12-08

by Bethany Chester

  I don’t know how we’re supposed to fight this.

  “It’s going to kill us,” I say.

  “Don’t you dare turn into a quivering wreck on me,” Clemency hisses. “Use your brain for a minute. Yes, it wants revenge, but it also wants to kill as many people as possible. Two lives will not satisfy it. It won’t kill us now.”

  That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt or maim us, I think, but I don’t say it. It would only annoy her.

  The light moves, stretches, expands. Tendrils reach down towards the ground. I jump backwards, alarmed, but Clemency stands her ground.

  It won’t kill us, I remind myself, trying to calm down. There aren’t enough of us.

  “Eddie!” someone screams. Heart sinking, I discern two silhouettes, dancing towards us through the night.

  Clemency mutters something under her breath. I can’t make out what it is, but I don’t think it’s very polite.

  “Oh shit,” I say eloquently.

  “Eddie!” yells another, deeper voice.

  How the hell did my flatmates find out where I was?

  “What’s going on?” Jamal demands, practically crashing into me. “We both woke up at the same time and found that you were gone. We got the feeling you’d be here, for some reason. What’s happening? What’s wrong with the sky?”

  “You need to shut up,” I whisper. “The louder you talk, the more trouble we’re in.”

  “Never mind that,” Clemency says. “You need to leave. This is not the place for you. Eddie and I will handle this. You’ve been manipulated. Get back home before it’s too late.”

  “We’re not leaving Eddie,” Jamal says.

  I see it play out on Clemency’s face, as the dirty orange tendrils snake along the ground towards us. She’s remembering another boy who wouldn’t go away, a boy who suffered for his loyalty.

  “You’re making this worse for Eddie,” Clemency says. “She’s more likely to be hurt if you’re here.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he says stubbornly.

  “What about you?” Annemarie asks falteringly. Clemency stares.

  “I am more than capable of looking after myself, I can assure you.”

  The fiery tendrils give off smoke, odourless yet choking.

  “I won’t tell you again,” Clemency says. “If you want to ruin Eddie’s chances, then that’s up to you.”

  I look up. “Um, I think it might be too late.”

  The tendrils have woven their way all around us, creating a net. There’s no way anyone is getting in or out unscathed.

  “Crap,” Jamal mutters.

  The light closes in, descends, prepares to obliterate us.

  “I guess it’s going to kill us after all,” I say.

  For the first time, Clemency looks concerned. “Two people wouldn’t have been enough, but four just might be.”

  “Well, that’s just brilliant,” I say shakily.

  Jamal puts an arm around me.

  “If anything happens, it’ll happen to us both,” he says.

  That’s an optimistic way of saying that if I die then so will he.

  Clemency looks like she’s concentrating hard, and I don’t dare disturb her. My flatmates’ breathing sounds laboured.

  “I’m suffocating,” Annemarie whispers.

  “No, you’re not,” I say. “It’s an illusion. Keep inhaling and exhaling.”

  Clemency gives me an approving look. I’m learning fast – for all the good it will do me.

  “Is there anything you can do?” I ask hesitantly. She’s pale, but resolute.

  “I can’t hold it off,” she says. “Not with this web around us. There’s only one more thing I could try.”

  I don’t like the way she says it.

  “What’s that?”

  “All it will take is a life,” she breathes. “Just one life.”

  In a split second, I know what she’s going to do. Annemarie works it out at exactly the same time.

  “NO!” she yells.

  Then Clemency is running for the web, doing that strange, no-space-in-between running, and she’s almost there, and I’m screaming at her to stop.

  Annemarie, though, doesn’t waste time the way I do. She runs, too, and only then do I remember that she used to be a brilliant sprinter in her secondary school years. One of the best in the country.

  She still shouldn’t be fast enough to catch Clemency, but somehow, she’s gaining on her. She’s right on her heels, and then she’s there, catching her, pulling her to the ground.

  They lie there, struggling to breathe, just bare inches from the web. I expect Clemency to resume her attempt, but she doesn’t move. She looks defeated.

  “There’s no need for you to die,” she says, as the web sinks.

  “We’re not going to die,” says Annemarie. Hysterical, easily flustered Annemarie has become deathly calm.

  “I admire your positivity,” I shout, over the sound of the chattering voices.

  “We only need one life,” Annemarie says. “Nobody said it had to be a human one. It doesn’t, does it?”

  Clemency struggles up into a sitting position.

  “No. It just has to be conscious being. But the banishment will be shorter. I don’t see –”

  “Surely you can find one animal?” Annemarie says. “Just an insect or something? You have a connection to the earth, right?”

  Clemency looks faint. “I can’t. I’m tired. So tired...”

  She slumps back down to the ground.

  There’s something wrong with her. I get the feeling she’s not going to be of much use from this point onwards. That’s a scary thought. We’re on our own.

  “Wake up,” I urge, shaking her, but she’s doesn’t move. Her eyes slip closed.

  Behind me, Annemarie gasps.

  I turn round in time to see a shape flit between us. It’s small, with a long, slightly curved beak, and wings that whir.

  “Oh my God,” I say.

  Jamal grips my arm. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “It’s a miracle,” I whisper.

