by Gill, J. G.
The door flew open, taking me with it. I stumbled awkwardly, just managing to catch myself before plunging headfirst into thick coffee-coloured sludge. Unexpectedly, I could hear the sound of water lapping gently against rock. As I looked up I could see that I was now standing on the banks of the Wiltsdown River, just below the Beare Bridge. The tunnel must have been built at some stage as a secret escape route from the Cathedral. Luckily for me, it was still working. I glanced around to see an overgrown path, leading back up the hill. With the thought of Demarge’s eels still fresh in my mind, I ran towards it, not stopping until I was over the bridge and navigating my way back to the Old Town Square. I glanced quickly over my shoulder, relieved to see that no one was following me. My relief soon turned to nausea though, as I realised that that could only mean one thing: Demarge had decided to wait in the Cathedral for the others.
I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and tried to get a grip on myself. I had no idea where I was actually going. It was pretty obvious that I wouldn’t be welcomed back into the Slipworld, having basically done the complete opposite of what Min and Thomas had expressly told me to do. Besides that, I was now miles from the entrance anyway. My best bet was to find somewhere warm to sleep, then try to figure it out again in the morning. I dug around in my pockets and pulled out a couple of notes. It wasn’t much, but enough for a hostel at least.
The Old Town Square was virtually deserted as I walked towards the far exit. There were just a few homeless people left, picking over the rubbish bins for whatever food they could find. It was so cold I could almost imagine my bones contracting inside my coat. I hugged my arms around me and burrowed my neck into my coat but it didn’t really help. I was so focussed on trying to squeeze as much warmth out of my coat as possible that it wasn’t until too late that I noticed someone suddenly stepping out in front of me. Before I knew it, I’d crashed into them, lost my balance, and found myself lying on the cobblestones, sprawled on my back.
“What the…?” the person shouted.
She was a girl, much smaller and thinner than me, but slightly older. Her eyes had a hungry, haunted look about them.
“You stupid idiot, why don’t you look where you’re going!” she said. “You know, those things on the front of your head, they’re called ‘eyes’.”
I was so taken aback that my first instinct was to apologise. But as soon as I’d said the words, I realised that I was actually quite angry myself.
“You know, you could take your own advice. You didn’t even look before you stepped back,” I said.
“Yeah, well that’s because I didn’t expect some maniac to just plough into me!”
“Yeah, well, sor-ry!” I said, not bothering to disguise the defensiveness in my voice.
The girl paused to scowl at me for a minute. “I really don’t have time for this,” she said, brushing herself down. Unconsciously, I did the same thing, as she moved away and start rifling through another rubbish bin. It made me realise just how hungry I was myself. It also gave me an idea. I cleared my throat, hoping to catch her attention again, but she completely ignored me. I figured I’d just have to go about it the hard way.
“Errm…” I said. Still no response. “I’ve got a bit of money, not much, but enough…”
The girl turned and positively glared at me before I could finish what I was about to say.
“Oh right, so you’re treating me like some sort of filthy beggar now are you?” She shook her head. “Seriously, you’re too much.”
I looked at her, my mouth gaping in disbelief. Then my anger came seeping back.
“You didn’t even let me finish. I never said anything about begging, or being filthy. What I was going to say is that I’ve got no idea where I can get something to eat at this time of night. If you wanted to show me, I could make it worth your while.” The girl scowled, her jaw jutting out defiantly.
“I’m fine thanks.”
“Digging about in a bin?”
“Hey, I might be “digging about in a bin” but I’m not asking anyone for anything. This is stuff people don’t want. It may be a poor-man’s jumble sale, but it’s not begging. It’s also not taking charity from some do-gooder who’s only in it to make themselves feel better.”
“Fine, whatever,” I said. The thought of getting into a big ethical discussion at that time of the night was too much. “Look, I’m starving and I’m going to find somewhere to eat. If you want to come it’s up to you.”
The girl looked me up and down as suspiciously as if I was an undercover cop, trying to catch her out for doing something dodgy.
“Yeah, all right,” she said eventually, in a way that made it clear that she was doing me a favour. “But try anything and I’ll have you.”
“Fine,” I said, trying hard not to roll my eyes. Seriously, what did she think I was going to do? Whip out my secret weapon of memorised poems from English class and unleash their fury on her?
“I know a place down there.” The girl nodded towards a narrow, dark alley that curled away from the side of the Square. I glanced at it uncertainly.
“Umm, yeah,” I said, in a tone that didn’t quite say “no”, but pretty close to it.
“What?” said the girl.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “It’s just, well, I was hoping for somewhere a bit…lighter?”
The girl shook her head, her mouth set in a thin, determined line.
“Nup, no can do. I can’t risk the cops seeing me.”
“Oh,” I said dumbly. Great, so my new ‘friend’ was wanted by the police for something – homicide maybe – and she now expected me to go down a dark alley with her? My face must have given me away because she suddenly laughed.
“Hey, it’s not what you think. Yes, the cops want to talk to me, but no, I haven’t done anything wrong. Honestly.”
