by Leo Hunt
Mark doesn’t let me finish. He lurches forward and hits me across the mouth. It’s not even a decent punch, more of a loose slap. My head rolls back and my lip feels sweet and warm and really enormous all at once. My face throbs. What did my body — the Fury — tell him? He’s deranged.
“Mark!” I hear Holiday yell. I stumble backward, holding my hand over my face. I’ve dropped the gerbil case. I’m still holding the paint, thinking maybe I’ll swing it at him, but he doesn’t hit me again.
More shouting. I take my hand off my face. Elza has Alice’s neck held in the crook of one arm and is trying to force her down onto the ground with what looks like some sort of wrestling hold. Alice is either screaming or crying. I can’t see Elza’s expression. Holiday is standing between me and Mark, talking very fast into his face. Her hands are gripping his shoulders. Kirk rushes up to the girls, shouting, and pulls Elza off Alice, who falls backward into the bushes, coughing. Elza pushes Kirk back and then head-butts him in the face and he’s knocked back, a smear of bright, almost-fake-looking blood leaking from his upper lip. Elza backs away from him, breathing hard, staring right at Mark, who looks at her and me with a mixture of fear and rage, then shakes his head and, linking his arm with Holiday’s, says, “Let’s go, man.”
“She hit me!” says Kirk.
“Everyone stop it!” Holiday shouts. “You don’t need to — this isn’t helping!”
Kirk hauls Alice to her feet.
“She hit me,” says Kirk, sounding like a little kid.
Elza looks poised to hit him again. I’m worried what’ll happen if he goes for her properly. Kirk’s not a pushover, and I don’t know how much more my body can take.
“You can’t hit girls,” Holiday says. “Come on.”
Kirk snorts and rubs the blood from his lip.
“Not even worth it,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Holiday.
She has nothing in her eyes except pity.
“I’m sorry, too,” Holiday says, and they leave.
I look at the churned-up grass. The whole thing took about a minute or two. I get the feeling that something else is leaving with them, too, some version of me. They won’t forgive me. This’ll follow me around Dunbarrow like a second shadow. Everyone will know.
“I’ve wanted to do that for years,” Elza says. “You have no idea — are you OK?”
“I’ll live.”
“Good friends, huh?”
“I ate an entire raw bird in front of their eyes. Who even knows what my body was doing when we weren’t watching?”
I pick up the can of paint and gerbil case. Elza bites her lip and starts to gather wayward pieces of hair in her fingers, slowly reknitting her bun.
At quarter to eleven, it’s time to go to the Footsteps. I put on my sigil and tuck a knife and the Book of Eight into my coat pocket. Then we load a sports bag with supplies and drag Ham into the night. The schematics of the ritual are burned into my brain, so hopefully I won’t have to refer to the Book again. It’s not as if we have an extra three days to spare. My face throbs. I can barely distinguish the pain of the beating from the other aches and pains I’ve gathered over the past week. It feels as if I’m listening to two separate brass bands playing over each other. Elza, who admitted to me that she didn’t have many “practical clothes,” is wearing freshly purchased waterproof pants and a mountaineering raincoat in bright orange and green.
“Remind me why we brought him?” I ask, pointing to Ham.
“I don’t know,” Elza says. “It just feels right. I felt safer when he was around, when you were gone. I didn’t want to leave him alone.”
“Don’t you think he’ll be in danger?”
“Maybe. Aren’t we all? I don’t know, it’s just a hunch, you know. I trust hunches.”
Elza has the gerbil case on her lap. Ham is deeply interested in the gerbil, and his breath is steaming up the side of the case.
“They’re making friends,” I say, pointing.
Elza grimaces. She’s still not happy about what we’re going to do to the gerbil.
“Speaking of which,” she says, “I wanted to say that all of this has really changed how I see you. I mean, I think we are friends now, right?”
“I’d say so.”
“I mean, I’m not happy about what we have to do. But I trust you. I really didn’t want to help you at first. I agonized over it. You’ve always just swanned around school like you were made of chocolate, and your friends are such jerks. . . . But you know, you’re dealing with all of this pretty well.”
“Thanks, Elza,” I say. “I always thought you were this awful, arrogant know-it-all. And I’ve come to realize that I was totally right.”
