by Caro King
Jibbit screamed. ‘NOT DOWN!!!!’
‘Oh, for Galig’s sake,’ muttered the housekeeper. She hoisted the gargoyle up so that they were face to face and her yellow, werewolf-Grimm eyes glared straight into his grey, stony ones. A lifetime passed.
‘Shut,’ she said, very quietly, ‘up.’
The gargoyle gave a tiny nod and they went on in silence.
In the Sunatorium, the scene was like something out of a bizarre dream. Even allowing for Mr Strood’s armchair, the Mortal Distillation Machine and so on, the Sunatorium was unrecognisable, and the thing that had really made the transformation was the crowsmorte.
It was everywhere. The path through the woodland walk had gone and so had the shrubs and ferns. Now, crowsmorte covered the ground in a dense carpet of purple flowers touched with scarlet. Wiry stems twined and twisted up the trunks of the trees like ivy, coating them in a thick growth of soft blooms and vivid leaves. They were laced around the table legs, draped over and inside the Distillation Machine, and even growing up the back of Strood’s chair.
Here, a long way east and north of Dark’s Mansion, there was no rain. Sunlight poured in through the crystal windows, throwing some nice dark shadows under the canopies of crowsmorte. Shadows that could hide things. Like a bogeyman for instance.
‘So,’ Strood said, leaning back in his chair and taking a few more sips of his afternoon cup of tea. ‘Tell me, why is it quivering like that?’
‘It’s downphobic,’ explained Mrs Dunvice, ‘and we’re on the ground. But I stopped it screaming. It also thinks you want to punish it for missing the Evebell.’
The watching Skerridge felt an inner twinge that might have been guilt but was probably down to indigestion.
‘Shoulda spat the collar out too,’ he mumbled to a particularly large bloom pressing against his nose, or at least, where his nose would have been had he not been in Dark Space Underneath The Crowsmorte form. He had been there since mid-morning, just as Strood had finished growing his first tiger-man.
‘Missing the Evebell?’ Mr Strood was saying with a frown. ‘Did it? Oh well.’ He went back to looking thoughtfully at Jibbit. He leaned forward. His quartz eye glittered eerily. ‘So, erm, Giblet, can you fly with those wings?’
Jibbit quivered. He opened his mouth and dribbled on the crowsmorte.
‘Well, it is made of stone, I suppose,’ Strood sighed. ‘So, Dunvice, do you think it will be of any use?’
‘Absolutely none, sir, while it’s in that state.’
Strood thought for a moment. Then he beamed. He fixed Jibbit with his glittering eye. ‘So, you don’t like Down, eh? And I bet you think you can’t get any more Down than the ground, eh? But you can. So if you don’t stop shaking and start talking, I’ll BURY YOU!’
Jibbit’s eyes went wide. For a moment he froze. Suddenly, he had a new worst nightmare.
‘I c-can climb,’ he croaked suddenly, in between panicstricken hoots. ‘And I c-can s-sit totally s-still …’
Strood didn’t look impressed.
‘… and I can go for days and days … forever without food or drink, though the odd crow is nice tooo chew. And I don’t need tooo breathe …’
Strood sighed and raised a dismissive hand. ‘Cross the bellringer off the list and send him to the gardener for the rockery, then bring in whoever’s next,’ he said, waving a hand at the large Grimm guard hovering by the door.
‘AND I CAN KILL PEOPLE WITH MY FREEZING RAINWATER SPIT, AND SPLIT THEIR HEADS BY FALLING ON THEM …’
Strood’s hand stopped mid-wave. ‘Now that’s more like it. What do you think, Dunvice, shall I let the gargoyle join my army, or shall we bury him anyway?’
Dunvice smiled, her yellow eyes fixed on the agonised stone.
‘I think he might be useful, sir,’ she said.
While Mr Strood was occupied interviewing other candidates for his army, Jibbit had managed to climb on top of the Distillation Machine and the relief of being up again was so deep it made his spine tingle. He drew a shuddering breath.
Around the Sunatorium, a few chosen servants were harvesting the rest of the crop. When they had a basket full of the best, largest blooms they carried it over to the far corner of the Sunatorium where the trembling Scribbins was injecting each flower with a tiny drop of the essence created from the original tiger-man.
