by Gill, J. G.
“Appearances can be deceptive,” said Thomas.
I rolled my eyes sceptically. There was no possible way Thomas could know anything about my family. He was making up a bunch of weird allegations on the basis of absolutely nothing.
“C’mon Thomas, I know my own stepmother,” I said.
“Clare, is it really so inconceivable that there might be things about her that you don’t know?” he replied.
Technically Thomas did have a point. I hadn’t actually known Arlene all that long. At the same time though, I didn’t need to know where she’d gone to school to know that she wasn’t thousands of years old, or that she worked for Demarge. Like Bede had said, it was Dad who was tied up with importing reptiles, not Arlene.
“Of course I don’t know everything about her,” I said. “But I know about the stuff that actually matters.”
“Okay, so how do I know that she met your dad at an insurance conference in Geneva and moved in with your family about five years ago?”
I stared at Thomas in shock. He was right, it had been about five years ago, roughly the same time as Dad had had a massive argument with Aunt Pixie and we’d stopped seeing her. “Who told you?” I said.
“No one,” said Thomas. “Like I said, we’ve been watching Morana for a while. It was Demarge who arranged for her to seduce your father.”
“Demarge?” I said. Now I was completely confused.
“It’s all been his design,” said Thomas, “although it hasn’t been easy to execute. Your dad was a good father. He took a lot of convincing that Morana would make the ideal stepmother. It was easier with you, being younger, but your brother, he was a completely different proposition. We watched her struggle with him for years, even on the wedding day, when he left the reception early to steal that car with his friends.”
“You know about that?” I said.
I remembered the night of the wedding only too well. The police had brought Bede home in the early hours of the morning, when Dad and Arlene had only just arrived back at the house themselves, still in their wedding clothes. They’d grounded Bede for months afterwards. But that had been private family business. The fact that Thomas now seemed to know about it made me feel as if someone had rifled through my bedroom when I wasn’t looking and found the diary I kept locked under my mattress.
“I’m just so sorry that we couldn’t stop her before she made her move,” Thomas continued. “I really don’t know what happened – one minute Min and I were monitoring the situation and the next…well…I’m just so sorry about your poor father.
My blood ran cold.
“Dad?” I said. “Do you know where he is?”
“Oh Clare,” Thomas whispered. “You still don’t know, do you?”
I looked silently at my lap, paralysed with fear at the revelation that was about to come. Part of me wanted to know the awful truth and just be done with it, like that old saying about pulling off a sticking plaster in one go. At the same time, a bigger part of me wanted to stay perfectly still, so I could freeze whatever hope was still intact and keep it safe. As Thomas opened his mouth to speak, I fought with all my strength not to scream at him to stop, to clap my hands over my ears and block his words from burrowing in. But the truth was inevitable. I knew that.
“She killed him Clare,” he said softly. “Morana, the Angel of Death. She killed him and she framed your brother for it.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t believe you. You must have made a mistake. He’s not dead. He can’t be!”
I could feel Thomas’s gaze resting on the crown of my head as my eyes began to fill with tears. Without speaking he slowly reached out and took my hand. It was the final straw, I couldn’t hold it in any more. Large, salty tears began rolling down my cheeks in extravagant wet streaks before dropping off the edge of my chin. I didn’t bother wiping them away.
“I just…I don’t get it,” I said, struggling to actually push the words out through my sobs. “Really, Arl…I mean, Morana? Why would she do that?”
“Because it’s time,” said Thomas.
“Time?” I said, repeating the word as if it was part of a foreign language. “For what?”
“For Demarge to set his plan in motion,” said Thomas.
“What plan?” I said, weakly.
“His plan to destroy the Slipworld.” Thomas paused. “And to persuade you to join him.”
I felt a wave of nausea wash over me.
“But I still don’t even know what the Slipworld is,” I said. “And why me, anyway?”
