by Holly Race
When I come up for air at Sloane Square, I reach into my bag to check the time on my phone. The unknown number has messaged again.
Have you never wondered about your mother’s death, Fern?
I stop dead in the middle of the pavement and a man glares as he pushes past.
Who is this? I reply, shock making my fingers clumsy.
But they don’t respond. They haven’t replied by the time I reach Bosco College, or by the time I’m forced to put my phone away at the start of double biology. They haven’t replied by first break, when I am interrupted in my toilet haven by Lottie Medraut and her harem, or by the time break ends and I slip into the back of the Latin classroom. Why would I wonder about Mum’s death? It was simple – she passed away in her sleep. Sudden Death Syndrome. Rare, tragic, but it happens to all sorts of people. There has never been anything to question.
It is only when I am standing in the lunch queue that my phone vibrates again. My whole body flushes as I spot the words on the screen.
Your mother knew me by another name, but you may call me Archimago.
Then, soon afterwards: She and I were knights together in Annwn.
Archimago? Annwn? I may as well still be in Latin for all the sense these words make. I have had time to order my thoughts now, though, and I know what I want to say. I won’t be distracted by a strange vocabulary. What did you mean about my mum’s death?
This time, the reply comes almost immediately.
Una didn’t die peacefully at all. She was murdered.
It’s as though the mysterious Archimago has reached through the phone screen, through my ribcage and is squeezing my heart, tight tight tight. I place a hand over my mouth to stop myself from showing too much emotion. No one else in the queue seems to have noticed my reaction, though. Half of them are glued to their phone screens too. I look from face to face, wondering whether this is a malicious prank by one of my peers.
How do you know? I reply, and after a moment I deliberately put my phone back into my bag. If Archimago is watching I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing how shaken I am. I stare straight forward, my elbow pressed against my bag to feel the vibration should another message arrive. I choose the chicken curry and chocolate sponge, and take my lunch to my usual table where everyone knows not to bother me. Those words – She was murdered – ricochet around my skull until they break apart. She was murdered. Was She Murdered. Murdered She Was. I can’t help it – I place my phone next to my plate. Elsewhere in the hall, Lottie Medraut’s ringing laugh carries over the other voices.
Spoonful of curry halfway to my mouth, the screen lights up once more. Archimago has replied. I draw the phone towards me and rice spills in maggoty drips into my lap.
Because I killed her.
2
The lunch in front of me goes cold as I stare at the message from Archimago. This has to be a joke. It has to be. Mum died unfairly but naturally. She died in her sleep. Dad woke up to find her cold in his arms. How could she have possibly been murdered?
My phone rattles against the tabletop, and I realise that my hand is shaking. I put the phone down and trap my fingers between my knees. Think, Fern.
I get up clumsily and stride out of the hall, sliding my still full lunch tray into the collection trolley. I need some fresh air. Outside, I try to call Archimago but they messaged me from an unknown number. I have to settle for replying to them. You’re lying, I type. I’m going to the police.
Of course I do nothing of the sort. Uncertainty, confusion and anger curl through my body. I consider calling Dad, but that doesn’t seem right. Dad and I have never been able to talk about Mum. Mentioning it to Ollie is out of the question. And they’re all I have, really.
The clink-clink of cutlery and plates rings out from the lunch hall. Students laugh, gossip, compare homework. Teachers nod at me as they pass.
Because I killed her.
I cannot be here.
Ignoring the startled questions from the receptionist, I fly out of Bosco and onto the street, running south to the Thames. There, I hang over the fence, nursing a stitch and taking great gulps of river air. A solitary gull is being tossed about on the water, wings flapping fruitlessly. It catches my eyes briefly and I nod in sympathy.
She was murdered.
I check my phone again. Archimago hasn’t replied to my threat. Maybe they’ve been frightened off. Maybe they’ve had their fun for now and will slink away, a perpetual question mark at the back of my mind.
