by Harper Fox
“The pastor must’ve loved that.”
“Oh, he never knew. I’d give the old girl the heads-up if I found her at it when he was on his way. She would chant the names of the plants as she picked them, and she told me the Murphy part was a corruption of Morpheus, the god of sleep. The leaves have a sedative effect.”
“Bloody hell. Are you saying my four-year-old slipped her dad a mickey?”
“Well, a Murphy at any rate. It won’t do him any harm.”
Lee tried to imagine Zeke in the graveyard. Then he didn’t have to: the place and the actions unspooled for him. The lanky teenage boy slipped out of the chapel’s rear door and picked his way through the headstones, leaving a trail in the long wet grass. The replay was panoramic. There on the path was Ma Frayne, also looking ready to head the pastor off. By her side, a sturdy, handsome lad of five or six years old alertly watched the scene. Zeke approached the old woman plucking seed heads from a plant like a straggling buttercup. Herb bennet, she said, as if to an old friend. The clue’s in the name. They say it’s for Saint Benedict, but that’s all nonsense of course. Herb benefit’s the truth of it.
All right, but you’d better go. The pastor’s coming.
You should learn these things. Beasts and priests, your family are, right back to Lyonesse, and those old drewydhyow weren’t ashamed to use the power of the green.
Those old what?
Druids, foolish boy. Learn the Latin names for the plants, if you’re too good and holy for the old ones. Start with the bennet here—Geum urbanum.
I can’t. He doesn’t let me. I don’t have time, and anyway...
He stopped. A dazed wonder touched his expression, lifting away the harsh mask his father had begun to fasten there. Granny? Where did you go?
The churchyard was empty. Zeke thought so anyway, though a less-brainwashed lad might have seen the old woman’s lightning movement, the flip of a hood, the whisk of a moss-brown cloak around incongruous crimplene trousers and flowered blouse. Her seamless drop to her knees amid the foliage. She was right there, and heaving with held-back laughter, the old devil...
Lee began to laugh too. He grabbed a corner of the pillow and pressed it to his mouth. Some aspects of poor Zeke’s upbringing were funny, his legacy of easily-cracked ice, the pompousness that melted at the antics of his twin boys. Others were grim. Gideon’s mind had been running along the same lines. The churchyard vanished and Lee tuned in easily to his husband’s thoughts. “I’m not sure I want Tamsie learning knockout potions,” Gid said uneasily, “but I’m glad he’s getting some rest. He’s a bit out of control today, and he... told me something about you, Zeke.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. I didn’t know whether to mention it or not. Maybe I should let the dead lie. But—look, I know our dad was very strict with you. I didn’t think he’d ever hurt you physically.”
“What? He never did.”
“He did, though. When you didn’t learn your Bible verse. Here.”
Lee’s control slipped further still, and he experienced both Gideon’s sorrow and Zeke’s astonished flinch, the way Zeke’s hand felt in Gid’s when he picked it up, Zeke’s hard-repressed pleasure at being touched by the brother he’d adored despite all the world’s efforts to blast that affection to death in the bud. “Nonsense, Gideon,” he rasped. “It was nothing. And I did learn my Bible verse, ninety nine times out of a hundred, so there was no need. I didn’t spend my adolescence watching Stargate and scrumping apples.”
“Well. The hundredth time, then.”
“It was nothing at all. Our grandfather used to whale the life out of the pastor with the end of his leather belt.”
“Much good it did his personality.”
“Fair point, but—”
“Look, my own feelings on when to hit children are never. But I’ve come across a few households where the kids take a walloping in good part, and the parents give it that way—lovingly, if love can come on the underside of a slipper. At least they’re being parents. Not you, though, Zeke. It never should’ve been done to you.”
At length—unhurriedly, as if Gid’s recognition had taken the sting from the long-ago punishment—Zeke withdrew his hand. “I think,” he said gently, “your focus is on the wrong part of this. Yes, the pastor hit me. I did hate it, and the humiliation made me a far worse person than nature intended in later years. But I’m more concerned about Lee. He’d normally rather have died than probe into memories I’d hidden so deeply away. Wouldn’t he?”
