by R Mountebank
Chapter 2
A difficult to find province of Britain 2010 AD
On the isle of England, in a very remarkable part of her borders, lived one of the strangest families of the age, in a very remarkable house. The strangest family of England for that era shared a two-bedroom apartment in Dover, and though they were a very interesting group of people, their story could possibly be found in another book. Not this one. The slightly less strange family that lived in a more remarkable house were called the Horns. At least that was how the locals referred to them. It wasn’t known what the residents of the remarkable house at 25B Cottondown Road were called exactly. They were quite aloof and stuck to themselves. All the neighbours had to go on was a small copper sign that dangled from an iron post. It read in rather ornate writing: ‘The House of Horn’. And since none of the occupants were forthcoming with their real names, that was what they were called.
If you were to sneak up to their bright red letterbox (not the blue one, never the blue one) early in the morning and read their mail, you could find letters addressed to anybody from an Adams to a Sanders to a Vander. Even the odd letter for a Laking sometimes, but that was obviously a mistake. That person had been dead for centuries.
It gave the postman hours of amusement every morning, reading as he did all the names on all the strange letters and parcels that he delivered to 25B Cottondown road. He would write the names in a little notebook he kept in his back pocket on his rounds. If he found a stamp that was particularly interesting, and he usually did, it too would go into his notebook. Back at the office, with the stolen stamps safely catalogued, he would transfer the notepads takings onto a giant chalk board that dominated the back wall of the Pennysworth Post Office tea room. There were over two dozen different names on it, each with a tally of the letters and parcels delivered by week, month, and year.
So far as the postman reckoned, the letters to various Sander’s was equal to the multitude of Vander’s. A certain D.Q Finch was the leading letter getter this month and there had only been two brown paper parcels for a Mr Edward Fox, a very unusual turn of events.
The postman scratched his head where his hat chafed his scalp. There was one letter he had delivered this morning that drew his attention. Peculiar in that this one had no stamp and that it was addressed to a Horn. Most peculiar. He almost didn’t deliver the envelope under principle, until he remembered he worked for the people of Pennysworth and not the Royal Mail.
“What was that name again?” he said to nobody. “I haven’t had a Horn in years…”
As he scratched his irritated scalp with his left hand he reached for his notebook of names with the right. Thumbing through the dog-eared and smudged pages, he came to the day’s scribbling.
“Horn… Horn… Horn… Where did I see that name?”
With a knobby index finger he scanned through the list, smudging the ink more as he did so.
“Ah. There it is… ‘M. Horn’. Who on God’s green earth is ‘M. Horn’?”
Consulting the tearoom’s black board he went to the Horns’ section.
“Okay. I see a Gerald Horn, a Henry Horn, a Henrietta, Thomas, Julie, a Mr Horn, a Remigius and a Stephen. No M. Horn. Very strange. I wonder if they’re new.”
Taking a piece of chalk from the mantel, he carefully added ‘M’ to the list of Horns’ on the blackboard. After replacing the chalk on its appointed resting place he stood two paces back and gazed at what he now considered his life’s work. After a quick perusal, he determined that there were indeed more Horns than Finch’s or Fox’s. Quite apt, seeing as the place was called the ‘House of Horn’. You would expect a few Horn’s to live in a place like that, thought the postman.
“I wonder if it’s for that horrible Mary Horn. Who would send a letter to her? She must have one friend after all. You live and learn, don’t you.” he pondered aloud. “Live and learn.”
The girl in question was coincidentally learning at Pennysworth Normal High School, or rather, attempting to learn, specifically trigonometry. She was very much alive too.
Mary sat at the back of the class chewing the life out of her pen and furiously glaring at her test sheet. To her, school was a place to learn what you needed to survive the big scary world the grownups had created. Anything that had no obvious or relative use to ones future needs was part of the teacher’s evil plan, to confuse and bore the spark out of their youthful charges till they were suitably drained and therefore susceptible to brain washing. Mary glowered at the wrinkled old walnut sporting a tweed jacket that was her maths teacher. Mr Higgs sat reclined in his chair reading yesterday’s newspaper, oblivious to the holes being bored into him by Mary’s eyes.
Her foe seemingly unfazed, Mary returned her attention to the test sheet before her and tried to think of any career that may require a sound knowledge of triangles. So far she could only think of one. Maths teachers would have to know a lot about triangles and hypotenuses and so on. Doctors, lawyers and important, highly paid CEOs would not. The test was a waste of her time.
