by Leo Hunt
“You never told me anything about flashbacks,” Elza says sharply.
“It’s just been dreams. Nothing to worry about.”
“You know you can tell me this stuff, right? You can tell me. I’m your . . . You ought to tell me. This is important.”
“I’m telling you now, Elza. This is me telling you.”
“OK,” she says. “Whatever. Sure. So why now? Why today?”
“I don’t know.”
“No ghosts that you saw? You didn’t hear from . . . you know?”
“Who? My dad?”
“Berkley.”
My dad’s lawyer. The Devil. When I first met him, he — it — had taken the form of a man, Mr. Berkley.
“No,” I say. “Thankfully. Nothing since . . .”
I’m about to say since he came to my house, spoke to Mum, but I never actually told Elza about that. She doesn’t know I’ve still got the Book of Eight, that it’s buried in the corner of the field next to my house. After what happened on Halloween, after we’d won, we were so happy to be alive that I never found the right time to mention it. As the months went by, I just felt like I wanted to put it behind me.
“Well, good,” she says. “The less we hear from him, the better. So nothing at all? Normal Monday morning.”
“There was this girl.”
“What girl?”
“She came in with Holiday. Exchange student.”
“Oh,” Elza says. “Where from?”
“California. She’s called Ash. Five foot nothing, bleached white hair. You haven’t heard about this?”
“Nobody tells me anything around here,” Elza says. “So what did she say?”
“Just said hi and sat down.”
“Well, that hardly sounds very sinister.”
“I suppose not.”
“But you’re OK?” Elza asks again, squeezing my hand.
I kiss her.
“I’m fine,” I say. “It was probably nothing.”
“Yeah,” Elza says. “I just wish . . . I wish you’d never read that Book, Luke. I wish I’d never —”
“If I hadn’t, we’d probably both be dead. We did what we had to.”
We sit together until the noise from the corridor outside fades, and there’s not even the sound of stragglers hurrying in from the far yard.
In the end, I get sent home. Mum comes straight from work to pick me up. I’m actually feeling fine and could probably manage the walk back to Wormwood Drive without help, but I want a day off from school, so I don’t stress this point too much. Mum has a really disconcerting habit of looking you in the eye if you’re having a conversation with her while she’s driving.
“I think it’s because of the meat you eat,” she says as she pulls out of the school parking lot, barely glancing at the road.
“What makes you say that?” I ask.
“Hormones,” Mum says darkly.
Mum’s name is Persephone Cusp (back to her maiden name now that Dad’s gone, although I’m stuck with Manchett), and she’s been making some changes in her life. Back in October, Mum was in a bad way and had been for a long time. She was ill and would spend weeks in bed with headaches, ice pressed to her forehead, curtains drawn. After Halloween, that changed. The doctors, who never seemed to really know what was causing her cluster headaches anyway, call it “an unprecedented recovery.” Personally, I suspect Mum’s wellness is connected to one of Dad’s ghosts — my own brother — who I sent over into Deadside along with the rest of his Host, but it’s not really the sort of thing you can bring up at the hospital.
“They take these poor animals,” she’s saying to me, “and they pump them — are you listening?— they pump them with hormones. It makes them grow faster, get fatter. And the hormones, when you eat meat, they go into you.”
“I need protein for lifting.”
One thing I’ve missed since Halloween: nobody to spot me, and nobody to celebrate my gains. Elza has made it clear she’d rather pierce her eardrums with a pin than listen to me talk about “moving bits of metal around,” and while Mum is less hostile to exercise as a concept, she just fundamentally doesn’t get it.
“You can get protein from beans and lentils,” Mum says.
“I don’t want to eat beans. They’re no substitute for bacon.”
“Well, I don’t know. You can be vegetarian and still eat protein, Luke. And you won’t be supporting the ghastly industrial farming complex.”
“Yeah, I’ll look into it.”
Mum’s weirdness is long-standing and deep-rooted. She’s thin, with straw-colored hair, and a desire to wear ponchos that borders on the disturbing. When she first met Dad, she was permanently barefoot and living in a van.
