by Garth Nix
‘What does it matter? They’re only ladybirds. Maybe like butterflies they just drop dead after three days. You look like you just lost your pet budgie.’
Jack shrugged, wishing she couldn’t read him so easily. Maybe he had entertained the thought that he might keep the ladybirds in a matchbox or something. Neither he nor his sister had ever had a pet – an unfairness they now understood to be driven by The Evil’s ability to take over animals, and their father’s wish to keep them safe at all times. Jack would do anything to have a dog, but some ladybirds would have done for a day or two.
He also didn’t like that they had died when they landed on his hand.
‘Come on,’ said Jaide, dragging him up. ‘Mum’s probably back already. Let’s go and see.’
Susan was indeed home. She was in the den, reading the latest Portland Post, which came out on Monday afternoon. The headline was all about the bloody circular saw – definitely the most exciting thing to happen since the storms.
After she had said hello to them and given them both a kiss, she returned to the article.
‘It says here that there was no body or . . . bits . . . anywhere on the site. Still, they’re looking for anyone who might have gone missing overnight, or lost a limb mysteriously.’
She put the paper down and looked the twins in the eye.
‘This doesn’t have anything to do with you, does it?’
‘What makes you say that, Mum?’ asked Jaide innocently.
‘Yeah,’ said Jack. ‘We weren’t even here most of the weekend.’
‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘Grandma checked with me about you staying with Tara and of course I approve. I’m all for you having normal friends like you did back home, before . . . before.’
She pinched the bridge of her nose as though warding off a headache. ‘I just want to know that you’re safe.’
‘We don’t have anything to do with this saw thing,’ declared Jack, with absolute honesty.
‘Yeah, you don’t have to –’ Jaide started to say.
‘We haven’t had a murder in Portland for fifty years,’ interrupted Grandma X from the lounge. ‘No one’s planning to start now.’
Susan believed them, or chose to pretend that she believed them, and the rest of the night passed uneventfully. In fact, Susan went to bed surprisingly early, blaming a hard shift and too many mashed potatoes with dinner. The twins sat up playing cards until Grandma X turned out the light, and then they too went straight to sleep.
It was Jaide, again, who woke in the dead of night to an unusual sound. This time, though, it wasn’t cats.
She opened her eyes, startled by the weird clarity of her brother’s Gift. She could see as clearly as though the sun was shining through the window, but at the same time she knew it was dark. There were no shadows. There were no spots brighter than others. She could just see . . . everything.
The low, soft, bubbling moan that had woken her came again.
She sat up, clutching her covers to her throat. It was quite different from the massed cat yowling, and it didn’t sound human either. It was full of pain and anger, but there was fear in it too, that came to the fore when it finally sighed off into silence.
Jaide sat completely still for a good three breaths, waiting for it to come back. When it didn’t, she got hurriedly out of bed and, before she could change her mind, shook Jack awake.
‘What now?’ he asked, blinking blindly around him.
‘Shhh. Listen.’
‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘I know. Wait.’
Jaide held her breath. Beside her, Jack picked up on her nervousness and did the same.
‘Uuuuuggggghhhhhhhhhhblblllellaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh.’
By the time it had finished, Jack was clutching his sister’s arm.
‘What is that?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I think it’s coming from the house next door.’
They peered out of the window, but even Jaide couldn’t see anything unusual in the garden over the fence.
The groaning utterance came again, more terrible than before.
‘That has to be the monster,’ said Jack.
‘We’d better tell Grandma,’ said Jaide.
But when they ran upstairs, Grandma X’s bed was empty.
‘Maybe she’s already doing something about it,’ Jaide said, just as another terrible, bubbling moan came from next door.
‘Then why does it keep happening?’
Grandma X wasn’t on the widow’s walk either, and neither were the cats. The Resonator turned and clicked as normal, and wasn’t smoking.
The twins went back downstairs and looked in their mother’s room, at least in part hoping she would wake up and reassure them that the noise was only the plumbing. But Susan continued to sleep through it all, just as she had slept through the massive catfight.
