The Boy with One Name

by J. R. Wallis

  Thomas Gabriel grinned. ‘I think you’d make an excellent Whelp, Jones.’

  Jones looked at the other boy’s smiling face and felt something dark and heavy thud into his stomach as he thought about the future Simeon was proposing for him.

  ‘And what about me?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘You’re a girl,’ said Simeon. ‘A brave one, admittedly. But nevertheless there’s no place for you in the Order. If you’re insistent on being around magic, I can put in a word for you at Deschamps & Sons. The store has served Badlanders for centuries. Last week I overheard a clerk saying the stationery department was looking for a junior, to learn how to mix inks. Who knows, you might even work your way up to the shop floor one day if you keep your wits about you. A shop girl! Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?’ Simeon smiled like an old uncle with no interest at all in children.

  ‘Wouldn’t it just?’ Ruby managed to say through gritted teeth.

  ‘The alternative is I report both of you to the Order for this abhorrent Commencement of yours. Neither of you would escape punishment and I have no doubt it would be long and very painful.’

  ‘I’ll take your generous offer to be your Whelp, sir, thank you,’ said Jones, standing up straight and looking Simeon in the eye.

  ‘Jones!’ said Ruby. ‘Being a Whelp sounds horrible, whatever it is. And what about Thomas Gabriel? Do you really want to be serving him? You’d make a way better Badlander than him.’

  Thomas Gabriel opened his mouth, but Simeon held up his hand to silence him. ‘Jones, if you can forget about your mother and father and give up on this fanciful idea of being an ordinary boy, I think you’ll make a fine Whelp in time. Can you do that?’

  ‘I can, sir, yes.’ And Jones ignored whatever Ruby was muttering under her breath.

  ‘Good,’ said Simeon. ‘Now, I’d like you to return to Maitland’s house and remain there until I arrive. Taking you on as my Whelp means the house and all its contents pass to me now, but certain documentation needs to be drawn up and approved by the Order.’

  ‘How long will that take, sir?’ asked Jones.

  ‘About a week. Will that be long enough to clean the house properly and organize everything so an inventory can be drawn up ready for when I come to view the house?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Jones.

  ‘Good.’ Simeon smiled at Ruby. ‘You can go with him and help. That will give you some time to decide if you want me to put in a good word for you at Deschamps & Sons. If not, then I will return you unharmed to your ordinary life without any recollection of the Badlands at all.’

  It was night by the time Simeon allowed Jones and Ruby to leave. He had spent the rest of the day briefing Jones about how he wanted Maitland’s house to be meticulously organized. To pass the time, Ruby had been given some old catalogues from Deschamps & Sons and told to study them.

  But, instead of reading them, she’d spent most of the afternoon hoping for Victor Brynn to come hurtling out of nowhere. She took great pleasure in imagining over and over again the look on Simeon’s face when he realized she and Jones could do magic, just before the No-Thing bit into his neck and started draining his blood.

  When it was finally time for them to leave, Simeon opened a plastic container and poured a ring of bright red Slap Dust around them as they stood in his hallway. ‘Now, you probably haven’t travelled using dust that looks like this before, Jones.’

  ‘No, sir,’ replied Jones looking suspiciously at the edge of the circle near his feet.

  ‘That’s because it’s a special mixture I’ve created. The base powder is dried beetroot mixed with a sprinkling of other rather more secret ingredients. Not only is it very useful for transporting large objects, it also requires very little actual Slap Dust because of the other things I’ve added to the mixture, making it cheap to create.’ He tapped his nose. ‘It’s a brilliant and potentially very profitable concoction. But the real advantage it has is that you only need to think, of where you want to go, making it safer and more convenient than normal dust. The problem of announcing where you want to go has always been an issue of course. I mean just imagine you were fleeing from a creature and it knew where you’d disappeared to? It could come after you. Genius, don’t you think?’ And Simeon grinned unashamedly as he put the top back on the container. ‘Being my Whelp, Jones, means you’re going to be trying out all sorts of my rather brilliant inventions. Now, ready to go?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Even though he didn’t ask her, Ruby put her thumbs up to Simeon and smiled as sweetly as she could. The plastic bag she was holding clinked.

