by Leo Hunt
“What be it, Titus?” the other horse monster asks, coming to a halt alongside his companion. They’re barely a car’s length from where we’re hiding. The sky flares blue, and the creatures are silhouetted against it, like statues sunk in the depths of a nightmare ocean.
“I believe I smell something,” Titus says cheerfully. “We may yet feast tonight, old friend!”
Elza’s hand grasps mine tightly. Do we run? They’ll catch us, I’m certain. One look at their muscular bodies tells you that. We’re frozen in place. They don’t know exactly where we are. We have to stay put as long as we can.
“I believe I smell it, too,” Dumachus says thoughtfully. “I believe that I do.”
The armored monsters are poised, front legs raised. Their horrible old-men heads are pointed into the wind.
“Flesh,” Titus sings softly, “flesh is what I smell. Flesh and spirit both. It is close, old friend.”
“Where be it hidden?” Dumachus whines.
I hold my breath. Snow settles on my face and hair.
The horse monsters move with lightning speed, leaping at a car parked on the other side of the street. They ram the vehicle so hard it tips over, exposing the wheels and undercarriage to the blizzard. Something erupts yowling from underneath it, maybe a fox or a dog, and takes off into the snow.
“There it be!” screams Titus. “There it be! Only a mouthful, but food all the same! After the rascal, Dumachus! After him!”
The spirits shriek with delight and gallop off after the animal, armor plates clattering, hooves pounding the snowy road. They vanish into the dimness within moments, their cries echoing strangely.
I let out a loud breath.
“What the f . . .” Elza whispers.
“So now you’ve met some residents of Deadside. Let’s go. If we get to your house’s hazel charms, they can’t touch us.”
I don’t know that for sure — the hazel charms guard against ghosts, and I’m not sure these horse monsters count. They might be some kind of demon or another type of spirit I don’t have a name for. Regardless, we’re surely safer inside a house than we are crouched out here in the road.
We break cover and run across the road, up the hill that leads to Elza’s house. The cars are totally covered now, strange lumps of snow with the suggestion of metal beneath the whiteness. We pass a telephone pole, and the drifts are so deep, I can’t see the bottom of it, while fog hides the top. Snowflakes whirl in mocking spirals before my eyes. I barely recognize this street. Our home is being erased. Dunbarrow is becoming something alien and hostile, a place that frightens me. And what happened to all the people? This is so awful that I can hardly get my head around it. All I can think about is one foot, then the other, my toes throbbing with cold in my sneakers. Elza’s hand is clamped to mine, less from affection than from a genuine worry that we might lose each other in the bleakness.
Finally we reach the end of Elza’s road, and I’m certain of that because we can see her house, almost highlighted in the murky storm, and it takes me a moment to realize what’s so strange about this view. The mist isn’t flowing into Elza’s garden, instead breaking around it, like the house is encased in a glass bubble. It must be the charms, the magical defenses she hung around her house and mine to keep uninvited spirits away. They’re keeping this fog away as well. We’ve found a safe place.
She smiles at me for the first time since we came awake in the forest, and we hurry forward, both with the same urge, to get into the house and bolt the door, finally get warm. Then, once we’re safe, maybe we can work out what’s going on here, how we can —
There’s a high, shrill scream behind us. I whirl around but can’t see anything. Nothing but whiteness, snow, shifting fog. The cry comes again.
“Titus!”
I hear it clearer now. They’re coming back. They picked up our trail somehow.
“Run!” I shout to Elza, and we take off, snow spraying around our legs. My breath rasps.
“Yes, my brother in arms, I hear it, too! The patter of feet!”
The horse monsters’ voices are louder already. I glance back over my shoulder, but I still can’t see anything. Snow, mist, empty front yards.
“They flee!” I hear one yell, with fierce joy. “Make haste, Dumachus!”
There’s a thundering gallop of hooves behind us now, the harsh sound of armor plates clashing. They’re so fast.
Elza’s house is just ahead. I can see the empty milk bottles by the garden wall.
