Idea in Stone (43 page)

The scratchman pulled the cord from its neck, leaving two small holes that leaked smoke. It moved toward Stefan, who was still dumbstruck by the thing’s voice. It folded the abacus rosary into Peter’s inert hand and tore off his shirt. Feeling for displacements of bone and muscle in Peter’s body, it roughly shifted him back into shape like a chiropractor of the mortally wounded. It then drew its finger down the centre of Peter’s chest. A faint line appeared. The scratchman traced a mathematical problem there, then another, faster, and another and another. Stefan’s eyes couldn’t follow the shapes and figures, which now figured and resolved, divided and spread on their own.

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” insisted the priest.

It gave him a disgusted look, then opened its arms to show its own body, the result of such a ceremony. For countless years it had been substantiating itself, and knew better than anyone how it managed to exist. It no longer wanted that existence, and willingly gave it to Peter.

“But his purpose?” asked the old man, pacing wildly through the room.

“His purpose,” interjected Stefan, “is just to be Peter Hailes, so I can love him.”

The scratchman looked up at him and smiled.

The smile vanished, replaced with a panicked look as the figure stood up. It turned around and Stefan saw a slash in its cloak, exposing the grey skin—a ragged symbol that was undoing the creature. The scratchman fell to the floor, and Stefan saw the priest standing there, holding a piece of coloured glass in his hand. He moved toward the table, where impossible mathematics continued to dance across Peter’s skin.

The colour drained completely from Peter’s chest, then his face. His features turned pure white, the mathematical figures there barely discernible. The dark brown of his hair desaturated, becoming a dark, bluish grey, like ash except for the soft flow of it.

The priest ran at them with his dagger of glass, and Stefan prepared himself for the blow. He wouldn’t lose Peter again. Before the priest reached them, though, he was pulled backward into the air. The scratchman held him aloft, swinging back and forth.

The creature’s other arm unravelled, trailing bits of matter like pencil shavings that smoked and vanished as they fell. It pinned the priest to the ceiling and adjusted its grip to encircle the old man’s throat. The man slashed at the scratchman’s old grey flesh repeatedly, severing an ear, cutting its face, but the thing wouldn’t loosen its grip. It turned for one last look at the lovers, then redoubled the force it applied to the priest’s neck. The scratchman’s cloak fell to the floor in a cloud of smoke and dust, and the old man fell on top of it, dead.

Stefan looked down at Peter, who opened his eyes. The eyes were no longer brown, but white circles around huge, surprised pupils. He took a gasping breath, and blinked. He looked down at his shirtless body, holding out his perfectly white hands with grey nails. He looked to Stefan for an explanation.

“You died,” said Stefan.

Peter looked away, thinking as he took in the surroundings of the dank cellar. He looked back to Stefan.

I know.

“I can hear you!” said Stefan.

You always could, couldn’t you?

Peter looked at the crumpled shape of the priest on the floor.

“A Matholic priest,” explained Stefan. “They’re the ones who put me in touch with my father. They saw the things that were happening here, and they thought I was responsible. They created the creature who’s been chasing me. But he knew I wasn’t responsible for all this. Well, not completely. He’s the one who brought you back.”

Back. Yes.
Peter’s thoughts drifted. There were no words for a moment, and Stefan couldn’t follow.
My family,
he thought, looking at Stefan, frightened.
The storm.

“You’re right. We have to warn them, get them out of the city.”

Peter stood, his trousers hanging around his hips, his torso straight and lean and undamaged. He stretched his hands and moved his neck around.
What am I?
he thought.

“I don’t know,” answered Stefan. “I know it was selfish bringing you back, but I just couldn’t—”

Peter moved to him and put his arms around him. Stefan was shocked at his touch: he felt like an object, not another person.

I’m here, and that’s where I want to be.

“Let’s go to your family,” said Stefan, rubbing the cold arms. He touched Peter’s chest, looking at the faint tracings of patterns in his white skin. “We should get you covered up.”

Peter looked at the priest. Without hesitating, he went to the body and lifted it up as if it weighed nothing. He threw the robe to the floor and took the man’s high-necked jacket, then dropped the body. He put on the jacket and buttoned it all the way to the top. He tilted his head down and looked at Stefan.

Stefan shuddered. Peter was a scratchman, and he couldn’t help being frightened.

Peter grabbed Stefan’s hand and pulled him toward the cellar doors. His other hand passed through a shadow and he stopped, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, relishing the feeling. He let go of Stefan’s hand and stepped toward the darkness.

“Don’t go,” said Stefan, taking Peter’s hand back. “I don’t know if I can follow you, and I don’t want to lose you.”

Peter nodded and returned to him.

“This is yours,” said Stefan, handing him the abacus rosary. “I think you’re supposed to have it.”

As it touched Peter’s fingers, his expression changed. He ran his thumb back and forth over a line of the beads.
My family are okay
, he thought. He looked at Stefan.
Let’s go
.

They ran up the stairs, hand in hand, out into the early evening. In the distance, they saw the clouds still roiling over the city.

~

Peter touched Stefan’s hand as he approached the front door of the house.
I can’t go in
.

Stefan understood. “What should I tell them?”

I don’t know,
answered Peter, devastated.
Just tell them I’m gone. But get them out of the city.

Stefan nodded and squeezed Peter’s hand. Peter moved away soundlessly to look through the window as Stefan knocked on the door.

~

They wandered back toward town, the job done. Peter ached at the hurt he’d caused his family. Seeing him like this wouldn’t have helped them. He knew he didn’t exist anymore as their son or brother.

Stefan watched the sky as they wended their way through the dark. The clouds hung like a low canopy over the city, but the storm had calmed itself.
The temple
, thought Stefan. He looked to Peter, who was preoccupied, and seemed unable to hear him. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see who made it back from the ambush.”