  ‘Don’t lose those gun parts,’ warned Simeon, pointing at the bag. ‘It’s a shame I had to split the weapon apart trying to break Maitland’s charm, but I’ll send over some imps tomorrow to fix it.’ He waggled his plastic container of red dust to show how useful his invention could be.

  Before Ruby had time to think up something prickly to say in reply, Jones was announcing they were leaving. Simeon opened his mouth to say something, but all Ruby heard was the whoosh of the Slap Dust and she closed her eyes.

  When she opened them again, she wasn’t standing in Maitland’s house as she’d expected. Instead, she was standing in the dark, beside Jones, in front of a row of dilapidated houses. There was a faint tang of beetroot around them too, which she put down to Simeon’s special Slap Dust.

  ‘This isn’t Maitland’s house. Where are we?’

  Jones walked quickly down the overgrown path towards the middle house in the row. ‘Come on,’ he said before disappearing through a gap in the front door where a piece of plywood had come loose. He stuck his head back through when he realized she wasn’t following. ‘I don’t care what Simeon says. I’m gonna find this Witch and kill her and get my parents back so I can make ’em better, whatever her curse has done to ’em.’ He pointed to the houses across the road and Ruby looked back and realized they must be standing in Chesterford Gardens, the street in which Jones’s parents lived. ‘I’m gonna be a Badlander for one last hunt and I want you to help me.’

  ‘Why?’ hissed Ruby.

  ‘Cos, strange as it is, you’re the only friend I got. If it wasn’t for you killing that Wretch, I wouldn’t be alive. Now, come on, before anyone sees you. I’ve worked out a plan and we need to get on with it. If you want to learn about being a Badlander, now’s your chance.’

  Ruby stood there for a moment, wondering what sort of plan Jones had in mind, and then she walked on quickly down the path, excited that, at last, she was going to get to work with Jones and start learning how to be a Badlander.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘Jones, what are we doing here? This place doesn’t look safe,’ announced Ruby as she ducked under a woolly cobweb, the gun parts clinking inside the plastic bag she was holding.

  ‘Looks all right to me,’ said Jones.

  Ruby pushed at the nearest wall. But nothing creaked or moved, and Jones just shrugged to prove his point.

  ‘Well, it stinks,’ said Ruby, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘What do you expect? This whole row of houses has been abandoned. It’s the perfect place for a Gást. Thomas Gabriel told me Simeon’s got one bound in the middle house in the row as a test for his apprentices.’

  ‘What’s a Gást?’

  ‘A ghost,’ said Jones. ‘Seeing as this house looks across the street to where my parents live, I’m hoping the Gást can tell us something about the Witch who’s cursed ’em. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a clue about how to find her.’ He vanished through a doorway into what looked like the living room. When Ruby followed him, she came face to face with a large black spider, as big as a pebble in the centre of its web.

  ‘Well, let’s hurry up and find it, Jones. I hate spiders,’ she muttered, edging round the web.

  Jones was crouched in a corner, inspecting a patch of olive green fungus on the wall, prodding at the rubbery surface.

  ‘Yuck, should you be touching that?’ asked Ruby.

  �
�I think it looks right. It’s definitely in the book . . .’

  ‘What book? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Clues, Hints and Inklings. Maitland made me read it. He was always asking me questions to make sure I was learning everything. We were almost at the end.’ He shrugged and tore off a hunk of fungus.

  ‘Jones, you’re not going to—’ Before Ruby could finish, the boy took a big bite and pulled a face as he chewed. But he managed to swallow. ‘That is so gross. Are you sure it’s safe?’

