The Monsters of Rookhaven

by Padraig Kenny

  Freddie’s mother nodded curtly. ‘Thank you, Mr Pheeps.’

  ‘How lucky both these gentlemen are to have such a fine cook as you to look after them.’

  Freddie saw his mother bristle at that, but she kept her mouth shut. His father ate, as he so often did, mechanically, without saying a word, staring into space.

  ‘I do, however, feel slightly guilty, what with rationing going on. You really are putting yourselves out to feed me. I feel . . . I feel as if I am taking something from you without giving anything in return.’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Pheeps,’ said Mr Fletcher.

  Freddie tried to concentrate on his dinner, but all he could see was the bird, the forest air riffling through its feathers, its eyes blank.

  Mr Pheeps gave a small belch. He held a hand delicately to his stomach.

  ‘Ooh, do excuse me.’ He patted his mouth with a fist. ‘In some countries such a thing would be considered a compliment.’

  Mr Fletcher grunted.

  Mr Pheeps looked apologetic. ‘I have really enjoyed the dinner and company, but I do feel I must retire for the night. These old bones aren’t what they used to be.’

  Mr Pheeps bowed and scraped and left the dining room. The only noise in the room now was the sound of cutlery on china plates. Freddie looked at his mother.

  ‘May I be excused, Mum? I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Boy should eat his dinner,’ his father grunted, still staring straight ahead.

  Freddie’s mum looked at him and nodded.

  Freddie left the table, fully expecting his father to reprimand him, but he made it out into the hallway without him saying anything. Instead he heard him use the word ‘penance’ while talking to his mother. Something in the way he said it made Freddie stop in his tracks. He stood behind the door to listen.

  ‘It’s been decided,’ his father said.

  ‘Who by?’ his mother asked.

  ‘There was a mutual agreement between both parties. It’s written into the Covenant. Any breaking of the rules results in penance.’

  ‘And what form will that penance take, Frank?’

  Freddie could tell by the tone in his mother’s voice that she didn’t approve.

  ‘They get no meat for a month.’

  ‘They?’

  The tone of disgust in his mother’s voice warmed Freddie’s heart.

  ‘Yes,’ his father replied. ‘They—’

  ‘Use their names, Frank. Enoch and the others. They have names.’

  His father muttered something indecipherable, then raised his voice a little.

  ‘They broke the Covenant. They’re willing to pay the price. We have to restore trust. That thing got out and—’

  ‘How do you know it’s a thing?’

  His father said something garbled, and Freddie didn’t hear a response from his mother, but he knew she would have her arms folded and be rolling her eyes.

  ‘Then there’s all that we’ve done for them, even during the war. We went without while they fattened their bellies on meat that should have been for our table. It’s like what Mr Pheeps said.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Freddie’s mother, a sliver of anger in her voice.

  ‘Them that take and give nothing in return, and there’s others in the town too who think the same way. It’s been going on long enough. It’s time someone stood up and was counted and made our position clear.’

  Freddie didn’t like what was being said. He’d never heard his father say a bad word about the Family before, and he reckoned his mother was just as shocked as he considered her silence.

  He heard her muttering something, followed by the bang and slap of dishes and cutlery as she started the washing-up.

  Freddie crept away from the door, still preoccupied with what his father had said.

  There were no lights on at the rear of the house, and even though it was his home Freddie felt his skin tingling.

  He heard something in the back yard, a distant sloshing sound. He went quietly through the scullery and opened the back door as slowly and carefully as possible.

  The stillness of the night was broken by a wet slapping sound, and a collection of low guttural moans.

  Freddie stepped out into the backyard. The dry stink of old meat lent a tang to the air, and there was another smell too. He turned to his right to see Mr Pheeps leaning almost drunkenly by the corner of the house. The cobbles at his feet were shiny and slick with vomit. Mr Pheeps moaned.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Freddie cursed himself for asking the question. It had been an instinctive response. Mr Pheeps turned round, his arms limp, flapping in the air as if he’d lost the use of them. He slid down the wall and sat on the ground and threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘Tell me, how do you stand that awful pig swill you call food?’

