Dawn of the Demontide (21 page)

‘Jake? Is—is that you?’

Jake nearly jumped out of his skin. The voice, weak and shivery, came out of nowhere. He recognized it immediately. The voice of a dead man.

Simon Lydgate emerged from the shadows of the chamber.

Fear, as deep as any ocean, stared out from Simon’s face. The clothes that he had been wearing on the night of his ‘death’ hung from his body. Rings around his eyes made it look as if he hadn’t slept for months. He shuffled forward, his gaze fixed upon the pool.

‘I came from there,’ he said. ‘From the Nothingness. They kept me trapped: the librarian and the Mother and the Master. They will follow soon. All are coming to the Hollow, the Elders and the witches. The old enemies are gathering.’

Jake caught him as he fell.

‘It’s coming,’ Simon whispered. ‘The Demontide.’

‘And he just appeared out of this pool?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Jake, this is impossible. Simon Lydgate died on the night your mother was murdered. That’s what you told the police.’

‘They never found a body. Somehow he survived.’

Jake, Rachel, and Eddie were sitting in the Saxby’s conservatory. The building was detached from the main house and hardly ever used. A perfect place in which to hide a boy who had returned from the dead. Simon lay sprawled on a battered old couch, unconscious, breathing steadily.

After leaving the cavern, Jake had found Rachel waiting outside with Eddie. Aside from the odd cut she had escaped unharmed. Eddie had helped carry Simon across the rocks and onto the beach. It had taken over an hour to get him up the hill to the Saxby residence. A few Hollow people had given them curious glances and whispered behind their hands. Word would spread like wildfire but there was nothing they could do about that. At least Dr Saxby was out of town for the afternoon.

Rachel laid a hand against Simon’s forehead.

‘His temperature’s OK. I still think we ought to take him to hospital.’

‘It’ll lead to too many questions,’ Jake said. ‘The police will want to know where he’s been these last six months.’

‘And where has he been?’

Jake shrugged.

‘Monsters,’ Eddie said simply. ‘They’re real?’

‘Afraid so, Ed.’

‘I used to believe in monsters.’ The kid twisted his hands in his lap. ‘It was fun then, imagining that Dracula or the wolfman could break in through the window at any minute. I used to enjoy scaring myself like that. But in real life monsters aren’t fun.’

Rachel wrapped an arm around her cousin.

‘OK, Jake,’ she said, ‘I think it’s time we heard your story.’

He didn’t tell them the whole story. There were parts of it that he couldn’t have explained to Rachel—things like her father insisting that a sacrifice was necessary in order to stop the Demontide. For similar reasons, he skimmed over his dad’s abduction and imprisonment. He also left out his dreams of the Witchfinder and those peculiar experiences in which he had felt a connection with the long-dead man. What was the point of explaining such things when he still didn’t know how the discovery of the Witchfinder’s frozen body could help to stop the Demontide?

And so Jake told the story in its basic terms. Witches and demons were real. For centuries, the Elders of Hobarron had waged a war against the Crowden Coven. The aim of the Coven was to bring about the Demontide and the end of Man. Now it was looking as if they would succeed. Heralded by Omens—the toads, the mist, the stone monsters—the Demontide would soon break. In preparing for this day, the Elders had devised a weapon—a mysterious mechanical cube called, simply, the ‘Incu’. The Coven feared this weapon and had killed Jake’s mother in an attempt to discover its secrets. The irony was that the Elders believed the weapon to be useless.

‘The Doorway,’ Rachel said. ‘That stone slab in the ceiling at the end of the staircase.’

‘That’s where the Demontide will start,’ Jake nodded. ‘It was mentioned in that old poem you told me:
Witchfinder, Witchfinder—Evil he saw—and used all his power—to seal up the Door.
I think that it was the Witchfinder who stopped the original Demontide … ’

‘Demons waiting behind the Door.’ Rachel shivered and drew Eddie close.

‘I think they gather there in force once in every generation,’ Jake said. ‘All of demonkind waiting for the Door to weaken. Waiting for their chance to break through and flood into our world.’

‘And what will happen then?’

‘Our time is over. Their time begins.’

‘But why would this Coven want that to happen? These witches are human beings, too, aren’t they?’

‘I think so. But their magic comes from their familiars. Imagine what a witch could do with thousands of demons at his command.’

‘And the Elders have stopped this happening,’ Rachel said proudly. ‘My father, your father, Dr Holmwood … ’

The truth danced on Jake’s tongue. No, he could not tell her.