I can read the number on her gate.
I imagine their monstrous old-men faces leering at me in the fog, their mouths opening wide like mantraps —
Their hoofbeats are cannon blasts now.
We’re at Elza’s front wall. She hurls herself over it, not bothering with the gate.
“Have at him, Dumachus! Have at him!”
I jump as well, vaulting the low brick wall.
I’m expecting to fall into the snowy garden, but I don’t. Something grabs my back, jolting me, my legs hitting the wall, I’m being dragged back —
“Luke!” Elza screams.
“What —”
Elza grabs my arms and pulls as hard as she can. There’s a ripping noise and the pulling at my back vanishes. I collapse onto Elza, tumbling into her yard, face-first into a snowdrift. I scramble up, trying to get closer to the door, not understanding what happened.
The horse creatures are both at her garden wall. They’re barely a foot from me. It seems like if they lunged across the wall, they could bite us, but they don’t. We’re protected by the hazel charms Elza hung around her yard. The spirits are even more hideous now that I can look at them up close, without thick fog between us. Their heads have gray mottled skin, wrinkled and unspeakably ancient, with long graying hair that merges into a mane on their necks. Snow settles on their armored shoulders and bare heads. One of them has a scrap of khaki fabric held in its mouth. It must be the back of my parka, I realize. He bit at me in midair, grabbed hold of my big jacket instead of my back. The other horse creature — Titus, I think this one is — looks at the two of us with a mixture of lust and loathing, running a fat gray tongue over his lips.
“That was ill struck, Dumachus,” he remarks. “A fine folly these two have led us on.”
“Donoff mggbh,” Dumachus replies through a mouthful of parka.
“You see the hazel-wood wards upon their abode,” Titus continues. “Another deception. She told us the old ways were forgotten now. They would be helpless, she said.”
“Who told you we were helpless?” I ask.
“Luke,” Elza says, “what are you —”
“Who told you that?” I ask again.
“You speak to us,” Titus replies. He sounds surprised.
“Yeah,” I say. “We can talk. Who brought you here?”
“Be you a sorcerer?” Titus asks me.
“I’m a necromancer,” I say.
“A necromancer,” Dumachus replies, finally managing to spit out the scrap of fabric. It looks like getting stuff unstuck from your teeth is difficult when you don’t have hands.
“Bah!” Titus barks at me. “Slaveholder! Enthraller! I’ll have none of your tricks, sorcerer! The gate is open, and the Winter Star waxes in the heavens! Tonight is our night, and it is a feast for the dead, not the living! Do not think we fear your sigil!”
“What are you?” I ask them. “Why are you here? What do you mean, the Winter Star?”
“No, we shall not parley with you, necromancer. This is our feast, our hunt. We are sworn Knights of the Tree. Cower behind your wards, and do not dare interfere. If we see you again, it will go ill for you.”
Titus turns without another word and trots away into the fog. Dumachus stands by the wall a little longer, looking me up and down. I like his face even less than Titus’s, sunken and hungry-looking. His teeth are sharp and inward-facing, like a shark’s.
“I smell your blood through your skin, boy,” Dumachus says softly. “I’ll que
nch my thirst before this long night is through. Mark my words.”
He turns, armor clanking, and fades into the storm, following Titus. I let out a heavy breath.
“Luke,” Elza says shakily, “what were they saying? How were you talking to them?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were speaking another language. It wasn’t English.”
“I thought . . . I don’t know. I have no idea how that happened. I thought you could understand them, too.”
“What did they say to you?”
“Their names are Titus and Dumachus. They said it was their hunt and that they’re Knights of the Tree. They said that the Winter Star was waxing, whatever that means. Oh yeah, and they really want to eat us.”
“Yes,” Elza says heavily, “I kind of gathered that much.”
Snow settles in her hair as we stand there looking out into the fog. The house opposite is invisible. We could be the only people left in the world.
The thought occurs, as the sky flickers green again, tinting the fog and snow a sickly jade, that maybe we are.
