Vengeance Child

by Simon Clark

  Laura indicated she couldn’t hear. Then, with both arms around Candice, she walked away – left him, abandoned him. He stared at her. Laura getting married. Laura cursed. It’s happening already. She doesn’t want to listen to me.

  A sharp point dug into his upper thigh. He reached into his pocket for the bracelet. He stared at it in his hand. Ghorlan~Victor. This bit of gold chain haunted him. Maybe it was the cause of all this trouble? So great was the din it was hard to think properly. Yet Archer knew this jewellery was important. The dead woman in the car had given it him. Now what seemed even more important was to get rid of it. If he could make Jay take it then maybe all these bad things would go away. Yes, that’s it, he decided. Give Jay the bracelet, the little witch. See how he likes having to carry it round. It had more than blood stuck to it: the gold had death glued to it, too.

  Archer’s problems were too great for the boy to fathom. At that moment they all seemed to be attached to the bracelet. In his juvenile way of dealing with problems the easiest solution was to dump the bracelet on Jay. All panic and horror handed over with it. Of course, in a little while, he’d come to realize that this wouldn’t end his woes, instead it would lead him to a face-to-face meeting with death itself.

  Thirty-One

  He had to get out of the din. That and find Jay. Archer slipped unnoticed through the hostel’s side door. ‘Jay’s gonna get the bracelet. That’ll make everything OK.’

  He staggered before the blast of chilled air racing up the deserted street. Leaves flew. Mist streamed like smoke from an old-fashioned locomotive. Even though it was mid-afternoon in May the sky had turned black. Gloom filled the narrow streets. Along with the fog it made the houses seem as if they lay in murky depths. Had the river flooded the town? Was he underwater? In that shocked state he wasn’t sure. Thoughts didn’t run as they should in his head. Constantly, he pictured his father with bullets lodged in his face. Twigs scuttled down the street like spiky-legged insects. In his mind he saw his father’s coffin. Only this time he, Archer, lay in the oblong box. All that wet soil pressing down. It would hold the lid shut for ever. Dazed, he pushed on through airborne debris. A newspaper wrapped around his face to blind him. Maybe when he pulled it away he’d find he really was lying in a coffin . . . in the dark . . . alone . . . listening for hungry worms . . . Archer yanked the paper away. A figure stood there in the mist.

  ‘Dad?’

  The shadowy form moved closer. ‘Remember me?’

  Archer stared.

  ‘I’m the mayor.’ The tall man smiled down at him. ‘I’m glad I’ve found you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You look as if you need some help.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried about something?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why aren’t you back in the hostel?’

  ‘I-I don’t want to,’ Archer stammered.

  ‘It’s going to get all stormy out here. You won’t like that, will you?’

  Archer was so preoccupied with his worries that he failed to notice how edgy the man seemed. He constantly checked the street as if he expected someone to appear at any minute. The boy strove to clear his mind of all those jangling thoughts that had no right to be there.

  Mayor Wilkes sidled up. ‘You don’t look well, little fellow. You’ve not had this stomach bug, have you?’

  Archer shook his head.

  ‘That’s a relief. You know this is a bad sickness. Really bad. People are dying.’

  ‘Uh?’ The word ‘die’ penetrated the fog of disordered thoughts.

  ‘Oh, yes. Dr Nazra told me so. Victor Brodman’s got the disease. In a few hours he might be dead.’ The mayor loomed closer. ‘Archer . . . it is Archer, isn’t it? You smiled when I said that Victor is going to die. Why’s that?’

  ‘He said he’d marry Laura.’

  ‘Oh? Well, there’ll be none of that now. Victor will be going to his own funeral rather than a wedding.’ The mayor stepped even closer. ‘I told you about people dying because I can trust you. You’re very grown up, you know. I bet you’re more intelligent, brainier, than the rest. You know I’m right, don’t you?’

  Archer hadn’t experienced anything like this before. A grown-up who talked to him like another grown-up. Even though Archer had an old face, his diminutive stature along with curly, little boy blue hair made people talk down to him like he was a baby. This he liked. A big important man that trusted Archer. The boy straightened to make himself taller.

