Thirteen Days of Midnight

by Leo Hunt

  “Yeah. Sorry. I just can’t wait until high school is over and I’ll be able to go to the college in Brackford or something. I seriously — AIIIEE!”

  Elza screams like she’s been scalded and jumps to her feet. There’s red running down her face, and I’m grabbing her, thinking she’s bleeding, the ghosts are here, the Shepherd — and then I hear drunk human laughter coming from above us. Alice Waltham and another girl I don’t recognize are standing on the upper landing, looking down. Alice is holding an empty wineglass.

  “Sorry, Elza,” Alice says. “My hand slipped.”

  Elza stares up at the two smirking girls, wine soaking into her dark cloud of hair, wine dripping from her shoulders onto the cream carpet. There are flecks of pink blooming everywhere around her. I realize I’ve still got my hand on Elza’s hip. She’s vibrating with rage, like a chain saw being revved up.

  “Go clean yourself off, you mutt,” says the other girl.

  Elza opens her mouth, and I think she’s going to scream at them, but instead she just whispers, so quietly only I can catch it, “I was here to save you.”

  She breaks away from me and runs into the kitchen, heading for the door. I’m following her, pushing past groups of lads, past the table with the grinning jack-o’-lantern, out the door, her boots crunching on gravel.

  “Elza!”

  “I’m going home,” she says.

  “Come on, please — I need your help . . .”

  “With what? We’ve got no plan. I’m covered in wine. I’m not sitting around in Holiday’s palace for another hour getting drinks poured on me, waiting for ghosts to come and kill me. I’m going home.”

  She takes the Book of Eight out of her backpack and thrusts it into my hands, then turns without another word and walks away into the dark. I watch her back as she disappears. The clack of her boot heels fades and then finally cuts out altogether. The night is cold and clear, with stars freckled like white paint on a smooth black canvas. I wait for Elza to come back, but she doesn’t, and after a few minutes I turn back up the drive, to Holiday’s house.

  Holiday herself is standing in the front doorway, her body haloed in bright white light, cat ears still perched on her head. Music and loud voices leak out around her into the quiet street. I stop a few paces from the door.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hi.”

  “Someone said maybe you left.”

  “I came back.”

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  “Not really.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  Holiday pushes open a white door with a gold H nailed to it. Her room is dark, lit by a string of blue and pink lights that are looped over the poles of her four-poster bed. Her hair is threaded with the cool light that seeps from the bed frame. Downstairs, the music is thumping, like a headache you’re about to have.

  “I cannot believe someone got red wine on the hall carpet,” Holiday’s saying. “Like, all over it! I just barely convinced Dad to even let me have people here . . .”

  “It was Alice.”

  “Oh, are you kidding? That girl — she just spray-painted my bathroom with vom as well, I had to put her to bed in my brother’s room. Thank god he’s not here.”

  “She dumped wine all over Elza. That’s why there are stains.”

  “Oh.” Holiday sits on the edge of her bed. “That wasn’t kind of her. Is that why you were outside?”

  “Uh, yeah. Elza was angry, obviously. She went home.”

  “You did come here with her, then?”

  “She’s a friend.”

  “Only a friend?” Holiday asks.

  She holds my gaze with a delicious intensity.

  “I . . . Holiday, I can’t do this right now.”

  “Can’t do what?” she asks, smiling.

  “Look . . . I can’t explain. . . . I’m, like, way over my head. I’m dangerous.”

  “What, you’re a heartbreaker?” she says.

  “No, look, it’s . . . my dad,” I say, not quite believing we’re suddenly having this conversation. “He died last week. We weren’t close, though.”

  “I’d like . . .” Holiday’s saying, “I’d like us to be close, Luke.” She’s lying back on her bed, clearly out of it. I wonder if she’ll even remember this conversation in the morning.

  “I’d like that, too,” I say. “But you look like you want to sleep right now.”

  “You don’t have to go,” she says, almost a whisper.

  “You’re very drunk. I think I should,” I say. She doesn’t answer. Her breathing is slow and deep. She reminds me of Mum suddenly, and I have to turn away. The music has stopped downstairs. They must be changing the track or something. I hope that’s what’s going on.

