The Book of Shadows

by Ruth Hatfield

  A frog was squatting in the middle of the pavement. Staring at Danny, it croaked again and hopped a few inches toward him. It surely couldn’t have followed him here—he had been running faster than a frog could ever hop.

  The frog croaked again, throat twitching. And Danny saw, with sudden clarity, that he didn’t need to pull the stick out of his pocket and talk to it. The frog wasn’t saying anything to him: it didn’t know who he was. It was just here, and it was breaking a spell.

  He had stared into the gray, and the gray had told him to give up hope, and he had believed it. Sammael was trying to play tricks with his mind.

  Ha! You can’t get me that easily! Danny stamped his foot in a way that reminded him suddenly and sharply of Cath Carrera, and also sent the frog diving off the curbstone into the road.

  He raced back down the street, looking up at the sky to follow the edges of the cloud. The people just outside the shadows were gathered in bunches, staring at the gray, shuffling closer.

  Danny clenched his jaw and kept running. He ran past prams and pushchairs abandoned on the cold pavements, old women fallen and helpless on the ground. Broken glass, broken cars and bicycles. The people were zombies. The cats were zombies. The dogs and the leafless trees were zombies. Nobody cared about themselves or anybody else.

  He turned into his own street and saw the shadows gathering at the far end. In front of him were the neat pavements he saw every morning and afternoon, and the garden gates—brown, black, blue, yellow—and the green hedges and trees, shrubs, and flowers.

  “Ori! Mum! Dad!”

  Ori came with a woof and a bounce, leaping over the front gate and landing heavily on the pavement. It gladdened Danny’s heart to see her glowing and lively, bounding to greet him.

  “The shadows!” he gasped, pointing up toward the sky. “Mum! Dad! Quick, come on!”

  But they didn’t come. Perhaps they couldn’t hear him. He’d left them in the garden, gathering up rubbish for a bonfire. Only an hour ago. It seemed like an eternity.

  Danny ran around the side of the house and clattered through the gate. The trees were waving in the breeze; the leaves were dancing down from the thinning branches. Everything was alive, full of—

  His parents were still gathering sticks for the bonfire.

  “Mum! Dad!” he called to them. “Come on! Quick! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  His dad stopped and dropped the armful of twigs onto the ragged lawn. “Danny? Why aren’t you—?”

  “Quick!” Danny beckoned wildly. “Come on!”

  They ran with him, back around the side of the house, out of the front gate, into the street.

  “What is it?” asked his dad.

  “The shadows!” Danny waved his hand toward the sky, toward the galloping shadows.

  His dad stopped. His mum collided with his dad.

  “Come on!” Danny tugged at their arms, but they stood still, smiling.

  “It’s okay, love. It’s only a storm. We don’t chase storms anymore. We gave that up, remember?”

  “No!” said Danny. “I’m not chasing it! It’s chasing us!”

  “Oh, love,” said his mum, sighing. “I know you don’t like soccer, but give it a chance.”

  “No!” screamed Danny, yanking at their hands. He might as well have been yanking at concrete bollards.

  The clouds swept down the street, devouring the houses one by one. The edge of the shadow gulped over the chimney next door, and Danny tried one last time.

  “Come on!”

  “Oh, there’s no point,” said his dad, and Danny looked at his dad’s face, and it was gray.

  He let go of their arms, turned, stumbled, and fell forward, and as he put out his hands to break his fall, his fingertips reached into the shadow.

  It was freezing. The cold ran down his arms as swiftly as pain, shooting toward his heart. A flash of agony shot through his brain—it had gotten him! The shadow was devouring his whole body—

  And it stopped. Something stayed warm inside him: a small, hard voice that roared with fire.

  He pushed himself up and took the stick from his pocket. It was hot in the palm of his hand. He had never truly understood what the stick had done to him, but there was no doubt that at the moment, it was doing its best to protect him from the gray despair of the shadows.

  “Mum? Dad?” he bellowed, but it was no good. His parents had turned away and were staring at the road, and his words merely echoed back to him, bouncing off the lifeless brick walls.

