by Leo Hunt
“What are you doing in here?” I ask, braver than I feel.
The second man, the ghost I don’t recognize, stands.
He’s taller than the others, older-looking, too, dressed in a black three-piece suit. His shoes are beetle-shell shiny, and he wears a white shirt that’s fastened at the throat with a strange silver pin. His face looks like a waxwork, with a drooping nose and overripe lips. His hair and beard are full and bushy, granite-gray with hints of white. His hair hangs over his shoulders in a thick mane. He’s wearing round, dark-tinted glasses and a black hat. He looks like an acid casualty dressed up as an undertaker.
“Who are you?”
“I am bonded as the Shepherd.” The ghost dips his gray-haired head in the shallowest bow I’ve ever seen. “This is my colleague, the Prisoner.” He indicates the scarred ghost with a wave. “You are presumably Luke Archibald Manchett, and we find ourselves in your service.”
“Did I say you could be in here?”
“We were merely keeping vigil over your mother.” The Shepherd’s mouth twists into a small sour smile. “She appears to be infirm. I’m curious as to the nature of her affliction.”
“Get away from her. Now.”
“As you wish.”
The ghosts stand and move closer to me. I look into their eyes and try not to flinch. The Prisoner opens his mouth and closes it with a chewing-gum noise.
“Where is your tongue?” I ask.
“It was cut out,” says the Shepherd, “by his father, I believe.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I understand he’s grown used to it.”
The Prisoner shrugs and then fades into nothingness. The Shepherd remains in the room, hands clasped behind his back, like he’s waiting for something to happen. Rain taps at the window. Mum is sitting up, looking at me, I realize with a sudden jolt. She’s awake. Did she hear me talking to the ghosts?
“Luke?”
“I was just . . .” I struggle to find a coherent excuse.
“I’m really very tired, love,” she says. “This head of mine. It’s not letting up.”
“Sorry, I just . . . wondered if you wanted —”
“That’s nice of you,” Mum says, in a tone that suggests she’d like me to leave now. She’s lying back down. The Shepherd is looking at her with an expression that’s impossible to read. I’m thinking of what Elza said. Blackest of black magic . . . Who knows what he did in life to look like that in spirit? Whoever these new ghosts are, whoever they were, they’re dangerous. Even seeing them here like this, with Mum asleep, it’s a threat. I have to be in control, I have to rule. They know I’ve got the Book of Eight. They don’t know I can’t read it and don’t have a clue what it says. I can’t let them know.
“I’ll go downstairs,” I say to Mum, but I look at the Shepherd as I say it so he knows I’m talking to him as well. I say it big and brave, like I’m talking to an underling, some underclassman nobody trying out for the rugby team. The Shepherd meets my gaze for a moment — at least I think he does; it’s hard to tell where he’s looking through the dark glasses — and then inclines his bearded head and nods.
Ham’s in the kitchen, drinking from his water bowl, but when he sees me come in with the ghost, he backs off into the laundry room, ears flattened against his head. The Shepherd watches Ham leave and says nothing. I ignore both of them, move around the kitchen, put some pasta on to boil. My hands tremble as I cut vegetables. The rain is coming down outside, heavy and relentless, a steady dull wash that tells me the storm clouds aren’t going anywhere. The Shepherd sits at the kitchen table, hands resting on the wood in front of him. They’re big hands, with long fingers and a cobwebby wisp of white hair sprouting from each knuckle. He waits as I make my food. He has the air of someone who knows how to wait.
“So you’re sixteen,” the ghost says as I sit down with my lunch.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Strange, how time moves. It seems not so long ago that you were a raw little scrap of a thing, held in a crib. Yes,” he says, in response to my obvious surprise, “I knew you when you were young. We’ve met on several occasions, although you weren’t aware of it at the time.”
“You were with Dad awhile then,” I say.
“I am his oldest servant. His left hand.”
“Why are you called the Shepherd?”
“It is customary for a Host to be headed by a Shepherd. An ancient title. It seems odd that you would not be aware of this.”
“Just making conversation,” I say.
I fork down some food, not really tasting it.
“I saw that you were in possession of your father’s copy of the Book,” the Shepherd says.
“It’s upstairs,” I say. “Why?”
“Horatio naturally entrusted me with certain information and kept other aspects of his life and work from me. The education and training of his heir was one of the aspects I had little influence over. However, I presume you were educated in the rudiments of the art of necromancy? The Book of Eight is not, after all, something to be trifled with.”
“Yeah, of course. I’ve got necromancy up to my eyeballs. Live and breathe it. Know the Book back to front. Definitely wouldn’t want to step out of line if I was a ghost bound to Luke Manchett. I’d come down hard on anything like that.”
“You know, of course, that the Book of Eight is considered to be infinite in length. It would not be possible for someone to ‘know it back to front.’ Even the most experienced necromancers will find pages they have never seen before.”
“Figure of speech,” I say, waving my hand.
“As you say.”
“I am a necromancer. I’m legit. Are you trying to say I don’t look like a necromancer?”
