Advent

  ‘Come!’ she cried a fourth time, as if something terrible would happen if he didn’t. The rushing got louder; the end of the tunnel was coming fast. Everything was swept away.

  He saw his hand in front of his face. He recognised it. I know it, he thought, like the back of my hand. He tried twitching it and saw the fingers flex. He made them touch his forehead, where it hurt. The press of fingertips against his skull scooped out little hollows in the pain. He was lying somewhere hard, cold and almost entirely dark. Something was wrong outside, but he couldn’t remember what, or what he thought he remembered couldn’t be right. Under his cheek and palms was stone. A stone floor. On the floor there had been, kneeling—

  He pushed his head up and looked around wildly. The ache flared up and out; he scrunched up his eyes and gasped. Going back to unconsciousness seemed like the best idea, but the opportunity had passed. All around his throbbing skull and his scratched arms and his bruised ribs and his dry mouth there was something else pressing on him, a tingling, insistent sense of being under threat.

  He’d seen . . . He’d heard—

  Terror seized him, made him pull his knees under him until he was crouching, panting, staring into the impenetrable darkness. A moment later the convulsion took its toll. He tumbled onto his knees and clutched his head and moaned.

  An invisible voice croaked, ‘Drink.’

  He cringed backwards, thumping into hard wood behind him. There was a patch of faint light smeared across the stone and he pressed himself onto it. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Drink. Water. Take off the ache.’

  There was something wrong with the voice, horribly wrong. The mouth that made it sounded bone, not flesh. Though the shadows hid it, it was close.

  ‘Who’s there?’ He twisted round wildly, looking for any disturbance in the dark. A second later and he was squeezing his head in his hands and keening with pain.

  The voice said something like a caw followed by a choke. Then, ‘Drink. Here.’

  A gentle plip came from nearby and suddenly Gav could see water. Little ripples were moving across it, raised edges glimmering. He realised he was desperately thirsty. The water was close, and the dark voice seemed further away. His mouth begged to drink. Slumping onto the cold floor, he pulled himself forward, inching along until he came to a lip of stone, worn smooth. He dipped his fingers down.

  ‘Drink.’

  In the darkness he had the odd sensation that he was putting his hand into the earth. He cupped some water in his hand, splashed a few drops onto his tongue.

  Then immediately his eyes were wide open, though seeing nothing. The taste in his mouth was not just chill water, but something else, a memory he knew but couldn’t put a name to, something he’d forgotten for a long time. It was so vivid it drove everything else out of his head, the agony and the fright, and so forceful that it was a few heartbeats before he even noticed they were gone.

  He lifted his head and looked around. He could hear outside sounds, a muted gusting wind, and also an inside sound, that special kind of audible silence that belongs to old, undisturbed places. A line of dim daylight trickled through a finger’s-width gap beneath a closed door behind.

  He scooped another handful of water to his mouth, feeling it wash away the last of the pain.

  ‘Feel better.’

  For a few tenuous heartbeats he’d hoped the water had washed the voice away too. It croaked from the utter darkness, flat, harsh, passionless, much too close. Gavin backed away on his hands and knees towards the strip of light under the door. The shooting stars had gone from his vision. He was looking into sheer black, like the mouth of a stone well opening in front of him.

  Someone lived at the bottom of it.

  Something.

  ‘W-who . . . ?’ he stammered. ‘Wh-what—’

  It moved.

  Swathes of dark resolved themselves into volumes of shadow. A man-sized blot was gathering. Its shape was badly wrong. It made a dry scraping sound as it came closer. Limbs swayed. A curved black thing touched the floor. There was a little glister there, an opacity hard and smooth enough to shine.

  Like a claw.

  Gav threw himself at the door. His hands thudded into it and scrabbled around, banged on it, fumbled for a handle.

  ‘Locked,’ croaked the voice.

  ‘Let me out.’ He found a heavy metal latch and rattled it frantically. Echoes rang around him. The door did not budge. His fingers pressed into the crack beneath, reaching for the outside. ‘Help! Let me out!’

