by Caro King
KILL FISH JONES
Caro King was born in London and raised in Surrey. She now lives in Croydon with her partner, Kevin. She studied art and has had a variety of jobs since then, including working at the Office of the Official Receiver and as a greengrocer’s assistant. Her first novel, Seven Sorcerers, was shortlisted for the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize.
By the same author
Seven Sorcerers
Shadow Spell
Praise for previous titles
‘Rich with extraordinary incident and a whole new
perspective on bogeymen … a vivid evocation of a place
peopled with strange beings and immersed in magic.
Who could ask for more?’ Daily Telegraph
‘Truly moving and involving’ Sunday Times
‘Gripping. Intricate, melancholy, occasionally gruesome,
but quickened with deft touches of humour’ FT
‘Witty and clever’ Family Interest Magazine
‘The narrative is well written, flows well and will capture
the reader’s attention, and as one of the bogeymen says:
“It’s been fun, what wiv everyfin’. Even the scary bits, an’
there’ve been plenty enuff o’ those”’ School Librarian
KILL FISH JONES
CARO KING
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Quercus
21 Bloomsbury Square
London
WC1A 2NS
Copyright © Caro King, 2011
The moral right of Caro King to be
identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85738 146 0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, organizations, places and events are
either the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or
locales is entirely coincidental.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset by Nigel Hazle
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
For my Mother, with love and happy memories.
And to Kevin, as always.
Book One
THE CURSE OF LAMPWICK THE ROBBER
1
LITANY
Perched on his usual gravestone, Grimshaw turned his corner-to-corner black eyes upwards and scanned the dull grey sky. It was empty. Empty was good, because anything at all in the sky, here in the Limbo world, usually meant trouble.
He heaved a sigh and swung his tail slowly to the left and then to the right. It was something to do. He scratched his ears with a clawed paw.
Close by, Lampwick was snoring again. Grimshaw glared at him. He didn’t know how the human managed to snore when he was not technically asleep. Nothing that existed in Limbo was allowed to sleep, not the half-alive creatures like the demon Grimshaw, or the half-dead ones like the human Lampwick. Even the Sisters didn’t sleep, and Grimshaw was pretty certain the Horsemen didn’t either. Not that anyone who met them ever stopped screaming long enough to ask.
Still, propped against the tombstone that marked the spot where his mortal remains were buried, Lampwick snored away, his robe spread about him in a pool of tattered fabric. Bored with the sight, Grimshaw switched his gaze to the scenery. There wasn’t a lot.
Limbo, or Grey Space as it was often called by its inhabitants, was a poor imitation of Real Space, which was where all the properly alive things were. This meant that the hills and valleys and roads and buildings that made up Real Space were all there in Limbo, just horribly grey-looking. The major difference between the two, the one that really grabbed your attention, was that Limbo didn’t do the properly alive part of things. So, although the basic landscape was all in place, there were no trees, grass, flowers, birds or animals on it to look at. Nor was there any weather, because although it wasn’t alive as such, weather was far too energetic for Limbo. The end result was like the stripped-bare foundations of the real world done in various shades of grey.
In the graveyard, apart from the one referring to Lampwick, the tombstones were blank, because the names of the properly dead had no place in Limbo. Lampwick wasn’t properly dead. He was the Architect of a deathbed curse upon his fellow men and so his spirit wasn’t allowed to move on to Whatever Comes Next until the curse was completed. Lampwick’s dying words had also created Grimshaw, because all curses need a demon to carry them out.
Grimshaw snuffed the air. It smelt of old socks. It was not warm exactly, nor was it cold. It didn’t waft about in breezes or draughts, either. It just sat there. Next he stared moodily at the church, looming up over the graveyard in which Lampwick was buried. The building looked slab-like, a big chunk of grey stone with no trace of the elegance that in Real Space would make it a beautiful piece of architecture. Grey Space didn’t do elegance.
He sighed again and flipped his ears. Then he looked at the device strapped to his wrist. This was his chronometer, one of the two possessions that all curse demons were born with. It had two dials around an inner face, all etched with numbers and symbols. It had five hands and, on the outer edge, a small red button. At the moment, the chronometer was telling Grimshaw that the time was somewhere about the middle of eternity and the place was the Limbo version of St Michael’s Church in the small town of Chillingdean. Both of these were things that Grimshaw knew already. He wondered how long it had been since the last update.
Because Real Space was constantly changing, as everything that lived in it got on with its life, every so often Limbo had to rearrange itself to reflect those changes. It did this every third hour throughout the day and it always felt to Grimshaw as if the world had blinked.
Unfortunately, the updates were mostly boring. Apart from the appearance of a new tombstone or the odd hail of falling plane parts, very little altered in Grimshaw’s world. The problem was that Lampwick, like all the half-dead, was tied to his mortal remains. He could move up to twelve feet away from his Limbo coffin, but that was all. And Grimshaw was tied to Lampwick’s command, which meant that (unless Lampwick allowed him to go) he had to stay in the graveyard with his Architect. Not that anywhere else in Limbo was more interesting, but it could be nice to be bored somewhere different for a change.