  ‘Long as it’s in the book.’ Jones patted his tummy as if congratulating it and it gurgled back. ‘Gásts live on a different plane of existence to us which is why you usually don’t see ’em. But most types of swamm record traces of ’em. Swamm capture little moments that you can hear or watch back if you eat a bit. I need to know what sort of Gást we’re dealing with before we try and catch it.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Hopefully it’s human cos if it’s something like an Ogre or a Troll then it’s going to be trickier to catch.’ He offered Ruby what was left of the fungus, but she shook her head. ‘Townies like Simeon and Thomas Gabriel wouldn’t dream of eating it either, that’s why country Badlanders are better. We don’t mind getting dirty.’ He popped the last bit of fungus into his mouth and grinned as he chewed. He imagined Maitland being proud of him, using the knowledge he’d been taught. It meant not thinking about how disapproving his Master would have been about why he was doing it, to give up on being a Badlander.

  ‘So what happens now?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘We wait, and hope the swamm’ll show me something—’ and all Jones managed after that was a strange throaty sound as the fungus began to take effect.

  He felt all the hair on his head stand up. His body convulsed with such force, his chin dropped onto his chest and bounced up again. As he blinked, he felt a tingling all over his body.

  ‘Jones? Are you all right?’

  He nodded as he started to hear the mutterings and whispers of someone. It sounded like a man’s voice. He tried picking out words and phrases, but they ran away from him too fast, as if someone was tuning a radio backwards and forwards.

  ‘Jones?’ asked Ruby again just as urgently.

  ‘I can hear something. It sounds like a man, but I ain’t totally sure. I need to get a look in a—’

  A man in a grey suit came striding out of nowhere towards him and Jones’s heart jumped. The man walked straight through him and disappeared into the wall behind.

  Jones gave Ruby a big thumbs up. ‘Thomas Gabriel was right. Simeon’s definitely put a Gást here. And it’s human. A man. I saw him. He’s about forty years old, with black hair combed in a parting.’

  Next Jones saw other glimpses of the Gást from the past: a grey-suited trouser leg and a smart black shoe disappearing through a wall, then the thing looking out of a window onto the street, muttering to itself, its hair as black as boot polish. In another instant, Jones witnessed the Gást’s head floating past like a balloon.

  As the fungus wore off, the tingling sensation in Jones vanished. And, after a nutty-smelling burp that seemed to last for an eternity, he felt perfectly normal again. ‘All we need to do now is perform a ghosting, a betreppende,’ he said to Ruby.

  ‘And that means?’

  ‘Catching it.’ Jones felt a cold breeze slick over his neck. The rotten door behind him slammed shut, making both him and Ruby jump. ‘Doesn’t sound like he’s planning on making it easy, though,’ said Jones, his breath turning frosty.

  The dust on the floor began to swirl and as it settled they could make out a message in the dirt:

  ‘We’ll see,’ announced Jones, scrubbing out the words with his black boot. He started picking various things out of his overcoat pockets, laying them on the floor, as the dust swirled again, rising in little thunderclouds that scrunched together and flew at the boy like dirty snowballs. He ignored them, raising the collar of his coat for some protection. When one of them caught him full in the face, leaving him spitting and coughing, the faint sound of laughter rang around the room. As Ruby watched Jones rubbing the dust out of his eyes she glanced around warily, wondering what else the Gást might have in store for them.

  She studied the various things laid out on the floor. A piece of chalk. A small white candle. A box of matches. A blue biro. An empty jam jar complete with a lid. And, beside these items, three white envelopes.

  ‘This is what you need to capture a Gást?’ she asked, with concern given the specialized weapons she’d needed to take on the Wretch.

  Jones nodded. ‘Nicked it all from Simeon’s house. These are for later, though,’ and he put the envelopes and the blue biro back in his pocket. He drew out a small brown notebook from the inside of his coat and began flicking through the pages. ‘As long as we follow the instructions I’ve got written down in my Learning Book, we should be fine.’ A cold draught blew across the room, trying to disturb Jones as he found the page he wanted, but he ignored it and then snapped the notebook shut. ‘Right, let’s get to work. I ain’t tried this on my own before.’

