The Four-Fingered Man

by Cerberus Jones

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  In the last moments before dawn, a man in a black trench coat slipped out from the shadow of the old hotel. The grass was wet against his legs and the silence around him was broken only by the distant crash of waves against the cliffs below.

  He hurried.

  If anyone was watching, they would have noticed how heavily his coat sat across his shoulders, how his back stooped under the weight, and how the bulging pockets bumped against his legs with every step. They may even have seen when – unnoticed by him – a small glinting object and a flurry of eucalyptus leaves fell from the man’s pocket and landed in the long grass.

  But no-one was watching. Not even the sound of birds broke the spell as he stepped into a grove of ancient magnolia trees and disappeared into their shadows.

  He was a tall man, but so thin and angular the leaves hardly crackled under his feet. As he walked, his hands kept straying to his pockets, patting them gently as though reassuring himself that his cargo was still safe.

  Hidden in a clearing beyond the magnolias was an old tin-roofed cottage – so run-down and shabby it was really more of a shack. The man slowed, looking around carefully, before stepping out from the trees and striding towards the cottage.

  Before his hand reached the door it swung open from inside, and a scowling face with a mess of grey hair appeared through the gap. ‘Where have you been?’

  The man in the coat hurried inside, brushing past the grey-haired man, who locked and bolted the door behind them.

  ‘You’re late,’ the grey-haired man grumbled.

  ‘Nonsense. My connection shall arrive momentarily.’

  ‘It should have arrived already. According to my charts –’

  ‘Your charts are wrong, Tom,’ said the man in the coat. ‘And they’re only going to get worse. I, on the other hand –’

  He paused as a deep shudder ran through the cottage, rattling the windows.

  ‘– am right on time.’

  Tom opened his mouth and closed it again, a look of frustration passing over his face. The cottage shuddered a second time, and a deep groan came from the far room. Or not from the room: somehow, the sound came from under it.

  Tom’s eyes narrowed. ‘Show-off.’ Then he held out a weathered hand. ‘Give it to me.’

  The man in the coat nodded and put a hand to his throat. No, not to his throat – somehow he slid the tips of his fingers into his throat and felt around inside his own neck. There was a clicking sound, a fizz, and the man’s face flickered as he delicately plucked a small black and bronze cylinder out of his neck.

  The moment he dropped it into Tom’s hand – the moment his own fingers lost contact with the object – the man in the coat was no longer a man. He still wore the trench coat but his pale skin and black hair had vanished, replaced by the glittering, metallic-blue shell of an insect. His long white fingers had become the curved black hooks of a beetle, and iridescent wings twitched beneath his coat.

  Tom scowled at him, and then at the device in his hand. ‘Hey! This isn’t mine! Where’s the one I gave you?’

  The insect patted at its coat pockets and chittered, clattering its mandibles.

  ‘Fine, fine, you don’t have time to worry about that. You don’t have to convince me that the Krskn issue is more important. But you do realise the new owners arrive today? Last thing I need is for them to find any clues that you’ve been here.’

  The insect started to move towards the other room, picking its way through a bizarre clutter of broken cuckoo clocks, wind-up toys and stacks of leather-bound books.

  A gust of hot air swept through the cottage, and that terrible, abysmal groan sounded again.

  ‘It’s here!’ said Tom. ‘Go on! Not that you’ve ever been bothered to wait for a connection before …’ he added in a mutter.

  The insect buzzed harshly.

  ‘No, I’m not asking any questions. Just go!’

  The room beyond the doorway was empty. Bare floorboards amplified the noise of the insect’s feet as it scuttled over to the hole in the far corner of the room. That hot, rank wind blew again, gusting up the stone steps that disappeared into the darkness beneath the cottage floor. Then, as though giant lungs were hidden down there somewhere, the wind turned and sucked back down the stairwell.

  Tom was still standing in the other room, clinging so tightly to the edge of his desk that his knuckles were white. The knuckles he had, anyway – one of his fingers was missing, a shiny patch of scar tissue in the gap.

  The insect gathered up its coat, and scurried down the steps.

  There was the sound of a door opening, a stronger smell of sour air and then a flash of light, and the door banged closed.

  Tom sagged against his desk in relief. ‘Gone!’

  It was Dad jerking on the handbrake that woke Amelia up. Her forehead bumped against the car window, and she suddenly realised three things: her neck was stiff, her mouth tasted like plastic and they were there.

  Great.

  She peeled long strands of red hair off her cheeks where she’d slept on them, and undid her seatbelt.

  Dad was already out of the car, bouncing along the gravel driveway in the thin grey light of the extreme early morning. It was chilly, grim and silent but Dad flung his arms out in delight like he wanted to give the place a hug. Like he hadn’t just driven all through the night to get here. Like he didn’t have two kids in the back of the car who wished he’d just get back in and drive them straight home again.

  ‘Come on guys!’ Dad beamed back at them. ‘Isn’t this fantastic?’

  James unfolded himself from the car, his long legs getting tangled in all the chip packets, headphone cords, plastic bags, jumpers and blankets in the back seat with them.

