‘How can you not remember me?’ I said to myself, but myself just shrugged, so we started to sing a duet to American Pie instead.
You’re dreaming, Stella.
‘I know that,’ I said to Jake’s voice.
I was myself again, and left the bar to get some fresh air, only when I stepped out into the street I somehow ended up in a train carriage. I sat and looked at the people at the other end, who seemed to be having a bit of a disagreement. I could see myself down there. It was my first mission for the London Coven. Not just my first mission, but my first day alive. I’d only been created hours earlier, and now there I was, chasing after a monster that could change its shape at will. I often thought about those people. The other passengers whose lives I’d dropped into. I’d made sure to remember each of their faces.
You haven’t changed much in sixty years.
‘I don’t age. I am what I am.’
Like a sexy Popeye.
I just about resisted the urge to punch myself in the head.
I needed to get off this train, to stop thinking about my first day of life, because if I thought about that it would break the illusion that I was a child. That I’d had a childhood at all. Instead I thought about Amy.
I was sat in bed and my Mum, no, Amy’s Mum, was at the door, smiling at me. Angie, David’s sister.
‘What you still doing awake, Miss?’ she asked.
‘Having trouble sleeping, Mum,’ I replied.
‘Why’s that then? You not tired?’
‘I am. But that’s when the bad thing comes.’
‘No use fussing now, love. You’ve said the rhyme out loud, haven’t you?’
I nodded.
‘Well then, damage is done as far I can see. Better off just accepting your fate and getting a good eight hours in. Night, night, love. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’
She closed the door and all was black. I felt the covers on my skin, the cool pillow against my cheek.
You know how dangerous this is? To put yourself up as bait for a monster? To waggle your bare arse in its direction, hoping it’ll sink its teeth into your seat meat and drag you into its realm?
‘Doesn’t matter. This is what I was created for. To put my life on the line for others.’
What if it doesn’t come for you?
‘It will.’
It came for children as they slept.
The children that had spoken its rhyme out loud.
It had marked them in some way. Shot up a flare that the creature could home in on. Well, I’d spoken the rhyme over and over again since Amy first handed me the note with all the lines written down.
‘Wake no more, said nobody’s child, kicked and beaten, turned mean and wild. Wake no more, said the fearful small, for now I am here, to punish you all.’
I’d probably said it out loud more than any of the children it had taken.
I was noisy with flares. The sky above me was a riot of bright explosions. It was just a matter of time.
‘Jake. Think about the things that man did to you as a child. Think about them and how they made you feel.’
I closed my eyes. I was in a classroom. I tried to stand but found my arm tethered, my shoulder jarring as I strained to get free.
Laughter, faces leering in, kids sneering down at me. I was handcuffed. Handcuffed to a radiator. It was hot and the heat was conducting through the metal of the cuffs. My wrist was getting hotter and hotter.
‘Let me go!’ I screamed, but Mark, young Mark, Jake’s bully, just laughed and waggled the key in front of me, letting me snatch at it but keeping it just out of reach.
‘It hurts! It’s burning me!’
‘What a fucking pussy,’ he said to the other kids.
We weren’t in the classroom anymore.
I was still cuffed to the radiator, my skin burning, Mark leering down at me—at Jake—but now all there was around us was black.
There was no noise. Mark still laughed and jeered, spittle flying, but he didn’t make a sound.
‘Mark? Mark, can you hear me?’
A pressure.
Something was coming.
I was alone. I grabbed the wrist that had been cuffed but was now free and rubbed at it. There was no burn mark.
I stood.
‘Jake? Jake, can you hear me?’
I couldn’t hear him in my head anymore.
‘Jake?’
The black rippled.
‘Night, night, love. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’
‘Night, Mum.’
Night air on my skin. Goosebumps.
I looked around. I wasn’t in the dark anymore, and I wasn’t in my own dreams.
I was in the back alley in Acton. I could see two small legs poking out from behind some bins.
Alice Travers, the young girl beaten to death by her two bullies, eighty years ago.
I was in the creature’s realm.
It had me.
33
‘David? David, where are you?’
I closed my eyes and tried to feel my hand in his. I wasn’t in my own dreams anymore, I was in a different realm of existence, a realm created by this creature when the murder of Alice Travers gave it life. I could easily be trapped here if I didn’t make myself an exit point, which is why I had David holding my hand. As long as he kept hold of me I had a living, conscious link back to my own realm, to what we think of as the “real world,” and I could escape from here.
‘David.’
There.
There it was.
I could feel his hand squeezing mine. The warmth of his skin against my own.
‘I’m here.’ His voice was a whisper, indistinct, like a suggestion of a voice carried on the wind.
‘David?’
‘I’m here, I have you. I won’t let go, Magic Lady.’
Without opening my eyes I imagined a door that would lead me back to him. That if I were to turn the handle, open it, and step on through I’d find myself back with him. Back in my coven.
I imagined it was real, then demanded it be real, pushing the command out of myself.
I opened my eyes; there was a door in the brick wall to my right. A neon sign above it read EXIT.
