The Boy with One Name

by J. R. Wallis

  ‘Look,’ he sighed. ‘Why don’t we go into their house so you can see for yourself there’s nothing there and I’m telling the truth. If we do that, will you give me my Slap Dust back then?’

  Thomas Gabriel smiled, thinking he’d got his way. ‘Deal.’

  As Jones started walking back towards his parents’ house, he was hoping this would all be over quickly so he could get back and ensure Ruby wouldn’t know he’d left her on her own. The thought of going into his parents’ house as a Badlander made him feel queasy. It didn’t seem right at all. This was the place he should have been returning to as an ordinary boy. A place he had already decided he should be calling ‘home’.

  ‘Come on, Ruby, don’t give up,’ shouted the gun in encouragement.

  Ruby had been holding on to the axe for what seemed like an eternity. It was pulling so hard towards the blurry hole that her arms were aching as she held on gamely to the wooden handle. Her legs were beginning to tire too. Pretty soon, she knew her body was going to give out. She gritted her teeth, hoping for a miracle.

  ‘Give me a break,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll fix the spell on you if you give me a chance.’ But the axe just kept on pulling towards the hole, doing what the spell cast on it was commanding it to do.

  Ruby grunted and tried taking a tiny step backwards. She succeeded in moving, taking the axe with her.

  ‘That’s right,’ whooped the gun. ‘And again.’

  Ruby took another teeny step, dragging the axe back a little more. It was like pulling an object out of very strong glue.

  ‘I’m going to do this,’ she said, willing herself on through gritted teeth.

  Her heart was pumping hard. She gulped like a goldfish. Sweat glistened on her arms. And then Ruby realized her hands were starting to slip down the wooden handle. Off came her sweaty right hand and then her left one. The axe’s handle spun upwards and crashed into Ruby’s chin. Her head jerked back at the impact and she collapsed like a rag doll.

  The axe disappeared through the hole, leaving Ruby out cold on the floor.

  ‘Oh,’ said the gun quietly. And then it fired off another shot. ‘Jones,’ it cried. ‘Jones! Where are you?’

  With a flourish, Thomas Gabriel produced a silver pillbox from the pocket of his herringbone jacket, flipped up the lid and plucked out a brown worm.

  ‘Do you know what this is, country boy?’ he asked, holding up the wriggling thing as they stood outside the front door of Jones’s parents’ house, in the orange glow of the street lights.

  ‘I’d say it looks like your basic Door Wurm,’ said Jones, wondering what Maitland would have made of this boy’s theatricality. He grinned when he decided his Master would not have tolerated it one bit.

  ‘And that’s funny why, exactly?’

  But Jones just shrugged.

  Thomas Gabriel tutted and inserted the wriggly tip of the Wurm into the lock of the door. The creature crept inside, leaving only its rear end exposed, and, in a matter of moments, the Wurm had become a key. Thomas Gabriel turned it and there was a click. The One Eye had its face pressed against the door as if looking right through it.

  ‘I can’t sense any alarm,’ it said, fluttering back towards them. ‘And there’s definitely no one else in the house.’

  Thomas Gabriel pushed open the door. ‘After you.’ Jones looked down the hallway. There was a faint whiff of polish. A red rug lay on the floor. People in photographs he didn’t know stared back at him from the walls. Suddenly, he was scared to enter the house.

  ‘Come on!’ squeaked the One Eye as it fluttered back and forth down the hallway. Jones willed his legs to work and he stepped through into the hall. Little firecrackers went off in his guts as he looked around. This had been his home once, although he recognized nothing about it, which made him feel curiously empty inside.

  Thomas Gabriel shut the door and placed the wriggly Door Wurm back in its pillbox. ‘Well? What are we looking for? What’s got you interested in the people living here? Are they shapeshifters of some sort? Is that what you’re thinking?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know anything about them,’ said Jones. ‘I made a mistake with my Master’s Slap Dust and ended up in the street by accident. That’s the only reason I’m here.’

  ‘I’m not stupid. There’s something about this couple you’re not telling me because you want to hunt them all by yourself,’ said Thomas Gabriel, inspecting a photograph of Jones’s parents. ‘I mean, where were they going at this time of night? It’s gone midnight.’

