Gallows at Twilight

by William Hussey

  Jake stared at Simon. ‘But I don’t get it. Razor’s one of the Cynocephali. And sure, he’s a bit aggressive, but nowhere near as brutal as you were when you changed.’

  ‘Razor is an evolved Cynocephalus,’ Pandora said. ‘His kind has had millions of years to become more civilized. What Simon’s mother did was tap into the unevolved genes that humans still carry from their Cynocephali ancestors. The result was a more basic, primal creature.’

  ‘As soon as we found out what I really was, your father started work,’ Simon said. ‘With this new information he could target my “inner beast” more effectively.’

  He reached under his shirt and withdrew a necklace with a triangular piece of amber for the pendant. Sealed inside the amber was a purple-hooded flower.

  ‘Aconite,’ Pandora said. ‘Also known as monkshood, leopard’s bane, and wolfsbane. Poisonous to the Cynocephali, but trapped within the amber resin it gives off just enough noxious vibes to keep Simon’s dark side at bay.’

  ‘It was the only reason I came back.’ Simon reached for Rachel. ‘I wouldn’t risk it unless your dad was sure that the wolfsbane would work.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘No unsightly hairiness in over two months,’ Rachel grinned.

  ‘Your dad was a genius, Jake,’ Simon said. ‘More than that, he was a good man.’

  The sincerity in Simon’s voice brought fresh tears to Jake’s eyes.

  ‘Only problem is, Razor keeps getting rashes whenever he comes near Simon,’ Rachel laughed. ‘But he sees it as a challenge to his machismo so he hangs around with us more than ever!’

  Simon slapped his forehead.

  ‘One more story about my “glorious Cynocephalus heritage”, and I swear!’

  Despite all the horrors and grief, Jake couldn’t help laughing along with Rachel.

  ‘OK, guys, let’s get back on track,’ Pandora scolded. ‘There’s something else Simon needs to tell you.’

  Simon’s crooked smile dropped. He switched the TV to the video channel and slipped a DVD into the player. As soon as the clip started, Simon hit the pause button. The image of a woman, dazzled by flash bulbs and standing outside a familiar front door, appeared on screen.

  Jake’s brow creased. ‘I don’t get it. What’s this got to do with—?’

  Simon tapped a trembling finger against the screen.

  ‘That woman.’ He swallowed hard. ‘She’s my mother.’

  Jake’s mouth fell open.

  ‘But … but that’s the Prime Minister!’

  Rachel led Simon back to the sofa. Although he’d had time to process the news, the boy was obviously still coming to terms with the enormity of it.

  ‘In his way, Simon was trying to tell us all along,’ Rachel said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you remember after we brought him back from Havlock Grange? He kept saying he was hearing his mother’s voice. We just thought he was dreaming about her, but actually he was hearing her. On the TV, on the radio. In his confused state, Simon couldn’t tell if the voices were real or imagined. What he heard was Cynthia Croft, Prime Minister of Great Britain, making her speeches and giving interviews.’

  ‘But, Simon, surely you’d seen Cynthia Croft before. Why didn’t you recognize her?’

  ‘Think about it, Jake,’ Pandora said. ‘When would Simon have had the opportunity to see her? We all know the Cynthia Croft story. She was only elected to Parliament last year in a by-election. Before that, no one had ever heard of her. That’s what’s made her meteoric rise to Prime Minister so amazing—in only a few months she has become one of the most powerful people in the world. And during most of that time Simon was a prisoner, either of Marcus Crowden or the Demon Father.’

  Rachel squeezed Simon’s hand.

  ‘So what happened to Cynthia Croft, or Cynthia Lydgate, after she’d successfully transformed Simon?’ Jake asked.

  ‘She moved on,’ Simon said. ‘She’d achieved her purpose. She knew that she could create a human-Cynocephalus slave race, and so she had no more use for me. As a final act of cruelty she implanted a false memory in my mind and then vanished into the magical underworld.’

