by Simon Kewin
“What is it?”
“Do you think you could drive your bus forward a little so that one wheel is resting on that grid?”
“The grid you just came up?”
“Yes, that's the one.”
He wanted to ask why, ask what she'd been doing down there. But her smile sweetened and instead he shrugged.
“All right, love.”
Without moving the newspaper he adjusted a lever on his dashboard. The bus juddered forward until one wheel rested on the grid.
“Thank you so very much,” she said.
“You're welcome, love. But …”
“Yes?”
“Oh. Nothing.”
The driver returned to his newspaper, shaking his head as if he'd seen everything now.
Catherine walked to the concrete wall of a nearby building and drew one final invisible mark, placing it among rival graffiti about Manchester United and Manchester City. This sketch took a little longer than the others, its message more complicated.
Then she walked away, limping more now with only the one shoe. At a safe distance she turned to look backward. The bus was still there but she could distinctly see it being jerked up and down as the undain tried to force the grid upward. So far it wasn't succeeding.
So. She had to get away from the library. She had to phone her daughter and let her know Cait was going to Danny's. And then she had to help Cait destroy or somehow hide the book while staying away from the undain and the forces of Genera.
There was much to do. But, before any of it, what she really needed was a sit down and a nice cup of tea.
13. Fires
Manchester, England
“Hi, Danny.”
“Cait! Hi. Come in.”
Two of the family's dogs barked around her legs, a lively white puppy, all ears and tail, and an older, lumbering Labrador. She was never entirely clear how many dogs lived there let alone what they were called. But she loved coming to Danny's house. This explosion of noise and excitement always greeted her. The whole place was a jumble of people, dogs and clutter. At the same time she could always find a quiet corner to sit and talk. Not like back home. There, Cait and her mother just got in each other's way. They only had the living room, where the TV stood, and you either watched that or tried to talk over it.
She liked Danny's kitchen best. It was always busy: one of his parents cooking, one or more of his sisters eating, someone she didn't even recognise dashing through saying hi or good bye.
Danny's mother peered around the kitchen door to see who it was. She waved with hands covered in flour. She wore her smartest work clothes, austere blacks and greys, the effect lessened by her apron, which had the picture of an unclothed and curvaceous woman across it.
They shouted a conversation over the din of the dogs.
“Hello, Cait. Cup of tea?”
“Lovely, thanks.”
“How's your mum doing?”
“She's, you know, the same really.”
“Well. Go on upstairs and I'll bring your tea.”
“Thanks, Mrs. G.”
Cait and Danny headed upstairs while the dogs, three of them now, dashed to some other part of the house, careering along like a single creature with multiple heads.
In his room, Danny sat at the little desk next to his bed. He wore jeans and a crumpled tee-shirt, his feet bare and his hair tousled as if he'd been holding his head in his hands. He'd been working: textbooks, paper and pens lay strewn all over his desk and on the floor. Screwed-up paper formed a mountain in his bin. Cait sat on the unmade bed and studied his posters. She particularly coveted the Screaming Machinery one with the original line-up. For the first time since the library she felt a little safer.
“How's it going?” she asked, nodding her head toward his desk.
He grinned and sat back, his hands behind his head. “Oh, it'll all come together eventually. You?”
“Don't ask.”
Danny's dad came in carrying a mug of tea for each of them, and a plate of chocolate biscuits and some home-made fairy cakes.
“These should help with the revision. Give us a shout if you need anything.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Maths getting you down again is it?” asked Danny when his father had gone.
He could tell she was upset. Was it so obvious?
“No, it's not that,” she said. “I mean, yeah, that's going badly, but there's something else.”
She hesitated. The whole thing seemed suddenly ridiculous.
“Go on. Tell me about it,” said Danny.
“Well, I went to the library after school to see my gran. Something pretty messed-up happened.”
She sipped at her tea and examined her mug for a moment, tracing the intricate knotwork pattern upon it with a peacock-blue fingernail.
“What?”
She sighed. He'd think she was completely crazy. Perhaps she was. “Sure you want to know?”
“Course.”
“OK. We were down in the basement …”
“So, pretty crazy, eh?” she said when she'd finished, trying to make it all sound like a bit of a joke.
He sat quietly for a moment, watching her. He was going to look away, the light gone from his eyes, make some excuse about having to get back to his work. It was ridiculous, the whole thing. What the hell must he think of her?
But instead he laughed, gleefully, as if he'd just been given some good news. “This is great! I mean, not Jane, obviously. But it all makes sense. I knew it! Hey, you have the book with you? That's it there?”
“You believe me?” she asked.
“Well, yeah. You've seen all those web-sites I've shown you, all the crazy theories. I've spent long enough trying to persuade you to take them seriously. There's this blog I read that talks all about this stuff. It fits perfectly. This monster must have come from the other world. And the book. And Jane too, don't you see?”
