Slowly but surely, he’d stopped caring, too. He stopped believing he was doing any good. He stopped thinking of them as pupils and began to think of them as opponents. His job was to make them shut up, learn, and pass their exams. Their job was to stop him.
After a while, they were no longer people. Their names meant nothing. Instead, he labeled them: Quiet, Slow, Bad Attitude, Cocky, Hard Worker. That was all he needed to know. If they did what they were told, he ignored them. If they got out of line, he crushed them.
School was a battlefield. Each new generation thought they knew it all, but they were just rookies in comparison to him. He was the general. They didn’t have a trick he hadn’t seen before.
Mr. Harrison got up and walked across his study to the window, bringing his whisky with him. He sipped it as he looked out at the rain. Maybe he didn’t like Mr. Sutton because Mr. Sutton reminded him of himself. How he used to be, before he’d given up.
As he considered this, his gaze fell on a boy scampering across the grounds in a raincoat, a hood pulled over his head. There was something furtive in the way he ran that pricked Mr. Harrison’s instincts. Whoever that was, he was up to no good.
Then the boy turned his head, and lightning flickered. Inside that hood, Mr. Harrison saw the face of Paul Camber.
Thunder cracked the sky, almost overhead now. Mr. Harrison’s knuckles went white as he gripped harder on his glass. He drained the whisky from it, slammed it down, swept up his coat, and stormed wrathfully out the door.
Rain splattered against Paul’s coat as he hurried across the grass, hunched over against the assault from the sky. Bullying gusts of wind shoved past him and then went whistling away down the valley. His feet sank into the drenched earth; his shoes and trousers were already ruined with mud.
Paul barely noticed. I saw it, he thought. I know I saw it.
He wiped a hand across his face and scanned the campus, eyes sharp and hard beneath his hood. By now he’d strayed off the paths and was surrounded by the furious gloom of the storm. The dorm halls were clusters of lights that hung disembodied in the distance. Behind him, the looming mass of the school building was still visible through the obscuring rain, windows aglow, stone blacker than the dark.
Ahead of him were the woods that surrounded the lake. On the edge of them stood the ruin of the old chapel. The dog had been heading in this direction, and there wasn’t a lot else in this corner of the campus. It had to be nearby, and he was determined to spot it again.
Paul couldn’t have said what it was that had driven him out into the rain. Curiosity? No. There wasn’t much that excited his curiosity these days. It was just that he needed to prove to himself that he hadn’t imagined that silver dog. He needed to know.
Once, he’d believed the world was a sane and ordered place. But that was before his parents vanished, quietly chalked off the planet. After that, nothing made sense anymore.
Mr. Sutton thought there was something wrong with him, for not putting his faith in anything or anyone. But it was everyone else who was crazy, for blindly believing that things would be alright as long as they followed the rules, as long as they just kept on doing whatever they were doing.
That silver dog was proof of the world’s madness. It was an impossible creature, made of metal. He’d seen it. Now he just had to make sure.
Paul headed for the old chapel first. He told himself that it was because the chapel was closest, but the truth was, the woods scared him. They hissed and thrashed in the storm. Anything could be hiding in there.
It had been a big dog, he reminded himself. For the first time, he wondered if it was entirely wise to be out here alone with a creature like that on the loose.
He neared the old chapel, its ghostly broken walls becoming more solid with every step. He stopped and listened in case there was something within, but he could hear nothing over the din of the storm.
A sense of foreboding was gnawing at him. This might be his last chance to turn back and walk away. Better that way, perhaps. Better if he was never sure what he’d seen from the window of his dorm room tonight.
But the hesitation lasted only a moment. He went to a gap in the wall and looked inside.
The ruin was deserted. Just an empty shell of stone.
Paul wasn’t sure if it was relief or disappointment he felt just then. He walked through the gap and into the ancient chapel. The floor had been broken up and consumed by the earth long ago, and now it was covered with a lumpy carpet of mud and grass. There was no longer any roof. Only the half-fallen walls remained, an outline of the building that had once stood here.
