by Martin Booth
“Strange things, warts,” Tim remarked.
Sebastian looked at Pip and winked.
No sooner had Tim arrived home than he hurriedly changed out of his school uniform, pulled his mountain bike out of the garage and pedaled hard in the direction of Brampton. He parked his bicycle against the streetlight outside the hairdresser’s, locking the frame to the lamp standard.
Getting directions from the post office, Tim set off down the main street. Between a pub called the White Hart and a baker’s shop with an old-fashioned gold-painted Hovis sign hanging over the door, he found a narrow, cobbled lane. Fifty meters along it, just past a small workshop repairing lawnmowers, hedge trimmers and chainsaws, he arrived at the turning into Peelings Lane.
It was an ancient street, little changed in a hundred years. A sluice of running water raced down the center of it which, Tim reckoned, had once served as a communal sewer. The houses on either side were old workers’ stone cottages. A few had been renovated, but most were poorly maintained, the paint on the doors flaking, the stonework in need of repair and the gutters cracked. Where summer rainwater had run down the walls hung tendrils of slimy algae. Here and there, clumps of moss grew on the windowsills.
Number fourteen was completely derelict. There was grimy broken glass in most of the windows; the door was rotted through and secured by an ancient, rusty padlock. Tim peered in through the windows. The rooms were completely devoid of furniture, the floorboards warped, damp and mold blotching the walls. A side gate, hanging on one hinge with a cracked plastic number 14 nailed to it, gave on to a minute garden in one corner of which was a long-disused outside lavatory without a roof. Tim squeezed through. The garden was a mass of rank and dying weeds.
Taking care not to snag his jeans on a nail protruding from a window frame lacking a window, Tim clambered into the cottage. Within, it smelled of cat’s pee, fungus, and damp plaster. He cautiously climbed the stairs, testing each step before putting his weight on it. The two upper rooms were as empty as those below, save for drifts of dead leaves that had blown in. In one corner, beneath a gaping hole in the ceiling, was a pile of bird and bat droppings.
Tim was about to descend the stairs once more when something on the floor caught his eye. At first, he thought it was a piece of tinfoil that had blown in with the leaves but, as he bent down, he found it was a silver oblong of dirty metal, about two centimeters by one wide. It reminded him of a dog’s aluminum collar tag, but thicker and heavier. Rubbing it to clean it, he saw it had been stamped with a symbol:
Slipping it into his pocket, Tim left the cottage.
As he came out of the gate on to Peelings Lane, an elderly man appeared, walking falteringly towards him. He wore a tattered flat tweed cap and had a rough-haired mongrel terrier trotting ahead of him on a lead; in his free hand he held a supermarket shopping bag from the top of which hung the green fronds of a bunch of carrots.
“Excuse me,” said Tim. “Can you tell me who lives here?”
“Look for yourself, boy!” exclaimed the man sourly. “Nobody lives ‘ere. Except them damn cats. It’s been empty for at least fifteen years, that ‘as.”
“Who did live here?” Tim asked politely.
“Ain’t no business of yourn,” replied the man suspiciously. “What you wan’ to know for?”
Tim, thinking fast, said, “I’m… I’m doing a project for school. We’re looking at who’s lived in which houses and how many old families there are in the town.”
“Oh! In that case,” replied the man, softening his tone, “you’ve come to the right chap. I can remember all of ‘em. This ‘ouse… Now let me see, nummer… nummer…” He looked down the lane to count off the houses, ignoring the number on the gate. “Nummer fourteen was lived in by…” He paused. “Well, to be quite ‘onest, I don’t think I can remember who it ever was lived in by. Come to think of it, I don’t think it’s ever been occ’pied in my lifetime. An’ I’m seventy-three an’ lived ‘ere all me life. It must be, well, I don’t know, just one of they things.”
“But it must belong to someone,” Tim replied, bending down to stroke the mongrel, knowing that this would put him in the old man’s favor. “You can’t have a whole house with no owner.”
The mongrel pushed its head into Tim’s hand. Its fur was rough and greasy.
“Like dogs, do you?” the old man inquired.
“Yes,” said Tim, to keep the conversation going. “What’s his name?”