“Yes. I... I’ll talk to him. But—Christ, I’m sorry for what happened to you.”
“It was long ago.” Zeke let a beat or two of silence pass, and Lee felt the firework brush of his indestructible straight-faced mischief. A ripple of melody from the same artist who’d inspired Gid’s fuckfest theme... “And it was far away. Of course if I said it was so much better than it is today, that would be an outrageous bloody lie. My life today is better than anything I could ever have dreamed of in the pastor’s house. A lot of that’s down to Lee, and maybe a tiny bit to you too, so... both of you, let that sad old memory go, all right? I have.”
A stir in the air as Zeke got to his feet. Gideon’s sorrow wreathed upward with him, only partly assuaged. “All right, I guess. Will you stay to supper?”
“Perhaps Lee should reveal some dreadful secret from my past more often. I like you like this—all stricken and trying to make things up to me. No, I can’t stay for supper, thank you. I have to pick up Buster on my way home.”
“Buster, the... pup, I presume?”
“That’s right. Six months old, heart of gold and guaranteed childproof. Bought him last Sunday.”
“But you’d only had Isolde for a day or so then.”
“Yes. She helped me pick him out.”
A pause, and then the muffled, rhythmical thump which was Ezekiel’s effort to start to creep down the stairs. Gideon must have stayed in place, staring at him. Lee rocked with his amusement. “Zeke,” Gid said after a moment, and the thumping ceased: Zeke coming to a halt, looking enquiringly back over his shoulder. “Zeke, you shmoop!”
Chapter Four
Depends Who’s in the Changing Room
The child and the dog had left Gideon the narrowest strip on the outside edge of the bed. Manoeuvring into place, he checked that Tamsyn was deeply asleep. He folded Isolde’s ears down, and addressed himself in a whisper to the half-awake gleam visible through Lee’s eyelashes. “Some fuckfest this is.”
The glimmer increased. Lee extracted one hand from the bedclothes and gave him a clumsy pat. “Make it up to you tomorrow.”
“How you feeling, sweetheart?”
“Undone.”
“Well, your kid drugged you.”
The hand made its way from Gideon’s hip to their daughter’s curls. “Murphy’s ears?”
“Yeah. Zeke told me what they were.”
“You should probably arrest her.”
“I will in the morning. Then, while she’s cooling her heels in the Bodmin nick, I’ll come back here, and...”
“We can let the festivities commence. Mmm. You will take this stinking lump of dog off me first, won’t you?”
Gideon chuckled. “I promise. Speaking of dogs, Zeke’s bought one. I reckon he did it as soon as the kids asked, then borrowed Isolde to try and save face and pretend to be thinking about it.”
“Shmoop.” Lee shifted to face him, as best he could beneath the little girl and the mutt. “I’m sorry I freaked out today, Gid. Sorry I dragged you away from work.”
“It was nothing. Lawrence practically threw me out when she heard her favourite clairvoyant was in trouble. Made mincemeat out of Sergeant Lennox, too.”
“Lennox is a good copper. She was just scared.”
“So was I. You had a bad time of it, love.”
“I know. The full bleeding, puking, fugued-out performance.”
“When’s our next appointment at Trelowarren?”
“End of this
month.” Lee rubbed his brow against the pillow. “I love how you say our appointment, when it’s my scrambled mess of a brain that causes all these problems.”
“Your brains are my brains. That’s how this marriage thing works.”
“Ugh.”
“Make sure the date’s on the calendar. Mustn’t miss this one.” Edging carefully around Tamsyn, Gideon leaned in and made a softly-growling play of biting the back of Lee’s skull. “Attack of the zombie werewolf! Imagine the doctors’ horror, when the scan showed... no brains at all!”
“Pack it in, you clown. You’ll wake the kid.”
“I should probably take her through to bed anyway.”
“Don’t bother. It’s four in the morning. She might as well stay where she is. And I feel like... everybody’s where they should be tonight. It’s fine.”
