Secrets were lost, and things were hidden, curses were laid and seeds were sown. Things crept across the boundaries that should not have crept across, and sat in the darkness and waited.
Two
Something was charging at Edward, hurtling through the mist that was as thick as treacle around him, and he couldn’t get out of its way. He thrashed, and woke up gasping, the sick taste of fear still sticking in his mouth, his brain twanging like a trapped nerve. A blurry object juddered into his vision. For a moment he thought it was some demon that had hurtled out of his nightmare … but then it resolved itself into the ordinary face and body of Munro, who slept in the next bed to him. He was tugging at Edward’s duvet.
It was a grim, sluggish day, a sense of foreboding hovering in the air like a vulture.
‘Wake up, Pollock!’ Munro was shouting. ‘Ferrers has already been in. You’re late!’
‘What day is it?’ Edward asked, the words gargling in his mouth. He blinked, two or three times, the dream hot and foaming in his grasp. He still felt he was inside it. This was not unusual, for Edward dreamed a lot: intensely vivid dreams, where every detail was stark and clear, and he could smell and touch what was going on. His dreams were, to tell the truth, mostly about quite boring things like being late for lessons and winning tennis matches; but there were some which were tinged with something darker, where he felt as if he was exposed, and vulnerable, to something he could not define.
‘It’s the greatest day of them all!’ said Munro, who somehow managed to be energetic even at seven in the morning. ‘It’s a wuh-whu-Wednesday! Come on, Pollock, get up!’ He swung his towel around his head, hitting Edward with it, before scampering off in the direction of the bathroom–which was freezing cold, though summer approached.
Edward groaned, rolled over and went back to sleep, until Munro, Peake and the other boys in his dorm turned over his mattress. He got up woozily, put his mattress back on his bed and promptly fell asleep again.
It was Mrs Ferrers the matron who woke him up. ‘How long have you been at Oldstone, Edward?’
‘What?’ he said, muffled by the duvet he’d put over his head.
‘I said, how long have you been at Oldstone?’
Edward pushed back his duvet grumpily.
‘Since I was five. Seven years.’
‘So you’re as well aware as I am that breakfast is at eight o’clock!’
‘Yes, Mrs Ferrers.’
‘So I’d get up if I were you.’ Mrs Ferrers was inclined to be nice to Edward. She remembered him on his first day, as a small, rowdy, gangly boy. Over the years this rowdiness had been distilled into a gentle, faintly rebellious melancholy.
‘Come on, Pollock. Milo’s getting cross.’ Milo was Edward’s hippo. When Edward had first arrived at the Manor, his jacket was about eight sizes too big for him and he still slept with Milo. Milo now sat on Edward’s chair on top of a teetering pile of books.
‘Milo can’t get cross,’ said Edward, though he secretly half-believed that he could, which was why he kept him on his chair. ‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say.’ He patted Milo on the head.
‘Come on, then,’ said Mrs Ferrers, smoothing down the pleats of her dark blue skirt. She always wore a string of pearls, whatever she was wearing; she fiddled with it now, impatiently.
With a groan like a sea monster Edward pulled himself up and out of bed, putting his bare feet on to the floor. It was comfortably, solidly real. He always felt that he stood on the edges of things, that he had some deeper access to what was unseen; to feel the bare carpet beneath his feet reminded him that there was a normal world, and he was in it.
‘Good,’ said Mrs Ferrers, and rustled out of the dorm.
Edward flicked back his blond hair, which was always far too long for his headmaster’s liking. He didn’t like Wednesdays. He dressed, pulling on shorts that were getting too tight for him, struggled into his house shirt, and went gropily down the back stairs to Kakophagy. When he’d first come to the school, he hadn’t known what Kakophagy meant, and no one had explained it to him. He’d worked out, eventually, that it was Greek, and meant ‘bad eating place’, which the boys called the dining hall as a joke.
After breakfast–which was a mess of sausages, black pudding, tomatoes and toast–everybody trailed out round the Manor to line up for assembly in Great Hall. Pushing, shoving, arguing and fighting, the boys were silenced by a look from the headmaster, and, subdued, traipsed in. Today, it being a Wednesday, assembly was given by Mr Flayton, the dullest teacher imaginable.
