Influence (2 page)

‘Just you
stay out of it you little slut,’ Tabby said venomously. Lizzie threw her head
back and raised her arms in exaggeration for the benefit of the onlookers.

‘Will you
two please make up your minds, am I a slut or a trampy little dyke? And besides
Little Miss Perky Tits you ought to be careful about throwing the name slut
around since Bitch Tits here has made a point of bragging to the entire school
about your sex life. Although it utterly beats me how on earth you two manage to
get it on, how
do
you hump a whale exactly?’ Raucous laughter was now
heard throughout the crowd, even from Bitch Tit’s corner.

‘I am not
fat,’ he exploded, spittle flying. ‘It’s bloody water retention.’

‘It’s
fucking cake retention big boy,’ said Lizzie taking hold of the Adams brother’s
arms and leading them through the crowd, which parted victoriously.

‘Are you
okay?’ asked Lizzie, retaking her seat in the Library and closing her books
over, resigned that no work would be getting done while the boys were present.
‘Is your robe ruined?’

‘I’m fine,’
said Robe, as if nothing at all had happened. ‘I can mend this.’   

‘So what
did you do Rob?’ said Vic using his brother’s proper name, the only person to
do so other than the teaching staff, and even then there were one or two who
slipped up now and again.

‘Why do you
assume I did something? I can assure you whatever has vexed Blair had nothing
to do with me.’

‘You must
have done something,’ said Lizzie.

Vic and
Robe had taken the seats opposite her at the table, which Lizzie was glad of,
she liked the guys, between the two of them they amassed her sum total of
friends not only in school but really anywhere these days, but Blair did have a
point. On a good day Robe emitted a certain funk, but on a bad day, that is to
say a hot day such as this one he, or rather his robe, was utterly pungent.

‘Did you
have a run in with him today?’ asked Vic.

‘No, the
first I saw of him today is when he slammed me against a locker.’

‘What about
Tabby? Did something happen with her?’ said Lizzie suddenly understanding why
she was spitting mad today.

‘Tabby? No,
at least not really, I had a class with her this morning, Physics. But I can’t
fathom why she would be upset with me.’ Robe’s eyes searched the air thinking
back to his class. Vic looked upwards too, wondering where his brother’s gaze
was pointed. Lizzie shook her head at him. To look at the boys they could quite
easily pass for twins, both tall, clearing six feet with identical hair:
straight, dark brown, chin length and slick. Both had the same habit of pushing
fallen strands behind their ears at least twice in every minute. Physical
appearance, though, in addition perhaps to their social awkwardness, was just
about where their similarities ended. Robe was two years younger than his
brother, but before Lizzie had gotten to know them she would have guessed that
he was the elder. He was an inch or so taller than Vic, but it was his eyes
that aged him; an intellect lived there, which did not habit his brother’s.

‘There was
one thing,’ said Robe drumming his fingers on his chin. ‘We were doing an exam
quiz in class and were divided into groups, Tabby was in mine. We were given
worksheets with a series of astronomical observations, from which we were to
identify the appropriate stellar phenomena based on the information provided.
All simple enough, until Tabby insisted the answer to one was a binary star.
Well, long story short, she was wrong. According to the data provided it was
quite clearly a variable star, most likely a Cepheid Variable based on the
regularity of the pulse cycle and its magnitude behaviour, which in this
particular scenario was-’

‘This is
the short version?’ interrupted Lizzie, ‘please tell me you have a point, and
that you’re getting to it?’

‘Well yes,
Tabby was quite resolute in her ignorance, and I was forced to point out
exactly where she was deluding herself. Anyway she got quite cross as the class
stopped to listen to the debate. Well, hardly a debate since there was no point
to discuss, she was wrong and that was that.’ Robe shrugged his shoulders and
fished two cellophane wrapped sandwiches from his bag and handed one to his
brother.

‘Thanks,
what’s on them?’

‘Cheese.’

‘Do you
want half of mine?’ Vic thrust a sweaty looking sandwich at Lizzie.

‘Not really
hungry, but thanks,’ she said trying to stop her nose from wrinkling. ‘So Tabby
obviously didn’t take kindly to your correction then, and went running to
Blair.’ Robe shrugged again, chewing furiously. ‘You should be careful,’ she
said. ‘They’ll take any excuse to start things with you. And if you go around
embarrassing his girlfriend, he’ll never leave you alone.’ Robe’s eyebrows shot
up incredulously.

‘
She
embarrassed herself, by being grossly misinformed. I merely... educated her. If
anything she should have been grateful.’ Robe was either unaware, or didn’t
care that particles of his cheese sandwich were escaping his mouth as he
talked. ‘I don’t understand why they keep coming after me anyway.’