‘I think we have to check it out ourselves,’ said Jaide. ‘I mean, this is our chance to find out about the monster.’
‘I’m not sure I want to find out,’ said Jack.
Jaide wasn’t sure either. But with Grandma X and the cats away, she felt it was their duty to investigate.
‘We have to,’ she said. ‘Who else is there?’
‘OK.’ Jack sighed. ‘After you. I still can’t see in the dark.’
Jaide led the way out of the house and across the garden, to where the fence had still not been properly fixed after the bulldozer had crashed through it. It felt weird to both of them, her being the guide in the darkness. Jack felt Jaide’s Gift lashing away inside him as well, reaching out to the air around him. It took an effort to stop it from whipping up whirlwinds or raising a storm. In fact it took so much of his concentration that he forgot to think about ghosts and haunted houses entirely – until the next awful, liquid groan. Up close, the house next door was very much like a haunted house, with peeling paint and a sagging verandah. The wind echoed through the empty rooms and out through the boarded-up windows, a soft, whistling counterpoint to the horrible groaning.
‘It sounds like its coming from the basement,’ said Jack. ‘Do you think this place has one?’
‘I guess it does, if it’s the same as Grandma’s.’
Jack pulled at Jaide’s pyjama collar.
‘Uh, what are we going to do if we do find the monster?’
‘I don’t exactly want to find it,’ Jaide whispered. ‘I just want to get a look at it and see if it’s part of The Evil.’
‘And what if it is?’ asked Jack. ‘What do we do then?’
‘We use our Gifts,’ replied Jaide impatiently, without thinking.
‘But I can’t control your Gift. And what can you do with mine? Except run away faster than me?’
‘I wouldn’t!’ Jaide protested. ‘But maybe you’ve got a point.’
The awful groaning sounded again, inside the house. The twins jumped and backed off a few paces. As they did so, Jaide noticed something on the steps that led up to the front door.
‘What’s that?’ she whispered, pointing.
‘What? I can’t see a thing,’ replied Jack in a panicky voice.
‘There’s a little mirror on the step. I saw the starlight reflected in it for a second . . .’
Jack didn’t quite see so much as feel Jaide bend down and pick it up.
‘It’s a mirror,’ she said. ‘Like from a powder compact. Why would –’
‘Jaide!’ hissed Jack. ‘Hear that?’
‘Hear what?’
‘The groaning has stopped. But there’s a kind of . . . slithering noise . . . ‘
Jaide backed up to Jack and they stood silently together, listening.
There was a shuffling noise inside the house, like a big heavy carpet being dragged across the floor.
The hair on Jack’s neck suddenly prickled. A horrible feeling crept over him, one he had felt before.
Someone . . . or something . . . was watching them.
‘Jaide . . .’ He barely breathed the
word, afraid of drawing the unnatural attention any closer. ‘Jaide . . . can you feel that?’
‘Yes.’ It was her turn to clutch him. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
They turned to run, but stopped in panic as the mirror in Jaide’s hand suddenly cracked with a sharp retort, and a shimmering white light blossomed in front of them.
++Jackaran, Jaidith – what are you doing here?++
Ahead of them, the spirit travelling version of Grandma X coalesced out of sparkly motes of light. As always, she looked much younger than she did in real life, but no less annoyed.
Jaide didn’t know whether to be relieved or not that it was clearly she who had been watching them, not the excision, or the monster, or whatever had been groaning in the house behind them.
‘We heard a noise,’ Jaide said. ‘You weren’t around, so –’
++Did you find anything?++
‘No,’ said Jack.
++Well, you’re lucky something didn’t find you, particularly since you’re not wearing those charms I gave you to take to Scarborough.++
They weren’t. Jaide’s was under her pillow. Jack’s was on his bedside table, under Jeopardy at Jute Junction.