We drive past the town square. I can see the usual pensioners, ambling around, all dressed in some variant of beige. A mobile-phone salesman having a cigarette outside his shop. A woman with a toddler on an elastic leash. A dead man with bloodstains on his uniform.
I still have second sight; it didn’t vanish along with my Host. Elza says that she thinks once your brain gets used to seeing the world that way — the true way — it’s nearly impossible to go back to how you were before. So I can see dead people. It’s honestly stopped bothering me. They usually just walk around, sit down, stare at nothing. Some of them are a bit gruesome-looking (there’s this one ghost in Brackford who me and Elza call Half Head, for reasons that become obvious as soon as you see her), but they’re really not frightening. It’s better not to let on that you can see them, because they’re usually crazy, or boring, or both. One of the weirder side effects of second sight is that a lot of shows on TV and movies actually have ghosts wandering around during some of the scenes. There’s a discussion thread on the Second Sight Support website Elza posts on devoted to sightings. I watched a football game the other week, and there was a man in what I think was a Civil War uniform standing beside one goalkeeper the whole game, trying to talk to him. It was really distracting.
“Look,” I say to Mum, “I don’t think it had anything to do with being a carnivore.”
“Yes, of course, love,” she says. “Are you feeling OK now?”
“I’m all right. Sort of light-headed. There’s a car coming.”
“I’ll see if you can go to the doctor this afternoon,” Mum says, glancing back at the road just long enough to swerve out of the way.
“What exactly did they say happened?” I ask.
“They said you had a seizure,” Mum says. “Has that ever happened before?”
“No,” I say. “And I don’t think I need to go see anyone. I’m just stressed. Exams.”
Normally, invoking exam stress is a good way to get Mum to forgive me for things, like leaving cereal bowls in my room until the remains dry harder than cement, or forgetting to close the kitchen door before I let Ham back in from the field — which once led to an unfortunate incident where he came in fresh from rolling in cow pies and jumped on her lap while she was wearing cream-colored pants — but it doesn’t seem to be cutting it this time. Mum gives me a sustained and serious look, apparently with full faith that nobody else will want to use either of the lanes on this road in the near future.
“This is really serious, love. You didn’t see any flashing lights? Dark spots?”
“I’m not getting your headaches, Mum.”
“I hope not,” she says. “I’ve just . . . I was always worried that I would give them to you, somehow.”
“Cluster headaches aren’t hereditary,” I say.
“You’re seeing a doctor,” Mum says. “Today, if we can manage it.”
“We’re coming to the intersection,” I say.
“I know,” she says, and brakes with just inches to spare.
I wonder if there is something really wrong with me, but our doctor isn’t going to find anything unusual. I’ll end up getting diagnosed with epilepsy or something else and given pills that will do nothing to solve the problem. I know why I had that blackout: I read the Book
of Eight, and I saw stuff in there that normal people were never meant to see. And it’s still inside my head, festering away in my subconscious, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation. How to deal with that, cure it, I have no idea.
“I suppose,” Mum says, almost to herself, as we make our way along Wormwood Drive, “it might be nothing to do with the meat anyway. It could be because your school’s using those fluorescent lights.”
I decide some questions are better left unasked.
Our place is nothing too fancy: front and back garden, short gravel drive. A few trees, some grass, flowers, the usual garden stuff. Inside we’ve got more fairly normal stuff: carpets, walls, furniture of varying sizes, a large dog. As soon as Mum opens the door, he leaps past her and tries to knock me down. In a friendly way, of course.
“Get down!” I shout. “Ham! No! I’m a sick man!”
Ham yelps with delight and practically somersaults in the driveway. In Ham’s world, me coming home from school a few hours early is like Christmas and his birthday rolled into one. Ham likes eating, sleeping, running in small bursts, being petted, and having his ears rubbed. He doesn’t like the dark, shots, loud noises, vacuums, cats, foxes, fireworks, and people blowing air into his ears while he’s asleep (which, of course, I would never do). He’s lean and gray, with long, smoky hair and big eyes with pupils the color of marmalade. We’ve been partners in crime since I was small, just after Dad left.
