by Adam Slater
They picked their way through the overgrown graves until they came to the church.
‘It was round here that I saw him,’ whispered Callum. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
Melissa nodded, swallowing hard. Callum gave her a tight smile and they stepped round the corner of the church.
Jacob was standing by the ancient yew tree, bathed in the moonlight. The gigantic black Grim, Doom, sat on his haunches at Jacob’s heel. They looked as if they’d been waiting there ever since the day the Victorian photographer had tried to capture their image with collodion and silver nitrate. As Jacob caught sight of Callum, the faintest trace of a smile played on his lips, but when Melissa stepped into view he frowned.
‘She is a mortal,’ said Jacob accusingly.
‘So am I,’ Callum answered fiercely.
‘You know well what I mean. She’s not a chime child. She has no connection to the Netherworld. She should not be here.’
‘Why not?’ Callum stood his ground. ‘She lives in Marlock too. Maybe her ancestors are buried in this churchyard.’
Melissa moved closer to Callum’s side.
‘Are you talking to him – to the ghost? Is he here now?’ She drew a sharp breath. ‘Can you see the Grim?’
Callum gave a curt nod. ‘Jacob’s unhappy that you’re here,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to insist.’ He turned back to Jacob.
‘Melissa’s a translator,’ Callum told him. ‘She’s not of your world, but she understands it. More than that – she’s fluent in it. I can see things she can’t, but I don’t know what they are. Melissa knows their names. She knows how things work. She’s told me more than you have, and more clearly. She can help.’
Jacob paused, and looked Melissa up and down suspiciously. After a moment he said with disdain, ‘Will she scream and run if she sees me?’
Callum carefully repeated the question, to warn Melissa. ‘Will you scream and run from Jacob?’
Melissa gave a snort. ‘Would I be here if I was going to scream and run? I – Oh.’
Jacob tilted his head towards Callum with a wry smile.
‘She can see me now.’
‘Is the Grim yours?’ Melissa asked softly, and it took Callum a stunned moment to realise that she was addressing the question directly to Jacob without showing any further surprise or fear. The great black dog stared back at Melissa, its eyes glowing like redhot coals in the darkness.
‘Doom goes with me where I go,’ Jacob answered briefly. ‘I do not own him. Come with me into the church and we can talk. You are not safe, walking abroad in this wood, either by daylight or in moonlight. Come inside.’
Doom suddenly loped forward. Callum couldn’t help but flinch as the gigantic hound passed them in a rush of icy wind. Melissa took a firm grip on Callum’s elbow, and they passed through the doorway of the ruined church together, Jacob following behind.
The floor of the roofless building was a tangle of weeds and nettles. A narrow path wound towards the gaping black hole of a doorway that led to the tower stairs. Doom stopped halfway along this path and turned around. Jacob joined him.
‘This is no longer a true sanctuary,’ Jacob said, ‘but as long as the moonlight falls on the altar steps, it holds a memory of its sacred past, and evil spirits will think twice before they enter here.’
Jacob’s depthless eyes pinned Callum with a piercing stare. ‘I know you think I am likely evil too. When last we met, you banished me from your home and accused me of murder. So tell me – what has brought you back to us so fearlessly now?’
Callum threw open his hands in frustration. Wasn’t it obvious?
‘The dark reflection.’
Doom growled, low in his throat, like the distant rumble of thunder. Jacob laid a gleaming white hand on the huge dog’s black head.
‘You have seen it?’ Jacob asked seriously.
‘It killed a boy at our school.’
‘Have you seen it?’ Jacob insisted.
‘It came into the garden last night,’ Callum said in a hushed voice. ‘It had no face, but then it took my face. What is it?’
‘It is a Fetch,’ said Jacob. ‘A demon from the Netherworld. And it has crossed into the world of daylight with bold impudence. It is a fearsome hunter, a tracker without parallel.’
‘A Fetch!’ Melissa cried. ‘Of course – how stupid of me! “The dark reflection”!’
‘You know it?’ Jacob asked in surprise.
