by Leo Hunt
Contents
(the circle opens)
(sunny-side up)
(the host)
(gray skies)
(echoes and relics)
(the lash)
(barren earth)
(dogsbody)
(the devil’s footsteps)
(the undiscovered country)
Acknowledgments
The first thing that happens is I unseal an envelope and Dad’s death falls out onto the breakfast table. I always thought I’d learn about it from the papers first, or that maybe news like this would be delivered by an angel, holding out a gilded scroll, its perfect face scribbled with sorrow. Instead I’m sitting with bed head, wearing inside-out pajamas, reading a letter printed in ordinary black ink on white office paper. The letterhead reads Berkley & Co., and they’ve sent a short message informing me of his death. I’m requested at a meeting with his solicitor this afternoon, “with regard to my inheritance.”
There’s no mention of Mum, which is strange. It’s addressed only to me. I’m not really sure what to feel. I was halfway through a bowl of cereal when I opened the letter, and my wheat flakes have melted into something that looks like wet brown sand. I pick up the remains of my breakfast and move over to the sink. Outside, in the back garden, Ham whimpers and bats at the door. I put him outside and forgot; he must be soaked by now. Leaving my bowl in the sink, I cross the kitchen to let him in. I get the door open, and he shoots past me like a dog possessed, streaking wet prints across the tiles.
I haven’t seen Dad, except on television, since I was six. He isn’t — wasn’t — exactly famous famous, but most people would probably recognize him. His face comes up a lot if you go rooting through the discount-books bins in supermarkets, or watch late-night reruns of his various paranormal shows. I’d get a card on my birthday up until a few years ago, and since then not even that. I think I could’ve spoken to him on the phone if I’d made a big effort to — maybe left lots of messages at his office — but I never tried. He made it clear that he didn’t want much to do with us. I always assumed we’d have some awkward reunion when I was older, but I guess now I won’t even get that. I look out at the garden, autumn apples hanging red on the tree. Past the trees there’s a drystone wall, and then grass and sheep. The sky is gray, the clouds sagging and out of shape.
I hear Mum on the stairs, and before I really think about what I’m doing, I’ve rushed back across the kitchen and hidden the solicitor’s letter in my pocket. Of course I should tell her. It should be the first thing out of my mouth: Dad’s dead. Two small words, but I don’t say it. I stand pretending to examine my orange juice as she comes in, dressed in the poncho-type thing she wears every morning, and starts clattering around looking for breakfast. Does she know already? It doesn’t seem like it. She barely dealt with their separation; if she knew he was dead, I doubt she’d be standing upright. I’m worried about how she’ll handle this. He was famous enough that it’ll be in the news somewhere. She’s going to find out. I really ought to tell her now.
“Morning,” I say to Mum, as if nothing unusual were happening.
“Morning, love,” she says, turning half around, giving me a sleepy grin.
Mum cracks an egg on the side of the pan. She’s clearly no longer in a vegan phase. The time to speak seems to pass, as I stand doing nothing. Ham reappears, claws clicking on the tiles with every step he takes. He’s a hunting dog, a compressed spring of gray fur and sinew. His snout is long and regal, but his head is topped by a crown of pale fluff, which reminds me of a newborn chicken. He presses his damp head against my hand. Despite all the crimes I’ve committed against him — the vet visits and worming tablets and forced walks in the rain — Ham believes I’m a good person. He grumbles as I knead his shoulders.