~

Peter felt even worse when he saw the aftermath of the group’s plan to free him. He kept to the edges of the room, out of the light of the candles and lanterns, but the space was dark enough that his appearance was not exceptionally noticeable. The people gathered there were taken up with helping the injured. Some were merely bruised, scraped, or cut, but others lacked entire limbs. They were in shock, not pain, and their stumps were smooth, as if those arms and legs had never existed. At the back of the room were the less fortunate, figures missing quarters or halves of their bodies, looking like they’d been born that way and somehow managed to grow into adulthood.

“How many are missing?” Stefan asked one of the volunteers.

“We don’t know,” she answered. “We never kept tabs on who’d joined us.” She turned from the person she was helping and whispered. “What really bothers us is that we’re sure there were more of us before, but we don’t know who they were.”

Stefan nodded. “Have you seen Rab?” he asked her.

She looked puzzled, then annoyed with herself for forgetting who Rab was.

“Thanks,” he said, leaving her. He searched for Peter, and found him huddled in a corner, fingering the tiny racks of beads on his rosary. “Rab’s gone,” he reported.

Peter nodded.

“It’s not your fault,” said Stefan. “If anything, it’s mine. I was the one who got them involved in—” He shook his head. “No. It’s not my fault, either. Everyone’s involved in this.” He slumped down next to Peter and leaned on the wall. “I wish I knew what to do.”

Peter looked at the tiny abacus in front of him as if he saw something there. His fingers twiddled across it of their own accord, as if some arcane knowledge of the device’s use came along with his scratchman nature. He flipped to the next abacus for a moment, ticking the tiny beads back and forth, then moved to the next and the next.

He turned to Stefan, his eyes two bright zeroes in the darkness.
I found your father.
 

Twenty-Seven

Dad

Delonia Mackechnie walked up the Royal Mile. It wasn’t as she remembered from her visit with Robert decades before. It wasn’t just that the shops had changed; things were
missing
. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders with one hand and held onto her hat with the other: the wind was picking up.

Something is wrong here,
she thought. The sound of thunder rolled across the sky. Blue-grey clouds churned overhead. She sped up her steps.

She had no idea where she was going, or what she was doing here. All she knew was that Stefan needed her. Immediately after her concert, she’d gone home and packed a bag to travel. As she left the house, she had a funny feeling she wouldn’t be back. Though she’d shared that house with Robert, she felt strangely unsentimental about leaving it. She shut the door, locked it, and got in a taxi to the airport. As the taxi pulled away, she looked back at the window from which she’d watched Stefan leave her.

Now she was walking up the Mile, her ankles wiggling as she walked over the cobbled pavement. Lightning flashed, frightening her. She sang quietly to herself, since that always helped to calm her down.

For a moment, everything went black. When she could see again, Delonia noticed that the pavement beneath her feet was smooth—tarmac, not stones. Her song became more insistent as she improvised lines about the confusion around her. She sang about the cathedral as she approached it, wondered in verse about the forgotten saint it was named after, and looked up at its crown-like steeple.

In front of the building, Delonia watched a piper in full regalia, who packed up his pipes and counted the money that listeners had thrown into his instrument case. He took a few steps away and the ground rumbled. He looked at Delonia, who felt the sensation, too. She stared at him as he looked down at the spot on which he stood: The Heart of Midlothian, a heart made of bricks, set into the pavement, which people had been spitting on superstitiously for hundreds of years. The bricks rumbled beneath his feet, then oozed wetness. Before he could move, the pavement blew open beneath the piper’s feet, shooting forth a torrent of liquid. Delonia fell to the ground, while the piper sailed higher and higher until he vanished into one of the dark clouds.

Panicked, Delonia redoubled her singing. She saw some kind of light, or lack thereof, pouring from the clouds in beams. As they struck the church, the beams blasted away its ornaments and features, turning them to sand. In moments, the cathedral was a plain block with a rectangle sitting on top of it.

Delonia kept singing as a beam passed over her, plucking at every stitch of her clothing, her hair, and her skin. She watched as it left her and struck a tall green statue on a pedestal and reworked it into a large, featureless concrete block. Her flowing, colourful handmade clothes had been turned into a grey dress-suit. Her hat was now a fast food wrapper, tumbling away. Perplexed, she looked at the shoppers with bags across the street. They continued their walking, unbothered by any of what she saw, not seeming to notice it.

Delonia found a small swatch of the piper’s tartan on the ground. She crawled to it and stuck it into her breast pocket, unable to abide being colourless.

~

Peter led Stefan as they ran, stopping in doorways and under arches to wait for clear passage through the streets.

Stefan squeezed Peter’s hand. “I’m so glad you’re with me,” he said.

Peter smiled in response. Despite the lack of colour in Peter’s eyes, Stefan got the same feeling he always had from them. Whatever Peter had become, something about him was the same, the thing Stefan first loved about him. Stefan felt like he could do anything when he was with Peter.

Thunder clapped and Stefan looked at the sky. Angry, he said to Peter, “I’m going to go back to Morton and stop him. My father can wait.”

Peter looked worried. He shook his head and held Stefan close.

“It’s worth a try,” insisted Stefan. “Otherwise, we’ll lose everything. I’m going.”

Peter grabbed Stefan’s arm with surprising strength. He threw Stefan back into the shadows and hugged him tight. Air rushed around them, then they tumbled out of the shadows onto the damp ground of a riverbank.

“Where are we?” asked Stefan.

Peter clutched his abacus rosary. Images flashed through his mind, snippets of interleaving patterns.
I’m sorry,
he thought.
I’ve got some things to find, and you have to find your father. I’m sorry.