‘So why are they now afraid that they can’t stop the Demontide?’

‘Maybe it had something to do with Uncle Luke,’ Eddie said. ‘Maybe the witches killed him and … and … ’

Jake cut in. ‘Before my dad left on his business trip—’

‘Strange, your dad heading off when the Demontide’s just around the corner,’ said Rachel.

‘Before he left,’ Jake persisted, ‘he told me that, to understand the truth, I should find Sidney Tinsmouth.’

‘That name sounds familiar.’

‘He was the man who murdered Olivia Brown.’

‘Of course! But why on earth would your dad want you to find
him
?’

‘I don’t know, but I think it’s important that we do. The only clue my dad gave was that Tinsmouth lived in “the lion’s head”.’

‘Wow. Cryptic,’ Eddie said.

‘Hold on.’

Rachel left the conservatory and crossed to the main house. She returned a few minutes later with her laptop. She tapped in ‘Tinsmouth’ and ‘Lion’s Head’.

‘Good old Google … Ah. No direct matches. Did your dad say anything else?’

Jake thought back. It was difficult to remember that brief conversation with his drugged father. The threat of imminent discovery, nearly being eaten by a pair of ravenous hellhounds, almost drowning—all those things made his memories a bit jumbled. Finally, he admitted defeat.

Rachel tried the phrases in a few more search engines but with no clear result.

‘The only “Tinsmouth” I can find is a cabinet maker in Stoke-on-Trent
…
’

Simon stirred. A shudder ran the length of his body.

‘Cabinet,’ he whispered. ‘
His cabinet …
’

Jake stood over his friend. He helped to lift Simon’s head onto a cushion.

‘Jake. Thank God. I thought that thing had killed you.’

‘I’ve still got the scars,’ Jake said. His eye was drawn to the puckered skin around Simon’s throat. ‘You’ve got them too. You saved my life, Simon.’

Simon managed a wry smile. ‘There’ve been times during the last six months when I wished I hadn’t. The things I’ve heard. The things I’ve seen. I thought I was going crazy. But it’s all real—the darkness, the monsters … ’

‘Simon, I need to ask:
how
did you survive? I saw Mr Pinch tearing your throat out. I’m … I’m so sorry I ran.’

‘If you hadn’t, I’d have got up and kicked your arse myself.’ The words came in Simon’s trademark series of short, dry bursts. ‘Truth is, I don’t know what happened. One minute that thing was at my throat; the next? I must have passed out. I remember waking up in a car. Could’ve been minutes or hours later. It was still night, that’s all I know—I could see the moon blinking through the trees. I was in the back of the car, curled up in the corner. There was a woman at the wheel, two men in the back with me. One had a short beard and was young-looking, the other was older with white hair. They were talking about Mother Inglethorpe and Tobias Quilp. About a plan that had gone wrong. Your mother had died and the weapon was still a secret. They were laughing about what their master would do to Esther Inglethorpe. “It’ll be the box for her,” the old man said. The young guy laughed, “That’ll bring her down a peg or two.” Then the driver spoke. She said their “amusement was misplaced”. Mother Inglethorpe’s plan was their best chance of finding out about the Elders’ machine. “Don’t worry,” the old man said, “the Elders are powerless. Nothing can stop the Demontide now.” Then the young guy noticed I’d woken. He held out his hand and spoke a few words. A yellow light flashed from his fingers and I lost consciousness again.

‘The next time I woke up, the car had stopped. Hands bundled me out and into a deserted alleyway. There was something weird about the street … ’

‘Weird how?’ Eddie asked, leaning forward.

Simon looked from Eddie to Rachel. ‘Sorry, who are you people?’

Jake made the introductions.

‘The sign said “Yaga Passage”,’ Simon continued. ‘I could hear lots of cars, buses, people shouting in the streets nearby. We might have been in London, Manchester, somewhere big. Funny thing, though—this place didn’t
seem
part of the city. It was dawn. I could see sunlight flooding into the street that joined up with the alley. But there was no sunlight here. I got the feeling Yaga Passage was always dark and cold. Even the people who’d abducted me seemed afraid. They kept looking up and down the street, glancing at the windows. There were shadows on the blinds … ’

Simon seemed to crumple in on himself. He shivered and ran a hand over his face. Rachel went to a bureau at the back of the conservatory. She returned with a glass and a half bottle of whisky.

