by Dave Rudden
One by one, the street lights returned.
“WELL,” GREY SAID, emptying a bag of crisps into his hand, “that was unfortunate.”
Denizen laced his fingers round his cup of tea, as much to stop them from shaking as to warm them. He couldn’t remember if he’d taken a sip or not.
Rain pattered against the windows. They’d found a café a few minutes from closing—the lights low, tealight candles flickering on each table, kittens staring blindly from an ancient print on the wall.
“I do understand, you know.” Grey idly moved crumbs around his plate. He didn’t look like he understood. He was still wearing that cat-burglar smile, wider now that he had made a pot of coffee, three sausage rolls, and two bags of chips disappear.
He might have been suffering inner trauma, though. Does inner trauma make you hungry?
If so, it hadn’t worked on Denizen. He’d gotten as far as adding milk. Everything else was beyond him at the moment.
“Denizen.” Grey dabbed at his lip with a napkin. “Stop being broken. I can’t deliver you to your aunt if you’re broken. Say something. Ask a question. Yes, it will be a stupid question. Ask it anyway.”
He’d cut right to the heart of Denizen’s silence. It wasn’t that Denizen had nothing to say—in fact, the questions were tripping over each other in his head. Grey was offering to answer them too. All Denizen had to do was ask. And, like unraveling a shirt by pulling a single thread, answer would follow answer and he’d suffocate under the weight.
Statements. Maybe statements were the way to go.
“That was an angel,” he said in a haunted voice. “That thing—it was an angel.”
Grey picked up one of the empty packets of crisps and spread it flat with his fingers. “What makes you say that?”
Frown No. 6—Insistent. “Because it looked like an angel.”
Grey folded the packet neatly into a square and then reached for another. He seemed entirely and maddeningly focused on the task.
“Did it?”
Well, now that Denizen thought about it…it hadn’t. Angels were graceful and beautiful, weren’t they? At least they were in stories, and after this evening, Denizen was both a little more ready to believe in stories and a lot more skeptical all at once.
His stomach still churned as he thought about how abnormal the thing had been—the glitchy, headachey wrongness of it. The creature might have had the basic shape of an angel, but it had jarred his senses the way a crack in a mirror distorted a face.
“Look,” Grey said, flattening the final crisp packet, “if it helps at all, I had the same conversation at your age. It didn’t make much sense to me either. Honestly, this could have gone better, but you know what they say: no plan of action survives first contact. I’m not supposed to be telling you anything. Your aunt was pretty clear in that regard.”
“Why not?” Denizen’s eyes narrowed.
“Because she…she wanted to talk to you herself. But that was then.”
“Grey,” Denizen said, leaning forward. The last of his reservations had vanished; he’d just been told he wasn’t supposed to know anything, and that made him immediately want to know everything. “What did I see tonight?”
Grey glanced around. The café was empty and the owner had disappeared into the back, but Grey still leaned forward, resting his chin on his palm. He hadn’t removed his gloves to eat, and crumbs dotted the black leather.
He must be cold, Denizen thought. He had to keep squeezing his own hands into fists to stop them from shaking, though that wasn’t due to the cold at all.
“OK,” Grey said. “Where do I start?”
He lifted the tall plastic beaker of sugar and put it in the center of the table. Next he moved the tealight candle until it was parallel with the beaker. Shadows shifted as he set the candle down.
“What you have to remember,” he said, “is that we don’t understand a lot of this ourselves. And when people don’t understand something, they build stories up around it. We’re dealing with theories here, not specifics. Exact answers are difficult. Keep that in mind.”
Denizen nodded nervously. Grey flashed him an encouraging smile and then carefully and deliberately placed his finger in the middle of the shadow the sugar beaker had cast.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Denizen frowned. “It’s a shadow.”
“No, it isn’t,” Grey said. “It’s a door.”
He withdrew his finger, and the shadow of his hand followed it. “And the thing about doors is that they go both ways. People go in. And things come out.”
“Things like the…whatever it was?”
Grey nodded.
“But people would…people would notice.” Denizen looked at the shadows under his hands, the darkness that lurked behind or in front, all the places where the light didn’t fall. Were creatures like the bad-dream angel lurking behind all of them? He shivered. “If things like this happened, we would know, wouldn’t we?”
Something dark and sad passed over Grey’s face. “I grew up in a place like Crosscaper, Denizen. We both know people disappear all the time.”
He ran a hand through his long dark hair. “I want to say more. I do. But your aunt will explain when we get to the house. She’ll want to…There’s something we have to do before you can be told the whole story.”
“You fight them. Is that it?” Denizen said. “You did something. Destroyed it. You didn’t even use your sword. Also, you have a sword.”
“I do indeed,” he said. “And yes, I have experience with these sorts of things. Your aunt does too. And that’s as much as I’m willing to say without her here. We were going to put you up in a hotel, but after what’s happened I think she’ll want a longer chat.”
“Well, that would be nice,” Denizen said a little bitterly.
Now that the shock had worn off, anger was rushing in to fill the gap. Say what you liked about the orphanage—and he did, a lot—it certainly lacked towering stone monsters lumbering around trying to kill him. Denizen would have been quite happy never knowing they existed at all.