  When he spoke he fancied his voice had become deeper, almost manlike. ‘I’ve got something really important to do.’

  ‘Oh? What?’ Mayor Wilkes asked.

  ‘I’ve got to find Jay. It’s important. Most important thing in the world.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up soon. Look, my house is round the corner. Why don’t we get out of the cold?’

  In the window of the post office Archer saw reflections of himself and the mayor. So that’s how people see us, he thought. A big grown-up man and a tiny boy with curly hair? Archer shook his head, determined to be grown-up. ‘I’ve got to find Jay.’

  The man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘I understand. But first—’

  A pair of figures hurried down the street. Mayor Wilkes quickly stepped back from the boy. The men went to a cottage where a window shutter had broken loose. It swung back and forth on its hinges with a metallic screeching.

  A woman with long silver hair rushed from a nearby house. ‘Mayor Wilkes, have you seen Dr Nazra? I can’t wake my Frank up. He’s had this bug . . .’

  ‘Try the surgery,’ Wilkes told her. As if the wind whisked her away she rushed up the lane. The mayor smiled falsely at Archer. ‘I know, we can find Jay together. Now we’re friends we can help each other.’

  ‘I dunno,’ Archer began doubtfully.

  ‘This Jay, is he the one that the other children don’t like?’

  ‘I’ve got to find him now! It’s really important. He’s said Laura’s name and my name, and—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure the child can be vexing.’

  ‘Now he’s gone . . . I don’t know where to look for him.’

  ‘You know, Archer, I saw him not five minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh?’ Hope surged in Archer’s chest.

  ‘Absolutely. He was going that way.’ Wilkes pointed into the teeth of the gale. ‘He headed up that pathway there, toward the forest. Come on, we’ll track him down together.’

  Thirty-Two

  Mayor Wilkes didn’t envisage any obstacles of note. He’d told this odd little child, with the old face surrounded by blond curls, that Jay headed in the direction of the woods. Of course, Wilkes hadn’t a clue where the Jay creature had vanished. He didn’t care. All that mattered was to lure Archer out of sight of nosey villagers, then he could simply force him to hand over the bracelet. Simple. Then get himself out of this awful weather. The mayor glanced back. The village had almost vanished in the murk. If the boy complained to anyone about Wilkes, he’d merely say he saw the boy find the bracelet on the ground. Seeing as the boy pocketed a possibly valuable item, Wilkes had done the socially responsible thing and confiscated it in order to hand it over to the police on the mainland. And if anyone was damn well persistent enough to enquire about the whereabouts of this piece of jewellery, Wilkes would airily dismiss the question with, ‘Oh, it turned out to be a plastic novelty. Utterly worthless. I just dropped it in a bin.’ Would anyone accept a child’s allegation seriously, especially a strange little child with behavioural problems? Wilkes had absolute confidence that he, an elected mayor and successful businessman, would be believed. The boy would be dumped back wherever he came from.

  The pair of them followed a path along the spine of the island. Ahead, the castle tower emerged from shifting rags of mist. Behind them, the village had vanished. Trees creaked as gales wrenched at their limbs.

  Here will do just nicely. ‘Stop right there.’

  The boy turned
that old face toward him. God, such a creepy, old man’s face. Wilkes opened his mouth to speak again. Just then, he noticed a shape emerge from the fog. The figure hurried toward them. Inwardly, he groaned. This would be tricky.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Knowles,’ he said in a friendly way as he searched for some excuse why he should be out in the fields with one of the Lodge children. For this was no other than Victor Brodman’s sister. Damn the family. They must have been put on earth to try my patience. ‘Terrible weather,’ he purred. ‘I saw this child by himself. It—’

  ‘Can’t stop,’ she sounded oddly drowsy. ‘I’m . . . I’ve . . . the doctor . . . Nnn . . . I’ve forgotten his name. It’s my husband, Graham. I’m worried. He’s so confused. Now he can’t even remember my name.’ She swayed. ‘Don’t feel so bright myself. Uh . . . Can’t stop.’ She lurched away.

  ‘So another one will soon bite the dust. Deary me. Now, Archer . . .’

  But it was Archer who turned the tables. ‘I don’t need Jay,’ he announced loudly. ‘You’re my friend. I trust you.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Wilkes got ready to turn out the boy’s pockets.

