“Of course you didn’t. That would have involved common sense.”
I can’t decide whether I should be offended. Her comment is probably justified, to be honest.
“Oh my God,” Jamal says.
“What?” I call.
He strides into the room.
“Look at this!” he demands, shoving General Abbott’s war memoirs in my face. He’s jabbing his index finger at a paragraph. The page is somewhere near the middle of the book. I snatch it off him.
“Some regiments had nicknames,” it reads. “Perhaps the most notable of all was the Hummingbird regiment, formed exclusively of specially skilled soldiers. Their role was kept secret, and to this day I am not permitted to divulge it. Suffice it to say that it was of vital importance.”
The rest of the page is about various other regiments. I scan it, and finding nothing of interest, I put the book down on the table.
“How the hell did you find that so fast?” I ask faintly.
“I just looked up ‘Hummingbird’ in the index,” he says sheepishly. I stare.
“What?” he says indignantly. “You didn’t think of it either!”
Annemarie arches an eyebrow. “You can thank me later,” she says.
“Call Clemency,” Jamal says. “Even she doesn’t know about this – as far as we know.”
The door flies open.
“Or not,” Jamal says, as Clemency strides into the room.
“You just found something,” she says urgently. “Tell me. The less time we waste, the more time I have to prepare.”
“Ever heard of knocking?” Jamal asks. Clemency ignores him. This is fast becoming a tradition.
“We found some information about a regiment who were nicknamed the Hummingbirds,” I say breathlessly. “They had a secret role for specially skilled soldiers. Do you think Sidney was one of them? Or do you already know?”
Clemency regards me for a moment. “I didn’t know any of that,” she finally admits. “But now that I do, I can probably find more details. How did you find out about this?”
“Ask her,” I say, pointing to Annemarie. “It was her idea.”
“I only suggested we look in the book that was stolen from the flat,” Annemarie says shyly, looking at the table.
“That was clever,” Clemency says approvingly. Annemarie blushes.
“What now?” I ask. I seem to be asking that question a lot these days.
“I need some time to think,” Clemency says. “Is there somewhere quiet I can go? I need to be alone.”
“There’s the living room,” I say. “We don’t really use it.”
Wordlessly, she disappears. She doesn’t ask where the living room is; I suppose she already knows.
“When she says ‘think’…” Jamal begins.
“She probably needs to connect to the other side,” I say. Jamal exhales slowly.
“Right,” he says. “Of course she does. Silly me.”
*
We’re afraid to disturb Clemency, so we leave her to her own devices. We occupy ourselves rather uneasily for the next hour or so, occasionally shooting nervous glances towards the living room door and wondering exactly what she’s doing in there.
“Do you think she’s drawn a pentagram on the floor?” Jamal asks, looking up from his book. I throw my pencil at him.
“Shut up,” I say. “She’s trying to save our lives.”
He sniggers.
I’m starting to get concerned when Clemency finally appears in the doorway. She’s good at creeping up on people – I didn’t even hear the door open.
“Have you found anything new?” I ask tentatively.
“One thing,” Clemency says. “And I can confirm a lot of the other things we thought we knew.”
“What’s the new thing?”
“I know what the Hummingbird regiment was,” she says.
She loves to keep us in suspense. It’s extraordinarily frustrating.
“So what is it?”
“Remember how the recruits had to have ‘special skills’?”
“Yes…”
“That meant having a connection to the other side,” she says. “Sidney Smith must have had a particularly strong connection. The Hummingbird regiment handled the so-called supernatural side of the war. They were supposed to spot any activity that was out of the ordinary, but things didn’t always go to plan.”
“Was that what killed Sidney?”
“Yes, as far as I can tell. He was stationed in France when our wraith came onto the scene. It was very devious in its method of approach, and as it happened, not even the sergeant noticed it – but Sidney did. After that, things happened pretty much in the way I suggested. He tried to thwart it, and when that failed, he aggravated it so much it struck out at him. He was killed, and it was banished. The length of the banishment was approximately sixty-two of our years, which means it will return to its full strength within the next couple of months.”
I shiver, picturing the scene. Sidney must have been impossibly brave.
“How did you get all that out of nothing?” Jamal asks suspiciously.
Clemency sighs, world-weary. “I didn’t get it out of nothing. The more clues I have, the more new information I can tap into. Information acts like a trigger, if you like. But it’s exhausting and time-consuming. Anyway, that isn’t relevant right now. The important thing is that we have a plan in place. We’d better start thinking.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Have I got this right?” Jamal is incredulous. “You’re saying that this thing is coming for Eddie, and the only thing you can’t find out is when it’s going to attack?”
“In essence, yes.” Clemency is calm.
“The world is a really shitty place to be sometimes,” he says bitterly. “And so’s the universe, for that matter. I’m starting to have my doubts about your ‘natural order of things’.”
Clemency smiles. “That’s because you only notice it when things are going badly. You don’t appreciate the goodness in the world. No-one ever does.”
“I didn’t say there wasn’t any good stuff,” he protests. “Just that the bad stuff seems to outweigh it most of the time.”