  His parents had been swallowed by the gray, and he was alone.

  It wasn’t the first time, Danny thought bitterly. He was always the one who had to carry on alone, standing strong against the dangers.

  Except this time, he had Ori, golden at his heels.

  “Run!” she shouted, leaping and barking. “Run now! They’re still moving!”

  Without thinking, Danny turned on his heel and ran, rounding the corner onto the main road. Ahead of him, the bus to Hailsbridge was pulling into the bus stop, and he sprinted toward it, fishing in his pocket with his free hand for some change. Damn! He was still in his soccer uniform, and the taro was the only thing he had.

  He leapt onto the bus, and Ori followed him.

  “Please!” he gasped to the driver. “I haven’t got any money, but I’ve got to get away! The shadows!”

  The driver stared at him through yellow-tinted glasses.

  “Off you trot, sonny,” he said. “And take your pooch with you. I don’t give free rides.”

  “No! I’ve got to go! It’s all the”—he bit back the word shadows—“it’s all that stuff! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  The driver put his bald head on one side and considered Danny for a moment so long and agonizing that Danny hopped from one leg to another and knew how mad he must look. But maybe being mad would work in his favor.

  “Reckon there have been a few crashes today, from my radio. Weather, isn’t it? You need to go to a hospital?”

  “No!” said Danny. The hospital was back in town. “Just away! It’s coming to get us!”

  “Where’re your parents, sonny?” the driver tried, but he glanced at his watch, and Danny knew he was giving up. Time to play crazy.

  “They’re on a rocket!” he burbled. “They went to the moon, in the stuff! That’s where we’ve got to go!”

  The driver closed the bus door. “Right, son. You sit up the front here where I can see you, and you keep a tight hold of that mutt. And I’ll take you to the moon. Sound fair?”

  “All the way?” Danny tried to sound amazed. “Really?”

  “All the way. And on schedule, too, if you’ll sit down and let me get a move on.”

  The bus driver let off his brake with a hiss. Danny sank into the seat and pressed his nose to the window, craning his head to watch as the shadow rolled up the street in their wake.

  Why was nobody else watching it? How were they all so blind?

  Hailsbridge was beyond Sopper’s Edge. He could get off the bus and run up to Aunt Kathleen’s farm and warn her about the shadows. Aunt Kathleen was sensible, and she listened to him. She would know how to get Danny’s parents to safety, and then he could begin trying to track down Sammael.

  He shivered. Stupid soccer uniform, making him cold.

  Ori laid her head on his knee, and the warmth from her golden body began to thaw him.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE GREAT PLAIN

  “That was my fault, wasn’t it?” said Danny.

  “No, of course not,” said Ori. “Why would it be?”

  “I’ve been talking to you. Using the stick. Sammael knows it, and he’s trying to scare me with these shadows. The stick was the whole problem in the first case—it’s why he hates me. He knows I can talk to everything and find out stuff about him.”

  “I only know the same stories about him as every other dog. And so many will be hurt by those shadows,” said Ori, shuffling closer to Danny’s bare legs. “From the l
egends I know, Sammael wouldn’t lay waste like that.”

  “Well, your legends are wrong,” said Danny. “He wanted to kill all the humans in the world with a great storm when I first learned about him. This is exactly like him, believe me.”

  “But…” Ori lowered herself to the floor and sighed gustily as the bus bounced over a crack in the road. “Surely Sammael is a creature of colors, not shadows?”

  “What do you mean?” Danny shivered.

  “I mean, those shadows are hopeless. They are the weapon of a creature without hope. In the stories told by dogs, Sammael is always making mischief, not pointlessly destroying everything.”

  “It must be Sammael,” said Danny. “What else could do that?”

  Ori was quiet for a few minutes as the bus sped out of town. At last, changing tack, she said, “What happened to your cousin Tom in the end, exactly? After he died, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” said Danny. “Well, I don’t…”

  He did know, though. It hadn’t all ended with Tom dying. He had seen Tom again afterward, or at least he’d seen Tom’s body.

  He summoned up the memory.

