Kill Fish Jones (17 page)

Grimshaw squinted up at the grey sky. Because anything in the Limbo sky usually meant trouble, it soon got to be a habit for curse demons and Wanderers to check regularly just to make sure they weren't missing anything important. Especially after a Blink. This time, far in the distance, he could see the grey smudge of an aeroplane as it drifted to Earth, bereft of passengers and pilot and with its engines suddenly as good at flying as a metal brick. Any moment now Limbo's dodgy gravity would notice the thing and bring it crashing to the ground. Fortunately it was too far away to be a problem to Grimshaw. Almost as he thought it, the plane stopped drifting and began to plummet.

Satisfied that he was in no danger, Grimshaw looked
over the vast stretches of dusty earth on either side of the road. In the distance he could see a single Wanderer trudging across the land towards the horizon. He couldn't tell if it was male or female, but he could hear the faint echo of its voice as it sang a determined-not-to-give-up type of marching song into the empty waste. It sounded very lonely.

Then it stopped and silence fell.

It was a flat silence, the sort of silence that really gets going on any nearby ears until they start making sounds up just to maintain a little sanity. It got on Grimshaw's nerves almost at once. In the silence, an odd feeling came to Grimshaw. He felt as if Fish Jones was there, somewhere nearby but unseen. Normally, a curse demon knew where his Sufferer was at all times, but that knowledge was tied in to the possession of a chronometer. So, having this strange sensation when his chronometer was not strapped firmly to his wrist as usual was kind of spooky. Grimshaw shivered and looked around anxiously. Not surprisingly, there was nothing there, but the feeling persisted.

Although Grimshaw didn't know it, as it was not the sort of information available on the Acts and Facts, there were rare times when Grey Space and Real Space could be drawn closer together.

Demons didn't sleep, but Grimshaw was worn out by all his misery and anger, so he stopped thinking and let his mind drift. Sinking into a kind of daze, he found himself seeing the Jones boy as if he was
right there
, next
to Grimshaw. The boy looked peaceful, with sunlight on his face and a faint breeze ruffling his hair.

At the thought of the sun and the breeze, and of the boy's right to live in Real Space and enjoy all those things which were denied to Grimshaw, the demon felt a surge of jealousy so fierce he thought he would break in two. At first, the boy had been just another Sufferer. Then he had turned into something more – a problem case with a destiny. He had become a frustration, an obstacle in Grimshaw's way, when all the demon wanted to do was finish the job. But seeing the boy lying there bathed in the sun of another dimension, Grimshaw's feelings changed again. At this exact moment, right here and now on this spot, he began to hate Fish Jones.

The boy stirred and woke up. He looked at Grimshaw, his eyes wide with shock, and then scrabbled backwards, away from the demon.

Grimshaw puffed up at once. He shook himself and bared his teeth in a snarl, glaring at the boy with his corner-to-corner black eyes, trying to look as fierce as possible. Shaking with fright, Fish stayed where he was, half crouching, his face level with that of the demon.

‘Please,' Fish said suddenly, ‘please let us live.'

It was the first time Grimshaw had heard the boy speak and his voice was softer than he had expected.

‘Your mother disturbed the sleep of the dead,' Grimshaw snarled, making his own voice deeper than usual, hoping it sounded more like Tun's. ‘She deserves to suffer.'

‘I know we are only humans,' said Fish, the words tumbling out of him now. ‘We aren't powerful like you. I know we are nothing special, we're not going to do great works or … or make great discoveries, but neither are we evil. My mother didn't wish to disturb the dead, she would never have wished that, she just didn't understand. Please, let us live and enjoy the world, that's all we want.'

Grimshaw howled. He hadn't meant to, but at that moment his jealousy and rage got so huge they boiled over. The boy's attempt to reach out across the vast space that separated the living from the half-alive, even though he was in mortal fear for his life, was too much. How dare the boy be noble on top of everything else!

‘I'LL GET YOU,' Grimshaw screamed, his voice a harsh, spitting roar. ‘NO MATTER WHERE YOU HIDE, I'LL FIND YOU, FISH JONES. I'LL FIND YOU AND I'LL KILL YOU.'

The demon sprang, his claws spread, ready to break the Rules and visit death on the human with his bare paws. But the connection between their worlds had been broken and Fish Jones had gone, and Grimshaw, fully alert and seething, was burying his claws in nothing but dry earth.

He lay there for a while, huffing miserably, while rage and frustration tore him to pieces. Then, silent and grim, he got to his feet and started once again to limp on towards home.

In Real Space, Fish Jones woke up with a start. He had been dreaming about the demon, as if it had been right there, next to him. It had glared at him with its terrifying, all-black eyes, and had leapt at him as if meaning to tear out his throat. Fish shuddered. For some reason it had never occurred to him that the demon might attack him with its bare ha … paws. Images filled his head of having to fight it, of touching the horrible thing. It made his blood run cold.

He shook himself. It was just a dream – what else could it be? The demon wasn't here, he would know when it arrived. Still, the things it had said and the look of hatred and fury in its eyes stayed with him.

Getting to his feet, Fish brushed the grass from his jeans and T-shirt. Then, his face set with determination, he turned towards Crow's Cottage and started on his way again.