“I still can't believe it happened. It's like something from a kid's story. Maybe I'm just having a nightmare.”
“You're saying I'm the man of your dreams?”
“Ha ha.”
“Look,” said Danny, “This is real. Trust me. Pinch yourself and see if it hurts.”
“But, I might just dream that it hurts.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Being chased by monsters. People dying. That doesn't happen in real life.”
“In that case, it won't do any harm to look at the book.”
She clutched it under her arm, but placed it on the bed now. Danny came over and kneeled beside her.
It smelled old: paper, leather and dust. Danny ran his fingers over the embossed skull etched into the leather cover. It looked human, but proportioned differently, taller and slimmer, the eye-sockets unusually large. In the stronger light she could see it shone faintly reddish-gold, most of the colour long-faded. Near the letters underneath the skull she could see a dark, irregular stain, like the map of an unknown continent.
“Strange letters,” said Danny. “I wonder what they say.”
He turned the book around. The skeleton on the spine was arranged with its arms crossed over its chest. More letters or symbols ran around its edge. The back was blank apart from a single symbol, a double-star upon which the gold colouring gleamed.
Danny opened the book in the middle. There was writing on the left-hand side of the page but nothing on the right. The words were hand-written in tiny, cramped symbols, the ink purplish-red, with many additions and notes added here and there. It looked more like an exercise-book than a textbook.
Danny turned the page, the leathery, off-white paper crackling. They could see more of the closely-written script, but again only on the left-hand side. Sketches interspersed the text. A human body, showing marks where cuts should be made, like a medical diagram. A series of concentric circles with symbols at random points inside each ring, like something from a horoscope. Each drawing had scribbled notes surrounding it.
�
��What is this book?” said Danny.
“I don't know,” said Cait. “But I can see why Gran wanted it destroyed. It gives me the creeps just looking at it.”
“The people in the library, the ones you said were like the police. And that guy with the sunglasses. Do you think they were after this, too?”
“I suppose so, yeah,” said Cait.
“Or maybe they'd come for the creature. They detected it and came to deal with it. Maybe they're the good guys.”
“I don't think so. They didn't behave like good guys. Plus Gran said this evil thing has friends here. I think they're all on the same side. I think they're all trying to get this book. And Gran and Jane risked their lives to stop them.”
“I wonder why,” said Danny. He looked up at her, directly into her eyes. He had such nice brown eyes, visible through the strands of his long, untidy fringe. She saw anxiety in them now, though. It had dawned on him what she was getting him into. She smiled, trying to be reassuring, but all her own fears returned, an electric shock in her stomach.
He grinned back and slammed the book shut.
“Hey, let's see what they're saying about it on the news.” He turned to the computer on his desk and browsed to the BBC. Underneath a red banner saying Breaking News, it read:
Police have cordoned off the Central Library in Manchester following an incident inside the building. It is not yet known whether there are any casualties. Details are scarce, but there are unconfirmed reports of fires and a number of small explosions within the building.
Police are keen to speak to anyone who was at the library at around 16:30 this afternoon. They are especially keen to speak to the people who were evacuated from the library when the attack occurred.
More details soon.
“Hah, I bet they are,” said Danny. “Looks like they've realised you slipped through the net.”
Cait nodded, saying nothing. She felt sick. What had happened to her gran? And what chance did she have? She wasn't really safe here. They had changed the news, changed what had really happened. How could she possibly evade such people?
“We have to destroy the book, Danny,” she said. “We have to destroy it now.”
“I suppose,” he replied. “Shame though. It looks cool. I'd love to know what it's about. I bet if we did some research on the net we could translate some of it.”
“Danny, I mean it.”
“OK, OK,” he said. “I guess you're right.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, gazing through his window. “Dad had a bonfire before. Let's go chuck it on there.”
They walked through a soft, evening light that made the whole garden glow. A mound of hedge-trimmings crackled and burned at the far end of the lawn, sending a line of white smoke straight into the still evening air. The smell of smouldering wood and leaves filled the air. Danny took a stick and poked the fire, exposing the red glow at its core, exciting it back into flames.
“Go on then,” he said. “Throw it on.”
Cait paused for a moment. Was this the right thing to do? Should they just destroy this ancient book? But she thought of her gran, and Jane, and hurled the book into the centre of the fire. It opened mid-flight, pages flapping as if it was going to fly away to avoid the flames. But it landed with a gentle wumph in the middle, sending up clouds of sparks. They watched for a moment as the flames burned brighter.
“That's that then,” said Danny. “Come on, let's go in and get some tea.”
Thinking back later on, it seemed incredible to Cait they sat there in the kitchen eating cold, left-over pie, laughing about their teachers or the stupid things their friends did, as if all their troubles were over.
Nox strode to the small, square, mid-terrace house. Glancing around to ensure his men were in place behind him, he rapped on the grimy plastic door.
