Authors: Nick Gifford
Flesh and Blood (8 page)
“I’ve got a job,” she said, in a tightly controlled voice. “I thought you might be interested.”
He looked up again, nodded. “Well done,” he said. Then he relented and added, “I mean it: well done. You didn’t hang about.”
She smiled, and came into the room. “Accounts Assistant at Sperry and Neeskens, shipping agents. Temporary cover for staff sickness. Starting tomorrow. I know, I should be looking for something better, but at least it’s something. A temporary job’s often a good way in, for when something more permanent comes along.”
“That’s what they told you, is it?”
She laughed. “That’s exactly what they told me,” she said. “And I really believed them at the time, too. Who knows? Something might come of it. At least I’ll be in a better position for when something better comes up – I’ve been out of the job market for so long, I need to prove I can still hack it. And it means some money in the bank, it means we can look for somewhere to live.”
Her expression was becoming more serious, more determined. “I’m going to make this work, Matt. At last it seems as if things are starting to fall into place. This is our chance to make a new start. You wait and see, Matt. Just you wait and see.”
It was finally, really, beginning to sink in. Despite all the talk, despite all he had thought, none of it had been real. But now... she really
was
going to stay in Bathside. She really was making a fresh start.
He lowered his head and stared blankly at the pages of his book.
Eventually, he heard a sound from the doorway and when he looked up he saw that she had gone. To pass on her good news to the others, no doubt.
He couldn’t help smiling at that: Tina, for one, was going to be delighted.
11 Tina
He’d thought Tina was strange. He’d thought she was over-protective. He’d even thought she was mad.
But he had never thought she would try to kill him.
~
Late the next morning, he was heading downstairs. She was on the first floor landing, watching him approach.
She was smiling. And he knew why. He had been forced to sleep with his window wide open in an attempt to conquer the fetid smell of decay, grateful for the warmth that lingered late into the summer night, woken early by the cool breeze that had come in from the sea just before dawn.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked, in an innocent tone.
He nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Never better. In fact, I’m getting to like that room.” He smiled broadly at her, and added, “You know, I’m really beginning to think of it as
my
room. Home sweet home. Could stay here forever – there’s plenty of space, after all: it’s a big house. What do you think?”
Her smile was fixed rigidly on her face now, making Matt think of the smile her mother determinedly wore whenever things became difficult for her.
“Really?” she said, hesitantly. “I thought...”
“I was joking,” said Matt. “J-O-K-E. Look it up in the dictionary, if you know how. You can relax. We’ll be going, sooner or later.” But then he couldn’t resist pushing her, and he added, “About six weeks, I reckon. Time for us to save up for a deposit on a place to rent.”
The look on her face was a reward in itself: the sheer rage, as if she was about to burst, like an over-filled balloon.
He smiled, and continued, “Still, it’ll be nice, won’t it? It’ll give us time to get to know each other. You, me, Kirsty. Plenty of time to become friends. Kirsty showed me how to play her racing game – the one you don’t like. Maybe I’ll race her some time.” He continued, enjoying himself: “And even then, when we find a place, we’ll always be nearby. We’ll be able to pop in whenever we feel like it. Won’t that be nice? We might even be neighbours...”
He turned away from her, thrilling at the mad, frustrated look on her face. He would go downstairs, maybe go out for a run or something.
He took the first step down, then heard a soft sound. It was a footstep on the landing, close behind him.
Then he felt a sudden push in his back, enough to knock him forwards, off-balance.
He put a foot out, trying to place it on one of the steps to catch himself, but he was tipping forward too fast.
He raised his hands and grabbed at the banister, but he couldn’t grip it, he was twisting, falling out of control.
He tucked his arms in to his body, hands before his face as he crashed into the stairs. A sudden bolt of pain stabbed through his body, then a numb blackness started to spread through his head, as the world went round and round, out of control.
~
He lay on his back, finally come to rest. It felt like hours must have passed. Days, weeks.
His head was pounding and the left side of his face felt numb, smothered with a strangely unfocused pain. His ribs ached, and his left ankle felt peculiar. He shifted the leg, relieved that he could move it, that it was not broken as he had initially feared.
He opened his eyes and gradually the world came into focus.
Tina was halfway down the stairs, her face pale, tears streaming down her cheeks. Suddenly, Matt wondered if this was the last thing his grandmother had seen.
He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his blurred vision.
Tina looked shocked, as if horrified at what had just happened... what she had just done. “Are you... are you...” Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to say more than that.
