Gallows at Twilight

by William Hussey

  He saw colours, shapes, shadows: sunlight on dusty ground; horses’ hooves pawing at the earth; the panicked flight of a bird. Commotion everywhere: running feet, barking dogs, shouts and curses, oaths and prayers. Through the haze of magical fire that engulfed him, Jake saw that he was standing in the town square that he had glimpsed through the portal.

  The people fled. They tore into the side streets that ran away from the heart of the square like narrow arteries. Gripped by his own sense of panic, Jake’s gaze swept around a circle of white-washed, timber-framed buildings. Tall and short, lean and dumpy, they seemed to have been stacked together like a ring of irregular dominos. A brick-built structure raised on four huge pillars dominated one whole side of the square. SHIRE HALL had been carved in big letters in the stone lintel above the door. The grand arched windows and the wide flight of steps that led up to the door marked the hall as a place of importance.

  Rubbing shoulders with the hall was an altogether different building—a crooked, tottering pile, three-storeys high and caked in soot and grime. At every window astonished faces pressed against the glass, their eyes fixed on Jake. Above the door, a badly-painted sign creaked in the breeze: THE GREEN MAN TAVERN.

  Literally a stone’s throw from the tavern stood the town pillory. A boy about the same age as Jake had been locked into the wooden T, leaves of rotten cabbage tangled in his long hair. Terrified, the boy turned his head away from Jake and whimpered.

  Jake’s gaze switched to the small group of men and women who had remained in the square. A dozen or so in number, they had gathered around the door of a rickety wooden hut. Another sign: Martin MONKS, sergeant-at-mace—Traders’ goods to be Weighed Here on Market Daye. Jake heard their frightened talk over the roar of the flames.

  ‘What is it?’ a woman cried. ‘What horror has gathered here?’

  She took another look at Jake and hid her grimy face in the folds of a bloodstained apron. A grizzled man with white dust in his hair grasped the collar of the boy standing next to him.

  ‘It’s a sign, Caleb, my son! An omen of the Last Days. An angel draped in vestments of fire has come to the town of Cravenmouth to proclaim to all: repent, ye wicked sinners, repent!’

  The boy wiped hands down his flour-dusted shirt. Bakers, Jake thought, and that woman must be some kind of butcher.

  ‘An angel perhaps, father,’ the boy said. ‘But might it not be a witch come amongst us?’

  ‘Angel or witch, the message of the creature stands. He brings Armageddon in his wake. See, he burns ever brighter!’

  Pain seared through Jake and the magical fire swelled around him. In an attempt to rid himself of it, he drew the magic inwards, focused it into his hands, and released it. Balls of light shot across the square. One crashed through the arched window of the Shire Hall; a second hit the roof of the barber’s shop and began to smoulder in the thatch; the third bowled towards the little group of onlookers. A collective scream rose up and they scattered like ninepins. A second later, the fireball smashed into the wooden hut, reducing it to charred kindling.

  Jake threw back his head, opened his mouth, and bellowed. He felt the last lash of magic strike out from that hidden place deep inside. It spouted from his throat in a column of liquid fire that soared overhead, breaking apart the low-hanging clouds and piercing a path into the sky. A whirlwind erupted from the column and skirled around the square. It caught at the embers in the thatched roof of the barber’s shop and whipped them into flames. It shrieked through the window of the Shire Hall and set the fire dancing within.

  At last, Jake felt the magic splutter out like an exhausted candle. His mouth snapped shut and the column collapsed. The infernos on the roof of the barber shop and inside the Shire Hall disappeared. Falling to his knees, Jake heard the Khepra Beetle click contentedly inside his head.

  Slowly, the people of Cravenmouth returned to the square. At the front of the crowd were the father and son bakers, the woman with the bloody apron, and a well-dressed man in his thirties with sharp green eyes and an air of authority.

  ‘Is it safe?’ the woman asked. ‘No, don’t go near!’

  ‘Hush, Mary Dower. There is no more fire, no more hell-wind. The witch has spent all its dark magic.’

  ‘Do not be so sure, Caleb, such things have wiles.’

  ‘It has taken on the guise of a boy!’ the elder baker cried. ‘See what fair skin he has, what strange clothes.’