  Freddie clenched his fists. It was as if something had taken hold of him. He thought of the bird in the forest and what this thing had done to it, and for the moment he wasn’t afraid.

  ‘It’s not pig’s swill. It’s my mum’s cooking.’

  Mr Pheeps narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Oh, we’re suddenly very brave now, aren’t we?’

  Mr Pheeps crossed his ankles and wiped a hand under his nose.

  ‘You know, I don’t get hungry very often, but when I do I like proper sustenance. I mean I can just about stomach some of what passes for your food to fit in, but really my dietary requirements are much more refined than . . .’

  He waved his hand lazily at Freddie.

  ‘To be honest, as long as I’ve walked this earth, I’ve never known what to call your kind.’

  Freddie took a step closer to Mr Pheeps. Mr Pheeps smiled, but his eyes were filled with contempt.

  ‘What are you?’ Freddie asked.

  Mr Pheeps shook his head and chuckled.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  Mr Pheeps looked at him for a long time before answering. ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘The right moment. There’s always a right moment, and that moment is almost here.’

  Mr Pheeps stood up and dusted his coat down. He looked piercingly at Freddie.

  ‘Let me show you something.’

  Freddie’s fear was gone and now it was replaced by a low burning anger as he stood in his brother’s room.

  His father had given it to Mr Pheeps that first night they’d met him on the road, and the idea of someone else in here appalled him. He couldn’t understand how his father had given up the room so readily, but he could see that this man had a way with words where his father was concerned.

  The room contained a brass bed, a chest of drawers and a little nightstand. The walls were yellow, and the carpet brown, but it always had a homely feel to it, a kind of charm.

  But James was gone now, and even with two of them standing in the room it felt empty.

  Mr Pheeps nodded at his leather holdall.

  ‘You’ve been wondering what’s inside the bag, haven’t you?’

  Freddie straightened up and tried to hold Mr Pheeps’s gaze. ‘I haven’t.’

  Mr Pheeps grinned. He knew he was lying.

  He leaned down towards the holdall and unzipped it. Freddie heard the delicate clink clink of glass on glass.

  ‘They’re all empty now,’ said Mr Pheeps. ‘Well, except for one.’ Mr Pheeps held up an empty jar with a dirty yellow label. The letters on the label were slightly faded with age. ‘This one I found in Maldon in 1200 or thereabouts. It was pretending to be a sailor. How quaint.’ He put it aside and picked up another. ‘This one I found skulking in a bog in Ireland during the Famine. I found it very sustaining. Rather ironic really. But, as I said, all are now empty. Except for one.’

  He looked slyly at Freddie. ‘Would you like to see?’

  Freddie’s newfound courage seemed to be waning a little, but he steeled himself.

  Mr Pheeps took another squat jar from the holdall and cradled it in his hands.
>
  The jar seemed to contain a small glowing cloud, white at the edges, with a pulsing sapphire light shimmering at its heart. Looking at it made Freddie feel as if he were in a dream where everything felt right and was in its proper place, and there was nothing in the world but hope and love, and that was all that mattered. The shining light moved with a languorous delicacy, and it was beautiful and strange, and somehow Freddie knew it was alive.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice hoarse with terror and awe.

  ‘A delicacy. Something that provides me with proper sustenance. Indeed, a delicacy that, once consumed, might sustain me for a hundred years.’

  Freddie had no idea what he was talking about. He was still transfixed by the beauty of the cloud.

  ‘I met her on a bridge in Budapest. I think it was sometime in 1888. It was a winter’s night. Cold. Beautiful. Lit with stars. I’d sensed her in the city a few days before, and, as is my habit, I waited. Waited for the right moment.’

  Mr Pheeps held the jar up to his own face, and the blue white light softened the cracks in his dreadful visage.