Now he was entitled to a bit more disclosure. The thing was, he knew none of this was Grey’s fault and it was stupid to be angry, but that just made him even crosser.
Grey raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Denizen said. “I could have died back there, but that doesn’t mean you should actually tell me what happened instead of spouting vague stuff about shadows being doors and—”
“Stop,” Grey said suddenly. His gaze had sharpened, his lips a thin line. Denizen was abruptly reminded that, nice guy or not, Grey had faced down a nightmare not half an hour before without batting an eye.
“I get that you’re a little on edge at the moment. Really, I do. And yes—you do deserve to know more. But right now the words you’re looking for are Thank you, Grey, for saving my life.”
He placed both hands back down on the tabletop, but not before Denizen noticed that they were trembling.
“I know I make it look easy, but these things carry a cost. The least you could do is be patient.”
They sat in silence for a few moments until Denizen sighed. “Sorry. And thank you.”
Grey grinned. “Good. Now drink your tea.”
THE SKY FELL as rain.
It sounded like Crosscaper was under siege—bullet-drops bouncing off the windows, ancient gutters rattling like machine guns, all underscored by the artillery roar of the thunder. The storm had started small—a rising wind, a leaden heaviness to the sky—but now it shook the stones of Crosscaper like all the wars of history come at once.
Simon loved it.
He laid his forehead against the cool glass of the dormitory window, angling his head so he could stare at the sky. Storms came to Crosscaper a lot—this was the house at the end of the world, as their geography teacher, Mr. Flynn, liked to say—and every time one swept in off the Atlantic to batter against the orphanage walls, Simon would slip out fr
om under his covers with a silly grin on his face.
There was something comforting about them—all that power and rage ending just centimeters from his nose. It would have been absolute misery to be caught out in the torrent, but here in his pajamas, with a blanket over his shoulders, Simon was snug and safe.
The other students snored behind him. They were well used to his habits. Simon had been here nearly his whole life—he was part of the furniture by now. As long as he avoided Ackerby and some of the spikier teachers, he was mostly left to his own devices.
Rain moved in great drifts across the courtyard. Tea in a bit, he thought. Technically, the doors to the kitchen were supposed to be locked, but Mr. Baxter the caretaker only locked doors when he remembered to, which wasn’t often. Usually, Denizen would go down for him so Simon didn’t miss any of the storm.
He was missing that tonight. Not the conversation—half the time, they didn’t even talk, Simon staring at the rain and Denizen reading—but Simon just liked knowing someone else was there.
Lightning arced between the clouds, and Simon looked away from the sudden light. It was strange, that empty bed at his back. He and Denizen had been practically inseparable since the day they’d met. What if his aunt takes him away for good? The note hadn’t said when Denizen might return, and it was Simon’s birthday at the end of the month, and…
No. Simon shook his head. There was no sense in worrying about these things. He’d be back when he was back. Besides, Denizen needed this.
Simon stood up, stretching to work the kinks out of his muscles. The longer you lived in Crosscaper, the more it changed you. Some students looked for attention—acting out, getting into fights—and others threw themselves into their studies so they’d get scholarships after they turned eighteen.
Simon and Denizen had found refuge in books.
Simon had learned a lot from the crime novels he read. Disguises, research methods…He wasn’t sure when he’d need to tail someone, but he was certain he could do it.
Denizen was different. He read fantasy novels. And eleven years of living in Crosscaper with that kind of reading material had made him into a fortress. Nothing went in; nothing came out.
It was like he was determined to wait out his childhood, staring skeptically at anybody and anything that came close to him. The only reason Simon knew this at all was because he had bunked next to Denizen for so long, and he hadn’t so much besieged as camped outside the gates and waited for Denizen to come out.
Lightning flashed again in a crooked spiderweb, painting the world in lurid green and white, the rain a million mirrors all cracking at once. Simon had lived here almost all his life, but the eerie glow of the storm painted everything differently, like he wasn’t looking at Crosscaper at all but at some other darker place.
And as if responding to that unpleasant thought, the gates of Crosscaper trembled. With a snarl of distressed hinges audible even over the roar of the storm, they began to creak open. Simon leaned forward. Usually, the gates swung open smoothly, hissing apart on well-maintained electronic hinges.
Now they screamed.
The thick storm-chain round the gate handles twitched and pulled taut. Metal groaned—the gates stopping, straining—until it gave with a broken-neck snap. The ruined padlock fell to the ground with a clatter, the chain slithering free after it.
Behind Simon, one of the orphans cried out in his sleep.
A light flickered on below in the porch and someone ran out toward the gates, a coat over his shoulders to protect them from the rain. It might have been Ackerby or Mr. Baxter, Simon couldn’t be sure, but the man paused in the middle of the courtyard, rain-battered and uncertain.
There was a sense of something about to happen. Simon felt it—a crushing nausea in his chest. Obligingly, lightning bit dramatically at the sky, illuminating the courtyard.
Three figures, painted in white. A short, round man in a waistcoat stood between the open gates, face held up to the rain. A woman dressed all in white loomed over him, ragged hair slicked to her scalp, her eyes holding the lightning just a moment too long.