  The well-dressed man, clad in immaculate black doublet and breeches, came forward. His intelligent green eyes examined Jake before flitting back to the crowd.

  ‘Keep your distance, good people,’ he said, his voice calm. ‘Witch or no, let the sergeant-at-mace and the constable go to their work. Gentlemen, see now to your charge.’

  Jake looked up at the crowd that closed in around him. Fear and excitement mingled in their faces, and something else, too. Hatred. The immediate and uncomplicated loathing for something mysterious and unknown. Only the well-dressed man had any kindness in his eyes. Jake held out his hand—a gesture of reassurance.

  ‘He’s ready to strike again!’ Mary Dower shrieked. ‘Stay well back, friends! He will blast us all with his unholy fire!’

  Jake’s words came in dry splutters:

  ‘No … I … w-won’t hurt you … Please … ’

  ‘The witch lies! Quickly, Mr Monks, silence its tongue!’

  His fellow townsmen bundled the sergeant to the front of the crowd. Full of nervous bluster, Martin Monks slapped away the urging hands. He was a plump man of about forty years of age, his fleshy, clean-shaven face framed by shoulder-length white hair. Monks’s hand went to the brace of weapons belted around his stomach. He selected a rusty wheel-lock pistol.

  ‘NO!’ Jake shouted. ‘Wait … ’

  Mr Monks did not wait. He loaded powder charge and ball, took an uncertain step forward and raised the pistol. With one piggy eye screwed shut, he sighted his target down the barrel.

  Sensing the impending death of its host, the Khepra Beetle loosened its grip on Jake’s brain.

  ‘NO!’—not Jake’s voice this time. The well-dressed man’s.

  But he was too late.

  Sergeant Monks pulled the trigger and the thunder-crack of the pistol echoed around the square.

  Chapter 16

  Trapped in Time

  Martin Monks, sergeant-at-mace, fired the pistol …

  The phantom quill scratched to a stop. Ink spluttered across the page.

  All eyes turned to Adam Harker.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Rachel asked in a stricken voice. ‘Why’s it stopped?’

  Adam tore through the next twenty or so pages of the Codex Tempus. They were all blank. He turned back to that last sentence.

  ‘Does it mean … ?’ Simon had to squeeze the words from a reluctant tongue. ‘Is Jake dead?’

  Guilt clutched at Simon’s heart. His actions had set Jake on this deadly road into the past. He should have handled the situation better; explained to Jake that he had never meant to fall in love with Rachel.

  ‘The Codex contains many ongoing stories, but it has only one author,’ Adam said. ‘It’s possible that the consciousness of William Reclusus has moved on to a different tale. If … if there is more of Jake’s story to tell, then he will return.’

  ‘But when?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Minutes, hours, days. There’s just no telling, I’m afraid.’

  Rachel buried her face against Simon’s chest. For a long time, the people in the study stayed where they were, frozen like figures in a game of musical statues. Adam stared at the empty pages of the Codex. Dr Holmwood made a steeple of his fingers and clicked his yellow tongue against the roof of his mouth. Pandora stood at the door whispering to Brag, filling in those parts of the story the troll had not understood.

  Meanwhile, guilt continued to gnaw at Simon. He should have chased after Jake, caught him in Yaga Passage and made him listen. Hell, knowing the pain his friend was in, Simon should have forese
en that he was about to do something stupid. He was stronger than Jake: he could have wrestled him to the ground and dragged him back to his father. Jake would have fought him all the way, and might never have forgiven him, but at least he would now be safe. Yet again, Simon felt that he had betrayed his best friend.

  From the bleakest shadows in Simon’s mind, a shapeless hand reached out …

  Betray …

  He looked around the study. No one else seemed to have heard the voice. Probably just his imagination. He had almost convinced himself of this when the voice called out again:

  Hear me, my son. The time has come. This is the knowledge you have waited for. Now, remember the lesson I taught you …

  Simon blinked. The room seemed to darken around him. Shadows stole along the walls and the hard edges of the study softened, blurred, and faded. Simon was about to say something when his mouth clamped shut and his throat tightened. The weight of Rachel’s head against his chest disappeared. The walls of the study disintegrated into wisps of smoke that billowed and swirled before reforming into a new configuration.