Edward plonked himself down on a bench after prayers next to his first cousin and best friend, Will Strangore, who looked like a large, cross owl. Flayton began, without any preamble or joke, to talk about the Manor House, which had already been there when the Normans came. He was telling a story about one of William the Conqueror’s knights, who had been so enchanted by the gorgeous lady who lived there that he laid down his sword and married her on the spot.
‘That sucks,’ whispered Edward to Will. It sounded to him like Susan in the Narnia books giving up battles and adventure for lipstick and invitations. He spent the rest of assembly staring glassily at the portraits that hung around Great Hall. There were two in particular that caught his attention today–a large one of a fierce-looking cavalier that hung above the great mantlepiece, and a smaller one of a rather sad-looking gentleman that was almost hidden under the beams. He knew which one he preferred.
Will was covertly reading a science book.
‘You’re such a geek, Strangore,’ said Edward in an unguarded moment, earning him a dirty look from O’Brien the science teacher. As if assembly wasn’t bad enough, Eudoky (which was the reason, Edward had found out, that the dining room was called ‘Kakophagy’–it meant in Greek ‘good teaching place’) had double science that morning. They grabbed their books from their form room, and went up to the lab.
The laboratory was a smelly, tatty building that had been built as a temporary measure thirty years before. But as usual there wasn’t enough money for a new one, though the paint was peeling off and sometimes in winter rain came through the roof and they put a bucket underneath the leak and pretended it wasn’t there.
Mr O’Brien was crazy and slightly suspect. He wore very bright jumpers and had very short, cropped hair which he never allowed to grow any longer.
The two cousins were sitting at the back of the class. Will as usual had got everything right, and Edward was dreamily copying down the results without really thinking about them.
O’Brien’s dog was snuffling around Edward’s feet. The dog was called Imp, short for Imperative, the boys were told, but Edward thought it really was a sort of devil. ‘Imperative’ was one of Mr O’Brien’s favourite words. He was saying it now.
‘It is imperative, boys, that you do not put too much acid in!’
‘That scabby dog!’ muttered Edward. ‘Why does O’Brien let him into lessons?’
He shifted his feet to get rid of the small, yappy instrument of terror which was sniffing round his shoes. It had no effect, except to make Imp growl a little.
‘Don’t move!’ said Will. ‘Don’t forget what happened to Earnshawe.’
‘What happened to Earnshawe?’ asked Edward through gritted teeth, holding himself very still.
‘Imp ate him! Whole. And left nothing but his fingernails. And some toffees which were in his pocket.’
‘Don’t blame him, if they were school toffees!’ They are rank.’ Edward made a gagging movement with his fingers. Imp let out a whimper.
‘Quiet!’ said O’Brien. ‘Or you’re out–with a double kappa!’
(A kappa was a bad mark–short for ‘kakistos’, which meant ‘the worst’ in Greek. The opposite was ‘aristos’, for ‘the best’. The boys called them ‘kaks’ and ‘nobles’ for short; ‘nobs’ for even shorter–especially if someone like Strangore got too many of them. Only the teachers called them kappas and alphas.)
Imp scudded off at the so
und of O’Brien’s voice, back to the feet of his adored master.
‘Wouldn’t be such a bad punishment,’ Edward whispered to Will, and raised a small smile on his cousin’s owlish face. O’Brien’s face darkened, and he began to say something admonitory, but luckily at that moment, Montgomery, who was the bell boy, ran out to signal the end of lessons, and the boys made their slow way down to lunch, dropping their books off at Eudoky on the way.
Edward and Will piled into Kakophagy with all the other boys. The dark, red-painted walls made Edward feel at home–warm and comfortable. Whilst everyone else clattered in noisily, he hovered for an almost unnoticeable moment on the threshold, and filled his lungs with the permanent stale smell of sausages, hot-pots and roast potatoes. The ornately framed portraits of ancient headmasters dead and gone, and boards with the names of old head boys and people who’d won scholarships painted proudly in gold made him feel part of something bigger than himself. One day he hoped to see his name on that board, although he would never admit that, even to Will.
