Kill Fish Jones (25 page)

Hill

East

Knock

Tone

Alice read it out loud, then made a quick alteration to the last two words and read it again with the pauses in different places. ‘Toby Green, 7 Fortune Hill, East Knockton. It's an address!'

Fish nodded.

‘You telling me you got all these words, in this order, from seeing them in the book as you flipped the pages?'

They stared at each other.

‘The same words each time?' she checked.

Fish nodded.

Alice put the paper down and shivered. ‘That's creepy, Fish. Like some kind of message from … from … Destiny or something. Hang on.'

She rummaged in one of the bags to find the road map, which she spread out in front of them.

Fish put a finger on the spot where Knockton was, then ran it slowly eastwards, but it wasn't until the second go that Alice spotted it.

‘Look, this street going off the main road here. Fortune Hill!'

They stared.

‘Oh lor',' mumbled Alice. She folded up the map around Fish's finger. ‘OK, I guess tomorrow we could walk to Knockton. We can try and find this Toby Green bloke. Dunno why, but it's something to do, and maybe
he'll know how to break a curse!' She put the map and the address carefully aside.

‘Right. Now, I'm going to have some more biscuits. And then I'm going to sleep.'

A second later, under a bush at the side of the house, a small figure popped into view.

Grimshaw scratched his ears and peered at the window high above, the one where a wavering light had just been switched off. Then he pulled the soaking pack from his back and dug inside, bringing out a sodden mass of paper, which he threw away, and a ruler. Then he pulled out another book, a brand new book picked up from a book shop on his way here, that was tucked into the back pocket of his drying trousers.

The new book was a story about a man who tore a world apart just to destroy his enemies. Grimshaw had chosen it because it seemed to fit perfectly, bearing in mind what he was going to use it for – finding the Mighty Curse to kill Fish Jones.

Carefully, he jotted down the words given by the new book, his brain on fire with the knowledge that he was nearly there, nearly at the point where he could win. And what a victory! He chuckled as it occurred to him that he would have the largest number of Innocent Bystanders
ever
. Then he looked at what he had written in his mostly dried-out notebook. It said:

World

Rings

Red

Hare

Mirage

Burnt

Offering

At first it didn't make sense, but he studied it patiently for a moment until he remembered that this time he was not looking for an event. This time he was looking for a
destination
. And since most calculations for destinations using the chronometer began with a reference to the equatorial and polar grid of the Earth, World rings was pretty clear after all! The next three were setting combinations and the last, well, the last was a reference to the end result.

He grinned, turned a page and wrote carefully: ‘
World Rings. Red Hare. Mirage. Burnt Offering
.'

It was an address.

Fish opened his eyes with a start, feeling as if his heart had missed a beat. It was pitch dark. Although the rain had stopped, clouds still swarmed across the sky, quenching the moonlight and driven by a chill wind. He lay still, his eyes open, trying to keep his breathing steady. He didn't know what time it was, but it felt like that point where night is at its most intense. Not actual midnight, which was too early, but between two and three in the morning, when life was at its lowest ebb. The midnight of the soul.

He went on lying still, letting his eyes adjust, raking them over the shadows that filled the room. The dark began to separate out into areas of lesser and deeper gloom. He could see the shapes of things and one of the shapes was that of something that shouldn't be there.

The demon was back!

In fact, it was not only back, it was sitting on the end of the quilt, watching him.

Fear sent shivers of ice along Fish's spine. Next to
him, Alice slept on, oblivious. He envied her. For a moment he wondered why he couldn't make out the gleam of its eyes. Then he remembered that its eyes were darker than any mere night. Of course he couldn't see them. Not even a reflection could live in those inky pools. Fish was ready to bet that those eyes didn't need light the way human eyes did. The horrible thing could probably see him as clearly as if it were day.

He squeezed his own eyes shut, pretending to be asleep, when every nerve in his body was alert for any sign of movement from the demon. Even with his ears straining to their utmost, he couldn't hear it breathe. He could make out Alice's soft and steady breaths, and his own more rapid lungfuls, but nothing else. No third creature. It probably didn't need oxygen.

There was also an absence of warmth. He could feel a weight on the blanket, but so slight it was barely there. The creature didn't have any real presence and maybe that was just right, because to the rest of the world the demon was something that didn't exist. Unable to hold in a shudder, Fish prayed that it wouldn't realise he was awake. If it did, it might attack him.

Alice moved, her shift in position ruffling the blanket. Her sighing breath filled the air before she settled back into a steady rhythm. She had flung an arm outside the cover and it lay there, the sleeve of her jumper rucked up and the bare skin exposed. Fish wished he could put it back in for her, out of the way. Just in case the thing reached out and touched her.