  ‘She knew who I was the moment she laid eyes on me, but by then it was already too late. I hadn’t seen her kind in eighty years. And I was hungry. So very hungry.’

  Mr Pheeps closed his eyes and a trembling took hold of his whole body.

  ‘I’ve been saving her,’ he growled.

  He uncorked the jar with trembling fingers, and Freddie almost screamed as Mr Pheeps put the jar to his lips and opened his mouth. As his jaws opened wider and wider, it seemed as if the blue-white heart of light tried to back away towards the bottom of the glass, but there was no escaping its fate.

  Her fate.

  Freddie thought he heard something. It sounded like something fading just as you woke from a dream.

  It sounded like screaming.

  The light slipped into Mr Pheeps’s mouth. His lips closed around it, he gobbled it, chewed it, swallowed it down. For one horrific moment his throat ballooned outwards like that of a bullfrog, the light pulsing blue underneath the skin, and then it was extinguished, and Mr Pheeps’s throat receded.

  The screaming had stopped.

  Mr Pheeps tottered backwards. He dropped the jar, which hit the floor with a clunk and rolled towards Freddie. Mr Pheeps supported himself against the bed rail, gasping and licking his lips. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth and threw back his head and laughed at the ceiling.

  ‘The thing is, you see, each time I consume one of them I become stronger. The problem is finding these creatures with the souls that burn so bright.’ Pheeps’s face wrinkled into a sneer. ‘They call themselves the Family. They are such rare delicacies these days. And they hide so well, protecting themselves with their little sorceries, or hiding in ruins. I’ve had to ration the last two I found over the course of two hundred years.’

  Freddie picked up the jar. There was a yellowing label on it, with letters that had faded with age.

  ‘What was that?’ he said, wiping his eyes.

  Mr Pheeps turned and looked at him and gave a deep sigh of satisfaction. His eyes seemed out of focus.

  ‘That was proper food, boy. That was a living soul.’

  Mirabelle

  ‘We’re being watched,’ said Mirabelle.

  They had just passed through the gate of the outer wall to the estate. She could sense the birds above them in the dark sky. Their quick bobbing heads, sudden whirring wings and muffled caws occasionally punctured the silence. There seemed to be more ravens on the walls than she’d ever seen before: over a dozen, with more swooping down and landing silently with each passing moment. It was eerie to see them at night.

  After spending time in the garden, she and Jem had returned to the house to wait for nightfall. Mirabelle could barely contain herself, knowing that they were heading to the village later that night. She felt excited, nervous, but most of all she felt defiant. Her excitement had grown as night drew in.

  But then the ravens had started to gather.

  It had started with some of them idly tapping their way along the roof at sunset. Then the one-eyed raven had started to flit erratically above the driveway, cawing madly, as if trying to attract attention. Eventually the other ravens joined him, wheeling about together before finally settling along the walls. Now it was as if they were waiting for her and Jem as they made their way down the driveway.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Jem asked.

  ‘They like to huddle together at night,’ said Mirabelle, keeping her tone light. She was already aware that Jem was nervous, and she didn’t want her to feel any more frightened. She didn’t admit to Jem that she’d only ever seen the ravens huddle together during the day, and definitely not out here at night, not like this.

  She thought about what Odd had told her once when he’d seen her coming out of the Room of Knives. He told her he’d visited some cultures where ravens were portents of doom, harbingers of death.

  Mirabelle put these thoughts to the back of her mind and decided to concentrate on keeping Jem as calm as possible, although she had to admit she was impressed with how Jem had handled things these last few days. She remembered how beaten down she’d looked when they’d first met, but looking after her brother seemed to have made her stronger, and she now took the strangeness of the house and its inhabitants in her stride.

  They’d left Tom in his room. He’d been resting again, and though he looked healthier, more at peace, he still needed to think about his experience with Piglet and try to take it all in. Whenever he and Mirabelle looked at each other, a silent understanding passed between them. Thanks to Piglet, they now understood each other in a way they never could have done before. She’d seen him at his worst. She’d seen him scrabbling for survival, taking beatings, stealing. There was no judgement on her part, and she could tell he was grateful for that.