I open a search on my phone and type in Archimago. All it brings up are references to a character in an old poem and a load of Internet personas. I try searching for Annwn next, checking the spelling against Archimago’s text. This time the results are more interesting: Ah-noon is the name for the Underworld in Welsh folklore. Where the dead live. Spectral fingers seem to tippety-tap up my neck. I still don’t understand, though.
I read Archimago’s messages again. She and I were knights together in Annwn. Right. I type knights Annwn. The Internet returns a handful of results and at the top, a link to a video. It’s titled The Truth About Your Nightmares. I click on it, ignoring the irritated glares of the people around me as sound blares out.
A young woman – dark hair, dark skin and sharp eyes – stares up at me.
‘Do you think you’re safe when you sleep?’ she asks. ‘Well, think again. The knights aren’t just –’
Inexplicably, the video cuts out mid-sentence, leaving me with a blank frame and a timebar that ticks on through nothingness.
I refresh the page and even try turning my phone off and on again, but nothing reveals the rest of the video. Baffled, I head down into the Underground and take the next tube back towards Stratford.
‘Don’t stare at her! You’re being so rude,’ a woman whispers to her boyfriend on the other side of the carriage. I catch the boyfriend’s eye. He’s smirking. The stranger opposite me is watching me intently too. I know the type. He wants to get into a staring contest so he can start something. It’s been happening a lot lately. I close my eyes to avoid him.
The train rocks gently. Mum’s face, dark hair billowing across crinkled eyes, taunts me. I was murdered, Fern, she seems to whisper. Are you going to do nothing about it? The raging lullaby of the Underground’s tunnels pitches me into my mother’s smile. I land in a woodland nightmare. Dough-faced Jenny is there, and so is Ollie. It is his face I see most clearly as he slips away guiltily. Then Jenny steps in front of me. ‘You’re a witch, Fern King, and we all know what they used to do to witches …’
The match is struck. Autumn’s leaves, crunchy underfoot, are ready for the flame. I scream, I plead, I humiliate myself, but my bonds are too tight and Jenny is too eager to taste my fear. Except she’s not Jenny now; she’s my mother, my father, my brother, baying in turn for my burning.
The exquisite, intimate pain of the fire doesn’t reach me, though. Not this time. This time a pair of metal-clad arms lifts me away from the sparks. I catch a glimpse of a face, freckled beneath scars and framed with red hair, before she shoves me backwards. I fall as if from a cliff, and jolt awake. I am still in the train carriage. People are still staring at me. But now I have yet another question.
I search through my bag for my sketchpad and fling open the pages. My guardian angel.
My fingers trace over the wild, bird’s-nest hair etched onto every page. Over her scarred, ageless face, and the armour that looks as though it once belonged to someone much bigger. She’s been haunting my dreams for as long as I can remember. In my nightmares – and I have a lot of nightmares – this warrior woman has always arrived to save me.
A knight. That’s what Archimago had said, and the woman online had mentioned sleep and the knights before her video cut out. Could they be connected to this mysterious armoured guardian?
‘But you’re just a dream, aren’t you?’ I whisper. Her impenetrable features stare back up at me, and with a lurch I realise that the only possible answer – Of course sh
e’s just a dream – doesn’t feel certain at all.
3
The house should be empty at this time of day. Dad’s on a long night shift again, working on the concierge desk of a posh apartment block a few miles away. I turn the downstairs radiator on and make myself a cup of tea. The only mug not currently sitting in the sink waiting to be washed is one I made for Ollie when we were eight. Untidy letters are stuck around the circumference: Best Broth. I had the er all ready to go but ran out of room. Still, it works better now that we can all pretend I simply really liked soup as a child.
I’m not allowed solitude for long, though. I’ve just put the kettle on for my second cup when the front door opens and Clemmie bundles in, hanging her purple monstrosity of a coat on a spare peg. Clemmie has been Dad’s girlfriend for five years, and it tells you something about her that she’s stuck around this long when it’s clear to even socially-oblivious me that he sees her more as a reliable best friend than a potential life partner.
