Sentinel

by Joshua Winning

  His parents’ secret study. The books about Sentinels. The dreams. The sleepwalking. How he’d known that somebody was following the bus. The whispers. The strange weather.

  All things he’d experienced first hand. All things that matched up with what Jessica had said.

  After it all, his thoughts returned to his parents. He’d always considered them the most normal and unsurprising of people. According to Jessica, they had been supernatural demon hunters. The thought left him with a bittersweet feeling, one of pride intermingled with regret. He wished that he could have known them as they really were. It should have been them who told him fantastical stories, not Sam.

  He lay back on the carpet, the cat dozing next to him. The warmth of the fire soothed him, and Nicholas spent the rest of the afternoon lounging there, attempting to make sense of everything that had landed him in a rambling manor house out in the middle of nowhere.

  *

  Lucy Walden sat in the dusky surroundings. It was another cold evening, but it could have been midnight, or midday for all that it mattered to her. She hadn’t left the house since the day the doctor turned their lives upside down, and the longer she stayed huddled away, the less inviting the outside world seemed. Of course, the outside world had become a bleaker place since the attack. They were being used as a cautionary tale for the rest of the community, no doubt, and Lucy could imagine what they were all whispering.

  “Trust nobody, little ones. Not even those you hold dear. Just look at those Waldens – they trusted their family doctor and now look at them.”

  They had been foolish. All of them, including Lucy, and she knew it. This wouldn’t have happened in the past, not when the Sentinel laws had been stricter. Back then, Sentinels were forbidden from conducting business or social affairs outside of the community; the Sentinel’s only business should be safeguarding the world from the terrors that ordinary people knew nothing about. But, as with most things, time ushered in a new order. The Sentinels had relaxed. They thought that everything was under control; they had a handle on the forces that for so long had battled to free themselves, and so life became a new place for discovery. A Sentinel could get a job, explore passions, befriend neighbours. And why shouldn’t they? They were human like everybody else, made of the same blood and flesh, and with their own hopes and dreams. Why should they fight for the rest of the civilised world simply because their ancestry dictated it?

  The new system worked for a time. The Sentinels were not scattered and fragmented by their new freedom; they had always been an organised people. There were weekly meets, and should an event occur that required their full attention, their jobs and lives could wait. But when things grow quiet, it is easy to forget. When past battles against unnameable terror are replaced with the daily battles of everyday life, the mind can grow cluttered with new priorities.

  This was the environment that Lucy and Richard had grown up in, with their lives governed at a comfortable distance by the Sentinel laws, afforded enough independence to live as they wished. It was a cruel twist of fate that had landed them in their current miserable position, but Lucy couldn’t help feeling that they had brought it on themselves. If they hadn’t become so relaxed – others would call it complacent – then perhaps they would have been alerted before any tragedies occurred.

  “Oh Richard,” she murmured, clasping his clammy hand in her own as she sat at the bedside. He was so still. The only sign that he was alive was the laboured rise and fall of his chest, which barely disturbed the sheets laid over him.

  “What are we going to do?”

  Lucy wondered if he could hear her, somewhere, deep in the fog of the coma. She was sure she’d read somewhere that certain comatose people were able to register the voice of a loved one. She hoped that Richard was one of those people. Looking at her husband, sadness washed over her.

  Anger came with it. They were good people. They had never knowingly hurt anybody save the odd Harvester, but there was certainly nothing good about them. What had they done to deserve this? Lucy didn’t suppose she would trust anybody ever again. She bowed her head, letting her forehead rest on the bed sheet.

  Then she frowned. Something was different. She lifted her head.

  “Richard?” she whispered. His breathing had changed. She was sure of it; she had sat here long enough to know. She stared at her husband’s face, part hopeful, part scared.

  Richard lay still as ever, but as she watched him uncertainly his eyes flickered behind the lids.

  “Richard?” she repeated, louder this time, squeezing his hand.

  The eyes flickered again and finally, painstakingly, the man’s dry lips parted.

