Werewolf Parallel

by Roy Gill

  Cameron woke, drenched in sweat. All at once he knew where he’d been: the beach at Weymss where they’d found his dad. He tried to sit up, and found the bedsheets had wound themselves into a knot around his legs. His feet fizzed with pins and needles. He shook them free, drew his knees up to his chest, and hugged himself.

  Cameron had dreamt a lot about his dad since he’d died. Those dreams were usually vague and sad, but this one seemed so real. He could still half smell the sour and salty air in his nostrils…

  Don’t think about it. He forced himself to lie back down. From his pillow, he could see 01.24 in blue glowing numbers on his mobile. There was still an awful lot of night to go. He reached for his headphones, but of course they weren’t there. His mini-system was stranded on a table by the window, near the only free socket. When he’d moved in, Grandma Ives had given him this huge upstairs room to himself. Unlike the ordered neatness of the rest of her house, it was clear she’d been using it for storage. There were boxes and books piled on every surface. He’d even found a stuffed mongoose – its furry limbs raised up, ready to pounce – lurking in the clutter on top of the bed.

  “That’s Monty,” Grandma Ives had explained. “Came from India. He’s been in the house for years and I can’t bring myself to throw him away. You don’t mind sharing?”

  Cameron had examined the dead animal’s glassy eyes and yellow teeth. “I’ll cope. As long as he doesn’t bite.”

  “You’re quite safe, unless you’re a snake.” She put the mongoose on top of a bureau, and Cameron later chucked a T-shirt over it. It snagged on the creature’s claws, but at least he didn’t have to look at it.

  “It’ll take us a while to sort things out,” Grandma Ives had said, “but I hope we’ll find a way for you to be happy here.”

  Over the course of the first week, they’d set to and cleared the room. Bit by bit Grandma Ives’ junk went out, and Cameron’s things moved in. Bags and boxes of CDs, books and clothes arrived, and his posters were stuck up over the old flowery wallpaper. His dad’s PC sat in the corner, gathering dust. It was doubly useless now, as Grandma Ives didn’t show any signs of getting broadband. There were still tons of things back at the old house, his dad’s stuff mainly. But Grandma Ives said that was a problem for another day.

  Cameron turned over in bed. His mouth was dry, and every time he closed his eyes he had the feeling he was going to end up dreaming about the beach again. He decided to get up and get a glass of water. He swung himself from the bed, and grabbed a sweatshirt off the back of a chair.

  Downstairs the kitchen light was on. Grandma Ives was up too. The old woman was wrapped in a green velvet dressing gown, her hair hanging loose about her shoulders in long silver strands. She was shaking flour into a large mixing bowl on the table.

  Cameron didn’t know where to look. This was nothing like him and his dad in their T-shirts on a weekend morning, grunting at each other over their teacups and cereal bowls. He turned to go, but she’d already seen him.

  “Good evening, Cameron. Or should I say good morning? What brings you down here?”

  “I need a glass of water.”

  “Well, help yourself. There’s cocoa on the shelf if you prefer. I find it calming after bad dreams.”

  “Who said I had bad dreams?” A flush of anger ran through him. If anyone was to blame for his nightmare it was her, with her mad outrageous promise of bringing Dad back. She’d clammed up after he’d agreed to her plan, but the idea had been festering away at the back of his mind. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could easily forget.

  “I just want a drink, that’s all. I’ll get it and go.”

  “Bad dreams wouldn’t be unusual, given what you’ve gone through.” She held out her hands in a calming gesture. “That was all I meant.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. Cameron sipped his water and watched as she began to stir the mixture in the basin.

  “What are you doing?” he said eventually.

  “I’m making dough for bread. I suffer from sleepless nights too. A little activity helps me relax.” She held out the wooden spoon to him and smiled. “You could stir this for me, if you like.”

  “I guess.” Cameron took the spoon. It wasn’t like he was in a hurry to go back upstairs anyway.

