by Adam Slater
“I don’t know what the thing was, Gran, but it … it wasn’t a ghost—” Callum broke off again.
“A ghost?” Gran prompted quietly.
“I can see ghosts too,” Callum admitted. “I’ve always been able to, Gran. They’re real. And they’re everywhere.”
“Can you see them here?” Gran asked seriously. “Can you see them in this house?”
“No, I can’t,” Callum replied. “But then you already know that, don’t you?”
Gran sighed. “Yes, Callum,” she said softly.
“But you never said anything!”
“People don’t like to talk about ghosts, do they?” she answered, her voice edged with something like sadness. “But if you don’t see them here, then what was the thing in the garden?”
“That’s what scares me. I don’t know what it was. It was something else. A monster. It borrowed my face, and now it’s out there pretending to be me, killing people.”
Gran sighed again but said nothing.
“You believe me!” Callum gasped.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why, Gran? You’re not superstitious! You don’t even go to church! So why do you believe me?”
“Callum,” Gran said, her voice still quiet and even. “We need to talk. There’s a lot you don’t know that I suppose I have to tell you. Things about me, and about yourself. And—”
She paused, then added reluctantly, “And about your father.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Your father was a chime child,” Gran said. “Do you know what a chime child is?”
“Someone born beneath a full moon between midnight on Friday and cockcrow on Saturday,” replied Callum. “Born with the ability to see ghosts.”
Gran nodded. “You’re a chime child too,” she said. “I’m not. I was born at the cusp of the chime hours, just after sunrise, and my powers are limited.”
“You have powers?” Callum echoed incredulously. “You can see ghosts too?”
“No.” Gran shook her head. “I’ve had to work at what I can do. My powers are mostly in charms and wards. I’ve learned some tricks—I suppose you’d call it magic.” She coughed nervously. “I’m surprised you haven’t noticed. I’ve grown a bit careless with the radio.”
“You’re always telling it to shut up, and it does! You told me it was the frequency cutting out!” Callum stared, wide-eyed. “Gran, you hypocrite!” he said angrily. “You called Melissa a witch, just because of the clothes she wears, and then you turn around and have a chat with your enchanted radio?”
“Yes, well, I was impatient with Melissa,” Gran admitted, her tone defensive. “But I don’t want witches here, or potential witches. Almost everything I do is designed to cut down on free-floating magic, to keep it out, to make things normal. You don’t like it, do you, seeing ghosts? I’ve done this for you, Callum. I—”
Gran stood up suddenly. She sounded less sure of herself now.
“Fourteen years ago, your father disappeared. Peter was my son, my only child. I tell people he ‘just walked out’ because that’s what people say when a man abandons his young wife. But the truth is a bit more dramatic than that. The truth is, he vanished.”
Callum listened in silence. There was nothing he could say.
“It’s still an open file with the police,” Gran continued. “He could have killed himself, he could have been kidnapped by drug smugglers or something. I suppose he could have run away to Morocco with some new girlfriend. No one knows what happened to him.”
“What about his friends?” Callum asked. “Didn’t they know anything?”
“He didn’t have many friends,” Gran said. “Peter wasn’t an easy person to get to know. When he first started going out with your mum, she and I used to have a good laugh about it behind his back. ‘Has he asked you to marry him yet?’ I’d say, and she’d smile mysteriously and answer, ‘He’s thinking about it. Still waters run deep.’ Even as a child he kept to himself. He was independent, unsentimental. A bit like you in some ways.”
“Like you,” Callum replied.
Gran smiled shortly. “Yes, I suppose so. When Peter disappeared, your mother and I were both miserable, and it drew us together. Neither of us had any family nearby. Helen moved in here with me for some while—she knew she wouldn’t get any sympathy from her parents in Cornwall, who’d told her a million times that her relationship with Peter would never work. She and I waited together, both of us hoping and hoping for a lead. Nothing turned up. And then she realized she was pregnant.”
