by Rhys Jones
Ellie’s eyes flashed warningly. “Shhh,” she said, and whispered, “Look who’s just got on the bus.” The pressure eased a little more so that both he and Ruff could lift their heads a few inches. The bus was almost full and there was now a queue of late passengers on the steps. And there, just about to show the driver her pass, was Lucy Bishop.
Luckily, two very large women had chosen to sit in front of Oz and Ruff, but Ellie was sitting right in the middle on the back seat, in clear view of anyone getting on. But Lucy Bishop, holding a large plastic bag and looking preoccupied and nervous, barely glanced up at the other passengers as she found a seat near the front.
“S’okay,” Ruff whispered, “I don’t think she saw us.”
The bus trundled out towards Seabourne United’s football ground; Ellie kept her hood up and half-turned, while Oz and Ruff crouched low in their seats. After a while, Oz realised that Ellie was grinning, her face glowing.
“What’s up with you?” he asked.
“Just this. It’s exciting. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Ruff said with his usual deadpan delivery.
“Oh, shut up,” Ellie snapped. “If it isn’t on a computer screen, nothing ever excites you. This stuff we’re doing, it’s so mysterious and strange. Can’t you feel it? Like it’s somehow part of some much bigger adventure.”
“Right,” Ruff said. “Just like one of my Xbox RPGs. And what usually happens there is that the heroes tootle along thinking everything’s okay and stumble blindly into something really buzzard, which ends up trying to disembowel them.”
“Really?” Oz said.
“Well, that’s what happens in Zombie Slaughter Sleep Wrecker, Ghostripper 2 and Ghoul Bounty Hunter.”
Ellie shook her head. “That’s only three out of hundreds.”
“Oh, and in Dark Wood Menace 1 and 2.”
“You’ve forgotten Murdering Marauders of Mexico,” Ellie said with a deadpan expression.
“I must have missed that one,” Ruff said, but gradually his eyes narrowed and he nodded to himself before adding, “If you are going to crack a joke, could you give us a bit of a warning so it’ll give me time to get the flags out?”
Ellie grinned at him.
“Maybe Ruff’s right,” Oz said thoughtfully. “I mean, I think we need to be really careful. But I think you’re onto something, too, Ellie. This thing could be much bigger than we think.”
Lucy Bishop stood up abruptly as the bus approached Hockley Row. This was on the other side of People’s Park, where Oz, Ellie and Ruff had their Sunday morning kickabout. It meant a long walk around to get to Magnus Street, but they were too curious to worry about that. They hurried off the bus and turned away while Lucy Bishop pulled her coat about her and set off at a brisk walk without a backward glance. It was fully dark by now, and night had brought with it a dank November fog, turning the yellow street lamps into fuzzy orbs. Visibility was dreadful and Oz struggled to see across the street, while on their left the empty space of People’s Park stretched away into a grey nothingness.
“Funny place to get off,” Ellie said as they waited to follow.
“She’s a funny girl,” Oz said, setting off briskly.
“What do you think she’ll do now?” Ellie asked.
“Dunno,” Oz replied. “Report back to whoever it is she’s working for, I suppose.”
“Of course, it could just be a coincidence.”
“No way,” Ruff said. “She was tailing us. I’m sure of it.”
Occasionally the dark shapes of pedestrians appeared out of the fog, walking in the opposite direction, huddled with collars up against the damp, cold air. Ahead of them, Lucy Bishop hurried along, oblivious, it seemed, of her surroundings. Suddenly Ellie stopped and cocked her head.
“Can you hear that?” she asked.
They paused to listen. The fog dampened the noise of the few cars traveling on the quiet park road, but Ellie wasn’t looking towards the street. She had turned her attention to the park itself. At first Oz heard nothing, but then, faintly but definitely, from somewhere in the dark expanse of playing fields, he thought he could hear a faint rustling. It had a rhythmic quality, suggestive of something moving. And moving quickly, at that. In the midst of that rustle was something else, a strange kind of snorting or sniffing, which suddenly stopped.
“What is that?” he asked.
“I have no idea, but it’s buzzard and I vote we don’t stay to find out,” Ruff said, peering into the darknes.
