The antlered man leveled the bulbous head of his staff at him and spoke, and as with everything else that had come from his mouth, Charlie hadn’t got a clue what was being said. There was no natural instinctive understanding for him, no connection buried deep in the primeval part of his hindbrain. He wasn’t one of them. He didn’t belong here. To his ear, the words were nothing more than deep guttural sounds, grunts barked out. But they didn’t need to make sense for Charlie to grasp the menace within them.
The antlered man approached, reaching out a cadaverous hand for Charlie. The Knucker followed loyally at his side. The boy fell to his knees, unable to look away. Black fingernails rested on his chest, right above his heart. He stared down at the hand, feeling his gut rebel as the man began slowly to apply pressure and the nails dug in painfully, and kept on digging as though he intended to force them between blood and bone to close around the vital organ.
Charlie was sure in that moment that he was going to die—not at some distant point in time where immortality would eventually wear out, but right here, right now. Before he could, the antlers whipped around, the Horned God’s gaze turning skyward as he barked out a challenge to some unseen threat.
Charlie followed the direction of the blackened fingernail and saw the dark smudge set against the bank of clouds: a solitary black bird.
The antlered man barked out more guttural commands, and delivered a punch to the air above his head. There was something wrong about his clenched fist; it appeared to stretch, not beholden to skin and bone, elongating like a streak of lightning that burned bright in the sky as the jagged end of the bolt mutated into antlers and the body of the stag became obvious as it rose to meet the crow head on.
The two clashed.
Charlie didn’t stick around to watch the fight.
He ran.
He didn’t look back. He raced across the clearing, head down, arms and legs pumping furiously to drive him on, and burst through the shield of trees, hurdling deadfall as he bounced from tree trunk to tree trunk, staggering as he pushed himself on. There was no beaten track to follow. He plunged on into the undergrowth, snapping branches that whipped back to slash at his face. The new buds stung where they struck.
Ancient trees roots protruded from the earth, each one reaching up to try and snag him as he ran. The sharp edges of broken stones made the ground treacherous. There was nowhere he could safely put a foot as he raced on. Charlie breathed hard, fear a cold fist around his lungs, squeezing them tight.
He could hear them crashing through the undergrowth behind him, taunting him. They called out in that guttural language he didn’t understand. He wanted to scream. They wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t lose them. There was nowhere to hide. They dogged his passage every step of the way.
Charlie didn’t slow down. He couldn’t. To slow down was to surrender himself to the monsters he’d heard plot to kill a bunch of kids. He was under no illusion what they’d do to him.
He crashed through a tangle of brambles ignoring the pain as they tore at his arms as he wrestled them aside.
Wild roses tangled with creepers to form a wall.
He had no choice but to push on through it.
Charlie cried out as a thorn opened a deep cut on his cheek.
The sounds of pursuit seemed to come from all sides.
He scanned the trees, his eyes drawn to any and every movement.
To the left he saw a loosely built cairn of rocks. It wasn’t high, but would offer some cover at least, so he changed direction, angling toward the pile of stones. He ran along the wall of tightly entwined vegetation. The light was barely strong enough to pierce it. It had a curious effect on sound: wrapping him in the crunch of his own feet, the rasp of his own heavy breathing, and the susurrus of displaced leaves as he ran. Beyond it lay a shallow declivity lined with a stone wall that supported one side of the gully. There was no obvious path alongside the crack in the ground. A trodden path ran down into it, a hollow way, the hard-packed earth worn smooth. Without thinking Charlie took the trodden path, following it down to an almost-dry streambed. He ran on, following the meandering curve, the beginnings of a stream trickled around, splashing on, always running, always forward because back was where they were—plotters, child killers, monsters.
The stones of the gully’s man-made wall were furred with fungal growths.
The air reeked with the sour stink of spoiled water.
