by James Erith
‘That was luck, Archie,’ Isabella shot back. ‘Pure luck. I can spell it for you if you want.’
‘No, it wasn’t—’
Isabella shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand which bit of the last day you think wasn’t.’
‘That’s ridiculous, you know what happened – you were there!’ Archie said.
‘Yes, of course I was. But there’s no reasonable, logical explanation for it, is there? No truth.’ She washed her dish, placed it in the rack to the side and dried her hands on a tea towel. ‘To be honest, I’m not even sure it happened.’
‘What?’
‘It’s an illusion, Archie,’ she said staring at their shocked faces. ‘Hasn’t it crossed either of your tiny minds that what happened might not have actually happened? That it’s entirely a figment of our imagination.’
‘Rubbish—’
‘Guys, seriously.’ Isabella smiled. ‘It might have been a drug – or the vapours from the storm glass I made that led us, unwittingly, to imagine it.’
Archie shook his head. He could feel his hair turning steely. ‘OK. Let’s talk about the storm glass, Bells. When it blew up, you thought it was important enough to go off to see the headmaster, didn’t you? And blocking a lightning bolt and getting holes in your hands isn’t simply a matter of luck. Look at my head and Daisy’s eyes. I don’t remember the cave being imaginary – do you, Daisy?’
Daisy shook her head. ‘Nope. Nor the fact that the flooding stopped when Archie said it would.’
‘Or a Jacuzzi that miraculously healed us—’
‘And that I can hear lightning forming,’ Daisy added, ‘and see stuff you can’t, and you can run up two hundred and twenty-two steps in the time it took me to go an eighth of the way. And, let’s not forget, that you also repelled lightning.’
Isabella had been dreading this conversation. Her features darkened. ‘These freaky things,’ she said as she whirled her arms in their direction, ‘can be explained by science. I’ll grant you, there may be some scientific wonders we experienced that aren’t known as yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Very soon, everything that happened to us will be seen as perfectly normal.’
‘Bullshit,’ Daisy said. ‘That’s utter rubbish.’
‘No, it isn’t, Daisy. Your hearing of strange, acute things must be something to do with heightened vibrations in your ear drum. Your hair, Archie, or wire or whatever you want to call it, must be an amalgamation of the electrical particles and the chemical atoms of the leather or rubber of the football combined with the huge voltage of electricity that narrowly missed you, and my hands – well, that’s simple. It must be related to the anti-lightning conductor I made with Sue in the lab shortly before the football game.’ She smiled triumphantly at them. ‘So no, it isn’t some kind of hocus-pocus weird dream magic as you’re suggesting.’
‘But Bells,’ Archie fumed, ‘look outside at the wreckage. The whole country has been utterly mangled. You – YOU dreamt about it—’
‘Listen, Archie. It was a once-in-a-lifetime storm. They happen. Globally, big floods really do occur. America, Pakistan, Australia, China; they have massive meteorological activity just like this. It’s quite possible that we somehow sensed it in our dreams – and remember, twins, these are only dreams. DREAMS for goodness’ sakes. And dreams tell you what you fear, so it was perfectly natural for me, as a scientist, to make the connection.’ She smiled at their furious faces, but her eyes were hard. ‘It’s your subconscious playing games with you, mucking about inside your head, telling you things—’
‘So how come,’ Daisy butted in, ‘we saw the same things—?’
Isabella sat down. Her eyes sparkled. ‘Because people dream about the same things all the time. Dreams repeat themselves time and time again like … like songs on the radio. Why do you think there are hundreds of books on dream interpretation?’ she offered the question to the table. No one replied. ‘It’s because people have the same kind of dreams every single day, that’s why.’
A silence descended. Isabella looked from one twin to the other.
‘The trouble is, Bells,’ Daisy said quietly, ‘that no one knows what dreams are actually for – it’s unclear what the purpose of dreaming really is.’
Isabella scoffed.
Daisy ignored her. ‘Dream scientists who map our subconscious and study sleeping patterns and REM come to only broad conclusions because, hard as they try, they don’t know why we dream.’ She looked from one to the other. ‘So it may be possible that our dreams have a purpose.’ She slipped her pink glasses on and raised an eyebrow.