Mum’s name is Persephone — though she’s keen on reinvention, so I think her actual birth certificate might say something different. She’s not close with her parents. Mum is tall and wiry, with blond hair like fraying rope. I think the best way to explain her is to say that she doesn’t do a lot, or more that she starts things and then doesn’t finish them, whether that’s a letter or a book or a meal or her long-running plan to set up a crystal shop. She’s interested in the restorative power of crystals. She’s also interested in tarot cards, numerology, past-life regression, ancient astronaut theories, Reiki, and books by people who’ve met angels or changed their lives through positive thinking — the perfect partner for a professional ghost expert like Dad. Or should’ve been, at least. Mum’s less interested in getting a job or cleaning the house or going to parent-teacher conferences. I think Dad must have handled the money side of things, despite the split, so don’t go thinking I’ve had it rough: power cut off or empty boxes at Christmas or anything like that. We’re good customers at the organic food shops, and since the start of high school, I’ve always had the right sneakers, the proper haircut, clothes with brand names, which is important if I want to keep hanging around with Kirk and Mark and the rest of them. I don’t know what’s going to happen about money now that Dad’s gone. I notice Mum’s looking out the window with a glazed expression, which makes me think she’s already had one of her pain pills.
See, Mum has these things called cluster headaches. I feel bad enough when I have a normal, standard-issue headache, like someone’s wrapping a rope around my skull, but cluster headaches are the premier league of headaches. Worse than a migraine. They’re so bad it’s like someone is driving a red-hot spike into your face, according to the pamphlets they give family members to help us understand the condition. When Mum has an attack going on, she has to retreat to her bedroom with the curtains firmly drawn and stay in there for days and days with a blindfold over her eyes and ice on her forehead.
So that’s how things are with Mum. She’s not that bad, to be honest. We get along pretty well because she’s really not that interested in how I do at school or who my friends are and how long I stay out with them, which is what my friends fight with their parents about. She’s weird, but at least she doesn’t drink on weeknights like Kirk’s mother and doesn’t have a rictus smile and flowchart of polite questions like Mark’s, who I think is a maternal android that his dad constructed from a mail-order kit.
“Bit of a blue day,” Mum says. There’s nothing about the day that could remotely be described as blue, but the comment confirms she’s not heard the news. I have no idea how to bring it up.
“Yeah,” I say, pummeling Ham’s shoulders and back. I’ve realized I’ll have to skip school today. I’m already very late thanks to the letter, not that Mum’s noticed. My meeting with Dad’s solicitor is in the early afternoon, but the buses to the city take the long route, and it’s easier to just not go to school rather than try to sneak out at lunch break. If they ask where I was, I’ve got a nuclear-grade trump card. The teachers’ll be scrambling over themselves to accommodate me when they find out what happened. I’ll have a couple of months of them jumping through any hoop I like.
“Hope we’ll see some birds today,” she says, gesturing at the feeder she’s got hanging from one of the apple trees. This is a recent project.
“I bet they’ll go nuts for it,” I say.
She scrapes her egg onto a plate.
“You know . . . because it’s full of nuts.”
Mum’s smile comes on slowly. She doesn’t turn around, but I can see the ghost of it in her reflection. It only lasts a few moments.
I walk over to her. Ham follows me, snorting and butting at my legs. “I’ve got to get ready for school now,” I say. “And I’ll be home late. I’ve got rugby practice tonight.”
I don’t, but I’m not sure how long the meeting will take.
“Do good things today,
” she says. “You’re a special person.”
When I hug her, I can feel all the bones in her back.
My name is Luke Manchett, and I’m sixteen years old. I live in a town called Dunbarrow, up in the hills of North East England. I was born in the Midlands, but Mum, once the separation was in the works, had a romantic idea of escaping to a house in the country, which turned out to be a lot less romantic after ten years of relentless downpour and small-town gossipmongering. Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure this is a great place to visit on a tour bus if you’re sixty years old. There are plenty of historic churches and burial mounds and Celtic sacrifice stones and whatever. When you’re sixteen, Dunbarrow is a tacky main street, one pub that might not ID, wet fields of sheep, and a maze of redbrick council estates, where you don’t want the kids to catch you unless they know your face. I live on Wormwood Drive with Mum, which is considered posh because we have a back garden and a front garden. We’re on the outskirts of town, and the garden wall separates us from the sheep paddocks, which stretch from here to pretty much forever. Mum is enthusiastic about this because it’s natural and organic, and the sheep are so incredibly organic — and rural — and totally don’t make you want to commit suicide if you mistakenly meet their flat dead eyes.
