Thirteen Days of Midnight (25 page)

As she says this, the schematics of the rite rise up uninvited behind my eyes, the incantation scrawling itself across my brain. I shake my head, trying to dislodge it.

“We need witch parsley and baneleaf,” I say, “and we need oil. We’ll need something to draw a magic circle around the standing stones, probably house paint, since we’re drawing on grass. We need a sigil. And we’ll need . . . a knife, and we need an animal. Something that’ll bleed, so I can’t just squash a spider and expect the Devil to show up.”

Elza cuts her toast into neat triangles. I watch her knife sawing through bread and imagine slicing a creature’s throat. I don’t feel very hungry.

“I don’t think any of that will be too difficult to get hold of in Dunbarrow. They should have the herbs at the New Age shop my mum visits,” I continue.

“I’m worried about leaving the house,” Elza says. “Now that I don’t have my wyrdstone.”

“You’ll be safe today. The Book told me Hosts can’t manifest on the thirtieth. The stars aren’t right. We won’t see them, I can’t summon them. It’s the calm before a storm. Once the clock strikes midnight tonight . . . it changes. But that means we have a head start on them, getting up to the Devil’s Footsteps.”

“Luke . . .” Elza says. “If they’re weak today, then your mum . . . maybe we can —”

“No. The Shepherd and the Fury thought of that. The Judge told me they’ve hidden her. She’s not in my house.”

“Huh. And the Judge would never lie to you?”

“He would. But I think he was being honest, as far as it goes. . . . He said he didn’t know where she was. How true that is . . . who knows? He’s afraid of the Fury. I’m not sure I blame him.”

“So that’s our plan, then,” Elza says. “Shopping, preparation, ritual. By midnight tonight we’re up at the Footsteps, sacrificing an animal to Satan.”

“I don’t like it either. You know that. But black magic got us into this, and black magic’ll have to get us out again.”

“We hope,” she says.

I eat a little toast, and we do the dishes. Then at one o’clock, we make our way down into Dunbarrow. All across the town, masks are being removed from closets, hairy werewolf gloves retrieved from the back of the sock drawer. Tomorrow night monsters will fill the streets and nightclubs, faces covered in green greasepaint, fake blood, cat ears, plastic fangs, and the mummified rubber face of Elvis. Until then the town is still. Pumpkins sit on sideboards, waiting for their eyes and smiles.

We make purchases at the New Age health shop and John Crisco’s hardware store, and then, at Elza’s suggestion, we visit Black River mountaineering and hiking store, which is a weird flat-roofed building near the park. Eventually, after nearly an hour of heated discussion, we make our final purchase at the Paws ’n’ Pals pet shop, next to the sweetshop in the old square.

Late afternoon, and we’re making our way back to Elza’s house. We’re cutting through the dingy, unkempt end of the park, far away from the play area and the bandstand. Friendly ducks who want to be fed bread crusts don’t venture this far into the undergrowth, which is the territory of cigarette butts and empty cider bottles. We’re hurrying along a narrow path. I’m carrying the gerbil and paint can, while Elza carries the clothes. The gerbil case is bulky, and the can of yellow paint is pulling my arm out of its socket, and I’m just wondering if I need a break when I hear a voice shout “Manchett!” in a tone normally used on the rugby field.

Mark Ellsmith is lurching toward us. He’s followed by Kirk, Holiday, and Alice. Mark is carrying a can of beer, and Kirk has the rest of a six-pack hanging down from his hand.

“Mark,” I say.

His eyes are flickering hatred.

“Who said you could come around here?” he asks.

“To where, the park?” I reply.

“You need help,” Kirk says. “You’re not right, Luke.”

“Just leave us alone,” Elza says to them, barely even looking around. “We’re busy.”

Holiday looks worried; Alice looks excited.

“Shut up,” Mark says. “You need to keep away from us.”

“What?”

“We don’t want you around here,” Kirk says.

“Around where?” Elza asks. “Dunbarrow? You can’t evict us.”

“Shut up,” Mark says. “Not even talking to you.”

“Look,” I say, “I’ve been ill. I know I haven’t been — myself.”

“More like you’re some
thing
else,” Mark says.

“Mark, please,” Holiday says.

“You didn’t see the birds!” Kirk snaps at her.

“And what are you hanging out with her for?” Alice asks, looking at Elza, as if this were somehow the greatest crime of all.

“I can’t explain,” I say. “Things have . . . changed. I’m not myself. I’m ill. Things will be normal, soon. I promise.” Even as I speak, I can tell nobody’s listening.