‘It’s
because you’re different Robe, you’re two years younger than everyone in your
year and you’re more intelligent than most of the teachers here. You shouldn’t
have to, but it might be easier for you to try to keep a lower profile.’

‘
You
don’t,’ countered Vic, pointing at Lizzie’s chest. Lizzie looked down at her
attire, the uniform was there, as was required of all students, the black skirt
and the red and yellow checked blouse, but Vic’s point was the bright t-shirt
blazing through the open front.

‘Yeah, but
it doesn’t bother me,’ she said. ‘I was only ever going to be here for a year,
so there’s no point in trying to blend in. And besides, if those idiots want to
waste their time thinking their bullshit upsets me, at least they’re leaving
someone else alone.’

The bell
rang again and the boys started to gather their things together. Lizzie pulled
open her books once more; she had another study period before her afternoon
class. Vic wrapped up the remainder of his sandwich and handed it to his
brother, who opened his satchel wide to repack it. As he did Lizzie caught
sight of an open envelope sitting brazenly amongst the other contents, stuffed
full of cash. She wondered if she could ask about it, but as she debated with
herself the moment passed and the boys slung their bags over their shoulders and
made to leave.

‘See you
this afternoon?’ asked Vic.

‘Sure,’ she
said.

‘Thanks for
your assistance earlier Liz,’ said Robe glancing over her shoulder at her maths
equations. ‘The first one’s wrong, but the other three are fine,’ he said as
they left. Lizzie threw her pen back into the fold of the book once again and
pushed it away from her in frustration.

Brother
Kelly reached out and rested his hand on the door handle. He leaned forward,
twisted and found it unlocked. The door opened noiselessly at first, but then a
groan rumbled from the hinge. He paused, breath held, then, after a moment’s
silence, continued. The door swung without further protest and the monk stepped
into the room. He was familiar with the layout even though he had never been in
this particular room before. The monk’s own rooms were identical, just enough
furniture to facilitate one’s needs with little in the way of comfort to
complicate life. The bed lay directly under the solitary window at the far end.
A dresser adjacent to the door was the only other furniture, on top of which
lay an unlit candle within a brass holder and a small brown rucksack. Brother
Kelly looked across the dark room, the pale half moon illuminating, without
fervour, the figure lying motionless, face-up, upon the bed. The monk’s heart began
to pound in his chest. He stood silently in the doorway examining the figure,
trying to see if the eyes were open or closed. A minute passed and no sound or
motion was forthcoming from the sleeping man. He edged forward and removed the
rucksack from the dresser.

He wasn’t
entirely sure what he was looking for. It hadn’t been fully explained to him -
anything
suspicious
, but what did that mean? When this man had turned up, paying
cash, giving the name John Smith and asking about the old library, not the small
new library in the modern section of the abbey, but the one the monks use,
alarm bells somewhere had been rung. Of course his error was explained to Mr
Smith, no such library existed, and had not for a very long time, but he did
not seem at all satisfied with this. So now the monk crept around his room like
he once might have, a strung out junkie searching for jewellery to pawn, such
was his life prior to his spiritual salvation, back when he was Vince Kelly. He
was to find anything which might paint a clearer picture of Mr Smith. He felt
dirty, but Padre Isaac, the order’s elder, had asked this of him personally, so
it would be done.

The rucksack
revealed nothing; the contents consisted only of some clothes, some cash and
travel maps. Brother Kelly replaced it carefully and slowly opened the door to
the built-in wardrobe. It was empty. He was now perilously close to the man
sleeping silently on the bed, and the risk of waking him was ever increasing.
He had, of course, prepared a cover story should the man discover him, but he
had never been the best of liars and he was desperate to vacate.

Brother
Kelly conceded he would find nothing of note, but at least he had fulfilled his
task. He backed towards the door, eyeing the sleeping Mr Smith as he did. He
was closing the door over softly, when he paused, something was not right, it
had only now occurred to him. The old man was absolutely silent. Too silent.
There was no sound of air inhaled or exhaled. His chest was neither rising nor
falling, and the way he was laying there face up, hands folded on his chest
like an undertaker’s vision of eternal rest, all dignified but unnatural,
was... wrong.

He stared
transfixed for an epic minute waiting for some sign of life, but nothing. Dread
and an old, but familiar feeling of paranoia washed over him. If this man was
dead, was it some sort of set up? Vince’s fingerprints were now all through his
possessions. Sweat left him in panicked gushes; his hands trembled as he braced
himself on the frame of the bed and he lowered his head over the man’s mouth,
his ear poised in anticipation of a breath, some relief from his worst fears.