The second possession that all curse demons were born with was a Litany of Sufferers – a list of all those people who were subject to the curse. Lampwick’s curse involved horrible things happening to anyone who bothered him. This meant all the people who had been bothering him at the time of his death, and went on to include anybody who might be foolish enough to bother him after his death as well. As a result, the curse wouldn’t be completed until Lampwick’s mortal remains – still decaying quietly away in Real Space – were so much dust and couldn’t be bothered in any way ever again. Just to make the point, on Lampwick’s tombstone, underneath his name, were the ominous words ‘Leave Him In Peace’.
When Grimshaw had been created, long ago in the days of Queen Victoria, he had had work to do in Real Space, wiping out his Litany of Sufferers. The list had been a long one, covering Lampwick’s landlady, the doctor who
had tried to help him on his deathbed and the policemen who had tried to arrest him, as well as any unfortunate nosy parkers who might have been hanging around to find out what all the fuss was about.
But that list of names had been long since finished, and for many decades Grimshaw had been confined to Limbo. Most curse demons, including Grimshaw, looked forward to the possibility that one day their curse might be invoked again and they would have more Sufferers to deal with.
Lampwick gave a particularly hard snore, making Grimshaw jump. The demon stared hard at the cadaverous face of his Architect, trying to see if the man’s eyes were open a slit, watching. Grimshaw stuck his fingers in his mouth, pulling down the corners to show his yellowed teeth. Then he wrinkled his nose, scrunched up his all-black eyes, waggled his ears and stuck his tongue out.
The half-dead man opened his eyes and glared. ‘A little respect, if you please,’ he said sniffily. ‘Remember, I am your creator!’
Grimshaw snarled under his breath and shook his ears. ‘You might have made a slightly better job of it!’
He took a deep breath and clenched his paws tight, trying to calm down. He hated the fact that when he got angry or irritated he began to twitch. Sometimes it was just his arms and legs, but sometimes his whole body would jump like a firecracker. Already he could feel the tension building up in his limbs.
‘Don’t blame me for your shortcomings,’ snorted Lampwick.
‘And you needn’t snore so loud,’ snapped Grimshaw, ‘I know you’re not asleep.’ He twitched violently, nearly falling off the tombstone.
Lampwick settled back with a smug smile tugging at his thin mouth. Grimshaw gritted his stubby teeth, angry with himself for letting his irritation show. Now Lampwick would snore all the louder. Dangling behind the tombstone, Grimshaw’s tail tied itself into complicated knots of frustration. He sighed as Lamp-wick began to snore again. It sounded like a buzz saw with a megaphone. Sneakily, Grimshaw peered down at the ground, looking for a small stone to throw into Lampwick’s open mouth. Preferably a nice muddy one.
The world blinked.
Lampwick sat up and gave a startled yell. His scrawny shape writhed in agony, crumpled up and vanished with a sound like a cork coming out of a bottle. Grimshaw gasped and stared wildly around the graveyard. Apart from the disappearance of his Architect, everything looked exactly the same.
‘I conjure thee, APPEAR!’ yelled Lampwick’s disembodied voice, echoing doomily in Grimshaw’s head.
Hurriedly, Grimshaw spun the dials of his chronometer, setting all five hands to zero.
‘I conjure thee, GET A FLAMING MOVE ON!’
‘All right! All right!’ Grimshaw hit the send button, the red one on the side of the chronometer. When a curse demon set his chronometer to zero, it acted as a direct route back to his Architect. So a second after he zapped out of existence in the graveyard, Grimshaw zapped back into existence in the middle of the stone floor of a crypt filled with tidily arranged coffins. He gazed around in confusion.
Lampwick was on his feet, waving his arms excitedly.
‘Look at this! Look! Don’t you know what this means? Oh come ON! Dunderhead! Idiot! THINK!’
Grimshaw twitched his ears, then checked his chronometer.
‘We’re still in Chillingdean,’ he said, ‘but it’s a different church! St Peter and St Paul – right over the other side of town!’
‘Never mind which church,’ cried Lampwick. ‘The point is, we were in a graveyard, now we’ve been rearranged to a crypt. In Real Space, someone must have dug me up and moved me.’
Avatar and Architect stared at one another.
‘Look and see!’ whispered Lampwick, his voice trembling with anticipation.
Nervously, Grimshaw reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a notebook with an old-looking document tucked into the cover. His paws shook as he removed the yellowed paper and unfolded it, laying it on the ground between them.
On top of the document, written in something suspiciously blood-like, were the words:
Litany: Sufferers for the Curse of Lampwick the Robber
Beneath that it was blank … except …
‘Ahhhh!’ Lampwick sighed as words began to appear, their shape rising through the paper in coils and loops. They were names, and there were four of them.
‘Four!’
‘And they’ll all have loved ones. A wife or husband. Children.’ Grimshaw was bubbling with suppressed excitement.
‘Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters.’ Lampwick waved his arms excitedly, lurching about the crypt. ‘So much to be taken away! And homes too, don’t forget. And jobs. Lives. They will all have lives.’
