Creeping Terror

by Justin Richards

  The whole thing happened in slow motion. The tank pulling away. Black fumes streaming from the exhausts. The tower leaning, tipping. The stones at the top falling – the effect travelling down the length of the structure as it crashed down.

  Ben and the others turned away. They covered their heads with their hands and arms as fragments of stone flew past them. Choking dust rose like smoke, clogging their eyes and throats, and the roar of the tank was lost in the rumble of the collapsing building.

  All around, the trees and plants were in a frenzy. It was like a gale was blowing through the bizarre jungle, fanning the fire started when Ben had let off the flare. Nothing was still. A noise like shrieking or screaming filled the air.

  A stone head rolled across the ground close to Ben. A screaming face surrounded by leaves. It stared at him accusingly and he realised that they hadn’t won yet – the grotesque creature still had power.

  A rusty, broken shovel slammed down into the face, splitting the ancient carving with a screech of metal on stone. Growl lifted the shovel from the debris. Knight stood beside him.

  ‘We must find them all and break them,’ Growl said. ‘Just as Greene broke the statues of the saints. It seems that destroying the tower didn’t work, so the only way to destroy the power of the Green Man is to break up the images of him.’

  The ground was covered with rubble from the tower. One half of it had collapsed completely, the other was a stunted, ragged ruin.

  ‘You find the carved heads in the rubble,’ Knight told Ben and the others. ‘Growl and I will get the ones still on the tower.’ He glanced at the battered tank, which had slewed to a halt some metres away. ‘And see if Maria’s all right.’

  There were two carved heads lying close together nearby. Ben tried not to look as he brought a heavy lump of stone down on one of them. It shattered at his second blow. Rupam smashed the other head repeatedly with another piece of stone from the ruins.

  The falling tower had cleared the immediate area of plants. But away from the devastation, the greenery was thrashing angrily. The fires were dying down, beaten out by the dense undergrowth.

  ‘What else can happen?’ Rupam said, seeing Ben and Gemma’s anxious looks.

  ‘I don’t want to find out,’ Ben told him. ‘Let’s just smash these stone heads and be done with it.’

  But Gemma’s gasp brought his attention back to the circle of green. ‘The Green Man.’

  One whole section of vegetation was gathering, growing, forming into a massive figure. It stood over three metres high. Leaves wove round its head, while stems and branches jutted from its body. The hands were wooden stumps, with leafy fingers sprouting out. Although made from roots and branches, leaves and stems, it was recognisably Colonel Greene. His huge face echoed the foliate heads that had been round the tower. It twisted in rage as the figure tore itself free of the plants and trees and started across the sea of rubble towards Ben, Rupam and Gemma.

  ‘Find the rest of the heads,’ Ben said. ‘We have to smash them before it gets to us.’

  Climbing over the remains of the tower, Knight and Growl had seen what was happening. Knight took the shovel from Growl and prised a foliate head away from its alcove. It fell to the ground, shattering to pieces as it hit the rubble-strewn ground below. He reached across for the next of the heads.

  ‘Here’s one!’ Gemma shouted.

  She hammered at it with a stone, but wasn’t strong enough to break it. Rupam ran to help.

  ‘Ben, over here,’ he called.

  But Ben was staring at the nightmare figure lurching towards them. ‘We have to destroy that too,’ he realised. ‘We have to kill the Green Man.’

  There would be a flare pistol in the tank. Just like the one he’d got from the other tank with Knight. Ben was running before he’d even consciously thought of that. His ankle twisted painfully on the uneven rubble, but he kept going. Maria was hauling herself out of the tank turret. She looked shaken and pale. When she saw what was coming after Ben, her eyes widened in shock and horror.

  ‘Flare pistol,’ he yelled. ‘In the kit box inside the turret!’

  Maria disappeared inside the tank again.

  The massive creature was stomping after Ben. It howled in inarticulate fury. A huge arm reached out for him, shoots erupting from the stubby green fingers, growing rapidly into creepers.

  He managed to avoid them and kept running, clambering over a pile of stones and up on to the back of the tank.