  ‘Can’t. Locked.’ The grim voice was closer. It came from a body that seemed to swallow light. ‘No help.’

  ‘Stop!’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Don’t— Get back!’

  ‘OK OK.’ The shape slid back into unbroken shadow.

  ‘What . . . what . . .’ Gavin’s palms squeezed against the underside of the door. His fingers curled and clung to the wood. ‘Where . . .’ Each question crumbled away before he knew what he has saying. ‘Where . . . Who . . .’ He knew where he was. The wind outside brought it back to him, that and the thick wood blocking his escape. The stone chapel, abandoned in overgrown woods. With a surge of dread he remembered how he’d stood at its doorway, looking in, and seen something too appalling to think. He thudded his head against the door to try and expel the memory. The molten light had fled and he was sealed inside, with . . . with . . .

  Absolute darkness. He couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear the silence it concealed.

  ‘Are you there?’ It came out as a strangled squeak.

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  The cawing noise again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Corbo.’

  ‘Wh-what are you doing?’

  ‘Watch. Talk.’ A grating monotone.

  ‘I want to get out.’ His eyes scrunched shut. Tears were leaking out of them.

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘I want to get out. Let me out. Get me out. Get me . . .’ His voice rose to a horrible shrieking whine before he ran out of air and his mouth gagged vacantly. The panic emptied into despair. Knees pulled up, head bowed between them, he curled tight against the door and the unforgiving stone. His shoulders shook weakly for a while. Tiny moans squeezed out of him and vanished into the silence.

  In a little while everything was still.

  ‘Can’t,’ the voice reminded him, after a long pause.

  ‘Just shut up,’ Gav whispered.

  ‘OK OK.’

  He raised his head and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  He’d been stuck in a lift once, a few years ago. Him and a babysitter. They’d been in there quite a while, in the dark, some sort of power cut. The babysitter got her phone out and used it for light. They’d sat together playing games on its tiny screen, sharing the little rectangle of phosphorescence, just the two of them. Eventually there had been lots of banging and shouting and thumping, and then the point of a crowbar appearing between the doors, prising them open, letting in blinding light and a crowd of busy, anxious faces asking busy, anxious questions.

  For the next couple of months whenever the babysitter took him out he’d insisted on going in as many lifts as possible, but they never got stuck again.

  Outside a seagull shrieked. The air seeping through the crack under the door was as cold as its cry.

  ‘Are you there?’ Gavin said, when his breath was steady again.

  ‘Yes yes.’

  He swallowed. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Told you. Corbo.’

  ‘Who’s that? What’s going on? Why am I locked in here?’ He bit his lip to stop the rising panic taking over again, and hugged his knees tighter.

  ‘One, two, three.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who, what, why. One, two, three. Hard answers. Too much.’

  ‘What . . . ?’ As he tried to steer his way between bafflement and the horrible
buzzing drone of fear, it occurred to him, out of nowhere, that this was a conversation. He was not understanding, the way he normally failed to understand. It was a straw of familiarity to clutch to. His old friend ignorance.

  ‘Are you . . . are you shut in here too?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  He swallowed, wiped his dry lips. ‘Why?’

  ‘Told you. Watch.’

  ‘Watching what?’

  ‘You. What else? Water, stone. Not going away, wraaaaaa.’ The last sound was a long guttural rattle, like a caw.

  ‘Who . . . who . . .’ He took a deep breath. ‘I mean what. What are . . .’

  The answers had been coming so swiftly that the silence dangling from his suspended question was horribly unnerving.

  ‘. . . you?’ he finished. ‘What are you?’

  There was a clacking sound and another wordless gurgle, kkrrrrrr. Gav pushed himself tighter against the door, terrified that it might be moving again. ‘No. Don’t—’

  ‘Hard one,’ it interrupted. ‘You try. See for yourself.’

  ‘Wh-what?’

  ‘What are you? You try. Not so easy, caaaarkk.’

  He tried. ‘I-I’m,’ he stammered. ‘I’m . . .’

  I’m locked in the dark with an invisible beast. I’m lost. I’m alone. I’m special. I’m cursed.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ he said. ‘I’m so frightened. I’m cold. I’m scared.’

