Verdigris Deep

by Hardinge, Frances

  ‘Is your mum OK?’

  ‘She’s not hurt. Mum and Dad are allowed to sleep at the hospital till I’m better. She’s probably safe while we’re all here. But every time she nips off to the shops for something I keep thinking, what if Josh is waiting for her on a street corner, so he can make something go wrong with the engine, or the brakes . . .’

  ‘Can’t we warn her?’

  ‘And say what? What do I tell her? Not to go near anything metal? Everybody already thinks I’m concussed.’ There was a cold, white pause.

  ‘It’s the well making Josh do it, isn’t it?’ Chelle said in a small voice.

  ‘It’s the well letting him do it, that’s for sure,’ Ryan muttered grimly. ‘And he’s getting more powerful, so that probably means she is too. Maybe every wish we granted just made her stronger.’

  ‘Then . . . then we have to ungrant them and make her weaker, don’t we?’

  Ryan opened his mouth to say that they had no reason to believe that would work, and then realized that he had no reason to believe that it wouldn’t.

  ‘You mean . . . try to fix the wishers, like you were saying before?’

  ‘Yes! And then when Josh isn’t so much in her power we can talk to him and get him to be less mad, and besides we have to fix Will quickly anyway, because of what you said about the Well Spirit wanting him to kill himself on his motorbike. And he’s right here – he’s in this hospital.’

  ‘Chelle, he’s never really met us before. If we show up and start trying to tell him what to do with his life, he’ll think we’re nutters.’

  ‘No, he won’t.’ Chelle went pink. ‘Actually . . . he’s really nice.’

  Chelle had been making good use of her morning. After arriving at nine and discovering that Ryan was still asleep, she had found out about the nurses’ coffee room, where a big board showed which patients were in which wards, and had sneaked off to visit Will.

  Chelle beamed as she told the story. Perhaps finally getting into serious trouble had made her less worried about the prospect. Ryan had learned that cornflakes still existed after the apocalypse. Perhaps Chelle had discovered that there was still life after Trouble.

  ‘Nice work, Chelle.’ He sat up carefully, pulled back the covers and reached for his contact lenses. ‘Let’s see if we can sneak over there and talk to him before my dad gets back.’

  Will was in a little ward with six beds. One of the other beds was occupied, but the man in it seemed to be asleep. When Will saw Chelle his face lit up. Ryan noticed that there were dark shadows round his eyes, however, as if he hadn’t been getting much sleep.

  ‘Chelle! And is this your sick friend?’ Will glanced at Ryan and a slight look of perplexity crossed his face. Perhaps he had recognized Ryan from the tea shop. Ryan perched on the edge of the bed, feeling his stomach cramp with stage fright. He’d got used to seeing Will Wruthers from a distance, and having all Will’s thoughts helplessly spooling out in front of him. Up close, Will seemed much bigger, more adult and more real.

  ‘Yes, and it’s all right, his brain isn’t fried. How’s your spleen?’

  ‘They still don’t know,’ Will grimaced. ‘Apparently the specialist won’t be around again until this afternoon.’

  ‘Will has to stay here for when his spleen explodes,’ Chelle added in a stage whisper.

  ‘If it explodes, not when.’ Will grinned. ‘It probably won’t. I’m just under observation. They’ve said I can probably go today.’

  ‘Ooh, you’ve been doing some already, that’s so great, can I read it?’ Chelle snatched up some scribbled pages that lay across his bed.

  ‘Of course you can.’ Will glanced at Ryan. ‘Chelle’s been setting me homework so I don’t go stir crazy.’

  ‘Well, he was telling me about having two accidents, both with Harleys, and how he thinks they’ve got a grudge against him and he made it ever so funny and I said he had to write it down and send it in somewhere as an article or something . . .’ Chelle retreated to the far end of the room to read. Her thin pale lips moved slightly as she skimmed the pages, giggling occasionally.

  Will watched her with a kindly expression that somehow took the limp thinness out of his face.

  ‘Chelle’s got such an original way of seeing the world – I could listen to her for hours. I was just about ready to go mad when she dropped in, saying she’d read about my accident in the paper. I’d been here two days without any visitors, or books, or sleep.’