A cold vice
snapped around the monk’s throat. His hands shot to his neck as his feet left
the floor. He clawed at the old man’s nobbled and twisted hand holding him, the
thin papery skin and loose flesh of the elderly arm betrayed the strength
locking him in place. He screamed, in his head, for help, but his plea could
not leave his mouth. A tortured cluck was all he could manage and Vince stared
forward into bottomless obsidian eyes. Locked in the titan gravity of those
black holes he dropped his hands to his sides; fear, confusion and fight left
him.

The
creature held the monk firmly in place. It had been aware of the man entering
the room, but it had allowed him to show his hand before taking action. It was
only a matter of time, it supposed, before the mask that was the arthritic old
man would have to be removed.

The
creature flooded Vince’s consciousness; it searched through decades of benign
human tedium but locked in quickly to its target. The mind of the old man it
currently occupied began to stir as the creature flowed into the monk. The
creature sensed the old man rousing from his slumber and raised Vince’s hands
to his throat ensuring he could not cry out. There they remained, three
entities locked in a bizarre knot while information flowed like electricity
through a junction box. The monk knew frustratingly little, or it was expertly
hidden. The creature had neither the patience nor time to interrogate his mind
any further, it pushed through and into the monk, locking him into a cell at
the furthest reach of his mind.

Consciousness
was creeping back into his previous vessel. The old man’s face snapped back to
life, as he took in the room and those eyes, those black eyes he had seen once before.
His twisted, useless hands flapped at the creature. Panic threatened to burst
from him and would have done so if his neck had not been savagely snapped by
the hands of the monk.

The
creature searched the robes of the monk it now wore and found a heavy set of
keys. It left the room and made its way down to the bottom floor and along the
main corridor which led to the dining hall. From there it made its way then
into the kitchen where a previous search had proved fruitless, but the monk’s
knowledge now drew the creature to the larder. The appropriate key was produced
and pushed into a small nook on the side wall. The key turned with a satisfying
clunk and the wall swung forward revealing a long staircase that led down a gentle
slope. The light-switch was located on the wall and it followed the stairs down
some thirty feet to a long and very old corridor.

The dull
lights, barely illuminating the way, buzzed as it swiftly strode down the long
straight path. The creature realised it was now under the garden area at the
rear of the new Blisland Abbey building and heading for the ruins of the original
abbey it had also unsuccessfully searched. Not a stone had been left unturned
of the old ruin which reached up through the gardens like a skeletal hand, but
the subterranean entrance it had hoped for had not been located. A large wooden
door stood before it now and would not yield. It searched through the set of
keys trying each, not knowing which would fit, because the monk did not know.
This was as far as the man had been shown by the elder priest.

After a few
failed attempts another deep clunk reverberated up the arm of the monk as the
correct key turned. The door swung out revealing a wide hall, the strained
yellow light struggled to expose the full extent of the ancient library before
it.

Within the
hall lay twenty or so alcoves with a writing desk sitting in the centre of
each. On the walls stood immense shelves bowing with the weight of the leather
bound books upon them. A hundred men working round the clock would take a
decade to make even a cursory inspection of each volume. However, the alcoves
the creature could discount instantly. It was not a book it hunted and what it
pursued would not be left exposed to prying eyes. The creature proceeded down
the hall to the far wall where a particularly deep alcove lay. It searched
along the walls and quickly found a solid looking door above which was a symbol
etched into the stone confirming the correct place had been located. A crude
motif of a book surrounded by three crowns marked this doorway as the end of
his search. Each key in the monk’s possession was tried in the lock, and it was
without surprise the creature found no match.

Unperturbed
the creature slammed the foot of the monk into the solid door. The noise that
echoed through the library was tremendous. The door frame shuddered but
resisted. The creature did not know if the noise of its efforts could be
detected, but it could not risk discovery now. It removed one of the writing
desks from an alcove and backed up as far as it could. Its preternatural
strength was concentrated on the makeshift battering ram as it sprang forward.
The resulting collision reduced both desk and door to matchwood, the scant
remains hung defeated from its hinges and the creature entered.

The near
darkness would have made searching the room impossible for human eyes but the
creature’s own behind that of the monk’s welcomed the dark, it was in its own
realm.

The small
room’s walls again were lined with heavy shelving, but no books stood upon them,
only parchment. Rolls of ancient paper were carefully placed in some order
known only to those who had catalogued the contents. There were only a handful
of scrolls and searching through them proved quick, but futile. These ancient
documents would be treasure to some, but the scroll it had been sent to
retrieve was not amongst them, and so they were worthless.

When it had
been taken from here was unknown but the creature had obviously been careless
in its pursuit. This monk who had come to the room had been sent, the task must
have been known or, at least, suspected.

The scroll
was gone.

The
creature’s summoner would not be pleased.