“Of course not, Luke. You carry yourself with all the dignity befitting a man of such ancient knowledge and arcane discipline. I and my colleagues have merely noted that you have been rather lax in terms of the bindings and restrictions you have placed on us.”
“It’s a new era, you know? I don’t see why necromancy has to be all, like, black robes and blood sacrifices. Forget what you think you know. I’m hoping we’re all going to be friends.”
What am I even saying? I’m so scared of this ghost that my mouth is just moving and words are coming out. The Shepherd snorts and sits up straighter in his chair.
“We are not your friends. We are bound to you. It is a rather different proposition.”
“All right, if you insist. I just wanted us to get along.”
“Interesting that such a thing interests you at all.”
“I’m not Dad.”
“Issue a general summons to your Host,” the Shepherd says.
“Why?”
“I want to see you do it.”
“I don’t want to. And to be honest, I don’t appreciate being told what to do.”
“Issue a general summons. You don’t even know what position your hands should be in, do you? Horatio . . . that old devil. He didn’t teach you a thing, did he?”
The Shepherd has his sly smile back.
“He taught me enough.”
“Luke.” The Shepherd holds his hands out, as if to beg from me. There are weird spiky stars tattooed on the palms. I think he wants me to see them, as if they’re supposed to mean something to me. “In life I was a great necromancer. My Host was the terror of the world. I have forgotten more pages of the Book than most men have ever seen. If you hoped to bluff me, you could not have picked a worse approach. You have no mastery of the dark arts.”
“No,” I say, fumbling for something, “I —”
“There is no shame in it. You’re a young man, not without wit or drive, and I appreciate the attempt at cunning you have shown in our dealings today. But you are no necromancer. You cannot manage a Host. You do not even want to manage a Host.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“Free us. Let us go. Do not live your life burdened by your father’s sins.”
&nb
sp; I don’t know what to say. This has to be a trick. Elza said they’d try and break free. I know this ghost is dangerous, I can feel it in my marrow, like he’s radioactive. Maybe he’s still afraid of me, a little? He’s right, I don’t want a Host. All I wanted was four million pounds, properties, DVD sales . . . I didn’t want this at all. I want them gone. What’s the harm in that, if I can just let them go? Surely everyone gets what they want?
“It’s that easy?”
“Oh, certainly Luke. It’s very easy. As easy as signing for us in the first place. We could do it right now. You don’t want a Host, Luke. You want a normal, happy life. You don’t want to follow in your father’s footsteps, believe me. Let us go, and this can end here.”
It can’t be this easy. I need to be careful.
“Well —”
“All that’s required,” the Shepherd continues, flashing a gray rank of teeth, “is a suitable mark of relinquishment in the Book of Eight. Fortunately your copy is right here.”
His tattooed hands move over the surface of the table, and there’s a flicker, like someone changed the reel in a film I’m watching. The green book is on the table, just in front of the Shepherd. The cover’s eight-pointed star gleams in the glare from the light fixture overhead.
“A simple spot of blood,” he’s saying, “and we leave your life, your home, forever.”
He strokes the Book, and the clasps spring off the cover without being touched. The yellow pages move as if blown in a gale, and the Book falls open right in the middle. He pushes it toward me. I put my hand on it, spin it around to have a look.
There are no words on these pages. The double spread is covered in a psychedelic pattern of concentric circles and spirals, all of which look hand drawn, and they seem to be moving as I look at them. I feel like every time I focus on one part of the design, another part of the page will change. I’m getting a headache.
“This will free you?” I’m saying.
“Indeed, Luke. A general declaration of freedom from bond, for all eight spirits.”
“Really. Wow.”
The circles seem to have . . . depth, somehow, like there’s more to this page than just the page. If I keep looking at it, I’ll be able to see what it is. There are pages beyond the page. There are hundreds of them. Millions of circles.
“Quite something, isn’t it?” the Shepherd asks.
“It’s amazing.”
My ears are ringing, roaring. I can feel my blood flowing.
All I can really look at now is the circles.
My hand is moving toward something, I realize it’s my fork.
“A single drop is all we need,” the Shepherd says. He sounds like he’s talking to me from down a long tunnel. His voice echoes.
I push the fork into the ball of my thumb. There’s a nice flush of red. It doesn’t remotely hurt. When I look up at the Shepherd, I can still see the circles and spirals, weaving over his suit and face.
They’re everywhere.
My hand is moving toward the book.
“You’re doing the right thing,” the ghost says.
My thumb is poised over the center of the design.
I’m about to press down.
There’s an explosion of noise, and I’m thrown sideways, landing hard on the floor. The rushing in my ears is gone. My thumb is fizzing with pain, blood running down onto the palm of my hand. Ham stands over me, barking and barking. The Shepherd looms above us.
“Restrain this beast, and seal the declaration of release,” he says.
“Sir.”
“Stay out of this!” the Shepherd yells, turning his head to look at someone else.
The Vassal is standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
“I can’t recommend you do this,” he says over Ham’s barks.
“I was going to release you,” I tell the Vassal, though I’m not sure anymore why it seemed like such a good idea.
“It’s for the best,” the Shepherd says.
“For you, perhaps,” replies the Vassal. “He has not wronged you. He is guilty of no crime.”
