‘Little Familiar. Insignificant bug. Fluff from my bellybutton. You seem to have found yourself within my premises once more. I assume this is some terrible accident on your part?’
‘L’Merrier, I need your help.’
His bulky frame was draped in a floor length gown, ancient symbols covering it. They weren’t just for decoration, he had magic sewn right onto his clothing. Protection. Giles L’Merrier had lived a long and eventful life. Many a dark Uncanny yearned to see his severed head roll down a gutter, though precious few had the ability to take him down, with or without his protection spells. L’Merrier was one of the giants. A man who had lived for centuries and taken out more enemies than any one person could count. These days he preferred to stay within the confines of his shop and leave the rough stuff to others. No one knew why exactly he’d stepped out of the game. Why he disliked people coming to him, looking for help. Some said he was waiting, but no one knew what for.
L’Merrier smiled at me, light dancing around his large, shaved head. It wasn’t a smile meant to provide comfort. ‘Perhaps you mistook my establishment for a newsagents? Or were merely passing when you tripped over your own clumsy feet and fell inside? Hm? Surely it can’t be that you entered on purpose, because I seem to remember a conversation, ooh, only three months ago, in which I stated, quite clearly, that my debt to your coven was paid and that you should not come to me asking favours again.’
I shifted, uncomfortable, ‘Thank you for your help, L’Merrier. If it wasn’t for you, Mr. Trick might still be out there. Might have killed me, too, as well as my witches.’
‘Don’t tell me you have returned to flatter. I am not a vain man, neither do I require the adulation of insects.’
‘I need… there’s a problem.’
‘This is London, there is always a problem.’ He stroked his bald pate. ‘Tell me, Familiar, where is your new pet? The detective? I thought he’d be scampering at your heels, his little tail wagging.’
‘I didn’t bring him, out of respect for you.’
‘Respect for me?’ he replied, raising an eyebrow, ‘And yet you return, after I made it abundantly clear that you are not welcome.’
‘Some things are more important than my own well-being.’
L’Merrier chuckled. ‘How very noble of you.’
He began to move among his shop’s shelves, hands dancing lightly across the various items on display. Some were what you would expect to find in an antiques shop, others were far more unusual. Ancient objects of the Uncanny, collected during his many centuries of adventure and exploration.
‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked, pointing to a glass case that contained a large, blackened object. I peered closer at the thing.
‘Is that... a heart?’
‘Correct. It belonged to a giant named K’lochenfer. The thing had been terrorising the people of a small village in Belgium. He would visit them once a week to grab a fistful of them to feast upon. I happened to be passing and decided to track the giant to its home. It was a cave of course; giants love their caves.’ He smiled as if enjoying a fond memory. ‘I crept inside whilst the creature was sleeping, reached into its chest and took out its heart.’
I looked at the heart in its glass case. It must have been three times the size of my head.
‘The giant lived for another month after that. Some Uncanny creatures are not so easy to kill, you know. The creature spent its remaining days searching Belgium for me, until finally the poor thing gave up and collapsed. I dragged its body back to the village and the people ate like kings for a month. Can’t say I found the giant’s flavour to be all that appealing, personally. Tasted like dirt to me. I’d never chewed such tough meat.’
‘L’Merrier,’ I said, ‘as fascinating as this is, I came here for a reason. I came for your help.’
‘And why should I help you? Why should I not render you asunder with a flick of my little finger? I no longer step beyond the walls of this place for a reason. I would like to think that you and others could respect my privacy.’
‘Something is taking children. Taking them in their sleep so they never wake up.’
L’Merrier raised on eyebrow and nodded. ‘I see. Do you have it?’
‘Have what?’
‘The rhyme of bewitchment?’
‘How did you know I’d have one?’
‘Because this has happened before. Many times. The troubling thing is, it should not be happening anymore. Not in London. It should be impossible.’
‘Well it is, I’ve got twenty kids in a hospital ward in Ealing who went to bed one night and refuse to get up.’
‘You do not understand. If what you say is true, if indeed this is the creature I think it is, then we can expect worse than a few children having a lie-in. Far worse. The whole of the city could be in danger.’
14
L’Merrier read the note Amy had written. The rhyme that seemed to be the trigger for each kid who spoke it being unable to wake up again. He sighed as he read the lines and nodded sagely.
‘You recognise the rhyme?’ I asked.
‘It is as I feared. The creature has found a way back into the thoughts and dreams of the children of London. It will only spread from there. Within a month, perhaps less, every child in the city will be taken; their bodies left to slumber as their souls suffer in eternal torment.’
He passed the note back to me.
‘What kind of creature is it? What’s its name?’
‘Name? Oh, it does not have a name, you stupid thing.’
‘Thanks.’
‘It does not have a name because the creature is not really alive.’
‘So what? It’s a ghost?’
L’Merrier stared at me silently for several seconds. It wasn’t hard to work out that I’d said the wrong thing again.
‘How do you make it through a day without setting yourself on fire?’ he asked.
‘Well, sometimes I don’t.’
Almost a smile, I was sure of it.
