Kill Fish Jones

by Caro King

  Grimshaw shrieked as everything suddenly whirled and fell away beneath him. It took him a moment to realise that Lady had snatched him up and was rocketing into the sky with her captive dangling upside down, gripped by her twisting tail! Far away and getting further, he saw his backpack and the hoe lying in the dusty earth, along with his notebook that must have fallen out of his pocket.

  Lady slowed down a little and, giggling, began to spiral as she flew, spinning Grimshaw round and round. It made him feel sick. Rage began circling around her whirling sister, going in the opposite direction. It made Grimshaw feel even sicker.

  ‘Now, my little third-rate creation of a deceitful man’s dying curse,’ cooed Flute, flying so that she was keeping pace with Grimshaw, face to face. ‘We’ll get to the question you actually asked later. First of all, let’s work on the question you should have asked. Bear in mind that we are already cross with you for getting it wrong. It’s very disappointing because you were doing so well, you even got a peek at Beyond. Are you going to throw up yet?’ She reached out and hit him in the stomach.

  Grimshaw threw up. Not a nice thing to have to do upside down. Some of it came out of his nose.

  Lady dropped him. They let him fall a little way before Rage grabbed him and began to fly upwards again. The ground receded further and further, the church of St Peter and St Paul disappearing into the distance as they went on and up, heading north-east.

  16

  TWO QUESTIONS

  They were flying so fast that Grimshaw had to fight for breath. The land was already far behind and they were out over the flat, grey expanse of the Limbo sea. Flute was screeching in his ears as Lady hauled him along, flapping in their wake like a torn pennant in a gale. When they were high over the sea, they stopped flying and a game of toss the demon began. By now, Grimshaw was too busy screaming to worry about questions.

  ‘Ooops,’ said Lady, missing him for the second time.

  Flute dived, catching him by an ear. She twisted it hard and shook him.

  ‘Yaaargh! That hurts!’

  ‘Upside down is best. They throw up more.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Flute threw him to Lady, who got him by the legs again, wrapping her tail tight around him. She began to drift in slow circles, with Rage in the centre, humming to herself. Rage hovered, turning on the spot with her arms folded, listening to Flute as she spoke.

  ‘Come on then, addleshanks,’ cried Flute cheerfully. She was flying upside down in front of Grimshaw, her luminous green eyes inches from his inky ones. He shut his tight so as not to see. ‘What should your question have been? What else has been bothering you lately? Let’s see if you can guess.’

  Grimshaw struggled to think. ‘If your job is to help us see the truth, why are you so mean about it?’ he yelled crossly.

  ‘Are you trying to distract us?’ smiled Flute, flying closer. ‘It won’t work. We are mean to the Wanderers because no human sees as clearly as when he thinks he is about to die – even when he’s already dead! And we are mean to you, little demon, because you are a nasty thing and you deserve it.’

  To demonstrate, she reached out a hand, but before she could claw him, Grimshaw’s madly scrabbling brain put together what she had said about something that had been worrying him and that moment of seeing Beyond on the mountainside. He spoke hurriedly, feeling a little sick from all the drifting in circles.

  ‘The other thing I’ve been wondering about is noble humans. There never were any before, but now I keep seeing them everywhere.’

  ‘Good demon,’ said Flute, drawing back her hand. ‘That’s the right question.’

  Grimshaw gave an inner sigh of relief. If he was on the right track, maybe things would hurt a little less. ‘But I thought I must be wrong,’ he went on, ‘because Tun says …’

  ‘Oh, what does he know?’ put in Rage. ‘He’s only a demon Avatar like you …’

  ‘He’s a first-class one.’

  ‘You mean, not a foolish little skinned thing that can’t kill its boy Sufferer and hasn’t yet worked out why?’ Rage snorted. ‘Huh, that doesn’t mean he’s not just as dumb as the rest of you.’

  From above him, still holding him by the ankle, Lady giggled. ‘How does it go?’ She put on a doomy voice. ‘Until my name is writ upon the tomb of my ancestors, the House of Ombre will be hounded unto death through every generation.’

  ‘Honestly,’ shrieked Flute, ‘only a real dimwit would kill off the last family member with a curse like that! Now it can NEVER be fulfilled!’

