by T C Shelley
‘Have you seen Hazel or her family since yesterday, Mrs Kelly?’
‘They still aren’t back? Oh dear, that’s why I came across. I saw you and thought they must be home. I’ve been knocking on their door since last night. Their dogs got into a car as I was walking by. A man was shoving them into his Mercedes. I told him, “Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you can treat animals like that,” and what did he think he was doing with the Kokonis’ dogs? He said he’d bought them. Well, I didn’t think Andreas and Chryssi would want such a rough man taking those sweet little dogs. I’ve visited three times to tell them, so maybe they could get them back, but no one’s answering. I got worried, because the door’s been unlocked all this time. I even went inside.’ Mrs Kelly blushed to admit such rudeness.
Wilfred leaned on Sam. He shivered like a pug.
‘What did he look like, Mrs Kelly?’ Sam asked.
‘Big, bulky. His coat was too heavy for the weather, I thought. And I swear he had yellow eyes.’
‘Was there a woman in the car, Mrs Kelly?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes, lovely-looking she was too, and very smiley, quite different from that awful man. Big beast! I hope she’s the one looking after the dogs. Do you know them?’
Wilfred shook his head. ‘Did you see where were they going?’
‘I’m sorry, Wilfred, no. Now I’m more worried about the Kokonis.’
Dora the dog trotted up the steps. ‘Pat me,’ she said. Wilfred did. Sam too. She looked at him. ‘Does he understand me like you do?’ Both boys nodded. ‘I only remember seeing a beautiful lady. She smelt odd, really odd, a bit like him.’ She pointed her nose at Sam. ‘The smell that makes you feel good, but there was so much of it, and I couldn’t stop wagging my tail. Mr Marks and his poodle, Zack, were there too, they live three houses down that way, and both of them seemed as dazed as me. When I saw Zack this morning, he said his tail was going ten to the dozen when that woman looked at him, but as soon as they walked around the corner Mr Marks had to sit down. Mr Marks told Zack he didn’t know what had come over him, and the poodle had to guide his master home. My Joy has a cold, you see. I think whatever the smell was, it didn’t work on her because her nose is blocked. She keeps telling people about a rough man, but I don’t remember him. I would have bitten any man’s leg if I’d seen him treat a dog the way Joy says he treated them.’ The dog sighed, and the boys kept petting. ‘I hope they’re OK.’
‘It’s that man and your Maggie from The Lanes?’ Wilfred asked Sam.
‘I think so.’ Sam looked at Dora. ‘So you don’t remember the man? He might have smelt odd.’
‘I couldn’t tell you a thing about him,’ Dora replied. ‘I don’t remember him, just the beautiful lady and the lovely smell. I’d have to trust Joy’s description more than my own, and that’s not usual.’
Mrs Kelly was still talking. ‘… and I hoped they’d be home again. I have a very bad feeling. So bad, I feel I need to call the police …’
‘You do that, Mrs Kelly,’ Wilfred said.
‘Do you think it will help?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I should get my Joy home,’ the Labrador said. ‘I think she’s very upset now. She thought they’d be back all safe and sound. Hazel and her friends are the only children I ever let touch me, even before I knew you spoke Dog. Hazel’s such a good girl and always makes sure she doesn’t have sticky fingers. Just like you, Wilfred.’
‘It’s not nice having gunk in your fur,’ Wilfred replied.
‘You have such a lovely understanding of dogs, you children. Just lovely,’ Dora said, and licked both boys’ hands.
‘Will you let me know if you find out anything, Wilfred?’ Mrs Kelly said.
‘Yes, Mrs Kelly, I promise.’
‘Oh, good.’ Mrs Kelly blew her nose again. Sam noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the wanness of her skin. She looked quite sick. She must have thought it was very important to come and check even though she felt so poorly. Sam thought her a very nice person indeed.
Dora led Mrs Kelly away.
Wilfred stood and when Sam copied him, the shifter boy gave Sam a hug. ‘I’m going home,’ he said. Already the pleased flush of the fairy dust had faded and he looked tired. ‘I have to tell Dad. He’ll know what to do. He’s with the authorities.’ He studied Sam’s face. ‘I told you that already, didn’t I?’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Sam asked.
