“Sir, I did not say I would not help in any way that I am able,” Redmayne protested with a kind of desperation. “It is not for our own safety that we fear.”
“We are both here to do your bidding, Squire Worthy,” said the second man.
The old man looked at them both and patted their broad shoulders in turn.
“Thank you, John. Thank you, Edmund. Without you I…I do not know what I would have done.”
Something passed between him and his helpers at that point, an unspoken understanding that a protest had been made—with great effort on their parts—and registered, but that duty would be done, and let no more be said about it. The old man looked up at the boy and shook his head.
“My greatest fear is that you are correct, Edmund. Perhaps it is a demon that we have here, and my poor Richard has already fled its clutches. Fled, and left bereft of reason in so doing. Yet what else can I do but try?”
The boy suddenly lunged forward against his bonds.
Teeth bared, his hands bound but still shaped into claws ready for tearing, he strained and made a noise from somewhere deep in his throat that was the least human thing Oz had ever heard.
Redmayne and Shoesmith, for that was who Oz now realised he was looking at, glanced at one another and nodded. They moved forward purposefully, one on either side of the boy. They grabbed at his tethered arms, leaning back to avoid being bitten, until Redmayne was able to get behind him. He reached for a leather strap attached to another ring and, with great difficulty, somehow managed to get the strap between the boy’s teeth and buckle it. Another strap went around the boy’s forehead until finally they had him tethered and secured. It was only now that the squire approached.
“Is it worth us praying, sir?”
“You may pray if you so wish. Yet I believe that where there has been cause to turn my son into a raving beast, there must be cure. There must be cure.”
He put his hand to his chest and reached for a leather pouch on a necklace. As he did so, Oz let out an involuntary yelp. On the middle finger of his outstretched hand was the ceramic ring. Oz watched with a sandpaper mouth as Squire Worthy undid a drawstring and emptied something dark and shiny into his palm.
Oz gasped. There sat the obsidian pebble.
The squire reached into a leather satchel slung around his shoulder and from it, to Oz’s amazement, took out two more objects. One was the black dor, which he, Ellie, and Ruff had recovered from Garret and Eldred. The third item, an oblong object as black as the ceramic ring itself and bearing a fine interlacing pattern of gold filigree on its surface, Oz had never seen before, yet he knew instantly what it was.
The pendant.
“But do you know…what needs to be done, sir?” Shoesmith asked, his words broken up by the effort of securing Richard Worthy.
The Squire shuddered. “In truth, I have no idea. Yet I must try.”
While Shoesmith and Redmayne fought to keep the boy still, the squire held up the artefacts in what was almost a gesture of supplication. He slid the dor into the pebble, and it melted in. Wary of this new threat, the boy started keening and growling even louder, writhing against his captors.
“Hold him,” ordered the squire. He moved forward and tried pressing each of the artefacts in turn against the writhing boy’s chest. First the pebble with the dor inserted, then the pendant, then all three. But nothing happened. Each time, the boy’s resistance became increasingly violent, and he began snapping his head forward in an attempt at freeing himself.
“Sir,” Redmayne said through gritted teeth, “these remedies do not seem to be efficacious. I feel that he may do himself more harm if we persist.”
With a sob, the squire fell to his knees. It must have seemed to Redmayne that he had collapsed, because he let go of the boy and went to his master’s aid. But this was a mistake that Richard Worthy turned instantly to his advantage. He surged forward, and the room reverberated to a crack as the iron ring holding the head restraint broke free from its wooden housing. One violent shake of Richard Worthy’s head and the strapping fell free. Snarling, he lunged downwards and sank his teeth into his father’s shoulder. The squire screamed in pain and thrust his arm up to fend off his attacker.
The blow itself was weak and glancing, more a slap than a punch. But what it did was bring the squire’s open hand in contact with the skin on Richard Worthy’s temple. And on the ring finger of that hand was the ceramic ring.
The change was instantaneous. Richard collapsed to his knees as if he had been poleaxed. He slumped forward, his arms still bound, jerking like a landed fish.
