Knightley and Son (9781619631540)

by Gavin, Rohan

  “This, Darkus, is the end of the l-line,” said Underwood, as if reading his mind.

  Darkus noticed that the man was now holding a pistol in his hand, and it was pointed directly at him.

  “You shouldn’t have c-come here,” Underwood went on, his eyes floating in the twin whirlpools of his lenses. “This is grown-up business.”

  “I came to get my dad,” insisted Darkus.

  “I warned you that if you proceeded with this investigation, it would mean losing your father all over again. And yet you chose to proceed.”

  Knightley looked up as if to say something, but his head lolled.

  “Alan was perfectly safe until you chose to interfere,” added Underwood.

  Darkus blinked. Inside his head, theories were flaring and exploding. Reason had abandoned him. He struggled to recalibrate his mind. “You took him because he got too close to cracking the case,” said Darkus. “To cracking The Code.”

  “No,” answered Underwood. “It was you who cracked The Code. You who resurrected his ailing career, and remembered the Knowledge he so badly needed. You are responsible for his current situation—no one else.”

  Underwood walked forward to allow another figure to enter through the doorway behind him. It was Presto, balancing something in his hands like a ritual sacrifice. It was a heavy, bulky manuscript, bound in some indeterminate animal skin. For a moment Darkus wondered whether it was in fact human skin. The stiff cover had come away from the spine, which was in tatters. The pages were barely held together, warped and worn by age. Darkus realized this was the original text that the Order of the New Dawn had talked about.

  “The Code was my offering to the Combination,” Underwood went on. “My way in. You see, there was a boy under my care—”

  “I know all about it,” said Darkus.

  “You don’t know everything,” Underwood corrected him. “The boy came to me with behavioral problems, lack of f-focus, that sort of thing. During the course of our sessions he told me about a book he’d discovered. His family was wealthy and powerful. They were collectors. They had come into possession of a certain manuscript . . .” Underwood nodded to the burden in Presto’s hands. “I asked him to bring it to me. The manuscript had no effect on me, but it had the most unusual effect on the boy: he tried to k-kill me. I defended myself, and he fell to his death. I did some research, and realized what I’d stumbled upon. And so it set me on my path, and afforded me entry into a very exclusive organization.”

  “A criminal organization,” said Darkus.

  “The judicial system found me guilty, so I used the manuscript to gain access to an alternative system. One that doesn’t rely purely on reason.”

  “Without reason there’s only madness,” argued Darkus.

  “We’re beyond reason. The Combination doesn’t exclude anyone, or anything, however extraordinary, or supernatural. You might say, we use a combination of everything to succeed.”

  “That still makes you a criminal,” insisted Darkus.

  Underwood didn’t blink. “Crime is only another form of justice. And The Code is the perfect recruiting tool.”

  “You’re endangering innocent people.”

  “I’m inspiring the weak-minded, giving them something to believe in.”

  “That doesn’t explain what you want with my dad.”

  Underwood nodded, continuing his story. “Alan f-found me . . . several months after I was presumed dead. But by that time it was too late. We were on opposite sides of the law. The truth is, I never wanted to harm him. It was Alan who told me about the existence of the Combination in the first place—or his suspicions of it. One day he might have been an asset,” Underwood explained. “So when he found me I didn’t want to kill him, but I couldn’t risk him talking. And that’s when I came up with a solution.”

  Aboveground, Bogna’s phone was ringing off the hook, and she was starting to regret her choice of ringtone—a Polish folk dance was hardly appropriate for the grave circumstances she now found herself in.

  Uncle Bill had called as soon as he woke up, and was now, against doctor’s orders, making the trip to Down Street with every available officer.

  Bogna watched as several white vans pulled up outside the abandoned Tube station. She crossed herself as officers entered the general store and the alley and started testing the strength of the gray security door.

  Inside one of the vans, Bill’s wheelchair was positioned at a control desk, his right arm in a cast, his left leg, also in a cast, extended out in front of him. He peered at a large monitor as a technician worked the keyboard.