Lightning flickered and thunder crashed overhead. Paul pushed back his hood, closed his eyes, and lifted his face to the storm. Chaos. This was the way of the world. Not the calm ease of a sunny day. The driving, switching wind, the ripping violence of thunder, the rain that washed everything away and left the land sparkling and changed.
Bring it on, he thought. Wash it all away.
A heavy hand slapped down on his shoulder, making him jump. He whirled. Hulking in the gloom, like an ogre out of myth, was Mr. Harrison, his face as dark as the clouds.
“Paul Camber!” he roared. “What on earth do you think you’re doing out here?”
Then Paul saw a flash of silver from the corner of his eye, and the dog lunged out of the dark, knocking Mr. Harrison to the ground and pinning him there. Paul stared, too shocked to move, as Mr. Harrison bellowed and struggled beneath its weight. Its snarls sounded unnatural, low growls accompanied by a high-pitched whine like a buzz saw. Mr. Harrison had his arm up in front of him to ward the beast off, and as Paul watched, it dragged its claw along the headmaster’s forearm.
Mr. Harrison’s cry of pain was enough to spur Paul to action. He searched around frantically and saw a rock lying on the ground. He ran over to it and snatched it up. Holding it in his fist, he turned, ready to bring it down on the dog’s rain-slicked back. But by then, Mr. Harrison had already flung his attacker off, and was scrambling away along the ground. Paul found himself looking right into the dog’s eyes as it crouched at bay in the center of the ruin.
His blood slowed to a crawl. For the first time, he got a really good look at the creature he’d seen from his window.
In shape, it resembled a border collie, one of the sheep-herding dogs that farmers used for their flocks in the pastures up the valley. But Paul had never seen a border collie that big, and never one so horrifyingly strange. Most of its body was covered in a silver mesh, hundreds of wiry tendrils that spread unevenly across its skin like some alien form of circuitry. Its hind legs had cables instead of tendons. In some places, there were irregular plates of silvery metal that seemed fused into the flesh beneath.
And yet there was muscle and bone there, too, patches where the silver mesh hadn’t spread, where scrappy tufts of black and white fur were still visible.
Paul might have thought this was some kind of robot, impossible though that was. But now that he really saw it, he knew it wasn’t. This was both flesh and metal, animal and machine.
The creature bared its fangs. Silver fangs. Suddenly the rock in Paul’s hand seemed a pathetic excuse for a weapon.
And then the creature turned and bolted, racing away through one of the gaps in the chapel walls. In an instant, it was gone.
Paul stood where he was, the rock still half raised to strike, his chest rising and falling as he panted in frightened breaths. Then Mr. Harrison gave a strained groan of pain through gritted teeth, and Paul remembered the headmaster. He dropped the rock and ran over to him, crouching down by his side.
“You alright, sir?”
Mr. Harrison was clutching his forearm, wiggling the fingers on his wounded hand. “Bloody dogs!” he snapped angrily. “I’ll find out who owns that mutt and I’ll have ’em!” He took Paul’s outstretched hand and pulled himself up.
“Is it bad?”
Mr. Harrison slid back his sleeve. Rain washed away the blood from his hairy forearm.
He flexed his hand again and hissed in his breath through his teeth. “It’ll be alright,” he grunted.
Paul looked at him, waiting for something more than that. Mr. Harrison looked back.
“Didn’t you see it, sir?” he asked. “The dog?”
“Course I bloody saw it, you fool. It attacked me!”
“No, sir. The dog … it wasn’t right. It was … it was like it was mechanical.”
He saw a moment of doubt on Mr. Harrison’s face. Just a moment. Then the headmaster’s expression hardened. “Don’t be ridiculous, Camber. It was a dog. That’s all. Now get back to your dorm, and don’t think I’ve forgotten why I came out here in the first place. I’m going to see the nurse, and then we’re going to have a long talk about what happens when you disobey me.”
