The Other Book

by Philip Womack

  ‘She did! I escaped from the hospital with Ferdinand Lane Glover –’

  ‘Wait a minute–Ferdy Lane Glover? I thought he was certifiably insane,’ said Mr Fraser.

  ‘He’s not! Well, he was for a bit, but only because he thought he was, but anyway now he’s as sane as you are and I need to stop Lady Anne because of her ancestor, she can’t get the Other Book because she’ll make everything like Tristram’s father did –’

  ‘Slow down now, Edward, please,’ said Mr Fraser, not unkindly. ‘Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll phone your parents, and we’ll have you at home in no time. That place clearly was no good for you. I didn’t like you going there anyway. I was never sure about Spawforth’s methods. Decidedly odd.’

  ‘No! Don’t send me home. You can’t. I have to stop Lady Anne!’

  Mr Fraser looked at Lady Anne, who shrugged her elegant shoulders. ‘I can’t think why he’s taken such a dislike to me,’ she said. ‘We got on so well in English lessons–didn’t we, Edward? Don’t you remember? Ye have the book: the charm is written in it …’

  Mr Fraser looked sharply at her. ‘Edward, sit down. Have a glass of water. I shall call your parents.’ He poured out some water from a heavy jug on his table and handed it to Edward. Fraser waited till he had finished it, then he picked up the phone.

  ‘No! You musn’t. Please don’t. I can’t go home. You have to believe me. I’m not lying. Why would I?’

  ‘Well, quite frankly, Edward, I’m not sure that you are quite yourself now. I don’t pretend to understand how you’ve arrived here, dirty and tired, but I find it hard to believe that Lady Anne had anything to do with it. Your last performance in my study was quite something, and I don’t want you to overdo it now.’ Mr Fraser’s dignified face was solemn, his eyes sad but kind at the same time.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fraser,’ said Lady Anne gently. ‘You see, Edward? Everything will be all right.’

  There was a knock at the door and, to Edward’s immense surprise and joy, Will Strangore, Guy and Ferdinand Lane Glover came in. Edward saw the look of surprise on Lady Anne’s face.

  Mr Fraser stood up very quickly. ‘Ferdy!’ he said, and held his arms out, as if he hadn’t seen a good friend for ages.

  ‘Hello, Alex,’ said Ferdinand. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  There was an awkward silence, as the two men wondered whether they should hug or not, and then they did. They patted each other on the back.

  ‘Ferdy Lane Glover. And I thought you’d gone mad!’

  ‘Well … I had, a little bit.’

  ‘Hello, Ferdy,’ said Lady Anne.

  Ferdinand ignored her.

  ‘What, don’t you remember Anne?’ Fraser asked Ferdinand. ‘The fun that the three of us used to have in that little house on Kingston Road?’

  ‘Of course I remember her,’ said Ferdinand coldly. ‘But first there is something you need to know. I know this seems strange–but you believed in stranger things when we were at university together.’

  ‘That’s true, Ferdy,’ said Mr Fraser softly.

  ‘I’ve brought Will Strangore in here, because he has something to say.’

  Will looked shyly around the room, his glasses shining in the light. He looked neat and tidy as always, like the lawyer he was bound to become.

  ‘I … I’d just like to say,’ he said, his voice growing more confident, ‘firstly, that I’m sorry, Edward.’ He looked at Edward.

  Will held Edward’s eyes, waiting for a signal. It took a half-second, whilst emotions coursed around Edward’s brain–this friend, who had betrayed him–but then he smiled back, and instantly forgave him for running out. ‘And … and secondly …’ he wavered, but caught Edward’s eye again and spoke more boldly, ‘I want to say that whatever Edward has said is true. I saw the Other Book too. I made it expel Guy and get Mr O’Brien in the pond. Sorry, Guy,’ he whispered in an aside.

  ‘This is mass hallucination!’ said Lady Anne, although there was a note of uncertainty in her iron voice.

  ‘Ferdinand. Please tell me that this is more than just a game?’ said Mr Fraser. ‘I am very worried about Pollock. His head has been filled up with enough rubbish. And now Strangore is succumbing too?’

