Advent

  Orphan.

  Here, in the dark, was his wish coming true?

  Ward of her you seek.

  He mouthed her name to himself soundlessly, afraid that saying it aloud might break the spell: Miss Grey.

  Old mad witch. Miss Grey, who wasn’t real, so they said, except to him. Miss Grey, whose worn and patient face was unchanging, ageless. Miss Grey, who had shocked him by suddenly raving aloud.

  ‘Corbo?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘This witch,’ he said slowly. ‘You mean . . . she’ll come here . . . because of me?’

  ‘Could do.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Gets killed.’

  He froze.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gets killed.’

  His heart and mouth turned to stone together.

  For the first time since inviting him to drink from the pool, the thing spoke unprompted. ‘Told you. Bad time.’

  ‘Corbo.’ The strangled grip had closed round his throat again, the dread. ‘Let me out.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  He rattled the door behind him again. ‘Please. Let me out. Please.’

  ‘Can’t. Locked.’

  ‘Who—’ He shoved himself against the door, but its ancient timbers were far tougher than him. ‘Why—’ The wind picked up again outside, out in the open, moaning more fiercely. ‘Who wants to kill—’

  ‘Names. Can’t say.’

  ‘But why?’ He was crouching on his feet, tight against the door, fingers roaming for the lock. ‘Why would anyone—’

  ‘Told you. Bad time. Bad beginning. Your sort, ccraaak. Too much wanting. Do this, do that. Do without suffer. Take without give. Same old same old.’

  The answer went over his head like birdsong. He found a patch of rough metal. He plucked uselessly at it. ‘There must be . . .’ He was completely blind; he couldn’t even figure out the shape of the door. ‘There’s got to be—’

  An abrupt commotion of rustling and scraping made him sink to his knees in terror.

  ‘Man coming,’ croaked the voice, much nearer. ‘No talk.’

  ‘No. Don’t—’

  The blackness took shape. A mass of it came towards him; atop it, something glinted like a fragment of polished slate. Everything happened at once. There was a lull in the wind, and he heard footsteps outside, moving through the wood. At the same time something locked round his wrists: a fierce grip that pressed and curled like fingers but had no warmth or softness. The grasp jerked him upwards. He saw a thin and strangely bent black arm, and, before he was dragged out of the sanctuary of feeble light, a gleaming round eye, and he smelled breath that reeked of sour meat and earth. The arm was appallingly strong. It pulled him away from the door as if he was made of paper.

  ‘No talk,’ the voice grated, right by his ear. He was dragged deep into the shadow to one side of the door. He would have collapsed had its grip not stayed clamped on his arm. ‘No talk. No sound.’ With paralysing horror he felt a touch on his neck, some beaked and bony part of its face nudging his bare skin.

  Heavy steps trod through the sodden leaves towards the door and stopped. There came a rattle – a key in a lock – and a heavy creak. The door was opening.

  The sound and smell of the twilit wood rushed in. Through blurry eyes Gavin saw a dark oblong swing towards him, silhouetted by a chilly pallor that was more welcome to him at that moment than any sunrise. The thing had dragged him behind the door so that it blocked his view as it opened. He couldn’t see the man at the entrance, breathing hard as if he’d been running. An old man’s breath, shaky.

  The last dusk light fell into the chapel through the door and for the first time Gavin saw something of where he was. Two squat columns flanked the pool, which was a hexagon of darkness in the middle of the space, a hole opening into nothing. There was no altar, no furniture, nothing more than a couple of smudgy rectangles against the back wall which must once have been pictures, now decayed almost to invisibility.

  On the far side of the pool from the door, just where Gav had seen it before, a small old-looking box lay on the bare stone, its hinged top open. Behind it was a scrap of glinting fractured metal, a small mirror, its surface shivered with cracks. They were the only things to see. Gav could almost feel the man’s eyes falling on them.

  ‘Ah, God,’ the man said, in a broken whisper.

