And a huge mop of dark, curly hair.
‘Mario?’ he breathed. ‘Oh – oh my God, Mario, oh Jesus Christ, no –’
He grabbed the table for support, then staggered back, blinked away tears and took a deep breath of the stinking air.
The throat under Mario’s hand was grossly distended, like a stuck frog bubble, and the veins along its side were dark and vivid and thick as worms. Blood had spilled from his mouth.
Fighting against his own body, Sep forced himself up and reached for his friend.
The stag bellowed and rose from the table, its shattered legs scrabbling for purchase. It swung its head around, catching Sep’s shoulder with the spike of its antlers and knocking him into the glass cabinet, which fell on to Mario’s prone corpse. Sep cried out as his skin burst on the antler’s points, then dived away and backed into the corner.
The stag reared up, its broken bones splintering like glass, and Sep looked at it in horror: its chest cavity was gaping and wide, split open and glistening, the little clamps on its severed arteries chiming as they swung. The animal was dead, torn open and empty, but it lashed wildly at him and howled in rage.
It reared again with a sound like tearing meat, and as he ducked from the antlers Sep realized the animal was splitting further apart under its own weight.
He heaved until he saw spots and lifted the cabinet away, but was caught again by the stabbing antlers, and as he fell backwards the cabinet landed on Mario again with a metallic crash. A drawer slid out, fluttering index cards on to the congealing blood, and as Sep watched their paper darken he felt his head spinning with nausea once more, the pain from his finger lighting his arm with bursts of fire.
The stag was between him and the door. Mario’s body was crushed. There wasn’t anything else he could do but run.
He grabbed the points of the antlers and held them as far from himself as he could. The stag roared, throwing back its head so that its mouth was in Sep’s face, the air of its throat hot in his eyes, flecks of blood pattering his cheeks. He pushed back, driving the animal’s head away, shocked at the strength of its neck and its kicking limbs, and it bellowed as it tried to reach him.
Sep slipped in blood, righted himself and slipped again, holding the antlers above his head like a trophy – when something at ground level caught his eye.
Mario’s mouth was moving. First a twist of lip, then a burst like pus from a wound, leaving the skin suddenly loose beneath the packed thing that had spilled outwards: a dark shape, cloaked in a sac of glistening mucus.
Sep screamed.
Barnaby unfurled on Mario’s chest, his little limbs popping back into shape as he stood upright and turned to Sep with shining green eyes.
He had climbed inside Mario’s throat and choked him to death. Mario, Sep’s protector and friend; Mario who had nothing to do with any of this.
Sep screamed again as the little bear ran towards him, and as he stood up to flee the stag pulled back its head, readying the antlers to strike. But as the deadly points swung towards him he ducked, saw them swipe past his head and catch Barnaby like a fly in a web.
Sep landed on something hard and square, and rolling away saw it was Mario’s Dictaphone.
He grabbed it and turned to see Barnaby writhing in the antlers’ cage as the stag tossed its head again, its eyes like green fire.
And just as he gasped with relief, he saw Mario’s ruined body shift on the floor, the green-eyed head turning to look at him.
Sep threw himself into the chip shop, away from the trapped, bloody heat of the surgery and towards the only door that wasn’t locked with a key – the cold store.
But the slick blood on his hands made his fingers slip from the numbers on the little lock, and as he wiped his fingers dry on his jeans to try again he realized his mind was blank – he couldn’t remember the code.
The door to the surgery opened behind him and Sep saw two green, glowing specks of light reflected in the brushed steel of the door.
‘It’s your birthday,’ he said under his breath as the Mario-thing shuffled towards him on heavy, dragging feet. ‘We stayed late and had pizza; we always have pizza on your birthday –’
The thing moved round the counter –
‘And it’s Greece’s day –’
He gasped as thick fingers touched his bare arm – and remembered –
‘The twenty-fifth! Your birthday is the twenty-fifth of March!’
He punched in the digits and ran inside, felt the wind of the grabbing arms brush his skin and, as Mario’s body thumped loosely on the door, Sep covered his face with his hands and wept.