  ‘Never?’ mumbled Grimshaw, puzzled. Personally, he thought it was a pretty good curse.

  Flute rolled her eyes. ‘Tun’s Architect,’ she said with exaggerated patience, ‘Rudolphus Ombre, was cast out by his family. When he was dying, Rudolphus asked for his name to be added to the list of ancestors carved on the walls of the family vault. But they refused outright, didn’t want to know him, see? So, with his dying breath, he put a curse on the family name that would last until they relented.’

  ‘The curse that Tun is Avatar for?’

  ‘That’s right. But now Tun has killed them all, there are no family members left to want Rudolphus Ombre’s name carved anywhere, let alone on the ancestral vault, see? Although everyone is dead, Tun is still connected to the curse.’

  Grimshaw winced, and not just at the idea of never ending. With no more House of Ombre there could be no more Sufferers. So Tun was stuck in Limbo forever, never able to go into Real Space! Maybe that was why he seemed so unhappy at times.

  ‘Unless,’ Flute went on, ‘he can find another way out, which I very much doubt! Anyway, my point was, your great Tun isn’t bright enough to know a noble human if it stood up and bit him.’

  Just to demonstrate, Flute bobbed forward and sank her razor teeth into Grimshaw’s shoulder.

  Blood flew into the air in scarlet streamers. Lady had stopped drifting and was flying on, picking up speed as she went so that Flute had to raise her voice as she flapped alongside.

  ‘OW!’

  ‘Come on, O small creature born of a sick man’s spirit,’ Flute shouted. ‘The answer to the noble-human question is easy. You just need to take a good long look at things and see how they really are.’

  She stabbed a finger in Grimshaw’s direction and began to spiral as she flew alongside him. Her hair whipped about her like golden snakes. Grimshaw groaned and shut his eyes, feeling sick and giddy.

  Rage darted in and gave him a whack. ‘Name a Sufferer from the past,’ she yelled in his ear.

  Grimshaw’s original Litany of Sufferers, the one he had been created with, had included all the policemen (or Peelers as Lampwick insisted on calling them) who had tried to arrest the Robber on his deathbed. There was also Mrs Boldheart, who had told the policemen all about the sorry affair of the pawned necklace, the physician who had been present at the time of the arrest, and the families and loved ones of all of the above. It had been a long list. But Grimshaw didn’t need to refer to his notebook. He had gone through the stories so often for Lampwick that he pretty much knew them all by heart.

  ‘Emily Boldheart,’ snapped Grimshaw. ‘Screaming and Sobbing followed by Collapse and Medication.’

  ‘And that’s true, is it?’

  ‘I have an excellent memory for detail,’ yelled Grimshaw coldly. He tried to fold his arms, but it didn’t work very well at velocity. Lady was curving round now, far above the great grey blanket of the ocean. They were so high that Grimshaw could make out the rougher grey edges of the land on both sides of the sea.

  Flute darted closer, peering into his face. ‘Mmhm? You don’t look too sure. But I expect you are right. I expect she screamed and sobbed as if her heart were broken. After all, her son had just been trampled to death. Very bloodily too, I believe.’

  Grimshaw swallowed nervously.

  Flute smiled, baring her teeth like needles of bone. ‘What about at the funeral? I bet she made a right fuss at the funeral.’

  Grimshaw opened his mouth and
then shut it again as an image flashed into his mind. The cabby, his face red with shame and misery as he begged Emily Boldheart’s forgiveness for killing her son. And Emily as she took his hand in hers and said:

  ‘My dear, good man. You were sober and awake and did all in your power to control the horse when it bolted. Never think that you are to blame for the cruelty of fate. But if you feel that you need a word of forgiveness from me, then you have it. I forgive you with all my heart, as would my son also.’

  Thrusting her face into his, Flute snarled. Grimshaw screamed as she raked her claws down one side of his head from chin to scalp. Then she hit him so hard that he felt his neck crunch. Lady began to fly even faster and the wind whistled about his ears, sounding bleak and cruel.