Some hours later, Grimshaw was making real progress, his paws hardening up as they healed so that he could walk faster. Fired up by the dream of Fish Jones that had made him so angry, he connected to the Acts and Facts looking for any hints about how to deal with Destiny.

The curse-demon information web was vast, encompassing the deeds done by the Avatars of all curses everywhere throughout history, plus any interesting snippets of information that they felt inclined to post. The easiest way to find anything was to think about the demon or the subject that you wanted to know about and see what turned up.

Focusing on Destiny got Grimshaw absolutely nothing. Not a bean. It was annoying, because Grimshaw was sure that Tun must be right. He couldn't be the only demon ever to have come up against this problem. Clearly the Acts and Facts wasn't allowed to hold information on such lofty matters. He couldn't even find a firm reference to the fact that Destiny trumped curses, even though everyone knew that!

What he did turn up was a list of curses where there had been a significant delay in the killing of one of the Sufferers. It was a short list. In most of those the delay was due to missed futures, or a Sufferer who didn't stop moving – one of them got around the world
twice
before the second-rate demon Juniper finally caught up with him; and then only because the man had collapsed from nervous exhaustion. In one case a Sufferer holed himself up in a single room, waited on solely by his faithful servant, and managed to survive for some years before the third-rater Ansifar finally managed to arrange a (slow) death by poison. It took a huge amount of planning, searching the possible futures, more planning and so on, and Ansifar was granted a kind of honorary second-rate status for his efforts.

But most interesting of all was a failed attempt by a first-rate demon to kill off his third victim. The failure was followed by a delay of
three years
before the Sufferer was finally dealt with. The first interesting thing about this case was the lack of any recorded explanation for either the failure or the delay, and the second interesting thing was the demon's name. Hanhut.

Grimshaw paused as a sign loomed up in front of him, the words meaningless because place names didn't work in Limbo. Limbo wasn't a world with direction. Even so, Grimshaw was pretty certain that he should leave the roadway here.

So he left the highway with its untidy rows of dead
cars and lolloped on to the smaller network of roads that would eventually lead him back to the church of St Peter and St Paul. He barely noticed the change of surroundings as dead houses and shops took the place of dead earth, and his mind kept going back to the odd case of Hanhut's third Sufferer. Instinct told him that the reason there was no reason given for the failure and the following delay was that it involved something that could not be recorded on the curse-demon web. Destiny.

And yet Hanhut had succeeded in the end! Of course, Hanhut was a first-rate demon where Grimshaw was only a third-rater.

Grimshaw paused to snarl quietly to himself. He felt angry at everyone and with everything. He was furious with Flute for being so spiteful as to steal his chronometer. With Tun and Hanhut and their like for being so superior. With himself for being such a useless Avatar. With Lampwick for creating him in the first place. With Fish Jones for having a destiny. And for being noble. And for being human.

Especially with Fish Jones.

After a short detour to pick up his dropped notebook and abandoned backpack, Grimshaw turned wearily into the gate of the church. He really, really didn't want to do the next hour or so. With a sigh, he pushed open the door and went in.

‘Utterly disgraceful!' Lampwick was striding, or rather lurching, up and down the crypt, waving his arm occasionally for emphasis.

Slumped in the middle of the floor, Grimshaw stared at his toes. His chronometer was laid out on the top of Lampwick's coffin and he was itching to grab it and put it on, but he had to wait until Lampwick gave it back to him. Unfortunately, the magician was enjoying himself too much to bring the lecture to an end.

‘I can hardly believe that even you would do something so … so … farcical!'

Grimshaw didn't know what farcical meant, but he got the general idea and shuffled his paws.

‘What were you thinking of! Putting yourself in the way of the Sisters of Gladness! Going to chat to them like Grey Space was a tea party!'

‘They had things to tell me,' mumbled Grimshaw. ‘Even if they were nasty about it.'

‘Losing … and this I really cannot believe …
losing your chronometer
!!'

‘They took it!'

Lampwick gave him a shrivelling gaze. He was pretty good at shrivelling gazes. When he was alive, he had used them a lot on anyone who dared to question his honesty.

‘Well, they did!'

Lampwick ignored him. ‘
Losing
your chronometer! You've always been a joke, barely fit to do your job, but that is shameful. Quite shameful. You're the laughing
stock of the demons!' Lampwick paused and looked at him steadily before delivering the deepest cut. ‘Even Wimble.'

Grimshaw closed his eyes in pain. He had been hoping that it wasn't so, that in spite of his disgrace his not-quite-bottom position in the demon hierarchy hadn't changed, but there it was, Lampwick had said it. Grimshaw was the lowest of the low. Even Wimble could look down on him now.

‘Not to mention,' went on Lampwick, his voice heavy with scorn, ‘that you appear to be incapable of killing a small, defenceless boy!'

‘He has a destiny,' snarled Grimshaw. ‘Destiny trumps curses.'

‘Always an excuse,' sneered Lampwick, waving a hand dismissively. ‘It's not my fault,' he whined, putting on a high, wavering voice, ‘it's not my fault I'm useless …'

Grimshaw raised his head and fixed his corner-to-corner black eyes on Lampwick with a look of intense hatred. For a brief moment the magician faltered, but it passed.

‘I suppose you will just have to join the roll call of shame, those few dismal Avatars who have
Survivors
!' Lampwick sighed and shook his head.

‘Wimble. Wimble is the only Avatar to have a Survivor.'