They started walking again, one eye now on the dark fields beyond the edge of their vision. Oz felt Ruff’s hand on his arm.
“Look,” Ruff said.
Ahead of them, Lucy Bishop had stopped and turned towards the fence. It looked as if she was about to throw something over it, but she hesitated and happened to glance back to where Ellie, Ruff and Oz had, themselves, stopped. They must have been barely visible, but their presence was enough to make Lucy Bishop change her mind. Suddenly, she pulled back and hurried away.
Oz could see no more than ten yards into the park. The only illumination came from the fuzzy yellow sodium streetlights, but in the gaps between the lights the darkness intensified into pools of dense shadow. Oz hurried along towards where Lucy Bishop had stopped, his curiosity aroused, but he was unable to rid his mind of the noise he’d heard, and was desperately trying to imagine what sort of animal might make such a sound. It had to be something large padding across the dry, dead leaves that lay like a carpet on the grass. But what was the cause of that weird snorting? Something that sniffed? That didn’t help, since most wild animals depended on scent as much as sight—unless, of course, it was a mole.
“Can’t hear it anymore,” Ruff said as he walked up to the fence. “Must have gone back towards the trees.”
“Think Lucy Bishop heard it, too?” Ellie asked. “Is that why she stopped?”
“Maybe it was just some animal. A fox or a badger or something,” Oz suggested.
Ruff nodded and moved close to the fence. “Well, there’s nothing there n—UGH.” His sentence ended in an involuntary yelp of shock and horror as something loomed out of the darkness on the other side of the fence, just feet away from where he stood. Ruff stumbled back and half-fell. It was just in time, too, as an arm shot through the bars towards him. Oz’s shocked gaze shot from Ruff’s sprawled form back to the fence, where a face glared at them out of the fog. It was a human face, but distorted and wild. The eyes were black and sunken, the features pinched, yellow teeth bared, the nails at the ends of the dirt-encrusted arms filthy and broken. A low, feral scream erupted from its red mouth and ended in a hissing snarl.
Oz felt the skin contract all over his body. He took two steps back but his eyes never left the fence and the thing crouched behind it. Whoever this had once been, there was nothing left behind those desperate, vicious eyes. A car roared past and the thing pulled back in alarm, and that was when Oz saw something even worse than those yellow teeth. The thing had chosen to clothe itself in a fur coat, dark and matted with filth and leaves, wrapped tightly around a thin body. It had pulled back onto all fours, glaring warily through the bars of the iron fence at Ruff.
But even in the dim and ghostly yellow light of the night, something shimmered around the shape. An aura, little more than a shadow, but that somehow gave substance to the pathetic, stick-thin body covered in a fur coat. It was the shape of a sleek predator, with a long, muscular body and a white-tipped face. Oz shook his head to clear it, and the boy on his haunches came back into focus. Stunned, Oz realised that there was something weirdly familiar about his features, but if he let his mind drift for even one second, the other image, the larger and much more powerful animal image, came back with a vengeance.
“Oz? What…”
He heard his name, but Ellie’s voice choked off as the thing lunged again, hurling itself against the bars. Oz dragged his eyes away and grabbed the others.
“Run!” he yelled.
And run they
did, pelting along the pavement. To his left, Oz could see the thing moving with them, running on all fours, rump in the air. It should have been ungainly and awkward, since the human form wasn’t made for running that way, but when Oz didn’t look directly at it, the thing seemed to move with sleek ease, loping along in a ferret-like motion that covered the ground easily. Ruff let out a shout as his foot met with a wonky paving stone and he half-tripped. Oz stopped and turned. The iron bars of the old-fashioned fence had given way to a modern, taller, chain-link variety. Through the mesh, Oz saw that the thing had stopped, too. It was watching them with feral cunning. Suddenly, it turned its eyes up to the gap above the fence.
“It’s going to come over the top,” Oz shouted.
And even as the words left his mouth, the thing leapt at the fence, scrambling up with unnatural speed. Within seconds it was at the top, swaying slightly, its eyes never leaving Ruff’s face as it prepared to leap down. And Ruff could only stare back up at it, his expression one of paralysed fear.