It’s a bit warmer in Elza’s house, but not as warm as I hoped it would be. In fact, there’s a howling draft blowing into the hallway, which turns out to be coming from the kitchen, where the window on the back door has been broken and the door itself unlocked. There are shards of glass scattered all over the kitchen floor.
“Oh, you have got to be joking,” Elza says. “Who did this? What is going on?”
“Where are your parents?” I ask.
“They went to a midnight concert in Brackford. . . . Did someone rob us? It can’t be a ghost. They can’t get in here.”
I quickly look behind us, into the dark hallway. Nothing. The wind whistles in through the hole in the door.
“Do you think they’re still here?” I whisper.
“Maybe,” she says grimly. “I don’t like this at all, Luke. We should’ve been more careful coming in. We made so much noise . . .”
I hear a soft bump upstairs, like somebody shut a door a little too hard. It seems like we’re not as safe here as we hoped.
Someone — something — is definitely still inside the house.
I motion to Elza, and she opens the cutlery drawer and pulls out two knives. She passes me one without a word, and we step silently into the hallway. My mouth tastes sour and my heart thumps. I slide the door to the living room open, but there’s nobody inside, just the dark bulk of the Moss family’s Christmas tree, sofas, a television. The laundry room is similarly empty, and the downstairs bathroom as well. Which leaves upstairs.
We tread as quietly as we can, but the staircase is creaky and unbearably loud. Another green flash lights the upstairs landing through the windows, painting Elza’s worried face in gruesome highlights and shadows. I point to her bedroom door, which we definitely left open this morning. It’s closed.
We stand on each side, knives clenched in our hands, and then Elza turns the handle as silently as she can and pushes the door open.
“Whoa,” she whispers. “Look.”
Elza’s room is dark and it’s hard to make out details, but it’s clearly been ransacked. Someone’s been through here in a big hurry, pulling stuff out of drawers, tearing the covers off her bed, even ripping some of the photos and posters down off her walls. There are books scattered all over the floor.
“Why would someone do that?” I whisper back. “What are they after?”
“When we find them, we’ll find out,” she replies.
I move past her, back onto the dark landing, and softly make my way down to the spare bedroom, the room I slept in when everything was going wrong for me all those months ago, just before Halloween. I push the door open and move inside. The blinds are drawn, and the room is almost pitch-dark. I’m about to turn around, when someone roughly grabs me. My heart nearly stops, and before I can say or do anything, I feel the cold edge of a blade at my neck.
Shit. They were standing behind the door.
“Drop the knife,” a voice hisses in my ear. “Do it.”
I drop the kitchen knife onto the floor. Elza hears the noise.
“Luke?” she calls.
“Tell her to drop it, too,” the man says. He’s got a deep voice, a local accent. “Tell her to sit on the ground and don’t do nothing. Tell her now.”
“Elza,” I call, feeling the blade caress my throat as my vocal cords move, “I found them.”
I’m sitting on the sofa in Elza’s front room. She’s sitting next to me. We’re not tied up, but there’s a definite sense we shouldn’t get up or make sudden movements. Two men in dark sportswear and ski masks are standing in the middle of the room. One’s holding a sword; the other has a cricket bat. They seem very agitated, which doesn’t put me at ease.
“Why are you wearing Big Chris’s coat?” the guy with the sword asks me.
“What?”
“That’s Chris Stokey’s coat,” he says, gesturing at my parka. “Big Chris, man.”
“We stole it from his car,” Elza says calmly.
“Don’t lie to me, man,” the masked guy says. “Don’t screw with us. What have you done to him?”
“Nothing,” I say. “It was on the backseat of a car. I was going to freeze, so we took it.”
“This isn’t important,” the guy with the bat says. “Keep it together, mate.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the other one agrees. “All right. What’s happening to the sky?”
“We don’t know,” Elza says.
“I’m asking Luke!” snaps the guy with the sword, and at that moment I’m sure who’s under the ski mask.
“Where did you get a sword, Kirk?” I ask.