  “I don’t usually have a helper for my nocturnal bakery.” Grandma Ives collected a wooden board from the cupboard and began to cover it with flour. “Would you like a story, to help time pass?”

  “If you want to,” he said guardedly. “Don’t you think I’m a bit old for bedtime stories?”

  “Oh, this story won’t send you to sleep, far from it. It has a little to do with our earlier conversation. Shall I begin?”

  Cameron shrugged.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Grandma Ives tipped the dough onto the board, and as she told her story, she began to knead. “The last trial for witchcraft was in 1727, did you know that?”

  He shook his head, a little surprised at her choice of subject. Did she really think talk about witches was going to cure his insomnia?

  “It’s more recent than people think,” the old lady continued. “Not long after, all of Europe began to look to Scotland and to Edinburgh for inspiration. There were new ideas about science, about philosophy, about engines for movement, about how the Earth came into being. They said it was a period of enlightenment, and superstition and the old belief in magic began to recede. Why do you think that might be?”

  “I thought this was a story, not a history lesson,” Cameron grumbled.

  “It’s always good to ask questions, Cameron. That’s how you find out how stories work.”

  Cameron rubbed his eyes and reluctantly engaged his brain. “Ok. When you’re a kid, you believe in things like the tooth fairy and Santa and monsters under the bed. But when you get older, you stop. You realise they’re made up. Maybe that’s what happened? People just sort of grew up.”

  “Good thinking. Completely wrong, of course, but nicely reasoned. How about this… Perhaps it wasn’t the people that changed. Perhaps it was the world?” She gave Cameron a very direct look.

  “Go on.” He folded his arms across his chest. “You’re not boring me.”

  “I’m so pleased.” Grandma Ives attacked the dough with renewed vigour. “There was once a great and powerful man called Alexander Mitchell. You won’t find him in the official history books. His family had for years held great power in their hands, both in this world and in the daemon world beyond—”

  “The daemon world?”

  “Where dwell those creatures that are not man, no nor angel either,” she recited. “Where do you think the monsters people used to believe in came from?”

  “Ri-ight.” Cameron had the distinct impression this conversation was running away from him. “And this daemon world would be where exactly?”

  Grandma Ives took her hands from the dough, rinsed them, and plucked some fruit from a tray on the counter. She set an orange on the table in front of Cameron.

  “Imagine the Earth as a spinning sphere.” She added an apple, right next to the orange. “Imagine the daemon world as another sphere, occupying a fractionally different space.” She walked her fingertips from the top of the orange across to the apple. “The two were so close, at times you could step from one to the other.”

  “But the world’s not really like that,” said Cameron dubiously.

  “Oh? And how do you know that?”

  “There’ve been spaceships up there. Satellites take pictures all the time. We’d know if there was another world nearby.”

  Grandma Ives sighed. “Lower your head, so your chin touches the table.”

  “Why?”

  “Indulge me.”

  Feeling a little daft, Cameron did as he was asked.

  “How many fruits can you see?”

  “Two.” The orange looked large and juicy, right before his nose. She lifted the apple, and put it directly behind the orange.

  “And now how
many?”

  “Just one.”

  “Which is what your rocket-ships and sputniks would see: the Earth alone in outer space.”

  “But I know the apple’s still there!” he said stubbornly. “You’ve just hidden it.”

  “Just as I know the daemon world exists alongside ours.” She stuck a finger under his chin and lifted it up. “You simply need the right perspective to see it.”

  Cameron glowered, and rubbed flour from his neck. “That’s not fair.”

  “Life rarely is.” She returned to kneading her dough. “Alexander Mitchell – of whom I was about to speak – didn’t care for the idea of dual human and daemon worlds at all. Far from being part of the natural order, he believed the daemon world was exerting a corrupting influence on its partner. He reasoned that if there was some way to free us from it permanently, we could evolve along a uniquely human path of science and rationality, and leave the dark days of magic well behind.