Using both hands, Mary crushed the cursed test into a small ball and threw it at the waste bin by Mr Higgs’ desk. Folding her arms on the desk she promptly rested her head and shut her eyes. Mr Higgs’ newspaper rustled as he turned a page.
“The test is worth ten per cent of this term’s final, Ms Horn,” said Mr Higgs in his reedy voice. Half the class giggled, the other half sniggered, all stared at Mary.
“Quiet now, my sweet young things,” said Mr Higgs, his head still buried in the newspaper.
Mary sighed loudly and scraped back her chair to get up. The class watched her as she stomped to the front of the room and looted through the contents of the bin for her test.
“Are you looking for lunch, Mary?” asked Deidre, one of Mary’s chief malcontents.
The class erupted into laughter. Mr Higgs put a finger to his lips and shushed the class till it went quiet. Mary growled and fished the balled up test from the bin and stomped back to her desk. Roughly unfurling it, she got to work, stabbing her answers and slashing her workings across the wrinkled sheet.
Folding his newspaper, Mr Higgs sat forward in his chair and clapped his hands once.
“That’s all the time we have, my sweets. Pens down. Hand your tests in on your way out. Failure to spell you name correctly counts as a two point loss to your total score. One for your gross stupidity and another for the shame you’ve brought down on your ancestors. Oh how they must cry in their graves…”
The class gathered their books and bags and shuffled out, their talking growing louder as they left the teacher’s sphere of influence. Mary waited until the room had emptied so she wouldn’t have to deal with another round of teasing and taunting. Mr Higgs exchanged his newspaper for a clay pipe and got to work tamping fresh tobacco in. Mary slammed her test paper on the desk, drawing his attention away from the pipe and onto the scowling wild splendour that was Mary Horn.
Mary was difficult to describe. She had a natural beauty that was marred by a set of peculiar features. Her heart-shaped face framed large wolf-like eyes, plush lips that were so dark they were almost purple and her wild mane of hair helped to hide two pointed ears that defied belief.
Mary had other odd characteristics that, depending on who you spoke to, were either related to a kind of mass hysteria that dim people are prone to, or outright mystical anomalies. For one thing, her height often changed before your very eyes with her emotions. Not by much, but some people swore they could be looking her in the eye one second and the next she was above or below them.
The second was the unnerving feeling that you were being watched when in her presence. It was as if the very wind held its breath in anticipation, an unseen force biding its time.
As a result, the people of Pennysworth had a deep seated fear of Mary. That fear manifested itself as intense suspicion and puerile hatred.
The girl was not right. She didn’t belong.
Mr Higgs did his best
to lower his rising bile, smiled at Mary and leaned back in his chair. “How was the test, my sweet? Will I have the honour of teaching you again next year or no?”
Mary slung her bag on to her shoulder. “That depends. Is ninety eight per cent a pass or not?”
Higgs smiled and picked up Mary’s test sheet. “My. You are confident. What question do you think you got wrong?”
“None. Your stupid test was easy. I spelled my name wrong on purpose.”
Higgs blinked several times. “Why?”
Mary sniffed and looking down her nose said rather matter-of-factly, “Father says I shouldn’t hand my real name out like some Hollywood hussy. Names are important. Names have power. You people will have none over me.”
Higgs could only stare off into space as Mary left the room, wondering to himself if she truly was as mad she looked.
Written plain as day on the test sheet was ‘Mary of the House of Horn’.
“I’m not paid enough. Not by half.”
It was lunch time and the hallways were mostly empty. The chatter of children and the clatter of cutlery could be heard from the school’s cafeteria. Mary always avoided it, rain or shine. Food had a habit of being thrown her way and she didn’t feel like washing potato salad out of her hair right now. Mary made her way outside instead, walking across the freshly mown sports field to a line of trees that marked the border of the school grounds. There was a particularly gnarled old oak that had plenty of good hand holds. Mary slithered up to the first solid bow and, sitting with her back to the trunk, made a start on her lunch. She ate with ferocity, chewing quickly and without satisfaction. Two cheese sandwiches were demolished with hardly a pause. The crusts she threw over her shoulder for the birds.
