with bumps where framed pictures had been absorbed, there were now hundreds of growths. Each one was twice as long as her index finger and tipped with a shiny black orb that was unmistakably an eye gazing piercingly at them.

  “Should I shoot them?” Shantay whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Is that your approach to everything?” asked Myfanwy out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Pretty much. Maybe that explains why we have so few manifestations in the States.”

  “Maybe,” said Myfanwy. “Let’s just head upstairs.” Turning her back on those hundreds of giant snail eyes was one of the hardest things she’d had to do in her very short life. But Shantay followed her and they moved much more quickly this time. At the top of the stairs, there was a long hallway with doorways spaced along it on both sides. Every door was open, and more unflattering purple light was spilling out into the hallway. Motes of dust and spores hung in the dim beams. The chanting was oppressive now. They could practically feel it hammering the air.

  Carefully, they padded toward the first door, checked that their weapons were ready, and peeked inside. The same fungus grew here, but it seemed more intense in color, as if it were closer to the root of it all. The purple had darkened to the shade of an eggplant, and there were thick veins of crimson shot through it. It almost glistened, sweating a thick ichor that stank of rotting meat.

  Whatever furniture had been in the room had been absorbed, just like downstairs. But it looked as if previous to the eruption of the mold, someone had stacked everything in the far corner of the room so that there was a large space in the middle. Crouching in the fetal position, knees drawn up to chests and chanting monotonously, were two rows of people who had also been covered by the fungus.

  The two women drew their heads back around the door and shared a grim moment.

  “That’s pretty messed up,” allowed Shantay. “Did you see their faces?”

  “The only parts of them that weren’t draped in that stuff. It’s like they’re wearing robes of gunk.” Myfanwy shuddered. “What do you think we should do?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s these guys who called you in,” said Shantay thoughtfully. “They don’t seem to be conscious of what they’re chanting. They don’t seem to be conscious of anything, really.”

  “Someone else, then?”

  “Let’s check the other rooms.”
They made their way down the hall. Every room had its group of people chanting in unison, staring blankly. There were men and women of every age, arranged in meticulous rows. Even the bathroom had four people crouched in position, their faces ringed by fuzzy cuticles of moss. Myfanwy put a cautious foot inside and moved slowly toward the figures. She ignored Shantay’s whispered warnings and crouched down in front of the closest chanter.

  It was a boy, a teenager. He had a little pudge hanging off his cheekbones and a little smudgy mustache, one that suggested he was trying to pass for eighteen but failing miserably. His eyes were focused on something that wasn’t there, and his pupils were like pinpoints.

  “Shantay, this kid isn’t more than fourteen. Christ, his voice is breaking even as he’s chanting!” She stood up in disgust and looked at the others. “None of the people in this room are old enough to have a checking account.”

  “Well, they’re certainly old enough to be possessed,” remarked Shantay. Myfanwy reached out toward the boy’s face, took a deep slow breath, then placed her index finger softly between his eyes.

  She was suspended in an ocean of sensation—the sum of the boy’s self. But where she would have expected a complex torrent of sights, tastes, and sounds, everything was muted. Delicate currents drifted about, wafting a vague acknowledgment of the temperature in the bathroom, the distant sound of Shantay tapping her boot, and the smell of Myfanwy’s deodorant. But all that, everything that was the world, barely registered.

  Instead, there was the overwhelming presence of the chant, echoing and booming above and below and all around, like thunder. It sucked everything toward it. Through it, she could feel the separate pulses of the people around them. Every person in the house who was chanting was connected to the rest. The pressure of the invocation was surrounding her, pressing on her, trying to pull her in. Myfanwy tensed and wrenched herself out.