  The outside air blew in and drifted against Gav’s cheek, exquisitely precious. His heart sank in despair as he heard the man shift, turn round. Barely daring to breathe, he fixed his eyes on the edge of the door as if the force of his gaze alone could hold it still.

  The door began to swing closed. Gavin couldn’t help himself. He twitched forward, terrified of losing the light again. At once the hideous grasp tightened. His gasp was drowned out by the scrape of the hinges. The latch clanked shut.

  The steps started up again and faded. Now that he could do nothing but listen, he was sure he recognised their unhappy cadence, and the catch of grief in the voice. It was Tristram Uren who had made his way here, seen whatever it was he needed to see, and was now limping away.

  The pressure against his neck eased and then the grip released him. He crumpled down onto stone.

  ‘Gone,’ said the voice, above him.

  Gav crouched on hands and knees, shivering.

  ‘Didn’t lock,’ it added.

  He looked up. His eyes hadn’t yet readjusted to take in the tiny sliver of fading twilight under the door; he couldn’t see a thing. It was true, though. He’d surely heard the noise of the key turning in the lock before Tristram had opened it. He hadn’t heard it again afterwards.

  After a careful pause he said, ‘Corbo?’

  ‘Yes yes.’

  ‘Can I go?’

  ‘Aaaaark. Not locked.’

  ‘Will you . . . will you stop me if I try and leave?’

  Again he was unnerved by the long pause before it answered. He had a strange feeling that it was struggling with its reply.

  ‘No no,’ it said at last.

  He crawled a few inches towards the door. The thing did not move behind him. He went on until his groping hand felt wood. Very slowly, he stood up and found the latch.

  ‘Um,’ he said, ‘do you . . . ?’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you want to come out too?’

  ‘Wraaaaa.’ A rough-edged, passionless groan. ‘Want, yes. Go, no. Take your chance.’

  He inched the door open. Sweet wild windblown air poured over him, and he saw the crowns of trees tossing against a sky whose last blue had almost surrendered to black.

  ‘Um,’ he said, unsure where to look, ‘Corbo. Thanks.’

  ‘Suffer for it,’ the voice croaked. Already it sounded small. The tumult of the wood overrode it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gav said.

  ‘Go. Learn fast. Worse next time.’

  He stepped out into the open and began to run.

  Thirteen

  It was all he could do to keep his footing. The path was barely visible. He ran full pelt through slippery stony three-quarter darkness, gasping aloud each time a twig plucked at his legs or arms. Behind the screen of trees to his right, slow-moving water turned the dusk into a sinister velvet glimmer. He couldn’t believe how dense and alive the dark was. He fought back the urge to call for help. Anything might come, anything: the croaking clawed thing, the other thing he wouldn’t let himself think about, or not until he’d got himself away, far away.

  Try knowing better than that, he told himself savagely. Just try!

  He sprinted faster. He tripped more than once, tumbling into the mulch of muddy leaves, scrabbling up again. The scrapes on his hands stung against clammy earth. He looked over his shoulder: nothing but whispering black. He blundered on. He tried to remember the way he’d come with Marina but nothing looked the same, it was all just deep shadow, and anyway that was in another world, a lifetime ago.

  A slit of lesser darkness appeared ahead. At the sight of
that break in the trees he forced himself to go faster, afraid it might vanish.

  Quite suddenly he was out of the wood, a purple-black sky opening above him. He ran into the field. Above, the outline of the ancient house squatted against the horizon like a stone beast. Firelight sputtered behind the lower windows. For a moment he thought he saw someone moving in a corner room. He raised his head, slid on the wet matted grass and fell heavily. The evening damp clung to him as he scrambled to his feet again. Legs and lungs began to burn; stopping had made them worse.

  Go, he told himself. Go go go. Get away, get out. He tried to make himself think. It was impossible. His pulse thudded in his ears like a galley drum. It sounded like words, like the Corbo thing’s hideous pronouncement, Bad time, bad time, bad time. His feet thumped the same rhythm against the ground.