Absently wiping at the crumbs on her uniform, Mary looked wistfully at the lands beyond the tall stone wall that surrounded the school. She had dreams of leaping over the wall and running as far and as fast as she could. She dreamed of an exciting life, a life with meaning far away from this quaint English country prison her father had chosen to hide in. But she couldn’t escape, nobody could.
Nobody with sense, at any rate.
She knew most of the adults could leave. All of the store owners in Pennysworth had to get their goods from somewhere outside. Nobody in town made televisions, trashy girly magazines or bags of crisps. Her father knew how to leave; he often disappeared for days at a time. The Postman was a given, and some of the Archers had gone for years once. But they all returned. Returned to live the rest of their lives in this perfect postcard hell.
All of them but her brother.
Mary could barely remember him now. It had been so long since he left. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes.
The bastard left me here. Alone.
A wind picked up from nowhere, tussling Mary’s hair and setting the tree boughs swaying.
There had to be a whole other world outside of Pennysworth. A world that Mary could barely imagine, a world filled with all the oceans, cities, jungles and Hollywood celebrities that she had read about in books and magazines. A world they were taught about in school but never allowed to see. She would be shown, she was constantly told, when the time was right. But when would that time come? When she finished school? That was years away yet. Mary thought she would be lucky to see her next birthday, the way the people of the county acted towards her. Most were downright rude to her but some went beyond mere insults and cold shoulder tactics. Mary had lost count of the number of schoolyard scraps she had endured throughout her short lifetime. She just couldn’t understand it; why did everyone hate her so much?
Again Mary thought of running away. But it didn’t matter which direction she ran. She would find herself back in Pennysworth. If you were to head north of town towards the outlaying farms you would finally get to a low hill which, as you crested it, you would find yourself just south of the village. Head east towards the forest and you would eventually find yourself in a clearing overlooking the western side of the village. Going in any direction away from Pennysworth would only get you to the opposite side of the town.
Mary had spent many an afternoon and weekend trekking or cycling around Pennysworth County, trying to discover the way out. You could say it was her only hobby. She had gone as far as making terribly rendered maps and devising ‘cunning’ plans akin to ‘The Great- Escape’. In a quiet corner of the forest was the aborted tunnel she had created. Mary had laboured for months on that project. Her spirit had almost been well and truly broken when she finally popped out of the earth in a farmer’s field amidst some startled cows.
The Postman was her best bet. He left Pennysworth every other day to fetch the counties mail, so she had regular opportunities to stalk him. The man also had a penchant for whistling loudly which made him easy to find. But try as she might to follow him, and no matter how stealthily or closely she followed, he always vanished, either just around a bend in the road or passing some trees.
The man was obviously a wizard.
Her father was no use either. Mary had asked him many times why they couldn’t leave. He always answered with a shrug or changed the subject. One Christmas however, he had been well into his whiskey when Mary had broached the subject.
“It’s magic, of course! Old bloody magic! Magic so old, nobody can find it! Not even him!”
He then rolled about on the carpet, laughing and crying in turns.
Magic wasn’t too farfetched in Mary’s book. In fact, it explained a lot. Some of the things she had seen her father do defied reasoning. He had drilled in to her what he called ‘the basics of life’, back when she was much younger and he was much more tolerable.
Never make an oath or a promise, either in truth or jest, unless you are absolutely sure of the outcome.
Never tell you true name to anyone, be they friend or lover. As power resides in all names, let not your name command you.
Never leave any physical trace behind, be it hair, tooth or fingernail. Destroy these leavings with fire or risk an enemy birthing a fetish in your likeness.
Salt for the soul, fire for the flesh…
Mary wanted to think she had grown out of all that bunkum she had believed in when she was a little girl, but what else could explain Pennyworth’s borders? Reality-swallowing wormholes in the countryside?
Occasionally an outsider’s car drove through Pennysworth, the occupants blank-eyed and gormless. The cars never stopped, much to Mary's disappointment; they simply passed on through. Many years back a homeless man had wandered into town, drunk and screaming profanities. He was the only outsider Mary had ever seen in person. The local constabulary had been quick to lock him up though, his fate unknown to Mary.
Mary sighed and, casting one last longing look at the world beyond the wall, prepared to climb back down the tree. She had just begun to lower herself down when she heard a noise above her. Looking up she saw two gleaming eyes peering back at her. Mary yelped and dropped to the ground in a heap.