“Shut up!” she shrieks, hitting me in the side. “I take it all back. You’re the worst.”
“What I mean is,” she says after a while, “I hope you make it through this. I’m worried for you. About what you’ll have to do.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m worried, too.”
As we mount the hill, the storm finally breaks. The world is reduced to a series of colored flashes and blurs. Luckily there’s a distinctive convenience store just a street away from Dunbarrow High, and soon I see its sign flashing.
My throat tightens as we hurry along the street. I’m hefting the gerbil’s case with one hand and dragging Ham’s leash with the other. Ham’s fur is slicked down and his eyes are rolling about under his brows. Elza trots in front with the sports bag and the paint can.
“The Footsteps are up there,” I say, pointing to the absolute blackness beyond the dim shape of the school. My raincoat hood is soaked and heavy against my head.
I pull on Ham’s leash and we walk, heads bent to keep the rain off our faces. There are street lamps burning orange in the staff parking lot, but apart from that the school is entirely dark. We walk around the reception office, sheltered from the wind for a moment, then out into the yard, past the portable classrooms that they teach English and math in, around the back of the kitchens, then past the changing rooms, and we’re out on the rugby field, keeping to the edge, trees grumbling and dripping water on our heads. The wind is like a raging river, bursting its banks, carrying branches and leaves and bracken straight into our faces.
The north side of the rugby field bleeds into rougher, unmowed grass, studded with bushes and small dead trees. There’s litter here, years and years of it, blown over from the schoolyards, bright packets and cans and soggy plastic bags flailing in the tree branches like ailing jellyfish. Elza brings out a fat barrel-shaped flashlight as we head farther into the woods. I’m stumbling over branches and the tiny infuriating holes that seem to form in the forest floor specifically to trip people up. The sleeves of my jacket are so wet they look glossy in the beam of the flashlight. The forest floor is overgrown with tangled nests of brambles.
“Ten minutes to midnight,” I tell Elza. We need to move faster.
Onward, upward. The only light is the flashlight now; even the tangerine-colored stain of city light on the southern horizon is gone, hidden by the curve of the hill. This slope is rocky, the ground carpeted by a spongy layer of dark moss. We reach the top, struggle through a tenacious wall of bushes, and cross a narrow dirt road, rainwater whooshing along the channels that tires have carved in the earth.
“Is this it?” Elza asks.
“Yes. Down that bank.”
We make our way down the shallow slope toward the Devil’s Footsteps. The oak trees arch over the clearing like a vaulted ceiling. As we get closer I can see the three standing stones: one tall, two squatter and wider, which have unnatural cup- or hoof-shaped hollows cut into them. The stones are light gray, covered in scales of yellow lichen. We’re sheltered from the worst of the wind, but the rain is still making its way through the trees hard enough. My teeth are chattering.
Now that we’re right up by the Footsteps I can see the disturbed earth in the middle of the standing stones, where my possessed body was digging: moss
ripped away, dark earth packed down and turning to mud in the rain. I point it out to Elza.
“Is something buried there?” Elza hisses.
“Could be. Looks fresh,” I say. “I know my body was digging here, but I don’t know why.”
“What would it have buried? Something for the Host’s own ritual? I’m not getting good feelings from this.”
I’m looking around at the dark trees, the whispering blackness of the forest beyond them, suddenly knowing we’ve walked into a trap. I saw my body digging here. . . . But we had no choice; the ritual has to be performed at a passing place. There was nowhere else.
“We can’t worry about that now, there’s no time. It’s nearly one minute to midnight. We need to move faster,” I tell Elza. She reaches into our sports bag and takes out the herbs. “Whether they buried something or not, we can’t worry about it. We don’t have time. Witch parsley and baneleaf. Stand in the center of the stones and I’ll draw the circle.”
I take the herbs. They’re a motley assortment of leaves, some brown and dry, others furry and fat and somehow tonguelike and covered in tiny hairs. I walk into the center of the Footsteps, with the gerbil’s case under my arm. I lay it down, right on top of the disturbed earth. I throw the herbs over myself. Some get caught in the wind and are blown away from me; others settle in my hair or stick to my raincoat. I feel like I’m garnishing myself. Elza ties Ham to a sapling and takes the can of paint, cracks it open, and begins to walk backward — counterclockwise, I remember the Book said — around the Footsteps, dribbling paint onto the moss. The magic circle isn’t very complicated: It’s just a ring around the passing place, with a mark of power at the north of the circle. It’s this mark that Elza seems to be struggling with.