  At the top of the field the iron gate leading through the overgrown wall was still open, though he could barely make out where it was. He had to slow down to find the spot, and when he put out his hand to push the bars of the gate, it was as if the metal was the beast’s claw, pressing on his skin again.

  He stopped in the darkness under the tangle of dry stems, hands on his knees, breath heaving. For the first time he thought about where he was going. The front door of the house wasn’t far away. Should he warn them? Could he find Marina again, make sure she was OK?

  What could he say?

  What if they knew?

  Was this what no one had told him about Pendurra? That it was haunted, that it was cursed even more horrifyingly than he was?

  At the groaning sound of a heavy door opening he froze, holding his breath. The front door.

  From where he crouched he saw light spill onto the gravel in front of the house. A vivid, slick red-orange light, quivering with sinister motion. Someone was there, coming out. He heard a step.

  Something.

  He bolted. He dodged and ducked through the garden, veering away from the clumps of darkness as they loomed up over him, following avenues of shadow close to the edge of the trees. When he reached the mouth of the decrepit driveway, he risked a quick glance back over his shoulder.

  The light outside the house was gathered into an eerie floating ball like phosphorescence in pitch-black water. It hovered at the head of a stick, and the stick was held in a person’s hand, and the person, invisible behind the evil light, was coming towards him.

  He put his head down, gritted his teeth against the burning protests in his legs and sprinted into the dark. He hadn’t seen who it was. He hadn’t wanted to. Now he only wanted to get out. Run up the drive, through the gates, out into the road, the real world, out out out. Anywhere else.

  The driveway was completely invisible under the trees. He followed it without knowing how. He couldn’t slow down no matter how blinded he was. When another light winked suddenly through the cage of branches ahead, he yelped in terror, but an instant later he identified it as electric light, harsh and bright. The light in Auntie Gwen’s porch.

  Someone stood there.

  He almost fell again. Trapped, he thought, and for a terrible second he saw himself back in the stone tomb, the door slamming shut behind him. Then the person under the porch light moved. Perhaps she’d heard his steps under the trees. She turned and peered down towards him. He recognised the silhouette, and at the same moment he remembered her promise, which at the time had been the last thing he wanted to hear: Tell you what – I’ll come back tomorrow, around this time, just to set my mind at rest.

  He ran on. She stepped away from the porch as he came, staring curiously into the darkness from which he fled.

  ‘Is that . . . ?’

  He twisted round to look back down the driveway. Through the screen of old trees he glimpsed the light that was never firelight, bobbing its way slowly up the path.

  Hester Lightfoot only gaped at him, astonishment all over her face.

  ‘Get me out of here,’ Gav said. ‘Please. Now.’

  On the other side of the river, Horace Jia slouched at the back of a bus and tried to cheer himself up with the thought that his day probably couldn’t get any worse.

  He’d been late to school, of course. Really late. The kind of late where they’d probably ring Mum. He had his excuse ready – Horace prided himself on being prepared for things – and anyway as long as he kept coming nearly top in everything he knew Mum wouldn’t freak out about a thing like that, but he could do without a lecture, especially today. And he’d have to stand there and take it, or she might really flip out and take away the key to the boat. And then he wouldn’t be able to cross the river any more.

  Not that he cared. (He slouched deeper, pressing his cheek to the vibrating window. Dark out already.) What do I care? he told himself furiously. Who cares about Marina anyway? She never listens to me. Thought I was lying. Thought I didn’t know what I saw. Did she think he didn’t have other people to hang out with? Maybe he’d forget about going over there. For ever. Leave her with her doddery old dad and mental Miss Clifton and that freaky Caleb bloke who looked like he never washed. See how she likes that. Maybe then she’d wish she’d been a bit nicer to him.

  Maybe he’d even tell.

  Tell.

