‘Big soft idiot,’ said Kartofel. ‘Now them two have gone, perhaps we can have some proper adventures. I understand you not wanting to say while those two were around, but it’s all right if I stay, isn’t it? Your old pal Kartofel.’
‘No,’ said Ben.
Kartofel sniffed. Little clouds of steam rose from his eyes, as if he was a boiling kettle. He turned away from Ben and scurried over to Talullah. ‘I didn’t want to stay anyway,’ he muttered. ‘I was only asking to be nice.’ He clambered into the saddle and Talullah whinnied. ‘Let’s go somewhere they care about us, hey girl?’
‘Good luck,’ said Ben but they had already disappeared into the Veil.
He walked through the cemetery, ready for his last goodbye. On the way he picked a few wild flowers and made a posy. He came to his mother’s plot, and set them down on the earthen mound.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘And I won’t forget you.’
He wiped a tear from his eye, walked back to the place the angels had snatched him, and sat down to wait.
For her.
Lucy blinked. She had forgotten, for the briefest moment, where she was, and the sudden realization that she was in a particularly unloved part of the cemetery made her shudder. It occurred to her that it would have been a strange route for Ben to take to visit his mother’s plot, which was when she remembered what she was doing. She was looking for Ben, yes, her friend Ben. And then she thought, How long have I been here, walking through this place? An inexplicable wave of panic crashed over her, and she felt as if she was about to drown.
‘Lucy,’ said a voice from behind her. It jolted her from the woozy feeling and anchored her to the present. For the briefest moment she thought that she recognized it, but there was something in it that jarred her. She turned round to face it, and there was Ben. And although he had been gone less than half an hour, it was as if he had completely changed. He didn’t look any different, but there was a sort of invisible definition to him now. He still had the same vulnerability, the same thing that had made her want to take him under her wing in the first place, but it was no longer pathetic and helpless. There was, she was a little surprised to find out, something even a little attractive about him now.
‘Hi, uhh, we were wondering where you went, because if you’re ready we can go but if you’re not you know you can take as much time as you want, you know, if you want to.’ She winced inwardly. Get a hold of yourself, she thought. This is Ben. Little Nerdy Ben.
Little Nerdy Ben held out his hand, and she took it. ‘I’m ready,’ he said, and as her palm slipped inside his, he was no longer Little Nerdy Ben but somehow Her Ben. His hand was warm and dry, and she felt safe.
As they started to walk away, she realized he was missing something. Perhaps that was why he seemed different. He was always carrying that satchel around with him, wasn’t he? He’d even taken it to his mother’s graveside.
‘Wait,’ she said, and looked back over her shoulder. ‘You forgot—’
‘I left it somewhere. I don’t think I’ll be needing it any more,’ said Ben. ‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it,’ and she didn’t. He was right. It didn’t matter.
They walked back to the car through the rows of headstones – facing away as if death was turning its back on the pair of them – and off into a lovely spring day in a quiet, forgotten, and somehow not-quite-as-bad-as-it-had-once-seemed seaside resort on the North Wales coast.
Epilogue
Deus Ex Machina
In the far reaches of space, so far from Earth as to be inconceivable to the human mind, there is a planet. It is a barren lump, little more than a piece of rock orbiting far from the nearest star. It is a deeply cold and dark place, totally uninhabitable by any creature anywhere in the universe. It is useless, a cosmic afterthought, a piece of space debris eternally rotating around a distant and indifferent sun.
Around that planet orbits a satellite, but it is not made of rock, like our own moon. This satellite is no accident, no wanderer that happened to be hurtling through space until it collided with the orbital pull of the planet below. This satellite is made of metal. It is a bright, white, pristine, twenty-faced shape that remains immune to cosmic rays and asteroids: it does not, and never will, have a scratch on it.
Inside this satellite is a single room. And inside that room – also white, also pristine – is a computer. It is the fastest, largest, most powerful computer ever built, and its sole job, the sole task of this machine that is so powerful that it needs an entire planetary satellite to house it, is to run one program.
This program is called ‘TERRA’.
There are many screens, and buttons, and levers, all easily accessible from the single red leather stool in the centre of the room. On the largest screen, which is as big as one wall, runs a series of words and numbers; green characters on a black background, like the most primitive home computer. And hidden within these symbols, these constantly moving, constantly changing, constantly updating figures, is everything that has ever happened as it is happening, including the events set down in this book, and the writing of this book, and now, as your eyes pass over these words, the reading of this book.
And as strange as this is, there is something stranger still about this satellite, something that can only be seen if the writing on one of its twenty faces happens to catch what little light the distant sun provides. For emblazoned on that icosahedron high in orbit around a dead and forgotten world, are these words:
PRIME 1.0
Acknowledgements
A book isn’t just the work of one person, but then neither is a writer. So I need to thank Mum and Dad first of all: not just for the lifetime of unconditional love and support, but also for moving to North Wales when I was four. Luckily they took me with them, and The Box of Demons is the result.
Alex read and reread the manuscript nearly as many times as I did, was right about most things along the way and nudged me in the direction of the Write Now! competition. It’s thanks to him that you’re holding this book at all.
Lynne was always on hand for advice and support and having things she told me pilfered and put into the dreams of rabbits.
Sylwia had the most difficult job of all: she had to live with me while I grumped around going on about angels and castles and monsters and whatever else popped into my head. Kocham cię, kochanie moje.
I’d also like to mention all the people who took the time to plough through early drafts and were nice enough to offer encouragement: Philip Benjamin, Emily Butterfield, Morven Christie, Linda Gale, fish & chip consultants Silv and Sarah del Prete, and the Rowleys, who sent me a lovely email when (unbeknown to them) I needed it most. Druss’s revenge is for them.
I want to thank Nancy Miles for her faith in me; Chris Riddell for making the characters look better than I imagined them; my brilliant editor, Rachel Petty, for coming up with loads of brilliant ideas that have made the book brillianter (she wasn’t allowed to edit that sentence), and the judges of the Write Now! Prize for choosing The Box of Demons as their winner.
I’d like to finish by recognizing all the booksellers and librarians out there, fighting the good fight and putting the right stories into the hands of the people who want to read them. I’ve been bowled over by their passion, their support and above all their kindness towards me. But since they’re probably too busy finding awesome new books to bother reading these acknowledgements, will you do me a favour?
Next time you see one, thank them for me.
Daniel Whelan was born in Cheshire, but grew up in North Wales. He moved to London in 2000 to study for a degree in Acting. His adaptation of Richard Adams’s Watership Down premiered at Riverside Studios and was acclaimed by Mr Adams as one of the best he’d read. His next play, A Harlot’s Progress, inspired by the etchings of Hogarth, was well received by Time Out. Alas, Mr Hogarth was too dead to give his opinion.
The Box of Demons is Daniel’s debut novel and was winner of the Write Now! Prize. He is Patro
n of Reading at North Harringay Primary School.
First published 2015 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-2572-1
Copyright © Daniel Whelan 2015
Cover illustration by Chris Riddell
The right of Daniel Whelan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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