  Ferdinand strode into the middle of the room, and he looked tall and proud and knightly; a far cry from the dishevelled figure in his orange dressing gown, mumbling broken snatches of poetry and madness. His long hair framed his gaunt face, and even the camel on his tie looked regal.

  ‘Alex,’ he said. ‘You should know. After graduating, Anne and I embarked on a research project to find a book that was rumoured to be held by Anne’s family–the de la Zouches. All knowledge of it had disappeared in the late seventeenth century. But it was said to be more than just a book. I helped Anne in her search until … until I knew that what she wanted was not what I wanted. I had ideals … which she twisted against me.’

  ‘But all this is stuff I thought you’d stopped believing in years ago,’ said Mr Fraser, ‘like me.’ He said the second part quietly.

  ‘Yes–I had to take up a respectable post to keep going. But I always wondered about this Other Book, which Anne wanted so much. And then I realised that she wanted it for her own power, she wanted to twist reality to her own bent. And that was when I … went mad. I was overworked, and when Anne found out I knew about her real ambitions, she … helped me go mad.’

  Lady Anne had remained silent throughout all this. In the pause after Ferdinand stopped speaking, Edward noticed with extraordinary clarity every detail in the room. Lady Anne’s queenly fingers clasped tightly in the lap of her bird-print dress; a pencil balancing on a pile of papers, about to fall off. The silence was a velvet muffler, smothering and hot.

  The pencil did fall off, and the noise broke the silence. Mr Fraser bent down to pick it up, and placed it carefully on his desk.

  ‘Is this true, Ferdy?’ said Mr Fraser.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Ferdinand quietly. ‘And then I realised something.’ He held his hands together in front of him, and bowed slightly. ‘I realised that Lady Anne was right.’

  Edward was distressed, and shocked. It was as if Ferdinand had thrown a spear into his heart. His last friend, his ally … it could not be true.

  ‘I realised that you were right,’ said Ferdinand, turning to Lady Anne, ‘and that perhaps your way is a better way. And so I have brought you a gift. A gift, to reinstate me in your sight, and to bring us both together as the equals we once were.’

  To Edward’s horror Ferdinand bent down on one knee. ‘I have brought you the boy, Edward Pollock, and within him is the Other Book. With your power and mine joined together, as it should be, we can tear it out of him. And once more Oldstone will be the centre of experiment; once more Oldstone shall rule with the unrestrained power of the Other World at its beck.’

  Edward was devastated. Everything had shrunk, all his hopes had shrivelled to this small point where now they were destroyed.

  ‘Rise, Ferdinand Lane Glover,’ said Lady Anne, and he got up, and stood by her, and they had pride in their faces and terror in their hearts.

  ‘Wait!’ said Lady Anne, and spoke a word; and suddenly Mrs Phipps was there, guarding the doors, and the others had frozen–Guy, Will and Fraser were all standing still and silent like dummies in a shop window. Even their skin had taken on a plasticky sheen. The air was thick, like syrup. ‘Now they will not hear us; they cannot bother us,’ she said, and smiled her cold, elegant smile at Ferdinand, who smiled back, revealing his long canines.

  ‘This should happen at the proper place,’ said Ferdinand. ‘The place where it all started.’ He took Edward’s arm and led him outside. Lady Anne came behind him, slow, lissom, baleful, beautiful. Edward glanced back and saw the others.

  ‘What will happen to them?’ asked Edward.

  ‘In a few minutes they will wake up. Phipps will see that they believe we have gone for a short walk. They will remember nothing.’

  Ferdinand’s grip
was tighter on him now.

  ‘I hate you,’ Edward said to Ferdinand.

  ‘Little whelp,’ he hissed into Edward’s ear, the word startling him.

  Ferdinand was leading Edward down to the pond, where the oak tree was, the sibling of the tree in which Merlin was imprisoned. The sky was almost cloud-free. The school ducks were happily quacking in the pond. Edward was sweating a little. Confused feelings were roaring around his skull.

  Ferdinand threw him down into the roots of the oak tree. He felt them press into his back. Lady Anne began speaking what must have been the language of the Other Book–cold, clear and cruel. Edward did not understand the words, and then it felt as if a hook had been implanted right in the middle of his chest; he could hear distant voices shrieking otherworldly cries. The hook was so painful that he was racked with a juddering hurt that scraped on every nerve in his body; he struggled to stand up.