  The thing that mattered most to Horace Jia was that he had a secret. Having a secret was wonderful. Nothing could take it away. No one else owned it; no one else could touch it. It was there when he went to bed, there when he woke up, there whenever he wanted to think about it, a little warm golden nugget in the back of his mind. Sometimes it tingled as if it was a part of his body. Sometimes he thought he could make it tingle there just by thinking. Close his eyes and bring it close and send a shiver down his own spine.

  But sometimes it wanted to burst out. Hey, guess what. You know that weird old house across the river, the one no one knows anything about? I sneak in there all the time. Yeah, I do, I swear. And there’s this girl who lives there, and I’m her best friend, and she’s really . . . really . . .

  He clamped his arms tighter across his chest. No way he could tell anyone. Even if it was the best secret in the world. If anyone else ever knew that he sometimes clambered over the wall from the footpath and ran up through the old woods and hung out with Marina, they’d stop him. It was probably illegal or something, even though Miss Clifton always told him no one minded as long as he kept quiet about it. Plus he always told Mum he was going to meet up with friends or go exploring on his own. If she found out he’d been lying about it for a whole year now, that’d be it. No more boat. No more freedom.

  So what? he told himself again. Who cares? He tried to think about other friends he could go and see, friends he could do normal stuff with – PlayStation and football – but when he imagined things like that, his secret went heavy and bright like gold inside him and made the rest of the world shadowy and too small, as if he’d switched the lights on during a movie.

  Marina’d spoiled it. Going off exploring with that other kid in tow. Her and crazy Miss Clifton going mental at the weekend. They’d ruined it for him. Ruined his life.

  The bus reached his village. He clumped off and marched home, keeping his head down. With any luck, he thought, Mum wouldn’t be back yet.

  But it wasn’t his lucky day. He saw lights on behind the curtains as he came down the lane. Worse, there was another car pulled up tight against the garden hedge, right in front. A visitor.

  Horace’s heart sank even lower. Mum had this thing about visitors and food. Anyone who set foot in the house couldn’t leave until they’d been offered everything from biscuits to cake to half that evening’s tea. And then there was the chatting, chatting, God, all that stupid gossip about people nobody cared about. What was there to gossip about? Everyone did the same stupid crap every day. The only thing that ever changed was that old people got sicker. Is she any better? . . . Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. He couldn’t face it. Not this evening, not after the morning he’d had.

  ‘Horace? Is that you?’

  Who else would be opening t
he door, Father Christmas? ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘Come and say hello.’ He smelled tea and a whiff of ginger cake, but no actual cooking yet. She and the guest were in the sitting room at the back, out of sight. ‘Did you put your shoes neatly?’

  Yes, he had. He aimed a phantom kick at them. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you have a good day at school?’

  Sounded like they hadn’t rung her, at least. Unless she was just being polite while someone else was in the house. Too embarrassed to tell him off in public. Horace hung his bag on its peg by the front door, put his coat beside it. ‘Yeah, fine.’

  ‘You remember Reverend Jeffrey, don’t you?’

  He froze with his arms still up by the peg, heart pounding. The day that hadn’t been able to get any worse wobbled, tipped and plunged down into total disaster.

  Mum still hadn’t seen him yet. For a few crazy seconds he thought about legging it back outside. Sorry, Mum, just remembered I left something on the bus! Hide in the neighbour’s garden till he saw the car leave. But what good would that do? Avoiding the bloke wouldn’t help. If he’d told her, he’d told her. Even running away wouldn’t help that.

  He shoved his hands down in his pockets. His right fist tightened round his keychain. He felt the little key, sticky with sweat. The key that opened the padlock that sealed the tin compartment in the stern of the boat where the tiny outboard lay stored. The key that meant while she was off cleaning rich people’s houses all day long at the weekend or in the holidays he could go where he liked. The key to his secret.

  ‘Horace? What are you doing? Come in. Don’t be rude.’