He turned and began to stalk away toward the medical block. But he’d only gone a few steps before he swayed, staggered, and had to put out his hand against the chapel wall to stop himself from falling over.
Paul rushed to his side. It didn’t matter what had happened between them before; Mr. Harrison was obviously in trouble, and Paul could hardly leave him that way.
“Here,” he said, offering his arm. “I’d better go with you, yeah?”
Mr. Harrison pushed away the arm, straightened himself up, and walked off, slowly and unsteadily. Paul trailed along behind him, ready to catch him if he stumbled again, and in that manner they made it to the medical block.
The nurse on duty was Nurse Wan, a small lady of Chinese descent who flitted about restlessly like a moth. She was already in something of a fluster when Mr. Harrison, dripping all over the carpet and holding his bloodied forearm, came in from the rain. She let out a little squeak when she saw him and then came rushing over.
“Mr. Harrison! What’s happened?” Her accent was crisply English.
Paul slipped in behind him while Mr. Harrison explained how he’d been scratched by a dog. Paul waited to see if he’d mention that the dog was unusual in any way, but he didn’t. He’d already convinced himself that the thing he’d seen was only in his imagination. Easier to deny it than to face the fact that it might be true.
Paul hovered around while the nurse guided Mr. Harrison to a chair. She rolled back his sleeve, took a look at the wound, and frowned.
“Are your tetanus shots up to date?” she asked.
“Had a booster last year.”
“How do you feel?”
“He was stumbling a bit on the way over here,” Paul volunteered.
Mr. Harrison gave him a poisonous glare. “I don’t feel a hundred percent, put it that way.”
“Probably the shock of it all. Come on, I need to clean that up. There’s some dirt or something in the wound.”
Mr. Harrison got to his feet with some difficulty — he did seem unusually weak — and he was led away down a corridor by the tiny nurse. Paul was left alone in the waiting room of the medical block. He didn’t quite know what to do next, so he sat down in a plastic chair, ruffled his wet hair, and waited. He didn’t want to go back to his dorm yet. He was too disturbed by what he’d just seen.
For a minute or two, he just sat around, processing everything. The clock ticked on the wall, showing twenty past seven. Rain blew against the windows. He studied his reflection in the darkened glass. He examined small imperfections in the short green carpet.
The dog. He should tell her about the dog when she came back. It might be important. Whatever Mr. Harrison said —
He heard Nurse Wan’s rapid step from the corridor, and she whisked back into the waiting room.
“Is he alright?” Paul asked.
She glanced at him as if she’d just noticed he was there. “Did you get scratched, too?” she asked sharply.
“No,” said Paul, a little surprised by the tone of her voice.
“Bitten? Did it touch you?”
“The dog? No.”
She seemed relieved. Paul opened his mouth to tell her about the strange metal on the dog, but she’d already gone to a phone behind the reception desk and picked it up. She dialed a number, listened, hung up the phone, and picked it up again. She rattled the cutoff switch and listened again. Then she looked up at Paul.
“Does your mobile have a signal?” she asked.
“No one gets a signal here,” he said. “We’re in a valley. Half of us don’t even bother carrying them around.”
Nurse Wan sighed impatiently, as if she’d already known the answer before she asked the question. She thought for a moment.
“Is he alright?” Paul asked again, more concerned this time.
“It’s not just him,” she said. “It’s Jason White. He was brought in with Eddie Grant a few hours ago. The two of them got bitten by some beetles near the lake at lunchtime, and by the afternoon they were both feeling very ill. Eddie Grant got picked up by his parents, but Jason …” She rubbed the back of her neck, worried and agitated. Suddenly she snapped her fingers. “Run over to the school for me, will you?” She scribbled down a number on a slip of paper and gave it to him.
“What for?” Paul asked.
“All the phones in the campus go through a switchboard in the school building. This phone’s dead, but you should be able to call from there. That number’s the on-duty doctor at the hospital. If that doesn’t work, find the janitor and get him to check the switchboard.”
“Hospital?” Paul felt a chill seep into him.
