The Bone Quill

by Barrowman, John

  I know you’re in there. Why?

  Matt quickly texted back.

  Need 2 help Em.

  Let me come. Want 2 help her 2.

  Can’t take u. Not strong enough to take 3 of us back.

  What?? Who’s in there with u?

  Matt suddenly knew what to draw to get through to the tunnels underneath.

  Ignoring the question in Zach’s final message, he cleared the buckets and pool chemicals away from the centre of the floor. Then he wrapped the loose end of the hose around his waist, giving it a tug to make sure it felt secure. Taking out his sketchpad, he copied the room exactly as it was. When he finished, he concentrated again and began to erase the centre of the floor. It began crumbling into flecks of white and grey dust as the cement disintegrated. Scrambling to grab his backpack, Matt slipped feet first into the gaping hole he’d created, falling like Alice into a dusty darkness.

  The hose around his waist stretched taut, then snapped. The impact of hitting the cold, hard ground winded Matt badly. Gasping, he pulled his knees to his chest and tried to get his breath back. Checking over his limbs, he decided he hadn’t broken anything. Untying the broken hose from around his waist, he hooked his backpack over his shoulders and flipped on his torch. His phone beeped weakly.

  Sorry, u can kill me later. Going to get Renard.

  FIFTY-SIX

  ‘That’s okay, Zach,’ said Matt aloud to himself. ‘You do what you need to do.’

  He pulled himself off the ground. A sharp pain stabbed through his chest. Em would have created a mattress for them to land on. Maybe he had broken a rib after all.

  He was standing in a small cavern, and he could smell the sea, a briny damp that had coated the walls with a greenish-grey slime. He raised the torch, expecting to see the opening to the passage that ran underneath Renard’s tower and up against the outside of the vault. Instead, the beam hit a stone wall.

  Matt thumped the wall with the side of his fist, listening to the echo of his thump. Solid. Turning in a circle, he spent the next ten minutes thumping his way around the cavern. His pulse began to quicken. For the first time since he’d rolled out of bed, he began to doubt his plan.

  Pressing a button on his phone, he switched the screen to a compass. The sea was to the west of the Abbey, which meant that Renard’s tower was to his east. The needle on the compass shifted for a few seconds, then settled at true north. Matt stared at the wall to his right. It had to be the one he wanted.

  And then he saw it. The two stones close to the curve of the cavern ceiling had no moss, no slime, nothing green on them whatsoever. They were recent additions to the chamber.

  Matt quickly sketched a ladder, watching it crawl up the wall like a wooden caterpillar. He climbed to the top rung, and thumped the two dry stones. The wall beneath him began to shift and shake, leaving a gap about two metres wide beneath him. He scrambled down again, tearing up the sketch when he hit the ground, and the ladder exploded, rung by rung.

  Clutching his rucksack, Matt squeezed through the gap. Midway, he felt the wall closing again, against his body. In seconds, he’d be crushed.

  He realized he couldn’t move forwards or backwards. He was stuck. A sharp edge of stone was digging into his injured arm. The pain brought tears to his eyes, the wall pressing hard against his chest. With one huge burst of energy, Matt squeezed himself all the way through, seconds before the stone passage sealed itself behind him with a thud. Too late, he remembered he’d left his torch on the other side.

  Matt was enveloped in darkness, his only light the green digits on the face of his watch and the screen on his phone. A noise like the scampering of a hundred tiny claws stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t like to think about it, but these tunnels were likely to be full of rats. The air smelled like rotting fish and wet animal.

  Concentrating, Matt held his phone above his sketchbook with his right hand, illuminating the page. He scribbled with his left hand, drawing a skateboard helmet with a light embedded on the front. When he finished the animation, the helmet materialized in a scramble of reds and greens on Matt’s lap.

  Next up, something to ride on, he thought. Why not?

  There wasn’t time to draw a vehicle that was too elaborate, and he certainly didn’t have room in the tunnels for anything too big. He sketched a scooter with a small motor on the back wheel, and added a light on the front in the shape of a shield. He’d no sooner coloured in the shield than the scooter unfolded itself in a swoosh of silver light.