Gideon considered this, listening to Lee’s breathing settle back into sleep. If the ship had gone down and the bed were a lifeboat, he had everyone he needed on board. He’d stop to pick up Ma and Zeke, of course. Toby and Mike and their mother, whose quiet administration of her preacher husband and twin boys had endeared her to him greatly. He’d better hoist Buster aboard too, hypothetical dog as he was at the moment, a dog in the bush.
And what about Elowen? Beginning to drift with his bed-boat into deep waters, Gideon shivered. His mind provided a scene half-pinched from Titanic, half his own work. Elowen, clinging to a spar of wreckage, cried out piteously to him to save baby Cadan, wrapped up cosily on the wooden board. The boat—pretty full now—wallowed and rocked on the tide. Still, he had to do what he could, and he steered towards her. He reached out and picked up the baby. This was a wish-fulfilment dream, apparently: Lee, stark naked and smiling, intercepted his next move. Ah, leave her to drown, Gid. Then you’ll never have to think again about how a nine-stone girl with no combat skills beat you hollow and stole your little girl.
Gideon liked that idea. And so, with Elowen falling away to the bottom of the sea, and everyone he loved gathered safe aboard his sacred vessel, he painlessly dissolved into sleep.
***
Alice Rawle had combat skills. She would weigh less than Elowen, dried out and drained by her gift, but she was fair game. Gideon’s mind solved its puzzle and dream-dumped him a year into the past, back into the road outside Dark primary school. Alice got out of the car. Gideon tried to approach her, and she held up her hand. And Gideon’s nose began to bleed, not Lee’s, and something inside him ached with a terrible hunger for change—a held-back sneeze magnified a thousand times over, an interrupted come.
He had no words for the feeling. And then it didn’t matter, because Tamsyn, held in Lee’s arms, raised her hand too. Pointed one casual finger... Alice folded like matchwood back into the car. The cessation of her pushing, pressing field of influence freed Gideon like a bird from a net. Gave him back command of limbs and action, even of his thoughts. In the dream he began to run.
His husband, kid and dog had manoeuvred him even closer to the edge of the bed, and he flipped overboard with a crash. “Fuck,” Lee said, waking up. Isolde began to bark, and Tamsyn, wide-eyed, raised her head. “Lee,” she whispered, small voice hoarse with sympathy, as if she’d have let him off if she could. “Swear box!”
“Sorry! Gid, what the f-... Are you all right?”
“Just barely.” He levered himself off the floor. “I was dreaming. I’ve unmasked your Launceston monster.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I think it’s Alice Rawle.”
Immediately Gideon wished the words unsaid. Monsters were best kept out of the bedroom. Daylight and a cup of tea in their cheerful kitchen would have been a better backdrop. But Lee, tough Falmouth deckhand as well as gentle seer, stretched out a hand to him. “Come here. What put her into your head?”
Gratefully he took the offered grasp and let Lee haul him back into the warm, rumpled safety of their lifeboat bed. There was just about room for him now that the dog had shifted her fat backside. “You did, on our way home. The counting and the wonderland thing.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You might not remember.” He put an arm around Lee’s shoulders. “I’m sure you were counting from one to five in Launceston because all five schools there were under threat, yeah. But in the car, you started counting down from five, and you said... it never was wonderland, but she certainly gave it her all.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, several times. Then you told me you were asleep. Look, sweetheart, this can wait till morning.”
“No. I’d best put this kid to bed, though. Come here, you.”
Tamsyn sat up and looked at him serenely. “It’s okay. Can do it myself.”
“Er... you can?”
“Yes, Lee. Take Zold and go to my proper bed.”
Her parents exchanged a wondering look. “Er... wow,” Lee said after a moment. “Okay. That would be great. And could you...” He paused, then went on experimentally, “Could you possibly wash your face, clean your teeth and change into your pyjamas?”
She nodded earnestly. “Can.”
She wasn’t exactly a chatterbox. Like her late attempts at walking, speech seemed to be something irrelevant, a chore for ordinary mortals. Lately, though, she’d begun small homely tasks for herself like getting dressed and making sentences, and before Gideon could begin to wonder about this latest development, she’d slipped neatly off the bed and headed for the door, Isolde at her heels like a hairy shadow. “Bloody hell,” he observed. “Should we let her?”