‘Fern? What’s wrong?’ Clemmie says, finally noticing me.
‘I’m …’ I falter. I wasn’t prepared for this. I need to tell Clemmie something, or she’ll tell Dad that I’m skiving school. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ That’s me, defaulting to defensive.
‘Your father mentioned he hadn’t had time to leave anything in the fridge for you and Ollie,’ Clemmie replies, ‘so I thought I’d rustle up a lasagne.’
My stomach rumbles my thanks, reminding me that I barely had lunch.
‘Is it Jenny again?’ Clemmie asks.
I shake my head, furious that tears are threatening to block my throat. As Clemmie folds her arms around me, I find myself overwhelmed again, just as I was in the school canteen, and I stumble out the truth about Archimago’s message.
‘They … they say they murdered my mum.’
There’s a long silence. The spectre of Mum has always been extra awkward around Clemmie.
‘That’s not possible, sweetie,’ Clemmie eventually says.
‘But you didn’t know Dad back then, did you?’ I look up at her. ‘I mean, did he ever tell you …?’
‘It isn’t my place to say, Fern. Now come on, come and sit down.’
As she ushers me to the sofa and presses a glass of squash into my hands, I realise that she’s not meeting my eyes.
‘Did Dad tell you something? Something he hasn’t told me?’
Another pause as she pulls a blanket from the back of the sofa and drapes it around me. Very, very occasionally I wish I could channel Ollie. He always knows exactly what to say to get people to do what he wants.
‘Please, Clemmie,’ I say, ‘I won’t tell Dad you told me. I deserve to know what happened to my mum.’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ she eventually says, sinking down next to me. ‘It’s just that your father once told me that she had lots of marks all over her. They faded a few hours after he found her, but apparently they were … very alarming for him.’
‘What kind of marks?’
‘I’m not sure, lovely. He just said they were as if she’d been cut all over, except she hadn’t, if you see what I mean? “Like an operation gone wrong.” That’s what he said, if I remember right.’
I think about the scars on my guardian angel’s face. Dad’s never liked my drawings of her. He’s always avoided looking at them. Now I understand why. There’s no point in wondering why he didn’t just tell me why they upset him. That’s not the way we work.
My heartbeat seems to pound off the walls.
‘Fern? Do you want to make a complaint against this person?’ Clemmie says, squeezing my knee. ‘I can walk you through the process. We might be able to find out who’s behind it.’
Clemmie is a police sergeant, so this is one area where she might actually be helpful. But I have no interest in going to the police. The last time I had official dealings with them –after the fire, when they promised to prosecute Jenny and Ollie for what they’d done to me – it all came to nothing. All that would happen is Dad and Clemmie would flutter around making all the right noises but actually doing nothing to protect me. Besides, if they find out who Archimago is, I might lose the only chance I have of finding out more about the knights, and about Mum. I can take care of this myself.
‘No. Thanks, though,’ I tell Clemmie, then feign tiredness to avoid talking further. She faffs about in the kitchen for a little longer, until the house is filled with the smell of melted cheese, then puts the lasagne on the countertop to cool and kisses my forehead on her way out.
I may have mixed feelings about sweet, beige Clemmie, but once she’s gone the house feels forbidding in a way it hasn’t before. The hallway is covered in my old artwork: stern faces and lonely landscapes. Ollie’s bedroom door is locked. My room is freezing because the radiator’s broken. I return to the sofa and continue my search on Dad’s old laptop.
