by M. V. Stott
‘I’m fine, I was just handling some, you know, heavy magic stuff. Must have fed back and knocked me out.’
‘Can you play Quidditch?’ asked Amy.
‘Nerd!’ said David, giving her a playful shove.
‘Shut up,’ replied Amy, scowling.
‘What’s Quidditch?’ I asked.
Amy looked at me in astonishment.
‘Our Stella has lived a long but sheltered life,’ said David. ‘Right, kettle on, two sugars for me. Go on, shoo,’ he told Amy, pushing her in the direction of the kitchen to leave the two of us alone.
‘So, wanna tell me what actually happened? How’d things go with your antiques wizard?’
I thought back to what had happened before I’d fallen into the black. The hundreds of voices. Thousands even. Pure fear and anger swirling around me, attacking me, trying to infect me. Whatever it was we were after, it had felt me there, searching. Knew someone was trespassing onto its land.
I hoped it was worried.
Hoped it had the capacity for that.
I filled David in on what L’Merrier had told me, skipping the part about the faltering network of spells and safeguards. That was just for me to worry about. For now at least.
‘So, a creature—a kind of creature at least—created by kids being bullied by other kids?’
‘Yep,’ I replied.
‘A creature that now targets kids? Seems like it’s kind of missing the point there, don’t you think?’
‘He said it’s not a rational, thinking being. All it has is the feelings that fed it, and the desire to lash out at other kids that might make it feel that way.’
David shook his head and sighed, ‘Well, I suppose that makes some sort of sense. At least as much as anything else has in the last few months. By the way, are we gonna circle back to the whole “me seeing ghosts” thing at some point?’
‘Let’s deal with one thing at a time. As soon as we’ve stopped this turd and saved every child in London, maybe then we can take a look at your messed up brain.’
‘You’re all heart, Stella Familiar,’ he replied, grinning. ‘I take it we have a way of helping Amy, right?’
I thought about the place the spell had shown me. The small legs poking out from behind the bins. ‘I think so. I hope so.’
Amy walked in, carefully holding three cups of tea. ‘Here you go, I make the best tea, you’d better believe it!’
‘Biscuits?’ replied David.
Amy grunted, turned on her heels, and stomped back out.
17
David insisted on coming with me. ‘She’s my niece, I want to help her!’
I agreed to his demand. The truth is, I liked it when he was by my side. For decades I’d handled the dangers of the job on my own, and it was nice to have some backup for a change. To have a partner.
‘We’re only going to be gone an hour or so,’ he told Amy, ‘We’re just checking a back alley out. You know how it is, the glamour of a police investigation.’
‘Why can’t I come?’
‘Because this is official business. No place for a muggle.’
‘Oi!’
She’d chased David around the kitchen, whipping him with a tea towel.
Even though we’d only be gone a short while and Amy had insisted she felt tip-top and wide awake, I placed my hands on her forehead and put the correct words together.
‘Awake. Alert.,’ I commanded, strengthening the spell I’d placed on her earlier.
‘Oh, that tingles like mad!’ said Amy. ‘Hey, can you give me superpowers? Make me fly like a witch?’
‘Of course she can’t,’ said David. ‘Witches can’t fly.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Not without their broomsticks.’
I gave Amy a sly wink, causing her to break into giggles. It was a nice feeling. I hadn’t had much experience interacting with teens. Or children. Or people, really.
‘That should keep you awake while we’re out,’ I told her, ‘but if you find yourself nodding off, call David and we’ll head right back, okay?’
‘God, alright, Mum,’ she snorted.
***
The place I’d been shown by the rhyme wasn’t too far. A small, backstreet square behind a row of shops in Acton, just a short hop on the Underground.
As the train shot us towards our destination, I noticed David wasn’t his usual self. Now that Amy wasn’t around he’d let his cheery face drop, and instead stared at his feet, his expression set. It was odd. He didn’t seem like himself at all.
‘Hey,’ I said, but a combination of the roar of the train and the noise of his own worried mind deafened him to me. I reached out and touched his arm. ‘David.’
He turned to look at me, ‘I can’t let anything happen to her, Stella. She’s family. I just... I can’t.’
‘I won’t let it have her,’ I assured him. ‘I won’t. We’ll stop this thing, I promise.’
He smiled and nodded uncertainly, then fell into silence again.
***
There were no legs poking out from behind bins when we reached the place I’d been shown; a squalid area, out of the way of any passers-by. The only people who came back there were shopkeepers throwing out boxes of expired goods, tramps hoping for a safe place to sleep, and people looking to do things away from prying eyes.
‘Nice smell back here,’ said David. ‘It’s like a fart farted.’
I took a look down the alleyway and saw the backs of the shops to our left and a high brick wall to our right, both leading to another wall at the far end. A dead end. The only way in or out was behind us.
‘You’re sure this is it?’ asked David.
I nodded. This was the place. As soon as we’d stepped into the alley I could feel it. A fug of old despair that hung in the air, infused with the sharp smell of urine. Actions can leave traces of themselves in the magic that washes around a place. They can scratch a signature in the bricks even. Dramatic events, events of high emotion, even more so.