  Bill picked up a walkie-talkie with his good hand. “Let me know when we have contact.”

  Chapter 28

  The Open Book

  Darkus was hanging on his godfather’s every word, and Underwood knew it.

  “I used hypnosis to make Alan believe he had never found me. Alan returned to his former life none the wiser, but deep down he knew he had the answer . . . he just couldn’t find it. It made him even more obsessive, even more determined to crack the Combination. It drove him away from Jackie, and away from you. And one day his mind locked up, and he couldn’t handle it any longer. And that’s when he had his episode.”

  Darkus felt a throbbing in his temples as the catastrophizer struggled to process what he was hearing. “It was your fault.”

  “A coma was the safest place for him. While he was asleep, nothing bad could happen to him. Then something woke him up. We may never know what that was,” said Underwood. “He was perfectly safe until you helped him remember.”

  Darkus turned to his father, who was now completely still.

  “He’s in a deep, posthypnotic trance,” Underwood went on. “When he wakes up, he won’t remember a thing: not this case, not your budding partnership. You, on the other hand . . . You’re the only one left with the Knowledge. Which means you’ll have to be consigned to history along with it. You were last seen entering a disused Tube station. No one will be surprised when an accident befalls you on the tracks.” Underwood nodded to the manuscript in Presto’s hands. “You know, there is something to that book. In the last few minutes, I haven’t stuttered once.”

  Darkus lifted his father’s chin, looking into his eyes, but they remained defiantly, terminally closed.

  “Dad,” he said, his own eyes welling up. “Talk to me.” He shook him, but Knightley wouldn’t wake up. Darkus sank to his knees, resting his head on his father’s arm, detecting the familiar smell of his shirt cuff, feeling the familiar rhythm of his chest heaving and falling—but his father was as lost to him as he’d ever been. “Please . . .”

  All of a sudden, Knightley’s body seemed to sense the proximity of his son, as if Darkus had an even stronger gravitational pull than the hypnosis. Knightley’s nostrils flared, his brows knitted, and his ears lifted—all unbeknownst to Darkus, whose face was buried in his father’s argyle sweater. Yet these subtle facial movements were as significant as a drowning man fighting his way back to the surface.

  Darkus heard the whistle from his father’s nose get quicker and looked up, daring to deduce what it might mean. “Dad?” he whispered.

  “Yes-yes,” Knightley answered, as if something deep inside him couldn’t refuse his son’s wish.

  At that moment, an announcement crackled over the station’s public address system: “This is SO 42. We have ye surrounded. Release the Knightleys and exit the station with yer hands in the air,” Bill’s voice went on. “I repeat: we have ye surrounded . . .”

  Underwood turned in the direction of the announcement. Presto frowned and exchanged a glance with him.

  But neither of them noticed the manuscript in Presto’s hands. The pages began to riffle from top to bottom, like a wave breaking. The leathery cover creaked and flew open. Presto looked down, his eyes widening, as the book appeared to tremble.

  Darkus stood up, feeling a vibration moving through the ground, affecting the whole station, pushing him off balanc
e.

  “It’s just a train,” said Presto, trying to convince himself.

  Knightley looked up, his eyes trying to focus. “No . . . ,” he said. “It’s the book . . .” He turned to Darkus. “We have to get out of here, Doc.”

  “We’re not finished,” said Underwood, raising his pistol, but the vibration made it impossible to aim.

  “The book’s more than just a trick of the eye. The Order was right—it brings death and damnation,” Knightley rattled on, as if to himself. “Don’t you see? It always does!”

  “It’s a train,” repeated Presto, a little too vehemently.

  “You’re only its custodian, Morton,” shouted Knightley. “It’s an ancient evil. Can’t you see? It’s protecting itself!”

