Kill Fish Jones

by Caro King

  He knew that he was next on the demon’s list. He knew that it was having trouble killing him – after all, it had had a fair few cracks at it and yet he was still here. He knew that it wouldn’t move on and kill Susan until it had dealt with him. So what was it up to now?

  ‘I s’pect,’ murmured Alice, ‘that your beastly demon is off plotting something really big. I mean, it’s not gonna just keep on with the falling junk and car accidents, is it? It’ll want something you can’t escape …’

  Fish found himself thinking about Imenga, who owned the world and would rather destroy it all than give away even a tiny part.

  ‘… I mean, something nuclear. Even if it means taking out other people …’

  But, thought Fish, surely it would be crazy to wipe out everything just to get one insignificant little person. Bonkers.

  ‘Because let’s face it, the thing must be barking by now. Mad as a hatter. You’ve cheated it at every turn …’

  Only, went on Fish’s head, to the demon, killing Fish Jones isn’t insignificant. To the demon, killing Fish Jones is everything.

  ‘… so all it can do is play its trump card. And from where I’m sitting, that looks like …’

  Fish swallowed hard, because if his thoughts followed their natural course back to the story they had just been reading, there was only one conclusion.

  ‘… the Mighty Curse.’

  There was a moment of complete stillness. Fish and Alice locked gazes. All around them the world paused and even the birds stopped singing for one eerie moment. And then it all went on as before.

  ‘Oh bum,’ said Alice quietly. ‘Your demon’s going to wake its demon up!’

  As one, they scrambled off the seat and began to move. By the time they reached the edge of the village, they were running.

  ‘I would have thought,’ snapped Tun, gazing down at Grimshaw with his piercing eyes switched full on and his arms folded, ‘that you would be searching Real Space for the Mighty Curse, not playing in the books, as usual.’

  ‘Like I care what you think,’ muttered Grimshaw dizzily. He was sitting on the ground outside the house trying to get his breath back. Having chewed him up, the story had spat him out on the library floor. After the whirling cacophony of the Mighty Curse Grimshaw’s head was spinning, but he had had the presence of mind to reset his chronometer before the other books worked out that he was free. He was glad to be outside again, taking in deep breaths of old socks and waiting for his brain to calm down.

  Tun went on glaring. ‘Really, I thought you had more backbone!’

  Grimshaw glared back. It was clear that Tun didn’t yet know what Grimshaw had found out. But the Acts and Facts operated like a grapevine. Any significant deed done or word spoken soaked through the dead air like ink through blotting paper, alerting demons everywhere. Although there was always a delay, any moment now Limbo would know exactly what Grimshaw had been up to.

  Because he had been inside the story, Grimshaw had seen the place where the Avatar of the Mighty Curse had risen like a dark cloud against the sky. He knew where it had fallen to sleep and where the waters had closed over its head. All he had to do was get there fast, before anyone worked out where he was going. Quickly, he fiddled with his chronometer.

  ‘Off now, are you?’ said Tun. ‘About time. But then it is a big task for such a minor demon and I suppose a little cowardice can be forgiven.’

  ‘Thanks,’ sneered Grimshaw. The dials were all aligned correctly.

  Tun turned to survey the Limbo landscape, his eyes raking over its grey greyness. He waved an arm expansively. ‘Remember, small one,’ he boomed, ‘all this will be gone if you succeed.’

  Grimshaw’s finger paused over the send button. Was that a touch of fear in Tun’s voice?

  ‘You’re chickening out, aren’t you?’ he said scornfully.

  Tun ignored him. ‘But can such a miserable creature as you find the strength and determination to wake the most fearsome curse demon in history from its sleep? Hmm?’

  ‘You bet,’ snapped Grimshaw, and hit send.

  Tun spun around, his black cloak sending ripples of darkness into the grey light. He gaped. And then the grapevine reached him.

  Limbo was normally silent anyway, but for one eerie moment even the silence was silent.

  ‘Satan’s rump!’ murmured Tun as he gazed at the space where Grimshaw had been. ‘He knows where it is!’