“It’s turned midnight! It’s Halloween!” I shout to her. “Hurry up!”
“Rain’s pooling here. It’s hard to draw it out.”
Elza bends forward and starts to work at the earth, slopping the paint with her hands. The flashlight is on the ground beside her, lighting her from below, casting a huge shapeless shadow over the wall of trees. Ham starts to bark, straining at his lead. I take my knife out of my coat pocket and unfold the blade. If it weren’t raining so hard, I could keep better watch on the south side of the hollow. I already know they’re coming: The air feels colder, in some way that’s deeper than just the wind and the rain. Ham is pulling his thin head backward, trying to slip his collar.
Elza stands up, wipes paint on her trousers.
“Done!”
“Good, now get out of here.”
“Can you feel anything? Did it work?”
“Yeah. I feel it.”
Nothing has outwardly changed. I’m still standing in the rain and wind in a remote part of the forests around Dunbarrow, facing death with a pocketknife and a store-bought gerbil. But I feel different, more important. I feel like I’m onstage and a spotlight just clicked on. What I do inside the magic circle matters; beings outside our world will be able to see, to notice me. My sigil is blazing with power on my finger, burning harder than it ever has before, sending jolts of cold up my arm and into my chest.
Ham slips his collar and bolts away into the woods, yowling.
“Ham! Oh, shit!” Elza cries.
“Elza, get out of here! They’re coming!”
There’s something moving in the trees. I can see my breath in the air. There’s a frost creeping over the gerbil’s plastic case, over the standing stones themselves.
“Last thing!” Elza shouts.
She throws me a bottle of cooking oil, then shoulders our bag and runs off into the woods, following Ham’s barks.
Something comes flying out of the forest to the south of the Footsteps. The Prisoner, blank white eyes rolling, floating over the moss and bracken at terrible speed. He ignores me and crosses the hollow in an instant, eyes set on the gap between the trees where Elza disappeared. The Judge follows, not looking at me, jeans rolled halfway up his shins, revealing his red boots. Both spirits are bigger and brighter, glowing like neon signs. You wouldn’t mistake them for living beings tonight. The ghosts dissolve into the rain and the dark and are gone, chasing Elza. Saying my heart is in my mouth isn’t even half of it: I feel more like every organ is trying to force its way out through my face. Ham is still yelping in the woods, his barks growing fainter against the noise of the storm.
I scoop the gerbil out of his case. I hold him over the flattest stone and pour the oil down onto his head. He squirms in my hand. The oil runs off his smooth brown back and onto my fingers. I can see something else moving in the woods. My sigil is humming with power, spreading a cold that feels like I’ve been dunked in the Arctic Ocean. I close my eyes, the pages of the Book of Eight appearing in my mind, as clear as if I were looking at them. I see the words I need, the words that will turn my murder into something more, words that will make my knife powerful. The gerbil struggles.
“Sorry, mate — I hereby dedicate this sacrifice to Satan, our dark father. Please accept this anointed beast, and the blood I spill for you. Come to me now, in this hour of greatest darkness.”
My sacrifice squeals in my grasp. I look down into his terrified furry face. I’ve never killed anything before — I mean, I’ve squashed insects and stuff, but that’s different. Ants don’t have faces.
“Look, I’m sorry. It’s you or me. No hard feelings.”
The gerbil is squirming. I aim the knife down at his belly. I stroke the point over his stomach and he looks up at me with helpless black eyes. It’s a gerbil, Luke. You can kill it to save yourself. Elza could be dying right now. You can’t back out now. What about the animals that die in a slaughterhouse every day? You eat those burgers and barely think about it. What’s different about killing something yourself?
The rest of my Host insinuate themselves into the hollow, beyond the standing stones and the rim of my magic circle. The Shepherd is first, taller and paler than ever before, the lenses of his glasses glowing like lanterns. The Oracle follows, holding the Innocent in her arms. The Heretic is next, quietly chanting, heatless flames boiling from his withered body. I can’t see the Fury anywhere, or my mum.