“’E be Towser,” replied the dog’s owner, continuing, “can ‘appen. You know, when somebody dies an’ nobody knows who owns the ‘ouse an’ they ain’t got no relatives, or nobody knows who they are, it just sort of stands there. ‘Twas another place like that in Brampton, years since. A small shop, it was. The old lady who owned it emigrated. Australia! That’s what they said, anyways. Never seen ‘ide nor ‘air of ‘er since. Suppose that’s the case with this ‘un. Maybe one day the council’ll knock it down.”
Tim continued stroking Towser, his fingers getting greasier and greasier. Towser, he considered, certainly needed a bath. Yet Tim knew that as long as he paid attention to the dog he would have its master’s attention as well.
“Only thing that lives in there now is them damn cats,” the old man continued. “Nasty wretches! Not big, mind you. Lean, sinewy little beggars. Wily as foxes. An’ fierce. Fierce as devils, they are! Vicious. Get bit by one of they an’ you’ll know about it. Now,” he went on, warming to the theme, “Towser ‘ere is a ratter. Champion ratter. Ain’t a rat gets by ‘im. ‘E’s got the courage of ten other terriers. But when it comes to they cats, ‘e backs off. I don’t blame ‘im. They say discretion’s the better part of valor. So ‘tis for dogs as well as men. I tell you,” the old man finished, leaning forward towards Tim as if to prevent one of the cats overhearing him, “if I were a young mum with a little one in a pram, I’d not park it out in my garden anyplace around ‘ere. I’m sure they cats’d ‘ave the baby.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tim caught a movement on the far wall of the garden. At the same instant, Towser stiffened.
“There’s one!” the old man said. “C’mon, Towser! Time we was off.”
Without saying goodbye, the old man tugged on Towser’s leash and the two of them headed off down the lane at as brisk a pace as the old man could manage.
The cat was a small nondescript animal with no distinguishing marks except a white left forepaw. It made no attempt to move towards Tim but just stood looking at him in the uninterested way cats have. Tim felt strangely uneasy. Glancing up and down Peelings Lane, Tim noticed there was not another creature in sight. He was alone with, he thought to himself, one of the Killer Cats of Brampton.
After a minute, the cat settled down, curling its tail around its hindquarters and closing its eyes.
Tim set off down the lane. At the small workshop, from the murky rear of which he could hear someone unsuccessfully trying to start a lawnmower, he looked back. The cat was following him. Tim had the distinct feeling it was making sure he was leaving the area. Only when he passed the door of the saloon bar of the White Hart did the cat stop and, its tail held jauntily high in the air, make its way back towards Peelings Lane.
“If Scrotton ever plays truant,” Tim said later as he, Pip and Sebastian walked across Rawne’s Ground towards the Garden of Eden, “the truant officer will be in for a major — like seriously major — shock when he gets to Peelings Lane, and Scrotton’ll be boiled in a vat of headmaster’s oil.”
“He’ll never be reported,” Pip replied. “Yoland takes attendance, so Yoland decides who’s playing hooky. He has only to enter him as present in the book and no one’s the wiser.”
“As for the house,” Tim remarked, “if Scrotton does live there, I’d not be surprised. It’s as filthy as he is. Stink of cats all over the place. Piles of bat poop, dead leaves…”
“He does not,” Sebastian interjected with certainty. “I believe the house to be a sanctuary.”
“A
sanctuary?” Pip repeated. “I thought that was a church or something.”
“Throughout England,” Sebastian went on to explain, “there are places where the wicked may go into hiding for safety. Often, these are caves or hollow trees yet, on occasion, they are buildings. In my father’s time, such a place was referred to as a templum maleficarum — a sacred precinct of evil.”
“Caves I can understand,” Tim said. “They last forever. But a house? That can fall down, a builder can repair it…”
“Scrotton has given this address because he knows, as a templum maleficarum, it will never be repaired,” Sebastian said. “If you return in twenty years, it will look exactly the same, protected by the next evil soul to use it. A templum maleficarum is often frequented by the powers of evil.”