  In the room with the sunlight on the walls and the smell of antiseptic, Susan opened her eyes. She had been asleep and dreaming of the old days, before she had disturbed the remains of Lampwick the Robber. She woke suddenly, feeling as if someone had called her name.

  For a second everything was still. It was an eerie stillness and it seemed to Susan that even the birds outside her window fell quiet. And then everything was normal again.

  She lay for a while, thinking about it. She was not a superstitious person, but there were things in her life that took more explanation than logic could provide. Fish was one of them. He had always been different, and although Susan loved him with all her heart, there were times that she didn’t like to think about when she found him a little frightening. So, even while she told herself that the moment of eerie stillness was merely a lull in the birdsong and the sounds of the ward that coincided with a gap in the traffic, the part of her that knew better than to trust mere logic was going into overdrive. She thought that maybe, when … if … she got to Crow’s Cottage, she should have a long talk with Fish and find out the truth. Even if it terrified her, it was time she knew about her own son. She was ashamed that she hadn’t had the courage to do it before.

  She drew in a slow breath and tried sitting up. It hurt in places she didn’t know she had, but it didn’t kill her.

  ‘Oh my rear,’ she groaned quietly, and reached for her clothes.

  ‘Mrs Jones,’ said the doctor, appearing in the doorway with a disapproving frown, ‘you have a broken rib and leg, extensive bruising and some bad lacerations. I really wouldn’t recommend—’

  ‘Question,’ said Susan patiently, ‘if I walk out of here now, am I going to drop dead?’

  The doctor looked bewildered. ‘Well … no.’

  ‘There you are, then!’ She smiled. ‘You see, there is somewhere else I have to be, and provided I can get there alive, then that is where I’m going.’

  He opened his mouth and then shut it again. He knew determination when he saw it. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Well, Mrs Jones, you’ll need antibiotics and some painkillers. I’ll make you up a prescription now, if you’ll give me a moment.’

  ‘You’ve got as long as it takes me to get dressed and ring for a taxi,’ she said, and gave him a smile that made his day.

  Grimshaw sat for a moment on the edge of the deep lake called Menga’s Tarn, peering at the water that dazzled his eyes with its reflected glare.

  He knew he was safe now. Even though everyone in Limbo would know what he was up to, nobody could stop him. Lampwick couldn’t travel to Real Space and neither could the Sisters or the Horsemen. The only ones who could were those few curse demons who had an active list and they were probably already in Real Space and busy. They wouldn’t catch up with the Acts and Facts until they got back to Limbo, by which time it would be too late.

  Picking up a stone, he tossed it into Menga’s Tarn, wondering how deep it was, how far down the Avatar of the Mighty Curse was sleeping. The ripples spread out, disturbing the glassy surface of the water. Below them lay the answer to the problem of Fish Jones. The only thing Grimshaw hadn’t figured out yet was what to do when he found the Mighty Curse. He would have to wake it up somehow, start the demon once again on its task of world destruction.

  Still, time for that later.

  He set the dials for the bottom of the tarn and hit send.

  Fish and Alice ran on in silence, Alice with Mr Green’s book clutched in her hand. It didn’t take much brain to work out where they had to go. The book was about local
legends. This legend included a Mighty Curse, a sorcerer called Imenga and a deep lake. It had to be Menga’s Tarn, the deep, steep-sided pool where they had spent yesterday afternoon.

  It felt like they had been going for ages when at last they spotted its dark waters glinting in the sunlight away to the left of the road. They changed direction, diving off across the fields. Leaping through the long grass they hurried on, sweat cooling on their spines and necks, stalks tickling their legs and grass seeds dusting their arms. Somewhere along the way, Fish’s foot had begun to hurt again and he was limping, but it didn’t slow him down.

  And so they reached the edge of Menga’s Tarn, where the banks fell down to a stretch of water that looked like wet silver and smelt like hot tin or the air just before lightning strikes.

  ‘There’s a way down,’ said Alice, pointing to a cut in the steep sides.

  She led the way through the trees and shrubs, stumbling down the earthy slope to a stone ledge just above the water. There was barely room for the two of them and side by side they stood and looked out over the surface of the tarn. This close the water looked like glass. Beneath it was midnight.