  The curved station walls started shaking. The gray switching box came off its hinges and fell to the floor, narrowly missing Tilly, who was sleeping soundly from her concussion. A gust of wind crept in, ruffling clothes and hair. Underwood spun around. The door in the center of the wall flew open, exposing the train tracks beyond the platform, where the eastbound and westbound tunnels met side by side. The gale picked up strength, whirling dust and tearing gray paint flakes from the walls.

  Darkus shielded his eyes, picked up the stiletto knife, and cut through Knightley’s bindings.

  Presto looked down at the book, which was now thumping and bouncing in his hands. Without warning, his fingers went rigid, as if the manuscript were on fire. “Ouch!”

  He dropped it with a dull thud and started blowing on his hands, in a parody of a man searching for a bucket of cold water. He screamed and kicked the book toward the open door.

  “No . . .” shouted Underwood.

  The manuscript seemed to fly out through the doorway, picked up by the wind, which was swelling into a tornado.

  Knightley staggered to his feet as the chair was knocked over and blown clattering across the room. Presto didn’t wait around to witness any more. He dashed for the side door and vanished through it.

  Underwood stared into the central doorway, entranced, his eyes bigger than ever. The wind rippled his clothes, as if something inside him was tearing and struggling to get out.

  “N-no—” he muttered, and went after the manuscript, descending a short set of metal stairs onto the tracks.

  “Morton!” Knightley shouted after him.

  But his old friend didn’t listen. Underwood’s face was that of a man possessed. He had the same slack-jawed expression that characterized the faces of miners during the gold rush, or politicians eyeing the seat of power. It was an age-old expression of greed and avarice, and it made Darkus realize that Underwood was deeper under the book’s spell than anyone else.

  The manuscript bounced lightly along the tracks like a paper bag in the breeze. Underwood stumbled after it, crossing from the siding onto the main track.

  The seismic rumbling through the earth reached a deafening climax as an eastbound train sped through the tunnel, past the room and within inches of Underwood . . . decimating the manuscript.

  Underwood was thrown to the ground by the force of it, the lenses in his glasses shattered, and he began crawling along the opposite set of tracks. He struggled to his feet, hopelessly grasping at the strewn pages.

  Knightley shielded Darkus’s eyes as the rumbling continued unabated—they both knew full well what was coming next. Darkus peered through his father’s fingers.

  A split second later, the Knightleys flinched in unison as a westbound train sped past in the opposite direction, running over the book a second time and soundlessly swallowing up Underwood—leaving no trace of him in its wake.

  The manuscript pages flew around the tunnel like a crazed flock of sparrows, soaring and diving. The tails of both trains vanished into the tunnels, leaving a whirling tower of paper, like the column of a storm. For a moment, it seemed to take on the appearance of a gaping skull.

  The Knightleys stood together, braced against it, their clothes and hair windblown. Darkus pinned his hat onto his head with one hand. The rumbling died down and the wind abated, only to go into reverse, like the thrusters of a jet engine on landing.

  “Hold on!” shouted Knightley over the mounting roar. “It’s not over yet—”

  Darkus’s hat took flight and billowed through the doorway onto the tracks.

  Knightley held Darkus tight as the air was sucked out of the room and down the tunnels by the departing trains, threatening to take them with it. Their shoes slid over the concrete floor, carrying them toward the doorway and the same fate as Underwood.

  The dust and paint flakes dislodged by the first gale were now swirling around them as debris was vacuumed into the tunnels. The switching box clattered and rolled across the room, then took flight. Tilly regained consciousness as she began to travel across the floor after it. She immediately extended her feet and wedged herself into a corner.

  The Knightleys weren’t so fortunate, finding themselves in the eye of the storm, drawn toward the doorway, deprived of oxygen and unable to breathe.

  “Dad?”

  “Close your eyes, Doc,” Knightley shouted over the din.

  Darkus obeyed him without question and clamped his eyes shut. It was at that moment—in the reddish blackness of his closed lids—that his mother’s words returned to him.

  “Evil doesn’t exist unless you believe in it.”

  He heard her voice clearly. He could almost see her holding her mug of tea.

  “If you don’t believe in it, it has no power.”