  I open Holiday’s door and come face-to-face with the Judge.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, though I already know.

  “Sorry, boss,” he says, rubbing his stubbly head. “Can’t be helped.”

  Before I even know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed him with my right hand. The sigil is cold, freezer-burn cold, like a tiny star of frost on my finger. I grab the Judge around his fat throat and lift him up into the air. He strains and squirms in my grip, his outline starting to blur like captive smoke, but I won’t let him go.

  “Boss, please —”

  “Shut up. I’m talking. I’m your necromancer. I’ve got the Book,” I say, holding it under his nose with my left hand. “I know how to use it. Where are the others?”

  “Boss —”

  I squeeze his throat tighter, cutting his protests off into a squawk. The sigil blazes even colder; my right hand feels like a shape carved from ice. Sparks are dancing in my teeth.

  “Where are they? Where’s the Shepherd?”

  “I’m here, Luke” comes his dry, clipped voice, right behind me.

  Still holding the Judge, I turn to face the room. The Shepherd is standing a few feet from me, regarding me through the black discs of his glasses. His hands are clasped at his waist. He looks calm, like someone waiting for a bus.

  “I’ve got the sigil here,” I say. “You make one move and I’ll —”

  “You’ll do nothing,” the Shepherd says, “or the girl dies.”

  With a sick lurch, I realize the shadows clotted around Holiday’s sleeping body have taken a man’s form. The Prisoner is crouched over her, staring down at her sleeping face with rapt delight. With his left hand he’s holding what looks like a thread of white light, which is connected to Holiday’s forehead, between her eyes. He’s pulling it out of her, whatever it is, and in his other hand . . . I see his shears are poised to snip the thread. He gives me a toothy tongueless smile.

  “If you touch her —” I say.

  “Empty threats,” the Shepherd says. “You have the sigil and Book, but you’re no necromancer yet, Luke. Give them up. Or my colleague will cut her thread and she’ll be gone.”

  I’m frozen in place, the Judge still struggling in my grip.

  The shears begin to close around the white thread, a millimeter at a time. The Prisoner doesn’t take his empty gaze off mine for a second.

  I can’t let Holiday die because of me.

  I release the Judge, who gurgles and falls to the ground. I drop the Book of Eight onto the floor and push it toward the Shepherd with my foot.

  The Prisoner doesn’t move away from Holiday.

  “The sigil as well,” the Shepherd says with a slight smile.

  I pull the painfully cold ring from my finger and throw it at his smirking waxy face. He catches it in midair without any apparent effort.

  “What are you waiting for?” the Shepherd asks. Is he talking to me? Why would I be waiting for anything? “Could it be you remain loyal to the necromancer?” he continues.

  I turn to look at the Judge.

  “Nothing personal, boss,” he mutters. He raises his hand, and I can see an empty bottle held in
his fist. He’s wearing a sovereign ring on his thumb. It catches the light, a miniature sun. I have time to wonder whether it’s a real bottle or somehow the ghost of one, and then he breaks it over my head with a flat white

  Snap.

  I wake up stretched out on Holiday’s bed. My neck feels like there’s a fire lit inside it. I’ve got a headache with a pulse and my mouth is dry. When I move my head I can feel hair itching at my shoulders and back. Holiday is lying next to me, eyes wide open.

  “Holiday?”

  I hold my hand to hers. It’s still warm, and I can feel the faintest heartbeat hidden there in her wrist. They didn’t kill her, and they didn’t kill me either. It’s not Halloween, so if what Elza said is true they can’t. My skeleton feels more like a collection of dry, weak twigs than the trusty lattice of bones I normally depend on. The room is still dark, but it’s closer to deep blue than black. Sunrise can’t be far off.

  The shadows by Holiday’s dresser deepen. There’s the glint of spectacles, the slight mushy sound of lips moving.

  “Luke,” says the Shepherd.

  “What have you done to her?”

  “Me personally? Nothing. I can’t speak for the Prisoner, of course. He does rather drain people.”