“I’ll go check on her in a few minutes. Alice Rawle, Gid?”
Lee was pale with shock. Gideon really would have kept his big trap shut if he’d had time to think. “I’m probably wrong. But you said I should subtract four, or four and three quarters, from some words you kept saying—she certainly gave it her all.”
“That’s a bit cryptic, isn’t it?”
“I know. But I think, when it’s a particularly bad one, your mind tries to make it as abstract as possible.”
“So abstract I can’t work it out myself? What’s the use of that?”
Don’t say that, don’t say that. Don’t ever ask what the point is, the use, if you can’t see the future or unmask a beast or whatever impossible task the world’s laid on you. Gideon held him tighter. His own world rocked sickeningly on its axis whenever he thought about Lee doubting himself in those terms. “You don’t have to work it out. You have a handsome, incredibly intelligent husband to do the thinking for you.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.” Lee shifted to see him. “Go on, then.”
“Okay. If you take away four and a bit words from she certainly gave it her all, that leaves us with all, and the R sound before it. And the wonderland part was obvious—I just didn’t want to think about it. Or her.”
“Oh, shit. You’re right. Alice Rawle.”
“I don’t get it. She’s nothing to us, isn’t she?”
Nothing but a memory from Lee’s childhood, and a minute on a sunny afternoon outside the school gates. Gideon kissed his brow. “Look, she might’ve been one of your stray signals, right? A dream.”
“Right. Or Sergeant Smartarse might’ve read my clues wrong.” A first trace of daylight was silvering the air. Lee pushed against Gideon’s shoulder, turning his face to the light. “I don’t think you did, though. And she’s not nothing to us, no. Because...”
“Because I should’ve followed up on her. On whatever the hell General Bolton-Reeves was doing, driving her into Dark village like a bloody guided missile. Why didn’t I?”
“I don’t know. All I remember is that he didn’t get far with his plans, because...”
“Because of our little missile. Maybe that was it. I couldn’t cope with anything more to do with our kid at that time, so I...”
“Shelved it? We both did that. Not just you.”
Gideon shivered in gratitude: what a bloody blessing it was, never to be left alone with the tough stuff! “Okay,” he
said, reaching a hand to Lee’s spine. “It’s still weird, though. I should’ve chased her up, made sure she was with that buttoned-up blimp of her own free will.”
“I don’t see how you could have. The blimp’s top brass. You’d need much more than a nosebleed and suspicions before the army would let you near her, even as a copper.”
“Maybe. But I didn’t even try. Never went after David Rawle, either, to see why he lied to us about her.”
“It is weird. Not too late, though.” Tensions gathered in Lee’s shoulders, an inner straightening of a spine that had carried too much of late. “If you can’t get to Alice, maybe I can help you reach Uncle Dave. He lied about his missus being alive. I can help you find him, at any rate. I can...”
A hot splash hit Gideon’s chest. Gideon gasped and sat up, grabbed a tissue from the box on the bedside table: shifted to kneel over and immobilise Lee, and dabbed the fresh blood from his upper lip. “No.”
“No what?”
“Listen to me. Do you remember last year, when this whole household was in meltdown over Dave Rawle and his bright ideas, and you told me that I could...” Gideon paused, settled a bit more of his weight. “That I could put my foot down with you? That I was the only person who could?”
Lee stared up at him. “I remember.”
“This is me doing it.”
“Oh.” One corner of Lee’s mouth quivered. Colour gathered under his skin. “Really, Sergeant?”
“None of your kinky stuff. I mean it. I want you to stop.”
“To... stop?”
“Yes. In a minute, I’m gonna go call Tollgate Road and get them to clue the Launceston lads in that their schools intruder might be Alice Rawle. That discharges my responsibility and yours, as far as we can do that in the middle of the night with nothing more to back us up than your hallucinations. Okay?” He waited until Lee had accorded him a nod and a pallid smile. “Okay. And then, just for a few weeks—the rest of this summer, say—you’re going to stop. Pack in your cold-reads, your police work, everything. Let all the monsters alone. I know you can build walls to shield yourself.”