  ‘Fantastic,’ James muttered. ‘Fantastically old. Fantastically ugly …’

  Mum ignored him, and got out of the front passenger seat, but Amelia thought he had a point.

  When their parents had told Amelia and James they were going to leave the city and move out to live in a big hotel by the sea, in a little country town nobody had ever heard of before, it had sounded …

  ‘Fantastically mental,’ James grumbled on.

  But Dad was sure it would be a huge adventure.

  ‘Just imagine,’ he’d said. ‘Mum and I will both be working from home – we’ll get to be with you guys all the time. No more afterschool care. No more vacation care. And we’ll have so much space! Acres of lawn and gardens and bush, and right next to the beach! In fact …’

  Here Dad looked at Amelia and said those magic words that had convinced her it would all be worth it. Worth moving school, leaving friends and giving up gym. Worth selling the flat where she’d lived ever since she was born, with neighbours she’d known her whole life.

  ‘Amelia, there will be so much space, you’ll be able to get a puppy.’

  ‘Once we’re settled in,’ Mum had added quickly.

  Now they were here, though, Amelia wasn’t sure a puppy would be enough. Maybe not even eight puppies would be worth this.

  The hotel was a huge, old-fashioned white building, w
ith vine-covered pillars and a roof edged with iron lace over the grand entrance. It was built on the end of a headland, and seemed to be floating in the sky. All around was the sound of the sea, waves exploding on the rocks far, far below. Tall cliffs fell away on all sides, and maybe it could have been kind of lovely, but somehow the whole place felt wrong to Amelia.

  Obviously, she wasn’t some silly, superstitious little kid who believed in ghosts or any of that nonsense but … if ever ghosts did exist, this was exactly the sort of place they would be.

  Amelia looked around her, trying to ignore the chill prickling over her skin. The hotel must have once been beautiful, but now it was a mass of peeling paint, cracked window panes, spider webs and abandoned wasps’ nests.

  The grounds were huge and badly overgrown. The garden beds were so shaggy, they almost merged with the thick bushland beyond them. There was nothing except the long driveway she was standing on to connect them with the rest of the world.

  In this case, the rest of the world meant a tiny beach town called Forgotten Bay.

  ‘Well.’ Mum put her hands on her hips. ‘We’ve certainly got our work cut out for us.’

  ‘Right,’ said James, sarcastic as ever. ‘Home, sweet home. How do we get in?’

  ‘Um,’ said Dad. ‘I thought the caretaker was going to be here to meet us …’

  ‘The caretaker?’ said James. ‘This place has a caretaker?’ He looked around at the missing floorboards in the wide veranda that circled the hotel. He looked at the possum poo lying all over the old swing seat, and made a face of fake admiration. ‘Wow. Lucky us. Imagine what a dump this place would be without someone taking care of it.’

  Amelia wished he’d shut up. But he was right. The hotel was a mess. Nothing like the neat, friendly flat they’d had to sell back in the city.

  Dad pulled out his mobile and grinned as though he hadn’t heard James at all. ‘I’ll call Tom now. Let him know we’re here.’

  James kicked at the gravel, and Amelia watched him, biting her lip.

  It had been like this for a couple of months now: James being all rude and angry, and even more sarcastic than usual, and Dad just letting it glide past him without saying a word. Sometimes Amelia caught Dad shooting a look at Mum, and once she heard Mum say, ‘That’s enough, James,’ in a voice so quiet and cool that she knew Mum was furious. But apart from those clues … what had gone on at James’s school? No-one would tell her. She had figured out that James wasn’t expelled, and wasn’t in trouble with the police, and you would have thought that was a good thing.

  You would have also thought that if James had just escaped trouble, he would have been a bit less keen to keep looking for it, but no – ever since Whatever It Was happened, James had been acting like he wanted to start a fight with the whole world.

  ‘You OK, cookie?’ Mum put an arm around her.

  Amelia really wasn’t. She felt empty and miserable, but there wasn’t much point saying so. She just nodded, and let Mum wrap her up in a hug.

  ‘No reception!’ Dad said, shaking his mobile and finally sounding less than a thousand per cent excited.

  ‘Ha!’ a voice barked out so suddenly, and so close behind them, that Amelia jumped. ‘You won’t get any reception around here!’

  An old man in a tatty, checked shirt was limping across the grass towards them. A black patch covered one of his eyes, and an ancient black cap with the words ‘Forgotten Bay’ embroidered on the front was pulled low on his forehead.

  ‘There’s a natural cave system that runs under the whole headland here,’ he went on, grinning at them all so widely, Amelia saw gold teeth glinting at the back. ‘Don’t really understand why, but something down there in the caves messes with electronics. You’ll have a hard time tuning a radio, far less a TV, and you can forget about using a mobile.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said James. ‘No wonder it’s called Forgotten Bay.’

  Amelia almost felt sorry for her brother. He was taking a university-level unit in electronic engineering at school, and whenever he wasn’t chatting online to his friends or rewriting the operating system on their computer, he was working on his engineering course project. With no electronics here, James would have nothing.

  Then Amelia realised it wasn’t James she should feel sorry for – if he couldn’t have his gadgets, computers and constant superfast broadband, James wouldn’t suffer alone. He’d make sure everyone else suffered along with him.