  And suddenly other images were flicking through his mind in jerky technicolour. The policeman who went to rescue his wife from their burning home and nearly died in the attempt. The policeman’s daughter who sat up night after night, patiently watching over her mother as she lay at death’s door from her injuries. The physician who …

  Somewhere in the middle of all his screaming, Grimshaw finally understood that Susan Jones was not the first noble human that he had come across, she was just the first that he had noticed.

  ‘It’s working,’ cried Flute, happily. ‘Amazing how fear can sharpen the perceptions. I think he’s beginning to look outside himself at last, to see humans as people, not just victims! We’ll make a better being of him yet, you’ll see.’

  ‘We’re here!’ called Lady. ‘Look, Grimshaw, we’ve brought you back over land. Aren’t we nice? We know you can’t swim. We may be cruel, but don’t ever say we aren’t thoughtful!’

  She slowed to a halt and hovered. Grimshaw risked a look. It was true. Right down below him, dizzyingly far away, was the familiar sight of England. Limbo style.

  ‘We’re very … high …’ mumbled Grimshaw, trying to shut his eyes against the spinning landscape of undulating grey far below. It didn’t help. He yelped as Rage whacked him round the ears.

  ‘Eyes open, if you please. This is the part where we show you how things really are. You can’t adore the glory of the world with them shut.’

  ‘Hardly glory,’ snapped Grimshaw crossly, squinting down at the grey expanse stretching out beneath him.

  ‘Try to see it as we do.’ Lady tossed him high in the air where he hung for a few seconds, while Limbo’s dodgy gravity thought it over.

  Flute spun away from Grimshaw. She hovered for a moment, looking at him, her emerald eyes unfathomable in their depths. ‘And now for the answer to the other question, the one you asked. The one about Fish Jones and why he’s still alive.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Grimshaw eagerly.

  ‘Destiny,’ she said.

  As he began to fall, Flute dived towards him one last time. For a fleeting moment her lips touched his cheek.

  ‘That’s for the question you got right,’ she said. Then her hand darted out to snatch at his wrist. ‘And this is for the one you got wrong.’

  For a second, Grimshaw didn’t realise what she had done. Then it hit him. Her sharp-tipped fingers had closed firmly around his chronometer, tearing it from his wrist!

  ‘Yaaaah! Give it back! Give it back NOW! That’s mean!’

  Flute laughed, keeping pace with him as he fell. Then she held out an arm and let the chronometer go. It vanished from sight in a moment. ‘Bye, Grimshaw,’ she said sweetly, and with a flick of her wings she was gone.

  Screaming with panic and rage, Grimshaw plunged to Earth. He struggled as if he could somehow reach his chronometer. He didn’t know why. It had already disappeared from view.

  His howls were lost in the vast emptiness of the Limbo sky, and through the whistling gale around his ears he thought he could still hear Flute laughing.

  17

  DESTINY

  Someone cleared his throat. Grimshaw squinted up as best he could from his spreadeagled position on the ground.

  He was keeping still while his skeleton, shattered by the fall, got on with the business of reorganising itself to be the right shape again instead of just lazing around in a jumble of splinters. It felt like he had been waiting forever, even though he knew it could be hardly more than an hour or so – in Real Space time – since his mortification at the hands of the Sisters of Gladness. He had stopped bothering to scream at the pain because his throat was getting sore from all the yelling. He was just lying there listening to the grinding and crunching as his bones worked hard to put themselves together again. In addition to all this, the spot on his cheek where Flute had kissed him glowed warmly, as if trying to get his attention. He ignored it. It made him think about noble humans, and frankly he wasn’t in the mood.

  ‘Hello, small one. What are you doing down there?’ Tun was standing next to him, tucking away a complicated chronometer made of wood, glass, sand and a lot of carving.

  ‘Mending,’ snapped Grimshaw sulkily.

  Tun nodded, understanding. He settled next to Grimshaw, his inky robes spread around him, looking like a pool of midnight on the ground. It was the first time Grimshaw had ever been face to face with his friend, as they were usually separated by Tun’s great height. Not that he could see any face as such, but he could sense Tun’s dreadful gaze issuing from the depths of his cowl. It dawned on Grimshaw that, for the first time ever, Tun had come to find him. Any other day he would have been pleased, but right now pleased was not on Grimshaw’s menu.