“And here we are at the end,” says the Shepherd.
I stand holding the gerbil and the knife, sigil burning my hand, my gaze locked with his. He’s only a few paces from me, right up at the edge of the magic circle. He runs a hand through his beard.
“The Rite of Tears if I’m not mistaken?” he continues.
I don’t say anything. I know he can’t cross the boundary of the circle. At any moment I can make my sacrifice and complete the rite. I’m still in control. But I want to know where Mum is first.
“I must admit a certain grudging respect,” the Shepherd says. “You reclaimed the mastery of your earthly vessel, which is more than I expected. That you’re even attempting the rite indicates you discovered how to access the Book of Eight. Impressive. Doomed, but impressive.”
“Doomed? I can complete the rite whenever I want to. I’m only even listening to you because I want to know what happened to Mum.”
“Your mother is alive, I assure you. She will be with us presently. And I do not believe that you will complete the rite, or you would have done so already.”
My sacrifice isn’t even struggling anymore. He’s quivering in my hand, his tiny heart ticking like a stopwatch.
“Quite absurd,” the Shepherd continues. “I was taught to kill once I’d learned to walk. You have courage and will, but you lack ruthlessness. Your witch-girl is dying as we speak, but you cannot bring yourself to spill the blood of a mere animal. The contrast with your father is marked. There was very little Horatio was not prepared to sacrifice.”
“It wasn’t their fault,” I say, looking at the gerbil, thinking of Ham and Elza and Holiday and Mum. I put my signature on Berkley’s contract. I invited all of this into my life.
“No,” the Shepherd says, “but for the necromancer, the question of who ‘deserves’ what does no
t apply. Men deserve only what they are prepared to take.”
Slit its throat. It’s an animal. If Elza dies out there in the forest —
“You don’t know what I could do,” I tell the Shepherd.
“No. I suppose one never does. Which is why we left nothing to chance.”
A cold hand grabs my left leg, squeezing as tight as a vise. I’m so shocked that I don’t even scream. I fling myself forward, falling hard against the low stone in front of me. I’ve dropped the knife and the gerbil, which has already run away into the darkness, completely lost. Without a sacrifice the ritual is impossible. I failed. My conscience held me and I failed. I’m scrabbling at the stone in front of me, trying to pull myself up, kicking out at the hand grasping my leg. It’s a real person, not a ghost, but how —
I kick free and scramble to my feet, turning my body to look at what’s attacking me. A human head, arms, and shoulders are sticking up from the disturbed earth at the center of the Devil’s Footsteps. The figure is completely choked by thick black mud, with only the eyes properly visible. Its hair is plastered down against its head. The figure pulls itself farther from the ground, torso coming free of the mud, white eyes locked on me.
“A man’s Host may not harm him, even on a day of power for the dead,” the Shepherd says. “But if the woman who gave him life is sufficiently influenced, she may be used to strike him down and break the Host’s bonds. It is an old magic, rarely invoked. A necromancer will generally slay his mother when he comes of age, to prevent her use as such an instrument. So, as you see, Luke, we may not enter your magic circle. But you will not be leaving it.”
Mum has finished wrenching herself clear of the ground. She stands upright, cloaked in earth from head to foot. The Fury stares with glee from behind her eyes. The rain beats down on both of us, mother and son. For them to use her like this . . .
I turn to face the Shepherd, already knowing I’m about to die, and my anger surges up through me, through my sigil, which sears my finger, and my anger is given shape and force by the black ring, a wave of power that strikes the Shepherd in the chest. The ghost ignites, white fire exploding from inside his eyes and mouth, white lines of force splitting his spirit flesh, and he’s screaming with pain and for a moment I think that I’ve found something he didn’t expect, some force they weren’t prepared for, but then Mum’s body clubs me heavily from behind, knocking me down onto the flat standing stone. The power flowing through my sigil is gone as fast as it arrived. I try to direct it again, try to turn the power onto the demon inside Mum’s body, but as I try to do it, there’s a hard thump in my stomach. At first I think she punched me, but then I realize, with pain like I’ve swallowed the sun, that I’ve been stabbed.