Tim felt his skin crawl. He might, he considered, have bumped into one on the stairs. It was a thought upon which he preferred not to dwell.
“As for the cats,” Sebastian added, “they are the guardians of the sanctuary who keep the inquisitive away. You were fortunate not to have had to deal with one of them. They are notoriously vicious.”
“I saw one,” Tim admitted. “It followed me when I left.”
“Did it possess a white left forepaw?”
“Yes,” Tim said, the hair on his forearms prickling.
“Then it was a guardian,” Sebastian confirmed. “Yet fear not. It will not have pursued you beyond its territory.”
They passed the oak bench and, on reaching the river bank, took a narrow path that ran parallel to the river.
“So,” Sebastian said, “show me the object you found in the building.”
Tim produced the metal oblong, saying, “Probably nothing. Just a gas or electricity meter seal. That sort of thing.” He handed it to Sebastian.
On receiving it, Sebastian stopped walking. He studied it very closely then, with a yellowish cloth taken from his pocket, rubbed it vigorously between his finger and thumb. In seconds, the metal gleamed as if it had just been cast.
“Did you notice anything else?” Sebastian inquired.
“Just the bat dung, dead leaves…” Tim answered. “Certainly no sign of anyone living there. The house doesn’t even have a bathroom. The lavatory’s a tumbledown stone shack in the garden.” He pointed at the metal oblong. “What is it?”
The sun was lowering towards the horizon, the shadows lengthening. In the fields across the river, a faint mist hovered a few centimeters above the grass.
“The metal from which this is fashioned is an amalgam of platinum, silver and gold,” Sebastian announced. “It is known as white gold.”
“But what is it?” Pip wanted to know.
“It is a spell key. When some spells are cast, for each part of the spell, there must be a key which acts as a catalyst to start the reaction.”
“What is the sign on it?” Pip then asked.
“It is an alchemical symbol referring to a melting furnace.”
“But what’s a spell key doing in a dump in Brampton?”
“I suspect,” Sebastian replied, “that Scrotton has been there and accidentally dropped it.”
“If that’s so,” Tim said, “he’ll come back for it and we can follow him…”
“He will come at night,” Sebastian cut in, “and we can hardly lie in wait for him, hour after hour.”
“At least we’ve got the spell key, not him,” Pip said.
“Another will be made with ease,” Sebastian stated dismissively and, bringing his arm swiftly back, he tossed the oblong into the middle of the river. It skipped three times like a flat stone, then sank.
“What are you doing!” Tim exclaimed. “It must be worth…!”
“It is tainted with evil,” Sebastian answered with a shrug, “its value is immaterial and I wish not to possess it.”
Five
The Wodwo
Tim pulled up his shorts and made sure the laces of his gym shoes were tight. All about him, thirty Year Seven boys milled around the locker room, changing into their PE clothes, joking and talking loudly. It was their first gym session, and most were eager to begin.
Paying little attention to the hubbub going on around him, Tim concentrated on Scrotton, who had chosen to get changed at the far end of the room, half hidden by an equipment locker. Nevertheless, Tim could still see his clothes were tattered and badly needed laundering.
“Why does Scrotton hide himself?” he whispered to Sebastian, who was wearing Tim’s spare clothes.
“When the class ends,” Sebastian said, “position yourself so that you might see him. Then, you will come to understand.”
One of the gym coaches blew a whistle.
“Form a line!” he commanded in a voice as strident as a sergeant major’s.
Cowed into silence, everybody obeyed, following him into the gymnasium. There an obstacle course had been laid out involving wall bars, ropes, a vaulting horse, a parallel beam and some rolling mats in addition to a long row of benches. The gym coach went around the course first to show what was required of the pupils. As he tackled each obstacle, he shouted out his actions in number sequence. Another PE teacher stood by the vaulting horse to help those over it who found the apparatus difficult.
The whistle blew a second time.
“Form a line at the end of the gym!” bellowed the military voice. “At the double!”
The boys instantly complied. Scrotton positioned himself in front of Tim, Sebastian standing behind him.
“You any good at gym?” Scrotton grunted, turning around before they started.
“I don’t know,” said Tim. “We didn’t have a gymnasium at junior school.”