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘People that age would normally be in bed if they’ve got work tomorrow. And what about kids? No evidence of that.’ Thomas Gabriel gestured with a hand down the hallway. ‘Far too tidy.’

  Jones opened his mouth to say something then realized he shouldn’t. He walked to the nearest doorway instead and stood looking into the living room. ‘Look in here if you don’t believe me. Everything’s normal.’ In the grainy dark, Jones noted a large television fixed to the wall and imagined sitting on the white sofa, watching it, snuggled down with his mother and father.

  ‘I’ll believe you when we’ve done a thorough search, together.’

  Jones hung his head and let out a long breath. ‘Fine. Let’s get on with it then, shall we?’

  Jones had explored many houses, working with Maitland, and knew what ordinary people considered normal. Drifting from the living room to the dining room and then the kitchen, and even the downstairs loo, he reassured himself his mother and father were definitely ordinary, boringly so. And he loved the idea that they were. Thomas Gabriel knew Jones’s parents appeared to be normal too, tutting every time they finished searching a room, having found nothing of note like the usual giveaway signs of secret chambers hiding special objects, runes scratched on the floor, and not even when he threw up handfuls of purple Sight Dust, which Jones knew was supposed to reveal any recent psychic disturbances.

  ‘I told you. I’m here by mistake,’ said Jones as he watched Thomas Gabriel tapping on the wall as if expecting to find a hidden door or compartment. ‘The people living here are just an ordinary couple.’

  Thomas Gabriel picked up an unopened letter off the dresser. He looked at the name and address on the envelope. ‘So, Mr and Mrs Davison aren’t shapeshifters of any sort? They’re not keeping a Droll Wurm in the cellar? They haven’t been brainwashed by a powerful Vampyr?’

  ‘It don’t seem like it, does it?’ and Jones smiled. He liked the name Davison.

  Thomas Gabriel pursed his lips and then pointed a finger skyward. ‘Let’s check upstairs.’ Jones rolled his eyes.

  The main bedroom contained a large double bed with a small bedside table on either side. After inspecting the magazines on one of the tables, Thomas Gabriel made a great flourish of deducing that the woman slept on the left of the bed, and Jones gave him a round of silent applause. There was a small bathroom further down the landing, with a white shower curtain pinched together in the middle at one end of the bath. The room smelt of toothpaste and bubble bath. When Jones saw strands of black and blond hair caught in the plughole of the basin, he imagined his own hair getting stuck there too.

  Next to the bathroom was a study, where a modest desk sat under a single window. Thomas Gabriel glanced in, uninterested, and then tried the very last door at the end of the landing. When he discovered it was locked, his eyebrows rose quickly, like they were being pulled up on strings.

  ‘A locked door don’t mean nothing,’ said Jones although deep down something stirred in him. Locked doors in any house were always viewed as suspicious by Badlanders because they were usually hiding things. He’d learnt that during his time with Maitland. Jones watched the other boy take out the Door Wurm from its silver pillbox and feed it into the lock. The door swung open with a creak and both boys looked into the room.

  FOURTEEN

  It was a box room with white walls and bare floorboards. But what caught Jones’s eye immediately was the big black pentacle painted
in the centre of the floor. Jones put his hand against the door frame to steady himself and breathed as slowly as he could. Finding a pentacle wasn’t good. Not good at all.

  Thomas Gabriel was tutting and shaking his head. ‘You almost had me downstairs. I was about to say yeah, you’re right, there’s nothing here, let’s go.’ He grinned a big one. ‘I’ve walked past this house hundreds of times with my Master, and not even he’s had a hint anything was wrong here. And that must be the reason why,’ he said, pointing at the pentacle. ‘I bet it’s working to conceal whatever’s going on here. How did you know?’ asked Thomas Gabriel, trying to hide the note of admiration in his voice.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Jones. ‘I told you, I came to London by accident.’

  But Thomas Gabriel just folded his arms. ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘What about this?’ said the One Eye, fluttering in front of an ornate cabinet on the far side of the room.

  Jones heard his heart hammering in his ears. Everything he’d deduced about his parents from walking around the house suddenly didn’t seem true any more. They weren’t ordinary at all. This house was in the Badlands. ‘I want to go,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what’s in here?’ asked Thomas Gabriel, trying the two doors of the cabinet and discovering they wouldn’t open. ‘It might tell us what we’re dealing with,’ he said, feeding his Door Wurm into the lock.