“Untie him,” panted the squire, stumbling backwards in at attempt at regaining his feet.
“Sir?” Shoesmith looked up questioningly.
“Untie him now!” yelled the squire.
Quickly, the men loosened the rope, and Richard Worthy fell on his side, shivering violently. The squire, one hand on his bleeding shoulder, reached out the other. Redmayne grabbed it.
“Sir,” warned Redmayne from above, but the squire dismissed his warning with a shake of his head, and Redmayne reluctantly released the arm. Richard Worthy’s eyes flickered open. He stared about him until at last he came to himself and found his father’s face. Whereas there was clearly terror and bewilderment in his eyes, there was no longer wildness. Gone was the Beast, and in its place was a frightened-looking boy.
“Father?” whispered Richard. “What has become of me?”
The squire fell to his knees and reached out a hand to touch his son’s head. The boy reached up his own hand and grabbed his father’s arm. The squire turned his face up to the other men, his expression one of utter amazement.
“He is back,” he whispered tremulously. “The Beast is gone.”
Wordlessly, the squire opened his palm to reveal the ring still nestling there.
The image faded, and instantly Oz was back in the dank chasm under the Black Mountains.
“Was that…” Ellie said eventually, her expression troubled.
“Squire Worthy and his son,” Oz whispered, nodding.” The ring reversed whatever it was that had turned Worthy into the Beast.”
“Wow,” Ruff said. “Soph’s way better than the TARDIS. It even smelled like seventeen-seventy-something. So, the ring is some sort of weird mental link thingy then?”
“Looks like it,” Oz agreed.
“Come on, Ruff, you gonk. Let me have a go…” Ellie trailed off, cocking her head at an odd angle. She turned to Oz. “Did you just hear…”
But Oz didn’t answer. He had turned to the passageway, too, because he, like Ellie, had indeed just heard. There was a noise at the entrance to the cave, something slipping on the loose stones, scrabbling for purchase, not trying to be stealthy. And with it came a sniffing, snuffling sound. The sort of noise a wary animal might make before entering a strange space. Behind Oz, Ruff was still wandering around, oblivious to what was happening.
“Some of these bones have turned completely to stone. Amazing when you think about it…”
He stopped and swivelled, looking puzzled by a distraction that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“Can you hear what I hear?” Ruff said.
No one answered him. There was a moment’s spiralling silence before the noises at the entrance began again, and then Oz’s stomach did a backflip.
He glanced up and saw in his friends’ horrified expressions that they were thinking exactly what he was. The something at the cave entrance did not sound human. But it did sound large.
The enormity of their situation sank home like a ship going under the crushing waves of a roiling sea. They were on a deserted mountain, miles from anywhere, thirty or more feet down from the surface in an ossuary, with only one way out.
In short, they were trapped.
Despite the cold, sweat began oozing from all of his pores, and Oz could suddenly smell his own fear. The edges of his vision flickered with dancing light. It wasn’t possible, was it? There was no suc
h thing…and yet, and yet they had just seen something from two hundred years and more before, which proved horrifyingly otherwise.
“Soph?” Oz implored, pivoting around to the avatar for an answer.
“Weight 45.4 kilos, warm-blooded, but I am getting mixed readings. Humanoid in all probability, but there is much interference.”
She didn’t need to say any more. Humanoid. That meant human and yet not human.
It said it all. Oz’s blood transformed to icy mud in his veins. With a gut-churning certainty, he knew they were about to come face to face with whatever it was that Bernice Halpin had called the Beast of Seabourne.
Chapter 20
Fight Or Flight
Oz took an involuntary step back, and Ellie followed suit. The thing came quickly; they could hear its snuffling progress as it neared. Soph’s silver-blue eyes filled the whole floor of the chasm with light, so when the thing finally emerged, it was revealed to them in all its horrific glory. Ellie gasped; Ruff let out a high-pitched “Buzzard!” But Oz could only stare, frozen to the spot, legs quivering, his stomach churning and threatening to regurgitate the soup from last night’s campfire supper.
“Soph?” Oz fired off a question in his head. “Holoshield?”
