by Paul Berry
‘How did you end up there – at the house?’ I ask.
‘My parents were getting divorced, and one night they were arguing about who was going to have custody of me, as though I was some burden to be offloaded, so I ran away to the park. It felt like the woods were calling to me. That’s when I found the house. Hastur’s voice was inside my head, telling me to come in, but I wasn’t scared. Time moved more slowly in the house. I must have lived there for decades, forgetting I was once human.’
‘What happened to your parents?’
‘They left Preston after I disappeared. Even as a monster, I still felt betrayed. Nobody came looking for me. The thing inside me was evil, but I welcomed it because for the first time I felt loved and part of something – a family.’
‘Is that why I went so willingly with you?’
‘The lonely were my favourite victims. Easier to manipulate.’ Despite the exhaustion I feel a needle of anger.
‘Why didn’t you just kill me like the others?’
‘I sensed there was something different about you. Underneath the pain there was something special, a key that would somehow free Hastur. And me.’
‘You must be so pleased you finally got your wish.’
‘If I could trade places with your father, I’d do it in an instant.’
‘I wouldn’t stop you.’
‘Hastur will find us eventually. It’s inevitable.’ I’m starting to get confused about what my mother is now. Has she been burnt away and replaced by Hastur or is she trapped inside her body while he controls it?
‘We have to be ready for him … her,’ he says, sensing my confusion. I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling.
Would I be able to kill my mother if I had to?
Adam takes a pillow and lies on the floor next to the bed. ‘At dawn, when I slept and the vampire’s hold weakened, I would dream of being back with my parents. That was all I wanted. And now all I can think of is you. Will you ever be able to trust me?’
‘I don’t know.’ I remember the desperation that weighed down on me in the maze before Adam found me and how he pulled me from its stranglehold. Nobody else, not even my dad, had the power to do that.
‘I can wait,’ he says.
‘Do you remember the people you killed?’
‘Yes. All of them. Part of me enjoyed it. You’re right, I can’t blame the vampire for everything.’
I turn on my side, trying to think of a response, and hear gentle snoring. I lean over the side of the bed. Adam is asleep, curled up with his arms crossed protectively over his chest. I think for a moment about lying next to him, but sleep washes over me.
In the dream I am standing on a beach facing the ocean, the cries of seagulls piercing the air. The sun is setting, casting a crimson glow that ripples on the waves. Adam is behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist. I have never felt happier, every bad thing that’s happened disappearing into the dying light. There’s a faint clanging of distant church bells and the sky darkens as storm clouds gather, an icy wind whipping in from the sea, and he pulls me closer.
‘I’ll keep you warm,’ he whispers into my ear, kissing my neck.
‘But it’s getting late. We should go.’
‘This is the end. There’s nowhere left to hide.’
The sun has disappeared. In the sky I sense something is watching us. A pair of eyes opens in the clouds and stares down, alien and unblinking. The sky fractures into a vast mouth, rows of mountainous teeth sliding out, and I pull Adam to the ground, shielding his head under my arms. The mouth gapes wider and I know it’s going to swallow the universe. I feel sand under my arms.
Adam has gone and I’m completely alone. I shout his name, but it’s drowned out by the howling wind.
The mouth begins to close and I scream.
Chapter 28
‘Sam!’
I feel myself being shaken.
‘Sam, wake up.’ I blearily rub my eyes, expecting to see my dad’s exasperated grin and smell sandalwood aftershave. Instead Rachel is standing next to the bed. Adam is sitting up on the floor, yawning and stretching his arms.
‘There’s been an accident at Jupiter Hill,’ she says.
We shuffle sleepily into the kitchen and sit around the table. The Saturday afternoon news on TV shows Jupiter Hill engulfed by black smoke and several fire engines trying to put out the inferno that is raging inside. The reporter looks suitably morose as he states that so far no survivors have been found.
‘It was my mother. It had to be,’ I say. ‘She knew the Syncret would go after her.’ I feel racked with guilt. If I hadn’t helped her, lured by her promise of a reunited family, none of this would have happened. I imagine Professor Ward screaming as she burns alive inside her cell.
‘The Syncret? Who are you talking about?’ Rachel asks, slipping into her American accent. ‘Oh fuck, did you start the fire?’
‘No. It must have been my mother.’
‘Your mom, who is dead?’
‘Well, it’s really Hastur,’ Adam says. ‘He’s inside her.’ Rachel looks at us incredulously.
‘You’re not helping,’ I say.
‘But it’s the truth.’
‘You’re both insane,’ she says. ‘Or on drugs. Did you kill Terry too?’
‘No. You have to believe us. Jupiter Hill isn’t what you think.’
She sighs, opens one of the kitchen cupboards and takes out a phone book and a bottle of vodka, pauses, returns the vodka and puts the book on the table.
‘I know what I’m about to say sounds crazy, but I don’t trust my parents. I’ve overheard their whispered conversations late at night when they think I’m asleep. They were talking about finding the potential to stop some monster. At first I thought they were practising lines from one of my dad’s dumb plays. Then I saw something.’
‘What did you see?’ I ask.