Now my way out was set I could get back to it any time I needed to. But I wouldn’t step through it until I had done what I’d come here for.
First, I was going to find the kids. Find them and get them to this exit point. After that I was going to put an end to this creature. Not block its entrance into our world, not put a lock on its door. Locks weaken, and if this saga had taught me anything, it’s that half a solution wasn’t a solution at all.
No, this time, my time, I was going to make sure returning to haunt the dreams of children would never be an option, or I was going to die trying.
‘Jake, can you hear me now?’
Silence. No smart-arse reply. I couldn’t feel him anymore, but I knew he was still there. I could still hear the sound of Mark taunting him. His fear was still in me, and that meant Jake must still be there too.
I turned to where Alice Travers lay, her face a battered mess, and knelt beside her.
‘Hello, Alice.’
Alice’s broken lips twitched and her eyes flickered open, the whites bloodshot, one bulging from its socket.
‘My name is Stella.’
‘Stella?’
Her voice had no power behind it. No breath. No life.
‘Have you seen any other children here? Maybe a girl called Amy?’
‘I think I’m in a terrible way, Miss Stella. Could you call me a doctor? I don’t want to die.’
I took her cold, damp hand in mine.
‘I’m sorry, Alice, but you’re already a long time dead. What happened to you was eighty years ago.’
‘Eighty years? No, it just happened. It’s always just happening. I get back up and clean off the blood and then they come running after me again.’
She sat up, her clothes tearing away from the dried blood,
and pushed herself back onto her feet, joints cracking like logs on a fire.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing to the other end of the alley, ‘Here they come again, and again, and again.’
I turned to see her attackers, her school bullies, running into the alley, their faces a mixture of joy and savagery, running towards her. I instinctively pulled the surrounding magic into myself and unleashed a molten arc of power, trying to stop the kids in their tracks, but they ran straight through the spell, not even flinching.
I looked away as they punched and kicked and stamped at Alice. They weren’t really alive. There was nothing I could do to stop this. Alice Travers was long dead and beyond anything I could do. I could only help the kids that were here but still alive, laid up in hospitals across London, in a hidden eaves den, in a room, laying beside me, in the London Coven.
Eventually the bullies blinked out of existence and it was just me and Alice left in the alley.
‘Alice? Alice, have you seen Amy?’
‘Yes. She was here once. I remember her. She tried to help me too, but you can’t help the dead, can you? Too late then. Too, too late.’
‘Can you tell me where she might be?’
Alice nodded, ‘She’s where her fear is. Find her fear. Oh look, here they come again.’
Alice got back to her feat.
‘Thanks, I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ I said, and turned from her, passing the two bullies as I made my way out of the alley.
Alice’s scream cut off abruptly as I stepped out of the alley and into what lay beyond. I didn’t walk out onto a street in Acton, as I would have done in the real world, instead I stepped into something that looked like a nightmare drawn by Escher.
Random pieces of reality were jammed together: rooms, streets, forests, lakes, schools, back gardens, caves, bedrooms, all slapped together by a madman in a dizzying array that made my head swim. There seemed no reason to it. It felt like I might fall into nothing with the next step. There was no way to orientate myself as the different places didn’t sit next to each other, but jutted out at every angle
‘Amy!’
Cackling laughter. I whirled around to see a boy in the distance. A black shape, a shadow. Was that the monster?
He stepped forwards. It was Mark. Jake’s meat suit. His bully.
‘Where are you going, Jake, you fucking queer?’
This realm was reading the fear inside of me, but it wasn’t mine, it was Jake’s. I wondered what effect this would have on him if he was really here? Would it pull out a primal sense of terror? Would it reduce him to a terrified wreck?
‘Oi, bender, I’m talking to you.’
Mark stomped towards me, pulling a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘but you’ve got the wrong person.’ I pulled the magic around me into myself and shot the palm of my hand forwards, fire arcing from it and burning the pretend Mark to nothing.
Mark was here for Jake. Somewhere in this jumble of places there was a room or two from Jake’s fears, and Mark was there to take him to it. To torment him forever. Well, bad luck, it wouldn’t work on me.
‘Amy, where are you?’
I reached out with my senses, trying to find something I recognised.
‘Listen,’ I said, placing the correct words in my mind.
‘Please, just stop! Please!’
Amy.
That was Amy’s voice.
I closed my eyes and held onto the connection, stepping forward, trusting it to take me to her. I felt tree branches scrape against my skin, felt the cold chill me, then heat make me sweat. I felt the ground beneath my feet change from one step to the next as I moved through the crazy array of places and times that the creature had squashed together in its realm.
I stopped. I could hear girls jeering, the sound bouncing off something hard, like we were inside a tiled room.
I opened my eyes, I was in a communal toilet. Four cubicles on one side, a line of sinks and mirrors on the other. Four girls were stood in a little semi-circle at the far end, a fifth girl in front of them, her back pressed against the wall as the other girls leaned in at her.
Amy.
‘God you’re fat.’
‘So fat and gross.’
‘Why’d you think Josh would even look at you, never mind fancy you, you dirty skank.’