Immediately, a shimmer appeared in the air five feet in front of the Beast. Nothing changed from Oz’s perspective, but he knew that the three of them would no longer be visible. Just as they’d been able to hide from Pheeps and the Volcano in Room 62 at school. Nevertheless, the Beast did not falter. It raised its head, sniffing the air, first towards Ellie, then Ruff, and finally and unerringly towards Oz. It dropped its head and a low growl burbled in its throat.
“It doesn’t need to see us,” hissed Ellie. “It’s scenting us—” But she had no time to finish what she was saying, because at that moment, the beast moved.
It came headfirst, rushing forward and to the side so its back was against a wall. It kept its head low, and its face—if it could be called a face—glared up at them with dark intent. Its body was covered in black fur, with a white stripe streaking over its back and head. The head itself was a vicious cross between a dog’s and a weasel’s, with a pale chin that receded back from the high snout. At the end of its fur-clad legs were long claws that clicked on the stone floor disconcertingly. It sniffed the air, its head jerking from side to side as it sensed what else was in the cavern.
However, it was the strange shimmering aura surrounding it that made Oz’s skin crawl. It gave the creature a sleek-bodied, vicious appearance, and Oz knew his brain wanted to see nothing more than that terrifying sight. Yet when Oz dared glance slightly away, the true nature of the thing was revealed, and in a way, it was twice as bad. He saw it was a parody, a concoction made from a madman’s idea of animal fancy dress. He had seen its like before, when Ruff had been attacked by Lucy Bishop’s brother, who’d been convinced he was a polecat.
Oz, Ellie, nor Ruff had any idea how such things could happen—other than it was the work of Gerber and the fifth artefact—but they had all seen it with their own eyes. And this time, there was no escape.
From its size, it looked to be immature, and when Oz made himself glance away again so the aura was less visible, he could see its head was a mask, with ears, snout, and eyeholes covering the upper part of the face. The scrabbling claws, too, were fabrications—metal spikes, man-made and attached by leather straps to the fur suit it wore.
Oz moved a step. The thing growled.
“Try not to look at it directly,” Oz said. “Turn your face away. It’s not what it seems. You’ll see what I mean.”
“Ohmygod,” Ellie blurted. “It’s not real… It’s human…”
The thing made another growling noise in its throat.
“What does it want?’ Ruff asked shakily from behind Ellie.
“Doesn’t want to play snap, I know that,” Oz said.
Ruff inched forward so that he was standing between the other two. “I can see with Soph’s vision,” Ruff said. “It’s male, sixty-two inches long…” He got no further.
Moving with astonishing speed, the Beast darted forward. Head low, eyes never leaving Oz’s face, it lunged at him with claws outstretched. Oz, taken by surprise, jerked backwards and tripped over a boulder, which was the only thing that saved him from a mauling by eight metal claws. But in falling, Oz reached out reflexively and grabbed Ruff’s arm for support. Ruff, caught off-balance, stumbled sideways, his shoulder colliding with the Beast’s head.
They fell heavily, Ruff’s momentum carrying him and the Beast forwards to the edge of the sloping floor. Ruff scrabbled desperately for purchase, but the slippery rock had no handholds, and all he managed to latch onto was one of the Beast’s legs. With a yell of terrified surprise, Ruff and the creature slipped over the edge to the lower floor, six meters below.
“Ruff!” Ellie screamed.
Pulse hammering, Oz scrambled to his feet, waiting for the sickening thud and screams of pain that were surely about to erupt from Ruff as he hit bottom. When nothing happened, Oz wondered for a horrible second if he was still falling, if the chasm was in fact a bottomless pit to the centre of the earth. But then, just as Soph’s avatar light disappeared into darkness, like the flick of a switch, it appeared again below them. Suddenly there was noise, a scrabbling of claws and growls and Ruff’s voice shouting “Gerroff!”
Oz and Ellie hurried to the edge and looked down. The floor was twenty feet below them, and there, arms over his head, his face stricken, was Ruff, in a silver-blue bubble of light. The Beast was flailing, throwing itself at Ruff’s body. No matter how hard it tried, it couldn’t get through. When its claws did get close, they were totally ineffective. It was as if a treacly, invisible layer had imposed itself between the two of them.