Charlie slipped on the slick surface of a wet stone, turning his ankle. He went over, landing hard on his hands and knees. Looking up he saw a shallow cavelike opening beneath the huge root system of a giant tree that grew out of the gully’s wall, its roots all the way down into the brackish water. He pushed himself up to his feet only for his ankle to give away beneath him before he’d managed a couple of steps. He looked back. He immediately wished he hadn’t. Always forward.
There was movement in the trees. Closing in.
He tested his ankle. He managed to hobble three tentative steps before a flare of pain had him reaching out for the wall for support. The fungus was wet beneath his hand. He heard something. A voice. A girl’s voice; calling to him from the darkness of the tree. His mind was playing tricks on him. It had to be. But in that moment it sounded like Penny. It had to be a trick. Something they were doing to fuck with him.
But he listened to her.
Hide, she whispered. Here, she promised.
He stumbled toward the deep dark cave beneath the root system and not knowing what else to do, splashed forward on his hands and knees, and crawled inside. The ripening leaves of the trailing branches fell across the cave mouth, a living veil between hunter and hunted.
It was small, smaller than he’d imagined from outside, the roots forming a cocoon around him. The dirt was wet, but there was a ledge at the back of the wooden cave that promised dryness.
Charlie pulled himself up onto the ledge and curled up against the cold dirt wall of his hiding place, drawing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around his legs. The opening in the earth wasn’t deep. It barely offered enough shadow to hide in now he was inside it.
He stared through the veil of vegetation, looking for a glimpse of his Hunters moving around out there.
He could still hear them, and if he could hear them they could hear him.
Charlie gripped his knees tighter, pressing up against the hard-packed soil at his back.
Still your breathing, Penny whispered. You’re safe, she promised.
He didn’t believe her.
He didn’t think he’d ever feel safe again.
His heart hammered against his rib cage. It felt like it was trying to beat its way out.
Close your eyes. Rest. Sleep. You are safe. That is my promise to your friend. My thank-you. She gave everything so that I might return. Keeping you safe is the least I can do. No harm will come to you; you have my word.
He heard footfalls in the shallow stream. Pebbles grinding under heavy feet. He was sleepy. He hadn’t been, but suddenly his eyelids weighed a ton. It was all he could do not to close them as he felt the roots swaddle him, offering shelter. Sleep, my dear sweet friend. No, he promised himself. Not while they were still out there. Not until he was safe.
He heard sniffing from beyond the veil of vegetation. Breathing. Loud, shallow, excited. They had his scent. Charlie rocked in place. There was nothing therapeutic or healing about it. He was going out of his mind. The sweat dripped down the ladder of his spine, betraying him with each fragrant bead of perspiration. He wasn’t getting out of this hole alive.
The roots curled protectively around him, cocooning him. He felt them moving like snakes around him. And still he heard the others out there, prowling around the gully, sniffing at the air for any lingering trace of him. He couldn’t move. There was nowhere to go. He rested his chin on his knees. Outside he heard the splash of water. They were moving away.
Let the forest cradle you. Let Mother shelter you. I will wake you when it is safe. Sleep.
And despite everything, that was exactly what he did: he fell asleep, safe in the embrace of Jenny Greenteeth’s sanctuary.
29
The call came into the station an hour before shift change.
Someone in an office block on the far side of town had seen a body in a cemetery. Normally there was nothing remarkable about that; bodies and cemeteries were a natural fit. This particular body hadn’t been buried. The officer worker reported seeing an old man walk through the tombstones, arrange his layers of coats as though making himself comfortable, and lie down. Then he hadn’t got up. The officer worker had thought nothing of it, but the old man had been there for most of the day, so he’d called it in hoping someone would check it out. Ellie volunteered. She was already on that side of the city so it wasn’t out of her way. Even so, with traffic building up and the rush hour getting a head start on the day, it still took her twenty minutes to get there, and another five to park up and negotiate the graves.
She stood outside railings of the derelict mausoleum where Cadmus Damiola had been laid to rest.