  Ryan remembered Will worrying about his mother and wondered why she hadn’t been to visit. Perhaps she really hadn’t forgiven her son for getting a motorbike.

  ‘I’m sorry about your accident,’ he murmured.

  ‘Yeah, came to grief on my Harley.’ The mention of the Harley was a little too nonchalant, and there was a frightened light in Will’s smile as if he was unsure whether something was going to hurt or not. ‘You like bikes?’

  ‘Yeah. Kind of.’ Ryan remembered his unreasoning envy of Josh straddling the motorbike. ‘Only . . . I don’t think I really want one. I’d just be getting it so I could be, y’know, “Biker Ryan”.’ During the following silence, Ryan did not dare look at Will.

  ‘You know what’s funny?’ Will said at last, and Ryan was glad to hear his voice still sounding natural and friendly. ‘They don’t tell you about the runny nose you get when you’re biking. I mean, in films you never get these guys in leather jackets getting off their bikes and going pfneeuh, pfneeuh, and wiping their noses on their sleeves.’

  ‘Sounds gross.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Will gave a rueful little sideways tilt of his head and stretched his arms and legs carefully. ‘Yeah,’ he muttered again, more quietly, as if talking to himself. ‘Ha. Biker Will . . .’ He sighed and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. ‘I can’t afford to keep the Harley anyway. I’ve been missing so much work, I can’t manage payments on the bike and the new flat. It was tough enough already. Better sell the bike and move back in with Mum. That’ll make her happy at least.’

  ‘No no no no!’ Chelle scooted over from the far side of the room and broke into a dance of smiling rage at the end of the bed. ‘Don’t! Well yes OK, you should sell the bike, but you can’t move in with your mum again. Because I’ve got your article now, and I’m not giving it back if you do, haha.’

  ‘Chelle, the whole reason I got a flat was because my mum wouldn’t have a bike in the house . . .’

  ‘But maybe the whole reason you got a bike was so you’d have to move out? And she hasn’t come to see you in hospital, and that’s horrible. And anyway your article’s really, really good, and I’m going to send it to Silverwing and you can’t stop me, haha.’

  This was a new Chelle. A Chelle with a strange, impish, capering confidence. Will was smiling tolerantly, Will was laughing and relenting. He was not going to talk to his mother just yet, he promised, if only Chelle would let him look over the article and improve it before she sent it anywhere.

  ‘Oh! And when you get out, can you please deliver this note for us?’ Chelle added as they prepared to leave. ‘It’s for Whelmford, it’s not all that far from Crook’s Baddock.’ Chelle tore out a sheet from Will’s notepad and scrawled on it. ‘It’s a nice lady Ryan knows who can’t leave her house, and Ryan does gardening for her, and we’re going to hers for tea on Wednesday only she doesn’t know it yet, and you should come too! And she’s got jackalopes.’ She made it sound like a disease. Laughing, Will promised he would.

  ‘Chelle,’ Ryan whispered as they scampered back to the children’s ward, ‘you made it sound like Carrie was an old lady or something.’

  ‘Yes!’ Chelle beamed at him. ‘And when he finds out she’s young and pretty he’ll go all nervous and shy and then she won’t be frightened of him.’ Chelle seemed to have given her angelic duties worrying amounts of thought.

  What do we do about Carrie? wondered Ryan. Once upon a time, Carrie had granted her own wish, locking herself away from the world, but now she had set out to ‘u
ngrant’ it again, by ordering her door. She must have partly succeeded by the time Josh took her ring out of the well, since Chelle was able to pick up her thoughts – the Well Spirit clearly considered hers an ungranted wish. Now Josh would want to re-grant her wish in some horribly permanent way. How could he be stopped? And would giving Carrie a new friend in the shape of Will really do anything to help?

  Ryan was discharged at four, but his parents told him that they wouldn’t be taking him straight home.

  ‘The police are still taking photos of all the rooms,’ Anne explained as they gathered their belongings. Ryan’s stomach lurched. What if the police looked through the house and found no sign of a break-in? Would they decide that he’d gone mad and torn everything up himself?

  ‘Mum . . .’ Ryan fumbled for words. ‘Did you give a report? About . . . what you saw?’ What had she seen anyway?