A purple bloom dangled over Jibbit’s eyes. He tore it off his head and bit it angrily. It tasted foul.
‘Wanna lift?’ muttered a voice in his ear.
Jibbit stifled a hoot. There was no need to look round because he knew who it was.
‘Yooo!’
‘Can it, will ya. I’m doin’ ya a favour. Wanna lift?’
Jibbit nodded speechlessly, then wished he hadn’t as the air around his ears grew hot and everything got so blurry he thought his eyes were going to implode.
Skerridge came to a halt halfway up the main stairs where he had a good view of the central hallway and the rooms off it. They were on a nice, high stair, so Jibbit leaned over to peer through the banisters.
If the scene inside the Sunatorium had been strange, the one in the House knocked it into a cocked hat.
The Terrible House of Strood, once so quiet and orderly, was now bedlam. Strood was growing crowsmorte, and crowsmorte, like any other plant, needed sunlight. The once bricked-up windows had been smashed open to the world and it looked like someone had done it in a hurry, with a sledgehammer, and without worrying about bringing down large parts of wall.
On top of that, there was crowsmorte everywhere, or at least everywhere that wasn’t covered in freshly grown tiger-men. The stuff was growing up the walls and out of the smashed-in windows, it was wound around banisters and cupboards and even hanging off the wall-lamps. Skerridge suspected it covered the floor too, but since it was being used as a comfortable bed by the tiger-men, he couldn’t quite tell. Their golden velvet bodies, striped with bands of purple and fringed with ivory claws and needle teeth, curled and coiled over every inch of ground. Eyes gleamed here and there, slits of eerie purple that somehow managed to glow red.
Terrified servants scurried around and over all the obstacles, their faces white with fear, laden down with plates of meat and bowls of blood for the tiger-men to eat and drink. Skerridge knew that the servants were part-mouse and so the tiger-men (which were, when you got right down to it, great big cats) must be giving them the horrors. Still, they were Strood’s servants and so they had no choice but to do their job.
Everything was a terrible mess too, the floor (what you could see of it) was covered in blood, mud, fur and worse. There were horrible stains on the wallpaper, not to mention claw marks, and the furniture was beginning to look frayed and battered. There were smells all over the place, some of them very nasty and some of them the usual ones to do with cooking and fresh air. On top of all that, the racket was dreadful. Everyone shouted orders or replies, the tiger-men yowled or snarled, doors banged, feet scurried or plodded and, when the tiger-men got bored with waiting their turn for dinner, there were the screams of those servants near enough to provide them with a timely snack. Luckily, the crowsmorte was there to clean every last scrap off the bones or things could have been very unpleasant indeed.
Just below Skerridge and Jibbit, Guard Floyd walked past, looking gloomy. On impulse, Skerridge left his perch on the stairs and fell into step behind the goblin-Grimm. Feeling the bogeyman start to move, fortunately at normal speed, Jibbit did a sideways flip and scrabbled on to Skerridge’s back. Judging by the direction Guard Floyd was going he was heading out of the House. Jibbit was finding the cacophony of sound, sight and smell almost unbearable after the lonely quiet of the rooftops, and although Mrs Dunvice had forbidden him to go back to the roof, she hadn’t said anything about outside.
‘’Ullo,’ said Skerridge cheerfully, as soon as they had stepped through a gap in the broken walls, ‘whatcha doin’?’
Floyd came to a sudden halt, realised who it was and got walking again w
ithout even looking around.
‘Well, well, if it ain’t Bogeyman Skerridge,’ he muttered to the empty air in front of him. ‘Yew’ve gotta cheek!’ He stomped on down the overgrown path.
‘Come on, mate, I only arsked. Carn’ a feller arsk?’
‘We’re musterin’ an army, tha’s what,’ snapped Floyd. It was a polite snap. After all, Skerridge might be a traitor, but he was still Fabulous. ‘An’ now Mr Strood’s recruitin’ …’
‘Press-gangin’ more like,’ snorted Skerridge.
Floyd glared at him, his brow creased. He was partly puzzled by the fact that Skerridge had a gargoyle on his head, and partly by some nameless worries that had been nagging at him all day and had suddenly got a lot worse, though he wasn’t sure why.