  I never believed in miracles, but I think I do now. Unless, of course, the smoke has got to my brain and I’m hallucinating.

  The web hovers just above our heads. This is it, I think. This is the end.

  The whirring shape floats gently upwards – right into the heart of the web.

  The web flickers like a dying candle, before exploding outwards. I never knew light could smash like glass. It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.

  It’s gone in an instant. The shards fade into non-existence, and the night echoes to a strange sound. It’s low and guttural, but it simultaneously sounds like a screech.

  When it fades away, it sends out shockwaves that knock us to the floor – aside from Clemency, who’s already there. We land in a heap, breathless and shaking. There’s a familiar rush as the air seems to return, although I now know that it never really went anywhere.

  We lie on our backs, unable to express what’s going through our minds. I’m so grateful to be alive, to be able to breathe freely. It’s the most incredible feeling in the world.

  “Is Clemency okay?” asks Annemarie. We crawl towards her, too drained to get to our feet.

  I’m terrified what we might find when we get there.

  My fears, thankfully, are unfounded. Her chest rises and falls slightly, and although she’s unconscious, she seems alright.

  “Thank God,” I breathe.

  “We should get her inside,” Annemarie says. “It’s freezing out here.”

  Only then do I notice the limp body of a hummingbird lying faithfully at her side.

  Between us, we manage to pick her up. We’re exhausted, but it doesn’t require much effort. She’s as light as a feather.

  We take her back to Hamilton House and lay her out on my bed. We have no way of knowing when she’ll wake up. I don’t want to consider the possibility that she might not.

  After that, I make
up a bed on the sofa, and the three of us go to sleep. We don’t know what else to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I feel as if I’m waking up from a strange, surreal dream. I turn over, and almost fall off the sofa.

  That’s when I realise that it all really happened.

  Clemency is the first thing I remember. I go into my bedroom, and find Annemarie standing by the bed. She jumps when I open the door, but relaxes when she sees me.

  “Is she okay?” I ask.

  “I think so,” Annemarie says. “She’s still unconscious, but her breathing and pulse are both fine.”

  I scrutinise Clemency’s face. She’s as pale as ever, but there’s a rosy bloom on her cheeks that I don’t think I’ve ever seen there before. I never realised how long her eyelashes were; they curl back on themselves, brushing her lids.

  “She looks…human,” I say.

  Annemarie smiles. “I know what you mean,” she says. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  We watch her for a moment more. Then, satisfied that she’s okay, we go to the kitchen to find breakfast.

  Jamal is sitting at the table, rubbing his head.

  “Did all that really happen, or were my dreams last night really messed up?” he asks.

  “Oh, it happened,” I say. “Unfortunately.”

  “Are we all okay? Where’s Clemency?”

  “Still unconscious in my room. We think she’s going to be fine, though.”

  Jamal and I decide we can’t possibly sit through our respective lectures after everything we went through last night. Annemarie, being the dutiful student she is, drinks her coffee, steels herself and marches out the door.

  Jamal still seems shell-shocked. After we’ve eaten, he hugs me and says he’s going to lie down for a bit. I hold on a little tighter than usual. There was a time last night when I thought we were going to be separated forever. Well, not forever – at least not if you listen to Clemency – but you know what I mean.

  It’s past lunchtime when I get round to clearing away the breakfast things. I’ve just dumped the dishes in the washing-up bowl when there’s a voice behind me.

  “So I look human, do I?”

  I start, making the plates slip over each other in an avalanche of ceramic.

  “Oh my God, Clemency,” I say. “You terrified me. Are you okay?”

  “As far as I know,” she says.

  I hug her, too, even though she’d probably rather I didn’t.

  “I’m so glad you’re alright,” I say. “I thought I was going to lose you all.”

  “Human,” she muses again. She’s barely listening to me.

  “Could you hear us, then?” I ask.

  “Just about,” she says. “It was as if you were a long way away, but I could still make out what you were saying.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “It was my own fault,” she says. “I usually keep a protective shield around me in those kinds of situations, but I let it go when I started running towards the web. If everything had gone to plan, I wouldn’t have needed it.”

  “Yes, because you’d be dead,” I say. She ignores me.

  “Anyway, since I was unprotected, the wraith was able to temporarily drain my life energy, which was why I slipped into unconsciousness. Luckily, it seems Sidney was looking out for us all along. I was very dimly aware of what was going on.”

  “He sent the hummingbird, then?” I ask.

  “More than that,” she says. “He was the hummingbird.”

  “What? How…”

  “It’s a little like reincarnation, but it isn’t exactly the same. In reincarnation, the spirit is born into a new body and inhabits it until the end of the body’s natural life. With this process, the bodiless spirit expels the spirit of a living being and takes its place. It’s dangerous, and if you were to do it to a human being, the price would be severe. Expelling the spirit of an animal is frowned upon, but there are no real punishments. A lot of legends have sprung up that way – werewolves and vampire bats and the like.”

  “So he sacrificed his life again?” I ask, dazed.

  “In essence, yes,” she says.