  ‘She made you believe you’d killed her,’ Jake said in disgust.

  ‘We have no trace of her until she turned up in the town of Saltsby-on-the-Marsh a year ago,’ Pandora said. ‘Within a few months she’d been selected as Saltsby’s Member of Parliament.’

  ‘And around the same time that the Demon Father breaks through into this world, the old Prime Minister dies and Miss Croft replaces him.’ Jake snapped his fingers. ‘Of course! Dr Holmwood said that, ever since she was elected, she’d been undermining the work of the Hobarron Institute. She was working with the Demon Father all along.’

  ‘And probably using magic to cement her position in the government.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A hundred ways,’ Pandora said. ‘Charm spells, hexes, voodoo enchantments.’

  ‘But why would the Demon Father need her to be Prime Minister?’

  ‘Always helpful to have that kind of organizational power on your side. And now we know about her experiments on Simon the reason is surely obvious.’

  Jake’s face went pale. He started to connect Cynthia Croft’s past with Brag’s muddled talk about a camp on the south coast of England. The way was being prepared …

  ‘The slave race,’ Jake said slowly. ‘It’s starting … ’

  Simon flipped the remote control in his hand.

  ‘You need to see this: last month’s Downing Street press conference. It took the world by storm.’

  Simon clicked ‘play’.

  Miss Cynthia Croft, her expression deadly serious, came to the podium.

  ‘People of Britain, I come to you today with momentous news. But first I must apologize for having unwittingly misled this great nation … ’

  A stir in the press pack. The camera zoomed in on the Prime Minister.

  ‘After the attack on the Hobarron Institute, I told you that monsters need not concern us. I was wrong. Monsters should concern us, for they are very real.’

  The laughter that greeted this remark was soon mopped up by the Prime Minister’s glare.

  ‘I am aware that such things seem outrageous, impossible, ludicrous even, but I have been convinced of their existence. In the next hour, you will hear from the leaders of Russia, France, Germany, Japan, China, Israel, and America. They have all seen the evidence and they will all attest to the reality of this hidden world.’

  No laughter now, just a confused twitter of voices. A journalist called out—

  ‘What evidence, Miss Croft?’

  ‘For one, the security tapes from the Hobarron Institute. The footage is now being transferred to your news rooms.’

  The image flickered for a moment and then switched to various shots of the assault on the Institute. Dozens of witches plummeted from the sky, their hands filled with dark red flames. Even more striking were the creatures riding behind them: hideous, mutated demons screaming and shrieking with glee. After several minutes of destruction and slaughter, the screen blipped back to the Prime Minister.

  ‘We’ve had the best audio and visual analysts examine the tape,’ she said. ‘Those things were not special effects. They were real.’

  Another astonished voice from behind the camera—

  ‘But … but they looked like—’

  ‘Demons,’ Miss Croft nodded. ‘Demons and witches. After this footage was sent to us by an anonymous source, the government decided to investigate the work of the Hobarron Institute. We have found irrefutable evidence that the family of Institute leader, Dr Gordon Holmwood, has been plotting with demons and dark witches for centuries.’

  ‘Plotting what?’ another journalist called.

  ‘The total annihilation of mankind. An event known as the Demontide.’

  Jake gasped and looked back at his friends. Pandora shook her head.

  ‘It gets better.’


  The Prime Minister stared directly into the camera.

  ‘I realize that even now some of you will not believe me. You will think I have lost my mind. Well, tomorrow you will read in your newspapers all the evidence we have gathered from our raid on the Institute.’

  ‘What about Dr Holmwood? Where is he?’

  ‘The good doctor and his colleague, Malcolm Saxby, were arrested this morning.’ Miss Croft allowed herself the briefest smile. ‘They are still being questioned.’

  ‘Miss Croft? If all this is true, what do you plan to do about it?’