  ‘So I’ve decided to show you something that’s secret . . . top secret.’

  This surprised Wilkes enough to make him pause.

  ‘I found something this week. It’s been hidden. Jay took me there. I hate Jay, so he can go stink.’

  ‘What did you find, exactly?’

  ‘You won’t believe your eyes.’ The kid’s face shone. ‘Promise not to be scared. It doesn’t look nice. In fact, it’s really horrible. But when you see it you’ll know what to do to make everything all right.’

  ‘Just what have you found, Archer?’

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ With that the boy dashed along the path to the woods. Wilkes followed. His instinct for self-preservation told him to find out what the boy had found. Wilkes knew there were secrets on the island. If they were his secrets he wanted them to stay that way.

  Thirty-Three

  This is the longest thirty minutes of my life, Victor thought as he waited. He could hear sheer bloody bedlam coming from the hostel. On no account could he help. Laura forbade it. After all, Victor was to blame for this episode. To distract Jay from willing those planes to collide he’d told the boy that he planned to marry Laura. Yes, a lie. Anything to stop those twin contrails meeting in a fireball five miles above the island. So he waited. In a yard nearby an iron gate banged with nerve-jangling ferocity. Leaves torn from trees formed green torrents around his head. A head full of thoughts that were as turbulent as the river. He recalled the near miss with the tanker that had sent a tidal wave crashing on to the shore. Laura would have died if he hadn’t reached her in time. Who was to blame? An irresponsible captain with a deadline to meet? No, it had to be Jay. Victor had watched the aircraft turn to fly at one another. Then this epidemic. Islanders had died. Now Victor, himself, faced the second stage of the mystery illness – forgetfulness, lethargy, coma, then . . . he avoided thinking that grim, dark word. As soon as possible he should warn his sister and brother-in-law. So . . . this epidemic . . . this plague. Who’s to blame? Jay. He’s the monstrous spider spinning a web of disaster. Each strand a promise of death. Victor rubbed his face. For a moment he’d forgotten he’d been standing there in the street. Was this the start of the next phalanx of symptoms? How long until second stage really kicked in? How long had he got before he stopped functioning? A day? A few hours? Jay? Where is Jay?

  ‘Victor . . . Victor?’

  Drowsily, he searched for the source of the voice.

  ‘Victor, up here.’

  He lifted his eyes. Laura, beautiful Laura, leaned out of the hostel’s office window on the upper storey. ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair.’ He clenched his fist, feeling betrayed by himself. He was letting go . . . his mind was slipping . . .

  ‘Victor. Hurry. I haven’t got long.’

  You’re not the only one. He bit his lip hard. The pain sharpened his wits again. But for how long? The church clock ticked the seconds down to his own personal zero hour. He crossed the street to the hostel.

  ‘No, not that way, Victor. The children will see you. Use the side entrance.’

  Seeing Laura focused his mind. Now’s the time to sort this out once and for all. Today we act on Jay.

  Moments later Laura greeted him at the top of the stairs. Holding her finger to his lips, she led him into the office where they’d be alone.

  The shouts of the children downstairs were falling; anger yielded to more subdued, gloomier emotions.

  ‘Close the door behind you, Victor.’ Laura’s face was the epitome of anxiety. ‘The children mustn’t know you’re here. Especially not alone with me. I’ve had to come away for a while, too. They get upset when they see me.’

  ‘I had to tell Jay something to stop him. I figured a surprise would distract him.’

  ‘It worked, thank God. It’s just the effect on the other children. Hearing the news from Archer that we were getting married has knocked them off kilter.’ She gave an expressive shrug. ‘These aren’t ordinary children, Victor. An innocuous comment can traumatize them. Lou’s talking to them now. She’s pretending you told Jay that we were getting married for a joke. If she can convince them you were joking, then . . .’ She shrugged again. ‘We may have averted one disaster.’

  He sat on the corner of the desk. ‘Now we only have to avert the other disasters then we’re home and dry.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Nearly being swept away by the wash from that ship this morning might not be the worst thing that happens to us today.’

