by T Hodden
“Did they tell you her name?” Ginger asked excitedly as he helped Wendy out of the pool. She waited for his paw to take hers before she let go of the float. “Did they?”
“No.” Wendy sighed, her Edinburgh accent sounding a little strained. “They did not.”
“Did they say anything at all?” Ginger asked, in a tone that suggested he did not want to hear the answer.
“By the prickles on my paws,” Wendy said in a stage figure that echoed around the tall and airy room, “there is a darkness at your door.”
The doorbell rang. Mrs Sussex woke with a start and put her book aside as she lifted her glasses onto her nose. She looked around at the bears who were all shaking. She rubbed her chin in thought.
“I'll get the door then shall I?” She asked kindly. The bears all shook their heads as the doorbell rang again. Muttering to herself Mrs Sussex went to answer the door, muttering under her breath. When she reached the door she put her handle on the door and glanced back. The bears were cowering in the hall, each of them armed with a pitchfork or a flaming torch. “I thought Fisher got rid of those.”
“Some of them.” Ginger said quietly.
Mrs Sussex shook her head and opened the door. Thunder cracked and the heavens opened in that instant, soaking the tall albino girl and her silver haired bear who were on the doorstep. They shivered and shuddered. The girl was clutching a plastic carrier bag to her chest and shivering intensely.
“Can I help dear?” Mrs Sussex asked sweetly.
“Is this England?” The woman asked. Her pale vest and shorts no match for the sudden monsoon. She tried again. “Eternity? Is Mister Fisher King at home? I have to kill him.”
“Ah.” Mrs Sussex shook her head. “You had better come in. Poor thing you're about to catch a death of cold.” She smiled. “What did you want again?”
The girl did not answer. She collapsed to a heap in the hallway.
Tiger turned the camera and looked into the lens. “Hurry home Fish.” She whispered.
“No.” Theodore Edison Bear loomed behind her. “We better go fetch him.”
One: The Precepice
It was morning. I lay there with my eyes closed in the twilight between waking and sleep. It was a golden moment, a rare one where I could remember Doreen as she should be remembered. There was enough of the dream left to feel her close to me, her hair in my fingers, her breath on my cheek, her smell, her warmth. It lasted a few meagre seconds, as soon as I was aware of it, she was gone.
There are two worlds. Here and There. Our world and the Other World. When you die your soul is meant to move on to the Other World. To exactly which realm I could not tell you. It depends who you were and how you lived your life, it's a complex equation. But Doreen is neither Here nor There. Her soul was destroyed. Burned away. Now the only mote of her being, the only splinter of her soul that was not eaten away by the spell that destroyed her is a torture to me.
I rolled out of bed and crossed to the en suite bathroom, splashing cold water into my face before I stared into the mirror. She was there in the reflection, just over my shoulder, just out of focus, forever in pain. Not a ghost, but a snapshot of Doreen Grey in the last moment of her existence. A reminder that meant even as I mourned I could never find peace. I could never let the regret, the sorrows, the guilt and the anguish seep into the depths of my mind. It was like keeping a wound open and raw. Stopping it from healing. But even more cruel than this: It was hope. While that grain of her soul was trapped under my skin there was the faintest chance, the smallest of possibilities, that I might have been able to bring her back. If I had known her true name.
If.
There was book by the sink, of names for a baby girl. I lifted it and opened it to the page I was at and cleared my throat. “Gabby?” I said the name three times, each time watching the blur over my shoulder for a reaction, feeling for a tug on my soul. “Gabrielle?” I repeated the process, saying the name three times, then moving on to the derivations of the name. When I felt nothing I picked up a pen, scratched out those names and turned the page. After an hour I was a few pages further into the book and a little closer to having one word of a true name.
If.