Tears pricked his eyes. He opened them and looked, hoping it had gone. It hadn't, of course. For all he knew, it would sit there all night. Terror crept through him on icy paws. Had it given up on accidents and come to kill him with its bare hands? How on God's Earth had he ever thought to escape it? There was nowhere that he could go where it would not find him. Nowhere. He had always known that, and yet somewhere in his heart he had foolishly hoped. And how stupid he had been to let Alice stay with him! Perhaps it would kill her too, just because she had dared to help him.

And when it had done with them, it would wait until Susan had heard the news of his death, until she was distraught and grieving, and then it would kill her too. Visit her in the night perhaps, like …

He tried to stop the thoughts going round in his head. Pictures of him and Alice lying in their makeshift bed as the sun rose. Unmoving, dead, murdered. Of nice Penny Dunnet stopping by to see if they were all right and finding their bodies all cold and still, with a look on their faces of such unending terror that it would haunt her dreams forever.

Closing his eyes again, Fish tried to relax his body, wondering if the demon knew that he was awake and was just waiting for him to doze off so that it could kill him while he was dreaming. Time ticked on and though he knew it could only be minutes, it felt as if he had lain there for a lifetime, died a dozen deaths in slow motion.
The pillow beneath his cheek was wet with tears and the sheet clammy with sweat. Every so often he looked, and always it was there.

Once he thought that it moved, shaking its head and twitching its ears as if bothered by something. Then it went still again.

And then at last he looked and it had gone and he could cry out loud, trying not to wake Alice.

Crouched at the end of the quilt, Grimshaw knew that the power to end everything lay in his paws. The thought was exciting, but it scared him too, and he hated that he was weak enough to be scared. His head whirled with the yearning to be different, to be an Avatar to reckon with, to be tall and glowing-eyed and … and … just
different
.

Why must I be like
this
? he thought.

In the bed, the girl stirred, throwing her arm outside the blanket. For a moment Grimshaw had an absurd wish to lean over and pinch the soft flesh. To feel what a human felt like. He ignored it and then was angry with himself for ignoring it. Even now, he felt bound to the stupid Rules that wouldn't let him have physical contact with humankind.

Although Grimshaw could see in the dark perfectly well, it didn't mean that darkness was just like light. It wasn't at all. Light gave things colour and depth. Dark leeched all the colour away and just gave things a shape
that was all shades of black and grey and that was oddly weak, as if it were part of the night and not a thing in its own right at all. He could see the boy and the girl lying there, night-time pooling in the sockets of their eyes and the creases of their skin. He could hear them breathing. The boy dragged air into his lungs like he was suffocating, and Grimshaw wondered if he was having bad dreams. If so, he hoped that he was in them. He would like to be the stuff of nightmares. He sniffed. There was a smell of salt tears in the air too.

It didn't make Grimshaw hate him any less. The boy might be brave, but he was also a menace. He and his destiny had brought Grimshaw to this, and when the Mighty Curse rose from its sleeping place and destroyed the world, it would be all the boy's fault.

He stared irritably at the pale shape of the girl's arm lying on the bedcover.

And Lampwick, useless trickster that he was. Third-rate conjuror with a scraping of magical talent and about as much integrity as a tin sovereign. Grimshaw clenched his fists, shaking his ears angrily. Even alive, the man had not been worth the flesh he stood up in. And if he had made an Avatar that was so powerless it couldn't even finish off its own Sufferers, then it was down to him if that Avatar had to take desperate measures.

Grimshaw grinned to himself. It was all clear in his head now. This was the only way that he could win. The Rules, the boy and his destiny, Lampwick, all the
other Avatars, they were all driving him one way. Just one way.

And then Grimshaw felt a single moment of fear. Fear that ripped down his knobbly spine like a frozen claw. Because suddenly he knew that he was
actually going to do it.
He really was.

And he was going to do it now.

Fish lay awake for a while longer, tormented by the fears the demon had set loose in his heart. Then, exhausted, he fell into a sleep troubled by dreams in which a nameless thing chased him relentlessly through shadowy towns and over barren deserts where the only colour was grey and all the seas looked like glass.

When the first light of dawn crept through the window, he woke up. He lay for a moment, taking stock. Birds were singing and the world on the whole looked pretty normal. Not that it was, of course.

He rolled over and shook Alice.

‘Uh? Wass time?' She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and looked around blearily. ‘Six o'clock! Fish!'

Fish was already sitting up, waiting for her to wake up properly. He didn't have to wait long.

‘So what's up then? Is something up? Don't tell me that demon thing turned up in the night! Oh CREEPS! And what now? I s'pose you want to go and see this Green bloke as soon as possible? What? Like now? Can I at least have some breakfast?'