Kill Fish Jones (12 page)

‘Is the lady going to be OK?' he asked.

The ambulance man smiled. ‘I reckon so, kid. She needs some care and attention right now, so we're taking her to the hospital at Blackheath, but my guess is she'll be fine.'

Fish nodded, as relief rushed through him in a tidal wave. His mother was going to be all right.

‘Did you see anything?' asked the ambulance man. There was a shout and he looked away for a moment. When he looked back Fish had disappeared.

Perched on top of the cafe, Grimshaw flipped his tail irritably as feelings of confusion and anger fought for possession inside him. Not a single one of the possible futures that he had seen when arranging the Junk Event had shown the boy bending down to pick up a coin.

In doing so, the boy had set off a chain of events that had led to Susan Jones diving across the road to be mown down by a car! It was fortunate that the car had only caught her a broadside blow instead of hitting her head-on. Otherwise Grimshaw would have killed his main target before he had finished the loved ones! The thought made him go hot and cold all over.

And then there was the issue of the boy himself. It was incredible, but Fish Jones was clearly gifted with extra-special vision. He had seen Grimshaw plain as day, there was no doubt about that. Grimshaw wondered briefly if it was the extra-special vision that had caused Fish Jones to survive, but dismissed the idea. Extra-special vision was not responsible for the sudden appearance of a coin where no coin had been before.

He sat for a while, turning it all over in his mind, but could come up with nothing to explain what had happened. The only possible answer was that he had missed a potential future, overlooked it somehow. It didn't seem very likely, but what else could it be? He groaned wearily. He was never going to hear the end of this one.

‘GET YOUR SCRAWNY RUMP BACK HERE AT ONCE!' screamed the voice of Lampwick in his head, right on cue. ‘I WANT A REPORT, AND IT HAD BETTER BE GOOD!'

Grimshaw closed his eyes briefly, but there was no point trying to resist. Already, he could feel the command taking hold, making him shiver and twitch all over. He could fight it for a short while, but sooner rather than later the compulsion to obey would win out. So he gave in, turned his chronometer to zero and went back to Limbo.

Leaving the ambulance man to get back to work, Fish had slipped away down a quiet side road. He kept looking around for the demon, but it had gone. He didn't know what he would have done if he had seen it. He wanted to scream at it, hurt it, damage it somehow as revenge for all it had done, but he knew those feelings were pointless. The creature wasn't made of flesh, nor could he make it suffer remorse. He was powerless to do anything but run.

As he stumbled on, shaking with fear and rage, he tried to think about what to do next. He knew that the accident had been meant for him, that the demon killed off the main target's loved ones first and then dealt with the main target. As long as Fish was alive, Susan would be safe, because the creature wouldn't attack her until she had suffered enough. Until she had seen her only child die.

At the thought, Fish clenched his fists, his nails digging hard into his palms. He couldn't let it happen. He
wouldn't
let it happen. Somehow he had to find a way to stay alive.

Fish had always looked after his mother, which was interesting because
she
thought that she always looked after
him
. But Susan couldn't see the creatures that Fish saw, and so there were some things that only he could do. And right now, even though he desperately wanted to be with her, he knew that the best way he could look after her was to keep out of the way of the demon. If he couldn't do that, then they were both dead. So his only real option was to keep going until he reached Crow's Cottage. The creature would find him there eventually, but he hoped that out in the wilds he would spot it coming. And with no scaffolding, electric saws, cars or any other number of lethal everyday things around, its options for a murder weapon would be limited.

With a new determination, Fish took stock. He had the clothes he stood up in, a pound coin and a few ten pences and coppers, and the map he had drawn of Crow's
Cottage. Feeling in his back pocket, he also found a foldout road map that Susan had bought earlier. He wished he had thought to pull on his jumper before they left the car. It was warm enough now, but if it rained, or he had to spend the night in the open, he would miss it.

Turning a corner, he found a quiet road leading to a field. On the other side of the field he found a gap in the surrounding hedge and struggled through to another road, which he crossed. Then there were more fields, layered one after the other to the horizon. Shading his eyes against the early-morning sun, he thought he could see another small town nestling in the middle of the fields, so he headed for that.

After he had been running, then jogging, then walking for a while, Fish began to feel calmer. Although he couldn't stop thinking about Susan, his stomach began to tell him that he was hungry. He was angry with it because it had no right to go on behaving as if nothing had happened, but it rumbled at him all the same.

He had reached the next town by now and there were plenty of cafes on the high street advertising breakfast, but that would be too painful because eating breakfast in a cafe was where he should have been with Susan. Anyway, he had very little money and there were other things he needed more than food.

So Fish ignored his stomach and bought a postcard, a stamp and a phone call instead.

The phone call was to Jed. It was no use ringing Alice, because her mother had an answering machine and the
chances of actually getting Alice to pick up were too slim to risk. So instead Fish gave Jed precise instructions.

‘Go to Alice as soon as you can and repeat everything I tell you.'

‘Uh huh. I can go now if you like.'

‘As soon as we've finished talking.'

‘Righto! What do you want me to tell her? Hey! They knocked your house down! I saw it! It looks awful, Fish. Are you all right? Were you in it?'

Fish shook his head out of habit, then remembered that he was on the telephone and had to speak.