‘Oh, how awfully clever, Daisy,’ Isabella spat. ‘Suddenly you’re an authority, are you?’
Daisy stood up and fixed her with an icy stare. ‘Yes. I looked it up on the INTERNET. Do your own research.’
The girls eyeballed each other across the table.
‘In any case,’ Daisy said running her hands through her hair and puffing her cheeks out, ‘I simply can’t understand that you have the inability to link the dreams we’ve had about a storm, finding stuff and the murder of an old woman, with the pictures in the cave which quite clearly showed the first part of that exact same sequence.’
Isabella chortled. ‘You’re talking about those cave paintings?’
‘Yeah, Einstein. Of course I am,’ Daisy said.
‘OMG. How typical, how cute that you managed to find a story in them. I hardly looked at those stupid pictures—’
‘They were NOT stupid—’
‘Oh, how sweet of you to think they had meaning,’ Isabella responded. ‘Of course they were cave-man scribbles! How dumb can you get? You honestly think you can derive a story, a narrative, from them? They could be interpreted in any number of ways—’
‘Really?’ Daisy snapped. ‘If you’d actually bothered to study them, you would have seen our dreams drawn out perfectly—’
‘And,’ Archie added, ‘it showed us with our odd features—’
‘And the Ancient Woman,’ Daisy said.
‘And the flood—’
‘STOP IT!’ Isabella screamed. ‘STOP IT!’ She hid her face behind her hands, her hair hanging like a veil over them. ‘Stop going on at me,’ she sobbed. ‘Why are you two always having a go at me—’
‘We’re not—’
‘Yes you are! Ganging up like … like Ant and Dec.’
Archie and Daisy exchanged glances. ‘Ant and Dec don’t gang up on anyone.’
Isabella flapped her arms about. ‘... Thinking how funny you are all the time.’ She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Do you have any idea what it’s like picking up the pieces after you two,’ she raged, ‘covering your backs?’
Isabella stood up, picked up her chair and threw it in the corner. ‘None of this makes any bloody sense,’ she yelled. She turned on Archie. ‘God, look at you,’ she seethed. ‘You’re a mess, and you,’ she said, directing her ire at Daisy, ‘are a stupid, idiotic tart. And you’re thick. You’re no better than that oaf, Kemp.’
She picked up a glass and, for a moment, Archie thought she was going to throw it at one of them. Instead, she slammed it down, turned, and stormed out of the room.
FIFTY-FIVE
A PROBLEM OF DIET
Kemp detected another surge of Cain’s energy tugging on his tendons and yanking at his muscles, threading into the fibres of his body. The heat radiated from the nerve endings of his fingers down to the tips of his toenails.
Kemp shrieked as it hit him harder, forcing him out of his slumber, heat blasting over him as if he’d been tossed into a bath full of scalding water, burning him.
Why wouldn’t Cain let him be? Did he have any idea of the damage he was doing?
Today, after another short sleep, he woke up so weak that putting one leg ahead of the other was like wading through treacle. Tiny morsels of food and little or no water had passed into his stomach the entire time he’d been within Cain – nearly two days. It felt like a month. Ke
mp seriously doubted that the excuse for water really was water. It had the texture of slime and the smell of sulphur, like chemically manufactured eggy farts.
Every time he ate, and he tried everything, he spewed it back out.
Kemp stared at the breakfast – foodstuffs like nothing he’d ever seen before; slug-like creatures that wriggled, foul stinking jelly and cakes consisting of insects and flies; foods he did not recognise. Desperate for something, Kemp picked up a slippery purple ball. He could hardly bear to think about it. He shut his eyes and put it in his mouth. It tasted like tapioca with an outer shell as gritty as bark. His stomach heaved. He tried another – a thin hard-backed slice of cake with a soft gooey centre that smelt of oil. He put it towards his mouth. The odour was too awful. He shoved it in and chewed with his half teeth.
‘… why … eat … slowly?’ Kemp heard every second or third word, muffled, but he had no way of responding.