With the wind knocked out of her, Mary lay amongst the leaves desperately sucking in air. There was a faint rustling beside her. She turned her head and saw the silhouette of something tall and slender standing in the shadow of the stone wall. Two amber eyes shone back at her through the gloom. Mary pushed herself up to her knees.
“Come any closer and I’ll break your legs.”
The silhouette shifted and a strange hollow voice replied back.
“I’m sorry to have startled you.”
“Startled me? You were spying on me, you sicko!” Mary shouted back.
A boy resolved out of the shadow, hands up and head shaking.
“You climbed into my tree. I was here first. You’re the sicko,” he replied in an odd, flat voice.
Mary studied him silently. She didn’t recognise him. Nobody in Pennysworth looked like him. He was wearing the school uniform, though, with his shirt tucked in and everything.
He was very tall and skinny, with golden like skin and large alm
ond shaped eyes. His face was long and slender and he sported two pointed ears. He was attractive in a rather androgynous way she thought.
“Who are you?” she asked bluntly.
The tall boy was taken aback. “My name is… John,” he said after a pause.
Mary arched an eyebrow. He certainly did not look like a ‘John’, nor a Mathew, a Mark or a Luke. He was more likely an alien or something, sent to check on the welfare of their prisoners. Xandu of the planet Yurt was a fitting name.
“Well… ‘John’, I don’t suppose you think it’s normal to hide in trees and spy on girls, do you?”
John blinked and replied in his monotone voice, “No. Is it customary to be a sarcastic twerp when introducing oneself?”
Mary couldn’t help but laugh.
Maybe this alien spy isn’t so bad.
She stepped closer to him and thrust out her hand. “I’m Mary of the House of Horn. Welcome to earth.”
John looked at her sideways as they shook hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mary of the House of Horn. I am humbled by your warm welcome.”
Mary snorted. “Now who’s being sarcastic?”
John smiled, the first showing of a true human emotion. “Touché,” he replied.
Mary unclasped her hand from his.
“I take it you’re new to this charming neck of the woods?”
John turned from Mary and looked around at his surroundings. “Yes, very much so.”
He seemed wary and perhaps a little sad. Mary assumed this new place was as strange to him as he was to her. But why was he here and where did he come from? All joking aside, this boy was obviously not a local. That meant he probably knew how to leave Pennysworth.
“So tell me about yourself, John. Where do you come from?”
John gave her a level stare. “We came from up North.”
“Who is, we?” asked Mary innocently.
“Me and my guardian. Erm… I mean my uncle,” replied John looking away.
“Guardian uncle? That sounds cool.”
John shrugged.
“So… The North is a big place. Anywhere in particular?”
“Northwest.”
Mary sighed. “So then. How did you get here?”
“We drove. In a car if you must know.”
Mary crossed her arms. “I’m going to stop talking if you’re going to be a complete tool.”
John gave her another sideways glance.
“I don’t understand. I am a man. Not a tool…”
“Could have fooled me,” Mary said beneath her breath.
John’s eyes narrowed. The ears were not for show then. John took a step closer. He looked over Mary’s shoulder towards the school buildings and pulling her close, spoke in a low voice conspiratorially.
“I know what you really want to ask me, Mary. I met the headmaster this morning. He told me that several of the students would be interested in where I’m from and how I got here. He made it very clear that I should not divulge anything that could help you. But believe me, Mary, when I say this: you do not want to leave.”
Mary snorted. “So I don’t want to leave, do I? You obviously don’t know me.”
John looked over her shoulder in the direction of Pennysworth for a moment; finally he looked her in the eyes. “There is nothing for you out there, nothing but pain and sorrow.”
Mary’s hackles began to rise. “You don’t know that. You know nothing.”
For this boy, this stranger to walk in to her life and dash her hopes with one short conversation was too much too bear. She felt angry and humiliated. Marys pulse accelerated. A pain in her chest swelled until her whole body was shaking. Mary shuddered as she gained an inch of height and girth, her uniform now strained down the seams of her shoulders and chest.
John stepped back from her, alarm on his face.
"What just happened?"
Mary clenched her jaw through the spasm of pain that came every time she lost control of her emotions. Her skin flushed a deep red. Her breath grew short. She glared at John for a moment then, panting, she turned and walked away from this nuisance of a boy.
“I am sorry if I have hurt you, Mary,” John said to her back. “But you must believe me.”
Mary couldn’t face looking at him. She quickly walked back towards the school, breathing deeply all the while to calm her raging thoughts.