  ‘Yes.’ His mum’s perennially direct gaze clouded and she dropped her eyes. ‘I told them that I saw things being thrown at you through the door by somebody in the kitchen.’ She raised her eyes again and smiled, calmly and levelly. ‘You may have to talk to them, but don’t you worry. It’ll be OK.’

  ‘We’re going to head back and talk to them ourselves now,’ Ryan’s father explained. ‘The Coopers have said that we can drop you off at theirs to spend the afternoon with Chelle. Are you all right with that, Ryan?’ Seeing Ryan pale slightly, he added reassuringly, ‘I believe that as of this morning the Coopers are minus one house guest.’

  So the quarrel between his mum and the Coopers had reached some kind of truce, and Miss Gossamer was no longer welcome in the Coopers’ house. However, it hadn’t been the prospect of meeting Miss Gossamer that had caused Ryan’s sudden pallor.

  ‘Dad,’ he murmured when he caught a moment alone with his father, ‘you’ll . . . stay close to Mum, won’t you?’ He halted, uncertain how to continue. His father smiled slightly and pushed a lock of hair back from Ryan’s forehead.

  ‘I had better,’ he whispered back, ‘for the sake of the police. If she stays in this mood she may try to wrestle their investigation away from them.’ They both looked across to where Ryan’s mum was frowning at Ryan’s medical chart and interrogating some poor nurse. Glancing up at his father’s face, Ryan recognized for the first time the glint of pride that had perhaps always lurked amid the exasperation and amusement.

  Chelle and Ryan were dropped off at the Coopers’, Chelle nervous at the thought of finding a message from Josh waiting for her. But there had been no word from Josh, and half an hour later a Cavern Conference was in session. On Ryan’s suggestion Josh’s Well Shrine, a blue plastic bucket which had been Ouija-labelled in green marker pen, was relocated to the wardrobe. When a rug had been carefully draped over it, and the wardrobe door shut, they felt safe enough to speak above a whisper.

  ‘You sure it’s OK to use the phone?’ Ryan couldn’t help asking.

  ‘I think so, I’ve . . . borrowed my dad’s work mobile and Josh doesn’t know about that.’ Chelle tucked her hair behind one ear and started to dial.

  ‘Is that Mr Punzell? This is Chelle Cooper, you remember, your friend Donna psychically projected into my brain.’ Pause. ‘Oh, but no! I’m not calling for her, I’m calling for you! You’re my only hope!’ A pause, during which Chelle began to smile in anticipation. ‘It’s my friend Ryan, everything in his house exploded and attacked him and he was taken away in an ambulance, and nobody believes us and they say it was just a gang breaking in but we know it was . . . no, I don’t think it was bad feng shui, Mr Punzell . . . it was this lady artist who’s been putting voodoo curses on Ryan’s mother and we think they bounced and hit him. And can you pleasepleaseplease talk to her, because we don’t think she knows what she’s done and . . . and could you please . . . oh yes, she’s called Pipette Macintosh, and she’s in the directory. Oh thank you, Mr Punzell, I knew you’d help us.’

  She pressed a button to hang up, and smiled her eyebrows way up into her fringe. Chelle’s personality seemed to be bulging out in unexpected ways, to fill the gap left by Josh, and Mr Punzell had agreed to help. He was certainly vain, but evidently vanity sometimes made people do unpredictable and generous things.

  ‘What about the mime-actor Jacob Karlborough?’ Ryan asked. ‘How do we ungrant his wish?’

  Chelle wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t know if we can. We can’t really unbreak the fairground. And as for the green spiky bit of the wish . . . well, supposing your dad’s article did help him, and he got parts in plays, and he’s started to be famous and happy . . . I just couldn’t undo it and spoil it all for him. I couldn’t. I don’t want to take away that little boy’s robot toy either.’

  ‘No. You’re right,’ agreed Ryan after a moment. ‘OK, we’ll leave them alone. So I guess . . . now we wait.’ A phone call, a motorbike article, a tea-party invitation . . . perhaps these would do nothing . . . but perhaps . . .

