The Monster

by Garth Nix

  By then, Shadow-Jack was two-thirds up the tree. He saw the twister waving an arm’s length from the ball and put on a renewed burst of speed. It was getting harder the higher he went, as the branches became thinner, letting in more light. He felt simultaneously stretched and squeezed as he jumped from perch to perch. Just another jump, he told himself. Just one more, and the ball would be in reach.

  Jaide was concentrating too closely to see her brother.

  ‘Nearly there, nearly there . . . that’s it . . . Yes!’

  The twister reached out with one tendril of air to touch the trapped football. The ball shivered in its perch, and the branch shivered with it, sending sharp swords of sunlight into Shadow-Jack, ripping him apart.

  ‘Jaide, be careful!’ he cried out.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, thinking he was still on the ground behind her. ‘I’ve nearly got it. One more push –’

  The twister came closer to the ball, shredding needles as it went, letting in even more sun.

  ‘Jaide!’ shouted Jack. He felt sick, and strange, neither in his physical body back next to Jaide, nor in his shadow-form, but somewhere horrible in between.

  An electric blue nimbus sprang into life around the football. With a roaring noise like a jet taking off, the twister exploded into a full-strength whirlwind as big as the tree, blowing off most of its needles.

  Jaide was thrown back, even as she shouted at the twister.

  ‘Stop! Listen to me! Why won’t you do what I tell you to?’

  The wind roared and the tree groaned, roots knotting and clenching in the soil at its base. The Evil’s bulldozer attack the previous week had weakened it. Jaide could see roots lifting out of the ground. It looked like at any moment the tornado might tear the entire tree away.

  ‘Stop!’ screamed Jaide. ‘STOP!’

  The twister didn’t obey. It got worse. The tree groaned like a wounded animal, the wind shrieked and somewhere deep inside both noises Jaide heard Jack shouting too.

  Only then did she wonder where he was. He had been standing right next to her, but now . . .

  Jaide looked around wildly, no longer concentrating on the twister. There was a kind of dim, shadowy version of Jack near her, but that was all. It was if most of him had disappeared, leaving only an outline.

  Then she saw him up the tree, inside the whirlwind. Or rather she saw his shadow-form.

  ‘Jack!’ she shouted. ‘Get back in your body!’

  There was no answer. The whirlwind was too noisy for Jack to hear her, and any second now it looked like the tree would topple over, taking Jack with it.

  Jaide shut her eyes and concentrated, willing the whirlwind to stop with every particle of willpower she possessed.

  Jack was attempting to get control of his Gift as well. He tried to get back into his normal body, but there was too much sunshine. Every time he got into a little patch of shadow, the tree would twist and move and the sun would break across, hurting him.

  I have to make shadow, Jack thought desperately. I need to create a shadow to block the sun long enough for me to get back to my body.

  But he didn’t know if he could make a shadow. Closing his eyes, he reached for his Gift and tried.

  The football sent out a bolt of lightning that went straight up into the sky, and the sharp, acrid smell of ozone spread through the air.

  Above Jack’s shadow-self, a cloud of darkness began to form. It spread sideways and then ballooned around him, taking in the tree, the twister, the garden. Then, without any conscious direction from him, it suddenly enveloped the entire town.

  The twister fell silent. The air stopped moving. The great Douglas fir uttered a last plaintive growl as it settled back in place. The football fell out of the branches and rolled across the ground towards Jack and Jaide.

  It was suddenly cold. Jaide opened her eyes and blinked in the sudden darkness. What had happened?

  ‘Jack? Jack . . .’ she whispered in the silence. The darkness had to be his doing. But she felt a sudden, terrible fear that perhaps they’d done something awful. Maybe they’d let The Evil in.

  Jack felt himself snap back into his body. He opened his eyes and looked up at the tree. Despite the darkness, he could see, after a fashion. It was rather like looking at a fuzzy black and white negative image, all white outlines and no detail.

  He realised immediately that this was much more than just their Gifts going out of control. There was something not right about the football. He could see it now, sending out fizzing sparks. Was it a trap?