  His voice has music in it. I want to throw myself at him, wrap my hands around his waxy throat, but I can’t. I gave up the sigil. I want to feed the Shepherd his own heart. Instead I stand, fists crunched up in my jean pockets.

  “She’s got nothing to do with this. Nobody here does.”

  “I quite agree, so I’d rather not get into any unpleasantness. Do exactly as I say or we’ll kill all of them.”

  “All right.”

  “Open the door and go downstairs, to the back garden. I will follow you. If you run, if you try anything, this girl here will suffer and then die. And don’t think we’ve forgotten that seer-child either.”

  “Good luck getting to Elza. She knows all about you.”

  “You really don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you, Luke? I have traveled through the cold beyond. I spoke with the Black Goat in the deepest woods. I plundered the ruins of Babylon and Solomon’s tomb. In life, there were kings who came to me on bended knee. Did you think the witchlet could help you against me? Against us?”

  “Elza knows more than you think,” I say. “All you’re proving is you’re old. And I’m not afraid. I know you can’t kill me.”

  I hope.

  “Downstairs,” he says.

  I haul my aching body through the door and across Holiday’s broad landing. The house is utterly silent, without a murmur or thump of footsteps. A clock reads 6:00 a.m. I run my eyes over a pile of neatly folded clothes, a gold-framed photograph of Holiday at eight or nine on a chestnut-colored pony. What have I brought down on their home?

  Sitting in a white chair on the landing, there’s a blue bundle that starts to shift and murmur as we approach.

  I’m a baby, the bundle says.

  I walk past the ghost, chill crawling over my skin.

  Pick me up, it says. The Shepherd doesn’t acknowledge it either.

  “Are you familiar with the Innocent? A story lies therein,” he says, as we reach the bottom of the stairs.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “As you wish. Another time, then. Closer to your death.”

  Nobody has left the party; everyone is still here. Every guest stands in place, hands clasped behind their backs. There’s not a human sound to be heard: no breaths, no coughing. Their faces have the flattened, sad expression of sleepers. Bottles and cans and glasses lie on the ground, surrounded by long-dried splats and spills of liquid. Whatever happened to them, it happened fast. I suppose this is real black magic. I didn’t realize, didn’t know the ghosts had this kind of power. Is this what Dad would use the Host for? If you could do something like this to people, freeze them like statues, then you could get away with just about anything. It’s not a nice thought. I remember learning about Pompeii, looking at all the plaster casts of the Romans who didn’t have the sense to leave town when their mountain started to smoke. Their eyes are open, but nobody is looking at anything in particular. None of them respond to my gaze. Everyone — every sexy cat, every Frankenstein, every Dracula, every Superman or cowgirl or zombie — all of them are facing the same way, staring toward the open back door.

  The garden is dark, grass tinted white with frost. Beer cans glint beneath the bushes that surround the lawn. There’s a wide circle of people standing on the grass; some are living, some dead. I think of the guys’ drinking circle out here last night, and I smile a bitter smile. I see Holiday’s mum, and a gray-haired man with a paunch who I assume is her dad, standing beside each other with clasped hands and the same sleepwalker’s expression. I guess they came back early. Too bad for them. Kirk and Mark stand with their backs to me, still in their superhero costumes. Between the seven warm bodies stands the Host, filling out the circle: the Judge, the Prisoner, the Vassal, the veiled Oracle, the flaming form of the Heretic, who for once stands silent, and the blue-swaddled baby, somehow moved down from the landing, on the ground next to Holiday’s parents. And at the opposite side the circle stands another figure, something I can’t quite make out, a strange hunched shape like a mound of cloth that’s breathing. No, that’s not quite right either: It looks more like a shadow being boiled.

  The Fury. I remember Dad’s notes: Power — rage — enemy of life.

  Just when you think things can’t get worse.

  “Is the whole Host accounted for?” asks the Shepherd behind me, loud, near my ear. When nobody answers, he carries on. “Come stand with me, Luke. We’ve left space for you.”

  I follow him through the damp, flattened grass, and my stomach lurches as we step into position. In the center of the circle is Holiday’s white cat, Bach, with a syrupy red slit in his belly. He lies still, like a toy someone dropped.