  ‘Eeuw!’ Chelle jumped up, wiping her knee, and ran to the window. Ryan realized that there was a dribble of water running from the wall to the place on the floor where she’d been kneeling. ‘It’s shut!’ she exclaimed in a surprised tone. ‘I can’t see where the rain’s getting in.’

  ‘Chelle . . .’ Following the dark snail’s trail of the water, Ryan had realized that it did not start at the window. He followed it back along the line of the wall, to a spreading puddle around the wardrobe . . .

  There was a thick sound, like a horse’s hoof lifting out of sticky mud, and a surge of greenish water spewed through the crack under the wardrobe door. From within came a glassy, echoing sound, like droplets falling in some vast cavern.

  They both jumped. The colour seemed to drain out of everything, and Ryan’s knuckles stung. He was back in the world of nightmares, but this time Chelle was there with him.

  ‘Ryan, we’ve got to pile things against the door, you’ve got to help me move the bed—’

  ‘The door won’t hold her, we’ve got to open it and destroy the shrine—’

  ‘Oh no . . . no . . .’ Chelle’s voice climbed in pitch as the wardrobe door pushed itself open. A tide of murky water rushed out, carrying weed-draped plimsolls and a frisbee. The rug over the bucket was shrugging oddly and had nearly bucked itself off. Water was dripping from the clothes rail and sounding against the base with a weird, cavernous clarity.

  ‘Grab boxes! Anything!’ The rug slipped off the bucket. The water within was spilling over the edge, and seemed to be boiling without steam. Ryan seized three board-game boxes from Chelle and slammed them down over the top. It was all he could do to make himself kneel and grapple the bucket.

  ‘Open the bedroom door!’ Chelle flung the door wide and ran ahead of him as he staggered down the hall, feeling the boxes buck against his chin as something pushed from below.

  A shrill, laughing conversation upstairs, a television-crowd roar in the living room, and nobody with enough attention spare to notice as two children scrambled past, struggling to prevent a god escaping from a bucket.

  The bathroom door was open, and he hurled himself in, half falling against the toilet. He released his grip on the boxes and the water sluiced out into the waiting bowl, accompanied by a deluge of pieces from the tearing Monopoly box. When the bucket was empty he tumbled back and Chelle slammed down the lid. Both lunged for the flush handle, then waited while the cistern roared, gurgled and faded. When they started to hear the same cavernous dripping from beneath the closed lid, they flushed again, and again, and again. At last all was quiet, and they raised the lid to find only clear water with a few floating plastic hotels in it.

  ‘We’ve done it now,’ murmured Ryan.

  24

  Gathering the Fragments

  Something was wrong.

  Ryan was sitting at the breakfast table as usual, spreading jam across his toast with great care, listening to the rustle of his father’s newspaper and the chime of his mother tapping her teaspoon dry against her mug rim. When Ryan reached across for the jam jar,
though, it seemed to recede from him along the table top.

  He looked up. Where his father and mother had been sitting a moment before there were only softly swaying nests of translucent tentacles.

  I’m asleep. Ryan stood up, looked about him at the steamed and splintered wreckage of the Glass House, then stepped through a jagged hole in the front wall.

  Now the sky was dark copper, kettle-belly. Little spasms of violet lightning flickered like scratches in an old film. Beyond the car park’s edge he felt, rather than saw, the decline towards the Magwhite well. There the dark air was fighting itself, and Ryan thought he glimpsed rent boughs, pushchairs, streamers of cordon tape, yellowed bones, all twisting in slow motion among the leaf swarms, as if tossed to and fro by some vast autumnal tantrum. He sensed the wordless summons in the roar, knew that the darkness demanded him.

  But he did not obey. Doubled against the thrust of the wind, he stumbled towards the snaking chain of trolleys along the side wall. The wind blew leaves into his face, and when they touched his skin he thought he heard fragments of words spoken, or wordless gasps.

  ‘She’s calling you,’ whispered the Man in the trolley chain gang.

  While the trolleys ahead of him and behind slid to and fro as if on a boat deck, the Man moved more naturally from one foot to another, as if he was trying to keep warm. His face was hunched down to his chest, his eyes hidden beneath a sodden curtain of earth-coloured hair. His hands were tucked into his armpits, again as if he was cold.