  ‘Flare pistol!’ he yelled again.

  ‘There isn’t one,’ Maria told him, emerging again from the hatch.

  ‘There is – there has to be.’

  She ducked inside again as Ben followed her and dropped down into the cabin. He could see the box fixed on the inside wall. And he could see that it was open – the flare pistol gone. Ben felt a sudden punch of panic and disbelief. This was the same tank that he and Knight had been in earlier. The flare pistol was gone because he had already taken it.

  ‘I think we have a problem,’ Maria said, and the calmness with which she spoke was worrying – as if she was resigned to their fate.

  Through the narrow observation window at the front of the tank, Ben saw the huge figure of the Green Man standing right in front of them, less than ten metres away. The hideous face was twisted in unnatural laughter.

  Ben and Maria were both frozen with fear. The only movement was the Green Man stepping towards them. And a flicker of light on the charred instrument panel in front of Ben.

  Maria saw it at the same moment. A flicker of red under the black residue of the fire. A button, the protective cover that usually hid it standing open – as if the button was about to be pressed when the flare burned away the plants that were driving the tank and shelling the village.

  Ben’s finger hit the button at the same moment as Maria’s. They both pressed hard. They both felt the tank shudder. They both heard the roar of the gun above them.

  And they both watched through the observation window as the shell of depleted uranium hit the green figure. It exploded on his chest, the sudden fireball rippling out. In an instant the creature was engulfed in an inferno. The limbs fell away, still burning. Fire raged through the body, erupting from the screaming mouth and hollow eyes.

  Behind the falling mass of flame stood the shattered remains of the church tower. As the fireball consumed the last of the Green Man and burned itself out, Knight raised the last of the foliate heads and dashed it against the side of the ruined tower wall. It shattered into pieces.

  On the far side of the devastation, another tank appeared. It pushed through the trees and slowed to a halt. Already the vegetation was drawing back from its dark, brutal exterior. All around, the greenery was dying down. What had been a jungle was again just an overgrown graveyard, beside a ruined church and the collapsed remains of a tower.

  Ben climbed out of the tank, reaching back to help Maria after him.

  ‘Look,’ she said, staring past Ben. ‘Look at the other tank.’

  He turned to see what she meant. The tank was again covered with plants. But it wasn’t the unforgiving greenery of leaves and wood, brambles and thorns. Spilling from the hatch and dripping from the barrel of the gun, laced through the tracks and wheels, was a mass of colour – reds and yellows, blues and pinks. The tank was covered with flowers.

  18

  THERE WAS A BUZZ AMONG THE CHILDREN back at Gibbet Manor. Most were due to leave in a few days, their education complete – for now, at least.

  A tall, thin boy with dark hair and glasses pushed past Ben at lunch. The same boy Ben had been sure was sneering at him. Was it only a week ago? It seemed like a lifetime.

  ‘Hey,’ Ben complained.

  ‘Oh, hey,’ the boy replied, turning and coming back. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. There’s just so much to think about. So much to take in, you know.’

  Ben nodded. ‘Tell me about it.’ He waited for the sneer to return, or a sarky comment about how Ben must know it all anyw
ay.

  But instead the boy smiled. A proper, genuine smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess it’s all old news to you. It’s been so great having you and Rupam here, treating us like we might match up to you one day. I mean, we’re just passing through and you guys – you’re on the front line. All the time. Everyone says how hard it must be and, well …’ He shrugged, suddenly looking embarrassed. ‘Thanks,’ he finished. ‘Thanks for everything.’

  Ben watched the boy leave. He didn’t even remember his name.

  *

  The new kids started a week later. Ben and Sam stood at Ben’s window and watched them arrive in a minibus from Plymouth station. Their parents – and most of their teachers – thought they were on an Outward Bound course, and when they returned they’d have pictures and stories to prove it. But they would be from two days, not two weeks, out on the moor. A survival course of a very different sort from the one their parents imagined.

  That evening, Ben was summoned to Knight’s study. He and Sam went in, apprehensive. Was he in trouble?