  “Over in the daemon world, a mage called Astredo had been plotting along similar lines. He believed daemonkind would flourish best in a world of magic alone, untainted by man’s ideas. Together, Mitchell and Astredo contrived a plan to separate the worlds.”

  “But if they’d always been so close,” said Cameron, toying with the orange, “wouldn’t that be really dangerous?”

  “Insanely, stupidly so,” agreed Grandma Ives.

  “So how were they going to do it, this mad plan of theirs?”

  “They used their dark skills to find a fissure point, a magical fault line where the connection between the worlds was weak. By exerting enough force, they hoped to separate the worlds entirely. Mitchell’s fissure point was right here in Edinburgh, above Salisbury Crags on Arthur’s Seat.”

  Cameron knew those hills. “Arthur’s Seat used to be a volcano, didn’t it? Millions of years ago.”

  Grandma Ives nodded. “Whatever subterranean clash threw it from the Earth also uncovered the fault line the conspirators would exploit. With Astredo and his coven ready to channel their power from the daemon world, Mitchell called together his followers. It was a dreadful night, the sky black and moonless, and the wind howling around the cliffs. The men clutched their hats to their heads, and the women wrapped their shawls tightly. The air was so cold it chilled you to the bone.”

  Cameron shot the old lady a quizzical glance. “You sound like you remember it…”

  “Cameron Duffy, I may be a little past my prime, but really! Now, where was I?”

  “On the crags,” he prompted. Grandma Ives was giving a great performance, her eyes flicking round the room, and her floury fingers gesturing as she brought the story to life.

  “Now, as the two covens focussed their magic, the tortured worlds screamed out their protest. The covens pushed and pushed, but no matter how much power they threw in, the worlds resisted. Rather than the clean separation they hoped for, they merely forced open a rift: a howling void neither of one place nor the other.

  “When Mitchell’s coven saw the terrible void they’d created, their confidence left them. One by one, their nerves broke, and they fled screaming into the night. Mitchell tried to hold on, but he didn’t have the strength. He was sucked into the rift, and it swirled closed behind him. We can only assume a similar fate befell Astredo, for neither of them have been seen alive since.”

  Cameron realised he’d been holding his breath, and slowly let it out. He could almost feel the chill of the storm-swept hillside, and see Mitchell’s terrified followers running away, leaving him alone to be drawn helplessly into the void. “So what happened next?”

  “Well, for a start, movement between the worlds became a lot rarer. The daemon world’s influence on ours began to decline, if not as completely as Mitchell might have hoped…”

  “And that’s when all those new ideas about science and engines and so on started to happen.” Cameron began to understand. “From then on, there were no more goblins, witches and ghosts for us.”

  “Fewer, certainly.” Grandma Ives nodded with approval. “Most of the old magic left the human world that night, leaving behind only the occasional pale glimmer that leaks across the gap. In time, people found other things to be scared of.”

  Cameron thought about the TV news. It was full of terrorists and pollution, bank crashes and job losses. Nobody had time to care about proper monsters any more.

  “The story’s not over though, is it? What about the void? Is it still there?”

  “Do you know the expression, ‘nature abhors a vacuum’?”

  “Yeah, I think.” Cameron racked his brains. “We did something about it in school. It means empty spaces aren’t normal, doesn’t it? Amy kidded on she thought it was something to do with Hoovers.”

  “Amy sounds like an amusing girl. Remind me to ask her to dinner,” said Grandma Ives, her eyebrow raised. “Yes, that’s what it means. The gap that opened up couldn’t remain empty forever. It had to be filled.”

  “What with?”

  “Whatever it could draw into itself. It snatched echoes, and stole distorted reflections from the worlds it bordered. It fed on memories of leftover places that were knocked down or forgotten. All the old creatures and things otherwise lost to time found a new home there. Slowly the in-between place became a mixture of human Edinburgh and daemon Edinburgh, all churned up into one. It is the route by which those who still can pass between the worlds. It’s a wonderful place in its own right.”