The cold store was dark but for the dim glow of street lights coming through the old window in the roof, its glass shrouded in a thick fabric of cobweb.
‘Mario,’ Sep whispered, listening to the big hands move on the door and looking in despair at his cell. ‘Jesus Christ, Mario … Jesus Christ, I can’t –’
Then he remembered Arkle, sitting cross-legged in Lamb’s living room. He turned up to the skylight and took a deep breath.
‘Mario goes bad,’ he said. ‘The hero escapes by climbing.’
He put a foot on the empty bottom shelf to haul himself up.
Then realized it wasn’t empty.
A dog, green eyes slitting open, had shifted its head to look at him and there were countless more eyes – smaller and sharper and rounder – behind it.
The door thumped again.
‘Oh, come on!’ Sep shouted, kicking away the lunging mouth and scrambling on to the next shelf.
Teeth locked on his jeans, and something – some long, cold thing – began to drag itself slowly up his leg. He looked down and saw a pair of the tiny green eyes inching towards his face and felt long-toed feet drag over his legs. With a sinking heart Sep recognized the shape of Mr Snuggles.
The iguana hissed, and Sep realized that not only would he die if he stayed still, but his death would be slow and painful.
And his body would be eaten by a costumed, zombie iguana.
‘Bollocks to that,’ he said, and heaved up with all his strength, touched the window and pushed. It was locked fast by paint and time and rust. He pushed harder, hammered with his fist, heard it begin to give.
The door cracked with the force of Mario’s weight.
Sep hammered again, harder and harder, until the glass shattered and fell and he pulled himself through the empty frame, knocking the lizard to the floor just as the Mario-thing roared into the dark space behind him.
53
Footprints
Sep slathered the antiseptic on his severed knuckle, tore a strip from his vest to bind the wound, then he and Arkle watched the movement behind the graveyard gates, Arkle rubbing Sep’s back as he wept. The faces on the other side of the bars were slack, the dark clothes were torn, and pale hands shook the padlock’s chain.
‘There’s so many of them,’ said Sep, his thumb on the Dictaphone’s play button – unable to press it, knowing what was trapped inside. ‘It’s so sad. It’s not even scary, it’s just sad. Look what we’ve done.’
They held each other until their strength returned, then pedalled in silence through the rain, watching lightning strike the forest.
By the time they’d reached the woods Sep had stopped crying.
‘Thank God,’ said Hadley when they arrived. ‘We’ve been so worried.’
‘Have you seen anything?’ said Lamb.
Sep looked at Arkle.
‘What?’ said Lamb.
‘Mario’s dead,’ said Sep. ‘It was Barnaby – he must have been looking for me. Now Mario’s dead. And it’s our fault.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Mack. He coughed and gasped for breath, sticky spit catching in his throat as tears welled in his eyes. He reached for Arkle’s shoulder to steady himself.
Lamb dropped to her knees.
‘Are you OK?’ said Hadley, blinking through tears. ‘We didn’t know –’
‘Mario’s dead,’ Sep said
again, and the weight of it hit him in the chest.
Lamb bit her lips.
‘Let’s end this,’ she said.
Sep nodded, looking at his hands, imagining the rain that soaked them as splashes of crimson from Mario, Roxburgh and his fox: all dead at the hands of their stupidity.
‘Now,’ he said, and he led them into the forest.
The path, like everything else – like their clothes and skin and hair – was soaking wet, and the rain drilled into the ground and hissed in the puddles. The world was an explosion of damp, running soil, and they fell again and again, Sep’s bandages plastering coldly to his skin as they pressed further into the trees.
He felt Hadley’s hand slip into his, and he squeezed it gratefully.
‘Not too tight,’ said Arkle.
‘Dude!’ said Sep, dropping his hand. ‘Come on!’
‘I’m freaked out! Please, I just can’t – what’s his name again? The big guy?’
‘Mack?’
‘Mack! Oh my God … my brain, I can’t –’
Arkle’s face was wide and frightened. Sep took his hand again and helped him forward.
‘Just for a minute, all right?’
