Twelve Nights

by Andrew Zurcher

  Kay’s heart stamped.

  ‘Ow!’ One of them tripped off the sill, crashed through the curtain and landed heavily on the floor. Kay held her breath, certain that her mother would have heard it, or that Ell at least would wake up.

  ‘Sshhh,’ said a voice from the window. And then, ‘Is this tooth really necessary? What happens if we just leave it?’

  ‘Flip, if you want to go back and submit the order sheet to Ghast without all the movables accounted for, that’s up to you.’ Will sounded like he was sitting up as he whispered, ‘To be perfectly frank with you, after the whole Habsburg business I don’t mind if I never see Ghast’s dirty little nostrils widen at me again … Hmm. I think I may develop a bruise.’

  ‘Well, I hope so,’ said Flip. ‘There’d be no fun left in pushing you if you didn’t get hurt once in a while.’

  At this Kay dared to crack her left eye open again. Between the fuzz of her parting lashes she saw the light of the torch held in the hand emerging from behind the curtain. It was pointing at the wall opposite her – or, rather, panning the wall as Flip began searching for the tooth.

  ‘Where do you reckon she keeps it?’ Flip said, the top of his head curling round the heavy curtain to look down at Will, who was still rubbing his shin.

  In the dim light Kay could see almost nothing about them, except that they both seemed very tall, almost stretched or elongated – like the thinned and distorted shadows of normal shapes cast by a light lying on the ground.

  ‘And would you mind getting up to help me, please?’ said Flip as an impossibly endless leg (like a spider’s, Kay thought) came swinging over the sill and under the curtain. The rest of him followed lankily into the cramped room. Flip turned immediately back to the far wall – to the bookcase, the chest of drawers and the small pile of toys still tumbled in the corner where Ell had left them that morning. Which was lucky, because what Will said next made Kay, for only the tiniest second, open her eye very wide indeed – and had Flip been looking in her direction, he could not have missed it.

  ‘The order sheet,’ said Will noisily as he unfolded a crumpled piece of paper retrieved from his coat, ‘says it will be in the left pocket of her cardigan. Or, with a very low probability, in her right hand.’

  ‘Cardigan?’ asked Flip.

  ‘Bedpost,’ Will shot back. And then the light swung round, and Flip’s body followed it, leaving Kay a split second to squeeze her eye shut again. She held her breath and concentrated on not moving her right fist, with its now precious prize, even a millimetre. But for all her heroic self-control, for all her theatrical stillness, it was already too late. Over the top of his paper, even as he spoke, Will’s eyes had settled directly upon her.

  Kay felt everything change in the room around her.

  Everything.

  ‘Flip,’ breathed Will, staring at Kay in a way that she could feel all over her face, despite the fact that her eyes were jammed shut. ‘Flip, we have a problem.’

  Kay’s heart beat a path right out of her chest and into her throat. It was suddenly so tight in her head that she could hardly hear them as they carried on talking.

  ‘Will, you are a problem,’ answered Flip. ‘What now?’

  For an instant there was complete silence, and Kay was dimly aware of the sound of the fir tree outside scraping against the gutter.

  ‘We’ve been witnessed,’ Will said in the same low and measured voice. ‘It’s all right, little girl, you can open your eye,’ he said. ‘We won’t bite.’

  ‘But I read the order sheet. The order sheet doesn’t say anything about her being a witness,’ Flip whispered hard, like a hawk plummeting to strike, as he stepped over to Will and took the papers. He hauled Will to his feet and then began to scan them. ‘Nope,’ he said, running his finger down the page. ‘No, no, no, no. No powers, no history, no prophecy, no witness. She’s entirely clean. No bio on her whatsoever. She can’t see us. She can’t see us for what we really are.’

  ‘She can see us all right,’ said Will, peering at Kay. He was so tall that his head, slightly bowed under the pitch of the sloping ceiling, was level with her own as she lay on the top bunk. He cocked it to one side to look straight at her. ‘Hello,’ he said in a friendly voice, cracking a smile. ‘Hello, little witness. Let’s have a look at you.’