He pulled himself into a sitting position, ignoring the protests from his body, sensing the anger building.
As she came down the stairs, he scrambled to his feet, driven by an inhuman fury. He took a big step towards her, grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head back sharply.
The two of them fell over onto the stairs, Matt on top of his cousin, pinning her down, twisting her hair in his fist.
He had never been so angry in all his life.
He was going to get some sense out of her. Going to get the truth. And he was going to hurt her.
“Hey!”
Hands grabbed him, pinning his arms tightly against his sides, forcing him to loosen his grip on Tina.
“Hey.” The voice was softer now, calming.
He looked back over his shoulder, into Vince’s puzzled face. He slumped. The rage was gone, and for a moment he regretted its passing.
He looked down. Tina was sobbing, struggling to squirm free.
He shook himself free of Vince’s grip and then stood, backed away. He felt ashamed – guilty, even – and he was angry at feeling like that.
“She tried to kill me,” he muttered.
Vince looked from Matt to Tina, and started to smile. Then he started to laugh.
He clapped Matt on the arm. “Excellent!” he said, when he had managed to control himself. “You guys really crack me up. Come on, Matt. Let’s get out of here, before war breaks out.”
And he led Matt towards the front door, still laughing and shaking his head. “You guys,” he said again. Then: “What a family...”
12 Confrontation
“Are you going to tell me what that was all about now?”
They were down on the Promenade, Vince throwing stones into the surf, Matt watching a ferry slide across the horizon. All around them, the holidaymakers carried on, going about their business as normal. It was another world.
Only a matter of minutes had passed, yet it all seemed so long ago. Already, the pain in his ribs and face had eased and his ankle only hurt when he put his full weight on it. He made himself remember how he had felt: the anger... the anger had been an alien feeling, as if he had been temporarily possessed by some ancient spirit.
She had tried to kill him.
“She’s mad,” he said. It was difficult to put into words what had just happened. Difficult to express his rage. “She pushed me down the stairs. Came up behind me, caught me unawares. I could have broken my neck.”
Vince nodded. “I never really thought she’d have it in her,” he said, in an admiring tone. “I never thought she’d have the bottle.”
Matt stared at Vince’s pale features. “You don’t seem all that surprised,” he said.
Vince shrugged. “Like you say: the kid’s mad, isn’t she? One hundred per cent certifiable. What do you expect? You shouldn’t have given her the chance. And another thing: you’re going to have to be a bit more subtle, okay? If you beat her brains out, like you just tried to do, then everyone knows it’s you. Nobody ever gets anything by dumb revenge.”
He laughed, then hurled another rock out into the waves. “What a family,” he said again. He pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his leather jacket and lit one, then turned to Matt again. “Why’d she push you then?”
“She hates me,” said Matt. “She always has. Ever since we came here she’s been trying to get us to leave. She’s just over-protective, I suppose. She blames me for Kirsty’s funny turns.” He stopped, abruptly, but it was too late to retract what he had just said. He remembered Gramps’ warning about Vince:
You should be careful of that one. He doesn’t know how dangerous he is...
“Yeah?” said Vince, watching him carefully. “Why does she think that then?”
Was Vince trying to trap him into saying things he shouldn’t? But then he had just stopped Matt from attacking Tina... sometimes, despite everything, Vince seemed the sanest person in this mad household.
“It’s like you said that day we went out to Gramps’ house,” said Matt, not sure how much he should say, how much Vince already knew. “This family’s blighted: there’s a madness, a weakness. Tina thinks that just by being here I’m somehow making Kirsty worse – that’s what Kirsty told me, anyway. Gramps has taught Kirsty how to control the madness, but she says that because I don’t have this control, I’m disturbing things.”
Vince was nodding slowly. “You think that’s true?”
“Do you?”
“Like I told you,” he said, “you and Kirsty are the same. That day you blacked out in the basement, you looked just like Kirsty does when she has a turn: frozen rigid, your eyes staring. It happens because you’re sensitive to the place, so why shouldn’t it happen because you’re sensitive to each other too?” He paused, then said, “So Tina doesn’t like it, eh?”
Matt shook his head. “She says I’m a destabilising influence. Until I came along she was in charge, but she knows she can’t control me.”
“It’s more than that, though,” said Vince. “She’s missed out. This sensitivity runs in families, doesn’t it? But not everyone inherits it. Kirsty’s got it, you’ve got it. So where does that leave Tina? She’s just an ordinary girl and she hates it.”
