Thirteen Days of Midnight (10 page)

“Still, though. We should just be careful.”

“Wait,” Elza says. “Is this in case Holiday Simmon or Mark Ellsmith sees us together?”

“No, I just think —”

“Oh, whatever, just say it. I know nobody likes me. I don’t like any of you either.”

“It’s not that,” I say, though it is, a bit. I worked hard to get where I am.

“I’ve got a reputation to uphold as well, you know. What’ll people say if they see me with a boy from the rugby team? They’ll revoke my platinum library card. Look, we’ve got just over a week to find a way of rescuing you from what might possibly be a fate worse than death. I would not want to be in your shoes when your Host breaks its bonds and turns on you. So let’s worry about that, no? Once we’re safely past Halloween, you and I never have to speak again, and you can go back to pretending ‘who’s in and who’s out’ actually matters.”

I can’t really think of anything to say to that, so I just nod. Elza finishes her cigarette and stamps it out in the long grass. A fresh drizzle has started to fall from the darkening sky, drops arriving in furtive gangs, darkening the shoulders of Elza’s jacket. I pull my own coat tighter. Elza seems like she’s about to say something else, then doesn’t. I look around us, at the wide still trees, the old graves.

When I get home, I discover every light in my house is on, blazing out against the dim morning. The windows on each side of the front door are like orange eyes. When I touch the doorknob, I feel the chill of the dead. I move into the house. Downstairs is empty: no ghosts, only Ham, hiding in his crate in the laundry room. Standing in the kitchen, shivering even in a coat, I hear a snatch of conversation coming from the room above me.

“Mum? Mum!”

I’m up the stairs, across the landing, into Mum’s room. I come to a halt, heart thumping. Mum is asleep, and there are two men sitting at each side of her bed. On the left-hand side sits the scarred man I saw outside school, nearly naked, wearing boxer shorts. He rolls his white eyes at me. The shears lie on the floor by his chair. The second man is leaning over Mum, looking into her face. Neither is reflected in the mirror attached to the wardrobe.

“What are you doing in here?” I ask, braver than I feel.

The second man, the ghost I don’t recognize, stands.

He’s taller than the others, older-looking, too, dressed in a black three-piece suit. His shoes are beetle-shell shiny, and he wears a white shirt that’s fastened at the throat with a strange silver pin. His face looks like a waxwork, with a drooping nose and overripe lips. His hair and beard are full and bushy, granite-gray with hints of white. His hair hangs over his shoulders in a thick mane. He’s wearing round, dark-tinted glasses and a black hat. He looks like an acid casualty dressed up as an undertaker.

“Who are you?”

“I am bonded as the Shepherd.” The ghost dips his gray-haired head in the shallowest bow I’ve ever seen. “This is my colleague, the Prisoner.” He indicates the scarred ghost with a wave. “You are presumably Luke Archibald Manchett, and we find ourselves in your service.”

“Did I say you could be in here?”

“We were merely keeping vigil over your mother.” The Shepherd’s mouth twists into a small sour smile. “She appears to be infirm. I’m curious as to the nature of her affliction.”

“Get away from her. Now.”

“As you wish.”

The ghosts stand and move closer to me. I look into their eyes and try not to flinch. The Prisoner opens his mouth and closes it with a chewing-gum noise.

“Where
is
your tongue?” I ask.

“It was cut out,” says the Shepherd, “by his father, I believe.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I understand he’s grown used to it.”

The Prisoner shrugs and then fades into nothingness. The Shepherd remains in the room, hands clasped behind his back, like he’s waiting for something to happen. Rain taps at the window. Mum is sitting up, looking at me, I realize with a sudden jolt. She’s awake. Did she hear me talking to the ghosts?

“Luke?”

“I was just . . .” I struggle to find a coherent excuse.

“I’m really very tired, love,” she says. “This head of mine. It’s not letting up.”

“Sorry, I just . . . wondered if you wanted —”

“That’s nice of you,” Mum says, in a tone that suggests she’d like me to leave now. She’s lying back down. The Shepherd is looking at her with an expression that’s impossible to read. I’m thinking of what Elza said.
Blackest of black magic . . . Who knows what he did in life to look like that in spirit?
Whoever these new ghosts are, whoever they were, they’re dangerous. Even seeing them here like this, with Mum asleep, it’s a threat. I have to be in control, I have to rule. They know I’ve got the Book of Eight. They don’t know I can’t read it and don’t have a clue what it says. I can’t let them know.

