The Missing

by Garth Nix

  Her expression changed so suddenly Jack almost jumped off the bed.

  “It tricked me!” she snarled, squashing the bug and leaping to her feet, sending her duvet flying. Her fists clenched, and a dark disk of air swirled around her head like a crown, shooting out thorny sparks of electricity. The four-poster bed rocked and swayed under her like a ship on stormy seas. “It tricked me!”

  ++So close!++ cried The Evil, all attempt at pretense abandoned now. She could hear the cold absence of anything human in its voice now. ++You are so close — just open the way and we will come to you!++

  ++Never!++ replied Jaide. To Jack she said, “Where’s it coming from? How did it get in here? We can’t get rid of it until we know where it is.”

  Jack turned on the lights and looked around for the weevil he had brushed off his hand. He couldn’t see it, but he did see an ant on the floor by his feet, a tiny black spider high in one corner, a fly parked on the wall next to the window, and a millipede inching up one bedpost. All had glowing white eyes.

  “It’s everywhere,” he said, raising one bare foot to squish the ant. “We need an exterminator!”

  Behind them, the door crashed open. Stefano stood there, framed in bright blue light. His hair was blowing wildly and his expression fierce.

  “You called?”

  He raised the iron rod he held in his right hand.

  But before he could do anything with it, Grandma X pushed him aside, dressed in her nightgown with hair in curlers.

  “Not in the house!”

  She raised her moonstone ring and pointed palm out at the spider. Cold white light flashed, and the insect curled up and dropped to the floor.

  “But you are,” said Stefano, red-faced.

  “Do as I tell you and don’t argue!”

  The ant made a run for it, but Jack put his foot down. Jaide bashed the millipede with one curled fist. When Stefano lunged for the fly, it buzzed away from him, right into another white flash from Grandma X.

  “What’s going on?” asked Susan, stepping on the weevil as she burst into the room. “What’s all this racket?”

  “The Evil,” said Grandma X shortly. “The early warning system went off. I’ve been searching the house for the source and finally found it in the children’s bedroom.”

  “What was it doing to you?” asked Susan, turning pale and gathering the twins to her.

  Jaide struggled, but her mother’s arms were too tight.

  “Nothing, Mom. Just talking.”

  “We’re okay,” Jack assured her. “Did we get all of it?”

  They looked around at the walls, ceiling, and floor, wondering if anything was left. From the blue room came the continuing sound of clocks chiming and a mechanical bear banging its drum. Jaide’s sudden rage had faded, but she could’ve kicked herself for not recognizing those sounds. The house had several means of alerting its inhabitants to the presence of The Evil. As well as the clocks and the bear, several special barometers were sure to be showing stormy readings and the weathervane on top of the house would be spinning like mad until The Evil was completely gone.

  “There must be a small piece remaining,” Grandma X said. “We can’t rest until we’ve rid the house of it.”

  “What can I do?” asked Susan.

  “Get the vacuum cleaner,” she said. “I’ll call the cats and get Cornelia out of her cage so they can help. You three” — she turned to the troubletwisters — “search the house from top to bottom. Stay in sight of one another, and don’t use your Gifts unless it’s an absolute emergency. I’m sorry I was sharp with you, Stefano, but there was simply no need to go overboard. Talking is all The Evil can do in such a small form.”

  The twins nodded. Stefano looked resentful, but nodded, too.

  “Words can be enough,” she added. “Don’t listen to any rapports you might hear, unless you’re sure they’re from me.”

  “Grandma,” said Jaide, “how is it getting in? The wards are still working, aren’t they?”

  “They are. Don’t worry. It’s nothing you’re doing.”

  They split up to pursue their separate tasks, and for the next hour the house was full of the sound of vigorous pursuit, as cockroaches, moths, worms, even a sleepy bee were shaken out of their hiding places, many of them innocent, but some decidedly Evil. Ari took no chances and ate all the bugs he found. Kleo was both more elegant and economical in her Evil-killing, skewering bugs with a single claw as they tried to scurry away. Cornelia snapped her beak with uncanny accuracy at anything flying.

