Thirteen Days of Midnight (20 page)

“That’s grim,” I say.

“Don’t even remember it too well, boss, tell the truth.”

“Speaking of being cracked over the head, Judge . . .”

“Ah, I knew you’d start with that —” he begins.

“You sided with the Shepherd!”

“Listen, boss, I was backing the winning horse. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t
know how it is.
They’re going to kill me, Judge. You’re helping them.”

“A key that fits no lock,” says the Oracle.

“You what?” Ryan asks her.

“For what it’s worth, boss, I’m sorry. What happened with the Vassal —”

“That was horrible.”

“He never said it would be like that! Never said they’d
eat
anyone!”

“So you already know each other?” the boy named Andy asks me.

“We go back,” I say.

“The book is a labyrinth,” says the Oracle.

“If you’re sorry, then why don’t you help me?” I ask.

“I can’t,” says the Judge.

“Big guy like you? I thought you stood up for yourself,” I say.

“They’ll cut me up, too, boss. You can’t stop that dog-headed bastard from eating me, so I’m no use to you. Even if I wanted to be. Which I don’t.”

“All right,” I say, “forget it. I didn’t want any of this to happen either.”

There’s a lull in the music, and then a new track rushes up to fill the silence.

“So you come here all the time?” I ask Jack.

“Most Saturdays, yeah. Just helps you remember, you know?”

“We miss coming here,” says Ryan.

“We watch the rugby games, too. That’s how we know you.”

“Right . . .”

“How did you die?” Andy asks me.

“I’m not actually dead,” I say. “It’s . . . weird. I’m trying to get back into my body. Some of his”— I nod at the Judge — “friends took it from me. I’m trying to find it right now.”

There’s a general silence. The boys give one another looks.

“Can’t help you,” Jack says at last. “Haven’t seen it.”

“Good luck, though,” Andy says.

“You will meet a man with unlined hands,” says the Oracle.

“You gotta cut that out, love,” the Judge tells her. “Shepherd ain’t gonna like that.”

“Does she actually make prophecies?” I ask.

“Do-lally, boss. Don’t make a lick of sense. Never understood why your pa kept her around. Must’ve seen something in her. She’s sort of me opposite number, you know? I’m all hard truths; she’s all vapors and visions. Maybe you need both of us in a Host for some balance.”

A really drunk girl in a black dress sits in the same seat as Jack, and they look like a horrible double-exposed photograph. Then she shivers and gets back up and staggers away from the ghosts’ table. I resolve, if I end up dead, that I’m not going to haunt a tacky club in Dunbarrow.

“Who knows?” I say to the skinhead after a moment. “Enjoy your night, Judge, Oracle, lads.”

I fly up through the ceiling, arrowing through the roof of Vibe and into the sky. I fly across the town, leaving the bright-lit square and the rows of shuttered shops, pass over the silvery strip of the river and past the park’s bandstand, its duck ponds and bales of orange leaves. I’m about to head back for Elza’s place, with no idea where my body might be hiding, when I hear someone shouting my name and turn in midair, back toward the town center.

Ryan flies toward me, cutting low through the trees.

“Told the skinhead I’d gone to hover in the girl’s bathrooms,” he says.

“Of course.”

“Look, they can’t know I talked to you. Can’t know anyone said anything. But I reckon you want to look up near the Devil’s Footsteps. I know all the town ghosts, and there’s been chat about stuff happening up there. If someone’s got hold of your body, that’s probably where it is.”

“Devil’s Footsteps?”

“Stone circle, mate. All the ghosts know it. It’s a passing place, you know?”

“Where is it?” I ask.

“Up by school. There’s a track behind the rugby fields, goes into the woods. Follow that. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“Don’t worry,” Ryan says, “just doing what we can. Dunbarrow boys stick together.”

He grins and flies away, back toward Vibe. I make my way up to the school.

Dunbarrow High is, unsurprisingly, deserted. There’s only a single white van left in the parking lot. I drift farther down toward ground level. It’s too dark to see anything now that I’m beyond the influence of the street lamps. I float across the rugby field, listening to the trees rustle, trying to see whatever path Ryan was talking about. I’ve never heard anything about the ominously named Devil’s Footsteps, and I’m finding it hard to believe there’s any occult hot spot so close to the high school.