‘No, Jed. I'm all right. Tell Alice I need her to post me as much money as she can manage …'

‘OK.'

‘Jed!'

‘Yeah? I was going now …'

‘You need the address to send it to.'

‘Uh huh. What's that then?'

‘Have you got a pen and a piece of paper?'

‘No.'

‘Get some and come back to the phone, but be quick.'

There was a rattle and a clunk. Fish had a horrible thought that Jed had hung up and cut him off, but then he heard Jed asking his mother for a pen. In his mind's eye he could see his friend, still surrounded by that childish glow that most kids his age had already lost. A moment later Jed was back.

‘I've got a pen and a page of Mum's notebook!'

‘Write this down.' Fish spelled out the address, including spaces and commas, very slowly. He could hear Jed breathing hard as he wrote it down in his big, odd printing.

‘Now take it to Alice.'

‘Uh huh.' The phone clanked down and Fish was left listening to the empty wire, something he always hated. It never failed to give him the creeps.

‘
Hello, little boy
,' whispered nobody. ‘
Stay and talk to me
.'

Fish hung up fast.

‘Well, I'm not surprised it didn't work!' Lampwick was saying for the umpteenth time. ‘You tried to brain him by dropping a … a … lump of old junk on him! It's no wonder you missed …'

‘It was a
piece of satellite
and it fell from the sky. Why don't you
listen
properly. The point is that the futures went wrong …'

‘You missed one, you mean! You'll end up as bad as Wimble.'

‘… and he's got
extra-special vision
!' Grimshaw looked hopeful. ‘That might mean something.'

‘So what? The boy's a freak of nature – it's got nothing to do with the futures. No curse demon with an ounce of gumption would let a silly little thing like that throw him. And why can't you STOP TWITCHING?'

‘Because I was made by YOU!' snarled Grimshaw,
twitching so hard he had to scrabble to keep his perch on top of the tomb opposite Lampwick's coffin. ‘And it didn't
throw me
, it's just
interesting
!'

Lampwick threw up his hands. ‘Useless! Useless! A curse that can't even bash someone on the head! What happened to mysterious fevers, hearts exploding in the victim's chest, people torn limb from …'

‘That's enough! I've had enough! You make a third-rate Avatar and demand first-rate delivery! And it was a
satellite
from
space
. It was a brilliant plan …'

‘Pah!'

‘… given the dumb
Rules
I have to put up with.'

‘But your precious plan came to nothing, didn't it?' sneered Lampwick. ‘Not so brilliant now, eh!'

Grimshaw screamed at Lampwick, lashing his tail furiously. By now, the twitching was so bad that every other moment he flipped several inches into the air. When the next spasm catapulted him off the tomb, he sprang to his feet and stomped off, heading for the worn stone stairway out of the crypt. Lampwick hopped down from the coffin and started after Grimshaw. Because Grimshaw wasn't used to walking anywhere – he normally travelled by chronometer – and because his legs were bent like those of a cat rather than straight like a human's, he tended to use his paws to help him get along. And Lampwick always lurched about like a zombie anyway.

‘Making you was a waste of my breath, you pathetic little half-life!'

‘If you were a real magician instead of a dumb thief, I might have been an Avatar to reckon with.' Grimshaw lolloped up the stairs, with Lampwick staggering at his heels so close that he trod on the curse demon's tail.

Grimshaw hissed over his shoulder, flattening his ears back against his head. Lampwick would have stayed firmly where he was, deliberately crushing Grimshaw's tail to pulp, but he couldn't keep his balance and pitched sideways, staggering into the wall. Grimshaw whipped his tail free and set off again. Lampwick righted himself and followed.

‘You wouldn't know how to be a curse worth having! Space junk! Falling sheep! It's ludicrous.'

‘And you're a fake with nothing but a few dumb tricks to your name. You … You CONJURER!'

Lampwick howled with rage.

Grimshaw reached the top of the stairs and bounded through the wooden door into the main body of the church. Lampwick tried to follow him. There was a screech as the robber's invisible tether kicked in. He howled again, teetering for a moment on the edge of the stairwell, then lost his balance again. This time he fell, tumbling head over heels all the way back down.

Grimshaw stood, listening happily to the howls of fury echo up the stairwell as his Architect ricocheted from one wall to another. When it was over, the demon grinned smugly and headed off down the nave of the church towards the main door. He pushed it open, using both paws to grip the massive handle, and then he was
outside. The fight with Lampwick had vented his rage and had left him feeling keyed up and restless, but not angry. The twitches were beginning to let up too.

He was ready to bet that Lampwick would be too battered – and too sick of his demon anyway – to summon him back. So, halfway down the path, Grimshaw paused, wondering what to do. He didn't feel like having another go at killing the boy just yet; his failure with the space junk had made him wary. Although overlooking a possible future was the logical explanation, Grimshaw didn't want to believe that he had made such a stupid mistake.

Quickly, he searched the Acts and Facts, but came up with nothing else that might explain the unexpected survival of a Sufferer. Missed futures had happened to other demons, but usually they sorted the problem out on the next attempt and everyone just forgot about it. Except in the case of Wimble, the most hopeless of all curse demons, who was on his fifth go at killing one of his Sufferers because he kept overlooking some of the less likely futures and so didn't allow for them in his calculations. It was this constant failure that had earned him a place at the bottom of the curse-demon pile.