  ‘Well, small one. You are in a bad way! Your Sufferer has a destiny and you have lost your chronometer!’

  ‘The Sisters took it …’ Grimshaw halted, unable to talk with the shame of it. He took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself, but it didn’t do a lot of good. He knew that there had never before been an Avatar who had been so utterly, unbelievably stupid as to lose his chronometer. The thought that it might be gone for good made him dizzy with terror.

  ‘It’s just so … awful!’ he finished miserably. ‘It’s nearly as bad as Wimble missing futures.’

  ‘I fear it is worse than that, small one. You are probably the most shamed curse demon in history now. But still, try not to dwell on it.’ Tun reached out a skeletal hand and patted Grimshaw’s shoulder gingerly, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to do it. ‘The Sisters love to torment. Look at Wimble! They took that uncouth raincoat he wears and threw him starkers down the chimney in the Lock-Out Club! Amusing for the rest of us, mind you.’ Grimshaw didn’t think Tun sounded at all amused. ‘The main thing for you now is to get your chronometer back.’

  ‘It’s … It’s my connection to the universe! I don’t even know where I am any more!’ Grimshaw’s voice rose to a wail of panic. He heaved a quivering breath, then struggled to sit.

  ‘Much better. You’ll get nowhere if you give up.’

  Under Tun’s piercing gaze, Grimshaw flexed a paw. He winced. The limb worked, but the movement sent needles of pain up his arm. Tun was right though; it felt better to be sitting up.

  ‘I have to get back to Lampwick.’ Grimshaw’s voice quivered again. Without the chronometer his spatial sense had gone west, or would have if it had known which direction west was. He had no idea where he was relative to Real Space time, or to geography either, he couldn’t work out how to find Lampwick, and he hadn’t a clue what his Sufferer was up to. It felt horrible, as if part of his brain had turned to porridge.

  ‘Which way do I go?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘There I can help, at least.’ Tun waved a pale hand. ‘That way. Keep going as straight as you can. If you pass a big stone cross, you’ll know you’re going in the right direction. Eventually you’ll hit the motorway, and it’s easy from there.’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ Grimshaw got painfully to his feet.

  Cautiously, he tested his legs. There was no help for it, he was going to have to walk all the way back to the crypt. Miles and miles. And miles. He set off, limping painfully, with Tun strolling at his side, stopping every so often to let the smal
ler demon catch up. Now he had a direction to go in, Grimshaw’s mind turned to the other huge problem.

  Destiny. The possibility that Destiny was involved blocked out all the other things the Sisters had said – like the reality of noble humans – pushing them to the back of his head. Grimshaw paused to rub his cheek, wishing the kiss would stop stinging. It felt angry now, as if he was doing the wrong thing. But it was weaker too.

  ‘The Sisters said that my Sufferer has a destiny,’ he said anxiously. ‘Do you think that’s true?’

  ‘It’s an interesting theory. But the Sisters are very lowly angels, so you don’t have to believe everything they say. It’s not like the Horsemen.’ Tun leaned towards Grimshaw and whispered, ‘It is said among us first-rate demons that the Horsemen know … everything!’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘They are in touch with the Highest Orders of Avatar, the ones we cannot even see!’ Tun straightened up and raised his voice again. ‘So, just because the child is proving hard to kill, doesn’t mean that the Sisters are right, that he has been chosen by fate for some higher purpose. Although I’ll agree that his extra-special vision may point to some great meaning in his existence. That certainly makes him a creature apart from the rest of his kind.’

  ‘Yes.’ Grimshaw nodded agreement.

  ‘Tell me, is he one who is strange to the eye? Who does not behave as others of his age and position?’

  Grimshaw thought of the boy’s virtual silence. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shunned by most, save for two trusted friends.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Downright odd?’

  ‘YES!’

  ‘Hmm. In that case, small one, I fear you are stuffed.’

  ‘Stuffed?’

  ‘Stitched up like a kipper. The Sisters, lowly as they are, have spoken the truth. Your Sufferer has a destiny. There is some deed of significance assigned to him, that he must live to carry out.’