  Alice shivered. ‘It’s deep,’ she said nervously. ‘Deep and dark, but mostly deep. What are you going to do? Find the Mighty Curse’s demon? Will you be able to guard it? Make sure your demon doesn’t get to it! We’ll camp out here if we have to. But be careful! Don’t get too close – you don’t want to do its job for it.’

  Fish took off his shoes and Jed’s jacket and gave them to Alice.

  ‘Well,’ she said with a rueful smile, ‘they don’t call you Fish for nothing.’

  Fish leaned over and kissed her cheek. Then he breathed deeply and dived in.

  ‘I’ll wait for you,’ she called, as the waters closed behind him.

  34

  MENGA’S TARN

  The water should have been cold, but it wasn’t. Fish swam deeper and deeper, through water that felt like blood-warm silk, but he couldn’t see the bottom of Menga’s Tarn. Above him, the light began to recede and a blue as dark as the shadows of night enclosed him. If anything, the deeper he went, the warmer it got.

  He paused, floating upright, suspended in this strangely silent world of green-blue light and inky shadows. Turning his head this way and that, he tried to see into the dimness around him. There was no break in the stony walls and still no sight of the bottom. So he jack-knifed and pushed on down, swimming into the dark. The sides of the tarn were drawing in, narrowing down to a funnel at its heart, so he headed for that. Because of his natural ease underwater, Fish had had a lot of practice at holding his breath, but by now even his lungs were feeling the effort.

  Nearing the bottom, he became aware of movement below him, as if part of the darkness that gathered at the base of the tarn was alive. There was something there, something that had purpose. His heart turned over with fear as he realised what it was. The demon of Lampwick the Robber’s curse had already arrived.

  Grimshaw was digging, scrabbling around in the mud as he tried to find a way through to whatever was beneath. Seeing him, Fish didn’t pause to think, because what he needed to do was too frightening to think about. He had to stop the creature now. At once, with a flick of his legs, he propelled himself down, right on top of the demon. Reaching out, he grabbed it.

  Feeling the boy’s touch, Grimshaw froze with shock. In his entire existence he had never had contact with human flesh before, not even the slightest brush of a finger. And now here were two very human arms, wrapped around him, trying to pull him away! He went rigid, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and astonishment. Unknown sensations battered at his brain, and for a moment he was nearly overwhelmed by the feel of delicate bones clad in warm, wet skin, full of blood that pounded as it pushed energy into every corner. How could something so small hold so much life! The boy’s muscles flexed as he turned his face to the light above them and begin to swim.

  Fish hung on to the demon, pulling him back towards the surface. He swam as fast as he could, trying to ignore the way the creature felt – like an armful of dense, slithery mist. And then Grimshaw snapped into action, struggling and squirming in the boy’s grip. Fish hung on desperately, trying to gain height, to get the demon up into the air where he could trap it, stop it from doing what it wanted to do. By now his lungs were on fire and flashes of light sparked inside his eyes like mini-fireworks. Water swirled, filling his head with a bubbling roar.

  Twisting, Grimshaw slashed with his paws and felt skin under his claw tips. Fish thrashed wildly and then fell suddenly still. Grimshaw was free! Paddling hard, he headed back to the bottom of the tarn.

  Fish was in trouble. Pain like cold fire burned on his arms and chest where the demon’s claws had raked him.

  I can’t swim! He thought. I can’t breathe!

  Blood roared in his ears and the flashes in his eyes were dazzling. The precious oxygen in his lungs was finally running out. He was going to die here, he knew it, drowned in Menga’s Tarn while Alice waited above, unable to help.

  Alice. His mother. Jed. He had to stop the demon!

  Jerkily, he willed his arms into life and thrust his body down, looking for the demon again. This was his last chance, he must catch it now! He had seconds left before he could hold on no longer. Already, darkness was creeping over the edge of his vision and he felt strangely cold and numb.

  But the creature had gone and silt had oozed back into place where it had been digging. Fish dived at the spot, pushing in hands first and forcing his body after them. Suddenly, everything gave way and he was sliding through the mud until he shot out the other side, like a bar of soap through wet hands. He fell, rolling into a ball as he went and landing with a thud on the rock below.