  After unlocking the cabinet, Thomas Gabriel folded the doors back, releasing a strong smell into the room. Sandalwood. Roses. Some sort of herb too. Spearmint perhaps. But there was something else beneath it, like the smell of hot metal. It reminded Jones of the camper van’s engine after a long journey.

  Thomas Gabriel crouched in front of a shelf on which stood two clay figures. They were approximately thirty centimetres tall. A simple face was marked on both of them. One had strands of dark hair glued to its head and the other had blond hair.

  The One Eye flew from one figure to the other, scanning them with its big eye. ‘They’re Witch’s Poppets,’ it announced. ‘This is Wiccacraeft,’ it said, fluttering back to inspect the pentacle again.

  Thomas Gabriel whistled. ‘A Witch, eh?’ Before he could pick up the Poppet with dark hair, Jones pulled him back.

  ‘Careful.’

  Thomas Gabriel shrugged him off and touched the figure anyway.

  ‘It’s all right. I know what they do. They’re made by Witches to control people, to keep them charmed to do whatever a Witch wants.’ He pointed to a little stopper in each of the Poppets’ chests. ‘I think these are Blood Poppets from what I remember reading somewhere. A person fills the Poppet that represents them with their blood, to show their loyalty to the Witch and her craeft.’

  Thomas Gabriel opened a slim drawer set below the shelf on which the two clay Poppets were standing. Resting on a red silk inlay were two cut-throat razors. Thomas Gabriel picked up one of the razors and opened it out. The blade looked so sharp it seemed to hum.

  ‘So, it seems the couple living here belong to a Witch.’ He gripped the razor a little harder, and his blue eyes narrowed as he looked at Jones. ‘You better tell me who you are. What you’re really doing here.’ He held up the razor to Jones’s throat as quick as a flash before Jones could move.

  ‘They’re my parents,’ blurted out Jones before he could stop himself, the blade of the razor biting cold against his throat, and Thomas Gabriel pressing it tighter and tighter. ‘My Master stole me away from ’em. I came to find ’em because I don’t want to be a Badlander no more. I want to be an ordinary boy.’

  Thomas Gabriel blinked as he tried to understand what he was hearing.

  ‘What do you mean? Who wants that? I don’t believe you one bit.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  But, before Jones could attempt to explain, they both heard a loud hissing sound. It was coming from downstairs. Thomas Gabriel motioned for the One Eye, perched on his shoulder, to go and look, and it came flitting back moments later, panting as it landed on the palm of Thomas Gabriel’s outstretched hand.

  ‘It’s the Wretch,’ it whispered. ‘It’s downstairs. It must have followed us.’

  ‘What do you mean, followed you?’ asked Jones, sounding alarmed, all his disappointment about his parents fading as he began to focus like a Badlander on this new-sounding problem.

  Thomas Gabriel just shrugged. ‘I visited a graveyard earlier with my One Eye. We found a Wretch, but then we lost it among the graves, so we moved on. It’s what Badlanders do, remember? Try and hunt down creatures. Not try and become ordinary boys.’ Thomas Gabriel sniggered at the idea of such a thing.

  But Jones wasn’t laughing. ‘Wretches hunt too. Don’t you know that? Haven’t you studied ’em?’ He drew out a small brown notebook from the inside pocket of his overcoat on which was written the title ‘Learning Book’, and held it up. ‘Hasn’t your Master made you learn about ’em? If you find one, it has to be pursued and killed or else it comes after you no matter what. It’s what they do: turn the hunter into the hunted.’

  Thomas Gabriel patted him on the shoulder. ‘Well, I know that now.’ The One Eye flew straight into one of his jacket pockets and peered up over the edge, its hands shaking.

  ‘Give me my Slap Dust back so I can go home,’ said Jones. ‘Take a pinch for yourself and go back to your Master. He’ll help you set a trap for it. It’ll follow you wherever you go until you stop it.’