  Every now and again, Jack and Jaide caught a hint of The Evil’s voice as they went through the house. Mostly it just repeated what it had said earlier, but once, when they had a white-eyed mosquito cornered in the bathroom, it tried a different tack.

  ++One of you will join us,++ it said. ++One always does. Why do you think she isn’t trying to rescue the one she calls sister?++

  “Be quiet,” said Jack, swatting at the insect with a rolled-up towel. “I’m not listening.”

  ++She knows how it must be.++ The Evil’s mental voice was thin and whiny like a mosquito’s buzz, but that didn’t make its words any less horrible. ++You will join us, or your sister will. Open the way and I will leave her alone.++

  “He said, be quiet!” Jaide used her Gift to lift herself up so her towel was in range of the whispering bug. One well-timed swat saw it smeared on the ceiling, silenced.

  Stefano peered in from the corridor, where he was sweeping cobwebs with his iron rod. He saw her land on the tiled floor in a swirl of air.

  “Your grandmother said —”

  “I know what she said.” Jaide wasn’t going to be told off by him. “I barely used it at all. How are you doing with those spiders?”

  Gradually, the banging and chiming from the blue room subsided and the house was quiet. The hunters reconvened on the first-floor landing, dusty, tired, and somewhat deflated. Fighting The Evil had never been so … tedious.

  “To bed,” said Grandma X. “Unless anyone has anything to add.”

  Jaide was tired and tetchy enough to think that Jack’s plan from earlier had a lick of sense. Perhaps it was time to be blunt.

  “Why aren’t you doing anything to rescue your sister?” she asked.

  If Grandma X was surprised by this question, she kept that surprise well hidden. “Is that what it said to you?”

  “One of the things.”

  “Well, you know better than to believe anything The Evil tells you.”

  “Does that mean you are trying to rescue her?” asked Jack.

  Grandma X turned to him. “I would never disobey Aleksandr or the wishes of the Grand Gathering.”

  Jaide put her hands in her hair and pulled at her scalp. “So which is it? Is The Evil lying or are you?”

  “I think we’re all getting a little overexcited,” said Susan. “Now’s not the time to talk about this.”

  “Tomorrow?” asked Jaide.

  “It already is tomorrow,” said Stefano, yawning hugely.

  “Exactly,” said Susan. “To bed, all of us.”

  Jaide collapsed face-forward into her pillow and went straight to sleep. This time it was Jack’s turn to lie awake, thinking about everything their grandmother wasn’t telling them. First on the list was Lottie, of course, but there was also Project Thunderclap, what Grandma X was doing with Stefano, and how The Evil was getting through the wards.

  After six months of stability and peace, it suddenly felt as though the twins’ lives were being turned upside down again. Only this time, Jack suspected, they would have nowhere safe to land.

  Tuesdays were never terribly interesting in Portland, except when The Evil was attacking. And even then, if it was a school day, Mr. Carver had a manner that made anything exciting instantly boring or weird. He insisted on reading everyone’s poetry homework for them, adopting an overly dramatic voice that bore no resemblance to the way anyone normally spoke. No wonder, Jack thought, there was a rumor going around that
Mr. Carver was such a bad actor even the Portland Players wouldn’t let him join their group.

  Jaide’s reward for getting through the day was soccer practice. Jack didn’t have that, so he spent the day seeking something to look forward to. The best he could come up with was recruiting Rodeo Dave to help him look for the mysterious Lottie Henschke.

  “Where are you going?” Tara called as he headed up Dock Road instead of trailing after the others to watch Stefano show off.

  “The Book Herd,” he told her. “I, um, need something to read.”

  “Great, I’ll come with you.”

  “Oh, okay. If you want to.”

  “I do.” She skipped double-time to catch up, pulling on a pair of fashionable purple sunglasses in one smooth motion. Tara’s mother ran a gift shop in Scarborough, so she always had the latest accessories in her backpack. “Gum?” she said, offering him a piece.

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I know you’re not after something to read. You’ve got that look in your eye. You’re troubletwistering.”