‘No, you go back to school. At least both of us don’t need to be in trouble for bunking off.’
As soon as Wilfred was out of sight, Sam regretted it. That cold place in his stomach grew. Hazel and Amira were missing and Wilfred was alone. And Sam didn’t have any of their phone numbers.
Not one shifter came to school the following day. None. And Sam had lots of classes scheduled with them. The receptionist wouldn’t give Sam anyone’s address or phone number. She insisted that if they were friends, he should have got their details from them. She wouldn’t even tell him if they had called in sick. ‘None of your business,’ she said.
The other kids gave him pitying looks.
Sam tried to explain the problem to Nick without giving away too much. It didn’t work. Explaining that a neighbour saw someone’s dogs get into a stranger’s car is not a problem to humans, unless someone reports them stolen, and there was no one left to report them.
Michelle said she was sad Sam’s three new friends had all missed school so soon after he met them. ‘There is a cold going around,’ she added.
CHAPTER 9
At the end of Tuesday, Sam waited for Nick at the school entrance alone. He was in a rush to get home. The gargoyles had promised to do some detective work while he was at school. He’d managed to sign in late with a weak excuse the previous day, but he couldn’t risk it another day. Children’s Services would want to know why the Kavanaghs couldn’t keep him at school. Other kids avoided looking at him, except for the few who asked about Wilfred. Was he sick too?
Sam wished Nick would hurry. Where was he?
‘Sam.’ It was Michelle’s voice. She sat parked along the road, waving at him. The passenger door swung open and he climbed in, lobbing his bag on to the back seat.
She didn’t ask him anything, and they drove home in silence.
He arrived home to find Nick stomping around the kitchen, while Richard, who should have been at work, held him too long then sat at the table clutching the newspaper and watching Sam over the top. He stared and he sighed and his eyes dropped, but he didn’t turn any pages or make frustrated grunts at articles he didn’t like.
Sam’s own eyes felt hot and prickly and his stomach knew something was wrong. ‘Is everything OK?’ Even though he couldn’t read faces well, the weight of the air was enough. He had fallen into another well. On the outside nothing had changed, but somehow all the goodness had been sucked away into darkness. The shifters were gone, and something important had disappeared from his own home. He just didn’t know what it was.
Richard smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes and he had that hard line above his nose. ‘We’re all here,’ he said. ‘Shall we talk somewhere more comfortable?’
‘I’ve just got to …’ Michelle said, left the table and went into the bathroom. She was gone ten minutes. When she joined them in the front room, her eyes glowed too pink. Richard reached out and pulled Sam to him, touched him on the shoulder, while Nick studied his feet, glared at his toes and kicked the coffee-table leg. Only Beatrice sent her normal tangle of stars at Sam and threw sparkles in his direction.
Sam felt like he was back at the court again.
‘Well, go on. Tell him,’ Nick said into the aching silence.
Richard coughed, and Michelle blurted out, ‘They’ve found your real dad, Sam. He wants to meet you.’ Then Michelle checked Beatrice’s nappy as if it had gold inside it.
‘No!’ Sam said. ‘I don’t have any other family besides you.’
Nick smiled for the first time
since Sam had got home and gave an abrupt nod. ‘Right.’
‘There’s been a mistake,’ Sam said.
‘No mistake, Sam. He described you perfectly,’ Richard said.
‘No, no, no! Just no!’ Sam said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then it hit him. ‘It must just be some man who thinks I’m his son. It’ll be so sad for him when he realises I’m not.’
‘Well, Mrs Petersen is coming tomorrow to talk to you about it,’ Richard said.
‘Do we really have to do this? I’ve got so much …’ Sam needed to see the gargoyles. He didn’t have time for this, so he rushed up to his room. It was too light; the gargoyles still weren’t home.
Downstairs, he heard Nick say, ‘See, I told you. He’s not happy either.’
‘He may meet him and remember,’ Michelle said. ‘And then …’ She wept.
When Michelle came to him later, he pretended to be asleep and she tucked him in the way she tucked in Beatrice, pushing the blankets under him so he was safe and snug. She kissed him, her warm lips lingering on the ticklish place above his eyebrow.