  “Sammael took Tom to his home in the ether,” he said. “He put him down outside his cave and then we made the moon burn the ether, and Sammael chased us. He got stranded on Earth after that, so he never went back to collect Tom’s sand.”

  “And Tom is still there? In the ether?”

  “I guess.”

  “So not alive. But not yet finished with dying,” said Ori, getting to her feet and putting her paws on the seat so she could stare out of the window at the sun-dappled countryside.

  Danny waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t.

  “So?” he said at last.

  Ori took her paws off the seat and looked at him. “The shadows are something to do with hopelessness,” she said. “And what’s more hopeless than a dead soul that belongs nowhere?”

  Danny’s heart contracted into an angry knot. He opened his mouth to deny it, to tell her she was mad and wrong. The shadows couldn’t come from Tom, because it was half Danny’s fault that he’d been left so carelessly in the ether, and that would mean the shadows were really Danny’s fault too.

  But it did make sense. And it was Sammael who’d made sure that Tom was neither alive nor dead; Sammael had taken his soul and left it lying on the ground. Even if the shadows came from Tom, the reason for them could still be traced back to Sammael. It was a clear and simple explanation, and once he’d thought about it, it seemed obvious to Danny.

  “You really think,” he said, croaking on his words, “that this could be Tom? Doing all this?”

  Ori cocked her head to one side. “It struck me as a possibility, that’s all,” she said.

  Danny knew that it was more than a possibility. It explained why he’d seen Tom’s body under the water, why he’d begun to remember Tom.

  Tom was back, and he was getting his revenge.

  “I’ve got to get to him,” said Danny. “I’ve got to put him back where he should be.”

  “With Sammael?”

  Danny shook his head. “There’s only one place Tom belongs. Back in the earth. I’ve got to give Tom back to the real Death.”

  “Well, you should certainly try,” agreed Ori. “Perhaps if you do, and the shadows go, then you’ll know they did come from him.”

  “It must be him,” said Danny. “But at least I can do something about it, now that I know.”

  The bus began to slow, and he got ready to run.

  * * *

  “Danny! Not again!”

  Aunt Kathleen was chucking forkfuls of slimy straw into a wheelbarrow by the henhouse. She shook her head and jabbed the fork into the ground, leaning on it.

  Danny slid to a halt in front of her, his teeth chattering.

  “What’s happened now? Where are your parents?”

  For a second, he couldn’t answer, because the words couldn’t defeat his ragged breath, and Ori was moving swiftly around his legs, waving her plumy tail in agitation, and he had to keep looking at the sky. It was white every time he glanced up, but he was sure the clouds were starting to shiver. He pushed his arm up, waving, hoping that she’d magically know already about the shadows.

  Aunt Kathleen thought the same thing as his parents had.

  “Have they gone again? Are they chasing a storm? I told them—”

  But that was old news. Danny shook his head vigorously, shaking life back into his lungs.

  “No! It’s real! The sky—the clouds—the shadows—”

  “Shadows? What are you talking about?”

  “Come on!” He tugged at her grimy sleeve. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Aunt Kathleen removed his hand firmly from her wrist. With an exaggerated spread of her fingers, she closed her own hand around his, holding him tightly.

  “Right,” she said. “You tell me where to go, and we’ll go together.”

  With the other hand, she fished her phone from her pocket and pressed a couple of buttons.

  “They won’t answer,” said Danny. “They’ve gone gray. We’ve got to get Shim—the pony—and get out of here! Far away!”

  “Right. The pony,” said Aunt Kathleen. “Yes, let’s go and see the pony.”

  She let the phone keep ringing, but of course his parents didn’t answer.

  “Are you sure they haven’t gone chasing storms?” she asked, when they were halfway up the track to Shimny’s field.

  “I told you. They’ve gone gray.”

  “Mmm” was all that Aunt Kathleen said to this.

  It was a shame. Aunt Kathleen had always been reasonably good at listening to him, not just assuming he was making up childish stories. But apparently even Aunt Kathleen’s reasonableness had a limit.

  The grip of her hand was comforting, though. When she let go of Danny at the gateway to Shimny’s field, he felt a cold rush of air surround him.