  “Those who still can. But who are they, exactly? Who do you mean?” Cameron gripped the table.

  Grandma Ives gave him a half-smile. “Are you sure you don’t know?”

  “Tell me.”

  “The people who were in Mitchell’s coven that night – some went mad, some became mystics, some never spoke of it again – but they all shared one thing. That little glimpse they had of the void changed them. From that moment on, they always knew how to find their way back, to pass into the in-between place, and to use it. Their children had the gift too, and their children’s children, and so on, right down to the present day. People like you and me, Cameron. People like your father, although he never wanted to admit it.”

  Cameron stared at her. “But I’m normal. I’ve never seen anything mad like that. I’ve never been anywhere but here.”

  “Perhaps. But that might not always be the case.”

  Grandma Ives lifted the dough, and smoothed it out into a tin she took from the cupboard. “This can rest for a while, and in the morning I’ll bake the bread.” She stretched her fingers. “I’m quite tired after that little workout. I think I shall sleep well.”

  “You can’t go to bed now! You need to tell me more!” Cameron protested.

  Grandma Ives leant forward and kissed him gently on the forehead. “There’ll be time enough tomorrow, Cameron.”

  “But…”

  “Turn the light out when you go up.”

  She swept out, leaving him in the cold kitchen with his long-forgotten glass of water, very much awake.

  3. A Shop in Two Places

  Cameron woke up full of questions, but when he went downstairs to speak to the old lady, he found a note stuck to the fridge:

  Cameron,

  I have some business to attend to, but I’ll be back by lunchtime. Could you pick up some milk for the cat? You’ll find some change in the kitchen drawer and a door key on the dresser. It’s about time you had your own.

  Go out the door, down the hill, and turn left. Keep going until you see a sign marked “Montmorency”. You can’t miss it.

  Grandma Ives

  Cameron picked up the key. How come he’d never seen the cat? It must be hiding somewhere, still uncertain about this strange new person it was going to have to share its house with… He knew how it felt.

  He grabbed a couple of buttery slices from the still-warm loaf resting on the table, slipped some money into his pocket, and ducked out the front door. Grandma Ives’ house was one of a neat stone-built row that lined the steep road up
to Blackford Hill. An observatory nestled on the hilltop. Cameron set off in the opposite direction. He was in the mood for a walk anyway. It might help clear his head.

  10.45 on a Thursday… If he was back in school, it’d soon be his least favourite time of the week. In fifteen short minutes, his classmates would swap the eggy warmth of the science lab for the changing rooms, and two full hours of P.E. The last Thursday he’d been there, they’d all been sent outdoors for football. He was put in defence as usual, along with the fat kids and the space cadets. Bored of watching the ball roll pointlessly about the field, he’d drifted into a daydream, thinking up a name for the great band he was going to be in, if he ever got it started… The ball went shooting past, straight into goal. He’d not been popular in the changing rooms. Wayne Sneddon had chucked a boot at him, saying he’d find that harder to miss.

  Morons, thought Cameron, trudging down the hill. He’d had nothing but trouble off Sneddon and his mates since he started Cauldlockheart High. Maybe if he didn’t have to see them for a couple more weeks, they’d forget he existed.

  Yeah, that’d be right. He kicked at a discarded Coke can, and watched it go skittering and bouncing down the slope. Grandma Ives hadn’t said anything about him going back yet. She hadn’t even made him do the work he’d been set. The letter she’d written to the headmaster said he was still grieving. Was that true? It wasn’t like he cried all day, or screamed until he had to be slapped, like people did in rubbish old movies. All he had left inside him was this nagging pain that reminded him something important was missing.

  The morning air was cold around his fingers, and he pulled his hands into the cuffs of his sweatshirt. The old woman’s offer to bring back Dad, her tales of a daemon world that existed alongside this one – they had all seemed so believable when it was just him and her. Here and now though, as he slouched down the road for a pint of milk, with his trainers rubbing against his heel because his feet had grown again overnight, it all seemed a bit, well, mad.