We excuse the fact that Dunbarrow has nothing going on, because we’re closer to the region’s only city, Brackford, than Throgdown and Sheepwallow and all the other pathetic tiny towns farther out into the moors. Brackford is a rusting iron giant, fallen, still getting up on its feet decades after they closed the mines and shut down the shipyards. The sky is always gray and the wind comes hard off the concrete-colored sea, running wild through the rows of terraced houses.
Anyway, what happens next is I walk down our hill like normal, with my schoolbag and everything, and then I go to the bus station and change out of my uniform in the restrooms there. I spend forty-five minutes being driven to Brackford. Once I’m there I get lunch (burger and fries), wander around some music shops, and look at fancy pairs of soccer cleats. Everywhere’s all decked out, ready for Halloween: There are paper skeletons and plastic witches dangling in shop windows. Usually when we skip school it’s because Kirk has a free house and we can crack some of his mum’s beers and play Xbox. I’d prefer that to meeting with my dad’s lawyers. I really should’ve told Mum about this. She ought to be with me. I know I should go back home and tell her and then arrange to come in another day, but at 1:45, I’m sitting in the reception area of Berkley & Co. At the desk opposite me is a blond secretary who scans her computer screen with the compulsive head movements of a trapped bird. After half an hour she gives me a harried nod and I make my way in.
Mr. Berkley’s office is what I expected — sterile and businesslike. There’s a heavy black desk, dull gray filing cabinets, a wall calendar covered in annotations. His desk is barren of everything but a fountain pen and an antique gold clock with a bright wagging pendulum. There are no family photos.
Mr. Berkley has plenty of lines on his face, but he’s still pretty striking, one of those old people you can tell used to be good-looking, with ash-white hair that he slicks back like the leading man in a 1930s movie. He’s got a neat beard, and large, even teeth that look like they cost more than some people’s cars. He’s dressed in a light gray suit and a pink shirt, no tie, and he’s reading something from a little notebook, which he tucks into a desk drawer as I enter the room. He looks rich, more than rich — he looks like money came to life and sat down in front of me. He stands and nearly blinds me with his smile before reaching over his desk and firmly shaking my hand and guiding me down into the seat opposite him all at once. He smells of peppery aftershave. It’s all a bit overwhelming.
“Luke,” he says, grinning like we both just won the lottery. “Master Luke A. Manchett, I presume? Son and heir of the late Dr. Horatio Manchett?”
“Uh, hi,” I say. His eyes are so blue that the irises look artificial, like they’re made of plastic. He’s friendly, but I feel like he’s sizing me up for something. I shift in my seat.
“I do apologize for the wait,” he continues. “I’ve had a lot to deal with today. Unexpected petitions, old friends asking to renegotiate agreements. . . . I’ve been overwhelmed. I do hope you’ll forgive me.”
“It’s all right, really.”
“Thank you, my boy. Forgiveness is a great virtue, wouldn’t you say? The unburdened soul floats easily in the cold river.”
“Is that, like, poetry?” I ask.
“No,” he says, “not really. It’s advice, I suppose. But I forget whom it is from. Anyway, I wanted to say, before we get down to the details, that I like to think I was rather close with your late father. Horatio was a great man. Your loss is all of our losses.”
I’m not sure that hosting a cheesy paranormal-themed TV show qualifies you as “great,” but it doesn’t seem like the right time to argue this point.
“I didn’t really know him that well,” I say.
“He regretted your estrangement. I can assure you of that.”
“I’d rather . . . I don’t know you. Sir. I’d rather not talk about it. Sorry.”
“Apologies, apologies. Well, Luke, as you know, we asked you to come in with some urgency regarding your inheritance. It was your father’s express wish that you be contacted as soon as possible. I appreciate the short notice may have been somewhat inconvenient. I hope your tutors were understanding.”
I shrug.