  Jones drew two large circles on the floor a few metres apart, facing each other. Around the edge of each one he wrote various symbols, copying them out of his Learning Book, which Ruby held open for him.

  ‘Each one’s got to be perfect,’ he said, rubbing out one symbol and starting again. The whole exercise wasn’t made any easier with the cold draught blowing through the house and the doors constantly slamming and the dust swirling. Spiderwebs broke free too and flew around the room. But Jones battled on until he was left with a stub of chalk and symbols he was happy with. It had taken him over an hour.

  In the centre of both circles, he drew a small intricate shape that looked rather like a snowflake. There was only a tiny nub of chalk left in his fingers when he’d finished.

  ‘Almost there.’ He tried to light the candle, only for the cold draught to blow out the match. ‘Candlelight draws out Gásts,’ he informed Ruby. ‘They hate that.’ Jones used his overcoat as a shield, holding up one arm like a bird inspecting its wing, and successfully lit the candle with Ruby helping to protect it too. He let it burn enough to be able to drip some of the hot wax into the bottom of the jar and then stood the candle in it until he could let go. Satisfied, he then placed the jar containing the flickering candle in the centre of the room between the two chalk circles and stepped inside the first one he’d drawn.

  ‘Get in your circle,’ he said. ‘Quickly. The light’ll start to draw the Gást out onto our plane of existence. Then he’ll be just like us, able to touch and feel things, meaning we can catch him. But it’s dangerous,’ continued Jones. ‘The slightest touch from one’ll poison you, and make your body die, turning you into a Gást too, stuck between this world and the next one.’ Ruby picked up the plastic bag of gun parts and stepped quickly into her circle, for once not feeling the need to ask any questions of Jones. ‘Stand on the symbol in the middle,’ he instructed. ‘Make sure your feet are completely covering it.’ As Ruby did so, Jones adjusted his feet too. ‘Now, don’t panic.’

  Before Ruby could ask why she might, she felt an odd sensation in the air around her. It seemed to be vibrating. And then a piece of something that looked like armour materialized in front of her with a slightly green tinge to it. Sections were being conjured quicker and quicker out of the air all around her, fitting together to create a metal dome. In a matter of moments, she was entirely contained within it.

  There was enough space for Ruby to hold out her arms and touch the sides, after she’d put the bag of gun parts down. Through the grille in front of her face she could see Jones had been surrounded by a similar shell. It looked like he was trapped inside a small green igloo covered in sharp, lethal-looking spikes.

  ‘How are we supposed to catch a Gást stuck inside these things?’ shouted Ruby.

  But Jones just pointed towards something in the far corner of the room. Putting her face close to the grille, Ruby twisted to s
ee what it was. She saw a shimmering patch of air, which looked rather like a puddle hung up to dry. A nose was poking out of it, sniffing the air nervously.

  ‘He’s coming!’ shouted Jones. ‘They’re shy at first. But he won’t be able to resist the light.’ Ruby saw a man’s face appear from the puddle of air. He was middle-aged with a large nose and a chin marked by a pronounced cleft in the middle. A prominent forehead jutted out over a pair of eyes, deeply set into dark cups that made the whites stand out. His skin was greyish like soggy cardboard. The man had a haunted look about him, like an animal on the verge of being hunted down. As he leant further forward, exposing more of his body, Ruby gasped when she saw a large gaping wound in his neck.

  ‘Someone must have slit his throat,’ said Jones. ‘A lot of murder victims end up as Gásts, trapped between worlds. It sends ’em mad. Makes ’em more and more dangerous too.’

  By now the Gást had emerged fully into the room. He wore a grey suit made from thick material paired with old-fashioned brown brogues, and had dark, oily-looking hair, neatly combed. He reminded Ruby of someone she’d seen in a film about the Second World War, where everyone had smoked and smiled and stuck together against ‘Jerry’.