“Why don’t you lie down, love?” Mum asks. I don’t need telling twice. I sit down on the sofa and put rugby on. Ham comes and hunkers down in front of me and I rest my feet, still in gray school socks, on the gray fur of his back. He’s warm, and I can feel his heartbeat pulsing up through my toes and into my legs.
Mum gets an emergency appointment with our doctor, and I get a more in-depth version of what happened in the nurse’s office this morning: light shone in my eyes, lots of questions. He asks if this has ever happened before; I say no. In the end, we get an appointment with some specialists at the hospital next Monday to get a brain scan, and Mum takes me home.
I lie down and watch more TV and try not to think about everything that happened today: Ash and Holiday, Mr. Hallow, Elza, the shapes that I saw in my mind’s eye when I looked at the triangle on the board. I just want to relax and ignore that small abrasive voice in my head that tells me something’s wrong, that things are about to change again, that whatever happened this morning is just the start. Ham shifts in his sleep. Despite her earlier objections, Mum makes me a decent pizza, with salami on it.
I lie in bed but I can’t sleep. The sky outside my window is dark and clear, glittering with stars. When I think back to those weeks before Halloween, when my whole life changed, what I remember is gray: overcast skies, the gray clouds heavy with rain, the gray mists that swirled around me and Dad and the Devil on whatever shore we walked upon.
I keep thinking about the Californian girl, Ash. There was something weird about her. The last time I felt this so strongly was when I met my dad’s solicitor, Mr. Berkley, and he turned out to be someone who was very dangerous indeed. I didn’t listen to my intuition then, and it went badly for me. I don’t want to make that mistake twice. There’s something about that girl. She doesn’t fit in at Dunbarrow at all. Why would you go on an exchange to this place? Why would the school agree to it this close to our exams?
I get out of bed and search for “Ashley Smith” online. There’s about a hundred thousand results, none of which gets me anywhere. She certainly isn’t one of the better-known Ashley Smiths. I scroll through the related pictures for a while, looking for a glimpse of her distinctive face and short white hair, but I don’t find anything.
I sit for a moment, my laptop’s fan purring in the dark, my room lit only by the faint creepy light of the screen, and then I search “William Goodman Foundation.”
This time the results lead me somewhere. The foundation has a web page, a bland PR-sanitized white void plastered with stock images and clean blue logos. The foundation is “a nonprofit organization devoted to improving the lives of young people worldwide.” This claim is accompanied with stock photographs of young people laughing in some kind of coffee bar somewhere. Ash is nowhere to be seen. It doesn’t say, anywhere, what the foundation specifically does, or who runs it, or how I might contact the foundation about their activity in Dunbarrow. The website is, essentially, a friendly locked door.
I turn off my laptop and head down to the kitchen. It’s about one in the morning. Ham’s lying in his crate next to the washing machine. He doesn’t get up, but he thumps his tail eagerly as I approach. I kneel down and rub his warm belly.
“All right, boy?” I whisper.
Ham grumbles and rolls onto his back. I sit there, petting him, and think some more. Maybe Elza is right; maybe Ash is just an exchange student, a cheerful Californian transplant. My attack could’ve come at any moment, and might have been brought on by the whiteboard’s geometry alone. Maybe seeing the green pen caused it? The Book of Eight was green, after all. It’s totally possible. Magic, from what little I’ve learned, seems to depend on the movement of the planets and stars. Perhaps they were in a bad configuration, and Ash just happened to walk in with Holiday? Correlation isn’t causation.
No.
There’s something wrong. She knew my name, but I don’t know how. I couldn’t find her online, and the foundation that arranged her trip could be run by anyone. For all I know, this is Berkley again; he (or it) seems to like cloaking his activities in the semblance of human process. He enjoys dressing up as a man, wearing a man’s face, pretending to do a man’s business. From what I’ve seen of him, it would be exactly like the Devil to set up a charity called the Goodman Foundation. I imagine he’d get a big laugh out of that.