‘But not for much longer,’ said Grimshaw. His tail swayed to and fro eagerly. ‘Not for much longer!’
‘Hah!’ said Lampwick gleefully, almost dancing with joy. ‘Serves them right for tampering with my mortal remains, eh! That qualifies as bothering me all right!’
Grimshaw’s cat-like face stretched into a happy, horrible grin. Once again, he had work to do.
2
BRIGHT YELLOW EXCAVATOR
The burly man in the hard yellow hat and the overalls glared at the red-faced man in front of him.
‘Look, Wayne,’ he snapped, ‘what with the exploding dog and the falling tree, I can do without you carping on about soft furnishings, got it?’ He wasn’t shouting yet, but he sounded like a man who might start at any moment. His face was tight and his eyes glittered.
Wayne swallowed hard and stood his ground. ‘It’s just … There are curtains … and I was thinking …’
‘Oh, thinking, were you?’ sneered the burly man whose name happened to be Jon Figg. ‘Don’t make a habit of it!’ He passed a hand wearily over his face, then went on irritably, ‘How do I know why there are curtains? Maybe the last owners couldn’t be bothered to take them down. Who cares? Just GET ON WITH THE JOB!’
Wayne opened and closed his mouth. Then he gave up and climbed aboard the bright yellow excavator.
Comfortably settled on top of the nearby postbox, Grimshaw watched with satisfaction. He was sitting in plain view because there was no need to hide. Apart from those exceptional occasions when fate allowed a child to be born gifted with extra-special vision, humans couldn’t see half-alive creatures like Grimshaw, unless the half-alive wanted them to.
Everything was going to plan. It was a month since Lampwick had been dug up and Grimshaw had been given the new Litany of Sufferers. In that time he had made good progress. Already, two of the four names on his Litany were finished.
He flicked open his notebook, looking for the page where ‘Sufferer 3: Jonathan Figg’ was neatly written in cramped printing. Because Mr Figg was the man who helped the man who moved Lampwick’s coffin, Grimshaw had added the words ‘The Man Who Helped’ underneath the name. Grimshaw liked to be organised and proper.
Also under Mr Figg’s name was a list of the things that Grimshaw had to take away from him to make him suffer. These were: dog, car, house, job and wife. When all of these were gone and the Sufferer was in despair, then Grimshaw would take away the only thing left: the Sufferer’s life. Currently, Grimshaw was working on the fourth item – Jonathan Figg’s job. Retrieving the pencil stub jammed behind one pointed ear, Grimshaw licked the end, then wrote, ‘Frayed Nerves and Inconstant Temper leading to Poor Judgement’.
By now, Wayne had started the excavator rolling forward, grinding up the neat garden path and crushing the flower beds. An empty milk bottle wobbled, then fell and cracked, rolling down the doorstep and under a bush. The excavator went on right up to the front door. By now, a crowd had begun to gather, prevented from coming too close by the barriers put up for their safety, but getting a good view anyway.
The excavator stopped rolling forward. There was a lot of grinding as its long metal arm slowly unfurled and reached out. The huge claw-like part at the end paused for a moment, then lunged forward, smashing into the wall and pulling it down. Under the onslaught of th
e heavy machinery, the side of the house crumbled as easily as if it were cake, not solid bricks and mortar. The excavator went back for another bite. Bricks and tiles tumbled. Windows shattered, the harsh sound tearing into the summer day. The crowd gasped.
Moving the arm of the excavator to reach more of the house, Wayne went in for another go. And another. A central portion of wall came down and the front of the house suddenly crumbled, sliding into a sea of rubble. The air was filled with the sound of thunder. And dust. An awful lot of dust.
When the dust settled and everyone could stop coughing and open their eyes again, what they saw looked like one of those doll’s houses where the front swings off to show the rooms inside neatly laid out in cross section. Upstairs revealed a newly decorated bedroom – the bed still unmade – and a blue-tiled, bathroom. On the ground floor was a hall, with wellington boots in a cubbyhole under the stairs and a door (still standing) through to the living room. There would be other rooms at the back, but the excavator hadn’t got there yet.
One or two of the crowd, the more thoughtful ones, began to look worried, but nobody did anything about anything, which was fine with Grimshaw. He knew that humans mostly thought that other humans knew what they were doing and so didn’t interfere, even when it was glaringly obvious that something was wrong.
Jon Figg was looking at his watch again. In the excavator’s cab, Wayne had forgotten his worries and was beginning to enjoy himself.
So was Grimshaw. He flipped to the next page of his notebook, which had the heading ‘Sufferer 4: Susan Jones, The Woman Who Knocked’. He smiled happily to himself. The whole event had a lovely symmetry and, frankly, Grimshaw was proud of it. He turned his all-black eyes towards the end of the road, because any minute now Mrs Jones and her weird son, Fish, were due to come home. If it qualified as home any more, which was doubtful.
Just about the time the roof fell in on the sofa, crushing it into a ruin of chocolate-brown cloth and stuffing, they arrived.