‘A few years ago, you were sleeping over in my room. In the night, I heard a noise next to my bed and looked down, thinking you were having a nightmare. You were flickering, like a candle flame. Then you disappeared. I was too shocked to move, but after a few moments you reappeared.’ She opens the phone book and takes out a dried maple leaf. ‘You were holding this. I took it from your hand and kept it to prove to myself I hadn’t imagined it.’
‘I remember,’ I say. ‘That night I woke up in a forest. I think it was Canada. I was surrounded by maples and redwoods as tall as skyscrapers.’
‘I should have told you.’
‘That wasn’t the first time it happened.’
‘I thought so. That’s why I didn’t tell my parents. I thought you might be the one they were looking for.’ She takes the leaf back off me and holds it towards the window, the light shining through an intricate web of veins fanning out from the stem. ‘I didn’t imagine seeing Terry in my garden that night, did I?’ I shake my head. ‘Tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.’
‘Swear you won’t run out of the house screaming?’
She holds up her hand. ‘I swear I’ll be as cool as the world’s coolest cucumber.’
I tell her everything, about my mother and the Syncret, the Datum, how I used the crystal to transport us to Adam’s house and how we barely escaped, skipping over the part where I bit off Dr Stone’s finger and drank his blood after he killed Terry.
I show her the crystal and she looks at it, unimpressed. ‘Something’s always felt wrong with this town,’ she says. ‘I could never suss it out, like everyone’s hiding a secret. And my parents may be members of this Syncret? For fuck’s sake, my dad’s just a costume designer. Why did he get involved with them? My mum’s always been a massive douche, so that’s not much of a shock.’
‘I think the Syncret has been running Preston for years,’ I say. ‘They must have infiltrated the police and fire brigade as well.’
/> ‘What are we going to do?’
‘We need to make a plan,’ Adam says, ‘before your mother – before Hastur finds us.’
‘Well, I can never fight the forces of evil on an empty stomach,’ she says. ‘Who else is hungry?’
Much to Adam’s delight, Rachel makes cheese on toast, and we both look at each other as he moans with pleasure, licking the grease off his fingers.
‘If she’s after the crystal, why don’t you just destroy it?’ she asks.
‘Because I’ll never get my dad back and it might be the only way to separate Hastur and my mother.’ Even though she told me she had never loved me, and despite Professor Ward’s warning that my real mother is dead, I still cling to the hope that she will change.
‘Hastur wants to open another rift into the Datum,’ Adam says. ‘His body, his power, is locked in there. At the moment, the crystal is the only way he can access it, but I’m sure eventually he’ll crack open a door.’
‘And if he succeeds?’ she asks.
‘Worse than you can imagine. He’ll make the world a place of everlasting darkness and torment.’
‘There must be some other way of sending him back,’ I say, recalling the dream I had. It was trying to tell me something important about the beach I was standing on with Adam, and I realise I might know how to find it.
‘Do you remember the picture I drew a few weeks ago?’ I ask Rachel. ‘It was a town next to the sea.’
‘Kind of. You coloured the sea blood red. Typical Sam style.’
‘Did anything in the picture show where it was?’
‘I think there was a church in the background. You seemed to be in a trance while you were drawing it. I called your name a few times and you ignored me.’
‘What did I do with it?’
‘It’ll be in your class drawer. Unless you destroyed it along with my peacock.’ She ruffles my hair playfully.
‘Why do you need it?’ Adam asks.
‘I had a dream about it. I don’t know why, but I think we’re supposed to go there.’
‘Was I with you in the dream?’
I’m about to lie but change my mind. ‘We were on a beach looking at the sea.’ He smiles, and I almost tell him how good it felt, but the words stay locked in my throat.
‘Something also happened in the library.’ I tell them how the book A Walking Tour of New Innsmouth fell onto the table and about the strange voice emanating from my Walkman. I then remember Professor Ward’s advice. ‘Someone at Jupiter Hill also told me to look for a hidden place, somewhere I would find salvation.’
‘I think you’ve just come up with a plan,’ he says.
‘It could be too risky going back to the college,’ I say. ‘If we get caught, it’s over.’
‘But if we don’t go, we’ll just be running forever,’ Adam says. ‘And I don’t know what else Hastur is capable of.’
‘So it’s decided,’ Rachel says. ‘I’ll drive us there when it gets dark.’ Adam coughs and gently nudges his crumb-covered plate towards her. She rolls her eyes. ‘I can also make more food.’
After lunch, we flop onto the living room couch, half watching the TV, and wait until the afternoon fades into evening. Adam falls asleep next to me with his mouth open, a gentle snore reverberating from his throat. There are no new updates about the fire; the police still don’t know if it was arson or accidental, stating that it could take weeks to identify any of the remains. They flash a phone number on the screen to contact if anyone has further information.
‘That would be an interesting call,’ I say. ‘Hi, my once-dead mother possessed by a vampire god started the fire. And, by the way, you’ll find lots of dead monsters in the rubble.’ Part of me feels tempted to do it. ‘I don’t think this is the first time she’s done something like this.’
‘Do you think she was responsible for the bus accident?’ Rachel asks.