Twice.
The gate was open, hanging precariously on a rusted hinge. The fretwork was incredibly detailed. It took her a moment to realize she was looking at the wings of a bird wrought in iron. She saw the old man lying on the ground. She recalled the office worker’s description of the old man taking his time to arrange his coats before he settled down, as though he’d picked this place, this moment, to die. He looked peaceful. There were worse ways to go, she thought. Going through the motions, she checked his throat for a pulse that wasn’t there.
She radioed in to the station, explaining what she’d found and requesting the coroner; she then settled in to wait. It took a while. These things always did. More traffic, more time. What had been twenty minutes for her would be thirty or forty for the coroner’s team. She wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. It felt wrong sitting on a tombstone, so she walked over to the rusted iron railings and sat with her back to them. Alone, she had too much time to think. And thinking meant remembering what had happened on at the hospital and again in the morgue.
“Can you hear me?”
She didn’t need to look at the corpse to know the dead man was speaking to her. It was beginning to become a habit.
Ellie crossed herself reflexively, the last refuge of the lapsed Catholic, and went to check him again for a pulse she knew wasn’t there. As she rested two fingers against his neck, she heard him. Distant words. Nothing she could make out. She saw a migrainelike jagged line of rainbow colors cut across her vision: soul light.
“You can hear me, can’t you?”
She was losing her mind. She had to be.
The dead didn’t talk.
She looked up. She was no longer alone.
“Listen. Listen. This is important. Really important.” She started to stand, her fingers drifting from his cold neck. “No, no, don’t break the contact.” Ellie froze, caught in an uncomfortable crouch, looking up at shimmering blue ghost light of Cadmus Damiola’s soul. Pale. Translucent. Standing there in the shadow of his own mausoleum looking at her in desperation. “I need you to do something for me, girl. I need you to find Joshua. And Officer Gennaro. Talk to them. Tell them you have seen me. They will understand. One for one. Remember that. He’s here. Arawn is here. He’s stronger than we ever could have imagined, and he’s gathering an army to his side. The Wild Hunt. It’s going to take to the streets if they don’t stop him. And then God help you all. You’ve got to get the message to them. They’ve got to cross over, go to the other side. The Annwyn. And I can’t help. Not anymore. There’s nothing I can do. I’m done. I’m dead. My part in this is over. I made a mistake. I got too close. He saw me. They’ve got to help the children. It’s all about the children now. They are depending on them. Do you understand? It’s all about the children. He’s bringing his accursed kin through the dimgate in Coldfall Wood. It’s the only way.”
None of it made any sense.
How could it?
“How? How do I help you?” she asked. “I don’t understand what’s going on. What’s happening to me? This is new. This,” she waved her free hand from the corpse at her feet to its shade before her.
The ghost spoke slowly, laboring over every word. “Find Julius Gennaro. Tell him … tell him that Damiola is dead. That Arawn is here. Everything he feared is happening. Now. Here. Tell him he is going up against an army intent on tearing this place down. And if he doesn’t move soon, there will be nothing he can do to prevent the Great Beast of Albion from waking. He’s got to cross to the other side. Tell him I’m sorry. I got it wrong. And now I’m paying for my mistake.”
She felt cold, but she was supposed to wasn’t she? That was how it worked, surrounded by the dead. Their cold rubbed off on you. She looked at him. Both of him: from ghost to body and back.
“What’s happening to me?”
“The dead need to be heard. You are the one who listens. You can give them a voice. You can help them find some kind of justice; help them find meaning for one last time. You can help me.” His words grew weaker the more he tried to speak, as though it was harder for him to stay, harder for him to interact with her, to make himself understood. More than anything Ellie just wanted the old ghost to go.