“With me,” Callum breathed. “But Dad didn’t know?”
Gran shook her head.
Callum was silent. He felt as though some part of him had been cut off.
My dad never even knew about me.
He could tell it pained Gran too.
“Callum, I’m sorry. There are a lot of reasons I haven’t told you any of this. That’s one of them.”
“Just get it over with,” Callum said. “Or isn’t there any more? He disappeared, the police couldn’t find him, and I was born a few months later?”
Gran nodded. “That’s pretty much what happened. That’s all your mother knew about it. But I had other ideas.”
She began to pace. The sitting room seemed suddenly too small to contain her.
“Now, I thought all along—well, I couldn’t talk to your mother about this—but I thought that there was another possibility besides all the guesses that the police were making. Your father was like you—he saw ghosts and monsters. He used to travel the country, looking for them, fighting them.” Gran shook her head again. “I think, in the end, one of them killed him. I knew you were a chime child too, and I couldn’t bear the idea that one day I might lose you like that as well. So I began to weave a web of protection around you—”
“Of magic?” Callum interrupted.
“Yes. It was easy, at first, because Helen stayed with me for two years and you were always under my eye. So I started with the house. The rowan tree was already growing by the door and I had the garden wall reinforced with iron rails.”
Melissa’s voice echoed in Callum’s memory.
Iron keeps away the fairies … Rowan works against witches …
“I filled the flower beds with sympathetic herbs, planted holly beneath the windows. I wove folk remedies into a charmed barrier around the cottage. I got better at it as I went along. I liked doing it, you know; there’s a certain artistry, a satisfying creativity, to making any kind of orderly pattern. I’m quite proud of it, really.”
“What happened when Mum moved into our flat in the town?”
“Some of the spells I made worked on you directly. And I added some charms over your mum’s window boxes and around the building there in town. The spells aren’t just protective; they’re concealing. I wanted to hide you. So your powers have been hidden, not just from whatever’s out there, but also from yourself.”
Callum was still listening quietly, growing increasingly annoyed with Gran’s pacing. Then he realized that it wasn’t the pacing that was making him angry: it was what she was saying. He didn’t blame his grandmother for trying to protect him. But to do it without his knowledge, to use some sort of magic on him without telling him what was going on, that felt like betrayal.
“After your mother died and you moved in with me, I stepped up the security. Once you’re inside this house, nothing should be able to find you. You’re safe.”
Gran finally stood still. She rested her hands on her hips and looked at Callum.
“Safe?” Callum blurted angrily. “Safe? I’m seeing more ghosts than ever. I can predict the future. The thing with no face—or with my face, depending on its dress sense—that thing is killing my schoolmates. I think your spells are collapsing.”
“I don’t think it’s the strength of my spells that’s letting you down,” Gran said with sorrow in her voice. “Quite the opposite. Your own powers are getting stronger. You’re getting older, Callum. You’ve become more difficult to hide
. I thought that if I kept you away from the occult—brought you up to believe it was all stuff-and-nonsense—then maybe those powers wouldn’t be triggered.”
“All you did was make me feel like a lunatic!” Callum exclaimed in outrage. “You made me think I was the only person like this in the world!”
“It was a gamble,” Gran said, her hands out towards Callum. “I thought it might work. Sometimes a chime child doesn’t know his or her own strengths. I tried to keep your power hidden as best I could. I tried, but obviously I failed. I’m sorry.”
Gran leaned heavily against the back of her armchair. She looked old and tired, but Callum didn’t have it in him to feel sorry for her. He could not believe how much she had been hiding from him. He felt anger burning up inside him, like a volcano.
“Well, maybe I can tell you what happened to my father,” Callum raged. “Maybe this thing without a face tore out his eyes and ate them!”
“His body was never found,” Gran said wearily. “Your monster leaves bodies behind, doesn’t it?”
“Did he even know he was a chime child, or did you hide that from him too? What else are you hiding from me?”