I put the book down. I cleaned my teeth and buzzed my neck with an electric razor. I stood in a shower and cleaned myself. But even when I had fresh clothes on, even when I had attacked my hair with a comb, even then I still felt like an escaped scarecrow. I left my room and walked down to the little restaurant at the front of the hotel. A hotel, not our hotel. Familiar yet different. It had guests talking quietly over plates of food instead of bears scampering around and leaving jam paw prints on things. There was an air of calm discussion. No calamity, no disaster, nothing exploding in a shower of springs or catching fire. There was just... calmness.
I ordered a breakfast so English it still believes we can win the world cup and a coffee so strong it was doing chin ups in the mug. The waitress was unimpressed. She wrote down that I wanted a farmhouse breakfast and a white Americano. It was raining outside, but that did not make the moors and the glens any less beautiful.
I slowly came to the conclusion that possibly, maybe, just maybe Clarumcoma was right. I needed this. I needed peace. I needed space. I needed time. Dad could look after the bears for a while. He had raised me and deal with the bears and run his little theatre at the end of the pier, so he was an old hand. Mrs Sussex was still there, she looked after the bears every day. And her dad Clarumcoma was sprightly for an old guy so he was able to lend a hand.
They would be fine with out me. Right?
I took out my phone and checked my messages. No emergencies yet. I checked the news. Cthulhu had yet to stomp across Eternity and the town had not been hit by a stray comet. The bears were not in the headlines so they probably hadn't done anything that could not be coped with. I smiled as the plate of food arrived and started to sip my coffee.
“Brilliant.” I said. I stopped myself. Don't say it. Don't even think it. Don't tempt fate. Do not say aloud that there is an absence of ursine trouble makers. I stopped and looked around me, just to be sure.
I was alone. The rest of the holiday makers were finishing up, or lost in their books. Wow. I could do this. I could walk into the village, find a second hand book and sit all day in the lounge with hot coffees reading. I could go for a walk. I could find a museum. Or... I reached into my wallet for the battered old leaflet that Clarumcoma had given me. He had been sure I would like the old house a few miles across the bleak moors. A grand pile hidden in a nook or cranny of a valley. Somewhere with history that was open to the public.
It had a mystery too. Clarumcoma had not mentioned that, but he knew full well it would sell the idea to me. Because who does not love a mystery. I ate, I drank the coffee, I collected my satchel and made my way down to the front lobby. I smiled at the girl behind the desk.
“Hey there.” She said.
“You okay?” I said gently. “You look...?”
“Bad night.” She said. “I was stuck here and that means my husband is left with the kids, and the flu is back again. You know how it is. All the vaccines and the medicine and the doctors still can't do anything. I can't remember the last time there wasn't somebody ill around town. But my Bob had to look after little Dave all night and she was having nightmares. Again. Funny how nightmares come with every bug eh?”
“I guess.” I said. She looked haggard, and flu was not to be trifled with, but it seemed strange to talk like it was a constantly looming threat. Like the reaper was walking abroad at night.
“Not even like they actually diagnose anything. Symptoms of life they call it, but it's obviously flu right? Just because they can't find the virus or the disease or something. Last doctor said it was stress, and psycho something.”
“Psychosomatic?” I offered, then rapidly changed the subject. “Nobody left any messages for me did they?” I said. “Nothing weird or...”
“No.” She shook her head. “Going anywhere nice?
”
“Shadowbrook house.” I said.
“Wow. Good choice.” She grinned with the forced enthusiasm of a paid employee. It froze. “Mister King, you were, er, talking in your sleep. The night porter was a little worried. He never had kids so isn't used to the monster under the window or whatever.”
“Oh?” I tried to laugh it off. “What was it...?”
“You were having nightmares. But you don't need to. There are no be-” She started to say. I put a finger on her lips.
“Don't say it.” I whispered. “Don't think it. Just don't. Or...” I glanced around in a way that desperately assured her I was in need not only of a holiday but a tin foil hat and possibly medical attention. “There will be.”
She smiled, shook her head and told me to have a nice day.