‘Bitch.’
‘What’s wrong with your clothes?’
‘Mum can’t afford anything decent?’
‘Shut up!’
‘Or what?’
‘What you gonna do, bitch?’
One reached forward and yanked on Amy’s hair.
I outstretched a hand and flames leapt from it, burning the mean girls like they were made of old newspaper, until all that was left were the echoes of their nasty little slurs.
‘Skank.’
‘Bitch.’
‘Lesbo-dyke.’
‘Amy, it’s me, it’s Stella. I’ve come for you.’
Amy shook her head. ‘No, you’re lying. You’re just this place. You’re the monster!’
I didn’t have time to negotiate so I grabbed her and pulled her forward, past the mean girls that were beginning to form again, to give themselves bodies and not just voices.
‘Where you going, bitch?’
‘I’ll fucking kill you if you talk to Josh again, you hear me?’
I pushed the door and stepped out, pulling a struggling Amy after me. We stepped out onto an abandoned train platform.
Amy blinked in surprise then looked at me. ‘Stella? Oh my God, it’s you, isn’t it? It’s really you!’
This platform wasn’t part of her fears, this was the location of some other kid’s worst memory. Pulling her here had snapped Amy out of her own terror.
‘Yes, it’s really me. Me and your Uncle David, we came up with a plan, and this, well, this is the plan.’
‘How did you get here? You’re not a kid.’
‘Magic. And a ghost.’
‘A ghost!’
‘Yeah.
‘Oh, cool.’
I gave her a shrug. ‘You haven’t met him.’
‘Oi, bender!’
I turned to see Mark walking towards us.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Amy.
‘That’s one of the ghost’s issues, don’t worry about it. Come on.’ I threw a ball of fire at the pretend Mark as we headed for the platform exit.
34
We did our best to ignore what was happening to Alice Travers as we arrived in the back alley and approached the exit I’d created.
‘So, I’ll just wake up, as soon as I step through that door?’
‘Yes.’ I decided to leave out the “hopefully.”
She looked at the door with its flickering exit sign.
‘Are you coming?’
‘No, not yet. There are too many other kids here still. I came here to save all of them, not just you.’
‘But what if… what if the creature notices what you’re doing?’
That was the big question. Sooner or later it would realise something was up and come looking for me.
‘If it comes, I’ll smack it in its stupid, blank face,’ I replied, and smiled.
‘You’re such a bad-arse.’
‘Yes, I am. Now get through the door, your uncle is waiting for you.’
She smiled and opened the portal to a white light beyond. ‘Thanks, Stella. Thanks for saving me.’
She turned and stepped through the door, the light engulfing her before the door slammed shut again.
Okay, one down, a shit-load more to go.
I have no idea how long it took me. No idea if time even existed the same way in the nightmare realm. For all I know I could have been there for seconds in real time.
Or decades.
Every new place was boiling with fear and anger. With pain and hatred. It chipped away at me, little by little, even as I found the children, one by one, and led them to the exit.
‘Are
you okay?’ asked one of the kids as I leaned against the wall, trying not to hear the sounds of feet stomping on Alice Travers.
‘Yes, just tired, that’s all. Go through the door. It’s time you woke up.’
And on it went: the image of Mark appearing again and again to torment me, or at least try to. After all, it was Jake’s trauma it was reacting to, not my own. The only effect it had on me was to make me increasingly annoyed as I struggled on.
I found all the eaves kids huddled together. They were the only ones not suspicious of me as I tried to help.
‘We know who you are.’
‘Of course we do.’
‘We’re eaves, we hear lots of things about you, Familiar.’
Finally, the last one, a small human boy named Tom. I found him locked in an abandoned hut in the woods. In this place the birds didn’t tweet, they screamed with the voices of terrified infants. Spiders crawled over every inch of Tom’s body as boys ran circles outside, hitting the walls of the hut with sticks and laughing and hooting. I burned them to cinders then carried the boy into the woods. Into the abandoned train station. The classroom. The caravan. The public toilets. Onwards and onwards through the sites of a thousand tortures.
At last we arrived in the back alley in Acton, a dying Alice Travers behind the bins. I pointed to the exit.
‘Go on. Wake up. Get out of here.’
‘Are you not coming?’
God knows I wanted to. I was exhausted, physically and mentally. This place had pounded against me relentlessly. Trying to find a way in.
‘I can’t. Not yet. I have one more thing to do.’
Tom nodded. He knew what I was staying to finish.
‘He’s coming.’
‘Who?’
‘The monster. The monster man without a face. Can’t you feel him?’
‘He’s coming,’ said Alice, agreeing, her voice a death rattle.
‘This is nothing but a bad dream, Tom. Go and wake up now.’
Tom shook his head. ‘No. This is very, really, real, I’d say. And you can die if it’s real. Don’t die, Miss.’
And with that, he stepped through the door into the bright white and the realm was empty apart from myself and poor Alice Travers. Only one of us was real though. Alice’s cries and battered body were nothing but shadows cast by something that was over a long time ago.
Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1) Page 25