“Tutamenzon field,” Oz said and grinned at Ellie. “The ring works like the base station.” He felt a surge of relief. It had saved him from Bendle’s sticky bombs, and now it was saving the ring-bearing Ruff from the claws of the Beast. Each time the thing threw itself forward, Ruff flinched, but that didn’t stop him protesting in an inimitable Ruff way.
“Gerroff me, you stinking git!”
Ruff crouched, wedged between a boulder and the wall. He managed to get to his feet, gaining confidence as he realised he was safe from the Beast’s manic attention inside the impenetrable field Soph had set up.
“Ruff, you okay?” Ellie called down.
“I would be,” Ruff said through gritted teeth, flinching again as the Beast launched itself once more, “if this furry idiot left me alone.”
“Oi,” Oz yelled. “Get lost.”
On hearing Oz’s voice, the Beast turned and glared up at him, hissing like a cornered cat. Instantly, it turned its attention to the slippery cavern wall and began jumping and scrabbling at the stone in an attempt to get back up.
“I think it just remembered that Oz is still on the menu,” Ruff said, standing up straight inside his bubble.
Indeed, the Beast had already found a couple of footholds and was beginning to climb up the wall.
“Soph,” Oz yelled. “Any ideas?”
“While Ruff wears the interface, I will be able to provide protection for him from auramal attack.”
“Sounds like you’ve seen this before,” Oz said, one eye warily on the Beast, who had fallen back twice and was now looking for another way up.
“I have encountered auramals such as this before.”
“Really?” Ellie asked. “So, how do we fight it?”
“Direct combat is the only option for defeating an auramal. However, it may not be necessary to fight it.”
“What do you mean, Soph?” Ellie asked.
“I know what she means. It’s Richard Worthy!” Oz exclaimed. “It’s the ring. The ring is what cured him. We have to get it in contact with that thing’s head to cure it, too. Is that right, Soph?” Oz yelled down to the lower floor.
“That is correct, Oz.”
“Oh, easy flippin’ peasy
, then,” Ruff said.
Already, the Beast was exploring a route back up to the higher chamber. It was now five feet off the floor, its claws acting like hooks on the craggy wall on the far side. Oz thought about trying to push it back down, but it was too far away. The gap in the floor acted like a moat, preventing them from getting near it.
“Look out, you two. It’ll be up there in a minute,” Ruff warned.
“Find a rock. Some sort of weapon,” Oz said to Ellie. He started searching the floor urgently. Ellie wasn’t moving. She stood quite still, wearing a look of fierce concentration on her face as she stared down at Ruff.
“Ellie, come on,” Oz urged.
She turned to face him finally. “No,” she said. “We’ll never beat the thing by fighting it. You have to get out, Oz.”
“Wow, is this a dream?” Ruff said from below.
“What?” Oz asked distractedly.
“Did I just hear Ellie say that she didn’t want to fight it? Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Shut up, Ruff,” Ellie snapped.
But Oz was with Ruff on this one. “Have you gone mad?” He glared at Ellie.
“No. I have not gone mad,” Ellie said urgently. “It’s you the thing wants, not us. It went for you when it attacked up here, and it lost all interest in Ruff once it heard your voice again. If you leave, it won’t bother me, I bet you.”
“But you can’t be sure…”
“Do you have any better ideas? It’s vicious and got claws. If we try and take it on now, one of us, if not both of us, is going to get badly hurt.”
Oz was staring at her in disbelief.
“Look, if it comes after me, I can always jump down on top of Ruff. Soph’s tutamenzon field will cushion me. But my guess is the Beast will ignore me and go after you.”
“But I’ll never outrun it,” Oz said, glancing around at the Beast and seeing with alarm that it had gained another two feet on the wall. Between snuffles, it was grunting in concentration as it climbed. “I’ve still got the pebble. Maybe if you and I wrestle it and I can touch its head…”
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