Thirteen Days of Midnight (11 page)

“Revenge,” the Vassal says. “He is consumed by it.”

The Shepherd kneels beside me and Ham. His glasses catch the light, two silver moons. Ham shrinks back but doesn’t run. I can see blue veins under the ghost’s skin. The wrinkles by his mouth shift as he speaks.

“You father defiled my tomb. In life I was the greatest necromancer the world has known. He bound me — bound me — and used me as
his Shepherd.
I do not forget. I do not forgive. I swore to rend his body and torment his soul, and, denied that small pleasure, I must turn to his heir.”

“I’ve done nothing to you.”

“Listen,” the Shepherd says. He removes his glasses. His eyes are black and wet, with no whites to them at all, black like the eyes of a goat or raven. “Listen to me, child. I have voyaged to the dark lands of the dead. I have seen things there that our words cannot describe. There can still be some small mercy for you, if you release me this very day.”

“I’m not scared of you.”

“You are a poor liar. Worse even than your father.”

The bottomless black eyes are a finger’s length from mine.

“This isn’t over,” he says. “This is the beginning.”

The Shepherd is gone.

“You could have warned me,” I say to the Vassal.

“I was afraid.”

“Of him?”

“He was the most terrible man in the world while he breathed, and he became worse for every day he spent beyond the veil. I fear him very much, sir.”

“Thanks for saving me,” I say. “You and Ham.”

“I know you did not ask for such a burden as we. The father is not the son.”

“So he can’t kill me?”

“He may not. Without explicit instruction, however, we may allow harm to come to you, and many of the Host would do so.”

“What will he do on Halloween?”

“I do not know, sir. The Shepherd has some stratagem, I am certain. He always does. Look to the Book of Eight.”

“I don’t know how! I can’t even open it.”

“And yet you must, sir. And yet you must.”

I look at the Book, now closed, sitting on our dining table as if it were any old book, nothing to take notice of. My stomach is churning. The Vassal has his head turned away from me, frowning, as if he’s listening to something happening in another room.

“I must go,” he says suddenly. “They will not forgive me for this.”

“I’m glad you helped me.”

“I hope I have cause to be glad of it as well, sir.”

The Vassal gives a small bow and vanishes.

I don’t go to Elza’s house. I don’t know what to do. The Book of Eight sits on the table, and I’m afraid to go anywhere near it. I’m afraid to even try to open it. I keep thinking about the circles flowing out of the pages, the way they covered the walls and the Shepherd’s face. The Book is a monster, and the Host wants me dead. I can’t leave Mum and Ham here without me. The afternoon darkens into evening. The trees that surround the house take on the shape of whispering giants. Ham won’t settle and paces the kitchen all night. I think of waking Mum, telling her we need to leave, but I don’t know how I’d get her to believe me, and I don’t know where we could go that they wouldn’t follow. By one in the morning I can’t keep myself awake any longer. I climb into bed with my clothes on and lie still, listening for any hint of the Host returning. The wind whispers at the cracks in my window frame. Outside, the fields are cold and dark. Animals shiver in their burrows, dreaming bleak dreams of running and dying.

W
hen I wake up on Friday morning, I hear a man’s voice coming from Mum’s room. I run in to her and find there’s a crude star drawn in black paint above her headboard: a slashed, spiky rune that takes up half the wall — the same symbol the Shepherd had tattooed on his palms. She’s lying still and straight, bedsheets covering her body up to her neck. Her hair is tucked behind her ears. She looks peaceful. I can’t tell if she’s breathing or not. The voice I could hear was her CD player, a man’s cheerful voice reciting some self-esteem exercise.

“Only you have to power to effect lasting personal change,”
the CD player says to itself.

“Mum!” I yell.

I cross the room in what feels like one step.

“Look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see?”