“I’m brilliant,” said Scrotton arrogantly.
“No doubt,” Tim replied sarcastically.
The whistle blew again, and the pupils set off at intervals of about five seconds. When it came to Scrotton’s turn, the coach standing at the head of the line said, “Right! Off you go, boy!”
Yet Scrotton did not move. He seemed to be studying the equipment, as if plotting his way around it.
“Get on with it!” the gym coach said impatiently. “It’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ve shown you what to do.”
At that point, Scrotton obsequiously said, “Yes, sir, I was just thinking, sir.”
With that, he set off at an incredible speed, his agility astonishing. One of the sets of bars was standing at right angles to the wall. The boys had to climb up the bars for six or seven rungs, reach out, get hold of a rope, wrap their legs around it, slide down the rope hand over hand and then run along a bench. Most boys went as fast as they could to the bottom of the bars and then gingerly climbed up the six or seven rungs before tentatively reaching for a rope.
Scrotton, however, did nothing of the sort. He ran straight at the bars, jumped from the ground up to the seventh rung and then, with a leap into mid-air, grabbed hold of a rope and slid down it at an amazing rate. Once he touched the bench below, he set off along it at little less than a sprint. At the end of the bench, he proceeded without pause around the entire course, soon catching up with the boy in front of him and having to wait until he cleared the next obstacle. The teacher by the vaulting horse did not need to help him over it; he rolled perfectly three or four times across the mats, and, when he got to the beam, he simply hoisted himself straight up on it and ran across it as if it were no more than a centimeter above the floor. Eventually, he reached the back of the line again.
Tim, following him around, simply could not keep up, even with his very best efforts. Sebastian took his time.
“That was fast,” Tim said with begrudging admiration when he came up to Scrotton at the back of the line.
“Yeah,” said Scrotton immodestly. “Told you I was good at gym.”
The class continued. In every task that was set for them, one of the games masters stood by the apparatus to assist the inexperienced or prevent injury: Scrotton required no help or guidance. He was nimble, swift and incredibly agile. Several time
s, Tim caught sight of the teachers looking at each other with surprise.
The gym period over, Tim made sure he was first into the locker room where he positioned himself so that he could see behind the lockers. Sebastian held back. Scrotton came in and, believing he was not being observed, swiftly removed his undershirt and tugged on it as quickly as he could. Yet Tim still saw a thin ridge of tightly matted black hair down Scrotton’s spine. Across his shoulders, he was also very hairy. His arms were dark with hair but it was much shorter and seemed to have been cut.
“Ape-lout!” muttered a voice over Tim’s shoulder.
He turned to find the boy who had told him about Scrotton on the first day of term.
“You should have seen him in junior school,” the boy went on. “If there was a tree, he was up it, swinging by his arms like a scruffy little Tarzan. The teachers were forever chasing him off the infants’ climbing bars.”
“You don’t know where he lives, do you?” Tim asked.
“No. Never saw his parents, not on open evenings or anything. We used to say he wasn’t born but made out of a packet of Insta-Fool.” The boy grinned. “Just add water and stir.”
For the remainder of the morning, Tim and Sebastian tended not to watch Scrotton to avoid arousing his suspicion. Instead, Pip turned her attention his way.
In class Scrotton was clumsy. He was continually restless, tapped his fingers on the desktop and jiggled his foot. His attention span seemed to last little more than a minute. When he wrote in his exercise book, he held his cheap plastic ballpoint pen between his second and third fingers instead of his index finger and thumb, writing with his hand curved and arched around with the pen pointing in towards him. His writing was scrawling and he stuck his tongue out when faced with a difficult question, licking his lips and frowning, reminding Pip of an iguana. She also noticed he frequently put one of his hands inside his shirt to scratch his stomach.
Close up, his skin was sallow and there were spots with large blackheads in them on the back of his neck. His filthy fingernails were long, as thick as horn and split in places, more like claws than ordinary fingernails. The lines of his palms were ingrained with dirt. The skin behind his ears was flaky and gray. His clothes were disheveled, his unpolished leather shoes scuffed, a line of dried mud along the edge of the soles.