“But that’s not true. Like I said, you’re only seeing the negatives.”
“Oh yeah? Then explain these poltergeists – I mean wraiths. They can go around doing all the evil crap they like, as long as they don’t kill people. Sometimes they kill people anyway, and yet their only punishment is a few decades of banishment. Where’s the justice in that? Where’s the goodness?”
Clemency raises her eyebrows. “Who’s to say there aren’t good beings as well as evil ones? Beings that watch over humans, and protect them, and nudge their lives in the right direction when they’re veering off course? Beings that listen to their prayers, and sympathise with them, and smile on them, and throw other people into their paths at exactly the right time?”
“Is that true?” asks Annemarie, wide-eyed.
“As true as anything has ever been,” Clemency says. I assume that translates to “Yes.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re making it up,” Jamal says, ever the cynic.
“Why are you so reluctant to believe that there is goodness in the world?” Clemency says, puzzled. “Humans have felt the presence of these beings for centuries. Some imagine they’re angels.”
“So guardian angels are real?” Annemarie looks awestruck.
“In a sense, yes,” Clemency says. “They aren’t Biblical angels, but the concept is similar. They were probably the origin of the guardian angel idea.”
Jamal is not as impressed as Annemarie and I.
“So if they exist to protect humans,” he says, “why don’t they help them fight the evil things, like wraiths? Why do they leave humans to die, without trying to do anything to stop it? They must have the power to do something about it.”
In my opinion, Clemency has every right to bite his head off, but she stays composed.
“That would defeat the purpose,” she says. “They are there to keep the peace, not to endorse violence. They generally prefer not to show themselves, or even to alert people to their existence. It’s not as simple as getting the good people to fight the bad people and hoping the good ones come out on top.”
“But if everything has to be balanced…”
“Everything will be balanced if it is allowed to run its natural course. Anything else would interfere and upset the natural order.”
“There’s nothing natural about it!”
“Your emotions are talking. You’re angry and frustrated, because you want to protect Eddie and you know there’s nothing you can do. So you’re picking holes in everything and finding fault with the universe rather than yourself.”
I have to smile at her rather accurate character analysis.
“She’s right, Jamal,” I say. “This isn’t going to help.”
Jamal isn’t listening, though. He’s still ranting on about something. I don’t have the patience to listen anymore. I wish he’d be quiet; he’s starting to hurt my head.
As my mind drifts, I’m assaulted by curiosity – I want to know more about the way Clemency connects to the other side. It sounds terrifying and mysterious and magical, all at the same time. I don’t know whether I’d like to do it myself, but I desperately want to know how it works all the same.
I wander casually into the living room, hoping to find some indication of the way she spent the last hour, but there’s nothing. There’s certainly no pentagram scrawled on the floor, much to my relief, and none of the furniture has moved, either. Well, unless she moved it back again.
Oh well. Perhaps she’ll tell me later. She’s been unusually talkative of late.
My mind turns back to Clemency and her angels. There’s something enchanting about the idea; it’s as magical as the wraiths are terrifying. It brings back so many memories of my childhood. In fact, it echoes my past rather uncomfortably.
About ten years ago, when I first heard about guardian angels, the idea fascinated me. I was a bit of a loner in middle school – I wasn’t bullied, but I was largely ignored. People were civil to me, and some of them were almost friendly, but that was as far as it ever got. I’ve never been very good at making friends. It didn’t help that I was a bit of a teacher’s pet. Anyway, I suppose that was why I loved the guardian angel idea so much. I had no friends to look out for me, and even my parents didn’t quite understand me. Grandma Edna was my only real confidante, and I usually only saw her once a week. We studied Anne Frank in Year 7 History, and I liked the way she addressed her diary entries to ‘Dear Kitty’ rather than ‘Dear Diary’, as if she was speaking to a real-life person. The idea caught my imagination – I wanted to be able to talk to somebody who cared whenever I needed to. I began to imagine I had a guardian angel and talk to it in my head. That sounds really sad, I know, but it helped me through a lot of difficult times. At any rate, I thought it would be a good idea to put it down on paper. When January came around, I started a new diary, and the entries were all addressed to ‘Dear Guardian Angel’.
I don’t know if that’s cute or weird or what. I still have the diary somewhere, along with a couple of the subsequent ones. When I got into high school, though, things started to change. I grew into myself and made some friends, so I didn’t really need a confidante anymore. My diary entries were no longer addressed to anyone in particular, and they were fairly trivial. I don’t know whether that’s a good or a bad thing; perhaps it’s neither. I still keep a diary, though. Old habits die hard, and all that. I think I’ll always need one of some description.
“Eddie?” calls Jamal. He appears behind me, closely followed by Clemency and Annemarie. “Oh, there you are. Why are you sitting in here by yourself?”
I shrug. “No reason. I was spaced out.”
“You do that a lot,” Jamal says, but he sounds affectionate rather than accusatory. Thankfully, he seems to have calmed down a little.