‘My dad’s hidden stash. He thinks I don’t know.’

She poured a glass and handed it to Simon. He drained it in a single gulp. When he returned the glass his gaze lingered on the girl.

‘Then what happened?’ Jake asked.

‘I was taken into this shop. A bookshop. Hundreds and hundreds of old books. There was this little man behind the counter. The young witch called him “librarian”, but his real name was Grype. He had this bird on his shoulder, like a vulture, only uglier.’

‘His familiar.’ Jake nodded.

‘There were beetles dropping out of its feathers.’ Simon shuddered. ‘Grype helped them carry me to a cupboard at the back of the shop. That’s where I stayed for the next six months.’

‘Didn’t you try to escape?’ Eddie asked.

‘I was kept drugged. Magically, I think.’

‘Then how’d you get out?’

‘One day the librarian came for me. Said that the Master had “requested my presence”. There was something in his eyes that I had never seen before. He looked … frightened … Anyway, he hit me with another of those drugging spells. Maybe I was becoming more tolerant to them because this time it didn’t knock me out cold. I was groggy, but I could hear a lot of what was going on. Grype dragged me into the shop and through a curtained doorway. That’s when we entered the Nothingness … Do you think I could have another drink?’

Simon’s hand shook as he took the glass.

‘Nothing living should ever enter that place,’ he continued, wiping his lips. ‘It was only fit for the dead. But it is
his
home.’

‘Whose?’

‘Crowden’s, the Coven Master.’

‘You saw him?’

‘A glimpse. He was dressed in old-fashioned clothes: a dark cloak, a hat with a buckle, big leather boots. There was a cloth tied around his face. Behind him, in the shadows, there was this box. Like a magician’s cabinet.’

Jake shot to his feet.

‘The portrait.’

‘Jake, are you OK?’

‘The portrait from Holmwood Manor. Eddie, you remember I asked you about the second man in the picture with Tiberius Holmwood? That man had a buckle on his hat and there was a black box in the background. You see what this means?’

‘Not exactly,’ Rachel confessed.

‘The leader of the Crowden Coven—the man now plotting the Demontide—is the
same
man as the one in the portrait. He was once friends with Tiberius Holmwood, the first of the Hobarron Elders, which makes him roughly four hundred years old!’

‘Can’t be,’ Rachel protested. ‘Maybe this guy’s a descendant. Like Dr Holmwood is descended from Tiberius.’

‘Then why the old-fashioned clothes?’

‘And his speech,’ Simon clicked his fingers, ‘it was dated. From another time.’

‘But how has he survived?’

‘Because he lives in the Nothingness.’ Simon’s tones rang hollow. ‘The empty, deathless place. His home.’

‘Not his home,’ Jake said. ‘His prison. I think that was Crowden’s punishment for trying to bring about the first Demontide in 1645.’

Eddie laughed. ‘Some punishment, he got to live for ever!’

‘No, it’s a living death. An eternity of nothingness,’ Jake said slowly. ‘Personally, I can’t think of anything worse … Go on with your story, Simon.’

‘There isn’t much more to tell. I overheard bits of what they were discussing. Nothing that made much sense. The next thing I know I’m crawling out of that pool.’

‘I have a question,’ Rachel said. ‘Why did they release you?’

‘Crowden, he said he wanted to “shake things up”. I think he thought that my being here in the Hollow would achieve that.’

‘It’s a pretty crazy story,’ Eddie said. ‘There you are, going about your everyday life, and then—abracadabra—witches are holding you hostage in a broom cupboard.’

‘That’s it!’ Jake shouted. ‘Abraca-bloody-dabra!’

He snatched up Rachel’s laptop and typed in the search phrases ‘Tinsmouth’, ‘Lion’s Head’, and ‘Abracadabra’.

‘It was something my dad said. It struck me as weird at the time but it just got mixed in with all the other weird stuff. Result!’

He twisted the screen around so that the others could see:

The Magic Shop—jokes, novelties, card magic, coin magic, mental magic, tricks and illusions of all kinds. Step in and utter the magic word … Find us at Marmsbury Cove, just off the Lion’s Head Parade. Proprietor, S. Tynsmawfe.

‘We’ve found him.’

Fifteen minutes of explanations and arguments followed. Jake told Simon the story of Olivia Brown and Sidney Tinsmouth. He went on to explain how his father had told him that, in order to understand what was happening in the Hollow, he should speak to Tinsmouth. Rachel pitched in with her objections.