‘I know of it,’ Melissa answered. ‘I should have recognised it when Callum talked about it at my house earlier. But I was still so shocked about Ed, and worried about Callum being accused of murder, I just didn’t make the connection. Some translator I am! I know exactly what you’re talking about. They call a Fetch “the dark reflection” because it doesn’t have a face of its own, so if it wants to pass for a human it has to take on someone else’s face and form. It can’t even make up its own idea of a face – it has to use the face of someone it’s seen before. And . . .’
She turned to Callum in excited triumph.
‘It has a weakness!’ she exclaimed. ‘You can catch a Fetch off guard by showing it its own true reflection: it hates to look at its unmasked skin.’ Melissa shivered, and hopped from foot to foot a couple of times. It was growing colder. ‘It’s in my book, that dictionary I showed you.’
Jacob nodded, his hand still buried in Doom’s dark fur. ‘You are quite some translator,’ he said. ‘A human girl who can tell the Fetch’s weakness? A rare thing indeed.’
‘The Fetch ate . . .’ Callum swallowed and tried again. ‘The boy it killed, it ate his eyes. Why does it do that?’
Jacob’s mouth narrowed with distaste.
‘The eyes of its victims give the Fetch its power,’ he explained. ‘But there is another reason too. Some people believe that, after death, the eyes of a murder victim hold an image of the true face of their killer, seeing them for what they really are. It is an old myth, but I think there is some truth to it. The Fetch blinds its victims so that it does not have to look at its own reflection in their dead eyes.’
Callum couldn’t repress a shudder.
‘But why is it here?’
Jacob bowed his head. ‘It is hunting the chime children. There have never been many of our kind. Now there are fewer still. You may be the last chime child, Callum – the last living.’
Callum shook his head.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that now the Fetch is hunting you alone. You are its final victim. It will not rest until it has tracked you down and satisfied its hunger with your eyes.’
Chapter 21
The easy catch outside the school has whetted the Hunter’s appetite. It has never felt more alert: its senses at their peak, its awareness of the real quarry electrifying. It knows where the boy is, knows exactly where to find him.
The Hunter tracks silently through the trees towards the abandoned church. The trail is clear and sharp. The Hunter does not need moonlight to find the way, but it enjoys the blue glow that will illuminate the terror on the boy’s face when he is finally caught. The game has gone on long enough.
The Hunter arrives at the church. But the quarry is not alone. There is a mortal girl there too. She is no matter, but there are other, more potent, beings as well: creatures of the Netherworld, an unusual ghost and a spirit hound. The ghost is speaking to the mortal children as if they share the same world.
The Hunter would rather not let these others watch it feed – a ghost will not scream and flee in terror of the Hunter as a living being will, and a Churchyard Grim is a formidable opponent. The Hunter does not fear such things; it does not understand fear, though it is amusing to see it in mortals. Still, for now the Hunter is outnumbered. Very likely it will not be able to take its prey by surprise here. The boy must be lured to his own, carefully guarded dwelling place, where the ghosts cannot enter.
The Hunter knows how it can cross that charmed threshold. It only needs an
invitation. And it is already masked with the boy’s own face.
The Hunter smiles with its borrowed mouth. It passes by the church without any further hesitation.
It heads towards the lighted cottage.
Chapter 22
Doom growled.
It was the same sound the great dog had made when Jacob first mentioned the Fetch, beginning low in the hound’s deep chest and rising to a dull roar. Then Doom spun round and snapped his long, white fangs. He took a few steps towards the western end of the church, where the dark tower squatted, and stopped, sniffing the air. The growl rose again in the beast’s throat as he gazed piercingly at the church wall, as though he could see or sense something beyond it.
‘Doom,’ Jacob said in his echoing voice, and the dog turned a querying head to look at his master. ‘Let. Sit. These mortal beings are safe enough here for the moment.’
Doom whined. It, too, was a fearful sound, like the wail of a man being tortured. Melissa covered her ears.
‘Quiet, Doom,’ Jacob ordered. ‘Guard the door, if you must. I have urgent business with the chime child.’