  Kay huddled back against the wall as his gathering hands suddenly loomed out of the darkness towards her, but it was no use resisting – he was as strong as he was tall, and despite the wadded blankets he had her sitting up in a second. She buried her right hand behind her, almost sitting on it under a lump of duvet.

  ‘Ah. I think we’ve located the tooth,’ Will said over his shoulder. ‘In her hand, just as the sheet says.’

  Kay had a good stare at him in the indirect light from the torch, which Flip had trained on the pages of the order sheet as he raced hurriedly through them. Will was broad and tall but, on more careful consideration, strangely skinny. The light almost seemed to shine through his shoulders. His neck also appeared normal enough until you looked right at it, when it would suddenly seem to stretch, or twist, or narrow – or something. She couldn’t put her finger on it. He was dressed in a long robe or cloak like a housecoat, with a thick rope belt around his waist. The cuffs of his sleeves flared like trumpets, but his wrists were as bony and wraith-like as everything else about him, seeming to disappear into the cavity of his clothing. But he had been so strong, she thought, lifting her up and sitting her back on the bed as if she were almost weightless. And, she noticed suddenly as she searched again for his face, he had a strange way of looking at you with only one of his eyes at a time, or perhaps with both eyes but differently. And with his left eye he was by now studying her very closely. He leaned forward, putting his chin on the edge of her mattress, his elegantly fingered hands tucked up beneath it.

  ‘So,’ he said in a very soft and winning voice, ‘are you going to give us the tooth? Because I for one would like to go home and get some rest.’

  Kay shook her head slowly, then a bit faster.

  Will’s smile dissipated, and he frowned comically at her from beneath furrowed brows. ‘You’re not?’ he asked. He frumped, sticking out his lower lip.

  Kay shook her head again.

  ‘She says she’s not going to give us the tooth,’ said Will over his shoulder.

  Flip was still running his finger down page after page of the order sheet, and seemed not to be able to hear anything but his own murmuring.

  Will turned back to the bed. ‘Why? Don’t you want me to get some rest?’ He tried smiling again.

  Kay stared at him. She wasn’t sure she could speak even if she wanted to. Her throat felt as if it had suddenly been transformed into a brown paper bag.

  ‘It’s just that that tooth is extremely important to my career prospects,’ Will said, nodding. ‘If I don’t bring it back to my boss, I might get, you know, laid off.’ He shook his head. ‘And then what would I do? Freelance fabling? Not a good line of work,’ he went on, pausing with two very angular, narrow eyebrows raised. ‘Ethically very dubious.’

  ‘Will.’ Flip looked up from his papers with a desperate blankness. ‘They’re not all here. The papers. The order sheet. There’s another page. Look – here, at the bottom … it says, page eighteen of nineteen, and then that’s it, that’s the last sheet. So there’s another one. Where is the last sheet, Will? Will, tell me you have the last sheet.’ Flip had moved quickly over to the bed, and in a frenzied haste was digging his hands on either side into Will’s cloak pockets.

  Will, who had stood up slightly stiffly with a sort of doomed but resigned look on a face that now looked lined and haggard, was shoving his own hands deep into other pockets. Kay could hear the chink of metal and the rustle of paper, and many other strange noises besides as the four hands groped around inside more pockets than she could keep track of; pockets that seemed to dive well beyond the depth of a standard lining.

  Flip was in up to his elbows when Will sudde
nly brightened. ‘Here, I think I’ve got it.’

  It was a piece of paper folded up very bulkily into a small square. In the dim light Will began gingerly to unpick it from its various tucks and creases.

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember now,’ he said as he undid the last fold and tried to flatten it out against the side of Kay’s bed, gently stretching along the creases. ‘I had a terrible sneezing fit just as Ghast gave me the order, and –’

  ‘I’ll have that,’ Flip broke in as he swiped the paper impatiently from Will’s hand and began to read.

  Will made a face at Kay that seemed to say, Yuck. She almost giggled.