  Matt put on his helmet and stepped on to the scooter. He turned the gears on the handle and shot forward into the long, narrow tunnel that had once been part of the monastery’s catacombs.

  He regretted not bringing a more detailed map with him. The drawing of the catacombs wasn’t proving as useful as he’d hoped. Up ahead, the tunnel turned west. If it didn’t lead him to the wall of the vault, he’d turn back and rethink his plan.

  Matt suddenly found himself at a dead end. Trusting his compass and his memory, he took his sketchpad from his backpack and began to draw his way into what he hoped was the art vault.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Zach understood Matt’s motives. Leaving Em behind had been the final straw in a haystack full of them. But even as a developing Guardian, Zach always had a difficult time getting a clear reading on Matt. He had started to wonder if Matt was honing his Guardian abilities on himself, working to mask his feelings from others. At sixteen, the twins would be assigned their own Guardians, based on a close psychic connection. If Matt kept his feelings so protected, how would any Guardian ever get close enough to develop the necessary bond?

  Zach was breathing hard when he reached Renard’s room, where light was spilling out from under the door. He knocked and burst in, signing at warp speed.

  ‘Matt’s going to animate something. Maybe try to get back to Em. He’s locked in the boiler room by the pool.’

  Renard stood up from his desk at once.

  ‘We have to stop him,’ he said, grabbing a heavy set of keys from a hook behind the door.

  They made their way along the corridors as quickly as they could. Zach reached the pool first. Renard swiftly unlocked the boiler-room door and flung it wide open. The space was empty, the floor intact.

  ‘He’s gone!’ Zach angrily kicked the pile of blue tubing that was leaning up against the far corner.

  Renard stepped into the centre of the space, his fingers held to his lips. Zach watched as the older man swayed back and forth in the centre of the room, as if he was dancing.

  With a jolt, Renard opened his eyes. ‘Matt has discovered the catacombs.’

  Closing his eyes, Zach concentrated on Matt, trying to capture the trail of his last animation – something he’d been working on with his dad. But the concrete floor was too thick and the ancient tunnels beneath too solid. All Zach could sense was the wispy image of Matt, which dissolved from his mind almost immediately.

  When Zach opened his eyes, Renard was gone.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Hauling himself out of the trapdoor he’d animated into the vault, Matt was instantly overwhelmed with wonder. The joy and pleasure radiating from the art in the vault was like a thousand Christmas mornings at once.

  The walls were covered in a dozen or more paintings and other kinds of art. Sculptures also filled the rough, square room, tucked into niches around the walls. Matt kicked the trapdoor shut and tore up his drawing. The animation soaked away like a puddle of coloured water.

  He tore up the sketch of his helmet, leaving the only illumination in the room coming from the art itself. Each item appeared to be floating on a pillow of white light. The aura surrounding each object was like the protective shield around the Abbey walls.

  The painting directly above the dissolving trapdoor was one of Turner’s early oils of a burning ship on the Thames. The orange glow at the centre of the canvas was pulsing. It didn’t surprise Matt to see Turner in here. If Van Gogh was an Animare, he knew it was likely
that many other famous artists were, too. Next to the Turner hung a Henri Matisse, its cut-outs and thick lines almost three-dimensional. Matt was mesmerized. The pleasure was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. He had to tear himself away from its reach.

  One of the niche statues was massive and egg-shaped, with a hole carved out of the top of it. In the next niche was another modern statue of an Egyptian princess with no face, just smooth white marble where her eyes and nose should have been. Standing in the niche closest to Matt was a black marble statue of an elongated figure reclining on a matching marble sepulchre, as if the figure were dead but had chosen to remain outside its tomb.

  The statue opposite the reclining figure was another sort of creature altogether: a demonic-looking faun cast in bronze. The snub-nosed statue rested on muscular goat haunches, playing reed pipes with a snarl twisting its lips. Sharp, scaly horns stuck through its furrowed forehead. The gold shimmer enveloping it had a dull edge, as if its Animare aura had been smudged.