‘It’s too much of a fluke. She mysteriously survived a crash which killed everyone else on board. It’s a bit hard to believe.’ Chills flutter down my neck.
‘Why is she like this?’ she asks.
‘I think she was poisoned, corrupted when they opened the rift, like being made ill by radiation.’
‘There’s a small silver lining to this.’
‘What?’
‘If everyone’s been killed at the hospital, then they’ll think you’re dead too. That means the police won’t be looking for you.’
‘The Syncret will figure it out eventually.’
‘But in the meantime, you get to start over. Be anyone you want.’
‘Like a superhero?’
‘Why not?’ She twirls her hair between her fingers. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Ask away. My life’s now an open book.’
‘What was it like when you were a vampire?’
‘I’m not sure anymore. The memories of it are fading.’ It feels like what happened is something I saw in a horror film a long time ago, a horror film I would have laughed at for having such a ridiculous plot. Perhaps it’s just my mind’s way of coping or some supernatural defence mechanism that keeps its world secret. ‘It felt like I was slowly losing myself as it took hold, everything that was me being burned away. I think this freakish teleportation power I have was the only thing that made me able to resist it for so long.’
I don’t tell her that in some terrible way I miss the vampire and the way it liberated me from my fears.
‘Do you think Terry knew what he was doing?’
‘He was completely taken over by it. But I think he was a good person underneath, just angry at the world, like me.’
‘Did he suffer?’
‘No,’ I lie. ‘He had no idea what was happening.’ I don’t mention how Terry tried to pull a knife from his chest before he died.
The snoring stops and Adam opens his eyes. ‘Is it time to go?’ he mutters, still half asleep. His hand brushes against mine and he hooks onto one of my fingers. I almost snatch my hand away but let him carry on touching it. He looks down at his hand and pulls it away.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s ok,’ I say, still feeling the warmth of his touch lingering on my finger.
The street lamps have automatically turned on, and their amber light filters through the slats in the blinds.
‘My fellow burglars, let’s get ready to break into the college,’ Rachel says. ‘Balaclavas won’t be a fashion option, unfortunately.’
‘We could wear your mother’s tights on our heads,’ I say.
‘What an excellent suggestion,’ she says, winking at me.
‘Tights?’ Adam asks worriedly.
After a few minutes of rummaging, Rachel finds a crowbar in the garage and shoves it into her backpack. Adam is disappointed when she refuses to make cheese sandwiches for the trip, despite the loud rumbling from his stomach. He insists on sitting in the front seat of the car, listening with an overly serious expression when she explains how to put the seatbelt on. ‘It stops you smashing through the windscreen when I crash the car,’ she says, patting him on the back reassuringly.
We arrive in a few minutes and she parks on the road parallel to the college, grimacing when Adam slams the car door loudly. There are a few lights on in the houses and the tinny echoes of televisions, but the streets are deserted.
We cautiously walk through the entrance and across the empty carpark that stretches around the back of the college, our feet crunching on frozen slush. In the sky, bats flit about, catching whatever insects have managed to survive the cold. Rachel pulls out the crowbar and wiggles it under the window frame of the art classroom.
‘If the college has a burglar alarm, get ready to run,’ she murmurs, pushing the bar down. There’s a dull crack and the window slides up a few inches. We push it open halfway and look into the ominous darkness.
> She takes out a torch and switches it on, swiping the narrow beam around the room. It’s empty and silent apart from paper fluttering in the breeze from the open window. We climb through and I expect any second to hear the shrill warbling of an alarm or the shout of a security guard.
I open my drawer, which has a sticker of Madonna on the front, and slide out a black portfolio. Inside is all the artwork I’ve made in class. The first is a coloured pencil drawing of Peter Cushing warding off a vampire with a crucifix. Adam picks it up and chuckles.
‘Sam has this weird thing about vampires,’ Rachel says.
I take out another picture. It shows a man in a forest clearing, his face identical to Adam’s, with a pair of black wings protruding from his back. Next to him stands a hooded figure in yellow.
‘Is that me?’ he says.
‘I don’t know.’ A cold shiver runs across my shoulders. Did I predict this was going to happen? Could I have stopped it?
The last picture is the blood sea and the beach. The town is in silhouette, with a twilight sky behind it. The weather vane on the top of the church is a stylised octopus holding a key in its tentacles. Staring out of the purple clouds is a pair of malevolent eyes.
‘Is this an actual place?’ Rachel asks, shining the torch on it. I think of the destinations from holiday programmes on TV, but the weather vane doesn’t look familiar.
‘We can look in the library,’ I say. ‘Maybe that book I saw was real.’
‘Break into the library? Usually people are desperate to get out.’
When we reach the library doors, they’re locked. ‘Nothing can get in the way of the master burglar,’ Rachel says and pops them open with the crowbar, wood splintering around the handles. ‘They’re gonna be furious when they see this,’ she says. ‘No doubt the goths will take the flak.’
We head straight for the architecture section and pull out a random selection of books, quietly placing them on a study table next to my drawing.
After a few minutes Adam says loudly, ‘I’ve found it!’ He clamps his hand over his mouth.