  But Gemma, Maria and Rupam were there already. There was another boy too. He looked nervous, blushing beneath a scattering of freckles. His hair was a mess of blond thatch.

  ‘I wanted you all to meet someone,’ Knight said. ‘This is Tommy. It’s because of him that we all had such a fun time in Templeton.’

  ‘Thanks, Tommy,’ Maria said. ‘It was a blast.’

  The boy frowned, not sure if he was being teased.

  ‘It’s because of Tommy that matters didn’t get out of hand,’ Knight said. ‘We have to thank you for being so alert and getting us involved.’ He shook the embarrassed boy by the hand.

  They all thanked him and shook his hand, and Tommy had managed a grin by the time he left them.

  ‘So, it’s all over,’ Ben said.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Knight said. ‘That’s partly why I wanted to talk to you all. Captain Morton has a few things to smooth out with the army. Webby was watching it all on the satellite and has shown me the time-lapse images. When you destroyed the tower, the vegetation had already overrun the rest of the village and was spreading outwards. So well done, everyone.’

  ‘All in a day’s work,’ Rupam said.

  ‘What did he mean, “not exactly”?’ Sam whispered to Ben.

  ‘You said it wasn’t exactly all over,’ Ben said out loud.

  ‘The Crystal,’ Knight said. He looked at them each carefully in turn.

  ‘What about it?’ Gemma asked. ‘You put it in your pocket.’

  Knight nodded. ‘And when I got back here, I had Webby run some tests on it.’

  ‘Is it Diablo’s Crystal?’ Rupam asked. ‘One of the artefacts?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Without it, Carstairs Endeavour could never hope to successfully summon forth Mortagula and control him.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Ben asked.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  Ben shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t think you do.’ Knight turned to Rupam. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Or you?’ Knight turned suddenly to ask Maria. She blinked in surprise, but did not reply. ‘And you?’ Knight asked Gemma quietly.

  Gemma shook her head. She glanced over at a large glass-fronted cabinet fixed to the wall – the securely locked cabinet where Knight kept many of his souvenirs and relics. ‘It’s gone, hasn’t it? I know – I could feel it. And now … Nothing.’

  Knight nodded gravely. ‘Yes, the Crystal has gone.’

  ‘But how?’ Ben asked. ‘I mean, did it just vanish or …’

  ‘Or did someone take it?’ Sam finished for him.

  Ben didn’t echo her words. Even though they could not have heard them, everyone in the room would be thinking the same thing.

  ‘Something for me to sort out,’ Knight said. ‘But it is worrying, to say the least. And as you know, not the first time we’ve had a problem. I must ask Mrs Bailey to review our defences and alarms. But perhaps its purpose was done and it has simply dissolved. Let’s pray we never find out otherwise. Now …’ He clapped his hands together, but Ben could see the anxiety in his expression. ‘I must officially welcome the new batch of students.’

  ‘So you’re not the new boy any more,’ Rupam told Ben as they left the study.

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Gemma agreed.

  ‘You’re one of us now,’ Maria said. ‘For better or for worse.’ Her sullen face suggested ‘worse’. ‘One of the team.’

  Ben watched them head off for the common room. ‘Whatever that means,’ he murmured.

  Sam was standing beside him. ‘You know what it means,’ she said. ‘It means that this is where the fun really starts.’

  About the Author

  Justin Richards has written over forty novels as well as non-fiction books. He has also written audio scripts, television and stage plays, edited anthologies of short stories, been a technical writer, and founded and edited a media journal. Justin is the author of three novels about The Department of Unclassified Artefacts, The Death Collector, The Parliament of Blood and The Chamber of Shadows, as well as The Chaos Code and The Invisible Detective series. He is also Creative Consultant to the BBC’s bestselling range of Doctor Who books. He lives in Warwick with his wife and two children, and a lovely view of the castle.

  www.justinrichards.co.uk

  By the Same Author

  The Death Collector

  The Parliament of Blood

  The Chamber of Shadows

  The Chaos Code

  The School of Night: Demon Storm

  Copyright

  First published in 2011

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  © Justin Richards, 2011

  The right of Justin Richards to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–27049–1