“We ask the questions,” he growls.
“I’ve known you since we were eight, man,” I say. “I know your voice. Mark’s, too.”
“I said there was no point in the masks,” the guy with the bat — Mark — groans.
“Whatever, man,” Kirk replies huffily. “At least I’m having some ideas, you know? Putting some stuff out there. It was worth a try.”
“This is itchy as hell,” Mark says. “I’m taking it off.”
He peels off his ski mask with one hand, keeping an even grip on the cricket bat with the other. What are they afraid of? Is it me and Elza? Why did they break into her house? The fog flickers green, and I see Kirk’s eyes glittering in the eyeholes of his mask. The green light shines down the length of his sword, which seems to be a Japanese design, like something a samurai would use. I know there’s a proper name for it. Kirk’s obsessed with martial arts movies, always used to talk about them.
Mark drops the mask on the other sofa. “We’ve still got questions for you,” he says.
“What do you want to know? Why did you come here?” I ask. The hot pain in my jaw flares up again, and I wince.
“You know something,” Kirk says. “You’re not like the rest of us. You know something about this.”
“Like the rest of who?” Elza asks.
“The rest of Dunbarrow!” Kirk yells. “You know!”
“We really, really don’t,” I say, as gently as I can. Kirk has always talked tough, but I’ve never seen him as an especially dangerous person. He has some nasty friends, but I don’t think deep down he’s ever really wanted to hurt people. Tonight, though, I’m not so sure. I feel like whatever’s happening here may have rewritten all the rules about what people will and won’t do.
“Turned midnight, man,” Mark says to me, “they all went weird. Everyone, except us. Dunno why.”
“What do you mean by ‘weird’?” Elza asks him.
“Weird,” Mark says. “Not right. All laughing and stuff. Talking crazy. And the light starts going up in the sky over the forest, and everyone was singing and cheering . . .”
“Where was this?” I ask.
“Dunbarrow Square. We were all waiting for the New Year. Night out, all the crew. Then —”
“They went funny,” Kirk says. “Everyone, not
just our mates. Little kids and grannies and granddads, too. Everyone came out of their houses. They were building a, like, bonfire. Some worship-type thing. We got out of there. Then this fog came down, all the power went out . . .”
“So we came looking for you,” Mark says.
“Why us?” Elza asks.
There’s a moment of silence. Snow swirls outside the window. I can’t see their faces, just their shapes, slumped and worried.
“You’re different,” Kirk says. “Both of you. You’re not like us.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“C’mon, man,” Kirk says. “Something happened to you. I’ve known you for years, then one day you go all weird. You don’t talk to me, you start hanging around with her, then Holiday says your dad died or something? You don’t tell me nothing about that.”
“You didn’t ask me,” I say.
“All right, so I never know how to talk about that stuff. Feelings or whatever. But look, man, there was that Halloween party, and you and Elza show up, and you’re weird all night, and then we all wake up in the morning and nobody can remember what happened, and there’s a cat cut open on the lawn —”
“— plus you’ve gone missing,” Mark says to Elza. “Only person who wasn’t there in the morning.”
“Yeah. Exactly,” Kirk agrees, jabbing a finger at her. “So how’s that look? Then we’re in the park and you eat a crow — a whole crow, mate — and you say something to Mark that makes him go dead white, but he still can’t remember what it was. You go nuts on us. I’m scared of you. And it keeps going, right? You’re in math that time when the new girl came in — and, like, people think there was no new girl. Holiday still says I’m making that up — and she comes in, and you go into a demon trance and start drawing pentagrams all over the board. Plus you’ve got nine fingers now, and people said there was an accident but, like, an accident with what? What kind of accident can you have where one day you’ve got ten fingers and then nine the next, and nobody ever saw a bandage on that hand? People notice these things, man. Am I wrong, or am I right?”
“You are right,” I admit.
“So anyway,” Kirk finishes with a deep breath, “as soon as everything starts happening, we think how we need to find you dead quick. Find out what you know about it.”