  ‘Oh no. No – for the love of all that follows, no. Will, you really are a walking disaster.’

  With a quick snatch of her left hand Kay grabbed the corner of her duvet and drew it up over her knees and around her shoulders. The air in the room had become uncomfortably cold, and the curtain continued to flutter with the light breeze outside. She huddled in the top corner of her bed and flexed her right fist behind her, feeling the edges of her father’s tooth in her palm. That hand was clammily hot; the rest of her body, by contrast, was freezing. The cold would be sure to wake Ell, she thought, for Ell was a light sleeper at the best of times. Will had gone back to watching her intently – or, rather, watching intently that part of her right arm that disappeared behind her back – while Flip kept up his agitated reading and muttering.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Flip said with a sigh, looking up. Kay saw the same angular face, the same high brows, the same strange gaze. ‘I’d better read it to you in full.’

  ‘If it means Ghast is going to dazzle me with his nasal musculature, I’d really rather you didn’t.’ Will laid his right cheek gently on the mattress and closed his left eye. Kay noticed how, although his brows were black, his hair shone a silvery white in the low light from Flip’s torch.

  ‘No, I’m afraid you have to hear this. It’s an order proviso, double-underlined, at the foot of the inventory. It’s in Ghast’s own hand. Note, it says. Domestic removal must be performed while the subject’s family is off the premises. Under no circumstances attempt to capture subject or movables in their presence. Do not approach them, even in their sleep. Did you hear that, Will? We’re not even supposed to be here. Oh, for the love of the nine sisters, I can’t believe this.’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘But there’s more. This is the best bit. You’re going to love this,’ he said, looking up with an expression that seemed to suggest anything but love, and stared at Will’s hunched back. ‘Subject’s daughter is an author. She’s not a witness, you unplottable oaf, she’s an author.’

  Only then, when he stopped speaking, did Kay realize that Will had begun quietly humming to himself – a quick, zippy sort of song. But he stopped at those last words, and there was total silence in the room. Not even the garden’s evergreen boughs stirred in this void.

  ‘An author,’ Flip repeated quietly, and his arm fell to his side, and the torch drooped until its beam shone directly, and very brightly, on the tiny patch of carpet in front of his left knee. Kay was relieved to find herself back in the anonymity of near darkness. Her heart had stopped racing now, and the violent trembling that had made her gather up her duvet had subsided. She thought, as she suddenly found herself swallowing easily and clearing the lump in her throat, that she could speak. So she did.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. And, more timidly, ‘Who are you?’

  Will propped his chin back up on the mattress and opened his eye, staring directly into her face from the gloom. His iris looked a deep and inexhaustible grey, and in this light the crow’s feet opening into his cheeks seemed to gape like cracks.

  Those cracks. Kay was scared she might fall into one of them. ‘And what do you mean, I’m an author, please?’

  ‘We’re going to have to tell her everything,’ Will said to Flip as he continued to regard her carefully but kindly. And then, after a pause, very softly, he said, ‘An author. I never thought I would see another author.’

  Flip, who had been kneeling bowed on the floor, stood up slowly, as if he were extraordinarily tired. He lifted the torch, throwing light again around the room, and Kay watched him carefully as he turned and, though still slightly stooped, lifted his shoulders to their full height. He passed the torch to his right hand, came up beside Will, put his left arm over his shoulder and then lifted the torch up on to the top bunk, resting it on the bottom corner of the duvet, pointing towards the back wall.

  ‘I’m Flip,’ he said, ‘and this is Will. We’re wraiths.’

  Kay stared at them, then tried swallowing again.

  ‘I knew that much,’ she said. They both started. ‘Your names, I mean. It’s because I woke up when you were coming up the roof. I heard what you were saying,’ she explained. ‘But I don’t understand what you’re doing here, or why you left me this card, or why you want my father’s tooth. Or anything. And I wish you would close the window before Ell and I catch cold.’ With her left hand she handed Will the card as Flip ducked behind him to pull the window shut.