  The bedchamber at Havlock Grange. The room that had been his prison for over a month. Simon found himself huddled in his corner behind the curtain, watching the shifting glow of candlelight play across the drape. Footsteps creaked on the rotten floorboards. They came closer, closer. Like a terrified child, Simon watched through his fingers as a gloved hand pulled back the curtain.

  ‘My dear boy, it is time we talked.’

  The Demon Father—his father—crouched down and Simon saw himself reflected in the creature’s dark glasses.

  ‘They will be coming for you soon, my son. Jacob Harker and his friends will battle their way through many dangers to rescue you. And rescue you they shall.’ The flash of a victorious smile. ‘I have seen to it that their triumph is assured.’

  ‘Why?’ Simon’s voice, broken and timid.

  ‘Because I want to see the boy conjuror tested. I must know his strengths and weaknesses before the final battle. And there is another reason … ’

  Simon flinched as the gloved hand stroked his cheek.

  ‘I need to have my spy in place. In every war there is a crucial moment, a turning point at which the fate of the conflict may be decided. Often this time comes long before the first bullet is fired. You are to keep your eyes and ears open, my son. When the time is right your unconscious mind will know it. And then … ’

  The Demon Father removed his glasses. Simon scuttled back against the wall, tried to turn away, but could not help staring into the blood-heavy eyes of the monster.

  ‘Then you will answer my call. You will give me the knowledge I seek. You will betray your friends.’

  The walls of the prison bedchamber melted away and were replaced by the hard reality of the study.

  No longer master of his will, Simon felt himself turning away from Rachel and heading for the door.

  ‘Simon? Are you OK?’ Rachel called after him.

  ‘Sure. Need some air.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with—?’

  ‘No. Need some time alone.’

  Still deep in conversation, Brag and Pandora parted to let him through. Simon closed the study door behind him and crossed the lounge with swift, robotic steps. He picked up the cordless phone. Little gears were turning in his mind, working the mechanism of a hidden memory. The digits flashed into his head and he dialled. After the third ring, the call was answered.

  That soft, menacing, musical voice—

  ‘Dutiful son, what have you learned?’

  Simon hesitated. He felt the weight of words crowd into his mouth. It was all he could do to hold them back for a few precious seconds. He spied Adam’s long-bladed scissors resting on the phone table—the ones the doctor used to cut articles out of psychology journals. Simon’s hand was like a dead weight but he managed to fumble and grab hold of the scissors. He would have to be quick. As soon as he opened his mouth the words would come tumbling out in a treacherous flood.

  ‘Speak, my son,’ the voice hissed. ‘Tell me what you know.’

  He tried to drop the phone but it was as if the receiver was glued to his ear. He lifted the scissors to his mouth, felt the cool touch of steel against his lips. There would be pain soon. Horrible, burning, screaming pain. Blood would gush down his throat and he would spit the severed flesh from his mouth. He would never speak again, except in slow, slurping mumbles. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make, if it kept Jake and his friends safe.

  ‘What are you doing, boy? Nothing silly, I trust. You cannot fight me.’

  Simon shuddered. It was now or never. He put his thumb and finger into the eyes of the scissors and opened his mouth wide. He stuck out his tongue and slipped it between the shining blades. The wet, pink tip glistened in the light. Simon closed his eyes. Tensed his fingers. One quick, brutal snap, and it would be over. Just a little courage and …

  ‘SPEAK!’

  At the command, the scissors fell from Simon’s hands and clattered to the floor. He felt the blades sting the side of his tongue, but the graze was superficial. It didn’t even bleed. Words bustled behind Simon’s lips and, like a desperate sinner confessing to a priest, he blurted out the secrets he knew.

  He told the Demon Father how Jake had travelled back to 1645 in order to retrieve Josiah Hobarron’s witch ball. With the magic contained in the ball, Jake hoped to cure Adam Harker and destroy Tobias Quilp and the Demon Father. But something had gone wrong, and Jake had overshot the time-frame by several months. He had arrived on 26th August 1645 in a town called Cravenmouth. Believing him to be a witch, the local sergeant may already have killed the boy.