  The overwhelming sense of joy Matt had felt when first entering the vault had been replaced by a thin painful pulse beating in his temples. He stepped closer to the statue, closed his eyes and concentrated. He could hear someone screaming. It seemed that the faun’s sculptor had not chosen to be bound.

  The near silence in the vault was suddenly shattered. Someone had summoned the security lift. Matt dashed to the tempered carbon alloy doors of the vault. Pressing his ear to the cold steel, he heard the lift grinding into action.

  He had no more time to waste.

  Doing his best not to let himself be distracted by the energies flowing from the art all around him, he hunted for the Duncan Fox painting his mother had copied when she had bound his father: The Demon Within. When he couldn’t find it, he started to panic.

  The lift shifted gears. It was on its way back down, and Matt knew it would bring his grandpa and Zach with it. If he was going to save Em and his mum, he had to find the painting.

  Fast.

  He began the circuit of the vault again. When he was close to the bronze faun, he heard the elevator slow, as various security tests were implemented. Finally, when he was almost ready to give up and face his grandpa’s wrath, Matt spotted it.

  It was the size of a school notebook, hanging between a Constable painting of the English countryside and a painting of Robert the Bruce about to attack King Edward I’s English army. The illumination from these two pictures was so dazzling that Matt wasn’t surprised he had missed the small canvas tucked in the space between them.

  The emergency lights in the vault began to flash. His grandpa was disarming the final security measure. Matt had run out of time.

  FIFTY-NINE

  When Zach realized he was alone, he ran to the sliding glass doors that opened from the pool to the lawn. Renard was jogging stiffly towards the patio and the kitchen doors. He followed at a sprint, catching up as Renard reached the patio.

  As Renard unlocked the French doors, the security alarm screamed, and the emergency lights inside and outside the house began to flash.

  ‘No!’ Renard moved as fast as he could to the keypad on the utility-room wall, quickly disarming the alarm.

  As Zach and Renard headed to the main foyer, their progress was halted by Jeannie in her flannel nightgown standing at the bottom of the stairs, hair in curlers and hands on her hips.

  ‘False alarm,’ said Renard, without stopping.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it from where I’m standing,’ Jeannie replied. ‘Where’s the fire?’

  Not a word, Zach!

  The force of Renard’s booming voice in Zach’s mind startled him. He had never heard anyone other than Em in his mind before.

  ‘What’s yer hurry?’ asked Jeannie, grabbing Zach’s arm.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ signed Zach, improvising. ‘Grandpa has a … a book for me.’

  ‘A book?’ Jeannie looked even more disbelieving. ‘That’s why ye got yerself dressed and came charging in through the kitchen doors? Were you thinking the book might be outside on the grass?’

  Zach shrugged. It had been a long day. He had nothing else.

  ‘Gone away wi’ ye then,’ said Jeannie, letting go of Zach’s arm. ‘And tell Mr R not to keep you up all night.’

  Zach sprinted down the hall and up the stairs into Renard’s tower, just in time to see him turn the secret lever on the mantel. The wall opened and revealed the steel doors of the lift.

  ‘Matt’s in the vault. But I need you to stay here, Zach. I can handle him alone,’ said Renard shortly.

  ‘How do you know that’s where he’s gone?’

  ‘It’s the only place that makes sense.’ Renard stepped inside the lift. ‘Matt must have found the old drawings of the catacombs. If I’m correct, the pool’s boiler room is directly above one of the old tunnels that leads to the vault.’

  Before Renard had finished punching the first code into the keypad, Zach lunged between the closing doors. They hissed shut before Renard could push him out again.

  ‘Zach! I told you—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Renard,’ signed Zach. ‘I have to come.’

  As the lift began to move, the old man’s anxiety felt like a low-pitched hum in Zach’s mind.

  ‘I heard you speak in my mind,’ he signed.