After Michelle left, Sam got up and went to the window. He waited two hours before the trio of grey faces appeared. They remained quiet as they clambered inside.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘The smells seem to come from the east, that’s all we can establish, but they’re distant. We would need a vehicle to get there. Otherwise it’ll take us weeks,’ Bladder said.
‘We can only travel at night. If we go hunting them, we’ll get seen,’ Wheedle added.
Spigot squawked.
He told them about his ‘father’.
The grey faces paled.
Bladder scratched his chin. ‘D’you think Maggie’s behind this too?’
‘Nope, nope, nope,’ Wheedle said. ‘Why use a human system to get at him? It don’t make sense. She’d just steal him. I think you’re right, Sam, it’s just a mix-up.’
Still, the healthier grey of their gravelly complexions did not return.
They didn’t leave. The gargoyles peered about, sat on the floor and formed a guard around Sam. His eyes closing, Sam watched them solidify into statues as Bladder’s head rested on the foot of Sam’s bed.
Sam didn’t sleep straight away. He wondered if Maggie had bewitched some poor man into finding him, maybe the poor man in the pet shop. It was something she would do. As he thought, he became more sure it was her. They were safe from her in the house, but she was behind the shifters’ disappearance and the sudden misery that had fallen on his home.
Sam got up early the next morning. He kissed each of the gargoyles and headed downstairs. The house was so quiet, so very still, that he was astonished to find Richard sitting at the kitchen table. Sam grabbed a piece of dry bread and moved for the door. His stomach seemed intent on the idea that it would feel much, much better if it got outside and took the rest of him with it.
‘Why don’t you stay in and have breakfast with us?’ Richard asked. ‘Come on. Pancakes. You like pancakes.’
‘In the middle of the week?’
Sam smelt fear on Richard. The house smelt of it, like the Great Cavern smelt of ogre paddies and brownie tears.
Sam’s insides chilled. What if they wanted to give him up? What if it was that they … ?
But pancakes. Daniel said pancakes were a sign of love.
Sam sat. Michelle came in and cooked the pancakes, a special treat, although darkness ringed her eyes as if she peered at him from a dim burrow. When Sam had returned home from The Hole a few months before, carrying Beatrice in his arms, her eyes had looked like that, like she was close to dropping into The Hole herself and never returning, like she hadn’t slept in a long, long time.
‘Mrs Petersen is coming today,’ Michelle said.
‘I’m staying home too,’ said Nick.
Richard shook his head, and Nick scowled. He got up and clattered his bowl into the sink. Sam heard something crack. ‘Better get ready to leave then. Obviously, nobody here can do anything but get ready to leave.’
‘I’d rather go to school,’ Sam said.
Michelle shook her head. ‘Not today, Sam.’
‘I’ll get dressed, shall I?’ Nick stamped to the stairs.
Sam followed Nick to the bottom of the stairs and the older boy pulled him into a bear hug. He kissed Sam’s head, the way Michelle or Richard kissed him. Sam hadn’t thought Nick would ever do that, not even in private. Nick clambered up the stairs as if wounded. ‘It is all a mistake, right?’ Nick asked.
‘Yes,’ Sam replied.
Nick’s tread was a little lighter as he walked to his room.
Sam sat at the bottom of the stairs, Nick came down again and Richard appeared from the kitchen. They arrived at the same time. Nick moped red-eyed and glaring; Richard clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘This is not goodbye, you know. Even if it does turn out to be his dad, we’ll do whatever we can to see Sam as often as possible. Right?’
Nick grunted. ‘I’ve got a test today,’ he said.
‘Nick!’
‘Sorry.’ Nick scowled.
‘It’ll be all right,’ Michelle said, appearing behind Richard.
Nick hugged Sam and pecked his mum on the cheek. Sam took out his pad and wrote ‘significance of excessive hugging?’ He would ask Daniel about it if the angel came back soon. Blow! Daniel wouldn’t be back for ages, not until he could move through walls again.