Doom slunk to the door in a rush of shadows and spread his enormous body at full length across the ruined threshold of the church. Callum felt increasingly trapped; not only was he surrounded by the church’s stone walls, but the entry was blocked by the waiting Grim.
Jacob’s bloodless lips quirked suddenly into his faint, wry smile.
‘You still fear we mean you harm.’ It wasn’t a question.
Callum took a deep breath. ‘You’ve agreed to trust Melissa. I’ve agreed to trust you. We’re even.’
Jacob nodded. ‘Good. Let me tell you what I am.’
‘We’re listening.’
The pale ghost looked away. He stood casually, with his gleaming white hands hidden in the invisible pockets of his trousers. His unwillingness to face Callum and Melissa as he spoke gave Jacob an air of embarrassment, as if he was sharing a shameful secret.
‘I said that you may be the last living chime child,’ he said slowly. ‘But there are others. Others like me. I too came into this world in the chime hours, but not as one of the living. I was stillborn, dead at the moment of my birth. I am the ghost of a child who never lived, born more than a hundred years ago. I am one of the Born Dead.’
Jacob’s shoulders rose and fell in a silent sigh. ‘Because I never drew breath, I was buried unbaptised, in the unconsecrated plot beyond the yew tree. But my mother named me Jacob. My name is all she gave me.’
‘But if you’re the ghost of a baby, how come you look like you’re our age?’ asked Callum.
‘The Born Dead are given the power to choose their shape,’ explained Jacob. ‘I chose this – the form of the boy I would have grown into had I lived.’
‘You’re bleeding,’ Melissa interrupted faintly.
A line of black blood trickled, glistening, down Jacob’s throat. The ghost frowned, and swiped the blood on to his fingers.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I can’t control it. An echo of my birth, perhaps . . .’
Melissa and Callum exchanged horrified glances in the dim light. Jacob held up his hand and the blood slowly faded away.
‘So what does it mean to be one of the Born Dead?’ asked Melissa. ‘I’ve never heard of you before.’
‘We haunt the boundaries between the Netherworld and the realm of the living, belonging neither in one world nor the other. It is a lonely business. When I first found myself to be a waking spirit, I raised this dog’s shade from its grave to be my companion.’ Jacob cast a glance at Doom, crouched by the church door. The great beast seemed unaware his master was talking about him. ‘It caused a deal of upset in the village. No one even knew Nether Marlock had a Church Grim before I summoned the dog’s spirit. But I needed a companion. And a Grim is a formidable foe against the demons of the Netherworld. Doom is my protector, as he protects all the humans buried in this churchyard; and he will protect you, too, if I command it.’
‘But what does this have to do with the Fetch?’ Callum asked.
Jacob turned to look at Callum and Melissa directly. Then he held out his long white hands, palms facing upwards.
‘Touch me,’ Jacob commanded.
Callum and Melissa glanced at each other in alarm.
‘Can we?’ Melissa said. ‘If you’re a ghost, we shouldn’t be able to, right?’
Jacob nodded.
‘Well, there you are,’ she said without conviction.
‘Try.’
Melissa raised her hand tentatively. Then she reached toward Jacob’s palm and laid her hand against it.
‘Oh!’
She jumped as though she’d received a jolt of electricity through her whole body, but she kept her palm held steadily against Jacob’s.
‘Should that happen?’ Melissa whispered.
Jacob looked at Callum, the tilt of his head challenging. He shook the long, black hair out of his face.
‘Go on.’
Callum laid his living hand against the ghost’s dead palm.
It was cold. But Callum could feel it, the shape of it – dry, lifeless skin without any heat of its own. It wasn’t a repellent touch, not clammy or icy, just lifeless, like a handful of dead leaves.
‘How?’ Callum croaked. ‘I’ve never been able to touch a ghost. How are we able to touch you?’
‘Once in a century, this happens.’ Jacob spoke quietly, but his bell-like voice was no less commanding. ‘Once every century, for thirteen months – a year by the moon’s clock – comes a time called the Shadowing.’