He heard shuffling inside, footsteps, then the door opened to reveal the drab, slow-eyed woman he had come to see. To think they had once suspected Fiona Weerd of being the one. She barely had a spark of life about her. Overweight, hair a mess, clothes chosen for comfort. Ten years ago he'd received a report this woman might be the most powerful witch in England. Laughable. She was a witch, of course, but only in name. Since the death of her husband, her power had withered away completely. Now she was little better than one of the healing-crystals-and-dreamcatchers brigade.
“Mrs. Weerd? I'd like to speak to your daughter.”
For a moment he thought he saw a flicker of life in her eyes. He dismissed it. She couldn't possibly have duped them. They'd monitored all three of them for years, profiled them, graded them. Nothing. The daughter had no power at all, the mother and grandmother next to nothing. Still, the older hag had worked at Central Library. A connection they had failed to make, for which heads would roll. And the little rat of a daughter had been there too, had actually walked past him. And now both daughter and book had disappeared. All that took it beyond coincidence. No doubt the three of them were being directed by some unseen power, but for now his top priority was to track down Cait Weerd. No real damage had been done yet, but the imminent arrival of the delegation from Angere gave everything a sudden and unwelcome urgency. The current situation could not, and would not, be allowed to continue.
“My daughter? Why, what has she done? Is she all right? Are you the police?”
She looked utterly resigned to her fate. If she was play-acting it was an incredible performance. He pushed past her and into the house. She simply stepped aside to let him and his two guards past.
“You can't come in without being asked. Who do you think you are?”
He ignored her mewling. “Your mother phoned you not long ago. Your daughter has gone to her boyfriend's. Where is that?”
“I … I don't know. We aren't as close as we should be. What is this all about?”
He strode into her cramped, rectangular living-room. The flat-screen television seemed to take up most of the space. She'd obviously been sorting out old photographs; they lay strewn over the floor, some in piles, others scattered at random. They looked like the tedious family snaps he would have expected. He trampled across them and turned to face her.
“The book of course. I have no time for games, Mrs. Weerd.”
“Book? What book? I'm afraid I don't know what she gets up to. She's out of control. She doesn't listen to me any more. It's a different boyfriend every week. I don't know where she is.”
Was she lying? Possibly. So far as he knew Cait Weerd didn't have a different boyfriend each week. Right now he didn't really care.
He picked up one of the photographs, a picture of Mike, her husband, standing on a pier somewhere, laughing as the wind blew his hair. Nox took a slim, silver cigarette lighter from his pocket. He held the photograph for her to see and clicked a button on the lighter, setting fire to a corner.
“A terrible tragedy what happened to your husband.”
The burning picture held her gaze. “Yes.”
The photograph burned right through leaving a crisp, blackened curl. He dropped it and picked up another, this time of Cait.
“And what a double tragedy it would be if lightning struck again.”
“I don't know where she is. Who are you?”
“Imagine the misfortune of two of your family members dying such a terrible death, trapped screaming in a burning building. Or all of you. Tragedy repeating itself. The Daily Mail could make a nice headline of it.”
“I don't know anything.”
She looked agitated, cornered. Perhaps he could goad her into some action, make her reveal her true colours. If she had any.
He lit the corner of the picture of Cait. “I wonder if it was over quickly for him. Or did it take time? Did he feel the flames as he burned, do you think?”
She said nothing, her gaze flicking between him and the two guards.
“Very well. Since you don't know anything useful we might as well kill you.” He inclined his head toward a guard. “Make sure it's quiet. I want it to look like a burglary.
Afterwards …”
The stud in his ear tingled as a call came through. He turned away from the woman to answer it.
“Nox.”
He listened as the voice on the other end filled him in on developments, then cut the connection.
“Well,” he said. “It seems we have found your daughter without your help. Change of plan. I shall go and retrieve her and the book now. Then I'll return for you, Mrs. Weerd. You do, of course, work for our competition, so you must be dealt with. You and your mother.”
He glanced at the guards. “Keep her here until I return. Kill her if necessary.”
There was no reply. Both guards took out guns and held them across their chests in a co-ordinated movement, fingers on triggers.
“Until later,” said Nox.
As he swept outside he wondered, again, whether he had misjudged this small, drab woman in her small, drab house. Would two guards be enough? He put those doubts out of his mind. He couldn't be mistaken. She was nothing. Only the book mattered.
He sparked his bike into life and roared off down the street.
They stood together in the fading light. The fire smouldered, lazy coils of smoke winding off into the air. Danny poked around in it with a stick.
Cait shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, thinking she should be getting home. “Did it all burn? We should set light to any scraps that are left. Gran said to make sure I destroyed every single word.”
“Cait. Look.” Danny turned. In his hands he held the book. He brushed grey ash off its red cover to reveal it was unharmed. He opened it and leafed through. “It's not even hot. How is that possible?”
Cait was about to speak when they heard a great roar from the street in front of the house. For a moment Cait thought the monster from the library had come for her.