by Matt Haig
She went up to Leonora’s mum between takes. ‘Hi. Um, it’s me. Evie. I used to be friends with Leonora.’
Mrs Brightside looked at Evie and gave a big fake smile. ‘Oh yes! Lion Girl! Now, could you please tell me what happened at school today? Leonora came home stinking of POO and in a terrible state . . .’
‘Um. I don’t know. I’m just . . . I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your dog. I think something might be going on . . . You see, there are a lot of other missing animals—’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Mrs Brightside, her smile even wider, as she looked at her watch. ‘We have to get on with filming. We want this wrapped for seven to maximise the views . . .’
Evie felt a strange sensation, as if she was sinking into the pavement. She nodded, and ran away. Fast, towards home.
She suddenly knew something was wrong. Her dad was never late for anything. And if he was running late he would have told her.
In ten minutes she was home. But she couldn’t get in because her dad wasn’t answering and she didn’t have a key. She noticed a snail crawling along the ground and then remembered her dad left a key under the flowerpot by the front door, so she found that.
Once inside she shouted, ‘Dad? Dad?’
But there was no reply.
The Snail
t didn’t take long to search the house.
And then the garage.
But her dad wasn’t anywhere. Not downstairs, not upstairs, not with his broken furniture. Nowhere.
‘Dad? Dad? Are you here?’
Evie panicked. In the kitchen she saw a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich on a plate. Her dad always had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, but Evie had never – in her whole life – seen her dad not finish a peanut butter sandwich.
‘Weird,’ she said aloud, as her heart drummed fast inside her. ‘Weird, weird, weird.’
She stepped outside the front door and looked all around. His car was still there.
Then amid her panic she remembered the snail.
Now, of course, she knew that snails were gastropods, and she remembered what had happened the last time she had encountered a gastropod. She had collapsed asleep on Granny Flora’s lawn.
But she also knew that the snail had probably been around the front of the house all day. And it would have answers. And right then, Evie needed answers.
She crouched down to try to contact the shelled creature.
Its two tentacles leaned forward. Evie knew this was where snails have their eyes. On the tips of their tentacles.
She focused hard.
‘Can you see me?’
Evie stared at the snail. She started to let the world slip away, as Granny Flora had instructed.
‘Snail,’ she thought, ‘can you understand me? Can you hear my thoughts? I am here. I am human. The big creature looking down at you.’
The snail made no sign whatsoever of having heard Evie’s thoughts. It just kept on snailing along. Evie knew she wouldn’t be able to ask questions. She’d have to go further. She’d have to try and find the dawa. She’d have to go right inside the snail’s slow and sleepy mind.
She closed her eyes.
She tried to find the darkest spot behind her closed eyelids and she focused all her mind on it. She felt a slow kind of calmness. She was incredibly sleepy now, but she kept on.
With the lion, the dawa had manifested itself as a wind, but with the snail it was different. It was weight.
She felt a kind of heaviness throughout her whole body. She tried desperately to stay awake. It was going to be hard. She hadn’t even reached the dawa with the slug and she had collapsed on the lawn.
But she had more adrenaline in her now. More determination. She kept trying.
And then the darkness bloomed into sudden light and, all of a sudden, she saw what the snail was seeing.
She saw her own giant human face, closing its eyes.
She began to feel the snail’s living energy, which – being a snail – was a kind of deep and slow energy. She felt a dull vibration throughout her body.
The snail was worried.
She found memories of a bird – a dark bird, a crow – landing inches away from the snail.
Evie’s body was feeling heavier as she – via the snail – tried to remember. And then she saw something.
Legs.
Human legs.
In khaki trousers.
A man, knocking on the door.
And then her father answering.
Evie couldn’t hear what they were saying, because the snail hadn’t heard anything. Because the snail was a snail.
She couldn’t see the man’s face. At first she couldn’t see anything but the man’s trousers. Khaki. The kind you’d wear in a war. Or a jungle.
But then she caught a glimpse of the man’s right hand. It was a very noticeable hand. It had a ring on it. A round sovereign ring. But that wasn’t the noticeable bit. The noticeable bit was the tattoo. There was a black tattoo of a coiled snake with its jaws open and its tongue out. It was a very scary-looking tattoo. But the scariest thing about it wasn’t the way it looked – though that was bad enough. The scariest bit was that she felt she recognised it from her dream.
And then she saw the man – or his legs – disappear inside the house. With her father. The door closed. She tried to find a later memory. Of the man and her father leaving the house. But she was getting more and more exhausted because a snail’s memories are very weak and you have to do a lot of wading to find them.
But then, at the point of near collapse, she saw it.
The door opening and her father walking out in front of the man, and out of the snail’s view. She noticed her father was still wearing his slippers and pyjamas. This wasn’t that unusual. And then everything went black.
The next thing Evie knew she was lying on the path, opening her eyes, feeling sluggish. Or snailish. Which was just as bad.
She got slowly to her feet and tried to think.
This is what she knew.
Her dad was missing.
He had left at around lunchtime, during his sandwich.
There had been no visible struggle.
He had left with a man in khaki trousers.
A man with a tattoo on his right hand.