But then there was a new noise behind them on the street. They heard shouts and a canine snarl. Barking madly, a golden yellow shape shot right past them to spring at the fence. Behind, on the end of a long lead, a man followed, half-stumbling, dragged along by the dog’s power.
“Whoa, Dusty,” said the man, trying his best to haul the dog back. “Bad dog, bad dog.” He came to an abrupt halt in front of Oz and Ellie, who were staring at where the thing had been moments before.
“Oh, I’m so awfully sorry. Did he frighten you?” asked the man as he looked into Ruff’s chalk-white face.
“No, he didn’t,” Ruff said shakily. “It wasn’t the dog.”
They turned to look at the fence. There was nothing there except a very excited Dusty, hackles raised, barking and growling at something unseen in the dark fields beyond.
“Don’t know what came over him,” the man said in a breathless voice. “He hardly ever barks. Only seen him do this once before, when a mad bull terrier went for him. Bad boy, Dusty.” The man jerked the lead and Dusty stopped barking to whine at his master with a flat-eared, shamefaced expression.
“No,” said Ellie, “he isn’t a bad boy.” She went to the dog and ruffled his fur, much to Dusty’s tail-wagging delight. “He’s a good boy. There was something on the other side of the fence,” she explained.
“Oh?” said the man. “What was it?”
Oz sent her a warning glance, and Ellie said, “I…we don’t know. But we think it’s been following us. Dusty did us a big favour.” She knelt down and allowed the dog, which by now had turned from ravening wolf into the friendliest golden retriever you could ever find, to lick her face.
“Shouldn’t be anyone in there now,” said the man. “Shut the gates at sunset in the winter, they do.”
“Probably someone messing about,” Ruff said weakly.
The man stared into the grey and black space. “Well, me and Dusty are going straight home after all this excitement. I suggest you do, too. C’mon, boy.”
“Oh, we are,” said Oz with conviction. “Straight home.”
* * *
They ran the final half-mile, and Oz had never been more pleased to see the lights and solid turrets of Penwurt approaching. Mrs. Chambers met them in the hall and regarded them with mild concern.
“Goodness me, just look at the three of you. Why are you so out of breath?”
“Ran home…from…the park,” panted Oz.
“Ran? From the state of you it looks like you were being chased by a monster.”
No one spoke.
“Right,” said Mrs. Chambers, somewhat bemused by their silence, “I’ve made some pasta with pesto sauce. Are you hungry?”
“Mrs. C, you always know the right thing to say,” said Ruff with feeling.
They all felt better after some food, and Oz was keen to get upstairs to properly examine the dor so he declined the offer of second helpings and made eyes to the other two as he hurried to clear away the plates, much to Ruff’s obvious disgust. But Ruff’s expression changed the minute Oz fired up his laptop and he saw the mysterious screensaver images.
“Buzzard,” he said as his eyes lit up like fireworks. “That is so awesome.”
Meanwhile, Ellie unwrapped the dress clip and put it carefully down, right in front of the laptop, under the direct glare of a desk lamp. “It’s exactly the same,” she said, comparing the brooch with the image. Her face was glowing again, partly from the central heating of a drum-tight stomach provided by Mrs. Chambers’ excellent tea, and partly with growing excitement.
“So, that just leaves us with working out what the symbol means,” Oz said.
“I’ve seen it before,” Ruff said through gritted teeth, “I know I have.”
“Let me guess, Vampire Zombie Bonecrushers 23?” Ellie muttered.
“No,” said Ruff in a less than disdainful way that left Oz wondering if there actually was such a game, “somewhere else.” Ruff frowned in concentration. A moment later he sat up and yelled, “The library!” and was out of the door before either Ellie or Oz could react. They followed him up, and a minute later they were both leaning over him as he inspected the library’s oak panelling, mumbling to himself as he did.
“There, see?” he said, pointing to the panel at about head height. Oz followed Ruff’s finger and recognised the odd-looking trident shape, which had twenty or so other strange symbols all around it.