Callum’s heart skipped a beat. ‘The Shadowing . . .’
‘You have heard the word before?’ Jacob’s expression was surprised.
‘Not till tonight. My gran mentioned it, but she wouldn’t tell me what it meant. She said it was dangerous.’
Jacob nodded. ‘It is. More dangerous than you can possibly imagine. While the Shadowing lasts, the boundaries of your mortal world and the Netherworld are weakened.’
‘The Netherworld – the world of the dead?’ Melissa asked.
‘Some of the dead dwell in the Netherworld,’ Jacob answered. ‘But they are not its only inhabitants. The Netherworld exists alongside the mortal world; its creatures unseen and invisible to mortal eyes. Not just the spirits of the dead, but also beings of magic and evil. Demons. Monsters. When the boundaries between the worlds are weak, the beings of the Netherworld can cross the border between the worlds and enter the realm you know.’
‘And we can touch,’ Melissa said in wonder.
Jacob nodded. ‘The Shadowing is not upon us yet, but it is close, and as I am a boundary-dweller, it is already affecting me – just as it has been affecting you, Callum.’
‘What does it have to do with me?’ said Callum.
‘Your powers have been given to you for a reason,’ replied Jacob. ‘The power to see the dead, to sense evil, to resist magic. You are a warrior, Callum. You and every other chime child. You are the guardians of the boundary. It is your fate to protect this mortal world from the dark forces that threaten it.’
Callum closed his eyes, blotting out Melissa’s amazed expression. A warrior? How could he be a warrior?
‘But you said this happens every century, the Shadowing,’ he said in a low voice. ‘What’s so different about this time?’
‘This time,’ Jacob said, his voice suddenly fierce, ‘there is a conspiracy. A plot between the demon powers of the Netherworld and the evil-doers of this. The Shadowing has not yet begun – the Fetch could not have crossed into the mortal realm without help from this side. And why is it only killing chime children? A Fetch can take any child, any human, and yet this one is picking and choosing its prey. It is no glutton – it is a gourmet. An assassin. I think the chime children are being singled out for destruction.’
‘And they’re being killed just before the Shadowing begins – just when their protection is most needed,’ Melissa said, understanding flooding h
er eyes.
Callum dropped his hand from Jacob’s palm.
‘And why do you care?’
Jacob shrugged. ‘I have no wish to exist in a world dominated by evil, any more than you do. My existence is lonely enough as it is.’ Jacob’s pale lips formed the faint, sad smile that made him seem more human.
Callum turned to look at the great shadow of Doom lying in the doorway.
‘You said that Doom protects you.’
‘Yes. And could protect you, too, if you would accept my help. Together, perhaps, we can defeat the Fetch that stalks you.’ Jacob glanced at Melissa, who still held her palm stalwartly against Jacob’s hand.
‘I’ll help too,’ she said.
Jacob nodded. ‘Translator.’
Suddenly angry, Callum glared at Jacob and Melissa. They seemed to have formed a united front, ready to decide his destiny for him. Rage swelled up in his chest.
‘Why is this my fight?’ Callum demanded. ‘I didn’t ask for this. I hate these so-called chime child powers, I’ve always hated them. Why should I use them for anything?’
‘Callum!’ Melissa swung around to face him in surprise.
‘I mean it. Why am I responsible? I just want to be normal. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’
‘But you aren’t normal, Callum,’ retorted Melissa. ‘You’re special. You have a gift -’
Callum snorted. ‘Some gift. The chance to wage a one-man war against the Netherworld. No thanks.’
Melissa put her hands on her hips. ‘You said you wanted to know what was happening and now you do. The Fetch is here to kill the chime children – all of them. That includes you. Isn’t saving yourself a good enough reason?’
At the very moment Melissa spoke the word ‘yourself’, Callum’s fingers went numb.
He shook his hands in panic, but already the burning pins-and-needles sensation was spreading through his fingertips as though he’d shoved them in a patch of nettles. It was the strongest warning of a premonition that he’d ever had, and the most painful. Then another vision hit him like a block of falling masonry.