  Tom turned to Dad. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. I had some … business that kept me.’

  ‘No worries!’ Dad bounced right back to cheerful again. ‘We’ve only been here long enough to stretch our legs.’ He reached over to Tom and held out his hand in greeting. ‘Scott Walker.’

  As Tom gripped Dad’s hand and shook it, Amelia saw that something was wrong with the caretaker’s fingers. The shake was quick, and Tom put his hand back in his pocket too fast for Amelia to get a second look, but there was something …

  ‘This is my wife, Skye,’ Dad went on. ‘And the kids, James and Amelia.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Let’s get you inside, then. I think Lady Naomi is out already, so don’t worry about making noise.’

  ‘Lady who?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘She must be the standing booking,’ Mum said. ‘How long has she been staying here?’

  A strange, distant look passed over Tom’s face. ‘Oh, err, quite a while now,’ he said, rifling through a tool belt that seemed to have more springs and wires in it than screwdrivers or pliers. He pulled out a huge bunch of keys, and Amelia tried to watch without obviously staring. ‘But she keeps to herself mostly. Busy with her research project.’

  ‘Should’ve researched herself a better place to stay,’ said James, as Tom flicked through the keys one by one.

  Tom mustn’t have heard. ‘Lady N will come and go, but she’s no trouble at all. Not like some guests, eh?’ He cracked a strange grin at Dad. ‘Ah, here it is!’

  Tom held a huge brass key and limped up the steps to the double doors of the main entrance. He fumbled with the lock, then gave the door a rough shove with the palm of his right hand. Amelia blinked.

  The door swung open with a creak.

  ‘After you,’ said Tom, and ushered the Walkers into their new home.

  Amelia stepped past Tom to go into the hotel, flinching a little. Whatever it was about the hotel that creeped her out, Tom had it in bucketloads.

  If possible, the inside of the place was even dustier, dirtier and more dishevelled than the outside. Old, darkened oil paintings hung on the walls in heavy gold frames. Two huge stone staircases rose up from the lobby floor, one curving around to the left wing of the hotel, the other to the right, and in the middle, a giant chandelier hung over them like a crystal deathtrap, just waiting for someone to loosen the pin that held it to its chain. It was amazing that anything so rich and elegant could look so spooky and foul at the same time.

  ‘Thank goodness we’ve got Mary coming on Monday,’ said Mum. ‘This is far more than the quick vacuum and coat of paint you promised, Scott.’

  Dad scratched the back of his neck and smiled awkwardly.

  But Amelia wasn’t listening. She was remembering Tom’s hand pushing open the front door. She had finally realised what was wrong with it.

  One of his fingers was missing.

  ‘Aaargh!’

  Metal crashed to the ground, followed by the sound of shattering glass. There was a moment’s silence, and then Dad called out, ‘I’m OK!’

  Amelia and James looked at each other. James rolled his eyes. Amelia yawned hugely. She thought she’d been exhausted yesterday, but that was nothing compared to how she felt after her first night
sleeping in the hotel. Or not sleeping.

  She’d had to drag herself down to breakfast in the staff common room, a cosy, almost normal-looking room off the hotel’s huge kitchen. It was the only room Amelia had seen so far that wasn’t either enormous (the kitchen, the ballroom, the library) or crammed full of shabby antiques and half-ruined heirlooms (the dining room, the lounge, the main bedrooms), or both.

  Sitting with James, eating cereal around the ordinary pine table from their old flat, Amelia could pretend she was at home. Except for the plates and plates of food crowding out their cereal bowls, that is. Bumping up against each other were dishes of grey, watery scrambled eggs, fried eggs with bits of shell cooked into the whites, French toast that was amazingly burnt and raw at the same time, greasy bacon strips …

  Amelia shuddered and turned back to her cornflakes. She didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings, but it was too early in the day for her to deal with his breakfast menu experiments.

  There was another shriek from the kitchen, and the gush of a fire extinguisher discharging. Amelia paused with her spoon in midair. The smoke alarms began to screech.

  ‘Well, at least we know something works,’ said Amelia, covering her ears.

  ‘Whose idea was it for Dad to be the cook?’ James sighed, poking warily at a blueberry muffin with liquid batter oozing out of the berry holes.

  The alarms cut off and Amelia put her hands down. ‘Not mine,’ she said. ‘I always thought he was supposed to be really good at his old job. I don’t know why he thought this would be better.’

  James nodded. ‘I asked Mum if Dad had been fired, and that’s why we had to come here.’

  Amelia’s eyes widened. She’d been so sure this move from the city had been about James, it hadn’t occurred to her there might be another reason. ‘Dad was fired?’

  ‘Mum said no. Actually, she said this is a kind of promotion for Dad.’

  Amelia stared at him. That made no sense at all.

  Dad was a scientist. He worked in a government lab with gigantic computers and telescopes and machines that studied outer space, and dozens of assistants who talked about ideas so insanely complicated that it was like they were speaking another language. So how did moving out to the edge of nowhere and burning eggs for a living make sense as a promotion?