  But Thomas Gabriel shook his head. ‘We’re not going anywhere. If there’s two of us and only one Wretch, the odds are in our favour, don’t you think?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Jones. ‘We’re apprentices, we’re not ready to fight a creature like this on our own.’ He flicked through the pages of his Learning Book and stopped when he found the page he was looking for.

  ‘Listen,’ said Thomas Gabriel. ‘My Master’s always giving me a reason why he won’t let me Commence. But, if I make a kill myself, he’ll have no excuses. We’re taking this Wretch on.’ He produced two silver knuckledusters from his pocket and slipped them over his fingers.

  ‘But they’re very hard to kill without the right weapons,’ said Jones grimly, ‘it says so right here,’ and he stabbed at the page of his Learning Book, hoping to make the other boy stop and think.

  But all Thomas Gabriel did was head for the door. ‘Then my Master Simeon will be mightily impressed if I pull this off.’

  ‘He’ll be getting a new apprentice if you don’t.’

  Thomas Gabriel stopped when he realized Jones was still rooted to the spot.

  ‘You know what I think? Your Master didn’t steal you. He rescued you from whatever evil’s planted itself here, and raised you as a Badlander. You’ll never be an ordinary boy now. The people living here might have been your parents once. But they’re not any more. So be the Badlander you are, and help me fight this Wretch.’ With that, Thomas Gabriel ran out of the door.

  Jones glanced back at the clay Poppets inside the cabinet. All sorts of questions about his parents were humming at the back of his mind, and about Maitland too. Maybe Thomas Gabriel was right, perhaps Maitland had saved him instead of stealing him as he’d thought. And then a mighty inhuman scream made him flinch and he raced out of the room.

  Thomas Gabriel was downstairs, one of his knuckledusters smoking. The boy had the Wretch cornered in the hallway and Jones realized Thomas Gabriel must have punched the creature when he saw a bright white mark showing on one of its dark, lithe arms. The Wretch was jet-black, made entirely from what looked like shadow that formed a tall, skeletal figure at least seven feet tall. The arms were long and lean. But the hands were large, out of proportion with the rest of the body, with large talons instead of fingers that curved like sickles and ended in sharp points. The head was a faceless skull, black like the rest of its body, with high cheekbones and a mouth of dark teeth. But the eye sockets were full of bright light that showed there was something alive and intelligent inside.

  Thomas Gabriel dropped hi
s right shoulder, feigning a punch, and caught the Wretch with a left hook, the knuckleduster drawing a white-hot mark on its black body, just above its hip.

  ‘Stay clear of its talons,’ shouted Jones above the screaming Wretch as it brought an arm swinging round, just missing Thomas Gabriel’s chin. ‘That’s one thing I know from reading the Pocket Book Bestiary.’

  ‘Are you going to actually help me fight this thing or not?’ shouted Thomas Gabriel.

  Jones found his catapult in his pocket and popped a silver ball bearing in the sling and aimed. But as he did so the Wretch suddenly retreated, vanishing into the wall, and the ball bearing hit the plaster with a loud POP! It bounced back hitting Thomas Gabriel in the shin, forcing him to start hopping madly on one leg.

  Jones ignored the other boy’s cursing, his eyes whipping round the hallway as he looked for the Wretch, trying to spot it, remembering how the creature’s physiology allowed it to be either corporeal like a human or non-corporeal at will, making it evasive and difficult to kill.

  ‘Ssshh,’ he hissed at Thomas Gabriel, who was still moaning about his painful shin, ‘I think it’s hiding in the wall.’

  And then he looked down and realized it wasn’t in the walls at all but lurking in the floor near his feet, its black face staring up at him.

  ‘It’s in the floor!’ shouted Jones as the face vanished. A moment later, a black head popped up, right behind Thomas Gabriel, like a seal breaking the water’s surface. ‘Look out!’ yelled Jones, pointing.

  But, as Thomas Gabriel looked round, it was already too late. Two black hands came up either side of him and clamped their sharp talons into his legs. Thomas Gabriel screamed and tried to move, but his legs were pinned. The One Eye flew up out of his pocket, buzzing round the Wretch, snapping its teeth, but the creature took no notice. Jones aimed his catapult again and fired at the Wretch’s head, but it ducked down through the floor, keeping its talons speared into Thomas Gabriel’s calves. The ball bearing pinged up off the floor and disappeared through a doorway.