“Because of who you are, what you possess. You may not realise yet, Clare, but you have something very rare.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “You’ve definitely got the wrong person,” I said. “I can guarantee, the only thing that’s rare about me is my height, and I’m sure Demarge isn’t particularly interested in that.”
Thomas shook his head, the way people do when they think you’ve misunderstood something they’ve said. “I don’t want to scare you anymore than I already have, but trust me when I say that Demarge will never stop until he has you in his possession.”
I looked at Thomas in disbelief. “You don’t want to scare me, and yet you tell me that?”
“I’m sorry Clare, but there’s no way of avoiding it, and there’s no easy way to tell you the truth.”
“So how does writing ‘run’ in blood on Dad’s bedroom mirror fit with Demarge wanting to get hold of me?” I said.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” said Thomas. “Your father wrote it, with the last of the life he had in him. He wrote it out of the love he had for you and your brother.”
I was crying so hard now that it was difficult to breathe and I found myself snapping at the air, only managing to grab small snatches of oxygen at a time. Thomas shuffled across and pulled me towards him as I wept onto his shoulder.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “If only Min and I had reacted faster, things might have turned out differently.”
It took me a long time to get myself together. Eventually, after it felt as if I’d cried out every last bit of moisture from my body, I was at last able to sit up and dry my eyes. Thomas pushed the hair back from my face.
“What about the snake-importing business that Dad was involved in? How does that fit with all of this?” I said.
“Clare, there was no importing business,” said Thomas. “Your dad was a good man, he would never have jeopardised the lives of his children by getting mixed up in something like that.”
“But I saw that letter from the insurance company,” I said. “Bede found it in the safe. Dad hadn’t been working for them for years.”
Thomas shook his head. “That letter wasn’t real, Clare. You need to understand, Archons like Morana are extremely clever. She could easily have had that letter printed and planted in the safe for you or Bede to find. It would have been child’s play to her. Once the letter was out in the open it was just a matter of her concocting a story to go with it.”
“Archons like Morana,” I repeated. “What do you mean?”
“An ‘Archon’ is the name given to a special class of Demarge’s servants. Morana is an Archon. Min and I are Aeons. We aren’t all that dissimilar; we just work for different sides.”
“Oh,” I sniffed. I was beginning to wonder how much more crazy stuff I was going to have to try to make sense of. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. It was hard to remember the last time I’d felt so exhausted. I leant back against the huge stone slabs of the wall, strangely comforted by the coldness that was now seeping into my body – at least that felt real.
“Did Morana find you too?” I said.
“No, that was my own doing,” said Thomas wryly. “Min and I heard that Morana had received new instructions from Demarge and that she was on the move. I was trying to track her down before she could do any damage but, as it turns out, I let my guard down far too easily. That’s the thing about this world Clare, it has a habit of blunting the
senses.”
I looked at him curiously. What did he mean, “blunting the senses”? Thomas seemed to read my mind before I could ask him.
“There’ll be time for explanations later. The main thing now is to make sure you survive.”
CHAPTER XII
Bede decided to stick to the back roads – fewer people meant fewer collisions, and more chance of staying inconspicuous. It also meant there was less risk of running into Mick again. A date with Mr Meat-Fists was the last thing he needed. He focused on the cobblestones stretching out in front of him as his feet hammered the footpath. The buildings lining the streets melted into blurred swatches of colour, as the memories of Arlene crept stealthily into his mind. He started to replay the various family events that had taken place over the previous five years. Had she really been fooling them all that time? No, it was impossible. Not even the best actor in the world could have kept it up for that long. It had to be yet another one of the stunts that Arlene Drama Queen pulled when she didn’t get her own way.
Man, she really is a piece of work. I mean, it’s one thing not to get on with your stepmother, but that chick takes the biscuit, thought Bede. He began to laugh, first inside his head, then quietly out loud.