  Lady Anne was calling the Other Book out of Edward. She was tearing apart his soul, tearing the Other Book out from his inner self. And Ferdinand joined with her. They stood in a terrible circle above him, their lips moving in unison, the weird dirge-like chant becoming more horrible and more nauseating.

  Edward couldn’t scream because the pain was so intense; he found a small corner of his mind which wasn’t full of the now-clamouring symbols and tried to hide there, but he was torn out. The hook began to pull and he was yanked up, up high, almost right off the ground, his body stretched and stretched. A sickness filled him; in his brain now was pain, pain, everlasting, infernal hurt and horror; and noise, too, and the awful, shadowy creature that Edward had seen before, when he had first opened the Other Book, gloating and shrieking, and he knew now that it was an avatar of Lady Anne. Then the noise and pain stopped and he fell to the ground, limp and exhausted.

  There was the Book, in Lady Anne’s hands. There it was, full of power and hatred, glory and harm; something that Edward knew now both fed into and off the personality of its owners. And there was Ferdinand Lane Glover, the man Edward had trusted, who had behaved to him as if he were a friend, who had pretended to believe him and to help him; and he was nothing but a shadow too, nothing but a man full of deceit and contempt. The sense of betrayal that Edward felt, as he looked into those once-kind, now burning eyes, was more than he could bear.

  Seventeen

  Lady Anne now looked more like a savage queen than ever. Ferdinand was like some cruel despot of the Middle Ages. Behind them the dark green of the daisy-spotted lawn and the blue of the clear sky seemed fake, childish, as if you could pierce through them with a needle and all the air would come out. Edward held on to the tree behind him and it felt like the only thing alive in the world, because everything else was a shell, hollow, empty. Even as he held it, it seemed as if the air around them was thinning, as if creatures were scraping at the walls of this world.

  And now he had no friends, no one to trust, no one who could help or defend him. The scraping was becoming louder.

  He remembered the bravery of Tristram, when his father had slaughtered the delegation. He summoned up his own reserves–they were small, but he had nothing to lose. If I could only get it back from Lady Anne, he thought … She was cradling the Book in her arms as if it were a baby, almost crooning to it.

  ‘The Other Book,’ she said, softly. ‘Oh, Ferdy, we have it now … And all this will be so, so wonderful.’ She stood lost for a moment in visions, and then said with finality, ‘I must prepare the charms.’

  Edward sprang up from the tree and ran at her, but she stopped him with one movement of her finger, without even looking at him.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I had forgotten. The boy. What shall we do with him?’

  Ferdinand looked at her. ‘Leave him to me,’ he said. ‘I am sure I can find a use for him.’

  ‘Don’t you come near me!’ Edward said, with as much venom as he could muster.

  ‘And what will you do, little rat?’ said Ferdinand. He came closer, and Edward felt the strength that radiated from him.

  ‘I’ll do my best to hurt you,’ said Edward, and when Ferdinand came nearer he kicked him in the shins, but it didn’t seem to have any effect upon him. Ferdinand picked him up by the arm as if he had been a doll. He took both of Edward’s shoulders, and looked deep into his eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. The strange thing was, that wasn’t what his lips said. What his lips said was, ‘You stupid little puppy.’

  Edward was suspicious. What was going on? Was this another trick of Lady Anne’s? He did not want to think that it was some horrible play on Ferdinand’s part.

  Again the lips moved. ‘I’ll make short work of you,’ but what Edward heard was, ‘Sorry, I had to do it, it would have been more painful otherwise.’

  More painful? thought Edward.

  ‘Ferdinand!’ said Lady Anne. He let go of Edward. ‘I think you had better leave that boy to me. You don’t seem to be able to get rid of him.’

  ‘But why should we get rid of him?’ said Ferdinand. ‘He won’t be able to do anything. And you have the Other Book now. Surely that is all that you needed, all that you ever wanted, my dear, darling Anne.’ And to Edward’s surprise, he took hold of her by the waist, and kissed her, deeply. For a moment the shadow from the tree, the gentle summer breeze and the quiet singing of the birds made them seem like young lovers in the countryside. But then the illusion passed.