‘I’m off ter ask Lord Greyghast if ’e’ll kindly pop up an’ ’ave a chat wiv Mr Strood,’ said Floyd at last. ‘Yew ain’t gonna tell me we’ll be doin’ any browbeatin’ there!’
Skerridge’s heart sank at the name of one of the most powerful Fabulous left in the Drift. Lord Greyghast wasn’t a lord. There weren’t any nobles left in the Drift these days, but Greyghast thought his name sounded good with ‘Lord’ in front of it and since nobody was prepared to argue with a Fabulous werewolf, that was what he was called. And he was going to join Strood’s army, Skerridge would bet on it. There was killing involved and werewolves always felt at home where there was killing.
They crossed the remains of a once-smooth lawn and walked through a tangle of dark trees. Jibbit could see the large folly looming ahead and made ready to jump. He could hang about out here where it was quiet until somebody came looking for him.
‘Look,’ Floyd went on with exaggerated patience. ‘We work fer Strood, an’ that means we follow ’is orders, see? We don’ worry about consequences. If some dumb kid ’as t’ go an’ get up Mr Strood’s nose, then it’s ’er lookout ain’ it? If Mr Strood wants t’ pull the Drift apart bit by bit an ’ave ’is cruel revenge on ev’ry livin’ fing then that’s jus’ ’ow it is. If we don’ do it, someone else will an’ we’ll jus’ end up on the side what suffers an ’orrible fate, or gets eaten or whatever. See? Common sense. Believe me, yer picked the losin’ side.’
The guard stopped in his tracks, thinking over what he had just said. Seeing Floyd’s face crease up with the effort of working it out, Skerridge gave him a nudge in the right direction.
‘Yer right. It’s only common sense,’ he said cheerfully, patting Floyd on the shoulder as he spoke. ‘On the balance o’ probabilities, the Redstone kid’s gonna croak along wiv all ’er friends, the remains of the Seven an’ an awful lot o’ innocent Quick. So, wanna know why I’m on the ovver side?’ Skerridge leaned close. ‘Yore the ones tha’s gonna live …’ he paused just long enough to give a bit of dramatic effect, ‘… wiv the consequences.’
Then he was gone, leaving a trail of smouldering undergrowth behind him.
Floyd watched him go. The BM’s words hung about in his head, taking up a lot of room and looking very ominous. Consequences. Floyd didn’t know what the consequences of killing the entire population of the Drift would be, but he had a nasty feeling he wouldn’t like them. He wrestled with his thoughts for a while and then sighed. He couldn’t work out the twists and turns of it all, but one thing he was sure of. His current future, the one where he stayed working for Mr Strood, was full of an awful lot of screaming. Besides, regardless of the consequences, he thought the Redstone kid was OK and somehow it just didn’t seem fair.
‘Enuff is enuff,’ he said firmly.
Then he dropped his spear, turned his face to the south-west and started to run.
From the top of the large folly, safely out of the way for the time being, Jibbit watched him go.
9
A Clue
Nin got slowly to her feet. She had been having a sit-down with her head in her hands wondering what on earth to do next.
‘I should have stayed where I was and let him find me,’ she said out loud. They could have been just missing each other for ages and the voices weren’t helping. Every time she thought she heard him she wasn’t sure because all the chatter got in the way.
‘And you can be quiet,’ she snapped, feeling both irritable and near tears.
Something hissed behind her, a slow hiss. Spiteful.
‘Ava, do you have to?’ sighed a female voice that Nin recognised as Enid’s.
‘Enid!’ called Nin on impulse. ‘Help me, I’ve lost Jonas.’
There was a long silence and then more whispering, but no answer. The ghosts weren’t playing – if they could even hear her in the first place.
One of the voices began singing something, a daft little rhyme about ‘when bogeymen come to play’. It wasn’t nice. It made the BMs sound even more horrible than they were. Especially the bit about rending things limb from limb and ‘holding the darkness’, whatever that meant.
Nin got moving again. She had to find Jonas. Had to. Or her bones would join those scattered throughout the Mansion. Trying not to let panic take over she went through the nearest arch into the next room and then the one after that. And the one after that. Then down some stairs. She called out and then stopped to listen and wished she hadn’t.