  “Didn’t you say the period of banishment was shorter if the wraith killed an animal? Does that mean we’ll have to deal with it again in five years, or ten, or twenty?”

  Clemency shakes her head. “The penalty will be the same length as the one for killing a human, because technically, it was a human spirit that passed into the other world. In fact, the penalty for the hummingbird may even be added onto it, since both were effectively killed at once.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “I still don’t understand how you know these things.”

  Clemency pauses. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I don’t suppose it can hurt.”

  “Go on.”

  “I have a strong connection to a spirit on the other side, which enables me to gain information I wouldn’t otherwise be able to access.”

  “The spirit of anyone in particular?”

  “In her last life, she was my mother.”

  Oh. I should have guessed.

  “So…you still communicate with her?” I ask.

  “Almost every day. I don’t know how I’d deal with her loss, otherwise. She was a good woman, even if she did make mistakes. She made a fatal error in fighting a battle she could never have won for the sake of one person she loved. My mother never did know when to harden her heart; I learnt from her mistakes. Now she’s one of those beings you call angels.”

  She was a good woman. She must have been, if she raised a daughter like Clemency.

  “Will you be an angel, do you think?” I ask.

  Clemency laughs her jaded laugh. “I doubt I’m good enough. Even if I was, I think I’d choose to return to this side. I’m of more use here – I can help people directly, rather than hiding behind the scenes. That’s what we’re here for, really. We’re here to do the angels’ dirty work.”

  There are so many questions I want to ask her, so many things I still don’t understand.

  “Who is ‘we’?” I ask her. “What are you?”

  Clemency seems amused by my question. “I’m really not very different to the rest of you. It’s just that one of my ancestors was a very powerful woman whose legacy persists to this day. Every generation has a daughter with an intensely strong connection to the earth and the other side. The daughter becomes a guardian, helping to keep the two sides balanced. Then she has a daughter, and passes on her skills. It’s vital that each daughter is trained quickly. As you can imagine, our life expectancy isn’t high.”

  “So that’s why you seem less human than most people,” I say.

  She tilts her head. “You think it makes me less human? I think I’m more human than all you so-called ‘normal’ people. It’s just that you’re all out of touch, so you think I should be, too.”

  I consider this, remembering the time she told me that the paranormal wasn’t really outside the norm at all. As usual, her words make sense. I think she’s probably right.

  That evening, I get a phone call from Grandma Edna. She rarely phones me, so it’s clear there’s something on her mind.

  “The most wonderful thing happened last night,” she says. “Maybe I’m going batty in my old age, but I could swear it was real.”

  I’m intrigued. “What happened?”

  “Well, I woke up at around one in the morning, and I saw a man in army uniform standing next to my bed. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I’d know his face anywhere.”

  “Whose?” I ask, though I already know.

  “Sidney’s,” she says. “Do you remember me telling you about him?”

  “Of course I do,” I say. “Did he say or do anything?”

  “He did. He smiled, and reached out his hand to me, and said, ‘I never forgot.’”

  “What did you do?”

  “I said, ‘Neither did I.’ Then I reached out my hand. I barely touched his, but I remember tha
t it felt warm, and I was surprised, because I thought dead people were cold. The visit itself didn’t really surprise me, though. I knew he wasn’t gone for good. Anyway, as soon my skin touched his, he disappeared.”

  “That’s amazing,” I say. I don’t doubt her for a second.

  “You must think I’m quite loopy,” she says. “But I don’t mind if you do. It’s strange, but when I woke up this morning, I felt the most tremendous sense of peace and tranquillity. I never realised I wasn’t perfectly at ease until I was. It’s a beautiful feeling, Eddie. I hope you get to experience it someday.”

  Something warm trickles down my cheek. Only then do I realise I’m crying.

  “I hope so too,” I say quietly.

  Chapter Thirty

  As the month of November passes, our lives regain some semblance of normality.

  It’s a relief, in many ways, to be able to go about our day-to-day lives without seeing poltergeists in every park and shapes at the heart of every campfire. It’s also a good thing in terms of my degree work – I don’t know what would’ve happened if things had stayed the way they were in late September and October.

  At the same time, it feels a little as if the magic is gone from our lives. But I didn’t exactly appreciate it while it was happening, so it seems rather perverse to miss it.

  Anyway, there is one consolation prize.

  Jamal and I have officially been together for three weeks now. The experience of being hunted down and almost killed by an evil being has only served to bring us closer. We’re both enchanted by the knowledge that another world, another side, lies only a whisper away. Sometimes, when we stand out on the balcony in the evenings, I can almost feel it there. I occasionally think I can hear the whispering voices of those who’ve passed through the wall.

  It’s now been a month since Jamal last had a cigarette. We’re hoping it was his last. I’m so proud of him for sticking it out. I know it hasn’t been easy for him, and I can still hardly believe that he did it for me.

  Yesterday, I thought to plug in my alarm clock again, to see if it had recovered from its traumatic experience. When I did so, it told me it was twenty past three. Thank God for that. If it had said 12:08, I’d probably have hurled it out of the window. I did wonder if 3:20 was the time when it was stolen. There’s something really creepy about the idea, so I hastily reset it, and thankfully, it stayed reset.