  Shimny was by the gate, staring off to the far hills, lip drooping. She raised her head as he approached, and for a second, he thought she was looking at him.

  But she was staring at the sky.

  “It was time for them,” she said. “It was time for them, and they came.”

  And he realized that while he had stopped listening, taking comfort in Aunt Kathleen’s hand, the world had gone silent.

  He whipped around. The cloud shadow was already at the bottom of the hill, racing up toward Sopper’s Edge. This time, the air echoed before him, a wide ball of silence bouncing from cloud to cloud, sending darts cutting through the last trails of birdsong, snipping down the remaining gusts of wind.

  “Run!” he shouted to Aunt Kathleen.

  “Danny…,” his aunt tried, but Danny was pointing at the clouds, at the gray, at the shadow running over the choking land.

  “Run, before it gets here!”

  Shimny tossed her head, snorting as he grabbed at her tangled mane.

  “Oh no!” she said. “I’ve done my running!”

  Danny didn’t listen. He knew better than any of them. Those who didn’t run would go gray, and he couldn’t bear to lose them—Shimny, Aunt Kathleen. They would just have to trust him.

  He leapt up onto Shimny’s back. It wasn’t anything like the struggle it’d once been; he’d grown so much taller since last summer. He held out a hand to Aunt Kathleen.

  “Get up! We’ve got to go!”

  “Danny!” she protested. “Come down from there. Come inside. We’ll have tea.”

  “Look!” He jabbed his finger toward the shadow, galloping now, up the hillside, eating up the front fields, swallowing the front yard.

  “It’s only cloud shadow, Danny. You always see it run up the farm, when you look at the view from here. Come down now.”

  “IT’S NOT A CLOUD SHADOW!” Danny screamed, his heart battering at his chest like the hammer of a bell. “IT’S TOM!”

  And it was the truth, the terrible truth. He knew it. The shadow wa
s the shadow of Tom’s torment, and it had somehow reached the land of Tom’s farm and Tom’s mum, and it was about to swallow both up in its anguish. Even the pony Tom had loved would fall into gray, along with every stick and stone and tree he had lived for. Perhaps he would find peace after that.

  Danny didn’t think so. What peace could be found from destroying the things you had loved?

  “Danny!” shouted Aunt Kathleen, as though a great wind had whipped up and was whirling away at the words that escaped from her mouth. “Come down off that horse! Tom doesn’t exist!”

  Her hand flew to Shimny’s neck, and her words echoed through the silence. There was no wind to shout over now. There was no sun to blind them, or rain to drive in their faces.

  There was a still, wordless hillside, and nothing moved, and under the devouring shadows, the world turned swiftly gray.

  Danny clenched his fist around the stick in his pocket. If only he could listen to the clouds—but these clouds were saying nothing. The only voice he could hear was his own, raging and furious.

  He drove his heels into Shimny’s sides. “Run!” he yelled at her. “Run for your life!”

  Ori leapt at her side, but still, the horse wouldn’t move. Danny felt the growing urge to turn back, to gaze into the shadows. If he threw the stick away and stepped underneath them, he would know what it was like, feeling all the last bits of joy and fear and hope drain from him, until nothing mattered anymore.

  He fought the pull with every last memory in his mind. All the wonderful things he’d done—those mad adventures: stags and seas and swallows in flight. And he looked ahead, to where the top of the hillside was green, with Hangman’s Wood growing black and thick along the crest, and he put a vision of the great plain of Chromos over all of it.

  The sky was a deep blue, and the coarse hill grass sparkling emerald, and Shimny was not an old piebald pony, she was Zadoc, the great guardian of Chromos, whom Danny had last ridden as a ghost, flying weightless over the vast plain.

  This time, he barely touched his heels to Shimny’s sides. But the horse leapt forward as if stung by a wasp, or by the lash of Danny’s hope. She put her head down and charged up the hill with Ori leaping beside her, and Danny’s long legs wrapped around her sides. She jumped the fence out of the field and onto the track, and made for Hangman’s Wood.