‘The thing that created this rhyme is rage and fear and blind fury incarnate. Unconscionable deeds and desire for revenge weaponised. The idea made reality by a concentration of magic and emotion, exploding out of the infinite possibility and creativity of youth. And it should no longer be able to do the things it is doing.’
He was losing me with this, but the fact that he looked so troubled shook me.
‘What do you mean it shouldn’t be able to do all of this? Was it killed already?’
He looked at me and smiled, ‘You cannot kill a thing such as this. It is not what you and I would consider to be alive, remember. No, it cannot be killed, but it can be prevented. It can be locked, chained, banished from this plane. And it was once, many years ago, when it appeared in our city and began taking children. It was before your time, I believe. Poor Lyla was the Familiar then, of course. Tragic thing.’
My predecessor, Lyla. For some reason I always felt funny when she was brought up. No one ever told me what happened to her, but I had enough of the pieces to know that it was nothing good. I think, when they were alive, my witches were surprised that I had made it as long as I had. Sixty years of age. I don’t think anyone expected a familiar of the London Coven to make it to such an age.
‘I still don’t understand exactly what it is you’re saying I’m up against.’
L’Merrier bowed his head and sighed, as though dealing with a very stupid child. To him, that was pretty close to the truth.
‘Shall I make my words smaller for you, familiar? Would pictures help?’
I felt my fists clench. Yeah, that would be a great idea, Stella. I unclenched.
‘Emotions are never more volcanic than when we are young,’ he explained. ‘Never more frightening and strange and acutely felt. Reason is never more blinded by those very emotions that attack our minds and bodies as though we are a castle under siege.’
L’Merrier began to glide around his shop, hands drifting over his many strange display items
. A helmet from some ancient army that I couldn’t put my finger on. A shrunken head whose mouth opened as though it was going to scream when his fingers made contact with it. A portrait of himself and three young women, its paint ancient and cracking. I squinted; was that…? My witches? My witches and L’Merrier?
‘Oh, I’m sorry, am I boring you?’ said L’Merrier, somehow within inches of me, even though, a heartbeat earlier, he’d been at the far end of his shop.
‘No, I’m listening,’ I said, acting unfazed. ‘Go on.’
He snorted and turned his back on me. ‘Imagine a bullied child. Bullied by other children. A tale as old as time, wouldn’t you say? Now imagine that raw emotion. The raw, explosive emotion of a child. The abject terror. The shame. The unfocussed terror and rage. Imagine that happening over and over and over again. A never-ending cycle, picking up a head of steam as all over the city, child after child is made to feel this way. Made to feel this way by other children.’
‘You’re saying bullying caused this?’
‘Simply put, so even your pea-brain can grasp it, the emotions stirred up across this city have come to a boil. The raw emotions met the Uncanny power that is so heavy in London, and an idea was born. An idea of blind retribution. A lashing out against not one child, but all children. And so this thing was created; this thing that exists not in our plane of reality, but that can take a child at their most vulnerable. In their dreams.’
I was finally getting the picture.
‘So, why the rhyme?’
‘Fear. Oh, it wants fear, and that is the first step. A whisper in the playground about a rhyme that can conjure the devil to take you as you slumber. A child will believe it. Oh, they would deny it, but there it will tickle, round and fat in their minds, as they walk up the stairs to bed. And then it has them.’
So, if I was grasping this correctly, what I was up against was not exactly a monster as much as the idea of a monster brought into “reality” by the raw, unchecked emotion of children. Why couldn’t it just be a flesh and blood thing so I could punch it in the face?
‘It doesn’t sound exactly fair. They just created an even worse bully.’
‘A creature born of centuries of bullying and made stronger every time a child bullies another. It has life and it has purpose: to unleash hell on children everywhere. To lash out at them for what they have done. To become wrath. It is not a rational being. It exists purely to vent that unthinking anger that every child feels towards their bully.’
‘And now I have come, to punish you all.’
‘Well, indeed.’
‘How did you stop it the first time?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t me. It was your coven.’
I smiled and felt my heart swell a little, but the momentary feeling was soon laid to waste when the pictures of their dead, shredded bodies popped into my mind’s eye.
‘What did they do?’ I asked.
‘They put certain, shall we say, magical locks in place. Safeguards. As I say, the creature exists in another plane. They blocked that plane from being able to interact with ours. No child should be able to speak those words in the correct order; your masters made sure of that. And that makes me worry.’
‘Has someone helped the thing?’
‘I think not. London is a focal point in the Uncanny world, which also makes it a weak point. A point of attack. A crack in the window. The witches of London did not just exist to police this place, they took it upon themselves to hold it together. To stop it sliding off the end of the cliff. Now, it would appear, that since their deaths, some of these locks have begun to, shall we say, spring open. Terrible things are slipping through, and more shall follow.’
‘Can you put the protections back in place? Reseal the locks?’
He looked at me in what I thought was a pretty shifty manner.