  ‘Bad time.’

  Despite himself he choked a bitter laugh. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Get worse.’

  The cold crawled up from the stone he sat on, into his spine.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he whispered.

  ‘Not much. Talk. Bored.’

  He stared hopelessly at the virgin dark, trying not to imagine whatever it was that stood there watching him and yet unable to prevent an image appearing on the black screen. The glimpse of a clawed and withered toe, the grim croaking voice, the clacking of a hard beak. A monstrous bird.

  ‘No, I mean . . .’

  When he was six or seven, there’d been a couple of weeks when he kept being woken up by a crow in his bedroom. He never forgot it. He only had to think about those nights for a moment and at once he was reliving the fear, the thrashing of his arms in the dark to keep the wing-beats away from his head, knocking over his bedside light, groping around frantically on the floor for the switch and, when he’d found it, crouching rigid in the corner, staring at the blunt black head swivelling and tilting as it eyed him from its perch on the curtain rail. And when Mum rushed in, the thumps and bangs and yells having panicked her too, the head bobbed about to watch her, until eventually she said, ‘There’s nothing there,’ and once she said it, it turned out she was right: the bird was gone. His mistake. Even though he couldn’t stop making it, until one night Dad came in instead.

  ‘I mean . . .’

  When he was two – Auntie Gwen had told him the story – they’d all gone on holiday to the beach, the three of them and her. There were crows roosting above the cottage they’d stayed in, and he’d cried every time he heard them call. Every time, Auntie Gwen said, day and night. At first they’d thought he was ill with some invisible and terrible affliction, and put him in the car, where he stopped crying, and took him to the hospital, where there was nothing to cry about and nothing for any doctor to find wrong with him, but as soon as he was back at the little house under the tall pines, he began to scream again. So after two days of their week’s holiday they had come home (except for Gwen, who thought she might as well stay, and then fell in love with the area and ended up never coming back at all).

  ‘Not here. Not in here. I mean . . .’

  Gwenny? The woman he’d seen, here, the thin silhouette, the right shape and size. And then something had spoken, and after that a chaos of terror and motion and falling.

  ‘What’s happening with . . . with my aunt? And Marina? Where are they?’

  ‘Aunt. Marina.’

  It took him a while to understand. Oddly, being forced to puzzle out the toneless replies worked as a barrier against the creep of mindless fear. It gave his thoughts something to get a grip on.

  ‘My . . . The person I saw. Here. And Marina. The girl who came with me.’

  ‘Caaaarkkk, aunt. Sad boy.’

  He waited, but it said no more. The silence was as suffocating as the dark. A question, he told himself. Ask a question.

  ‘Where . . . where is she? Where are they?’

  ‘Gone. Out.’

  ‘Out? Where? Why?’

  ‘House. Waiting.’

  ‘The house? They went to the house?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘They . . . Waiting? For what?’

  ‘Witch.’

  ‘What do you mean, which?’

  ‘What I said. Listen. Stupid boy.’ There was scratching, hideously loud in the locked chamber.

  ‘No, sorry. Don’t— Please. Don’t come closer.’

  ‘OK OK.’

  Sorry? He was apologising to this thing? This monster in the dark, this skeletal voice, which he was now sure belonged to the gargoyle blur of bent wings he had glimpsed on the roof of the chapel, descending like the image of death itself as Marina clambered innocently towards the door? His thoughts scattered again. How long had he been unconscious? The patch of light that crept in under the door and spread over the stones, the patch where he sat, was shrinking. His hands clasped each other. He felt the small scratches all over them.

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘You came. Followed girl.’

  ‘I mean inside, locked inside.’ The memory was suddenly appallingly fresh. ‘Something hit me. It was pushing me, something rough. Knocked me over.’

  ‘Aaaaaark, Holly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Holly.’

  ‘Like in the tree?’ No answer. ‘A holly tree?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘Trees can’t . . .’

  ‘Crows can’t talk, caaark,’ and it coughed out its chuckle again.