‘Come … much … … little time … world … … genetically useless … to sort … hurry …’
Was Cain talking to him again, urging him on?
Kemp chewed as best as he could. As he ground the cake between his teeth, a liquid suddenly burst out of the bark and flooded his mouth. He involuntarily vomited.
Kemp’s swollen stomach gave a sharp pain, like the tip of a wooden stake jabbing his gut. His legs felt like lead weights. His head throbbed.
Kemp knew that his body was failing, as if his body wasn’t even there. The pain of the burning seared him as if being sizzled in a frying pan and now his strength had gone, every last bit of it.
He stumbled and fell.
Then only blackness.
CAIN’S ashen exterior struck the floor and a large plume of ash soared into the air.
‘What now?!’ Cain screamed. ‘There’s something wrong, I cannot feel the boy,’ he yelled. ‘Schmerger, Schmerger – where are you?’
Cain’s chief of staff arrived. ‘You called, Master?’
‘This damnable boy is not working,’ Cain said from his position within the ashen body prostrate on the floor. ‘Do you think he does it purposefully? Does he do it to spite me?’
Schmerger made his way over to the bundle of ash, grabbed what he hoped was an arm and manoeuvred the ashen bundle into a chair. Stepping back, the servant coughed and dusted himself down. ‘I am unsure as to how you mean to continue your relations with the being.’
‘What are you talking about, Schmerger?’
‘It appears the boy may have requirements of which, sire, we are unaware. Can you feel if the boy is alive within you or dead?’
‘I am unsure,’ Cain replied, checking his limbs.
Schmerger rubbed his long black beard. ‘How does your relationship with the boy work?’
‘Work?’ Cain said.
‘sire, I need to understand how the boy operates. It has come to my attention that he has barely ingested any of the food I have laid out for him. Maybe these humans do not eat what we eat. Or it might be that he requires another source of energy? All living things must feed to create energy, sire. Or they fail.’
In his excitement Cain hadn’t stopped to think this through. ‘Then we must find out – and soon – for having this being within me is an absolute wonder, Schmerger. You have no idea – I must make it work. I have no magic, not yet at least, for I do not have eyeballs, but at long last I can see and my presence is as real as any other being. Do you have any idea how invigorating it is after so long?’
Schmerger was astonished by recent events. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that Cain would in some way come alive. And now he sensed the power of the man, the presence, the aura that once surrounded him. He now understood the stories that had been passed down by his ancestors, of Cain’s imperious majesty and power.
Cain hadn’t seen his palaces, his lands or the seas or the mountains for thousands of years. Even when he left the great palace for months at a time, roaming the lands of Havilah in his invisible form, he would return and continue searching for his branchwand. The branchwand which Cain believed might return a fragment of that old power.
Now that Cain had stumbled upon the boy, an energy and purpose had returned to his master that was both thrilling and awesome. And his futile, eternal search for his branchwand had been put on hold.
When Schmerger told his family of Cain’s newfound body, they had told their friends who had told their friends and so on. Before long, the news spread across the planet of Havilah that Cain was back.
A sense grew that this strange ruler of theirs, dormant for so many thousands of years, might finally help them. Schmerger wondered if it was fate. The people on Havilah had been weakening for some time, rife with disease and illness, and it wasn’t because of anything particularly different, more that their bodies hadn’t been able to modify, to change or evolve, since Cain’s disappearance.
Havilah, once the melting pot of all the worlds, a hubbub of liveliness, a place where vices were ignored and ruthlessness admired and riches abounded, now groaned in collective decay, a land slipping into waste.
‘I’ve had the boy two days and now he is collapsing. What is wrong?’ Cain asked. ‘Why is Havilah failing? Why do the people here wallow in pity, why is there no life, no zest?’
Schmerger wondered if, like all the inhabitants of Havilah, this boy from Earth bore their sickness. He moved closer, inspecting the pile of ash. ‘My Lord, this is a most unusual situation—’
‘Of course it is, you fool,’ Cain snapped. ‘And I employ you to look after my unusual situations. How can I restore Havilah if the boy is faulty?’