Something bad had happened here.
‘Hey, you okay?’ asked David.
I realised I was hugging myself. ‘Yeah, it’s just... this is definitely the place. I don’t know what happened here, not yet, but it wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.’
‘So the monster was created here?’
‘L’Merrier told me there would have been a flash point. That years of bullying had built up until one final incident gave the creature the spark to exist. Whatever happened here gave it that spark. This is where it started. This is where a monster was born.’
‘And how long ago was this?’
‘Not sure. But before my time, so at least sixty years ago.’
A sound.
What was that? Footsteps running? A name being yelled? It was distant, right on the edge of my senses, but it was there.
‘The thing that happened here, it’s still happening,’ I said.
David looked at me, then looked around, turning in a little circle. ‘I don’t see anything, not even with my new super-awesome ghost vision. I’m calling it ghost vision by the way, because it sounds cool. Better than brain damage caused by an evil bastard monster anyway.’
‘I can sense it. Almost sense it. Like it’s just out of my reach. But the incident wore a deep groove here, and it’s happening over and over again, on an endless repeat. A child running, its name being called, a dead end. Over and over it goes, and it’ll never stop.’
‘So what do we…’ David stopped mid-sentence, furrowed his brow and shook his head sharply.
‘What is it? David, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, I… No… don’t let them… Stella—’
He started to back up, away from me, towards the dead end.
‘David? What is it? What are you seeing?’
‘No!’
His eyes were wild now, pure terror, he wasn’t seeing me, wasn’t hearing me. He was somewhere else, somewhere that scared him to the bone.
‘Don’t let
them touch me!’
He turned and ran, but there was nowhere to go. He hit the dead end, turned, arms up, sliding down the brickwork screaming, arms over his head, tears rolling down his cheeks.
‘Don’t let them touch me! Don’t let them touch me!’
18
I had to get David out of the back alley before he dropped dead from a heart attack.
I grunted as I struggled to lift him.
‘David, it’s me, Stella. You’re okay. Stop fighting.’
‘Don’t let them, please, don’t let them touch me. Get my dad, my dad will stop them, please.’
After that he stopped resisting and went catatonic, paralysed with fear. I cradled him in my arms and headed out of the back alley and into the street, getting a few curious glances from the Acton locals as I turned the corner, lifting a full-grown man like he was a baby.
I managed to get him to a bench and placed him down, dropping into the space beside him and catching my breath. David sat slumped next to me, still frozen, lost in whatever it was the place had made him see. I wondered why the alley hadn’t affected me the same way. I’d sensed the dreadful things that had happened there, tasted the terror, the anger and desperation on my tongue, but it hadn’t seeped into me like it had David. Hadn’t made me mad with fear.
‘David, can you hear me? David?’ I tapped gently at his face. ‘Hey, hear my voice, David. It’s me, it’s Stella, you’re okay, you’re safe.’
Nothing.
I looked around, making sure no one was paying attention, then I belted him across the cheek hard enough to make my palm sting.
‘Ow! Hey! What d’you do that for?’ shrieked David, putting a hand to his reddened face.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Am I okay? No, you just smashed me in the… wait, how did we get out here? When did we decide to sit on this bench?’
‘What do you remember?’
David lowered his hand from his cheek and looked away, distant.
‘I was… we were in the back alley, which stank. I mean, just stank. And then… and then I was somewhere else. I didn’t feel it happening and it didn’t seem strange, I was just suddenly somewhere else. Like the sort of thing that happens in a dream, you know? One minute you’re one place, and the next you’re somewhere else, or even someone else, and you don’t question it. Dream logic. Your brain just tells you this is normal and on you go.’
‘Where did it take you?’
David smiled briefly, ‘I was in my garden. From when I was born until I hit ten, we lived in a place with a nice back garden. It looked out onto some fields. We didn’t live in London, then, it was Hitchin, a little place just north of London. More rural. So I’d sit in this back garden and I’d play, right? Drive my little toy cars around, make my He-Men fight each other, kick a ball about, whatever. And then… I stopped wanting to sit in that garden. My Mum would ask me why I didn’t go out there to play anymore but I wouldn’t tell her. Didn’t even like helping to hang out the washing on the line back there. The thing is, I couldn’t remember why I didn’t want to go out there. I’d blocked it out somehow, and then… well, then we went in that back alley it’s like a locked door opened up and I was pushed inside.’
‘So, it let you see some sort of, what? A traumatic incident from when you were a kid?’
David swallowed and nodded, his hands fussing at his jacket.
‘I mean, I didn’t remember this at all. The things a brain will do to protect you, eh?’
‘What was it?’
He looked away from me, looked into the distance like he was seeing it play out again.
‘I was maybe five and I was on my knees in the back garden. I was playing, happy. Mum was inside, Dad was out somewhere. I didn’t notice them at first.’
‘Didn’t notice who?’
He turned to me, fear dancing in his eyes.