Sam followed Nick out of the house and looked up at the softly glowing warding on the walls. Three sigils stood side by side: ‘unsmellability to unwanted monsters’, a general warding against ‘supernaturals’, so Maggie and her lot couldn’t find him, and the third one, waxing and waning like a beating heart, a simple ‘blessing’, which Daniel had put up to cover them all. All three shone.
It’ll be all right. It will be all right!
Nick peered over his shoulder several times before he turned up the street towards school.
Sam went back to his room; he didn’t feel so good.
Michelle snuffled and clicked away downstairs. Sam recognised the system of taps and tones as the sound of messaging on a phone. She would be texting a friend, or Great-Aunt Colleen. Someone. The phone bipped out its replies.
He looked at the digital clock and sighed. Nick would have arrived at school.
Sam rushed down when he heard the feet coming up the outdoor steps.
Michelle and Richard moved with him to the door as the bell rang. It was 9:30 a.m. They exhaled in unison and Michelle unclicked the lock.
‘Hello, Mrs Petersen,’ Michelle said to the woman outside.
‘Mr and Mrs Kavanagh,’ Mrs Petersen replied. ‘Sam.’
Sam smiled at her as well as he could. He tried to remember that Mrs Petersen had always been nice to him.
* * *
Sam did not like meeting in the front room. For a start, Mrs Petersen sat in his favourite place in the middle of the couch. The place where he sat between Richard and Nick. His spot. His belly tightened, he didn’t want her there. This was the ‘Relaxing Family-time Room’, not the ‘Terrified Kavanaghs’ Space’.
Mrs Petersen had dark skin, and deep-brown eyes and hair. She wasn’t frowning. In fact, she smiled, as if she had good news for him.
‘Come and sit down, Samuel,’ she said. ‘You’ve been told, I suppose?’
Sam turned and saw Michelle’s face pale underneath her pink blush. Richard rubbed his hands like he was scrubbing grime.
‘How did he react?’ Mrs Petersen asked Michelle and Richard.
‘He thinks the gentleman who says he’s Sam’s father is wrong,’ Richard said.
‘Is that right, Sam?’ Mrs Petersen asked.
‘I’m positive.’
Mrs Petersen opened her folder. ‘Your father’s name is Edward Samuel Woermann.’ She studied Sam’s face, waiting for some reaction. ‘Your name is Samuel Woermann.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Sam replied. ‘I’m really sure it’s not.�
��
‘I have all his paperwork. I’ve seen photos of you when you were much younger.’
Sam smiled. It was definitely a mistake. ‘There aren’t any photos of me when I was younger.’
‘Is that right, Sam?’ Mrs Petersen asked. ‘Because you’re only a few months old? Because you’re half monster?’
Sam knew Mrs Petersen hadn’t believed a word of what he’d said, but he wasn’t a liar. ‘That’s right.’
‘We expected you might feel that way, but he seems to know you intimately. When we talked about your … memories, he described what you might say perfectly. He said it was a book he had read to you, when you were very little. You loved it. It was your “safe” book, he said. He told us things we only know between us, Sam. About the pixies and leprechauns. The … what did you call it? … the Vorpal Sword. Things that haven’t made the papers. Your memories are …’ Mrs Petersen paused and looked at her page. She didn’t finish. He’d heard the counsellors use the phrase ‘false memories’.
Mrs Petersen smelt of fairy dust and this man had built a whole rat king of lies. Who was he? If it was Maggie who wanted him, surely they’d be talking about his real mother?
‘Nope. He’s lying.’
She didn’t argue. She looked at Richard and Michelle. Neither of them spoke. Michelle stared at her hands while Richard continued to dry-scrub his.
Mrs Petersen continued, ‘I know this is hard for you. The service advised your father against seeing you today, he was desperate to come. If he’d known where you lived he’d have been here days ago. He really wants to see you.’
Samuel shrugged.
‘Maybe if you met him, it’d bring some memories back,’ Richard said.
Sam looked at Richard’s face. He looked twenty years older. Sam breathed in. Richard wasn’t any happier about it than Sam was himself. At least there was that.
Sam thought hard. ‘The memories you want me to have. What if they never come back? The Kavanaghs are the only family I remember. Will you make me go and live with this man? Even the court said I had a say in staying here.’