  “Lucy,” he uttered weakly.

  Lucy’s heart leapt into her throat.

  “Richard!” She clutched tightly at his hand. “Oh, Richard.”

  Her husband’s eyelids shuddered sluggishly and then opened.

  “Lucy,” he croaked. “Where are you? I can’t see you.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Pentagon Room

  AUDREY JONES SWEPT HER FEET FORWARD and rocked up into the air, ignoring the wind as it nipped at her cheeks. She wasn’t bothered by the cold. Quite the opposite; it meant that she could play on the swings for as long as she wanted. All the other kids were being kept inside, out of the unnatural weather.

  The weather wasn’t the only reason other children were being kept in their homes, though. Everybody was hiding away because of what had happened to Raj Gupta, too. Audrey didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. That Raj kid had been stupid enough to wander off into a field during a snowstorm and was found frozen stiff two days later by a farmer. Dead as a doornail. Audrey had heard her mum on the phone to Sophia’s mum, who was sure that there was something more to it – why had Raj wandered off from his aunt in the first place?

  Audrey hadn’t liked Raj anyway. He’d kicked a ball in her face that time in a sports lesson. Her nose had bled for ages. No, Audrey had no intention of staying inside because of something stupid Raj had done, which is why she’d slipped out to the park when her mother was busy chatting to one of her men on the internet.

  As she pushed herself higher on the swing, the girl noticed something strange. There was another child in the playground, there, by the slide. Stranger still, he wasn’t running about or playing, he was just standing there, staring at her.

  Audrey eyed the newcomer. Even from here she could tell there was something wrong with him.

  He smiled at her, but the smile wasn’t right somehow. It looked stretched. Abnormal.

  “What you doing?” the boy asked, sidling up to the swings. He was probably about the same age as her, eight or nine, but he didn’t have a winter coat on and his skin was grey as the sky.

  Audrey decided to ignore him. She thrust her feet out, swinging higher still.

  “Bet I can get higher’n you,” the boy said.

  Audrey scowled. “Bet you can’t,” she said, watching the trees as they bobbed up and down in front of her.

  “I’ll prove it.”

  “No.”

  “Go on.”

  “No.”

  Audrey swung on, showing off now, willing the swing higher with every shove of her stockinged legs. The boy watched her with odd, glassy eyes that made her skin crawl. Finally, Audrey couldn’t bare him looking at her anymore. She hopped off the swing.

  “Where you going?” the boy asked.

  “Home,” she huffed.

  “Don’t you want to see that dead dog everybody’s been talking about?”

  Audrey, who was heading resolutely toward the park’s exit, slowed slightly.

  “What dead dog?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Some dog got frozen out by the river there,” the other child said, pointing back past the swings to a bushy area that led out into the countryside. “Probably a stray. Everybody’s seen it. It’s sick.”

  “You’re making it up,” Audrey said, certain that if there really was so
mething that grisly round here, she’d have been the first to know about it. “There’s no dead dog.”

  “There is. You can see its brain through its nose; it snapped off in the cold.”

  The boy giggled wickedly.

  Audrey had stopped walking now. She looked at the boy, who was wearing a devious, expectant little grin.

  “Can you really see its brain?” she ventured. The boy nodded quickly.

  “Show me,” the girl ordered, pushing past him to start in the direction that he’d pointed.

  Not smiling anymore, but instead dabbing his chapped lips with his tongue, hungry for young flesh, Diltraa led Audrey Jones off into the wilderness and to her doom.

  *

  Up close it resembled nothing more than a capricious scattering of dots, as if a dozen cans of paint had simultaneously exploded. But when Nicholas stepped back, allowing his eyes to wander over the surface of the painting, it was a masterpiece. How anybody could produce anything quite so emotive out of a collection of coloured dots was beyond him.

  The two enormous canvasses were the only things that occupied the poky room. The house seemed to be filled with odd little rooms like this, tucked away in funny corners, perhaps the result of an indecisive architect.