“Oh, Callum.” Gran shook her head. “Part of the reason I felt so strongly about protecting you is because I failed to protect your father. Yes, he knew he was a chime child. He was so sure of his abilities, and so quick and able when he used them. There’s a set of books he studied—books passed down from one generation of chime children to the next, containing information about the Netherworld—”
“Books,” Callum repeated as evenly as he could. “I’m guessing these would be the books on that hidden shelf up there, then? The ones you’re so precious about, you threw my friend out of the house when she went near them? Passed from one generation to the next. So they should be mine.”
If Gran was surprised to learn that he knew about the secret library, she didn’t show it.
“I’m sorry, Callum,” she said again, with that same weary air of defeat. “I was wrong.”
“Wrong? No kidding!” Callum yelled. “You’ve tried to hide me, but that monster—whatever it is—still found me, didn’t it? It stood on the patio, grinning at me last night. It chased me halfway around the school today. It knows I’m here. All it has to do is wait!”
Now Callum was on his feet too. He faced his grandmother. “You didn’t want to trigger my powers? I’m being blown off the map by them, and I don’t know anything about them! What is this thing that’s after me? What does it want? What does it do%—besides rip out people’s eyes? Why does it do that? How can it be stopped? Are you hiding that from me as well?”
“No, Callum, I’m not. I don’t know how to stop it.”
“At least tell me what it is! You say you’ve been trying to protect me all my life—now’s your chance to really do it. Tell me!”
“Callum, I don’t know what it is.” Gran’s voice was so despairing that Callum knew she was telling the truth. “But I’ll tell you what. We don’t need to stay here. If the Shadowing is beginning, we can leave. We—”
Gran broke off, clapping a hand to her mouth. Callum stared at her. A horrible twisting sensation in his stomach told him that they had reached the deepest secret of all.
“What’s the Shadowing, Gran?”
“It’s nothing,” replied Gran hastily. “But I’m serious, Callum. We can pack a couple of rucksacks in ten minutes. We’ve still got time to catch a train to Manchester tonight. We could be in the Lake District in a couple of hours. We can lie low for the weekend and make plans. Figure out our next move. I’ve got a friend from school who lives in Scotland—”
“Gran. Gran!” Callum interrupted. “This isn’t helpful. What do you mean ‘if the Shadowing is beginning’?”
“Don’t ask me, Callum.” Gran’s voice was desperate. “I can’t tell you.”
“You have to!”
“Callum, I can’t!” snapped Gran. “It’s too dangerous. I know this is hard, but you just have to trust me.”
Callum shook his head. Maybe Gran could keep him safe, and maybe she couldn’t. Either way, he was fed up with being lied to.
“If you won’t give me answers, I’ll have to get them some other way.”
Yanking open the door, Callum stormed out of the cottage. He stomped up the path to the front gate, shoulders hunched and head down, gritting his teeth as he tensed himself for the harrowing walk through Marlock Wood.
“Callum, come back!” Gran called after him in desperation. “It’s not safe!”
Callum didn’t answer.
He set off up the road into the dark.
Chapter Twenty
Halfway through Marlock Wood, Callum began to run. His heels hit the road with dull thumps. He was running the race of his nightmare again, driven by dread, not knowing where he’d end up. But in the nightmare, his surroundings had been unfamiliar. Now he knew where he was. Now he was awake. He didn’t know if he was running toward the menace of his evil dream or away from it, but he knew it was real.
He ran out of the woods and through the tidy, empty streets of the housing estate, cars and garden walls lit faintly orange by the streetlights. When he reached Marlock High Street at the top of the hill, Callum paused. He had lost all sense of time waiting in the police station, and he had no idea how late it was now. The high street, usually quite lively on a Friday night as its pubs and restaurants began their weekend rush, was deserted by the living. Maybe news of Ed’s murder had spread and was keeping people off the streets. Only the fluttering, pale ghosts came and went along the pavements. Callum ignored them. It seemed strange that these harmless shades had once seemed so frightening. Compared to what was hunting him now, they were no danger.