A man who she now recognised as Mortimer J Mortimer.
Thirty-five Minutes
vie went back into the house.
She paced around, trying to look for more clues, but there was nothing except the sandwich. She phoned 999 to tell the police her father was missing.
‘And how long has your father been missing?’ asked the policewoman on the end of the line.
‘Um. I don’t know exactly. But I think since lunch.’
‘Okay.’ The policewoman sounded bored. ‘When did you know for sure that he wasn’t at home?’
Evie looked at her watch. ‘Thirty-five minutes ago.’
She heard the policewoman sigh. ‘Riiiight. Well, I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation.’
‘No. I just know something’s happened to him. He left half his sandwich. He’s never left an uneaten sandwich in his life.’
The policewoman sighed again. The sandwich thing clearly hadn’t impressed her. ‘A sandwich?’
‘Yes. A PEANUT BUTTER sandwich.’
‘Is this a prank call?’
‘No. I promise you.’
‘Half-eaten sandwiches aren’t evidence. Even ones containing peanut butter.’
‘They might be!’
‘Of what? Indigestion?’
Evie was feeling very frustrated now. ‘He was meant to pick me up from school but he wasn’t there. Aren’t you going to launch an investigation?’
‘Into a half-eaten sandwich? No. We have quite a lot of missing animals to deal with.’
‘Yes, I know. I think this is related.’
‘You think an animal ate the sandwich?’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Evie. ‘I think he’
s been . . . kidnapped. You see, I saw him leave with a man. A man with khaki trousers and a snake tattoo on his hand. And he wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me. I just know he—’
‘You saw him leave?’
‘Yes. But, you see – the thing is, there was a snail.’
The police officer groaned wearily. ‘A snail?’
‘Yes. A snail. Outside. Near the flowerpot. And the thing is, I have this . . . err, this gift. The official name for it is the Talent. I can kind of enter the minds of animals.’
‘Oh,’ sighed the officer. ‘I see. You should have just told me that at the start.’
‘You see,’ continued Evie breathlessly, ‘I think that might be why my dad’s in danger. I think that might have something to do with why he is missing . . . Because there is a man called Mortimer J Mortimer, who killed my mother by taking over the mind of a Brazilian wandering spider, and—’
It was at that precise point that Evie realised the policewoman had put the phone down on her.
This was hopeless.
If she wanted to find her dad before it was too late, she was on her own. Or was she? At that moment she noticed a bag of liquorice on the kitchen bench. Granny Flora.
So she ran. She ran all the way to Granny Flora’s bungalow. When she got there she was out of breath. But Granny Flora wasn’t there.
Nor was anyone else, except Plato, who was outside, eating a piece of asparagus Granny Flora had left out for him. This was strange.
She had never seen Plato not at Granny Flora’s side.
‘Plato,’ Evie said. And then she said the same thing with her mind. ‘Plato.’
And Plato just chewed slowly on the asparagus.
‘Plato, where is Granny Flora?’
No response.
She stared at him. Then she closed her eyes. She thought about arrows. She tried to reach the dawa. But nothing. Plato was impenetrable.
But no. If Granny Flora could do it, so could she. It had to be possible.
‘Plato, Granny Flora is in trouble. You need to tell me what you know. What is going on?’
She thought of what Granny Flora had said, that day with Marmalade. She heard her voice echo in her mind.
You need to make it INEVITABLE. You need not a shadow of doubt. You need to become him. Don’t just understand the animal, be the animal.
A thought came to Evie. As Granny Flora never went anywhere without Plato, she might have known she was going to be taken. Maybe she had left Plato on purpose. Maybe Plato had told Granny Flora where to go.
She knew that she couldn’t simply ask Plato a question. She had to go all the way inside his mind. She tried again to reach into the dawa. But it seemed impossible.
She thought of something else Granny Flora had said.
Everything is impossible until you can do it.
We are all linked. Life is life. Everything connects.
‘Everything connects,’ whispered Evie. ‘Everything connects, everything connects . . .’
In the darkness of her closed eyes she concentrated right on the darkest part. She felt a coldness from inside her body. As if all her blood was suddenly starting to cool to the level of a reptile. She could hardly breathe. She knew if she opened her eyes she would feel instantly better, but she had to keep on, heading deeper into the dawa until she was there. And then in the darkness she slipped inside Plato’s mind. She saw trees. Many, many trees. And there was Granny Flora. Her face looked troubled.
‘The forest,’ came the thought.
A strong, mysterious, all-knowing thought.
The thought of a bearded dragon.
‘You must go to the woods. There, you will find all that you seek. He knows you will come. But there, your past will free your future . . .’
Evie opened her eyes. She could breathe again. Her body warmed back into life.
She stared at the green lizard, still chewing on his asparagus. He looked up and stared at her for a moment, with eyes that seemed older than time.
‘Thank you, Plato,’ she said.
And then Evie started to run to Lofting Wood.
The Stag
he ran until her lungs were bursting. She ran and didn’t stop, passing hundreds of missing posters. She ran even when she saw Scruff near the bins outside the back of Sun Palace, the Cantonese restaurant.