“My dad said that those symbols are all to do with alchemy and astrology,” Oz explained.
“Great, so all we need to do now is work out what they mean,” Ruff said, frowning.
“Well, since there are twenty-six of them, the most obvious thing is that they’re some sort of alphabet,” Ellie said.
“An alphabet,” Ruff repeated in wonder. “Of course.”
“And your symbol is the third, counting clockwise from the top,” she added quickly.
“So it begins with a C. Right, now I need to borrow your laptop.” Ruff turned and was off down the stairs again. Ellie and Oz grinned at each other and followed. It was like watching Dusty trying to find a hidden bone.
Three minutes later, Ruff sat back from Oz’s laptop, looking smug. “Ellie was right. This”—he pointed to the symbol—“is the alchemical symbol for cinder.”
“Cinder?” said Oz with a shake of his head, trying to ignore Ellie punching the air next to him. “Like in bits of burned coal and stuff? But what does it mean? I mean, why would someone put a symbol for a cinder on my laptop?”
“I need to take a closer look,” Ruff said.
Ellie and Oz left him to it and took the trinket box back up to the library. Despite Oz pressing the maker’s mark thirty or more times, nothing glowed and it felt cold and metallic under his hand.
“Maybe it only works if the moon’s full or something,” Ellie suggested, taking it from Oz and examining the symbol carefully. But Oz could see that Ellie was not quite her usual self.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, although he didn’t need three guesses.
“I’m still thinking about the park,” she said with a shudder. “What was that thing?”
“Dunno,” Oz said. “I mean, I know it was a man, but how weird was that get-up? And when you didn’t look at him, it looked like something else altogether.”
“Yeah.” Ellie grimaced. “I saw that, too. His body looked sort of longer and there were markings on his face. It was really weird…”
Oz was quiet for a minute, but then said, “Know what it reminded me of?”
Ellie shook her head, but her troubled eyes revealed that she was in two minds about finding out.
“A polecat. I saw a programme on National Geographic last week about them. They’re vicious things, and they make this weird sort of noise.”
“Like that bloke did,” said Ellie with obvious distaste. “Lucky for us Dusty came along.”
A head of curly brown hair appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Talking of str
ange, furry animals,” Oz said quietly, causing Ellie to giggle.
“Think I may have got something,” said Ruff, striding in. He stared at the two of them suspiciously. “What’s up with you?”
“Nothing,” Oz said. “Just discussing exotic species.”
Ellie put up her hand to stifle another laugh. Ruff frowned, but held out a sheet of paper covered with scribbles. The cinder symbol was there, much larger now. At the ends of each horizontal line Ruff had drawn other symbols, including an N, a funny thing that looked like wonky rugby posts, a weird kind of curly pound symbol and an hourglass.
“What are those?” Ellie asked.
“Those are what are hidden at the blobby ends of your cinder symbol. All I had to do was blow up the image.”
“And what do they mean?” Oz asked.
“Well, according to the Alchemy for Pinheads website I found, they’re instructions. The N must be number, the funny goalpost thing is the alchemical symbol for pulverise, the pound thingy is the symbol for solving and the hourglass…is an hourglass.”
“Meaning?” Ellie asked
Ruff shrugged. “Anyway, I pulverised cinder into c, i, n, d, e and r. Gave them each a number from their position in the alphabet and added them up—”
“Comes to fifty-three,” Ellie said, much to Ruff’s annoyance.
“Ruff, that’s brilliant,” Oz said. “Talk about hidden depths.”
“Yeah, dark and murky,” Ellie muttered.
“Okay. So what does the hourglass mean?” Oz said.
“That, I don’t know,” Ruff answered.
Oz went very quiet. “I think I do,” he said in a low, tremulous voice. “Time, commander of all things.”
“You what?” asked Ruff.
“It’s my dad’s clock,” Oz said. “Come on.”
* * *
The study was just as empty as Oz had left it, but not quite the same. Oz remembered that Tim had been in there bleeding radiators, which explained why the desk was at a funny angle. Oz stood before it and pointed at the clock on the wall behind.
“And?” said Ruff impatiently.
“There, beneath the pendulum, see it?”