  ‘Let me make this absolutely clear: forget terrorism, forget climate change, forget wars, pestilence, and famine—the threat of magic and demons is the most serious this planet has ever seen. These people, these creatures, possess incredible powers, and they have only one objective—the overthrow of humankind. Now, we have already set up a powerful new government body, answerable only to me. The Department for the Regulation, Examination, and Authorization of Magic. DREAM. But I need to stress—We. Cannot. Do. This. Alone. The British people must aid us in our fight for survival.’

  ‘But what can they do?’

  ‘They must keep their ears and eyes open. If they see anyone whose appearance is a little unusual or who is behaving strangely—a colleague, a friend, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, wife, husband, even a child—they must do their duty and report them to the authorities.’

  ‘What authorities?’

  ‘The DREAM agents. These men and women will soon be on every street, asking questions. Please aid them in any way you can.’

  Jake felt a familiar dread.

  ‘It’s a witch hunt,’ he said.

  ‘On the strength of the evidence and the threat posed, foreign governments will have their own agents in place within the week. Anyone suspected of having dark powers will be taken to internment camps and—’

  ‘But this is madness!’ a voice shouted. ‘It goes against international law!’

  Miss Croft gave the unseen speaker an icy stare.

  ‘What good will your laws be when this world is overrun with demons? When your children are slaughtered in the streets by dark witches?’ Miss Croft’s eyes blazed. ‘I give this warning to all who would stand against us—you will fall upon the flaming sword of humanity’s vengeance. And to wield that sword I have appointed an expert in the wiles of demonkind. May I introduce the leader of the DREAM agents, Mr Marcus Crowden.’

  The door of 10 Downing Street swung open.

  Into the flood and flicker of light walked a man with the face of an angel.

  His dark glasses flashed as he took Miss Croft’s hand.

  ‘Good evening, people of the world,’ the Demon Father said, his voice soft and musical. ‘Despite all that you have just heard, I am here to tell you not to be afraid. For I am with you … ’

  Clouds rolled in and masked the light of the borderlands’ twin moons. The desert had vanished in the darkness, and it was only by the occasional crackle of sand against his face that Jake knew it was there at all. The friends stood on the apartment balcony, each thinking about the new world that had dawned so suddenly around them.

  ‘The camps,’ Jake said, ‘that’s where Cynthia Croft and the Demon Father will create their slave race. They’ll experiment on the people sent there.’

  ‘There are thousands of DREAM agents on the streets,’ Brag grunted.

  ‘ “Watch for Witches”. That’s the slogan on all the posters,’ Rachel said. ‘Everyone wants to do their bit to help the war effort.’

  ‘They’re calling it a war?’

  ‘A War on Witchcraft. If only they knew that a dark witch and the father of demons were their leaders!’

  ‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ Jake said. ‘All this effort, all this risk, but for what? Let’s say they create their slave race, there’s still no way they can bring about the Demontide. The portal at Crowden’s Sorrow is gone and the witch ball is in the demon dimension.’

  ‘Maybe he plans to create another universal coven,’ Simon suggested.

  Jake frowned. ‘Another one?’

  Pandora explained how the Demon Father had used the magic of the collective covens to send Quilp back in time—a spell that had resulted in the death of everyone present.

  ‘But the creation of a second universal coven would be impossible,’ she continued. ‘Sure, there are plenty more covens around the world, but the DF cherry-picked the most powerful ones last time. Anyway, the others will have heard what happened to their predecessors. These witches may want the Demontide to break but they’re not going to risk their own necks for it.’

  ‘What if a demon on the other side used the witch ball to open a Door into the human world?’ Brag asked.

  Pandora stared at the troll. ‘You know something, Brag? That’s a fairly intelligent point!’

  Brag beamed.

  ‘But the Demontide doesn’t work like that,’ Pandora continued. ‘A Door can only be opened on this side.’

  ‘Then how—?’

  ‘Hello? Anyone up there?’