I groaned. She had thought it. She had a thought in her head that there were no bears here. She would probably, as soon I walked out of the lobby she would probably tell her friend in the office that she felt sorry for me. That I screamed out in the night I wanted the bears to leave me alone. That there were no bears here. And then there would be.
I stopped as I stepped outside and looked at my phone. I clicked it to one of the apps and set a countdown. I was up at the other end of the country. I was somewhere not easily reached by a motorway and some distance from an A-road. None of the bears knew where I was. There were repairs being made to the railway mainline over the weekend.
I had maybe seven hours. Then my holiday would be over. I set the reminder for a seven hour countdown. Then I went to solve a mystery.
*
I was stood at Shadowbrook. Not in the manor house, but on the bridge too the manor house. The one that crossed the narrow but deep valley at the bottom of which was the brook for which the house was named. The house was tall, wide, more imposing than you should have been able to fit into the modest grounds. It was a ramshackle hodge-podge of building styles and design, none of which quite managed to fit together and all of them looking like they were on the verge of falling apart at the seams.
The bridge was old and simple, built from cold grey stone. Tall, flat walls on each side. I stood in the middle, rocking on my heels on the cobbles and looking up at the sky. The bridge was called The Precipice. There was something odd about the sound when you stood right there in the middle of the bridge. Stand either side of the bridge and you could hear the distant rumble of traffic, the call of birds and the gurgling of the brook. Stood here though and you could hear nothing. Silence. A peace that seems to be ever so slightly disjointed from the world.
Even if you don't know the history of the bridge, you know that people died here.
I turned and walked towards the entrance to the manor. I bought myself a ticket and a guide book, I followed the little arrows and did not cross the velvet ropes. I made my way up to the tower. I know, I was doing a disservice to a stately home full of history and antiques, with a wonderful collection of execution weapons and perhaps the most beautiful collections of theatrical posters known to man. But there was that thing that Clarumcoma had told me about. The thing that convinced me to have a holiday.
The same week the Titanic sank the Precipice claimed it's first mysterious victim. There had been people who fell and who met unfortunate ends on the bridge in the few centuries it had stood there, but it was not until the nineteen-tens that the sporadic accidents on the slippery bridge in a rainy part of the country were transmuted into legends. The last Lord Shadowbrook locked himself in the highest room in the tower, known as the mirror room. He locked the door from the inside and spent all night studying old papers.
The next dawn he was on the bridge, looking as though he had fallen from the heavens and crashed into the unmoving stone. The case had been investigated and no cause could be found. In the thirties a spiritualist medium had tried to investigate. She had at one point stayed in the mirror room, sure that it was the key to the mystery. The next morning she too was found on the bridge having suffered a very, very long fall. In the seventies a TV producer had become interested, sure that there was some kind of portal in the mirror room. He had, somehow, convinced himself that he had calculated the exact height from which the victims had fallen and it was the same height as the tower. Having heard that one of the ancestral owners of the manor was the kind of person who dabbled in black magic and alchemy he was sure there was some artefact that transported people a few hundred yards sideways so they dropped onto the bridge.
Back around nineteen twelve, when the Shadowbrook line came to an end, Clarumcoma Sussex had investigated. That was not his name back then, he made that name up when I hired him because the world thought he was dead and he was happy to stay that way. He was somebody else. A lot less wrinkled, a lot less leathery and older than should have been possible given he still draws breath. In the photos he had shown me he looked to be in his late fifties but was probably already much older than that. He had dressed like he should have been shooting grouse, dark tweeds with leather patches on the arm. His hair gave the impression it had been blonde in his youth, darkened to a rusty brown as an adult, then begun to lighten towards grey as he got older.
He had investigated for three weeks and had looked into the case again and again as the years went by, never quite finding a logical explanation. So he had decided that maybe discounting the impossible had been a mistake. Which was probably why he asked me to look at it. The Sussex family did not like unanswered questions, and I tend to dabble in the impossible a little too often.