I looked at her curiously, my eyes scanning hers for lies. Normally, when someone says the word “honestly” to me like that, warning bells start clanging in my head. It usually means the complete opposite, like the time that Bede stole the car and told Arlene that he honestly hadn’t. Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t help but believe that the girl was telling the truth. There was something about the way she looked at me, directly, unflinchingly. If she was lying then she was way better at it than Bede.
“Okay,” I said.
The girl’s face relaxed. “C’mon,” she said, walking towards the alley.
I began to follow, glancing back at the safe, illuminated Square that was now disappearing behind us.
“What’s your name, anyway?” said the girl.
“Clare, and you?”
“Calix. So what’s up with you, running around the city at this time of night?”
I paused, deciding how much to tell her. Obviously the whole ‘Demarge situation’ was out of the question, she’d just think I was crazy.
“I dunno. Same as you I guess,” I said.
Calix stopped, turned to me, and made a noise that was half laugh, half snort. The kind of noise that someone makes when they don’t believe a word they’ve just been told.
“Hey, I don’t mean to be rude and all that, but you? Homeless?” She stepped back and ran her eye up and down me, before making the same “huh” sound again. It was starting to get annoying.
“What, so you’re saying I don’t look homeless?” I said.
“Err, yeah!” said Calix, as if I was obviously an idiot. Now I was angry.
“So who’s making judgments about who now?” I said. “You don’t know anything about me. If you did, you’d know that my Dad’s just died, my brother’s gone missing, a whole bunch of crazy stuff has just happened to me that I can’t even tell anyone about, and actually I am homeless right now!”
As I heard myself say the final few words out loud I felt the tears dam up against the rims of my eyes, threatening to burst the banks. I bit the inside of my cheek as hard as I could stand. Things might be pretty bad right now but no way was I going to let myself cry in
front of this stupid girl.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” she said.
I shrugged and looked away. Suddenly, I felt Calix’s hand on my arm.
“I mean it, I’m sorry,” she said. I gulped, as the tears started roll down my cheeks. Calix rubbed my arm for a couple of seconds while I tried to get myself under control again.
“Thanks,” I said weakly. Calix smiled.
“C’mon, it’s just up here.”
I wiped my face on the back of my sleeve and followed her down a series of side alleys that seemed to get increasingly narrower and darker. Finally, we turned a corner and I could see, down the far end of the alley, a shaft of creamy-yellow light reaching out into the darkness. Shadowy figures huddled together, taking turns to approach the light source. As we drew closer, I could see that there was a square hole in the wall and a small shelf from where a dark-haired man with a red face was serving kebabs.
“Got the money?” said Calix. I fished around in my pockets and dug out a crumpled note.
“Is this enough?”
She nodded, grabbed the note and began working her way through the crowd. I watched in amazement as she pushed men twice her size out of the way. They were so surprised they didn’t stop her. Within minutes Calix was back, shoving a meaty kebab and a fistful of change into my palm.
“Sorry, didn’t know if you were vegetarian or not,” she said. “I’m not, so I just took a chance.”
“Thanks,” I said. Although I’m not a huge fan of meat, and anything even slightly bloody makes my stomach churn, I was starving and the smell of cooked food smelt amazing,
We began walking away from the kiosk, down the rest of the alley, until we eventually reached a small park. In the centre was a large asphalt square, decorated with a dilapidated set of swings and a few lengths of rusty iron piping from an old climbing frame. Neither of us spoke much, we were both too busy wolfing down our food. Calix slopped herself into a u-shaped seat and I took the swing next to her. We both began rocking back and forth with our heels in the gravel.
“So…” Calix paused. “How did your dad die?”
“Umm,” I said, the question catching me off-guard. I faltered for a couple of seconds, trying to work out exactly what to say.
“He was...”
Calix looked at me expectantly.
“Umm...murdered,” I said, the word still not sounding quite real to me. I glanced away as I felt the tears begin to bank up in my eyes again. By the time I’d composed myself, Calix was looking at me with a weird expression on her face.
“What?” I said.
“Look, this might sound like a really crazy question, but you don’t happen to have a brother called Bede do you? It’s just that, I met this guy the other day who...”
I didn’t let her finish.
“How on Earth do you know about my brother?” I said. “Where did you meet him? How? Do you know if he’s still there? Have…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Calix suddenly cut in, clapping her hands theatrically over her ears. “Ease up, I’m not good at ‘question by machine gun’.”
“Sorry,” I said, “but I’ve just been worried sick about him. Just one more question, I promise I won’t ask anything else, but is he okay?”
Calix crinkled her mouth uncertainly, as if she was working out how to make a disappointing gift look better in a pretty ribbon.
“He was fine when I last saw him,” she said hopefully.
“Do you know where he is now?” I said, consciously ignoring the fact that I’d just broken my promise not to bombard her with any more questions.
“You mean right now? Not exactly,” said Calix. “I can tell you what I do know though.”
I listened intently as she told me about the squat, her friend Troy, how the police had turned up and evicted everyone, and how she and Bede had ended up in the doll factory. I had to fight the urge not to scream at her to say the words faster so I could fill myself as quickly as possible with all the information I’d been missing. Then suddenly she stopped.