‘Thanks, Seppy.’
The ground underfoot was slippery and spongy, oozing over Sep’s torn feet whenever he found softer turf. He felt the texture of the forest’s skin on his, and remembered, with the soles of his feet, running barefoot with the others over this path.
He balanced on a tree trunk, swore as the bark peeled off in his grip – and landed beside an unmistakable shape: the enormous, round-toed boot-print of Roxburgh, pressed deep and wide in the soft earth and filling with water that glowed silver in the moonlight.
Arkle helped him to his feet, and Sep found another print beside the first. It had looked – and sounded – as though the gamekeeper’s legs had broken when he fell from the shack, but the prints were close together, and deep. So he was walking, slowly, and – Sep stepped back – walking out of the woods.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing.
‘Look at what?’ said Arkle.
‘Roxburgh’s footprints!’
Mack leaned down and ran his finger round the lip of the boot’s impression.
‘Pretty recent,’ he said.
‘How do you know that?’ said Hadley.
‘The edges. The turf hasn’t sprung back yet, so it’s not been there for long.’
‘What are you, the Lone … Star?’ said Arkle.
‘Ranger,’ said Mack.
‘We’ve been here for a while,’ said Lamb. ‘If he’d left the woods we’d have seen him.’
‘But look – he’s been this way!’ said Sep. ‘That’s brilliant – one less thing we need to worry about. Let’s keep going.’
He turned to Hadley, standing beside him, shining in the wet.
‘I don’t feel well,’ she said.
She looked even more drawn than before, her eyelids and skin shrinking against her skull.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there soon, and we’ll fix it, I promise. We’ll –’
And as he spoke his eyes refocused, past her face and into a pool of moonlight that hung, bright and heavy, in the mist.
Roxburgh’s corpse was walking towards the box, a shambling, slow, unyielding step that dragged him through the forest’s knots without pause.
Sep’s body ceased to function. He felt his blood stop, and his lungs froze as he looked down.
Roxburgh’s legs were broken and splintered, grinding shards of bone protruding from the feet: feet that were on backwards and making – with a soft, sucking sound – backward footprints in the mud.
Hadley stifled a scream, and Sep started to back away as silently as he could, millimetres at a time.
The two of them turned back to the others as Roxburgh reached the edge of the puddle of light and moved into the shadow of the trees.
‘Did you see him?’ whispered Sep, though he knew by their faces they had.
‘Holy shit,’ said Lamb, almost breathing the words out. ‘What do we do?’
‘Go the long way,’ said Sep. He wondered whether a gamekeeper’s ears would be as keen when they were undead, and added: ‘Quietly.’
Hadley nodded, and they turned to go.
Ptwing!
Sep saw Arkle anxiously rethreading his floss, and before he could grab him he’d fixed it in his grip and pulled.
Ptwing!
Roxburgh’s ruined body turned slowly towards them.
‘What?’ said Arkle. ‘It’s making me feel better – I can remember how to floss, even if my mind is –’
The forest exploded in eldritch shrieks and green light as the Roxburgh-thing screamed – and they ran again, agony filling every part of Sep until it took him over completely and he didn’t know, couldn’t imagine, where it might end.
They ran through thickets of whispery thorns, tangled their hair in spiders’ webs and cut their faces on the trees’ hanging claws, and the thing kept gaining on them, scrambling across the ground on its hands and knees and the splintered bone of its feet, the shard of Sep’s stick of rock glinting in its dead eye.
A buzzing storm of dragonflies fell on them from the trees, and something white and scorched dropped on to Hadley’s head. She fell, clutching at strings. A lump of bloody fur flew into Lamb’s face and she staggered back, hands flailing at her face, Mack hauling at the green-glowing thing and throwing it against a tree before spiking it through the head.
Sep ran along the ravine – a hundred-metre drop on to slippery rock – and fell to his knees.
Then Roxburgh was on him.
His skin had been rebuilt by animal fur, his face studded with too many eyes, and he gnashed at Sep’s throat with teeth that were not human.