  “Shhh!” Jack looked around, but he should have known that no one was in earshot because she could say the word troubletwistering without her mouth slamming shut.

  “Will it be dangerous?” she asked.

  “I’m just going to look through some old books,” he said, figuring there was no point lying since she had already guessed. “Hopefully with Rodeo Dave’s help.”

  “Will he help you? I mean, he’s not supposed to remember this stuff anymore.”

  “I know. But I think we can talk him around. Just keep your fingers crossed Kleo isn’t there. She’ll tell Grandma for sure.”

  “So it’s a secret?”

  “What we’re trying to find out is a secret,” he said, briefly outlining what he was hoping to find out and why. “Or else everyone’s deliberately forgotten it, like Rodeo Dave has.”

  They turned into Parkhill Street, where an old lady was sweeping the sidewalk. What was the point of sweeping the outside, Jack thought. Everything was dirty. They dodged her tiny piles of dust, saying hello as they went, and hurried to the next corner. The Book Herd was open — another hurdle avoided, since “irregular” was a kind way of describing the hours Rodeo Dave kept. Kleo wasn’t where she usually preferred to nap in the afternoon, in the window on a large and well-thumbed atlas thoroughly softened by age.

  “Town records?” asked Rodeo Dave when Jack told him what he was after. He was a big man with a mustache to match, and like Grandma X, his cowboy boots seemed more an extension of him than something he put on every morning. “Of course, my boy, of course. You know where they are. Weren’t you digging around in those last month?”

  Jack and Jaide had been, but back then they hadn’t known Lottie’s surname or the year she disappeared. And the mystery hadn’t been quite as pressing as it was now.

  “Do you think you could help us, this time? We’re looking for someone in particular.”

  Rodeo Dave stood up from the mound of paperbacks he was cataloguing. At least, that’s what he had said he was doing. To Jack it looked as though he was simply moving them from one pile to another, perhaps organizing them by color or cover illustration rather than author name or title, just for a change.

  “Ah, it’s something specific you’re looking for,” he said with a knowing wink. “I thought you were just curious. A big game hunt is always more exciting than a sightseeing expedition, so you can count me in for certain. What manner of creature are we chasing?”

  Jack was pretty sure Dave didn’t mean an actual creature. His knowledge of Warden business was completely buried, along with his memories of Lottie. Still, it was unnerving to hear him use the word, and for a moment Jack stammered, unsure how best to answer.

  “A woman,” said Tara brightly. “She’d be about your age. Jack thinks she might be someone in the family who ran away a long time ago. No one will talk about her, so she must’ve been pretty interesting. We’re just curious to know what happened to her.”

  “A scandal, eh?” Rodeo Dave’s bushy eyebrows jiggled up and down. “Well, let’s take a look. Shut the door, Jack, and put out the closed sign. Let’s do this properly.”

  He led them through the shop, room by room, to a chamber filled with books too large to fit on the ordinary shelves at the front. Most of them were in languages Jack couldn’t understand, and he was pretty sure none of them were for sale. Most of them were too heavy for one person to lift, and had to be levered out carefully lest they fall apart in a shower of dust. The air was close and stale, and yet somehow deeply invigorating as well. Jack didn’t have to imagine all those old words jammed together, jostling for release: He could smell them all around him.

  “Right-oh,” said Dave, heading to one corner of the chamber where the town records were stored. The twins had never asked how he had come to have them, and he had never explained.

  “What year are you looking for?” he asked, running a finger along the worn leather spines.

  “Forty-five years ago,” said Jack. It seemed impossibly distant. Neither of his parents had been born then. Cell phones didn’t exist. The Dark Ages, practically.

  Out came a ledger the size of a suitcase. It contained handwritten accounts of council meetings, subcommittee reports, and news clippings from the Portland Post. The handwriting was tiny and birdlike, but perfectly legible if viewed closely. Rodeo Dave gave Tara and Jack a magnifying glass each, and used a third to examine a random page.