I decide to take Ham out and stand under the stars, get some night air. If this really is Berkley again, there’s no way I can avoid what’s coming. He’s not someone you can hide from. If he wants something from me, it can’t be anything good. I’ll just have to be ready and do my best.
Ham hears the jingle as I unwind his leash, and he gets up, grunting, and thrusts his head into my legs. I put on my raincoat and a woolly hat and softly open the door, leading Ham out into the back garden. There’s a fair amount of moonlight, illuminating the stone wall, the garden shed, our apple trees. There’s a crisp, fresh smell in the air. Almost April.
We walk out through the back gate and into the grass field behind our yard, which is occasionally used for grazing sheep. There are tall trees at the far end of the field, coming into leaf after the winter, their long branches dark against the orange city glow on the horizon. Beyond this field are more fields, then trees and wild moorland that stretches on for miles. Somewhere off in the distance, I hear the cry of an owl. Ham, a coward of infamous proportions, whimpers a little, but I pull him onward and he calms down.
After a few minutes’ stroll we reach the far side of the field, the spot where I buried the Book of Eight. The flat stone is still there where I left it, almost five months later. The site is undisturbed. Although I could hardly claim the Book was the greatest source of my problems, it was the first magical thing I ever saw, and it seems to have had the longest-lasting effect on me. I buried it about a foot deep, in a toolbox, along with my dad’s sigil — a strange black ring that was the focus of his magical power — and his other eight rings. That’s where they still are, sleeping down there under the stones and mud and grass.
I don’t quite know why I came out here. I think I wanted to check on the Book, to make sure it had stayed buried. Maybe I thought the plants here would’ve turned black, or the hedge would be growing leaves shaped like pentagrams. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just a field, just a flat stone from our wall.
The owl cries again, louder this time, a haunting, hollow noise. It sends a prickle of fear down my neck. I suddenly feel exposed, out here in the darkness. I’m glad I wasn’t born a field mouse.
Ham, far from mous
e-size, is pressed up close to me. He’s whimpering and whining, quaking against my thigh like a vibrating phone you’re ignoring.
“It’s an owl, boy,” I say. “It’s a bird as big as your head. You’re fine.”
He whines louder. As I look down at him, I realize I can see my breath in the air. There’s a chill around us, a cold that’s reaching down into my guts, my marrow. I’ve felt cold like this before.
I turn slowly, feeling like I’m in a dream, and see a girl standing between us and the house. My heart is thumping, a hard-core rave rhythm, big whooshing bass reverberating up into my chest and skull. Ham snarls, baring his teeth. I can’t make the girl out properly; she’s about halfway down the field, but she’s definitely looking at us. She’s wearing what looks like a short dress, way too skimpy for a clear night like this. She is definitely a ghost.
Like I said, the dead are usually harmless. The town ghosts keep to themselves, don’t usually pay you any attention. Some of them are confused, try and talk to you, asking about buses that stopped running back in 1956 or jabbering about the inheritance that wasn’t divided the way they wanted it to be. That’s annoying, but I can deal with it.
This girl is probably one of them. The ghosts who stick around on earth, in Liveside, aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. Mostly they don’t realize they’ve died, or are too afraid to go onward into Deadside. I feel a bit bad for them, but they’re not scary.
There’s something about this girl that I don’t like, though.
“Toughen up,” I hiss at Ham. “You’re a necromancer’s familiar, remember? You eat ghosts for breakfast. Literally. Let’s get back to the house.” Elza put hazel charms in the bushes to keep my house spirit-free, but their effect doesn’t reach this far out into the field. Even if this ghost does want trouble, we just have to get past her, into the yard.
We make our way toward her. I don’t see any point in trying to be stealthy; she’s clearly seen us. My feet rustle in the grass. The owl calls out again and again in the trees behind us, a mournful siren. The closer we get to the girl, the colder the air becomes. My breath balloons in white clouds.