“And?” I said.
Calix looked at me with a mix of sheepishness and embarrassment, like someone who’s convinced they’ve seen a UFO but knows that no one’s going to believe them.
“What? I said impatiently.
“I don’t know how to say it,” she said.
“Say what?” I said impatiently.
“Like you were saying before, some pretty weird stuff’s been happening around here lately.” Calix paused, as if deciding whether or not to tell me the truth or not. She decided to risk it. “There was this guy who just turned up. And he wasn’t normal. For a start, he was dressed almost completely in black…”
“Except for a white shirt and a tiny emerald cross at his throat?” I said, finishing her sentence. Calix looked shocked.
“You know him?” she said.
“In a way. More than I’d like to,” I said. “His name’s Demarge.”
“Well, whatever his name is, I’m pretty sure he’s got your brother,” said Calix.
“Did you see where they went?”
Calix shook her head. “It all happened so fast. There was basically a blur of black and then they were gone.”
She fell silent, avoiding my gaze. It took me a couple of seconds to realise she was crying.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“It’s Troy. I’ve got no idea where he is, but I think he’s in trouble.”
“How come?” I said.
“After I left the factory I managed to get hold of him on my mobile. We agreed to meet up on Gregory Street, in the Old Town, do you know it?”
I nodded. Gregory Street had a pretty bad reputation for gangs and drugs.
“So anyway, I parked the work truck a couple of streets away and started walking to the corner of Biggs and Sash Street. I was almost there when this guy came up to me and said ‘Are you Calix?’ I remember his face really clearly because there was something about him that wasn’t quite right. I can’t explain exactly what it was, but I just had this feeling. The dude was definitely in ‘camp creepy’. He had these small squinty eyes and he was sweating a lot, despite it being freezing. So I said to him ‘who’s asking?’ and he told me he was a friend of Troy’s. Troy had told me on the phone that he’d met some guy who was helping him out, so I figured that this might be the one. I didn’t know for sure though, and I was still trying to be careful. He could have been an undercover cop for all I knew. So I asked him where Troy was and the guy told me to follow him.”
“Did he tell you who he was?” I said.
“Not really, except for saying his name was Stanley.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“Tried to buy some time by saying I’d wait for Troy on the corner. Then Stanley started getting really heavy with me about following him. He was saying all this stuff like: “You’re wasting Troy’s time, he really needs to see you, blah, blah.” The thing is though, I know Troy. He’s not needy like that. The whole thing was starting to get way too weird so I figured I’d be better off legging it and waiting for Troy to get in touch. He hasn’t called though, so I’ve got no idea where he is. The one thing I do know is that he’s totally reliable. If he says he’s going to call, he does – if he says he’s going to be somewhere, he is. There’s got to be something else going on.”
Calix was right, the whole thing did sound really weird. I was still mulling it over when I suddenly noticed something moving in the bushes nearby. The sound was pretty faint, just a small rustling, but it was louder than if the wind had just been blowing the leaves about.
“What was that?” I said.
“Dunno, I didn’t hear anything.”
I shrugged it off and we sat in silence for a couple of seconds. Then it happened again, the same noise, only louder this time.
“Okay, I heard it that time,” said Calix. We were both now staring anxiously at the bushes.
“I hope we’re not about to be mugged,” I whispered.
“Nah,” said Calix, although she didn’t sound entirely convinced herself.
“I reckon we should get going,” I said, standing up to run.
But before Calix had time to move, something bounded out of the bushes and I screamed in surprise. Calix looked at me, then started laughing.
“It’s a fox, Clare! Not an axe murderer. Man, you’re nervy.”
“Yeah, well…” I said, embarrassed at being such an idiot.
“He can probably smell the meat from the kebab. Here fella.” Calix pulled a piece of meat out of the rolled up bread and tossed it towards the fox. It looked at us curiously for a moment, then chomped down the food in a single bite.
“It’s a shame some people think foxes are pests. I really like them, they’ve got such delicate faces and bright eyes,” I said.
“Yeah, I like most things that have to live by their wits like that,” said Calix.
We were so engrossed in talking about the fox, we didn’t notice that there was now another rustling sound coming from the undergrowth. Nor did we notice how the grass had been flattened into wavy ‘s’-shaped patterns. It wasn’t until Calix suddenly grabbed my arm that I realised anything was wrong.
“Snake!” she mouthed, her eyes wide with horror.
I slowly turned to see a shimmer of green moving rapidly towards my side of the swings. Without stopping to think, I grabbed hold of the chains connecting the seat to the frame and stood up in the bucket-shaped fabric. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel my body shaking. Arius was now directly beneath me, swaying to and fro, his tongue flickering in and out of his head like a mechanical toy. His black eyes cut into me like pieces of flint. The snake seemed completely oblivious to the fact that Calix was even there.
“I might have known he’d send a scout,” I said.
“A scout?” said Calix.
“Demarge’s ‘assistants’. They help him track people down,” I said. Calix gave a loud sigh.
“I’m beginning to think that running into you and your brother was the biggest mistake I ever made,” she said.