Vince was envious. He was talking about this sensitivity as if it were a gift, Matt realised – just as Gramps had called it a gift. Maybe he could answer some of Matt’s questions, if only he would work out how to phrase them.
Vince broke the silence. “You thought I was the mad one when I talked about all this stuff before. Remember? So what’s changed your mind? Is it because you spoke to Kirsty? Or has something else happened?”
Vince was looking out across the bay and Matt couldn’t read his expression. Should he trust him, he wondered? But he had said so much already, he had little to lose by revealing a bit more.
Your talent must be mastered
, Gramps had said. But to do that he had to understand it first. He reached into his pocket for the letter. Slowly, he withdrew it, unfolded it, handed it to Vince.
Vince studied the letter, nodding occasionally, smiling. When he had finished, he peered at Matt through his dark fringe. “That’s what she called it, too. Alternity.” He stared out to sea through narrowed eyes and drew deeply on his cigarette.
“Who?” asked Matt, but Vince didn’t respond.
Finally, he said, “So now you believe. The big question is, how are you going to learn how to handle it?”
Matt reached out and took the letter from Vince’s grip. “How do you know about all this?” he said. “Gramps wouldn’t have told you.”
Vince shook his head. “Like I said before: I’ve studied these things. I’ve been stuck with this family for most of my life – I’ve had to make sense of all the weird things that have gone on. Gran was the only one who ever trusted me. None of the others will have anything to do with me, but she was okay. She thought I had a right to know why things were like this. She explained a lot, but not everything. I had to work some of it out for myself. Fill in the gaps. If you know where to look and who to speak to, you can find out all kinds of things.
“The old goat uses different language to describe it, but the kind of thing he’s talking about has been known to mankind for thousands of years. There have always been special places, and special people who know how to use them.”
“Gramps didn’t say anything about
using
the Way,” said Matt, thinking of all those graves, the lives lost when things had gone wrong in 1898. “He talked about defending it, or protecting it...”
Vince laughed. “Even though he has some of the sensitivity,” he said, “he’s just like Tina: scared of change, convinced that any development will be bad.”
“That makes sense to me.”
“Think about it! Why have you got this gift, if not to use it? Generations of gifted people have used their skills – healers, great leaders of men. Think of all the power just waiting to be tapped, and controlled – you must be aware of it, you must have felt it. Even I’ve felt it, and I’m not as sensitive as you. Read between the lines of the old goat’s letter, Matt: he’s telling you that you’re in charge. You’re a Wareden: a guardian – the Way through to Alternity is in your care, along with all the powers that, as the letter says, ‘emanate from this place’. It’s up to you, Matt, to use however you choose: in the letter he calls it ‘tapping into the power of the ancient’. Think of all the things you could do with that power!”
Vince was staring at him, grinning excitedly. “It’s up to you, Matt,” he said, “whether you use the powers you’ve been given, or whether you just turn away from them like your grandfather did.
“But one thing’s certain: you’ve got to learn to control them. Otherwise you’ll just crack up, or Alternity will take you by surprise one day and destroy you.”
Matt knew Vince was telling him the truth: he had come to exactly the same conclusion himself. He had to master his sensitivity, before
it
mastered
him
. “But how?” he said. “How do I learn to control it?”
“Confrontation,” said Vince, still grinning. “The only way to master Alternity is to confront it...”
~
Matt sat in the car, still not quite believing he was here, not quite believing he had let Vince talk him into coming to Crooked Elms. He wasn’t ready for this. He was too young to handle it.
But what about Kirsty, a voice inside his head reminded him? She was only four when her sensitivity had awakened and Gramps had taught her how to cope.
Vince was watching him with dark, intense eyes. “Are you going to learn to control it?” he asked softly. “Or are you going to let it control you?”
Matt ignored him, remembering the last time he had been here.
Vince took the bunch of keys from his jacket pocket and jangled them in front of Matt’s face. “Come on, Matt,” he said. “You’re different to the others. I noticed that when you were here in March. You’re tougher than the rest of them. You’re not the sort to bottle out, are you, Matt? Are you?”
Matt reached for the door and pushed it open. He wasn’t going to let Vince bully him into anything: this was his own decision, something only he could do. Something he had to confront. He thought of the dreams, of how they had become steadily more intense and disturbing – Alternity reaching out for him, trying to take a hold of his mind, he felt sure of that now.
He had to face up to it. The alternative was to lose his mind.