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. I may be one of the most powerful Uncanny things to ever stride across this planet. A colossus. A true master of the light and dark arts. A man who has met the Devil and made him call me sir. But that does not mean I have mastery over all things.’ L’Merrier fussed at his gown, agitated, before turning to me with a scowl. ‘To put it bluntly, I have no idea how the witches did what they did.’
Well this was a day to remember. The mighty Giles L’Merrier, admitting he didn’t know everything. A flaw in the diamond at last. I almost danced a jig, but just about managed to keep my body under control.
He went on: ‘I only know that the three of them combined were able to set up a web of protective spells that criss-crossed this city and prevented it from falling into chaos. They blocked the worst of other realms from slipping into our reality. Neutralised certain threats. The power it would need to generate such a web, and to keep the magic fed so it would sustain, so it would not collapse and blow away upon the breeze… it is almost inconceivable.’
‘Something is happening in this city, Stella. It’s like the stitches that hold the place together are starting to fray.’
Jake the ghost, he’d tried to tell me that things were falling apart and I’d brushed him off. Had he been right? Had he felt what L’Merrier was describing? The erosion of these magical safeguards my witches had set up?
‘So, what should I do?’ I asked L’Merrier.
‘There is always a tipping point that gives “life” to a thing such as this. A single incident that lights the blue touch paper. You must locate that inciting moment: the terrified child, cowering from their bully. Do that and you will find the creature. In other words, you do your job—the one you were created to do—you insignificant glob of sputum.’
15
I left L’Merrier’s shop with no invitation to return and headed back to the coven. As I pushed through the ticket barrier and walked towards the tube platform, my head swirled with all the new information L’Merrier had dropped on me.
There was of course the wider concern. The idea that my witches had somehow kept bad things from slipping into London, and now they were gone those barriers were crumbling. That what Jake had told me was true. But I couldn’t get too side-tracked by that. All I knew for sure was that twenty kids in a hospital were being terrorised and might never wake up. That more and more would join them unless I could pin this creature down. This weird amalgam of emotions brought to life to lash out at kids, whether they were guilty or innocent. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that feeling of shame, of helplessness, of fear, of rage, all squashed up together and firing out of a child made to live in terror by other children. Kids it should be playing with, laughing with, not running from.
I felt Amy’s note scrunched in my hand, in the pocket of my jacket. I needed to find a way to locate the tipping point. The final inciting incident that had pushed things over the edge and made this creature powerful enough to drag itself into existence.
And then, well, we’d get to the “then” once we got there.
The train rocked me back and forth as it charged through the black.
I didn’t call David, I wanted him and Amy away from the coven while I worked. I didn’t know for certain that what I was about to do wouldn’t put Amy in danger if she was there to see it, so I left them to their day-trip and got to work.
I sketched a chalk pentagram on the slate square again and placed the note with the full rhyme at its centre.
The magic of the coven washed around me. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and drew the energy towards me. Felt it lap against me in great waves, soaking into me, becoming part of me. I trembled with the power, the buzz, heard myself giggle in delight. For this to work, I’d need to hold and direct a lot of power. More than I would usually take on. Drawing in even a small amount of surrounding magic was pleasurable, allowing this amount to drench me was intoxicating. I licked my lips and opened my eyes, my pupils huge, my cheeks aching from smiling. The magic of my coven had a special effect on me. An illicit thrill. A weaker Uncanny could become lost in it; let its mighty waves break over them again and again until they were
buried beneath them.
But I was stronger than that.
I was created in this room.
This magic was my magic.
I took a step towards the pentagram, tendrils of multi-coloured, molten magic trailing behind me. I knelt and held out my open hands to the note, to the words written upon it.
I grunted and pushed the power into the words.
‘Show me,’ I said. My voice eight times my own, a mighty, booming, command.
The last time I’d only had a partial rhyme and no idea what it was exactly I was hoping to discover. This time I had the full rhyme and knew exactly what I wanted it to show me. I wanted it to reveal its past. Its birth. To drag the past into the present. That sort of magic was difficult, almost beyond me. It’s only in that room in my coven that I could ever hope to tackle such a thing. And even then it hurt.
A breeze.
Wind whipped back my hair.
I wasn’t alone.
The light in the room had dimmed, the walls seemed distant. Transparent. Were there things beyond the walls, in the shadows?
Wake no more, no more, no more, no more...
The words repeated on the wind as it pulled at me.
I pushed more magic into the note, into the words. They glowed silver and rose off the page, growing larger and larger as they spread to cover the ceiling. Only it wasn’t the ceiling anymore, it was the sky. Hadn’t I been in the coven? Hadn’t I been in my home?
‘Show me,’ I screamed. I didn’t realise at first that I was screaming as the magic of the Uncanny surged through me, fed the spell, fed the rhyme, but I was. I could tell because my throat had begun to hurt. Maybe I’d been screaming for minutes, hours, days, forcing the rhyme to give up its secret. To show me its birthplace.
To show me where fear turned to revenge.
Endless, constant, ravenous, unfocussed revenge.
‘Show me!’
Damp fingers traced a line across my neck, my cheek, pulled at my hair.
Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1) Page 19