  Murdles’s head poked through the hatch that led up to the balcony. He spied Jake and floated through the roof.

  ‘Ah, Jacob, excellent. I just wanted to thank you again for your sterling efforts today. I—ah—’ The manager tugged at the lapels of a brand new ecto-suit. ‘I owe you my life.’

  ‘Don’t you mean your “death”,’ Simon corrected.

  ‘Very witty, Mr Lydgate. Anyway, I thought you would like to know that everything has been arranged for tomorrow. We will give your father a fine send off .’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Jake sighed. ‘So soon.’

  His friends gathered around him.

  ‘All right, Murdles,’ Simon grunted, ‘off you pop.’

  The manager bowed and was almost at the hatchway when he turned back.

  ‘I knew something else had brought me up here. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t glued ectoplasmically into place! This came for you by the last phantom coach.’

  Murdles took a scarlet envelope from his pocket, bowed again, and disappeared down the hatch. The thick, expensive paper burned Jake’s fingers as he tore it open.

  Dear Jacob,

  My spies on the borderlands have already informed me of your great battle against my former favourite, Tobias Quilp. Many congratulations, dear child, on a notable victory.

  Please also accept my most sincere condolences on the passing of your dear father: Dr Harker was a wise, brave man, if a little sentimental.

  It may be of some comfort to you to know that, although you have lost your father, I also lost something precious today. The witch ball. My spies tell me that Mr Pinch has returned home with the orb. The only difference between us, Jacob Harker, is that I will soon retrieve my prize. I will find the one among millions with the power to pluck it from my old realm and return it to me. But your father? I’m afraid that there is no bringing him back.

  But to more serious matters. You must now be aware that I am in control of your government, and that all hope you had of interfering in my plans is lost. Take my advice, boy conjuror, and disappear. If you do not give me cause, I will not pursue you.

  With fond regards

  DF

  Jake handed the letter to Pandora.

  ‘This is not good,’ she murmured, passing it to Rachel.

  ‘No,’ Jake agreed. ‘It’s brilliant!’

  He burst out laughing and a rich blue flame erupted in his hand.

  ‘He’s lost it,’ Brag shrugged. ‘Can’t blame him, I suppose.’

  ‘But don’t you see what he’s done?’ Jake shouted happily.

  ‘He’s gloating,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘He’s taking the p—’ Simon grunted.

  ‘Precisely! And he’s told us everything we need to know,’ Jake laughed. ‘Everything we need to stop him. Those camps, they’re not just for the slave race experiments, they’re to find someone. Someon
e very special.’

  ‘Who?’ Pandora frowned, turning the letter over, as if searching for a clue she had missed.

  ‘A witch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Demon Father’s looking for a witch.’

  ‘But he knows dozens of witches,’ Simon protested. ‘My mum, for one.’

  ‘Ah, but those witches already have their demons. Pandora, correct me if I’m wrong, but when a witch summons a demon, that’s it. No exchanges or refunds, that’s their demon for life.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And once summoned, demons can’t travel back and forth between the human and demon world. They’re stuck here until their witch dies.’

  ‘Right again. Not that they’d want to go to and fro—escaping the demon dimension is half the reason why they agree to serve as familiars.’

  ‘But where does that get us?’ Rachel asked.

  Jake grinned, barely able to contain his excitement. ‘Read the letter again. The Demon Father is using the DREAM agents, not only to get experiment subjects, but to find one among the millions. Translation: a potential witch. One who’s not yet summoned a demon.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think that, when he finds that “one in a million”, the Demon Father will force the witch to summon one demon in particular. One of the most evil, vicious, depraved demons that ever existed.’

  Rachel’s eyes widened. ‘You mean … Mr Pinch!’

  ‘That’s the boy!’ Jake shouted. ‘And Pinch won’t be coming alone. He’ll bring the witch ball back with him.’

  ‘Great,’ Simon shrugged. ‘So what are we gonna do about it?’