This whole thing seems too ridiculous to be true, because it is just that, ridiculous. I mean, that story about Dad being bitten by a snake, how gullible does she think I am? “So Arlene wants to call herself Morana now? Who cares? It’s probably some fad in one of those stupid magazines she’s always reading. I bet what’s really happened is that she and Dad got mixed up in some sort of dodgy business with that fat guy and the creepy dude in black. It all ended up going bad, she got in a strop with Dad over it, and now she’s playing it mean by telling me some crap about him being dead. That would be typical of her – fighting over nothing, turning septic and it ending up okay again after all.
Then Bede remembered the writing in blood on the mirror. It was the one piece of the jigsaw that didn’t quite fit. He continued to wrestle with it as weaved his way through the Old Town, keeping his collar turned up and his head bowed to avoid making eye contact with anyone. He knew from experience that eye contact had a nasty habit of making people remember you. Not ideal, especially at a time when he knew he’d need to shift like smoke if he was to avoid the police.
It was freezing now, the cold rising up out of the ground and through the soles of his shoes. Just the thought of having to sleep outside for a second night made him shiver uncontrollably. Shopkeepers were starting to bring their signs inside, the metal frames scraping the footpaths like knives against bone. The smell of roast dinners wafted from homes and lingered in the streets, the thick, meaty perfumes crystallising in the cold night air. Bede’s stomach growled hungrily as he remembered the loaf of bread he’d dropped by the roadside. He pulled his coat tightly around his shoulders and buried his hands deep inside his pockets, pulling out a fistful of coins. Counting them quickly, he realised he had less than half the money he’d need to get a bed in a hostel.
“Great, just great,” he muttered to himself.
In a corner of the Old Town the loud, sonorous bongs of the Old Town clock, echoed across the rooftops like the deep-bellied voice of an old man. Bede counted the chimes. Six o’clock. The guys will be out skateboarding now.
It wasn’t the first time that Bede’s thoughts had wandered to his friends. They were like a surrogate family to him – had been ever since Arlene had moved in and home had stopped being home. Now, standing alone, cold and virtually penniless on the street, Bede missed them more than ever. Without thinking, his feet began to walk him out of the Old Town, towards the river. He was soon standing on the southern embankment, looking across the oily-black tide. Somewhere, deep in that thick, dark soup, he imagined the slick bodies of thousands of eels churning themselves into knots. A cold chill cruised up and down his spine. He tore his eyes away and quickly ran towards the safe, bright lights of the bridge.
Bede had soon reached the northern bank and began running towards the skateboard park as if on auto-pilot. It wasn’t long before he could hear the familiar sound of juddering wheels, racing up and down the wooden ramps. In the distance, a group of boys were standing around with their boards, watching each other practice their ollies and kickflips. Two or three others were tagging a wall and laughing loudly. The chemical smell of spray paint hung in the air.
“Hey!” Bede began running towards the group watching the jumps.
It was only then that it struck him, he didn’t actually know what he was going to say when he got there. Usually it was easy, he could just dump whatever was on his mind and that would be it. But this was different. This was so much bigger than anything he’d ever had to deal with before.
How would I even begin telling them what’s being going on? he thought. Hi guys, guess what, my Dad’s a criminal and has gone AWOL. Arlene says he’s dead and that she’s framed me for it. Oh yeah, and some dude wrote ‘RUN’ in blood on a bedroom mirror in my house. So what’s up with you?
Bede sighed. No matter how much he rehearsed it in his head, there was no way he was going to be able to explain what he’d been going through.
“Hey man, what’s up?” said a voice behind him.
Bede turned to see Shrapnel standing near one of the ramps. He had a skateboard propped under one arm, and was wearing a black hoodie and baggy trousers slung low so that the tops of his underpants were showing above the belt line.
“Hey Shrap,” said Bede, giving his friend a high-five.
Shrapnel set his skateboard down and ran his fingers through his thick, dirty- blond hair. It was so matted it looked as if it was some sort of animal was camping on top of his head.