  It was Nicholas’s first full day at Hallow House and he’d spent it exploring his new home. He’d discovered the hard way that it was easy to get lost here. There were strange marvels everywhere. In the statue-lined hallways, great vases were filled with peculiar dried flowers, and huge, polished boulders were strewn about the place like dozing armadillos. Then there was the glass cabinet that contained the bones of a colossal beast. Nicholas had never seen anything like it. At first he’d thought it was a dinosaur, but then he remembered what Jessica had said about evil forces – “the monsters of the deep” – and wondered if this was some kind of malevolent creature.

  Elsewhere, he’d uncovered a handful of strange rooms and cramped corridors that he didn’t suppose had been used by anybody for quite some time. There were rooms with no windows, rooms with nothing but windows, rooms filled with mysterious objects draped in big white sheets.

  Then there was this room. It was a circular turret with dark panelled wood walls. A small chandelier was suspended from the ceiling, spilling light onto the two paintings.

  The first was of a woman in her late sixties, he guessed, wearing a simple black dress and an expression that was supremely sour. Black hair, shot through with flecks of silver, curled neatly on her head but failed to soften the woman’s stony grimace. Her sharp green eyes stared right out of the painting; if Nicholas hadn’t known better he would have sworn she was looking right at him. Whoever she was, she was a severe-looking individual, and Nicholas pitied anybody who’d ever come across her on a dark night.

  The second painting was more inviting. Two young women and a man danced in a circle, their heads thrown back in mirth. The wind tugged playfully at the girls’ white dresses and one of them hitched up her hem to kick her legs out gaily. Wreaths of bright flowers had been threaded into the blonde-white ringlets of their hair, while their skin was fair almost to the point of translucency. The man was dressed in a blue tunic, clutching the girls’ hands as they spun about, bathing in the gracious rays of the sun.

  Nicholas could almost hear their joyful cries as they frolicked barefoot in the grass. He wondered who these sprightly individuals were, and how they were connected to the grim-faced woman that was their neighbour. There must be a connection, if not with her, then at least with Jessica. Nicholas mulled this over; somehow the two dancing women reminded him of Jessica.

  Something rubbed against his leg and he found the cat staring up at him. “Where’ve you been?” the boy said, bending down to scoop the animal up into his arms. The cat purred as he fondled its ears, shoving its head into his hand.

  “Let’s get out of here shall we?” Nicholas said, eyeing the scowling old lady. He went out onto the dimly-lit landing. He was on the second floor, and if he peered over the banister he could see right into the circular lobby below. From this height, Nicholas could trace the twisting design of the marble floor – it appeared to consist of three intertwining sections that coalesced in the centre around a six-pointed star.

  The sound of voices echoed into the lobby. Surprised, Nicholas crouched down, holding the cat tightly to him. He hadn’t seen Jessica since that morning, when she’d given him a brief tour of the house – including the kitchen, where a pantry was full of food, and the sunny conservatory. He’d used the shower in the bathroom adjoining his bedroom to wash away the dirt of the bus crash.

  Jessica hadn’t mentioned that they would be receiving guests, though, and he’d not heard anybody else come into the house. So who was talking?

  There came the sound of footsteps and Nicholas pressed his forehead against the banister rail, straining to see into the lobby.

  Jessica glided across the marble floor, talking in a hushed tone. A second figure appeared behind her – a tall stranger wearing a hooded black cloak. Jessica spoke quietly to the newcomer, and then they both disappeared through a doorway.

  What’s going on? Nicholas thought. Who could this newcomer be? Another Sentinel? Unable to contain his curiosity, the boy hurried down to the lobby. The cat squirmed in his grasp so he dropped it to the floor.

  A light burned in one of the passageways beyond the circular foyer and Nicholas skulked quietly after Jessica. He’d crept around his own house many times at night and he knew that he could move about unheard if he concentrated. He stepped lightly, brushing a hand along the wall for balance.