  ‘I hoped you would,’ Renard replied with a sigh. ‘Since you’ve been hearing Em for a couple of months, I thought that you might be able to hear me, too … eventually.’

  The lift stopped. Renard disengaged the final security level, pressing his palm on the pad in the control panel. The lift began its descent again. Strobe lights flashed, creating the illusion that they were travelling forwards and down. Their speed had picked up, too. If he hadn’t been so anxious about Matt, Zach would have appreciated the ride more.

  ‘Why has Matt gone to the vault?’ he signed. His stomach was somersaulting, and he could feel his ears popping.

  ‘Because,’ said Renard, ‘he’s going to unbind his father.’

  SIXTY

  Renard heard the music first as the doors opened with a hiss. A soft, sultry melody.

  The vault was illuminated by an eerie, animated glow. The music was much louder with the doors open. Zach shifted closer to Renard, aware of the music’s increased vibrations.

  ‘Go back up to my study—’ Renard was unable to finish his sentence as the music increased to a hundred decibels. His face contorted in pain, his hands covering his ears.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Zach’s heart was hammering in his chest from the intensity of the vibrations. The entire lift was shuddering.

  Renard dropped to one knee in agony as the song became a thousand sharp fingernails on a chalkboard. The excruciating screech was having little effect on Zach.

  Keeping his hands pressed to his ears, Renard looked at Zach desperately. ‘Go!’

  The lift stopped vibrating as silence fell. Ignoring Renard’s plea, Zach stepped into the vault.

  No, Zach! Get back inside.

  Renard lunged at Zach and yanked him back, seconds before a bronze creature like a demented Pan leaped on its hind legs in front of the lift.

  Zach stared in horror at the goat-man bounding back and forth on hairy legs, horns twitching from wet, fleshy cavities in its forehead. It cocked its head and scratched a cloven hoof across the stone. Then it lifted its reed pipes and began to play again.

  The debilitating screech forced Renard back into the corner of the lift. The sound waves were crashing over Zach with so much force that his head was beginning to hurt.

  ‘Is Matt doing this?’

  Renard nodded, hands to his ears. ‘He needs to keep us out of the vault until he’s finished what he came down here to do.’

  The creature continued its strange bouncing from hoof to hoof, its hairy tail waving to the music like a demented baton. The sound waves from its pipes were so forceful they were shaking the lift on its cables. Then suddenly, there was only silence and puffs of gold glitter swirling in the l
ight from the paintings.

  Renard dashed to the far side of the vault. Zach followed. Without warning, a prickly sensation at the back of his neck sent odd shivers down his spine. It wasn’t pain as such, more like a brain freeze from eating an ice lolly too fast. His eyes began to water, and his fingers and toes were tingling.

  ‘It’s the power from the paintings,’ said Renard, catching Zach’s expression. ‘Every Guardian feels a wee bit odd when he’s in the presence of bound artists. I’ve always thought it’s to make sure we remember what’s been done to these men and women, and keeps us from taking the decision to bind anyone lightly.’

  His face was pale as he slid to the floor under the Turner and rested his head in his hands. His grief hit Zach like a punch.

  ‘I’m afraid Matt’s gone,’ Renard said. He indicated the little space between two paintings with a trembling hand – the space that had held Sandie’s copy of The Demon Within. ‘And he’s taken Malcolm with him.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  As soon as Matt climbed out of the hole he had animated into the Abbey courtyard and stood up, he could feel the hellhound gargoyles on the ramparts straining against their moorings beneath the security spotlights. Looking up, he saw one stretch its entire body out from its parapet, floating over the darkness. Could it sense what he’d done?

  Matt exhaled, forcing his mind to settle. The hellhound hunkered back into its place.

  Not for the first time that night, he wished Em was with him.

  Ducking under the shadows of the arch that led through Jeannie’s garden and down to the jetty, he tore up his sketches of the statue and his last tunnel.

  ‘Sorry, Grandpa,’ he mumbled. ‘You too, Zach.’