“Look, who even cares?” says Elza. “Great, fine. Enjoy your fabulous lives.”

“Why did you say that to me?” Mark asks.

“Say what?” I ask.

“By the bandstand,” he says. “On the hill. Why would you tell me that?”

“I don’t know what I told you. It wasn’t me —”

Mark doesn’t let me finish. He lurches forward and hits me across the mouth. It’s not even a decent punch, more of a loose slap. My head rolls back and my lip feels sweet and warm and really enormous all at once. My face throbs. What did my body — the Fury — tell him? He’s deranged.

“Mark!” I hear Holiday yell. I stumble backward, holding my hand over my face. I’ve dropped the gerbil case. I’m still holding the paint, thinking maybe I’ll swing it at him, but he doesn’t hit me again.

More shouting. I take my hand off my face. Elza has Alice’s neck held in the crook of one arm and is trying to force her down onto the ground with what looks like some sort of wrestling hold. Alice is either screaming or crying. I can’t see Elza’s expression. Holiday is standing between me and Mark, talking very fast into his face. Her hands are gripping his shoulders. Kirk rushes up to the girls, shouting, and pulls Elza off Alice, who falls backward into the bushes, coughing. Elza pushes Kirk back and then head-butts him in the face and he’s knocked back, a smear of bright, almost-fake-looking blood leaking from his upper lip. Elza backs away from him, breathing hard, staring right at Mark, who looks at her and me with a mixture of fear and rage, then shakes his head and, linking his arm with Holiday’s, says, “Let’s go, man.”

“She hit me!” says Kirk.

“Everyone stop it!” Holiday shouts. “You don’t need to — this isn’t helping!”

Kirk hauls Alice to her feet.

“She
hit
me,” says Kirk, sounding like a little kid.

Elza looks poised to hit him again. I’m worried what’ll happen if he goes for her properly. Kirk’s not a pushover, and I don’t know how much more my body can take.

“You can’t hit girls,” Holiday says. “Come on.”

Kirk snorts and rubs the blood from his lip.

“Not even worth it,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Holiday.

She has nothing in her eyes except pity.

“I’m sorry, too,” Holiday says, and they leave.

I look at the churned-up grass. The whole thing took about a minute or two. I get the feeling that something else is leaving with them, too, some version of me. They won’t forgive me. This’ll follow me around Dunbarrow like a second shadow. Everyone will know.

“I’ve wanted to do that for years,” Elza says. “You have no idea — are you OK?”

“I’ll live.”

“Good friends, huh?”

“I ate an entire raw bird in front of their eyes. Who even knows what my body was doing when we weren’t watching?”

I pick up the can of paint and gerbil case. Elza bites her lip and starts to gather wayward pieces of hair in her fingers, slowly reknitting her bun.

At quarter to eleven, it’s time to go to the Footsteps. I put on my sigil and tuck a knife and the Book of Eight into my coat pocket. Then we load a sports bag with supplies and drag Ham into the night. The schematics of the ritual are burned into my brain, so hopefully I won’t have to refer to the Book again. It’s not as if we have an extra three days to spare. My face throbs. I can barely distinguish the pain of the beating from the other aches and pains I’ve gathered over the past week. It feels as if I’m listening to two separate brass bands playing over each other. Elza, who admitted to me that she didn’t have many “practical clothes,” is wearing freshly purchased waterproof pants and a mountaineering raincoat in bright orange and green.

“Remind me why we brought him?” I ask, pointing to Ham.

“I don’t know,” Elza says. “It just feels right. I felt safer when he was around, when you were gone. I didn’t want to leave him alone.”

“Don’t you think he’ll be in danger?”

“Maybe. Aren’t we all? I don’t know, it’s just a hunch, you know. I trust hunches.”

Elza has the gerbil case on her lap. Ham is deeply interested in the gerbil, and his breath is steaming up the side of the case.

“They’re making friends,” I say, pointing.

Elza grimaces. She’s still not happy about what we’re going to do to the gerbil.

“Speaking of which,” she says, “I wanted to say that all of this has really changed how I see you. I mean, I think we are friends now, right?”

“I’d say so.”

“I mean, I’m not happy about what we have to do. But I trust you. I really didn’t want to help you at first. I agonized over it. You’ve always just swanned around school like you were made of chocolate, and your friends are such jerks. . . . But you know, you’re dealing with all of this pretty well.”

“Thanks, Elza,” I say. “I always thought you were this awful, arrogant know-it-all. And I’ve come to realize that I was totally right.”