  Darkus repeated the phrases over and over in his head above the roar. He felt his father’s arms around him, and his mother’s words in his head, and although they were being pulled toward certain doom, he felt safe. In his world, at that moment, there was no room for evil.

  At the same moment, the signal lights over the train tracks flicked from green to red. With a series of loud mechanical clicks, the same thing happened all along the line. The tunnels that stretched into the distance were suddenly bathed in a warm glow. The rumbling receded to an eerie stillness; the wind reduced to a soft breeze.

  Tilly got to her feet, rubbing her head, unsure of what had just happened. Darkus opened his eyes to find the tracks empty. There was no sign of the manuscript, or of Underwood. The station was deathly quiet once more. He looked up to his dad for confirmation.

  “Let’s go home,” said Knightley, taking Darkus’s hand in one of his, and Tilly’s in the other, and leading them out.

  They made their way to the end of the platform and followed a faded sign that read: to the street. An artistically rendered arrow led to a tall spiral staircase with a well-preserved cartouche that read: way out. After one hundred and three steps, they reached a doorway to the outside world.

  Chapter 29

  Quality Time

  The remaining half of the semester proceeded without incident. The hoodies continued to lurk at the back of the room, making disparaging remarks about Darkus’s name. Darkus continued to deflect them, practicing peaceful engagement. It was as if the recent events involving shadowy crime organizations, and possibly supernatural forces, had never happened.

  And so, with the inevitable pomp and expectation, Christmas rolled around. Despite heavy snowfall, buses and trains were still running, and most people had forgotten about the freak tornado that had affected parts of the Piccadilly line several weeks earlier. The phenomenon was put down to an air-pressure problem in the Underground rail network, and the relevant transport safety organizations assured the public that repairs were under way. Rumors of passengers seeing people, including children, playing by the tracks around the time of the incident were put down to urban legend, although one of Darkus’s female classmates happened to be on the Tube at the time and swore she caught a glimpse of someone matching his description. Darkus laughed off the idea, but wasn’t sure how convincing he’d been.

  Meanwhile, consumers who were scouring bookstores in search of the popular bestseller The Code were disappointed
to find that stocks had inexplicably dried up. Even e-book readers found only a dead link. A week later a newspaper reported that a lawsuit had indefinitely suspended publication of the book due to a copyright issue. Ambrose Chambers could not be reached for comment. However, the publisher would not rule out the possibility of a sequel.

  On the home front, Darkus tried to return to some semblance of “normal.” His father was living at his office on Cherwell Place, being well fed and cared for by Bogna, who was also taking a self-defense course in her spare time. Darkus wasn’t happy about being returned to his former domestic situation and had the nagging suspicion that the investigation with his father was a one-off that wouldn’t be repeated. They had never spoken about the case again. They had never discussed whether the book was responsible for the disturbance in the tunnel, or whether it was just the trains. (Darkus already knew what his father’s answer would be, and there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove it either way.) They also hadn’t talked about the fact that Presto and Chloe were still unaccounted for. Nor the fact that Tilly would not stop until she found every member of the Combination and exacted her punishment. More than ever, Darkus understood that this was less the end of one case than the beginning of another.

  He could at least relax in the knowledge that his father was alive and well, and only an hour and a half away by London cab.

  Clive continued his efforts at self-improvement, this time from a court-ordered stay at a trauma clinic in Staffordshire, practicing what Jackie diplomatically referred to as R & R. A junior presenter was standing in for him on Wheel Spin, and the official reason for his being off the air was a cranial injury sustained during a high-speed test-drive.

  Tilly willingly returned to Cranston as a day pupil and completed her coursework with flying colors, defying her teachers’ expectations. She was even rumored to be in the running for student council. Miss Khan never reported the theft of the asthma inhaler, fearing accusations that she had inadvertently put her pupils’ welfare at risk. Instead, Tilly negotiated a plea bargain, in which she apologized to Miss Khan for the theft, suggested future improvements, and they agreed to keep it their secret.