I shake her by the shoulders. She doesn’t wake. I can’t find her pulse, but her arm feels warm. I hold a hand mirror to her face, and she breathes the faintest film of fog over it. She’s alive, then, whatever they did to her. I sit on the floor beside her bed. I should’ve said something to her, but I don’t know what I could have told her. She believes in the spirit world as an abstract place full of energy and good vibes rather than as a malicious storm of darkness. How would I have explained the Prisoner or the Shepherd to her? I should call an ambulance . . . and then what? They’ll give her a CAT scan? Put her on a drip and wait for her to wake up? I’ll get put in foster care. I can’t think of people who’ll be less responsive to my stories about evil spirits than a gang of paramedics and social workers. I’m on my own. Whatever the Host has done to her, I have to deal with it.

“Do you see someone who’s confident and powerful? Most of us don’t.”

I turn the CD player off so hard that the power button breaks. I leave her room, shut the door, and walk out onto the landing. I feel like the ghosts must be watching me, watching Mum, waiting to see what I’ll do.

“Show yourselves!” I’m shouting. “Come out! What have you done to her? Don’t hide from me! Show yourselves!”

Nothing. What I’ll do if the ghosts do appear I have no clue.

“Don’t make me wait!”

There’s a sharp rapping at the front door. My spine fizzes, like it’s been filled with electrified ice. My throat tightens. Ham starts to yelp in the kitchen.

“Who is that?”

Whatever’s at the front door doesn’t answer. Peering down the stairway into the hall, I can see a dark human shape, silhouetted beyond the door’s pane of rippled glass. I’ve met five of the eight ghosts.

What’s waiting beyond the door?

Did Dad really summon a demon?

There’s another flurry of knocks. I make my way down the stairs, one step at a time. The figure outside grows closer but no clearer. The morning is overcast, the dim light coming into the hallway almost feels like dusk. Ham yowls behind the kitchen door. I realize I left my meat skewer up in my bedroom, although what good it would do I don’t know.

My hand closes around the doorknob.

I take a breath.

I swing the front door open.

“Elza?”

“Are you all right?” she asks. “You look terrified.”

“What are you —”

“I waited for you all of yesterday. You were supposed to come to my place? What’s going on? Is your Host here?”

There’s a light drizzle falling. She’s wearing muddy combat boots and a black wool peacoat that looks like it was cut for someone twice her size. She gives me an impatient look.

“Am I talking to myself? Look, my hair’s getting wet. I’m coming inside.”

Elza pushes past me into the hallway.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “There have been, like, developments. . . . I haven’t been able to come by. I didn’t get your . . . how do you even know where I live?”

“Internet,” she snaps. “Your house feels haunted. Incredibly haunted. I don’t even like standing in the hallway. What happened?”

“Elza, I don’t know how safe it is for you to be here.”

“Nor do I. I thought this would keep me straight, it usually does”— she holds up the stone that she wears around her neck — “but feeling what it’s like in your house, I don’t know.”

“What is that?”

“Wyrdstone. Has a naturally occurring hole. They’re very rare. Druids used them to ward off evil spirits. Is that your dog I can hear in the kitchen?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Well, are you going to let it out?”

I lead her down the hallway and open the kitchen door. Ham leaps up at me, dragging his paws down the front of my pants.

“Big dog,” Elza says, taking a step back.

“He’s a deerhound. Down, boy. Calm down.”

“Hmm. I was expecting a terrier or something. Hello,” she says to Ham. She grabs his head and starts rubbing the skin behind his ears. He grumbles with joy. I walk into the kitchen, not sure what I’m going to do. What does Elza want? Can she actually help me? What am I going to do about Mum? She’s lying above us right now, trapped in sleep.

“So this is it,” Elza says behind me. I turn around. She’s still petting Ham, but she’s looking at the kitchen table, at the Book of Eight.

“Dad’s legacy,” I say.

“Now, your dog is bigger than I was imagining.And yet the fabled book is smaller. It’s practically pocket-size.”

She pushes Ham away and picks up the Book. Her fingers start to work at the clasps.

“Elza, I’m not sure if —”

“What’s wrong?” she says.

“It’s just the book is delicate and —”

“No, what happened? You look completely hollowed out. You look like someone died.”

“It’s Mum. The Host tried to take over yesterday afternoon. This ghost, the Shepherd, he tried to trick me and kill me. Then they did something to her. . . . She won’t wake up.”