“Anyway. Let’s get down to business. Luke, I’ve brought you here today to inform you that you are the only named beneficiary of Horatio’s will. You stand to inherit his properties, both domestic and overseas, as well as future royalties from book and digital video sales. There is also the matter of a bank account intended for your personal use containing a sum in excess of six million dollars, which when converted into sterling is about four million pounds. . . .”
He keeps talking, but his voice has faded to a whisper compared with the thundering fireworks display that just lit up in my head. I feel like my chair just sent a thousand volts into my body. I assumed Dad did all right from his TV show, but I didn’t know it was this good. I’m a millionaire. Not just that, a multimillionaire. A series of magazine-exposé photographs is flashing through my head: VIP tables, bottle service, penthouse suites. I can’t believe just yesterday I was worried about my exams. Who cares? I won’t need to beg Mum for my own car either, which is great because she’s been completely deaf to my hints and hasn’t noticed the car magazines I’ve been leaving around the living room for the past six months. I picture myself at the wheel of a bright-orange Ferrari, with Holiday Simmon in the passenger seat, her hair glowing in the light of a tropical sunset as we —
“Luke?”
“Yeah,” I say, not having listened to a word Mr. Berkley was saying.
“So you understand what I’m telling you today?”
“Uh-huh. Dad’s estate. Six million dollars. Domestic and overseas. DVD sales.”
“That was the general outline, yes. Now, as sole beneficiary of the will, there are certain steps you’re required to take in order to inherit —”
“He didn’t leave any of it to anyone else?” I always thought there must at least be another woman: blond, thin, half his age.
“As I said, Luke. Sole beneficiary. He required that you alone be contacted about this matter, not your mother or anyone else. He was very clear about that. Now, the first thing you need to do is sign some documents, indicating that you understand what I’m telling you today and that you’re willing to accept full responsibility for your father’s estate.”
Bring it on, I want to scream at him. Whatever it takes. Show me the money. I came in expecting to inherit some cuff links or a watch. Berkley roots around in a desk drawer for a few moments. I watch the clock pendulum swing.
“Here we are,” he says, laying some sheets of paper on the desk. I leaf through them. The top few are normal legal documents, computer-typed, printed on legal paper. I sign
them with Berkley’s fountain pen. The bottom sheet is different, and I pause. It’s a rough, yellowing sheet of parchment, and the text has been written by hand in weird brown ink. The script is tiny and ornate, a frantic mess of Gothic lettering. I squint, but I can’t read any of it.
“What is this? Is this in English?” I ask Berkley.
“Latin, my boy. Is there a problem?”
I run my fingers over the parchment. It feels rough, fibrous.
“Vellum,” says Mr. Berkley. “Made from goatskin. Difficult to source these days, as I’m sure you can imagine. We have a man in Cumbria.”
I rest the pen on the blank space at the bottom of the page. Berkley leans forward in his chair. I withdraw the pen nib. The gold clock ticks, a steady brittle sound.
“What am I signing?” I ask.
“As I explained, Luke, your father —”
“What am I signing right now? Why is this written in Latin on goatskin?”
Berkley runs a hand over his slick hair. He blows air out of his nose.
“Luke, I know this probably seems . . . unusual, but Horatio was assuredly not a paint-by-numbers man. There are a number of stipulations before you can receive any of his money or property. The first of these is that this particular document be signed by you, today. This is a very specific request, made in a legally binding last will and testament. Unless you sign this document, here, now, I am under instructions to dissolve the late Dr. Manchett’s estate and contribute the proceeds to various charitable organizations. You and your mother will not receive a single penny. All very noble, I think you’ll agree, but probably not the outcome you’d like, and frankly not the outcome I’m looking for today either. If you want to read your father’s instructions for me on this matter, I have the papers here.”
Berkley reaches into another drawer and pushes some ring-bound documents at me. There are more paragraphs and subclauses than I could read if I sat here all day, but it’s unmistakably Dad’s signature on each one. I recognize it from the birthday cards he’d send.