  ‘Jack? Bring back the sun.’

  Jack looked across. Jaide was kneeling down, clutching her legs, making herself as small as possible. Only then did it occur to him that he’d made more shadow than he’d intended.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ he whispered. He bent his head and concentrated, feeling the shadow. It was almost as if it was part of him, some extension of himself.

  ‘Come back,’ he whispered, reaching out with his hands to pull the darkness back towards him, like drawing up a blanket on a cold night. The shadow responded, returning to its maker.

  Jaide stood up as the dark sky peeled back to reveal the sun once more. She shivered and looked at Jack, who lowered his arms and met her gaze.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. Do you think anyone noticed?’

  ‘Noticed?’ said a man’s voice from the other side of the fence. ‘I reckon the whole town must have seen it!’

  The twins spun round, guilt and fear making their hearts pound.

  A middle-aged man with an expensive haircut was looking over the makeshift fence, stretching up to get a good look. He was wearing an old baseball cap with a three-M logo tipped well back on his immaculate hair. The cap looked very out of place with his brilliantly white shirt, gold tie and dark pinstriped suit.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like that?’ he said, turning his attention to the twins.

  ‘It isn’t what you think,’ said Jaide, torn between wishing Grandma X was there to offer the man a hot chocolate and make him forget about everything, and hoping Grandma X never ever found out about what they had done wrong.

  ‘Not what I think? Nonsense! What else could it have been?’

  ‘Uh, I don’t know,’ said Jack, who didn’t like the way the man was looking at him. He was studying them entirely too closely, and he hadn’t blinked once.

  ‘Well, then.’ The man abruptly changed the subject, indicating Grandma X’s home. ‘You live here, huh?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jaide, also beginning to feel defensive. That feeling grew only stronger as a barrage of questions followed.

  ‘Do you go to school in Portland too?’

  ‘Yes, but what –’

  ‘I’m new here. Perhaps you can help me.’

  ‘I don’t know –’

  ‘There’s a woman – Renita Daniels. She was supposed to meet me here, but she hasn’t shown up. Have you seen her at all?’

  The twins exchanged an anxious glance. They knew exactly who he was talking about. Rennie was the town handywoman who had been taken over by The Evil. The last time they’d seen her, she had rats growing out of her shoulders and had tried to kill them, before falling off the top of the lighthouse.

  ‘We haven’t seen her,’ said Jack.

  ‘She disappeared,’ Jaide added.

  ‘When?’ the man asked them.

  ‘In the storm.’

  ‘That big blow a week ago? I wondered why I hadn’t heard from her. You see, she has something of mine, and I’d very much like to get it back.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Developments of a Dubious Nature

  ‘That will be quite impossible,’ said a firm voice. ‘Rennie is missing. It is feared that she was swept out to sea in the storm, and is very likely dead.’

  Three pairs of eyes converged on the house’s back entrance, where Grandma X stood with one hand on the door frame. She was a tall woman with thick silver hair, and was dresse
d in jeans, a white shirt and cowboy boots. Next to those boots, one on each side, stood two cats, one grey and straight-tailed, the other a ginger tom whose head was held low to the ground, ready to pounce.

  ‘And you are?’ asked the man.

  ‘The grandmother of these children.’

  ‘Ah!’ The man straightened to his full height – which could have barely been five and half feet, given the way he was clinging to the top of the fence. His smile was sudden and entirely too friendly, as though he had taken off a mask and replaced it with a new one. His teeth were far too white and regular to be natural. ‘The owner herself ! My company has been trying to get in touch with you. My name is Martin M McAndrew –’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Well then, let’s get straight to it. I want your house.’

  Jaide stiffened and Jack felt a lump turn to ice in his stomach. Martin McAndrew’s eyes weren’t the ghastly pure white of The Evil, but after a statement like that, there was no way his intentions could possibly be good.

  To the twins’ surprise, Grandma X didn’t explode, or turn him into a cockroach. She just smiled back. But if smiles could be warning shots, this would have whizzed over his left ear and taken his cap with it.