Scruff – along with Plato – seemed to be among the few animals who hadn’t gone missing. ‘Hello, Evie! Where are you going?’
‘Sorry, Scruff!’ she thought back. ‘No time to answer!’
‘Are you going where all the others are going?’ said Scruff. ‘Wow, weird times.’
Evie passed her old primary school. And kept running, to the field where she had let Kahlo the rabbit free, and she carried on, up the gentle slope, with farmland and the zoo to her left and Lofting town and its church with its witch-hat steeple to her right, towards the forest. Towards Lofting Wood. By the time she got there, it was almost dark. And totally empty. No one ever went to Lofting Wood because they were always inside working or watching telly or playing video games. Even the dog-walkers went to the park in town, near the church.
The trees stood against the sky like a strange army, waiting for battle.
As soon as she was in there, in the forest itself, she noticed holes in the ground. Rabbit holes.
Of course!
She remembered. This was the place Kahlo had called the Forest of Holes.
A male deer stopped ahead of her through the trees. Its antlers spread up and back and wide like wild beautiful branches were growing out of its head. An average-sized male deer was called a buck, but Evie knew this was bigger than average and so it was a stag. There was still just enough light in the sky for Evie to realise he was one of the most beautiful animals she had ever seen.
‘What are you?’
‘I’m Evie. I’m a human. But I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘You are not of the forest.’
‘What?’
The stag didn’t seem at all perturbed that Evie understood him, and that she was communicating with him.
‘There are two kinds of thing. Things of the forest. And things not of the forest. And you are not of the forest.’
Evie could sense its proud mind. It felt strong, as rooted as the oak and sycamore trees around it.
‘You are right. I am not of the forest. And I will leave the forest. I just need to find someone.
Maybe you could help me . . . I’m looking for my dad. He’s like me. But taller. And a man.’
‘I don’t know. But there are a lot of cats. And dogs. And other things not of the forest.’
‘Where?’
The stag tilted its head. ‘They went that way . . . I will show you. Follow me.’
So Evie followed this giant stag deeper and deeper through the trees.
‘This way, this way . . .’ the stag kept saying. ‘You’re getting closer . . .’
And then Evie saw them all, in a low clearing. Animals of every shape and size. Silhouettes of all the missing pets. Dogs, cats, hamsters, parrots, even a few horses. All standing totally still – and obedient. She looked around for her dad, or Granny Flora, or for Mortimer J Mortimer himself.
‘This way . . .’ the stag kept saying. ‘This way . . . this way . . . this—’
She heard a voice she recognised.
‘Evie! No! Don’t listen to the stag!’
It was Granny Flora. Evie turned and saw her, tied to an oak tree.
‘Granny?’
Evie began to run towards her.
‘No!’ Granny Flora shouted.
But it was too late.
In between leaping with one foot and landing on the other, she looked down at the leafy ground and saw, to her shock, there was no ground at all. Her foot kept falling, and her body too, and she fell and fell and fell. Until BOOM! She hit hard cold earth at the bottom of a large hole.
In the Hole
t was even darker in the hole than it had
been out of it. But she heard her dad’s voice.
‘Evie, are you okay?’ He came closer to her. He put an arm on her shoulder.
‘Dad!’ She hugged him. ‘Oh, Dad. What’s going on?’
‘It’s him. It’s Mortimer. He’s got us both here. He came for me earlier. I had to go with him. He said if I didn’t he’d hurt you. But he knew you would follow . . .’
Evie looked up and saw the stag’s head leaning over the hole above her. ‘I have followed my command . . .’
And then Evie’s dad quickly explained, ‘He’s mind-controlling all the animals in Lofting. Most of them, anyway.’
‘The dawa . . .’
‘Yes. Your mum told me he was the master of it. He can find the dawa within any animal. And then control them completely. Not just one at a time, either. But I never realised he was this powerful.’
Evie got to her feet. ‘Is there a way to climb out?’
‘No. It’s too deep. It’s amazing what a few mind-controlled dogs can do.’
‘Dogs?’ wondered Evie.
And then she saw them. Sitting in the base of the hole. Four dogs. An Alsatian, a Labradoodle (a Labradoodle Evie had seen on a poster earlier that day), a Rottweiler and Bibi, Leonora’s Maltese terrier. They were all staring straight at them, totally brainwashed.
‘And he’s got Granny Flora tied to a tree,’ Evie’s dad said.
‘I know. I saw. Poor Granny Flora.’ She was scared to ask the next thing, but she asked it anyway. ‘Where is he?’
Evie’s dad didn’t have time to respond, as there was a voice from above. A smooth, deep voice like poison and velvet. A voice she’d heard somewhere before.
‘Oh,’ the voice said. ‘I’m everywhere.’
Evie looked up and there, where the stag had been only moments before, was a man illuminated by the moonlight. A tall man with a black moustache wearing what looked like a thin scarf around his neck. Evie felt cold just looking at him. It was Mortimer J Mortimer himself. It took Evie a moment to realise that the scarf wasn’t a scarf at all. It was a snake.
‘You killed my mum,’ Evie said, in a scared mumble, but her dad touched her arm as if to say, ‘Don’t aggravate him.’