Between them there was a…Simon squinted. No matter how much the lightning flashed, it did not reveal the third figure. Instead, the light just defined…a shape, a hole in the air, a distortion that made Simon’s eyes water and the back of his neck go cold.
It was the shape of a little boy.
The person with the coat over his shoulders shouted something that was swallowed by the thunder. Simon’s breath fogged the glass, and he scrubbed at it with his sleeve.
The three visitors didn’t respond, though the woman in white sank to her haunches, eyes gleaming. The child-shape cowered as the man in the waistcoat stepped forward, rain glistening on his stub of a nose, lips split in a vicious smile.
Run. The thought came from nowhere, and yet it was all Simon could do not to shout it out loud. Run.
Lightning struck the courtyard.
Heaven and earth were connected just for an instant by a bar of writhing light. The window frames jumped in their settings. Simon jerked back from the window, his vision suddenly seared white, the world full of the choking taste of ozone—the stink of tortured air.
For too long he just sat there, vision returning in spots and blotches. Like spider legs, every hair on his body stood on end. Finally, he got to his feet.
The courtyard was empty.
Fear curled down Simon’s spine when he saw the coat lying abandoned on the muddy gravel. Something animal rose in him. Panic, the adrenaline-addled need to run, to get out of there—that a terrible thing was happening and the darkness was coming in—
He took a deep, ragged breath.
No. Simon Hayes was not prone to panic. Denizen had always said it was the books he read, that he’d inherited the unshakable calm of a hardened detective. Simon liked that. It was far cooler than the truth.
The simple fact was that Crosscaper had changed him. It had taught him one lesson: panic never solved anything. Getting angry or upset was a waste of time unless it let you change the situation you were in.
This was no different.
He ran to Michael’s bunk and tried to shake him awake. It didn’t work. Each orphan just moaned and squirmed against his hands, unresponsive, their heads lolling in a deep and unhappy sleep. He stared into their faces, whispered to them as loud as he dared, but their eyelids simply flickered frantically as if trying to see in the dark.
There was no reason to freak out, Simon told himself—though having to tell himself that wasn’t a good sign. Nothing had actually happened. The gates had swung open with a noise like all the snarling in Hell. Someone had gone out in the rain to see what the racket was.
That was all normal. Of course, then there was the lightning…but lightning had to strike somewhere, didn’t it? That was just a coincidence. Made things a little more dramatic than usual.
The boy-shaped hole in the air was a little more difficult, as was the strange sleep somehow affecting everyone but him, but Simon was sure there was an explanation. He just didn’t know what it was.
Maybe it would be wise to take the precaution of fleeing in terror first and trying to explain things later.
There was nothing he could do here. He should go to get help. Simon wasn’t sure exactly what he’d say—The gates are screaming, and no one will wake up didn’t exactly sound useful or sane—but it was better than waiting here.
It didn’t take long to consider his options. If he made it down to the third floor, he could cut across to the classrooms to the right. From there he could go downstairs and get out of the side door of Mr. Colford’s room and then head to Dooagh, the nearest village, roughly a half-hour panicked run away.
This was doable. Completely doable. He had no idea where the strangers were, but the whole plan and his continued sanity depended on not thinking about that.
I’m not fleeing, he told himself. I’m just giving myself an opportunity to come to the rescue later.
&nb
sp; Simon dragged on a pair of socks and shrugged a coat over his pajamas. He picked up his shoes and, taking one last look at the empty bed beside his, slipped out into the dark.
“HERE WE ARE. Seraphim Row,” Grey said, easing the Interceptor to a halt.
Here was a narrow street with tall houses of gray brick nestled shyly behind thick green hedges. Street lights glowed in patchwork, choked out by the spreading shoulders of trees. So far the city had been alive with noise, but this felt like a place removed—silent but for the rustle of fallen leaves. There were no other cars parked on the street.
Denizen stared at the house as they walked up the driveway. It was a grand old monster—the architect had obviously wanted a castle, and by the looks of it had possessed the budget but not the space. None of the buildings on the street were new, as far as Denizen could make out, but this one looked like it had been there for millennia.
The windows were arrow slits, the door wide enough to accommodate a company of soldiers. It was two or three times the size of all the other houses. In fact, they seemed to shrink away from it. Denizen could see why; the mansion looked as if, with the slightest provocation, it would lunge at the others and swallow them up too.
A pole rose from the lawn, its flag fluttering halfheartedly in the breeze. Denizen looked around: there were flags in front of every other house as well.
“What do they mean?” he asked.
Grey threw his bag over his shoulder, tugging down his suit jacket to straighten it. “A flag outside a building means that it’s an embassy. We passed the American one on the way here—remember that big circular building? British, Japanese, Mexican…all just round the corner.”
Denizen knew quite a lot about flags. He’d often thought about what would happen when he was old enough to leave Crosscaper. Maybe he’d teach in foreign countries, or just travel, wander from one strange city to the next, collecting stories and adventures and scars. Reading atlases had become like research to him. He’d learned what the colors and symbols of each country meant, like a promise to himself that he’d someday go there.