“I’ll go downstairs,” I say to Mum, but I look at the Shepherd as I say it so he knows I’m talking to him as well. I say it big and brave, like I’m talking to an underling, some underclassman nobody trying out for the rugby team. The Shepherd meets my gaze for a moment — at least I think he does; it’s hard to tell where he’s looking through the dark glasses — and then inclines his bearded head and nods.

Ham’s in the kitchen, drinking from his water bowl, but when he sees me come in with the ghost, he backs off into the laundry room, ears flattened against his head. The Shepherd watches Ham leave and says nothing. I ignore both of them, move around the kitchen, put some pasta on to boil. My hands tremble as I cut vegetables. The rain is coming down outside, heavy and relentless, a steady dull wash that tells me the storm clouds aren’t going anywhere. The Shepherd sits at the kitchen table, hands resting on the wood in front of him. They’re big hands, with long fingers and a cobwebby wisp of white hair sprouting from each knuckle. He waits as I make my food. He has the air of someone who knows how to wait.

“So you’re sixteen,” the ghost says as I sit down with my lunch.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Strange, how time moves. It seems not so long ago that you were a raw little scrap of a thing, held in a crib. Yes,” he says, in response to my obvious surprise, “I knew you when you were young. We’ve met on several occasions, although you weren’t aware of it at the time.”

“You were with Dad awhile then,” I say.

“I am his oldest servant. His left hand.”

“Why are you called the Shepherd?”

“It is customary for a Host to be headed by a Shepherd. An ancient title. It seems odd that you would not be aware of this.”

“Just making conversation,” I say.

I fork down some food, not really tasting it.

“I saw that you were in possession of your father’s copy of the Book,” the Shepherd says.

“It’s upstairs,” I say. “Why?”

“Horatio naturally entrusted me with certain information and kept other aspects of his life and work from me. The education and training of his heir was one of the aspects I had little influence over. However, I presume you were educated in the rudiments of the art of necromancy? The Book of Eight is not, after all, something to be trifled with.”

“Yeah, of course. I’ve got necromancy up to my eyeballs. Live and breathe it. Know the Book back to front. Definitely wouldn’t want to step out of line if I was a ghost bound to Luke Manchett. I’d come down hard on anything like that.”

“You know, of course, that the Book of Eight is considered to be infinite in length. It would not be possible for someone to ‘know it back to front.’ Even the most experienced necromancers will find pages they have never seen before.”

“Figure of speech,” I say, waving my hand.

“As you say.”

“I am a necromancer. I’m legit. Are you trying to say I don’t look like a necromancer?”

“Of course not, Luke. You carry yourself with all the dignity befitting a man of such ancient knowledge and arcane discipline. I and my colleagues have merely noted that you have been rather lax in terms of the bindings and restrictions you have placed on us.”

“It’s a new era, you know? I don’t see why necromancy has to be all, like, black robes and blood sacrifices. Forget what you think you know. I’m hoping we’re all going to be friends.”

What am I even saying? I’m so scared of this ghost that my mouth is just moving and words are coming out. The Shepherd snorts and sits up straighter in his chair.

“We are not your friends. We are bound to you. It is a rather different proposition.”

“All right, if you insist. I just wanted us to get along.”

“Interesting that such a thing interests you at all.”

“I’m not Dad.”

“Issue a general summons to your Host,” the Shepherd says.

“Why?”

“I want to see you do it.”

“I don’t want to. And to be honest, I don’t appreciate being told what to do.”

“Issue a general summons. You don’t even know what position your hands should be in, do you? Horatio . . . that old devil. He didn’t teach you a thing, did he?”

The Shepherd has his sly smile back.

“He taught me enough.”

“Luke.” The Shepherd holds his hands out, as if to beg from me. There are weird spiky stars tattooed on the palms. I think he wants me to see them, as if they’re supposed to mean something to me. “In life I was a great necromancer. My Host was the terror of the world. I have forgotten more pages of the Book than most men have ever seen. If you hoped to bluff me, you could not have picked a worse approach. You have no mastery of the dark arts.”