  ‘You’ve heard about the epidemic?’ Her expression was grave. ‘That there’s a second stage?’

  He nodded. ‘And people are dying. I’m sitting here but I know I should be running like hell to warn Mary and my brother-in-law. They’ve both had first stage.’

  ‘And so have you.’

  ‘So far, I’m fine.’

  ‘But we do have to act quickly.’

  ‘Jay?’

  ‘Jay,’ she confirmed. Then she turned an open laptop toward Victor so he could see the screen. ‘Remember what Solomon told us about changelings and curses? Well, I already knew about that. When bizarre events started happening around Jay at Badsworth Lodge I did my own research.’

  ‘So you did know more than you were letting on?’

  ‘Absolutely. But how do you go public on something like this? That a boy rescued from a refugee ship has the power to curse people? Look at this.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘A curse is the opposite side of the coin to a blessing. Just as most religions have rites that bless newborn children, or homes, or harvests then you get the dark side. There are rites to wish harm on others, or actively invoke evil to befall people, whether it’s to cause accidents, sickness or blight crops. In voodoo ritual an object, such as a skull or a shoe, can be implanted with the curse. Then the person inflicting the curse would hide the object in their victim’s house or even on a path that they know the victim uses.’

  ‘So, like a landmine? Only it detonates bad luck rather than explosive.’

  Laura scrolled downward. ‘See, thousands of web pages about curses.’ She clicked a link. A page appeared showing photographs of strips of metal on which words had been scratched. ‘These pieces of lead were found in springs that supplied a Roman bath house.’ She read aloud from the page. ‘“Roman citizens would bathe in the hot mineral springs, which they believed healed skin complaints, arthritis and leprosy. They also believed that the goddess of the thermal spring could drive away the evil eye. Also, if someone had harmed you, you could write the person’s name and the damage you wanted to inflict on a lead tablet, then throw it into the water.” Here’s one that says, “Lucius Praedox took four gold coins from my purse. I beg of Minerva to extract the blood from his heart.” And another less specific one, but potentially more destructive. “I wish that Neptune sink all the ships of the Egyptians for men of that race broke my husband’s bones in
Alexandria.”’

  Victor scanned the screen. ‘So a curse can be as accurately targeted as a bullet or, like a nuclear bomb, cause indiscriminate destruction.’ He caught Laura’s eye. ‘If you believe such a thing.’

  ‘And millions have believed in blessings and curses for thousands of years. Here’s a modern curse: “The Toilet Tissue Sting works surprisingly well. One: write your victim’s name on a piece of toilet tissue. Two: flush it down the lavatory. Three: tell your victim what you’ve done. When you do, just watch the expression on their face.” Then you have blessings in the form of St Christopher medallions in taxicabs, breaking bottles of champagne over ships’ bows. Generally, something like a horseshoe is a non-specific good luck charm. In Northern Europe metal frightened away evil spirits. So often a piece of steel would be put into a baby’s cot to prevent goblins stealing the child and replacing it with one of their own.’

  Victor nodded. ‘OK, type in changeling.’

  Laura did so. ‘See, thousands more web pages. Belief in the changeling is about as universal as you can get. Globally, parents feared their child would be secretly exchanged for an evil spirit, goblin, demon, you name it. The child initially resembles the parents’ child but it slowly changes in appearance, becoming ugly, behaving strangely and soon bad luck starts to dog the household.’

  Victor read off the screen. ‘“Wales. In this ancient Celtic land the changeling child is known as plenty newid. Although the child develops physical beast-like characteristics it is noted for its uncanny wisdom. Parents would attempt to reclaim their own child by ill-treating the changeling. This offspring of goblins would be placed on a shovel before being held over a hot fire.” Extreme.’ Victor rubbed his jaw. ‘Very extreme.’

  ‘Solomon told us that Jay isn’t a changeling as such. He believed that the doomed refugees on the ship willed Jay into existence to become a Vengeance Child.’

  ‘And his purpose would be to curse people he came into contact with. First on a fairly random basis, and always one at a time. But now he’s growing up, he’s getting smarter. So now, the aircraft, and we saw what happened with the ship.’ He grimaced. ‘Add to all that a mutant virus. He’s learning new tricks, isn’t he?’