The stairs to the top of the tower were steep and narrow. The door to the Mirror Room heavy, with locked and bolts operated from within. I stepped inside. The room was well named. Inside was a desk looking out of a tall and wide window, a couple of other pieces of furniture and an awful lot of mirrors. They stood on the shelves, hung on the walls and were bolted to the ceiling. I could feel the anguish and pain of Doreen staring at me from every direction. I could feel nothing else.
I glanced around at the mirrors, my hands dug into my hair as I tried to avoid her gaze. My trainers squeaked on the wooden floor as I turned on my heels looking for somewhere I would not have to see her. My eyes fell on the tall dress mirror. I was alone in the reflection. There were other little differences. The small clock did not tick in the reflection. I held my breath and cleared my head.
“So, three people came up here looking for a mystery and those three died a strange way.” I muttered. “So maybe those are the three that found something.” I ran my fingers around the frame of the dress mirror. Something clicked and it swung away like a door. I opened it to reveal a tight staircase covered in spiders webs and dust. I was in no rush to go up there just yet. I hung back and looked at the dress mirror. There was a series of runes inscribed on the back side. No portal to magically drop me over the bridge.
I took a look around. There were no members of staff to stop me, so I stepped into the secret passage and started walking up the stairs. I dug a small torch from my pocket, flicked it on to cast the ethereal white light from the LEDs before me, then I closed the mirrored door behind me. The air was thick and musty, undisturbed for so long. I wondered if the runes had been there to somehow camouflage the door, to prevent detection even when knew there must be a door.
The steps emerged to a cramped room with a stone altar and a work bench. There was a fairly substantial tool kit for a skilled magician in the room, but it was buried under set dressing and tat. The useless bunk was almost overwhelming, the black crystals and blood red candles, the jars full of pickled eyeballs. Somewhere under it all was a set of scribes for a magic circle and some totems to amplify will power. I took a packet of salt from my pocket and tore off the corner. I tipped it into the air and watched as the grains flowed like metal attracted to a magnet. There was no breeze but the salt drifted and settled on a battered wooden sideboard. I smiled and crouched by the sideboard. It was the least dusty item in the room, so it should have cried out to me anyway. The splash back of tiles behind the board h
ad been wiped clean a few times. Maybe three times, by three victims. I ran my fingers around the tiles and found the latch. The concealed panel sprung open and the real treasure was revealed. Old coins. Silver ones that had made with a hammer stamp sometime around the Viking invasions. They were the coins of a warrior sect, marked not with the head of a king but the ring of teeth that was the brand of the cult. One did not fit into the alcove of the velvet cushion any more. It was the largest and heaviest. It had been dented, one half flattened down too thin. It had been mangled and crushed.
But seven coins. Just the right number if you wanted to make a magic circle that way. The permanent kind that left a mark on the floor that could never be removed. It was why the cults used them. They were sponsored by entities from Over There. Not normally a friendly kind like a bear. So they would find a rock or a cave and set out the circle, power it up with a spell or two then burn the circle into the stone floor. The circle could then be activated by bringing one of the coins into it.
I felt my eyes drawn to the large coin. It seemed to glow a little and there was a sound in the air like a choir singing softly. The light glinted on the coin and I could see... Oh I could see so much I could do with that coin. It had to be worth a fortune. I could maybe get a better boiler for the hotel in Eternity, pay for somebody to help look after the bears, or, if I was really lucky, I could get a new van better suited to enduring the bears. Something military?
I blinked the thoughts away. They were not my own. My hand was held out ready to take the coin. It wanted to be taken. I might almost go so far to say it was angry I did not take it. I closed the hatch.
Somebody cleared their throat behind me. I twisted around to see a tall man in a dark jumper and slacks who was framed by the doorway. He had a face that looked like it had been whacked by a spade until all the features was flattened.