  ‘Tell me, Mr McAndrew, why were you asking the children about their school?’

  ‘Because they might know my daughter, Tara. She just started.’

  ‘And what do you want with poor Rennie?’

  ‘I hired her a fortnight ago to help with the renovations here.’ He waved at the empty, fire-blackened house behind him, his smile faltering for just a moment. ‘My company, MMM Holdings, still deeply regrets that terrible accident with the bulldozer, and we want you to know that our offer for your house still stands, Mrs – uh –’

  ‘Thank you. Lastly, what do you think you just saw in the sky?’

  ‘Just then? It was an eclipse of course.’

  ‘An eclipse?’ echoed Jack in surprise.

  Martin McAndrew turned his attention back to the twins. ‘What else could it have been? The sun going out like that, then coming back again. Remarkable!’

  Jack hastily nodded. ‘Yes, it really was.’

  ‘I’m surprised it wasn’t on the news, but I’ve been very busy lately . . . distracted. I’m rebuilding this house here as a personal thing, just a sideline, but you might have heard of my latest big project – Riverview House. There are still some retirement units left, you know, and we’ll be back at work on them very soon. Perhaps we could arrange some kind of swap . . .?’

  ‘I really don’t think so,’ said Grandma X. ‘Jack, Jaide, come inside now. Your mother has made you a . . . treat.’

  The twins backed away towards the house, not quite ready to turn away from Martin M McAndrew.

  ‘Nice to meet you, kids,’ he said with a jokey salute. Once he dropped down behind the fence, the twins hurried inside, ushered into the laundry room by their grandmother while the cats ran after McAndrew, as though to see him off.

  The twins conducted a hurried conversation entirely in whispers, so Susan wouldn’t hear.

  ‘That’s Tara’s dad?’

  ‘He doesn’t look a bit like her!’

  ‘He’s so creepy.’

  ‘And did you see the way he smiled at us?’

  ‘I thought we were dead for sure!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jackaran and Jaidith,’ said their grandmother, doing her best to interject herself into their excitable exchange. ‘He’s just a property developer. An insidious and unlikeable breed, but not actually dangerous.’

  ‘But it was his bulldozer that almost flattened us!’

  ‘And he was looking for Rennie –’

  ‘And he wants your house –’

  ‘And he saw what happened when we –’

  Jaide elbowed Jack firmly in the ribs, but it was too late.

  ‘What did he see, troubletwisters?’ asked Grandma X sternly.

  Jack lowered his gaze and looked at the floor. Jaide met her grandmother’s eye squarely and said, ‘We used our Gifts, and something went wrong. We don’t know what. It was like something interfered with us.’

  ‘It was the ball,’ said Jack, raising his head. ‘Tara’s dad did something to it – I’m sure of it. He rigged it so we would reveal ourselves, and he was right there to catch us when we did.’

  ‘That’s an interesting theory,’ said Grandma X. ‘It’s a shame the facts don’t support it.’

  She raised her right hand, which held the deflated remains of the ball. Clearly written on the limp rubber were three letters written in a childish hand.

  HJS. Their father’s initials.

  ‘I don’t need to ask you where you found this,’ she said. ‘It’s been mouldering away in that box ever since your father was a teenager – but time doesn’t change the fact that it was once owned by a Warden. A troubletwister then of course, but his Gift is what matters. The ball has some of his power in it, and it reacted to you when you used your Gifts near it. You must be careful what you play with around here – just as you must be wary of strangers, but not to the point of imagining things that simply aren’t there. A person of dubious morals and practices he may be, but Mr McAndrew is not The Evil.’

  ‘You said that some people ally themselves with The Evil even though they’re not taken over,’ said Jaide, not yet willing to let go of the theory. Martin McAndrew was definitely guilty of something.

  ‘And he’s working on a big development,’ said Jack. ‘What if he digs up one of the wards or . . . or pours concrete over one of them!’

  ‘He won’t, trust me. I have taken steps. And don’t you worry about the wards. It’s dangerous for you to go anywhere near them. And it’s dangerous for them too.’