Just as I’m about to give up, I see someone wearing a black hooded jacket. I dart into the pine trees and hang in the air just underneath the dripping dark branches. It’s me — my body. It comes closer, making squishing noises as it walks across the damp field. It’s carrying a headless rabbit in its left hand, the brown corpse swinging by the hind legs. As my body passes the tree I’m hidden in, it pauses and looks around, as if it can sense something in the wind. My face is white beneath the hood of the raincoat, my mouth twisted into an expression of joy. If I still had any breath, I’d be holding it. After a moment my body turns and moves on, striding into the darkness, and I glide along in pursuit.

We make our way over the rugby field and then head up through the woods, uphill for quite a distance, then down a shallow slope, and we come suddenly to what must be the Devil’s Footsteps. They’re set in a hollow completely overshadowed by enormous oak trees. The hollow is carpeted by soft moss, as well as by tufts of those needle-thin reeds that grow in wet earth. There are three stones, one taller than a man, the other two more rounded, flatter, and maybe table height. I could get dramatic and compare them to teeth, but they’re really just craggy masses of rock, like someone started sculpting something and then just couldn’t be bothered and left them out here. The setting is appropriately sinister.

My body walks to the center of the stone circle and then kneels and starts to claw at the ground with its hands. I watch, hidden up in the tree line, as it digs, ignoring the wind and rain.

I get back to Elza’s house at midnight. Ham is laid out at her feet, breathing softly. She’s got two pages of my dad’s notes on the sofa in front of her and is furiously scribbling at something with a permanent marker.

“Knock, knock.”

“Did you find yourself?”

“I did, actually. I — it, rather — was up behind school. Some place called the Devil’s Footsteps?”

“Oh. The sacrifice grounds. Well that’s . . . unpleasant. It must be preparing something for Halloween.”

“It dug a hole for hours, stopped just before midnight. I followed it back to my house.”

“And you couldn’t get in because of the magical barrier.”

“Right. It went in and that was it. It’s still there.”

“So we’ve got lots of problems. No sigil, no Book, you’ve got no body. They’ve got your mum shut up in the house. We’ve only got five full days until Halloween, and I still have no idea what your dad’s sheets of numbers are all about.”

“Elza, I want to know my mum’s OK. I haven’t seen her since Friday. Anything could’ve happened to her. You know how she’s been. I want to see her.”

“All right.” Elza pinches at the bridge of her nose. “Oh, my head is pounding. I was going to suggest the same thing. If the Host doesn’t want you in your house, then that seems like an excellent reason to get inside.”

“What, you want to go now?”

“No, not now. We need to plan this properly. We can’t just go running off without a clue, like we did to Holiday’s place. We’ll work this out and go tomorrow. Rescuing your mum seems like a good start.”

“OK, but how will that help us with the rest of it?”

“Well . . . I don’t know. But they clearly want her alive for something. I think if we get your mum out of there, they’ll come after us. Your body, too. And we’ll . . . we’ll have to improvise.”

“OK,” I say. “I mean, I don’t have a better plan.”

“So this magic circle,” Elza says. “Could I cross it? Does it stop spirits only?”

“I don’t think the magic circle stops living people. I saw the postman go in.”

“Maybe they were letting him through.”

“Yeah,” I say, “maybe. I saw birds get through, too.”

“Hmm. I’ve got an idea.”

“Really?”

“Have you tried possessing anything yourself?”

“It never crossed my mind.”

“Probably for the best. It’s a bad habit to get into. Well, listen, I’m not going in there alone. We know they can’t kill you. You’re already a ghost. I’m not sure how much they could even do to you. But I’m vulnerable. I don’t think the wyrdstone will help me if your body gets hold of me.”

“So I have to come, too. But I can’t cross the —”

“Yes. But like I said, I’ve got an idea. You know about the siege of Troy, right? The Greeks had a wooden horse with soldiers inside. We don’t have a wooden horse, but we do have something I think you’ll be able to use to cross the barrier inside.”

“Well, what is it?”

The fire spits, and a lump of flaming coal rolls out of the grate and hits the fire screen. Ham snaps out of his sleep, leaps upright, and whines. He turns to Elza and me and looks at us with wide affronted eyes.