Outside, he leaned against the car and stared at the house’s front door. “So what do I do?” he asked, as Vince came round to join him.
“Reach out,” said Vince. “Can you feel it yet? The old goat called it an affinity with Alternity, a mental bridge. A Way is the place where that mental bridge becomes real. He said that in your head you have a key that links the real with the alternate. You just have to learn how to use it. Can you feel it yet?”
Matt could feel it, all right. Something just beyond his normal perception, beyond seeing or hearing. Beyond reality.
Vince opened the door and stepped inside. He paused in the hallway and looked back at Matt, his pale features ghostlike in the shadowy interior.
Matt swallowed, but the dry lump in his throat wouldn’t go. He made his feet move, followed Vince inside.
He stared at the door to the basement. “That’s where it is, isn’t it?” he said. It made sense. Gramps said that people tended to build churches and shrines at these special places – the Way was here before these buildings, so they must be rooted in the ground, in the bedrock below the soil.
The basement.
Matt stepped towards the door, but was stopped by Vince’s hand on his arm.
“Remember last time?” Vince said. “You just blacked out. Where’s the sense in that?”
“But I can control it now that I know what’s likely to happen. Gramps could. Kirsty can – at least some of the time.” He tried to think. “The key’s in my head. That’s what the letter said. I have to work it out.”
“Is there anything the old boy has told you that gives any kind of hint about how you get this control? What does Kirsty do? It must be something significant, but also something simple enough for a small girl to use. What does she do, Matt? Think!”
He remembered Kirsty’s words:
Gramps looked after me. He told me stories and taught me old poems that would help me close the doors in my brain
. Something special, yet simple enough for a small girl to use: those old poems that Gramps loved!
Words have a magic
, Gramps had told him, years ago.
They work the locks to the doors of the mind
. All those years ago, Gramps had been preparing him for this!
Something about the doors of the righteous – Gramps had taught him that one when he was small: he had used it to help settle him at night. Matt hadn’t understood it, but he had found that the strange words had seemed to shut out the dreams, the night terrors that had plagued his first stay in this house.
The doors of the righteous... what else was it?
He was on the right tracks, he realised. Even thinking about those words was sending a wave of reassurance through his mind: calming him, helping him think. How had it gone?
“You know, don’t you, Matt?”
He nodded. “I think so,” he said. “Special words. If only I can remember them.”
“Say them out loud, Matt. Assert yourself.”
He started hesitantly.
“Never the doors of the righteous be breached.” It was coming back to him!
“The minds of the pure are our shield,
“Protect us from evil, protect us from fear...”
What was the rest of it? “Shine light where the shadow concealed.”
Silence. A stillness so absolute it was as if time itself had paused.
He stepped towards the basement door. “I’m going down there,” he said. “Down to where it’s strongest.”
He went down the stone stairs.
The basement was the same as before: piles of boxes and accumulated junk retreating into the shadows. He walked on a concrete floor, next to smoothed brick walls that glistened with moisture. The basement was lit by a pool of light from a single bare bulb suspended from the middle of the low ceiling.
He turned around, passing through 360 degrees. This place felt ancient, he realised – a chamber in the ground that was far older than the house itself. He remembered last time: how his feet had grown so heavy, just as in the dreams. How he had been almost unable to move, struggling to drag himself across the floor. How he had finally collapsed on the stairs, where Vince had found him.
The heat struck him first, an intense wave passing over him, as if he was about to faint.
Then it was suddenly a huge effort simply to breathe.
“The words, Matt.” Vince had followed him, he realised.
He struggled to turn his head, to look at his cousin.
“Never the doors of the righteous be breached.”
He filled his lungs as the weight momentarily lifted.
“The minds of the pure are our shield,
“Protect us from evil, protect us from fear,
“Shine light where the shadow concealed.”
“Confront it, Matt! Assert yourself!”
He peered at Vince’s white face, his staring eyes. How?
The words, he thought. The power is in the words. He should
change
the words, then. Take control of them. Twist them, shift them, reverse them. As soon as he thought that, it seemed the right thing to do...
“Never the shield of our minds be breached.” He didn’t know what he was saying, or why he was saying it... the words just seemed to rearrange themselves on his tongue.
So easy.
So tempting.
“Shine shadow, where light had concealed.”
The basement was shifting, rearranging itself just as the words were doing.
“Protect us from evil, protect us from fear –”
The air was wavering, so that it was like looking through a lens, like looking into a distorting mirror.