  ‘How can we avoid them if we don’t know what all of them are?’

  ‘First of all, don’t practise your Gifts unless you’re under my supervision. Secondly, if you do find something strange happening, immediately back away and come home. Thirdly, don’t even think about the wards. Do you understand?’

  Both twins thought of the promise they had made their father – to do anything their grandmother asked them, no matter how strange or annoying.

  ‘Yes, Grandma,’ Jaide said.

  ‘Can you fix the ball?’ asked Jack. ‘So we can play with it?’

  ‘I think it would be best if I bought you a new one.’ Grandma X smiled.

  ‘Thanks, Grandma!’ said Jack. ‘You’re the best.’

  Grandma X’s smile widened. She tousled Jack’s hair, then looked piercingly at Jaide.

  ‘Is there something else I can do for you, Jaidith?’

  ‘Uh, yes,’ said Jaide. ‘I . . . we . . . wanted to ask you about the Monster of Portland.’

  ‘Is it real?’ Jack asked. ‘Is it some creature of The Evil?’

  Grandma X’s smile faded, though there was still a slight twinkle in her eyes. She knelt down and gathered both children into a quick hug.

  ‘People in Portland have been talking about their monster since your grandfather was a boy. Probably longer. But none of them have ever seen such a thing. All I can say is that if there was a creature of The Evil stalking about the streets, I would certainly tell you about it. Now come into the kitchen and see what your mother has made – and then I have something for you that I hope will help you burn off some of your restless energy, so it is not directed into your Gifts.’

  The twins obeyed, torn between their reluctance to eat their mother’s cooking and the rewards that would follow. Sure enough, when they entered the kitchen, they found the air thick with smoke and their mother trying to put on a brave face.

  ‘Here we are, kids,’ she said as she unveiled the charred lump sitting on a wire tray in the centre of the table. ‘I was missing a couple of ingredients, and that oven still has a mind of its own, but I think this’ll be delicious. Shall I cut you the corner piece, Jack? I know that’s your favourite.’

  ‘Go out the window,’ yowled Ari from
the sill, his tail lashing. ‘It’s not too late.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Kleo, sitting prim and upright on the sideboard. ‘He just wants more for himself.’

  ‘Not me,’ Ari said, with a shiver that ran from nose to tail. ‘I’m off to find something more edible, like a three-days-dead mouse.’

  With that, he followed his own advice, leaping out of the window and running off into the garden.

  ‘He really does have the most abominable manners,’ sniffed Kleo.

  ‘Listen to those cats meow,’ said Susan. ‘If only we could understand what they’re saying.’

  ‘I expect they’d only talk about food,’ Grandma X said. ‘And perhaps the benefits of a good scratch under the collar.’

  She looked at each of the twins and winked. That was just one of many secrets they had to keep from their mother, along with the Blue Room, their Gifts and everything to do with The Evil. Jack and Jaide really wanted to ask Kleo where the cats had got to that afternoon, but they had to pretend that they heard only mews and yowls.

  Grandma X produced antique tea plates from a cupboard while Susan carved the cobbler into pieces, with some difficulty. Jack did indeed like the corner piece of fresh cakes because they were the crunchiest bits, but he struggled to get his teeth through the burned crust that had formed over this one. Inside, he found lumps of fruit and nuts in a doughy paste that hadn’t quite cooked through.

  ‘Deliffoush,’ said Jaide through a mouthful that proved to be particularly difficult to swallow.

  ‘Yes,’ said Grandma X. ‘Very good, dear. But don’t eat it all, children. It will be dinner time soon.’

  Jack gratefully put his slice back on the plate, only half eaten. Even Susan herself looked relieved as she did the same.

  ‘I suppose it’s later than I thought,’ she said. ‘It’s easy to get distracted, cooking. Are we going to have those . . . um . . . Chinese greens you’ve been steaming?’

  ‘Greens?’ said Grandma X with an eyebrow raised. ‘I thought we’d just have fish and chips. I’m quite busy and, well, I think you’ve done enough cooking for one day.’