The song about the bogeymen was still going, or maybe the singer was singing it over and over again. The goriness of ‘… and then they pulled the bones apart and stripped the flesh right off them, and digging free the beating heart they squeezed till it burst open …’ clashed so horribly with the tinkly nursery rhyme tune that Nin began to feel sick. She plugged her ears with her fingers, trying to block it out. The singer raised his voice. There was a hard edge to it.
Perhaps it’s Ava Vispilio again, she thought, although if she was honest it sounded more like Dark. She didn’t like to think he could be so horrible. Perhaps he’s just teasing me, she thought, trying to scare me. I wish he’d stop.
Spinning around, she wondered which way to pick next.
‘And held the dark around their forms, so hidden they could claim, the poor and hapless children, that they wanted for their game …’ The voice rose steadily to a boom.
‘STOP IT!’ yelled Nin. ‘They aren’t that nasty!’
‘What do you know of the Dread Fabulous, little girl?’ chuckled the voice. ‘What do you REALLY KNOW about bogeymen …?’
Silence fell. Outside, rain lashed the windows and a branch, growing from the outer walls of the Mansion, scraped against the glass. It should have been better without the singing, but it wasn’t. She felt watched, and not by anything friendly.
‘It’s just a song,’ she said firmly, ‘it can’t hurt me.’
The roar came suddenly. One minute the place was quiet, the next it was full of a top-of-the-lungs howl that Nin could feel vibrating in her bones. She screamed and ran, panic taking over in earnest. The roar echoed from room to room, rising in volume, sometimes in front of her, sometimes behind, driving her this way and that as she fled through room after room until …
She jolted to a stop, frowning. Blue and yellow light surrounded her, dappling the walls with the glow of late afternoon. It was familiar. She was back where she had started.
Nin walked further into the room and something caught her eye, something scrawled on the polished floor in chalk. It said:
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE STAY HERE
Relief flooded through her. Jonas was nearby and he would come back and find her. He had a better sense of direction than she did.
She settled down to wait. The room was peaceful now, the singing had stopped and the voices had taken up again, chattering on about Galig’s Hall, whatever that was, and how magnificent it looked. They seemed close, so close she began to imagine they were coming from the room next door.
There were four archways out of the blue-and-gold room. The smallest and narrowest was on the opposite wall to the others, the same wall as the window. In fact, the reason Nin hadn’t registered it straight away was because she had thought it was a window.
>
She frowned. Surely that was an outside wall and there couldn’t be a room there? The arch should open on to empty air. Curious, she walked over to have a look.
There was a room all right.
It was lit by four great windows of stained glass, one in each wall, including the wall behind her, which shouldn’t be possible because that was the window wall of the room she had just walked out of. By rights it should have three windows, not one.
‘Magic,’ said Nin softly.
It wasn’t just the room either. In front of her hung a spiral made of something soft and supple, like a twist of ribbon with colours coming off its glowing surface in silky veils. There was nothing visible supporting it, the thing just hung there, turning gently in an unfelt breeze.
Nin stepped closer. The colours were shadowy ones, purples and blues and deep greys, but they gave off a glow like moonlight. Nin’s fingers tingled and electricity crackled over her skin. This had to be the clue!
She wondered what to do next. She should go back into the other room and wait for Jonas, but …
Frantic that the other room would have gone, Nin spun around. It hadn’t, she could still see its blue and yellow light through the doorway. She was about to head back in there when she hesitated. That room hadn’t vanished when she went through the arch, but what if this one, the one with the clue in it, did vanish? They might never find it again.
Simple, she thought. I wait here, just inside the arch, and when Jonas comes back I’ll call.
Picking a spot where she could see through into the other room, she settled down, sitting with her back against the wall. To pass the time she busied herself looking around the clue room, then wished she hadn’t.
The windows were staring at her. The four panes were each filled with the image of a lion. The rain had stopped and the late-afternoon sun breaking through the clouds brought the colours to vivid life. The yellow lions had red manes and their scarlet claws and teeth were bared as if ready to attack. The eyes were emerald green and were watching Nin carefully.