30
The hammer was heavy in Josh’s hand, metaphorically as well as physically. He knew that to anyone watching he must have looked unhinged, walking fast through the streets with the silver-headed hammer banging against his thigh as he muttered to himself. A couple of kids in superhero T-shirts sat on a low wall, kicking their heels and smoking cigarettes as he walked by. The girl said something to the boy beside her, a half-assed witticism that went over his head. Josh didn’t bother turning around to teach her a lesson in manners; with the hammer in his hand any engagement would have been blown out of all proportion. Better to just walk on, focused on the gates of the cemetery at the far end of the street. The ironwork really did look like wings from a distance.
The bench where Cadmus Damiola so often held his vigil was empty. It was unlike the old man to abandon his post.
Had he not been so wrapped up in his own thoughts he might have noticed how weird the atmosphere in the city had become. There was a raw elemental charge there: permeating every nook and crack in the pavement, seeping into the hearts and minds of her residents. It was in the ranks of the disaffected youth where it was most pronounced; the way they looked at the older Londoners around them. It wasn’t distrust; it was dislike. The millennials saw all that was wrong with the world, Arawn’s war cry resonating within them, and laid the blame squarely at the feet of the Gen Xers and baby boomers who’d come before them with their greed and their me-me-me existence.
The first fists had already flown, a group of teens beating a fortysomething suit on his way to a nameless bank inside the Square Mile. That had been followed by six preteens savagely tearing into a day trader on her way to the Stock Exchange. More reports were coming in by the hour, each detailing more and more brutality, all of it at the hands of the teenagers of the city. No longer were they content to be the voiceless generation. Those first few reports all made reference to a weird ululating chant the teens made as they waded in with fists and feet, though none of the victims knew what it meant.
Halfway down the street, Josh saw a group of schoolkids in their striped blazers—they had been red and navy, but the red had faded with age to a soft pink—and ties gathered in a circle, shouting and jeering.
“On your knees!” one of them barked. “Get on your knees like a fucking dog!”
It took Josh a moment to see the woman in her pencil skirt and business suit; she’d been pinballing between them as they shoved her around the circle. Now she stood in the middle of the group, gasping like she was choking on the air she needed to breathe. The heel of her shoe had snapped off and lay on the pavement a few feet away. Long bangs of hair fell over her face as she slumped into a schoolboy’s fist. “I said get down!�
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It went from nothing to Josh raising the hammer above his head and roaring what amounted to a battle cry in a couple of seconds. He raced toward them, not sure what he was going to do until he reached them. He just knew he couldn’t stand by and watch whatever they were about to do. He scattered the circle with half a dozen wild swings back and forth, lurching violently from side to side to make sure no one knew where the next swing might land. The schoolkids, none older then fifteen or sixteen, a few much younger, backed away from the mad man. That didn’t stop them from mocking him.
“You’ll get yours, fuckhead,” the smallest, with a basin haircut and big ears, screamed up at him, spittle flying from his lips. The kid’s entire body shivered, straining with pent-up rage bursting to get loose.
“You’re fucking dead, man, dead,” one of the older boys howled, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe anyone could be so stupid as to come between them and their prize. The pits of acne scarred his face.
The woman was on her knees.
Josh looked at her to check she was all right. The fear had reshaped the muscles and bones of her face. She was far from all right. She was a mess. Her knees were bloodied and her neck flushed red as the tears stung her cheeks, and she’d have a spectacular black eye before too long. The skin around her right cheek still bore the angry imprint of her attacker’s knuckles.
“Get away from her,” Josh yelled, locking eyes with the boy he took to be the ringleader. He kept telling himself he was just a kid, but there was something really wrong with the way the boy stared back at him, like he was broken inside. He was taller than Josh by a couple of inches, whippet-thin and probably anemic given his pallor. Josh whipped the hammer around in a vicious arc, knowing that the absolute last thing he wanted to do was make any sort of contact. Brutality would only escalate the situation. He needed to defuse it.
The kid watched the hammer and laughed at him. In his face.
Coldfall Wood Page 17