  ‘Dear old Ferdy,’ she said, pushing him off her. ‘But you see he knows, and just one person who knows my secret is too many. The others –’ she cast an arm backwards to the office–‘will remember nothing but a meeting in which I finalise taking over the Manor. The school will move, they’ll all drift away, and Pollock here won’t be in our lives either–or theirs.’ She grinned at him, wolfishly, poised. ‘What should we do with you, my dear, dear boy? I think that the Other World might be a fine place for you. I’ll prepare the way now.’

  Ferdinand looked horrified, and said, ‘Anne, no! The boy has done nothing.’

  ‘Silence!’ said Lady Anne. ‘He will be the perfect final sacrifice. The raven, the dog and the boy … You see, Pollock, it is always the powerful who win. The meek won’t inherit the earth.’ She started to mutter something which made Edward’s skin crawl.

  He could hear the chatterings and squealings of the creatures from the Other World. He watched Ferdinand try to stop Lady Anne, but Ferdinand could not go near her. There seemed to be a wall of power around her which nothing could breach; she and the Other Book were a parasitic, symbiotic pair, sucking the life out of each other and replenishing it again.

  The muttering was becoming louder now, and more horrifying. Lady Anne was going to prove to be worse than Tristram’s father, Wentlake. Much, much worse.

  He could feel the chattering creatures tugging at him. They were pulling him out of this world. This really was it. His brain nearly shut down, but he forced himself to stay conscious. He didn’t want to meet his first minutes in the Other World unable to defend himself.

  However much he fought against the tendrils that scratched at him, they tangled him up the more, until it felt as if he were completely enveloped in a mass of writhing creatures. He was nearly sick, there and then.

  Edward was nearing oblivion. He could feel the real world getting fainter and fainter. He said goodbye to his parents, to Ferdinand, whom he saw standing speechless. He gritted his teeth and prepared himself. If Tristram had done it, then so could he. That was how he would repay him–by being as brave as he was. Maybe he could then walk free, if I took his place, he thought. Finally Edward called to his parents, one last, low call, that said to them, I love you, and I will miss you. He felt that call would spread across time and space, and they would hear it and know that he loved them.

  Then he heard something soft, yet insistent; something that seemed to call from the depths of someone’s soul. And then the real world began to get firmer again, and he saw Lady Anne standing with the Other Book. Edward was filled with a
new strength.

  There was a puzzled expression on her face–the first time he had seen her so. She leafed through the Other Book. ‘That’s impossible. I’m sure I said the spell properly,’ she said. She repeated some harsh phrases, and for a moment Edward felt that he was falling back again. But he fought against it, and the figure of Lady Anne became stronger and sharper, and the sky behind her seemed more real too, no longer as if it were a child’s balloon that could be burst. He pulled against the creatures that entwined him. And he called again, the call to his parents, that call that all mothers and fathers know, which joins families in iron bonds. And he felt the call stretch so that it was the call of every child to every parent, every nightmare needing to be soothed, every hunger needing to be sated, every harm needing to be healed. And he saw a change come across the faces of Lady Anne and Ferdinand, and he began to understand.

  And then he saw Guy running down to the pond, his feet leaving imprints in the long, wavy grass, his face perplexed, to join his father. He noticed the resemblance between the two of them, an odd thing to see when you are on the brink of death. But wheels were clicking in his mind, connections forming, and he managed to stand up. The line of the wizard and witch is strong, thought Edward. I can see them. I can see what is strong.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Lady Anne, confused.

  ‘Guy,’ said Edward, croaking in his weakened state.

  ‘What is he saying?’ said Lady Anne.

  ‘Guy … listen to me. Take it from her.’

  Guy hesitated, looked at the boy on the brink of destruction and, without really thinking, launched himself at Lady Anne, and wrenched at the Other Book, and too late Lady Anne realised what was happening and found herself unable to hold on to it.

  When Guy took hold of it, he felt a rush of power. He saw a line of people stretching across the centuries, until it came down to him … and the one before him he recognised. He felt their wisdom engulf him like a wave.