A
m Ham. Am Luke. Walk fields with girl. Fields smell good. Am brave. Am good. Big brave Ham. Good boy. Love girl. Am in rain. No good. Trees shouting in rain. Mud under. Feet wet. Am brave. Girl walk with Ham. Find Mum. Go to house. Bad house.

Walk walk. Head wet. Girl talk. Talk talk talk. High voice. Girl hair wet. Girl smell very good. Walk walk walk. See house. Bad house. Ham afraid. Ham brave. House big and bad. Was good house. Now Ham afraid. House full of unpeople. Unpeople bad, no smell. Ham afraid. Ham brave. Must find Mum. Must be brave. House full of unLuke too. Worst of all. Smell like Luke. Is not Luke.

Sneak sneak. Ham sneak. House smell wrong. Am brave. Will not run. Luke brave. Hedge have blood under. Fresh blood. Unbeasts hung from trees. Unbeasts talking. Say
go away go away go away.
Ham not run. Must cross blood. Go to bad house. Am Ham. Am Luke.

Girl talk, push at Ham. Do not want to go. Ham afraid. Unbeasts everywhere. Unpeople too. Very bad. House big and dark and bad.

Girl hit Ham on bott. Hit bott very hard. Not happy. Want to shout. Am Luke. Am Luke. Am crawl. Girl follow. Am brave. Unbeasts nailed to trees. Unbeasts shout.

Need to find Mum. Am Luke. Am Ham. Am brave. Am bravest. Crawl across blood. Bad smell. Am bravest. Cross lawn. Girl hide in shed.

Am not Ham. Am Luke Luke am Luke and finally —

— finally let go of Ham’s body and whistle up out of his nose, like steam from a kettle. Elza was right. It worked, we’re inside the circle. The dull-eyed heads of the carrion sentries turn to watch me as I drift over the back lawn, which was always my favorite place in our house, wide and green and gently curving down to a low stone wall, with churned-up sheep fields just beyond. Ham is whimpering behind me. I hope he’s not going to be a liability. Using him to cross the barrier around my house was a stroke of genius, but I’m worried that he’ll alert the ghosts. I’ve been keeping watch over my house since the early morning, hovering behind our neighbor’s chimney stack. My body went out into the moors this morning and hasn’t come back, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to, and I’m certain the Shepherd will have other members of the Host guarding the house.

“Go and find Elza!” I hiss. I think about possessing him again and driving him over to the garden shed to wait, but I’d rather not. Holding myself inside Ham’s mind is the most confusing thing I’ve ever done, worse than any drunken haze or dream. It’s like being trapped in a maze of mirrors while an idiot shouts into your ears. Every piece of dirt that made up the fields between Towen Crescent and here smelled indescribable; it was like an orchestra of sound and light playing in my snout. I was losing track of who I was. Without Elza spurring Ham on, I couldn’t even have made him cross the boundary.

I move across the garden and melt through the wall of the kitchen. I can hear the television talking in the living room. I move into the hall and peek my head around the door frame. The Judge is sitting on the sofa, red Docs resting on the coffee table. He’s watching a rugby game, obviously neglecting guard duty. I wonder what the rest of the Host are doing. I decide on the most direct approach possible and drift directly up through the ceiling into Mum’s bedroom.

My head breaks through the floor, then my shoulders, pushing up into the room. It’s dark in here. The window is covered by some thick black bedsheets, not her usual orange-and-green curtains. Only a thin seam of daylight is getting in around the edges.

Mum herself is floating about a foot above the bed, suspended by an unseen force. The enormous star rune is still painted above her bed, with eight other smaller marks now ringed around it. I move closer to the bed. Her face is flat and calm; it doesn’t look like she’s in pain. Her arms are folded over her chest, and I see that she’s clasping a small green-bound book. So that’s where they’re keeping the Book of Eight. I don’t know how we’re going to get Mum out of here. I didn’t plan for her to be levitating. I stay by her bedside, listening to her breathe, knowing that even if she woke up, she wouldn’t be able to see me. I can’t even touch her. If only I hadn’t signed Berkley’s contract . . .