Arkle grabbed the thing’s jacket and it rounded on him, falling and landing on his face, its fur-patched chest bursting open. Sep kicked it and saw the dark, tarry bags of the old gamekeeper’s lungs drag over Arkle’s gurgling mouth.
As Lamb tore Here’n’now from Hadley’s face and threw him into the darkness, the Roxburgh-thing leaped once more at Sep. He heaved back against the stinking deadness of its hands on his neck, pulling against its fierce strength, but its muscles were no longer human and they knew no weakness, no mercy – only the crushing anger that closed on Sep like a steel trap, pushing him to the edge of the cliff.
Sep battered on the stick of broken rock in the thing’s eye until his skin broke – and still the thing pushed, its leering mouth dribbling sulphurous bilge.
A branch swung in and knocked its head away, splitting the neck in a shower of blood and – as Sep dragged himself from the ravine’s edge in a mess of knees and elbows – the Roxburgh-thing slid into the darkness, the lights of its eyes winking out as it fell.
‘Is everyone OK?’ said Sep. Blood flowed from the space in his gum, and he swallowed it.
‘No,’ said Lamb, throwing the branch to the ground. She was holding her eye with both hands. It was swollen closed, and already purple. ‘That bloody thing nearly burst my eyeball.’
‘Where’s Arkle?’
‘Smoker’s lungs,’ said Arkle’s voice from a nearby shrub, ‘smoker’s lungs …’
Mack was vomiting on a tree. His leg was buckled beneath him, his lip split by a trickle of blood.
‘Hadley?’ said Sep. ‘Hadley!’
He saw the glitter of her shoes first – she was lying in a sweep of giant roots, her arm twisted behind her, the thin scores of string visible across her neck.
‘Hadley!’
He ran to her, lifted her head and held it in his lap.
‘Can you hear me?’ he said, touching her cheek. ‘Hadley?’
‘She’s so pale,’ said Lamb, dropping on to her knees. ‘Why’s she so pale?’
‘It’s killing her,’ said Sep, pressing his fingers into her neck. ‘It has been since it took her blood. I can’t find a –’
Hadley’s pulse flickered weakly against his skin.
He ground his teeth and sucked more blood into his mouth.
‘We shouldn’t have brought her here.’
‘But we needed her to –’
‘Well, we need to think of something else now!’ said Sep. ‘Hadley? Hadley, can you hear me?’
Her eyes peeked open and found Sep’s. He leaned in closer.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she said.
Sep almost laughed with relief.
‘It helps me think,’ he said. He watched her eyes close again, then turned to the others.
‘You’ve got blood in your teeth,’ said Arkle. ‘Want some floss?’
‘I’m going after it,’ said Sep. He swallowed.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Lamb. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to the box alone.’
Lamb shook her head.
‘I didn’t tell the truth before, about the mirrors,’ she said, holding Hadley’s hand in both of hers. ‘It was only one that broke – I said it was all of them, but it was just the one on her dresser. That morning, when it was my turn, it had a huge crack … and when I looked in it I looked like her, and I – smashed the rest of them, all of them. I couldn’t – I had to tell you –’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said Sep, gripping her shoulder. ‘I’m going to kill it.’
‘Sep, no!’ said Mack. ‘We’ll all go, we’ll all do it – together!’
‘You can’t even stand! Lamb can’t see. Hadley’s unconscious –’
‘I’ll come,’ said Arkle, rising and falling in one movement. ‘Or maybe not. Sep, I’m sorry – I can’t stand up.’
‘How’s your watch?’ Sep asked Mack. ‘Is it still working?’
Mack nodded.
‘Then it’ll be all right, won’t it?’
‘Here,’ said Mack, taking the watch off and holding it out. ‘Take it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Sep. He strapped it to his wrist, three holes up from the groove worn by Mack.
‘Wait, Sep,’ breathed Hadley, her eyes flickering.
He leaned in and kissed her, pressed his lips into hers so that she might know his feelings and read his thoughts; tasted her breath in his mouth and let her fill him up inside, the glorious sense of her shining like sunlight in his heart.
The Sacrifice Box Page 26