++Go back to bed this instant, and please let’s have no more wandering around at night, no matter what you hear. I’ll return soon, and if you aren’t asleep by then, there will be trouble.++
They promised they would. With a stern nod, Grandma X’s image faded, taking the light with it. When it was gone, Jack was even blinder than ever.
‘That was her mirror,’ Jaide said as she led him back to their own front door.
‘What?’
‘That was her mirror. She’s been watching out for anyone going in next door.’
‘Or anything coming out maybe,’ said Jack.
Jaide thought about that for a few moments.
‘No . . . the mirror was facing out. Like an eye watching the outside.’
‘So Grandma knows what’s in there already?’ Jack asked as they got back to their room.
‘Maybe,’ said Jaide. ‘Maybe there’s nothing in there. Just a noise to attract someone.’
‘Like a trap? But for who?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jaide snapped, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘Nothing adds up. It can’t be the excision -- I mean, Grandma wouldn’t let that hang around next door. And why would she let the monster move in? I mean, if there even is a monster . . . maybe it was just an injured animal that wandered in there to hide, and it died just as we came in. A possum or something. They sound pretty freaky sometimes.’
‘That wasn’t a possum,’ said Jack. ‘Not in a million years.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Slow-motion Attack
They were woken again a few hours later, just before the dawn, this time by Ari, who batted with a paw first at Jack’s face then at Jaide’s until both were blinking sleepily at him.
‘What . . . what is it?’ Jack asked. He’d been dreaming about the sewers and The Evil’s horrible voice, and his first half-waking thought was that he was somehow back there again. ‘Ugh . . .’
The cry of disgust was for the dead moth that was tangled up in his hair. Brushing it out, he found several more dead on his bedspread.
Jaide paid him no attention, as Ari circled in the middle of their floor, waiting for them to be fully awake.
‘What is it, Ari?’ she asked sleepily.
‘You’re needed on the roof,’ he said. ‘Someone has to watch the Etheric Resonator, and Kleo and I have to go out.’
‘No one was watching it before!’ Jaide punched the middle of her pillow and laid her head back down again. ‘Besides, I thought Kleo didn’t want my help.’
‘Grandma X was watching from afar,’ said Ari. ‘But she’s not now, and like I said, Kleo and I need to go out. Please come and watch for us.’
‘Has there been another attack by Amadeus?’ Jack asked. He swung himself out of bed and slapped Jaide on the back. ‘Come on!’
Jaide groaned, but raised her head.
‘Not yet,’ replied Ari. ‘But one must be coming. Amadeus won’t give up, not when he senses he has the advantage.’
‘I’m only coming if Kleo says sorry for before,’ grumbled Jaide. She felt very tired and cross, and not at all inclined to help anybody out, let alone Kleo.
‘I would be grateful for your help,’ said Ari diplomatically, neatly avoiding Jaide’s demand.
‘Come on,’ repeated Jack. ‘It’s almost daylight anyway. You’ll never get back to sleep.’
‘Yes I will,’ complained Jaide. But she dredged herself up and flung on her father’s dressing gown, snarling as one arm didn’t go through properly.
They tiptoed past their mother’s room even though the snoring from inside confirmed that she was still able to sleep through anything, up past Grandma X’s perpetually empty bedroom, and on to the widow’s walk where, posed as perfectly as a gargoyle on the wooden rail, was Kleo.
She turned her head as they approached, but did not narrow her eyes or hiss.
Jack took a step towards her, then stopped. Jaide sniffed and pulled her dressing gown tighter around her, deliberately not meeting Kleo’s eye.
They stood in silence for almost a minute in the cool night air, not yet warmed by the hint of the dawn to the east.
Finally it was Kleo who spoke.
‘I’m sorry I was harsh with you, and caused you hurt. It was my frustration speaking, not my true feelings.’
Ari let out a soft whoosh of relief, and the twins went forward to stroke Kleo’s head and scratch under her collar, tributes that she accepted like the queen she was.
‘That’s OK,’ said Jaide. ‘I was just trying to help – and we still want to help.’