  These were the things she thought about that gave her strength.

  But then she remembered that Piglet was still silent, and the ravens were watching, and she felt that cold, creeping unease return.

  She looked at Jem and tried to remember that she was with a friend.

  ‘The tear is still there,’ said Mirabelle. ‘Uncle Enoch still hasn’t found the right magic to close it, so until he does we can pass through.’

  ‘How far is it to the village?’

  ‘Three miles, so I’m told,’ said Mirabelle, trying not to smile as she saw Jem’s face drop.

  Of course she could have asked Odd for help, but that would have meant risking him reporting her to Enoch, and, besides, she wasn’t entirely sure Odd was that comfortable with others travelling with him through his portals. The night they’d chased Piglet had been a unique case. Also, Odd seemed to be in the house even less since that night, and she wondered if it had anything to do with the simple fact that he couldn’t face her.

  Good, she thought. He should be ashamed. He has good reason to be. They all do.

  When they reached the edge of the Path of Flowers, Jem pulled up and stared at the spot where the dark grass suddenly became a white chalk path.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Mirabelle. ‘They won’t touch you as long as I’m with you.’

  Jem nodded without taking her eyes off the path, and she pulled her cardigan tighter around herself. Mirabelle smiled encouragingly, and they both stepped onto the Path of Flowers.

  Some of the flowers raised their heads and sniffed the air as they passed. The sight of them made Jem veer straight into Mirabelle. Mirabelle decided that the best way to deal with Jem’s fear was to distract her.

  ‘What was your mother like?’

  She felt odd asking the question. Before her experience with Piglet, she wouldn’t have considered the impact such a question could have. Now she regretted it as soon as she’d asked it. The words seemed sharp, barbed, almost dangerous.

  Fortunately, Jem looked grateful to be asked the question.

  ‘She was kind,’ said Jem. ‘Very kind, not like . . .’
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br />   Her brother, your uncle, Mirabelle thought, remembering the hulking shadow – that raised stick.

  Jem shook herself. ‘She was just very kind, and she looked after us. She made us feel . . .’

  ‘Safe,’ said Mirabelle, remembering her visions of Tom and how he’d felt before his mother had died.

  Jem nodded. ‘She was a good person.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mirabelle. ‘She was.’

  Jem frowned at her, and Mirabelle was about to explain what she meant, but she noticed something up ahead through the shimmering rip in the air. She raised a hand.

  ‘Do you see that?’

  Jem narrowed her eyes and looked straight ahead, then nodded.

  She and Mirabelle crept up the path until they were a couple of feet away from the tear. Mirabelle relaxed when she realized what she was seeing, and she chuckled to herself and whispered to Jem, waving her through.

  ‘Come on.’

  They both stepped through the tear and into the forest. A few feet ahead, muttering to himself and looking up into the night sky, was Bertram.

  ‘Uncle?’ Mirabelle whispered.

  Bertram wheeled round and gave a high-pitched shriek.

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything bad,’ he gibbered. ‘I was just . . .’ He pointed up to the sky. ‘I was just looking . . . and . . . and . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, Uncle. We won’t tell anyone. And we hope you won’t either.’

  Bertram smiled gratefully, then looked startled when he realized what Mirabelle was admitting to. He pointed a finger at them agitatedly.

  ‘You’re not . . . You can’t . . . ooh, but . . . ooh, this is . . .’

  ‘Yes, Uncle?’

  ‘You’re . . . you’re not supposed to be out here,’ he spluttered indignantly.

  Mirabelle folded her arms. ‘Really, Uncle? And you are?’

  Bertram hung his head. Mirabelle couldn’t help but feel a warmth towards him. Only Enoch and Piglet were older than Bertram, but in many ways he was the child of the Family.

  He waved his hands about. ‘I was just looking. It looks different, and it’s been so long since I’ve been out here beyond the grounds.’