  A long pause greeted the end of the story.

  ‘You have done well,’ the sweet voice said at last. ‘Soon we shall see each other again, my child. Farewell.’

  Simon heard a click and then the drone of an empty line. He looked down at the scissors and wished with all his heart that he had managed to cut out his tongue.

  ‘Eleanor!’

  Jake gasped and surfaced out of the dream. A dream about an unknown girl that fractured around him and was quickly forgotten.

  Feeble rays of sunlight touched Jake’s face. He moaned softly and raised himself onto one arm. He was lying on a rough flagstone floor dusted with straw and peppered with rat droppings. There was no blanket beneath him and the straw did little to keep out the bone-aching chill of the stone. He had been stripped of his clothes and dressed in a long coarse shirt that smelt of the sewer.

  A sharp pain throbbed in his jaw. His fingers traced the tender flesh that had erupted along the right side of his face, temple to jawbone. Hot to the touch, his skin was as taut as a drumhead. Gingerly, he touched the inside of his mouth with his tongue and probed the back teeth behind the worst of the swelling. The testing tip was too much for one molar and it popped straight out of the gum. Jake spat the tooth and a mouthful of blood onto the floor. Then, groaning, he leaned back and took in his surroundings.

  The room was a freezing stone box with dripping, moss-coated walls. Within easy reach stood a squalid wooden bucket over which a cloud of flies and bluebottles droned. A narrow window and a door studded with iron nails completed the picture. Jake tried to think back. Where was he? How had he got here?

  As if to remind him, the scarab clicked its legs. When it had sensed Jake’s impending death, the Khepra Beetle had relaxed its grip, ready to leave its doomed host. The sergeant’s gun had been fired; Jake remembered hearing the whip-crack report of the pistol. So why wasn’t he now missing the best part of his head?

  Jake’s hand returned to his face. His fingers roamed along his jaw and to the back of his head. He explored each inch of skin, praying that he wouldn’t find any serious damage. His prayers were not answered. Reaching the side of his head, Jake discovered that his right ear was gone—blown clean away by the shot. In its place was a small circular hole plugged with dry blood. And now Jake realized that the dull sensation at the
side of his face was not just the result of swelling. He was partially deaf.

  He tried his best not to panic. Magic, he thought. The power of the Witchfinder would heal him. Afterwards he would use the raw Oldcraft to free himself from the cell. He held out his hand, his gaze concentrated on the bowl of his palm. As usual, he delved into those memories of pain and despair that had ignited the magic before. They came to him as clearly as ever, the first among them being his mother’s murder at the hands of Tobias Quilp. That memory in particular nearly always provoked a magical response.

  Not this time. Deep inside, where he had felt the glimmer of Oldcraft before, there was a dry emptiness. He swore and focused again on his mother’s death … Nothing. It was as if the whirlwind of power that had come to him through the Scarab Path had exhausted the last of his magic. Not wanting to believe that this was true, Jake crawled across the cell and pressed his hands against the locked door.

  Open, open, open, OPEN!

  Not a flicker. Not a spark.

  He soon gave up on magic and pushed and hammered, dug his nails into the jamb and tried to prise the door open. It didn’t budge an inch.

  Pain, fear, and confusion overwhelmed Jake. He returned to the back of the cell and slid down the wet, weeping wall. He clasped his hands around his knees and rocked back and forth. Separated by vast tracts of time from his father and his friends, he knew that he would die here. To the people of this town he was a dark sorcerer—an enemy to be thrown into a cell and left to rot. He would die as surely as his father would die centuries from now, both of them cursed by magic to leave this life before their time.

  Jake looked around his little prison and felt despair clutch him in a cold embrace.

  Time passed, each hour marked by the shaft of sunlight that crept across the floor. Occasionally, Jake would hear a hopeless scream or lunatic shriek echo out from some distant part of the prison. Despite these hellish cries, he felt despair begin to loosen its grip on his heart. He took strange comfort from the fact that the Khepra Beetle was still lodged inside his brain. The creature was obviously concerned with its own preservation and therefore sensed any threat to its host. As long as the beetle’s pincers remained tucked into his grey matter, he had a fighting chance. All he had to do now was find a way out of this prison.