‘You have told us where the invaders are coming from,’ said Kleo. ‘That is important.’
‘I mean really help.’
‘It is best if you do no more,’ said Kleo. There was iron in her voice.
‘What’s the story with that fluffball?’ asked Jack, trying to change the subject. ‘Amadeus?’
Kleo bowed her head and stared out across the town.
‘He was a friend of mine once. Amadeus and I ruled this coast together, sharing the territory without conflict or suspicion. Then I met your grandmother and became a Warden Companion . . . and Amadeus changed. He became jealous of the time I spent on Warden business, rather than on our cats. He will never stop punishing me for abandoning him. And now it is a battle, a battle to the death.’
She eased out from under their stroking hands and jumped down.
‘And like any good general, I must go and put heart into my troops. But I must also not shirk my duties here, so I thank you for watching the Resonator.’
‘I don’t think it even works,’ said Ari. ‘But orders are orders . . .’
The strange contraption was still turning its glass eye, patiently and unproductively, over the town below. Grandma X had told Susan it was an antique weather station, and she had accepted that readily enough.
‘Well, we’ll watch for you,’ said Jaide, putting her back against the walk’s conning tower and tucking her feet into the dressing gown.
‘Speaking of watching,’ said Jack. ‘Have you seen anything going in or out next door?’
The cats looked at each other for a moment, and Jack thought he saw one of Kleo’s eyes droop in the suggestion of a wink.
‘We have been watching the Resonator,’ said Kleo. ‘Please do the same, or your grandmother will be displeased. Goodbye.’
With that, the two cats were off, slipping down the stairs even as Jack called out to them.
‘That’s not an answer!’
The twins sat there for more than an hour, until Grandma X suddenly emerged from the conning tower door.
‘Where have you been, Grandma?’ Jack asked sleepily. He had nodded off for at least part of the hour, despite being cold, uncomfortable and constantly startled awake every time the Resonator clicked.
‘Here and there,’ she said. ‘In the Blue Room.’
‘No, you weren’t,’ said Jaide. ‘I listened and didn’t hear you.’
‘Well, I was being quiet. And speaking of which, tread lightly when you go downstairs, or else you’ll wake your mother.’
‘She’d snore through a football game,’ muttered Jack.
‘Grandma,’ said Jaide, keen not to waste any opportunity, ‘what was making that horrible groaning noise next door? And why were you watching the outside of the house with your mirror?’
Grandma X took a deep breath and looked at her grandchildren.
‘I was watching the outside to make sure that no one interfered with what was inside the house,’ she said at last. ‘Including troubletwisters, I’m afraid.’
‘But what was –
Grandma X held up her hand like a traffic policeman.
‘I’m sorry, it’s not a matter for discussion. You know the reasons why. In any case, there is nothing there now. So please go downstairs.’
Jaide opened her mouth, another question on her lips, but it froze there when she met Grandma X’s stern gaze.
‘Please, troubletwisters,’ said Grandma X. ‘I’m sure you are tired, just as I am.’ Jaide’s mouth shut. Jack pushed her gently in the back and the two of them wearily trudged through the door, back into the house.
‘You know those cats we saw on Sunday?’ Jaide asked Tara when she came to visit after school on Wednesday. ‘Are they still there?’
The two of them were sitting in the drawing room playing an ancient version of The Game of Life that had a ‘Poor Farm’ option that Jaide had never seen in the one she knew. A childish hand had written ‘Henry’ next to it, then crossed it out. The Pay Days were ridiculously small.
‘Yeah, more cats than ever,’ said Tara, spinning the wheel and getting a six. ‘Dad says the council’s going to bring in pest control to get rid of them soon.’
Jaide nodded thoughtfully and made a mental note to tell Ari and Kleo later. An even bigger army was building, one that not even Fi-Fi could repel, but there was a chance the council might get them first. That was both good and bad news.
‘Where’s Jack?’ Tara asked, firmly putting a blue peg into her car.