  “That’s old Miss Ackroyd’s hand, that is,” he said. “She was secretary for fifty years, and the council wasn’t allowed to use a typewriter until she died. Striking woman. Only four-and-half-feet tall, and at least half a foot of that was hair.”

  Rodeo Dave was like that. He could remember amazingly insignificant details from his years in Portland, and yet nothing at all about the Wardens and huge chunks of his own life.

  “We’re looking for a woman called Lottie,” he said. “Lottie Henschke.”

  Dave screwed up his face in thought and looked at the ceiling. “Lottie Henschke … Lottie Henschke … No, doesn’t ring a bell. Are you sure she wasn’t from Dogton? They’re a rowdy bunch and always have been.”

  But you knew her, Jack wanted to say. I’ve seen a photo of the two of you standing next to each other. You even had a crush on her. How can that all be gone?

  “I’m pretty sure,” Jack said instead. “She lived on Watchward Lane.”

  That was a guess. Kleo had told him once that Grandma X’s father had built her the house they lived in as a wedding present. Given that the house next door was its twin, didn’t it stand to reason that Lottie had lived in that one? She might not have been married, but she was still her father’s daughter. Susan and Hector always made sure that their presents to each of the twins matched in size and prestige, in order to avoid fights and hurt feelings.

  “Hmmmm.” Rodeo Dave thumbed through the ledger, occasionally stopping to put the calloused pad of his index finger on any interesting pages that flicked by. “Watchward Lane, eh? I seem to remember something interesting from around this time. Let’s see … whaling protests? No … wide-brimmed hats? No again, but I remember that argument…. Walking dead? Unlikely …”

  Jack and Tara leaned in close on either side, looking for Ws and studying names and faces as they flashed by. None of them seemed familiar.

  “Wait,” said Tara, one plastic-ringed finger shooting out. “What’s that?”

  There was a picture of a house in a newspaper article, and it was clearly Grandma X’s house, although the trees around it were much smaller and the garden wall hadn’t been built yet. There was no weathervane, and the external door leading to the blue room was hidden.

  The picture wasn’t just of that house. It also showed the house next door, which had gouts of smoke issuing from the ground-floor windows. Two men in old-fashioned fire uniforms held a nozzle pointed at the house, although no water was coming from it. The hose attach
ed to the nozzle stretched out of the shot, presumably to a fire truck nearby, because there wasn’t a hydrant on Watchward Lane that Jack knew of.

  “This must be when it happened,” said Jack.

  “When what happened?” asked Dave.

  “When she, um, left. Is there a date?”

  The clipping was just a photo, with no story or date. Dave flicked to the pages before and after, and found references to meetings on May 22nd and 24th.

  “It would have to be the 23rd, then, you’d guess,” he said. “Strange there isn’t anything in the minutes about it.”

  “What’s this?” said Tara, pointing again, this time at the edge of the page Dave had just turned. “Looks like there are two pages stuck together.”

  “Why, Tara, you’re right! Let’s see if I can separate them without tearing anything.”

  Dave produced a letter opener from the back pocket of his jeans and inserted the tip into a tiny gap between the pages. Wiggling it gently back and forth, he managed to ease the blade inside, then raised and lowered it so the pages began to separate. When they fell apart, a cloud of dust rose up that made Tara sneeze twice in quick succession.

  “Wow,” said Jack when he saw what was contained between those pages.

  It was the notes from an emergency session of the Portland town council, which didn’t sound at all exciting until they started reading. The session had been called to discuss an accident and several casualties on Watchward Lane the night of May 23rd. The hospital was full of injured people, and its morgue contained no less than five bodies, not all of them identified. Several people were still missing. Of most immediate relevance to the council, apart from the tragic nature of events in general, was the death of the deputy mayor, nicknamed “Joe,” full name Earl Joseph Henschke, stepfather of one of the missing women.

  Jack read with bulging eyes. This was his great-grandfather they were talking about. It had to be. On the day Lottie had disappeared, Joe Henschke had died. And there was more.

  The otherwise utterly legible Miss Ackroyd had blotted her record.