Schmerger knew to tread carefully. ‘The boy is made of flesh and blood? A human—’
‘Of course.’
‘Then perhaps he requires a diet to fit mankind?’
Cain was amazed he hadn’t thought of this before. ‘Of course! You’re right. Just because I have no need of sustenance … what is the diet of man, Schmerger?’
‘Our insect and fungus diet is not suitable, that is plain to see.’
‘Obviously, you idiot. The boy needs earthly foods – where are they? He needs them NOW.’
Cain detected a faint glow of the body he had taken over. ‘It is weak,’ Cain said quietly as a terrible feeling washed over him. ‘If the boy fails …’
‘Surely you can remove yourself?’ Schmerger asked.
‘Indeed I can – and go back to how I was. But it is not good enough. No! I need a body that will willingly be a part of me. Understand this, Schmerger. It may not happen again. If I were to release the boy and he recovers, would he give himself to me again freely?’
Cain realised he had been reckless. He needed to act quickly.
Schmerger looked on anxiously. ‘Is there anyone we can contact as to the boy’s health?’
Cain thought for a minute. ‘Do humans live here in Havilah?’
‘There are some in the caves, but they are the old type,’ Schmerger replied. ‘Ancestors of the early people, from whom we are all derived. They are troublesome and barbaric – I am not sure they would help.’
Cain groaned. ‘Who else?’
‘Perhaps you could return him to Earth, sire, in the manner by which you arrived, through … a creature?’
‘Alas, servant,’ Cain said, ‘Asgard the dreamspinner is reluctant for me to use his maghole as transportation until our plan is complete.’
Schmerger stroked his long black beard, contemplating the situation. Suddenly a light sparkled in his eyes. ‘As a spirit, sire, a ghost, you are part of another world. You might summon a human spirit to advise you—’
‘Yes,’ Cain said, as the idea sunk in. ‘Brilliant, Schmerger. Of course. But who?’
‘A spirit connected with him, one of his ancestors. Humans die so young there must be many.’
Cain sat and thought. ‘You’re right, humans have a bond like no other. I will call for them, Schmerger. You may live another day but be warned, you should not be here when they arrive.’
>
Every day since he’d returned, Cain had threatened to kill him, part of the job, he suspected, but Schmerger partially heeded his master’s advice, turned and walked to the door where he waited. If it got bad, he would leave.
The room fell into silence. Cain began chanting, his voice calling out into the universe.
‘SPIRITS AWAKEN, spirits come near.
Spirits come close you have nothing to fear.
I call to those who connect with this boy.’
HE STOPPED AND WAITED.
‘O SPIRITS from the reaches of time and of space,
Come hither to connect with me here in this place.’
SCHMERGER TREMBLED as he felt a wind envelop him. He hated it when Cain joined his ghostly companions. He looked about, but there was nothing to see. But Cain looked upon a host of Kemp’s family whooshing in and around the building.
‘Spirits of this boy,’ Cain called out, ‘I call upon you as a spirit myself. I cannot ascend into the sky or feel the land but I will always live. This child of man, your relative on Earth, willingly joined with me and in return I have saved him from the great tempest on that planet.’ Cain looked up at the spirits who floated round him. What an ugly bunch, Cain thought, with matted ginger hair, thrusting chins and thick red lips sweeping around the room.
‘The boy is failing fast. I have fed and watered him, but I did not understand his needs,’ he called out. ‘The child requires your help. I call on the newest of you to reveal yourselves now.’
In an instant, a silvery, opaque-looking man appeared, kneeling in front of them.
Cain noted the spirit’s sadness – his youthful, bent head, his mournful face. ‘Thank you. And you are …’
‘I am the spirit of the boy’s father,’ he said, his voice deep and blowy like the wind.
The boy must have lost his father young, Cain thought. ‘There is no more ideal person to help, other than a mother.’
‘Indeed,’ said the ghost. ‘His mother lives, though she knows not of her child. I was taken when our son was an infant. We were together in an accident ...’ the voice tapered off.