Clemency is in one of her more sociable moods – or perhaps I should say pseudo-sociable. I still suspect she’s putting it on sometimes. There’s friendly banter flying between her and Jamal, with occasional input from Annemarie, who appears to taking Clemency’s side.
I’d usually join in, but tonight I don’t feel like it. I’m still thinking about guardian angels.
I slide open the French windows, letting in a rush of icy night air. Going out onto the balcony, I grip the railings and stare up at the sky.
Even though I have my back to her, I can feel Clemency’s eyes on me. They still seem to follow me almost constantly. I don’t know why – I swear she never does it to Jamal or Annemarie, or anyone else for that matter.
The sun has set, although it never really gets dark around here. An orange haze is spread across the horizon, but if I look at the sky directly above my head, I can just about make out a few stars.
People have interpreted the stars in various ways over the years – as eyes, or gods, or lumps of ice – but I’d rather imagine that they’re angels, watching over us and nudging us onto the right path.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’m walking down Kingston Road, but everything looks wrong. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly, but something doesn’t feel right, and I don’t like it. It’s dark, but the streetlights are off. There’s an oppressive atmosphere that threatens to suffocate me.
I stop outside one of the buildings. I know it’s Hamilton House, but again, it doesn’t look right. I crane my neck to look up at the first floor. None of the windows are lit up.
I should just go inside, but something tells me to stay out on the street. That’s ridiculous, I think. I can’t stand out here all night.
Something’s going to happen, I can feel it. It reminds me of the mysterious music and the hovering light; something is building up, and soon it’s going to erupt, or collapse, or both.
The air around me feels warmer than it should. It’s almost November – it should be colder. What’s more, it seems to be getting warmer still.
I know where this is going, I think.
I can barely breathe. I really do feel like I’m being smothered; it’s as if all the air is being slowly sucked away, leaving me suspended in a semi-vacuum.
It’s more than that, though. I know nothing about chemistry, but it feels as if all the oxygen molecules are moving towards one central point. My chest is tight, and I’m struggling to breathe.
The mass of air is so dense I can almost see it. Above the roof of Hamilton House, a patch swarms and swirls like a hive of bees.
That’s not right. Air shouldn’t be able to do that.
The air doesn’t seem to care that this shouldn’t be possible. It gathers and darkens until it resembles a thundercloud, hovering barely a foot above the chimney pots of Hamilton House.
Here it comes.
I brace myself as it begins to swell. The mass trembles, and the air vibrates.
I expect the explosion to be deafening, but it’s virtually silent. In fact, it’s more like anti-sound, so silent it’s almost painful.
The mass is thrown violently apart and scattered over the rooftops. For a moment, I think the houses have escaped the fallout, but I’m wrong.
Waves of energy emanate from the central point of the compressed air. The rippling is silent and deadly, tearing away strips of brickwork as if it’s nothing more than paper. Chimneys topple, glass shatters, and slates are torn from roofs – it has almost a domino effect. Hamilton House suffers the most damage, but some of the waves extend further, and the pieces of flying debris cause more destruction still.
The shockwave knocks me off my feet. I twist my ankle and land on some shards of glass and brick. For some reason, I don’t feel any pain. It’s almost as if my mind is too distracted to deal with my nervous system right now.
Oh my God, I think. Jamal and Annemarie are still inside.
Panic rising, I begin to scramble over the rubble. The anti-sound has
died away, so to speak, and the air is slowly returning to its rightful place. I gulp in as much as I can, and scramble up the ruins of the front steps. A part of me doesn’t even know why I’m bothering. It’s clear that nobody inside the building could possibly have survived the blast.
The staircase is now little more than a pile of splinters and jagged stakes, and the two storeys above have all but collapsed. Desperately, I scan the few pieces of flooring above my head, still clinging to the one wall that hasn’t fully collapsed. It’s no good, though – they’re empty, and they aren’t really big enough for a person to stand on in any case.
That’s when I see the bodies.
One is male, the other female. Both are sprawled out across the rubble, as if taking an ill-timed nap.
My legs are so weak I almost to collapse, but I push onwards, tripping over lumps of debris every few metres or so. Finally, I get near enough to see the faces of the dust-blackened forms, and find that…
…it’s not them.
I tumble backwards onto the rubble, breathing hard. These people are both middle-aged. That doesn’t really make me feel any better, though. There’s still no way anyone could have escaped. Strangely, I don’t recognise either of them from the flat upstairs. Who are they?
I’m not giving up just yet. I continue to walk and climb over the remains of the ground floor, until I see what looks like a hand.
Fevered, I dash towards it. In my haste, I trip and fall, landing only a few inches from the body. My hands are cut and bleeding, but again, I can’t feel the pain.
It’s a girl of no more than twelve or thirteen years of age. Bizarrely, her straggly white-blonde hair is free of dust. Spread out on the rubble, she looks pale and thin, but at the same time, almost angelic.
This is more than I can take. I sprint for the ruins of the front door, slipping and sliding down the remnants of the front steps.
That’s when it hits me, something that’s so blindingly obvious I don’t know how I ever missed it.
Hamilton House doesn’t have front steps, I remember. The door is at ground level.
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