The two boys took their places behind the benches at one of the twenty wooden tables that stood in severe rows. There was a sudden silence as the headmaster, Mr Fraser, said grace in Latin, and then everyone sat down.
Why does O’Brien have to be head of our table, on top of everything else? thought Edward as he pulled out the bench. He looked gloomily at the lasagne which was piled up crustily in a vast vat in front of O’Brien. It looked like it had been scraped out of a prison’s dustbins and dumped back on to the plates, barely warmed up. There were no rats at Oldstone Manor, thought Edward, probably because they were being used for the lasagne. Squirrels too should keep a wide berth of the kitchen.
O’Brien, without even asking, piled up the most enormous heap of steaming, stinking lasagne, before handing it down the table to Edward. He kept his eye on Edward all lunchtime so that he had no chance to scrap it in one of the bowls that stood on the table for that purpose. As Edward was forcing a second, revolting forkful into his mouth, he noticed Mandy out of the corner of his eye. She was the daughter of one of the kitchen staff and went to school in the village. She often came to the Manor at lunchtime to help out her mother, and now she was taking some plates out. She turned round to pick up another and caught his eye, and Edward made a face at her, inadvertently swallowing a huge piece of lasagne that he had been holding in his mouth for quite some time, in the hope that he would be able to spit it out into the scrapping bowl. No such luck, he thought, as he watched Mandy stifle a laugh and head back quickly into the kitchen.
Further down the table, Edward saw the school bully Guy Lane Glover tormenting his cousin Will–punching him under the table, knocking his cutlery off and drinking his water. Will of course would never say anything, which seemed to make Guy torment him more.
But the brightly-sweatered O’Brien continued to watch Edward. He believed that if the boy were given enough football and enough science (and enough lasagne), he would somehow magically come to like them. Aversion therapy, or something like that. All of which meant that on this particular Wednesday Edward had to settle to being linesman at the football match.
Every Wednesday and Saturday there was a match against another school. Rugby and cricket Edward could cope with. Tennis, basketball, hockey–he could even do cross-country running. But football … it seemed to him like an advanced form of torture.
So on this Wednesday, an hour or so after lunch, Edward was reluctantly standing behind the goal, a flag hanging limply in his hand. The large pitches stretched out either side of him. Parents huddled together at one end. In the distance some boys were playing cricket in the nets. Behind him was another field. Third-form boys straggled beside him.
Even though it was May, and the beginning of the Trinity term, there had been a grudge match against their local rivals which had been postponed and postponed until now. There was much honour at stake, and both schools took it seriously. O’Brien was totally caught up in the game, so Edward handed the flag to one of the third formers and began to sidle away. He was standing as far back from the pitch as he could. The shouts and drama of the game already felt distant and unreal. The light, warm drizzle of the late May afternoon was pleasantly dampening his skin.
The morning’s dream was returning to him. He’d had it before. But the dream had always changed to winning the tennis tournament (not likely), or driving a Ferrari (even less likely). This morning it hadn’t. This time it had been so vivid, so frighteningly solid, that Edward had been trembling all day. Something was breaking through the delicate membrane which, unknown to him, surrounded his world.
He was now about twenty feet from the line. There was a field behind him, bounded by a stone wall. He thought he could sneak into it, just for a few minutes, and sample the cool wetness of the grass. He could lie on the ground, listening to the complete and eerie silence, make stories out of the shapes of trees against the skies, and try to unravel the mistiness of the nightmare that haunted him.
Turning his back on the field, Edward looked at the football match. O’Brien wasn’t likely to notice that he’d gone. Oldstone was winning, and O’Brien was too caught up in the game to notice that Edward Pollock, a lowly linesman, had skived off. The ball wouldn’t come his way, anyway. He was behind the home goal end, and all the action was up against the opposition’s.
A scuffle was developing on the pitch between Guy Lane Glover and one of the Southey boys. O’Brien had dived in to stop it, and was giving Lane Glover a good ticking off and threatening him with a yellow card. The noses of the oil-skin wearing parents were all turned to the other end of the pitch. Edward could move away, and get some peace. He chose his moment to escape carefully, and melted quietly, like a shadow into the greater darkness, and disappeared through the gap in the stone wall.