‘I didn’t see the boys. There were three of them. In my memory, they’re giants, but they must have only been about eleven. Just three stupid kids who saw a chance to mess with someone smaller than them. To feel strong and powerful. I didn’t notice them, but they’d cut through the field and seen me. It wasn’t until the first one had climbed over the fence and the other two were following that I noticed.’
He was trembling, that same childhood fear fraying at his nerves again. I reached over and placed a hand on his arm, ‘It’s okay, David. You’re fine.’
He smiled and nodded, laughed even. ‘Yeah, stupid. It was so bloody long ago.’ But his eyes turned dark again. ‘One of them had a knife. Just a little flick knife. The kind of thing a kid might carry to show off to his mates when no grown-up was looking. To show how tough he was. It was the size of machete to me though. I couldn’t move. It’s like I was frozen. I wanted to run—every part of me was telling me to run inside, to scream, to shout—but I just stayed there, on my knees, as the boys sniggered and nudged each other. They ran the knife across my cheeks. My chin. My neck. Not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough for me to think they were going to.’
‘Did they hurt you?’
‘No. They weren’t interested in that. They just wanted to frighten a little kid. Make them so scared that they’d wet their pants. Yeah, I wet my pants. They laughed, but they weren’t done yet. The one with the knife grabbed a chunk of my hair and pulled it so hard it almost came out at the root. The other two held me down as he sawed through it with the knife and came away with a handful. After that they put the blade away and climbed back over the fence with their trophy, laughing some more. I remember just staying out there, on my knees, watching them disappear across the field, then standing and going inside. My mum saw my piss-covered jeans and bald patch and went mental. Demanded to know what had happened. I knew better than to squeal, so I told her I’d tried to give myself a haircut and wet myself when it went wrong. She wasn’t impressed, I’ll tell you that.’ He sighed and leaned back, shaking off the recollection. ‘Well that was a shitty little trip down memory lane.’
‘The incident, whatever happened in that back alley, the place is heavy with it. It must have pulled out your childhood trauma.’
‘Well, that back alley can fuck right off,’ he replied, laughing, before raising a middle-finger in the alley’s direction. The laugh was a hollow one, and as he lowered his hand he turned to me, his face grim.
‘Stella, we have to stop this thing. We can’t let it make any more children feel that way. We have to find it, and we have to kill it.’
19
David was quiet on the tube ride back to Hammersmith. I could tell he hadn’t quite shaken off the fear that the trigger location had dragged out of him. I wondered whether that fear was generated by the place, or if it was an effect of the creature it had created. Whatever the case, it was obvious from our visit that it could force adults to experience the worst of their past emotions, but what about me? I didn’t have a childhood. I was born exactly as I am, exactly as I always will be until something kills me. I had no childhood trauma to attack, but I knew how deep down and painful those kinds of fears could be in other people. People who were actually born and then grew up. Effects of bad events when you’re a little kid can scar you like nothing else. That alley, that creature, whatever it was that had affected David, it hadn’t done anything to me. There was no childhood and no trauma that it could latch onto.
Lucky me.
As we got off the train and stepped out into Hammersmith, David looked at his phone and swore.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Amy didn’t reply to the message I sent before we got on the tube.’
‘Maybe she just hasn’t seen it yet?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, maybe.’
But somehow I already knew that wasn’t true.
We began to walk fast, almost breaking into a run as David dialled again and again, swearing as it went to voicemail, hanging up, and trying, hanging up and trying.
He ran ahead as we turned into the blind alley, the coven door at the othe
r end.
‘Amy!’ he shouted.
She should be okay.
She should be safe.
I left a spell on her to keep her awake.
Into the coven, David already heading for the main room, to the couch where the previous night I’d sat and watched Dirty Dancing with his niece.
And there she was.
Curled up and fast asleep.
‘Amy, wake up. Come on, Amy!’ David patted her, shoved her, pulled her up into a sitting position. She wouldn’t wake up.
‘Do something!’ he said, staring at me, desperate.
I reached out and placed my hands on her temples.
‘Wake.’
Nothing.
I tried again, putting more force behind the word, pushing more of the magic of the coven into myself and out through my command for Amy to wake. To open her eyes. To be safe.
After fifteen minutes I staggered back, David staring at me in disbelief.
‘What? Is that it?’
‘I can’t reach her. She’s gone.’
His eyes blinked slowly then he turned back to Amy, fast asleep beside him.
‘You cast a spell on her. You said she’d be okay.’
I felt the knot of guilt twist in my stomach. I’d had good reason to think she’d be okay. A spell that keeps you awake, keeps you alert, was child’s play. I’d thought it would be too dangerous for her to go to the alleyway with us. As it turned out, there was no safe place for Amy. Sooner or later, it was going to get her.
She’d said the lines.
Repeated them out loud.
And that meant she was the creature’s to take.
She belonged in the creature’s realm now and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
Nothing at all.
‘I’m… sorry.’ It was the best I could do. I didn’t have anything else to offer.
David closed his eyes, teeth bared like he might yell, then I saw it just melt away. He looked at me.
‘What am I going to say to my sister? I’m a detective, Stella. I protect people. How can I tell her I couldn’t even protect my own niece?’