“So, haven’t seen you ‘round for a bit?”
“Nah, been busy,” said Bede, evasively. “You?”
Shrapnel shrugged. “Y’know, old man’s still on at me about getting a job and the old lady’s on at him about fixing the boiler. Same old crap really.” He paused as if suddenly remembered something. “Hey man, did you know the cops were around here looking for you?”
“Oh. Right,” said Bede. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”
“Nah man, no way. So what’s the deal? You been ‘busy’, nicking another car or something?”
“Ah, not exactly.” Bede shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “It’s kind of…complicated.”
Shrapnel shrugged. “Yeah, know how it is,” he said.
No, you really don’t, thought Bede, nodding all the same to avoid any more awkward questions.
“Hey, if the cops come around again, you’ll say you haven’t seen me, yeah? I don’t really need them on my tail right now.”
Shrapnel raised his eyebrows. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
“It’s not me really, it’s Dad. Can’t get into it right now, but promise me man, if you see the cops again you won’t tell them anything.”
“Sweet, whatever,” said Shrapnel.
“The other thing is…” Bede paused awkwardly. “You don’t happen to have any money I could borrow do you? I really hate to ask but, well, I’m kind of…not living at home at the moment.”
“Yeah, sure, what are mates for?” Shrapnel dug around in his pockets and pulled out a couple of notes. “Here, take this. Just pay me back when you can.”
“Thanks, I owe you.”
“No worries. So you’re not with your olds? Where’re you staying then?”
“Anywhere I can find really, at least until this gets sorted.”
Shrapnel drew a breath back through his teeth. “That’s pretty brutal.”
“Tell me about it. Even worse, Clare’s on the streets too but I don’t know where.”
Shrapnel’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “She’s fallen out with your parents too?”
“Yeah,” said Bede, vaguely. He really wanted to change the subject.
Shrapnel nodded sympathetically, as a thought suddenly occurred to him.
“Hey, do
you remember my cousin, Troy?”
Bede laughed. “Yeah, he used to come skateboarding until he went and got a job and turned all, ‘I’m a serious businessman now’.”
“That’s the one,” said Shrapnel, grinning. “He’s not such a bad guy though – may be able to help you out.”
“How?”
“He’s got this flat with a bunch of guys, just a few blocks from mine. It’s not exactly, well, legit. I mean, nothing major or anything, but they kind of just found the place, broke in and started living there.”
“You mean squatting?” said Bede.
“Yeah, more or less,” said Shrapnel. “Anyway, I’ve been there and it’s huge. I don’t reckon they’d even notice if you bunked down for a bit.”
“Really?”
Shrapnel nodded. “I could have a word to Troy, I reckon he’d be cool about it.”
“Man, that’d be amazing,” said Bede. It was by far the best news he’d heard all day. “I’d kill just to have a shower and a decent night’s sleep.”
“C’mon then.”
Shrapnel slapped Bede on the back and began leading him out of the skateboard park. It was dark now and the streetlights were pinging into life. Bede let Shrapnel do the talking, it was easier that way. Eventually, they came to the intersection of Rice and Menlove Streets.
“This way.” Shrapnel nodded towards a pedestrian access, pointing out a dilapidated house with its front door boarded up. “Home, sweet home, my friend. C’mon, they use the side door.”
Bede followed Shrapnel along the makeshift path that had been hacked into the undergrowth at the side of the house. As they neared the door he could see its handle was missing, the socket crusted over with rust. A long piece of piping was propped up against the wall and one end of it had been roughly hammered into a sharp point.
“That’s your key to the place,” said Shrapnel.
Bede frowned. “What do you mean?”
Shrapnel picked up the piping. “Here, I’ll show you.” He slid the sharp end of the metal into the doorjamb, jimmying it open to allow a thin wedge of space through which to squeeze into the house. He then reached outside, replaced the piping against the wall, and slammed the door behind them.