Edward rested against the wall, just on the inside of the field. He felt as if he had slipped into a different world. Light slanted through the clouds, falling through stirring, rustling trees. Tiny splashes of rain made everything look fresh and clean. The sky here seemed to be a different colour, deeper and richer.
The tracings of the trees against the sky were like etchings. He stared around the field, taking in the graceful movement of every blade of grass. A gentle breeze was rustling his damp hair. He slumped down, and curled into the stones, closing his eyes. He was beginning to feel listless, as if he were underwater. Everything was far away, and the dull, dark-red tinge of the sky seeped through his eyelids. The breeze sounded like the distant breaking of waves on a fabled shore. All the enforced rituals of school–the match, the labs, the lasagne–were disappearing, turning into tiny specks of annoyance in the far distance. Everything was calm. He had managed to disperse all thought of the nightmare. He didn’t want to analyse it, to understand it. He wanted to erase it. But just as he thought he had, it came back to him … and then he heard something.
A gentle, ripping noise coming from a far corner of the field, nearest to the church. He could hear a faint whimpering, too. He cautiously opened his eyes. Through the drizzle he could distinguish something moving, a dark shape, bobbing up and down, in a way that made Edward feel disgusted.
A force he did not understand drew him towards it. He reared up from the wall and began to run. The whimpering had an excited edge to it. He came nearer, and the shape resolved itself into the horrific terrier, Imp. He was snuffling, and tormenting something black. Edward ran up to the dog, shouting as loud as he could. It turned jealously, and growled.
‘Imp! Get away! Get away!’ he shouted. Imp growled again, baring his teeth, saliva dripping from his maw. His hackles were up and he shivered with anger.
‘Go on! Get away!’ shouted Edward, waving his arms at the beast, trying to make himself bigger than he was, dredging up some half-forgotten hint from a book read years ago. He wasn’t sure that it was working because Imp seemed ready to spring, coiled up like a deadly viper. He didn’t dare stop yelling and run away. He was afraid that the dog would leap af
ter him and be on him, in a second. And no way did he want to come into contact with those stinking teeth, and end up like Earnshawe–eaten alive. Imp’s eyes, like those of an assassin, glared at the boy, gleaming, as if he knew something Edward didn’t.
Edward was just mustering enough courage to make a rush at Imp when the dog acted as if he had heard a whistle or a command that Edward could not detect. Imp’s ears flattened, his eyeballs looked as if they were going to jump out of his skull, and he made a strange gulping sound and ran from the field. Edward shuddered from the cold and from adrenalin.
He looked down at the ground.
It was a raven. It was massive, almost as big as Imp. No doubt he hadn’t attacked it out of hunger. O’Brien fed him to the brim with chicken and salmon. The creature had ravaged it out of pure spite. The bird was mangled enough to cause a deep tug in Edward’s gut, which became a ball of tight emotion in his throat. He knelt on the ground, in the wet coolness of the long grass.
He didn’t then know that it was odd for a raven to be there, in the south-east of England. He didn’t think that someone could have sent it there, for reasons he couldn’t know. He didn’t then know that sad eyes were watching him from another world; that someone had fixed their notice upon him.
The bird was enchanting and it had been alive. Now it had been destroyed by something brutal and unnecessary. Edward hoped that it hadn’t been alive for long after Imp had got hold of it. Its eyes were dull. He could not tell if they had seen him. He didn’t know if there was any truth in the story that the last thing a creature sees before death is imprinted on its eyeballs, but he was disturbed to see his own reflection staring back at him.
He picked up the raven. The feathers were almost pleasant to touch. A fly had settled on a scrawny part of its neck. He brushed it away, but it returned. He looked around for somewhere to put the corpse, and remembered that the field he was in was next to the church. He ran towards the other side, away from the pitches, his football socks coming down, the grass whipping his bare legs, and clambered over the wall, jumping down awkwardly into a muddy flowerbed. It was raining harder now and his shirt was clinging to his skin.
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