  ‘What . . . you mean . . .’ But Gav couldn’t put this into words. If he tried to say the thought aloud, everything would crumble into madness. Uncontrollable fear waited for him, lapping around his heels. Something else, he thought desperately. Ask something else.

  ‘Marina,’ he said. There was a confused memory: her scream, a protracted instant of fear, falling. ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘No no.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No no.’

  ‘What . . . Is she hurt?’

  ‘Inside.’

  ‘Inside what?’

  ‘Hurt inside. Grief, krrwwww. Misery.’

  In the silence Gavin listened to his breath, fast and shallow, as if it was about to run out.

  ‘Misery?’

  ‘Echo. I say you say. Stupid boy. Bored.’

  He tightened his fists and squeezed his eyes shut. He wondered if there was no voice at all. Of course there wasn’t; there couldn’t be. Oh come on Gav. It was all inside him, the darkness inside mocking him. He’d brought it with him here. He’d infected Marina with it.

  ‘Let me out,’ he whispered.

  ‘Can’t. Told you. Listen.’

  ‘When? When can I get out?’

  ‘Come back. Open door.’

  ‘What? You mean when they come back?’

  ‘Who.’

  ‘Marina and, and my . . . And the person. Who was here.’ Gav felt his voice faltering again. Whatever it was that was so wrong, at the centre of it was the shape silhouetted against that unearthly light.

  ‘Her. Yes.’

  ‘So when? When are they coming?’

  The voice cawed very softly. ‘Caaaaark. Can’t say.’

  ‘Why not? What are they doing?’

  For the first time there was a hesitation before the answer came, and he heard a brief shuffle in the dark. ‘Told you. Went up. Waiting. Took half-girl.’

  ‘The what? Marina?’

  ‘Yes yes.
’

  ‘And they left me here?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Bait.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bait.’

  ‘Bait? Like in . . .’ He struggled for something to make sense of, anything, before the gathering cold and dark dissolved him completely. ‘Bait? For what?’

  ‘Witch.’

  ‘Which what?’

  ‘Kkrrraaaa, witch. Old witch. Old mad witch. Old old old.’

  He dared not fall silent. If he stopped talking there’d be nothing left at all; he’d fall without stopping. It was more like a tomb than a chapel. Silence and blackness and deathly cold. ‘A . . . a witch? Bait for a witch? Me?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘But . . . what’s . . . What have I got to do with it?’

  ‘Everything, kkrrwww. Stupid boy.’

  His voice withered to a whisper again. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Learn fast. Bad time.’

  ‘Help me.’ It was scarcely louder than a breath. He felt the tears pushing up again.

  ‘Can’t.’

  Of course not. He was alone, finally utterly alone. The thing in the dark wasn’t real. He should know better. Except that he didn’t know anything at all.

  ‘Who am I?’

  ‘Sad boy. Stupid boy. Names, aaaarrkk. Lots more.’

  But this time he had meant the question only for himself. It was the thing he didn’t know, the hole in the middle of him. He’d never known it was there, the hole, until Mum and Dad and everyone had starting telling him about it. Even then he hadn’t asked himself the question. Not until now, when everything else had gone.

  He didn’t really hear the reply from the dark, because as soon as the question was whispered aloud he remembered another answer, spoken by another voice, a voice like dead leaves.

  The girl, a changeling. The boy, an orphan, and ward of her you seek.

  He sat unmoving, eyes wide open.

  After a long, long time he said, ‘Corbo?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘What’s a ward?’

  ‘Ward. Wrrkk. Belonging thing.’

  But he hadn’t really needed to ask. He read a lot, he always had. It was a way of surviving as an only child in an unhappy home. Mr Bushy had noticed it and steered him towards some Victorian novels, library books with fusty slow-starting stories that he was always just about to give up on when they suddenly got interesting and he ended up needing to know what would happen and spending weeks reading to the finish. One of them had featured a ward. It stuck with him: the idea of a child who didn’t really belong to their parents, who was just surviving until the time when their inheritance would come and the people they’d thought of as their mother and father would be revealed to have no connection with them at all, no power over them.