“Shut up!” she shrieks, hitting me in the side. “I take it all back. You’re the worst.”

“What I mean is,” she says after a while, “I hope you make it through this. I’m worried for you. About what you’ll have to do.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m worried, too.”

As we mount the hill, the storm finally breaks. The world is reduced to a series of colored flashes and blurs. Luckily there’s a distinctive convenience store just a street away from Dunbarrow High, and soon I see its sign flashing.

My throat tightens as we hurry along the street. I’m hefting the gerbil’s case with one hand and dragging Ham’s leash with the other. Ham’s fur is slicked down and his eyes are rolling about under his brows. Elza trots in front with the sports bag and the paint can.

“The Footsteps are up there,” I say, pointing to the absolute blackness beyond the dim shape of the school. My raincoat hood is soaked and heavy against my head.

I pull on Ham’s leash and we walk, heads bent to keep the rain off our faces. There are street lamps burning orange in the staff parking lot, but apart from that the school is entirely dark. We walk around the reception office, sheltered from the wind for a moment, then out into the yard, past the portable classrooms that they teach English and math in, around the back of the kitchens, then past the changing rooms, and we’re out on the rugby field, keeping to the edge, trees grumbling and dripping water on our heads. The wind is like a raging river, bursting its banks, carrying branches and leaves and bracken straight into our faces.

The north side of the rugby field bleeds into rougher, unmowed grass, studded with bushes and small dead trees. There’s litter here, years and years of it, blown over from the schoolyards, bright packets and cans and soggy plastic bags flailing in the tree branches like ailing jellyfish. Elza brings out a fat barrel-shaped flashlight as we head farther into the woods. I’m stumbling over branches and the tiny infuriating holes that seem to form in the forest floor specifically to trip people up. The sleeves of my jacket are so wet they look glossy in the beam of the flashlight. The forest floor is overgrown with tangled nests of brambles.

“Ten minutes to midnight,” I tell Elza. We need to move faster.

Onward, upward. The only light is the flashlight now; even the tangerine-colored stain of city light on the southern horizon is gone, hidden by the curve of the hill. This slope is rocky, the ground carpeted by a spongy layer of dark moss. We reach the top, struggle through a tenacious wall of bushes, and cross a narrow dirt road, rainwater whooshing along the channels that tires have carved in the earth.

“Is this it?” Elza asks.

“Yes. Down that bank.”

We make our way down the shallow slope toward the Devil’s Footsteps. The oak trees arch over the clearing like a vaulted ceiling. As we get closer I can see the three standing stones: one tall, two squatter and wider, which have unnatural cup- or hoof-shaped hollows cut into them. The stones are light gray, covered in scales of yellow lichen. We’re sheltered from the worst of the wind, but the rain is still making its way through the trees hard enough. My teeth are chattering.

Now that we’re right up by the Footsteps I can see the disturbed earth in the middle of the standing stones, where my possessed body was digging: moss ripped away, dark earth packed down and turning to mud in the rain. I point it out to Elza.

“Is something buried there?” Elza hisses.

“Could be. Looks fresh,” I say. “I know my body was digging here, but I don’t know why.”

“What would it have buried? Something for the Host’s own ritual? I’m not getting good feelings from this.”

I’m looking around at the dark trees, the whispering blackness of the forest beyond them, suddenly knowing we’ve walked into a trap. I saw my body digging here. . . . But we had no choice; the ritual has to be performed at a passing place. There was nowhere else.

“We can’t worry about that now, there’s no time. It’s nearly one minute to midnight. We need to move faster,” I tell Elza. She reaches into our sports bag and takes out the herbs. “Whether they buried something or not, we can’t worry about it. We don’t have time. Witch parsley and baneleaf. Stand in the center of the stones and I’ll draw the circle.”

I take the herbs. They’re a motley assortment of leaves, some brown and dry, others furry and fat and somehow tonguelike and covered in tiny hairs. I walk into the center of the Footsteps, with the gerbil’s case under my arm. I lay it down, right on top of the disturbed earth. I throw the herbs over myself. Some get caught in the wind and are blown away from me; others settle in my hair or stick to my raincoat. I feel like I’m garnishing myself. Elza ties Ham to a sapling and takes the can of paint, cracks it open, and begins to walk backward — counterclockwise, I remember the Book said — around the Footsteps, dribbling paint onto the moss. The magic circle isn’t very complicated: It’s just a ring around the passing place, with a mark of power at the north of the circle. It’s this mark that Elza seems to be struggling with.