  The shock made him gasp. Fortunately, there was something to gasp in other than water. He dragged the air into his lungs in great ragged breaths. Silver suns exploded in front of his eyes and the roaring in his ears became thunder. Water splattered on his head, washing some of the mud from his face and ears. After a few moments he recovered a little, the spinning in his head calmed and the silver suns faded.

  Gingerly, Fish sat up and looked around. The air was warm and felt like a steamy bathroom. Water trickled somewhere. A dull reddish glow, coming from a point down and to his left, gave him enough light to see that he was in a narrow split in the rock, quite tall but barely wider at the bottom than he was. He had been lucky not to have cracked his skull on the sides as he fell. Peering up the funnel of rock, Fish wondered why the contents of the tarn weren’t falling on his head. But although water ran down the walls and dripped in places on to the ground, either the silt plug was very efficient or some other force kept the tarn at bay. The other thing he saw was that the demon had gone.

  Grimshaw was in a great cave, a layer below the narrow crack where Fish gasped for breath. He was perched on the edge of a shelf of rock, peering into the depths of the vast fissure that lay beneath Menga’s Tarn. Far, far below him, something glowed. It was a glow that pulsed slowly, but steadily. He had found the Mighty Curse.

  He glanced behind him, but there was no sign of the boy just yet. He wasn’t drowned, Grimshaw knew that, and soon he would be here to try and stop what was about to happen. Which meant that if he was going to do it, Grimshaw had better hurry up. And he was going to do it, because killing Fish Jones and defeating Destiny was everything he had worked for, everything he wanted.

  Now he had found the Mighty Curse, he wasn’t sure how to wake it. He wondered about using Imenga’s own words, the words that had created it, but that didn’t seem right. After all, Grimshaw wasn’t about to die and he certainly didn’t own the world! So instead he leaned over the pit and prepared to shout out the thing that had brought him here, all this way to the edge of the abyss. But before he could speak, he heard movement behind him. It was coming from the tunnel that led to the cave above and it had to be the boy.

  The gap was so narrow that Fish had to lie on his tummy and half crawl,
half slither down it, grazing his arms and elbows and scraping his toes as he went. The bathroom mugginess made the air feel as thick as soup in his lungs. Sweat prickled in his hair and down his back, and his injured foot had begun to bleed again, but carried by his own momentum, he scrabbled out on to a broad expanse of rock. Yards away he could see the edge of the pit and the shape of the demon crouching over it, outlined against the red glow that came from the depths.

  Grimshaw turned to look at the boy, flattening his ears against his head and snarling, ‘Don’t think you can stop me now, Fish Jones!’

  Fish scrambled to his feet. The softness of the demon’s voice made the creature seem less like an evil persecutor and more like a being.

  ‘Please,’ he said, putting everything he could into his voice, ‘please don’t do it. It can’t be worth this, just to kill me!’

  He looked into Grimshaw’s corner-to-corner black eyes, willing him to understand. Grimshaw snarled again, looking more cat-like than ever. Then he reared up as tall as he could stand.

  ‘Doing this,’ he said, almost dreamily, ‘will make me GREAT!’ He spat out the last word, flinging his arms wide. ‘It will make me terrifying!’

  As he spoke, Grimshaw looked into the boy’s eyes and saw fear there. Fish was shaking like a leaf, his whole body one great heartbeat about to be stopped forever. Grimshaw could see how much courage it took for the boy to face him like this, but he dismissed the thought because he didn’t want it right now.

  ‘You are terrifying!’ cried Fish.

  It was too late and Grimshaw had turned away. He leaned forward and called into the depths.

  ‘O Mighty Demon of a Mighty Curse, wake up and kill Fish Jones, even if it takes the world to do it!’

  For a moment there was silence, absolute silence, and then, far in the depths, something stirred. The rocks shook and a deep rumbling began, like thunder that wouldn’t stop but kept growing. The red glow began to pulse faster, speeding up until it was one long fiery glare. Light climbed the walls of the cavern, rising up from the pit like vines of blood. But in the pit, as deep as the eye could see, was not light. The red glow had a heart of darkness and it was moving steadily up. The Mighty Curse had woken up and now it was coming to finish its task and turn the world to ashes.