  ‘Flip, we should do this introduction properly,’ Will said. Flip nodded slowly with his lips pursed pensively together. ‘It’s like this,’ Will went on. ‘I’m Will O. de Wisp, wraith and removals man, Fellow of the Honourable Society of Wraiths and Phantasms.’ He stepped back and bowed. ‘This is my friend Flip Gibbet, also of the Honourable Society and, well, also in removals. We’ve got an order here from the Sergeant of the Honourable Society to remove your father; an order that comes directly from the top. We started the job this morning and finished with the movables this evening, but we neglected to collect one item – the tooth I think you are hiding in your fist back there – so we had to come back before we could submit for completion. Now, normally we wouldn’t have had any trouble with this whatsoever, but seeing as you’re an author …’ He stumbled over this again, and for a moment breathed quickly. ‘As you’re an author,’ he repeated, ‘you overheard us and woke up and got involved, and, well, now we have to deal with you.’

  Kay looked at Flip, who was nodding slightly, his head tilted to his shoulder. Suddenly he seemed to have thought of or remembered something, and he reached quickly into one of his cloak pockets.

  ‘I’m sure I’ve got one somewhere,’ he said. And then he pulled out a black eyepatch like a pirate’s, and held it out to her. ‘You might be needing this for a short while, just till your eyes get used to it. It could be easier on the cheeks.’

  Leaning forward slightly, Kay took it carefully from him, only to draw quickly back again to pin her right arm against the wall. Settled, she looked at the patch in her hand, where it lay like a dark blot in the darker darkness.

  ‘Will,’ said Flip. ‘Something tells me this one isn’t going to need a patch.’

  Will hadn’t shifted or broken Kay’s gaze, but suddenly he seemed to be staring into her eyes as if she were the dawn and he had waited all night to see her rise.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. Keep the patch if you like, but for now, try opening your eyes. Just –’ and here he folded his arms up and across his chest, then spread them out like a flower blooming, to take in the whole of the dark room around them – ‘just try to keep looking at the world lightly. Or don’t try – just let it happen. See with two eyes as if they were one.’

  Kay let her lids fall gently closed, relaxing all the muscles in her face. It was such a relief that it almost hurt. She thought maybe the wraiths might try to steal the tooth while her eyes were shut, that it was all a ruse. For a second she tensed. But the lightness in her face was too great a pleasure to be surrendered. Lightly. She opened her eyes.

  The wraiths were still there. Kay’s lids blinked fast as a butterfly.

  ‘Now you’re practically one of us,’ said Will. And then, his face changing, he added hurriedly, ‘Ma’am.’

  Kay stared stupidly back at them, not sure what to say. Her mother was always telling her to be frank, and never to use two w
ords where she could make herself understood with one. She cut to the chase.

  ‘What do you mean, you have to deal with me? Why do you want my tooth? Where have you put my father?’

  Flip answered this time. ‘Well – ma’am,’ he said, looking quickly – and was it questioningly? – at Will, ‘it’s as my colleague says. We had an order to remove your father, and we did; and when you remove someone, you also have to take all the movables, the things, associated with that person, so that no trace of them survives in the place from which they have been removed. Otherwise they go on – well, you just do. And we have a complete inventory of his movables –’ here he held up the first eighteen pages of the order sheet he had studied so carefully – ‘but my esteemed partner here –’ and here he turned pointedly, at very close range, to Will, and clownishly stuck out the tip of his tongue – ‘managed to miss one item – the tooth – during completion this afternoon. So here we are.’

  They were clearly not used to explaining themselves, Kay thought. She noticed that she had relaxed her grip a bit on the duvet and she shifted her weight slightly to make herself more comfortable. She sat up a bit higher.

  ‘It’s not every day,’ Flip went on, ‘that a wraith runs into a witness while on a job, but when it happens – it happened, you know, to my cousin Hinkypunk just last year,’ he said, turning to Will, who nodded vigorously and with great compassion. ‘Well, when it happens, you have to remove the witness, too. Then the Sergeant settles it.’