It takes hours and three servings of lasagne to find anything more – an interview with a gnarled woman who claims to have once been a knight of Annwn. Her mouth is sunken, most of her teeth missing, which makes it difficult to understand her. ‘It happens on your fifteenth Samhain,’ she says, pointing a finger at the camera, her mouth pursing around the word – Sow-ane. ‘The lights change, you see. The lights of Annwn. That’s when the knights take you. The lights change and you know –’
The video blanks out, just like the one earlier. A crisp picture turned suddenly to black. I can’t find anything else. It matches, though, with the mention of Annwn and the knights, and now another new word. I look up Samhain and find out that it’s basically another word for Halloween. I glance at the table lamp next to me. It refuses to do anything remarkable. Archimago had mentioned tonight as well. It happens on your fifteenth Samhain. I am fifteen. Did Archimago know?
Behind me, the hallway light flickers. A key is thrust through the lock of the front door and soon afterwards Ollie enters. His school uniform’s spattered with mud and even from this distance I can smell the cigarette smoke on him.
‘Aww, waiting up for me, Ferny? That’s sweet of you.’
He finds the remains of Clemmie’s lasagne and shoves a bowl in the microwave without further discussion. I don’t say anything either. I’m trying to beat my record of not talking to Ollie, which currently stands at eleven days. I’m on day nine, so I’m feeling hopeful. But equally, I desperately want to tell him what I’ve found out. Out of everyone, he’s the only one who might understand what this feels like, and know what to do about it. Yet the words stick in my throat. The spectre of the fire springs up between us. He hasn’t been able to meet my gaze since it happened; not since I saw the blazing guilt in his eyes as he slunk away, his part in the prank completed.
As twins go, you couldn’t get two more different-looking people than Ollie and I. We should really be identical, and if you look carefully you can see that our chins and eyes and noses are the same shape. Yet Ollie is a heart-breaker and I’m just … weird. My brother has golden skin like he’s sailed in from Spain, a mop of dark hair and brilliant blue eyes that make him look like an old-school movie star. Whereas I … well, let’s just say that when Dad describes me as ‘startling’, he’s being kind. My light blonde hair and pale skin is unremarkable, so when I wear sunglasses, you don’t see it. But not many people can get away with wearing sunglasses unless it’s high summer, so for most of the year my deformity is very apparent. I have scarlet-coloured irises. The doctors told my parents it was simply a genetic abnormality. One of those things. Growing up it hadn’t mattered much to me because Ollie was always there. My twin and I, facing the world, and if Ollie said I was acceptable then others followed his lead. For ten years we were best friends as well as siblings. Then secondary school happened and everything changed. I may have only added the burn scar to my face last year, but the differences between my brother and I were cemented years before the fire.
‘You’re being creepy again,’ Ollie says, his back to me still.
‘What?’ Damnit.
/> ‘Staring at me like that. No wonder people hate you.’
‘I wasn’t staring at you. Don’t flatter yourself.’ I turn away and march up the stairs. Ollie’s tired insults have broken any thought I may have had of confiding in him.
Outside, the church bells begin to chime midnight. My mother’s grave is somewhere near those bells. Well, if she was murdered I’ll simply have to find out more on my own.
Boom, the bells go. Boom. Boom. Boom.
The lightbulb on the landing flickers.
Boom.
‘Cut it out, Fern!’ Ollie shouts from the kitchen.
‘I’m not doing anything!’
If there’s a power surge then Ollie’s closest to the fuse box. He can sort it out. I’m off to bed. The lightbulb above me flickers again. This time it blooms brightly. My shadow looms alarmingly along the wall.
The lights.
I jump back down the stairs. It’s as though I’m entering a nightclub – every light is flashing on and off unevenly. The lamp by the sofa makes suns on the pile of homework beneath it. The lights in the kitchen babble in Morse code. This is no power surge. Ollie’s shock, seen like a flip book, is almost comical. He doesn’t know what this means, but I do.
The lights of Annwn. That’s when the knights take you. The lights change and you know.
Samhain. Halloween. Tonight.
It’s true. It’s all true.
Boom. Boom.
A different kind of noise rattles the floorboards above us. I rush back up the stairs. It’s the fan in the bathroom, whirring so fast that little clouds of dust fly out of the grill.
Ollie appears behind me. ‘What the hell is happening?’