“You livestock,” spits the Shepherd, “you servile, mewling animal!”
“A Host is unable to harm its master,” the Vassal tells me. “It is at the heart of our bond. He may not kill you, but if you release him, you remove that deepest taboo, and he will stop your heart with a word.”
“Why?” I ask the Shepherd. “Don’t you want to be free?”
“Revenge,” the Vassal says. “He is consumed by it.”
The Shepherd kneels beside me and Ham. His glasses catch the light, two silver moons. Ham shrinks back but doesn’t run. I can see blue veins under the ghost’s skin. The wrinkles by his mouth shift as he speaks.
“You father defiled my tomb. In life I was the greatest necromancer the world has known. He bound me — bound me — and used me as his Shepherd. I do not forget. I do not forgive. I swore to rend his body and torment his soul, and, denied that small pleasure, I must turn to his heir.”
“I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Listen,” the Shepherd says. He removes his glasses. His eyes are black and wet, with no whites to them at all, black like the eyes of a goat or raven. “Listen to me, child. I have voyaged to the dark lands of the dead. I have seen things there that our words cannot describe. There can still be some small mercy for you, if you release me this very day.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
“You are a poor liar. Worse even than your father.”
The bottomless black eyes are a finger’s length from mine.
“This isn’t over,” he says. “This is the beginning.”
The Shepherd is gone.
“You could have warned me,” I say to the Vassal.
“I was afraid.”
“Of him?”
“He was the most terrible man in the world while he breathed, and he became worse for every day he spent beyond the veil. I fear him very much, sir.”
“Thanks for saving me,” I say. “You and Ham.”
“I know you did not ask for such a burden as we. The father is not the son.”
“So he can’t kill me?”
“He may not. Without explicit instruction, however, we may allow harm to come to you, and many of the Host would do so.”
“What will he do on Halloween?”
“I do not know, sir. The Shepherd has some stratagem, I am certain. He always does. Look to the Book of Eight.”
“I don’t know how! I can’t even open it.”
“And yet you must, sir. And yet you must.”
I look at the Book, now closed, sitting on our dining table as if it were any old book, nothing to take notice of. My stomach is churning. The Vassal has his head turned away from me, frowning, as if he’s listening to something happening in another room.
“I must go,” he says suddenly. “They will not forgive me for this.”
“I’m glad you helped me.”
“I hope I have cause to be glad of it as well, sir.”
The Vassal gives a small bow and vanishes.
I don’t go to Elza’s house. I don’t know what to do. The Book of Eight sits on the table, and I’m afraid to go anywhere near it. I’m afraid to even try to open it. I keep thinking about the circles flowing out of the pages, the way they covered the walls and the Shepherd’s face. The Book is a monster, and the Host wants me dead. I can’t leave Mum and Ham here without me. The afternoon darkens into evening. The trees that surround the house take on the shape of whispering giants. Ham won’t settle and paces the kitchen all night. I think of waking Mum, telling her we need to leave, but I don’t know how I’d get her to believe me, and I don’t know where we could go that they wouldn’t follow. By one in the morning I can’t keep myself awake any longer. I climb into bed with my clothes on and lie still, listening for any hint of the Host returning. The wind whispers at the cracks in my window frame. Outside, the fields are cold and dark. Animals shiver in their burrows, dreaming blea
k dreams of running and dying.
When I wake up on Friday morning, I hear a man’s voice coming from Mum’s room. I run in to her and find there’s a crude star drawn in black paint above her headboard: a slashed, spiky rune that takes up half the wall — the same symbol the Shepherd had tattooed on his palms. She’s lying still and straight, bedsheets covering her body up to her neck. Her hair is tucked behind her ears. She looks peaceful. I can’t tell if she’s breathing or not. The voice I could hear was her CD player, a man’s cheerful voice reciting some self-esteem exercise.
“Only you have to power to effect lasting personal change,” the CD player says to itself.
“Mum!” I yell.
I cross the room in what feels like one step.
“Look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see?”
I shake her by the shoulders. She doesn’t wake. I can’t find her pulse, but her arm feels warm. I hold a hand mirror to her face, and she breathes the faintest film of fog over it. She’s alive, then, whatever they did to her. I sit on the floor beside her bed. I should’ve said something to her, but I don’t know what I could have told her. She believes in the spirit world as an abstract place full of energy and good vibes rather than as a malicious storm of darkness. How would I have explained the Prisoner or the Shepherd to her? I should call an ambulance . . . and then what? They’ll give her a CAT scan? Put her on a drip and wait for her to wake up? I’ll get put in foster care. I can’t think of people who’ll be less responsive to my stories about evil spirits than a gang of paramedics and social workers. I’m on my own. Whatever the Host has done to her, I have to deal with it.
“Do you see someone who’s confident and powerful? Most of us don’t.”
I turn the CD player off so hard that the power button breaks. I leave her room, shut the door, and walk out onto the landing. I feel like the ghosts must be watching me, watching Mum, waiting to see what I’ll do.
“Show yourselves!” I’m shouting. “Come out! What have you done to her? Don’t hide from me! Show yourselves!”