  “Right there,” the Shepherd says. I’ve got the Heretic to my right, the Shepherd to my left. The circle is complete: eight living, eight dead. I stand where he indicated, fists clenched, head throbbing, and the Shepherd reaches up and touches the center of my forehead with my sigil. Cold spreads from the black ring throughout my body, faster and deeper than it did when I grabbed the Judge’s throat. I find that I can’t move. I’m frozen in position, like the others. All I can do is watch.

  “There,” says the Shepherd after a moment, enjoying my discomfort at suddenly being paralyzed. “Our circle is complete. Allow me to introduce an infamous servant of your father. The Fury.”

  At this, the boiling shadow, at first only waist high, unfurls like a great dark flag, and I realize I was looking at something wearing a black robe, kneeling on the ground with its back to me. It stands and stands, expanding upward until it’s past seven feet tall, its shoulders level with the taller ghosts’ heads. The Fury turns to face me, and I realize that each time I think I’ve seen everything, there’s just one more level of screwed-up weirdness.

  The thing has long, thin arms, hands that fall down below its knees, fingers like groping roots. The demon’s skin is ink-dark, and I can’t tell where its cloak begins or if it’s actually wearing anything at all. It looks like a three-dimensional shadow, a shadow with depth and mass, like a sculpture made out of black smoke. The head is the lean, sharp head of a dog or jackal. The demon’s eyes are like keyhole views of a furnace, smoldering orange holes punched into the darkness of its face. It sniffs at the air and then opens its mouth, which also shimmers with red heat. Unlike the Heretic, shrouded in flames, this creature is burning from within. There’s a faint, awful sound, like someone screaming and shouting two streets away.

  “Hear me now,” says the Shepherd. “The Fury and I have decided that Luke is lacking in the correct authority to manage this Host.”

  The demon adds nothing. Its furnace eyes bore into mine.

  “Luke has continually proved himself incompetent, slothful, and inconsequential. His grasp of necr
omancy is effectively nil. We believe him to be an unworthy owner of the Manchett Host, and we are relieving him of command.”

  The Prisoner gives me a curdled smile.

  “This is mutiny,” says the Vassal quietly.

  “Shut it!” hisses the Judge.

  “The first order of business,” says the Shepherd with an expansive gesture, “will be breaking our bonds. As you’re all aware, Halloween is seven days away. Our power will be at its apotheosis, its apex. I feel confident we will be able to slay our necromancer, and thence shall be free. Luke is weak, and such a chance may never occur again. Do you want to end up like the monk”— he points at the Heretic — “forever lost, mind worn down to nothing by centuries of service? We must break free!”

  Nobody disagrees.

  “Just in case anybody has some misplaced loyalty . . . consider this a warning, all of you.”

  At this prompt, the Fury leaps at the Vassal and smothers him in its robe. The black shape billows and beats like a heart, and then the struggle is over. The Vassal is kneeling in the middle of the circle, looking down at the dead cat. His hands and feet are bound with what look like black briars. The Fury stands over him, blazing eyes empty of expression. Nobody looks pleased or smug anymore, not even the Judge. I’m guessing whatever’s about to happen, the Shepherd didn’t fill him in on this part of the plan.

  The Shepherd speaks to the Host. “The Vassal is domesticated, a mewling house pet. At every chance for freedom, this traitor blocked the path.”

  “Luke!” cries the Vassal, on his knees in the grass. “Luke, save me! If you have any goodness, any compassion, please save me! Stop this now!”

  I try to speak, and my mouth won’t work. I’m frozen in place, totally silent. All I can do is stand and watch.

  “Please! Oh, God, please don’t let it eat me! Please!”

  The demon reaches inside its body and draws out something that glows with a hungry light: a long whip of flame, an impossible cord of boiling orange that swings down from its black hand to singe the wet grass.

  The Vassal raises his head, eyes glinting in the fierce orange blaze of the whip. I can’t tell him how sorry I am, how much I appreciate what he’s tried to do for me, but he must be able to read my gaze.