Panting a little as he looked around, Callum saw the sign that pointed towards the train station. The yellow brick house by the station, Melissa had said. That was where she lived—the only place he might find the answers he needed. He hoped it wasn’t too late to make an unexpected visit. At the station approach he glanced up at the dial on the nineteenth-century clock tower and was surprised to see that it wasn’t yet nine o’clock.
Melissa’s house was small and smart, with a brass plate on the door that said “Old Stationmaster’s Cottage.” Callum waited until he was breathing normally before he rang the bell.
Melissa answered the door herself. She opened her mouth to exclaim aloud, then clapped both hands over it before any sound came out. For a moment Callum thought she was going to hug him, and he stepped back warily. But she managed to restrain herself. Instead, she grabbed his arm with one hand and hauled him inside, holding a finger to her lips with the other hand to warn Callum not to say anything. Then she called out over her shoulder, “It’s one of my friends from school, Mum. Everybody’s so upset about what happened today. Can I make him a cup of tea?”
“Right-o,” called a woman’s voice from the front room. “Come in and have a chat then, if you like. Best to talk about it.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
“And try not to make a mess, Melissa.”
Melissa screwed up her face and led Callum to the kitchen.
Her house seemed enormous to him. It wasn’t really much more than a cottage itself, but the ceilings were higher and it was three times as wide as the Nether Marlock almshouses. The kitchen had been extended with a modern glassed-in area to make room for an aging sofa and large pine table stacked with magazines and newspapers.
“I’m so glad to see you,” Melissa said with honest warmth, briskly clicking the switch on the electric kettle and banging down two mugs on the crowded table. “But look, I’m not going to take you in to talk to my mum. Everyone in town’s gone hysterical over this murder and she’s not too happy about me being called as a witness. What happened? Did they prove your alibi?”
Callum nodded.
“Yes!” Melissa crowed, slapping one palm down on the tabletop hard enough to make the mugs jump. “I’m so pleased! So does that mean you’re free?”
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“Depends on your definition of freedom,” Callum said, leaning his elbows on the table and burying his face in his hands. After a moment he ran his fingers through his hair—it was tangled as a bird’s nest after this evening’s carry-on. He looked up at Melissa. “I think I know what’s happening,” he said.
Over mugs of stewed tea that neither of them could drink, Callum told Melissa everything that had happened over the past week. He left out nothing, not even the details of his dream, his meeting with Jacob, or the fights with his grandmother. Even Melissa, who had been so eager to believe that Callum was a chime child, looked overwhelmed by the undeniable connection of the faceless monster with Ed’s murder—and with Callum himself.
She bit her lip, then stood up, went to the back door, and looked out into the night.
“Come on,” she said, and beckoned. “The best thing you can do—the only thing you can do—is to find this Jacob. Okay, you don’t know what he is, but he’s obviously not the one who’s killing kids. You said yourself he’s a ghost, not a monster like this other thing. Maybe he knows what’s going on. He might have answers.”
“He tried to warn me,” Callum said, thinking. “But I thought he was threatening me. I thought it was him doing the killing. You’re right. I don’t know if he can be trusted, but …”
But whatever else Jacob might be hiding, his warning about the “dark reflection” had been accurate. And now that Callum thought about it, even Doom’s howling had only ever served to protect him. It had scared him, true, but it had also scared off Ed and his gang, and even the faceless thing that was trying to kill him.
“I don’t know if any ghost can be trusted,” Callum said. “But no ghost has ever hurt me, and Jacob’s the only one who’s ever tried to talk to me. Maybe he does have answers.”
“Come on, then,” said Melissa. “He hangs out in the church-yard, right? So we need to go there. If we sneak out by the back door, I don’t need to tell my mum we’re going. I’ll leave a note, though.” She scribbled a brief excuse on a pad and stuck it on the fridge. “Hopefully she won’t see it till I get back.”