“Just in case,” said Nurse Wan. “Jason White’s getting sicker, and I’m a little worried. He might need to spend the night there. Go on. I need to stay here.”
Paul got to his feet and hurried off to do as he was told. Hospital? Is it really that serious?
It was only when he was halfway to the school that he realized he’d forgotten to tell Nurse Wan that the dog had been silver.
The heavy double doors at the entrance of the school building were locked, of course. Students were forbidden inside after seven o’clock, when the first dinner bell rang and all the after-school activities were done. Paul knew there was another door that the teachers used when they were working late, but he’d never bothered to find out where it was.
He tugged on the old iron bellpull, and kept on pulling until he heard a key rattle, and the door was pushed open a crack. It was the janitor. Paul recognized him but didn’t know his name. He was a tall, thin man with a patchy ginger beard, wearing dirty blue overalls. Like all school janitors, he was regarded by the students as slightly creepy and possibly unhinged.
Paul hastily explained the situation. The janitor listened with a wary scowl on his face, as if he suspected a trick.
“Nothing wrong with the phones last time I checked,” he said.
“Well, there’s something wrong with the phone in the medical block,” said Paul. “Can you let me in? It’s important.”
The janitor considered that. “You’re not supposed to be in here after seven.”
Paul was getting frustrated. He was already wet through, and this guy wasn’t helping his mood. He held up the slip of paper that Nurse Wan had given him and spoke very slowly and firmly, as if to an idiot. “We need … to call … a doctor!”
The janitor’s scowl deepened, but he stepped back and let Paul through, then locked the door behind him. He glared at the puddle Paul was making on the floor. “Come on, then,” he said sullenly, and stalked off down the corridor.
Paul followed. The silence in the school sounded louder in contrast to the storm outside. The classrooms they passed were dark. This was the twilight world of school after hours, the eerie, empty land where janitors lurked. Paul had walked these corridors a hundred times in the six months he’d been here, but never like this. It felt like he was being given a glimpse behind the veil of the ordinary.
They came to a public phone in the corridor, one of several that students could use to call home. There were many similar phones scattered throughout the dorms. Paul wondered if it would have been easier to find one of them instead of having to deal
with the janitor.
“You’ll have to put in the money yourself,” said the janitor as he pulled the handset from the cradle and held it out to Paul. Paul took it, listened, and gave it back with an expression that said: I told you so. The janitor put it to his own ear. He tapped the cutoff switch a few times, just like Nurse Wan had.
Why do people do that? Paul thought. Did they learn it from the movies? It never works.
“Dead,” said the janitor. “There’s another one round the corner.”
Paul opened his mouth to say that one wouldn’t be working either, but he decided to let the janitor find out for himself.
“Huh,” said the janitor when it turned out Paul was right.
“Nurse Wan said you should check the switchboard, or something,” Paul offered.
“Right,” said the janitor. “The switchboard.” He walked off down the corridor. After a few steps, he stopped and looked back. “Well? Can’t leave you here on your own, you know. Not allowed to.”
Paul caught up with him. “Where are we going?”
“Basement,” he replied.
“There’s a basement?”
“Oh, yeah,” said the janitor with a grin that exposed his crooked teeth. “You’ll like it.”
The route to the basement took them deep into the heart of the school. They strode along a hallway with windows that looked out onto the quad, an enclosed square open to the sky where special assemblies and graduation ceremonies were held. They walked down dour and forbidding old corridors hung with portraits of former headmasters with grim and haughty faces. Presently, they came to the Osbourne Gallery, or, as it was better known, the Hall of Show-Offs.
The Hall of Show-Offs was a long, wide corridor with a high ceiling and decorative stone pillars set into the walls. Placed along its length, in the center of the gallery, were seven glass cases on pedestals. In each was displayed a famous invention or accomplishment from one of the academy’s former students.
One contained a model made of colored plastic balls linked by a series of metal rods, representing a molecule of some important chemical. In another was a novel called The White Bird Singing, which had won a big prize or something. Paul had never stopped to look.
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