“Oh, Luke . . . is she —?”

“No. She’s alive. Look, I’ll show you.”

I take Elza upstairs, with Ham trotting along behind us. I let us all into Mum’s room. It’s exactly as I left it: Mum’s tribal masks still hanging on the walls, her books about ley lines and communication with angels still on her bookshelf. There’s a single slipper on the floor, halfway between the bed and the doorway. It looks lost.

Elza steps past me and moves toward the bed, looking at the enormous spiky star on the far wall. She’s still wearing her boots, and they leave small dabs of mud on the carpet. She looks up at the ceiling, then kneels down and lifts the sheets on Mum’s bed, looking into the space beneath it.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Looking to see where the spell is coming from. I imagine it’s produced by the obvious mark on the wall, but you never know. There’s nothing under here, anyway.”

“Can we remove the mark?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, we could try, but you won’t be able to wash it off. A mark like that, it’s more than paint. Maybe if we took the wall out with a crowbar. But even then . . . I’d be worried about your mum if we did. It might make things worse.”

“Do you know how to break the spell?” I think it’s a measure of how much my life has changed that it doesn’t even sound like a stupid question anymore.

“No,” Elza says, “not really. When it comes to magic, I’m like someone who can turn a TV on but doesn’t know how to build one. I have a wyrdstone and I can make hazel charms, but I don’t know why they work. I just know they do.”

“So you can’t —”

“I can’t wake your mum up, Luke. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know how to start.”

Ham is standing beside Mum’s bed, sniffing eagerly. He starts to nuzzle at her pillows and whine. I look away. My eyes feel hot and swollen.

Elza looks at my face, frowning. I don’t want her to see any of this.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not. You’re about to cry.”

To my surprise Elza steps forward and wraps me in a tight hug. She smells of cigarettes. I rest my chin on the rough, damp wool of her coat. I barely knew her two days ago, and here we are, embracing. Even with my eyes blurred by tears I start to smile. I don’t know what Holiday would make of this. After a few moments, Elza slaps me hard on the back and lets me go.

“I think that’s how you rugby boys handle emotions, right? Lots of backslaps? Someone downs a beer? I didn’t bring any cans with me, unfortunately.”

“That’s more or less it,” I say, dabbing at my eyes.

“I don’t want to spend any longer here than we have to,” she’s saying. “This house isn’t secure, and I don’t think I can make it safe for us to work in. I still think you should come across to my house in Towen Crescent. Bring your beast as well.”

“Wait, what? I’m not leaving.”

“Luke, I get that you’re very worried about your mum. I’m worried, too. But realistically, the best chance you have of doing anything for her is not calling a doctor, and it’s not sitting up every night next to her bed until Halloween. The best thing we can do is try to get the Book of Eight open and find out what’s inside. Find something that’ll help us.”

“I don’t even know if I want to open that book. The Shepherd, when he opened it up, the stuff I saw inside was —”

“Well, I don’t think we have another choice. And I’m not staying here — they’re probably listening to every word I’m saying. My house is warded with hazel charms, so uninvited spirits can’t enter. The best thing you can do now is get everything your dad left you and bring it to my house immediately.”

“I can’t just leave Mum here.”

“Then she’ll die,” Elza says. Her eyes are muddy green, the irises wide and dark. Her gaze doesn’t leave mine. “She’ll die. You’ll die once they find a way to break their bonds. We all might. But today she’s alive, which suggests to me that if they were going to kill her, they already would’ve done it. She’s your blood, your mother, and that can be important for some types of magic. I think your ghosts have some plan for her, and the sooner we find a way to stop them, the safer she’ll be. I can keep your book at my house without raising suspicion, but even if we put your mum in a wheelbarrow or something and take her over there, the first thing my parents are going to ask is ‘Why is there a woman in a coma lying in our spare room?’ and I won’t have an answer for them. She’ll be off to the hospital before you know it, and hospitals aren’t good places. Lots of people die there, they’ll be full of spirits. The walls between here and Deadside will be thin. Bad place to be come Halloween. The best thing you can do for her is leave her. Come with me. Now.”