“No,” I say, fumbling for something, “I —”

“There is no shame in it. You’re a young man, not without wit or drive, and I appreciate the attempt at cunning you have shown in our dealings today. But you are no necromancer. You cannot manage a Host. You do not even want to manage a Host.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“Free us. Let us go. Do not live your life burdened by your father’s sins.”

I don’t know what to say. This has to be a trick. Elza said they’d try and break free. I know this ghost is dangerous, I can feel it in my marrow, like he’s radioactive. Maybe he’s still afraid of me, a little? He’s right, I don’t want a Host. All I wanted was four million pounds, properties, DVD sales . . . I didn’t want this at all. I want them gone. What’s the harm in that, if I can just let them go? Surely everyone gets what they want?

“It’s that easy?”

“Oh, certainly Luke. It’s very easy. As easy as signing for us in the first place. We could do it right now. You don’t want a Host, Luke. You want a normal, happy life. You don’t want to follow in your father’s footsteps, believe me. Let us go, and this can end here.”

It can’t be this easy. I need to be careful.

“Well —”

“All that’s required,” the Shepherd continues, flashing a gray rank of teeth, “is a suitable mark of relinquishment in the Book of Eight. Fortunately your copy is right here.”

His tattooed hands move over the surface of the table, and there’s a flicker, like someone changed the reel in a film I’m watching. The green book is on the table, just in front of the Shepherd. The cover’s eight-pointed star gleams in the glare from the light fixture overhead.

“A simple spot of blood,” he’s saying, “and we leave your life, your home, forever.”

He strokes the Book, and the clasps spring off the cover without being touched. The yellow pages move as if blown in a gale, and the Book falls open right in the middle. He pushes it toward me. I put my hand on it, spin it around to have a look.

There are no words on these pages. The double spread is covered in a psychedelic pattern of concentric circles and spirals, all of which look hand drawn, and they seem to be moving as I look at them. I feel like every time I focus on one part of the design, another part of the page will change. I’m getting a headache.

“This will free you?” I’m saying.

“Indeed, Luke. A general declaration of freedom from bond, for all eight spirits.”

“Really. Wow.”

The circles seem to have . . . depth, somehow, like there’s more to this page than just the page. If I keep looking at it, I’ll be able to see what it is. There are pages beyond the page. There are hundreds of them. Millions of circles.

“Quite something, isn’t it?” the Shepherd asks.

“It’s amazing.”

My ears are ringing, roaring. I can feel my blood flowing.

All I can really look at now is the circles.

My hand is moving toward something, I realize it’s my fork.

“A single drop is all we need,” the Shepherd says. He sounds like he’s talking to me from down a long tunnel. His voice echoes.

I push the fork into the ball of my thumb. There’s a nice flush of red. It doesn’t remotely hurt. When I look up at the Shepherd, I can still see the circles and spirals, weaving over his suit and face.

They’re everywhere.

My hand is moving toward the book.

“You’re doing the right thing,” the ghost says.

My thumb is poised over the center of the design.

I’m about to press down.

There’s an explosion of noise, and I’m thrown sideways, landing hard on the floor. The rushing in my ears is gone. My thumb is fizzing with pain, blood running down onto the palm of my hand. Ham stands over me, barking and barking. The Shepherd looms above us.

“Restrain this beast, and seal the declaration of release,” he says.

“Sir.”

“Stay out of this!” the Shepherd yells, turning his head to look at someone else.

The Vassal is standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“I can’t recommend you do this,” he says over Ham’s barks.

“I was going to release you,” I tell the Vassal, though I’m not sure anymore why it seemed like such a good idea.

“It’s for the best,” the Shepherd says.

“For you, perhaps,” replies the Vassal. “He has not wronged you. He is guilty of no crime.”

“You livestock,” spits the Shepherd, “you servile, mewling animal!”

“A Host is unable to harm its master,” the Vassal tells me. “It is at the heart of our bond. He may not kill you, but if you release him, you remove that deepest taboo, and he will stop your heart with a word.”

“Why?” I ask the Shepherd. “Don’t you want to be free?”