  This part of the house seemed older and the few lamps lining the walls were not lit. Finally, the boy came to the spot where the sole flickering light originated – it pushed its way through the crack of a peeling old door that had been left slightly ajar. Nicholas recognised this door. He’d tried to open it earlier in the day, but it had been locked. Blood thumping in his ears, he eased in to the stare through the gap.

  It was another one of those strange little rooms. Though plain in decor, this one, a parlour, perhaps, was shaped like a pentagon, its five walls making it distinct from the other rooms in Hallow House. The smell of damp was all-consuming. It was clear this place had been locked up for quite some time. Nicholas realised that this was the one part of the house that truly showed its age. Broken cobwebs quivered in the corners and there was a layer of dust covering everything. Even the surface of the walls had chipped away to reveal the plaster underneath, like a picked scab.

  Standing before a round table, her back to him, Jessica glowed in the sputtering candlelight.

  “I have seen the boy,” a deep, male voice rumbled, resonating hollowly in the confined space.

  The figure in the black robes lingered in one of the room’s furthest corners. He was unnervingly still. Nicholas frowned. There was something wrong with the hooded stranger’s face. It was emotionless and sallow, fixed in a perpetual expression of indifference. Then the boy realised what was wrong – it wasn’t a face at all, but a mask. For a moment, the shadows that twitched across its smooth surface had afforded the visor a life-like appearance.

  “And?”

  This time it was Jessica who spoke.

  “He is emotional.”

  Jessica didn’t move a muscle. “He mourns,” she reasoned. “He has endured much in these past weeks. For now he is grieving, but he has strength.”

  “You like him,” the figure observed. “Be careful. You must not let your feelings muddy the truth – if the boy isn’t capable of what is required, he must be dismissed.”

  Nicholas’s stomach gave a little flip. What were they talking about? Whatever it was, the boy took an instant dislike to the stranger. He spoke in clipped, self-important tones. There was an air of the military about him. And what was with the mask? Nicholas wanted to see the stranger’s face, but all that was visible behind the mask was the eyes. Nicholas remembered his mother telling him that eyes were the windows to the soul
. The newcomer’s were shards of black glass.

  “Do you have news from the community?” Jessica asked.

  “There is panic,” the hooded figure told her, though he sounded resigned to what he had witnessed. “Nobody anticipated this; not even the Sensitives. Naturally they sensed something, but this was beyond prediction.” The figure paused before continuing darkly: “Cambridge has been particularly active. Strange things are happening there. Missing children, a break-in at the museum. Attacks on Sentinel families.”

  “But that’s where Nicholas has come from,” Jessica started. “What do you–”

  “We cannot stand about debating the ‘whats’ and ‘ifs’ of the situation,” the figure snapped. “You’re delaying.”

  “I’m not.” Jessica sounded annoyed. Nicholas was surprised that she could be riled in that way. She’d seemed so composed with him.

  “What are we to do?” Jessica asked finally.

  “The moon is waxing,” the figure told her. “It’s time to put your studies into practice.”

  Jessica moved – and Nicholas nearly cried out in shock.

  A skull was grinning at him.

  There, in a chair pushed up to the circular table, sat a withered old corpse. Its taut skin was papery, while a mound of black and silver curls tumbled down into the empty eye sockets – which gaped right at him.

  Nicholas put a hand over his mouth to muffle his breathing, which suddenly seemed to be huffing loudly from his throat. He wondered if Jessica could hear the blood pumping in his ears. What the hell was going on?

  “Tonight?” Jessica said. She eyed the cadaver. It was still wearing the clothes it had died in. The necklaces and rings adorning its throat and bony fingers were dull with age. “I’m not ready.”

  “You will have to be,” the figure told her bluntly. “If we are to stand any chance against those in the service of the Dark Prophets, we’ll need any aid that is available to us. You have studied the conjuration for long enough, and she has been trapped for far too long. She will prove a powerful ally, especially with regard to the boy. It is time to release her.”