Crik (15 page)

The tickle in his throat returned, making him cough.

He passed the creaking swing, missing the doll, with the button eyes, propped up against its frame.

Nearer to the hole, he could smell the earth. It was a good smell. Clods of different coloured mud mingled with the red brick he had earlier noticed. Watching his mother grow things had inured him with enough knowledge to recognise there was too much clay to grow anything besides grass and bramble.

The irritation continued to rise in his throat, burning his lungs and causing his coughs to become more violent.

A sudden cry from the Rook stopped him short of the open ground. Clay crusted his shoes, and the first crumbled stone littered his path. Turning back, he saw the black bird spreading its wings, frantically flapping them, sending pinion feathers high into the air. The bird squawked in great pain, and then its plumage erupted in flames.

Shocked, he cast his eyes away from the burning bird, wanting desperately to see what lay only a few feet away at the bottom of the hole. With faltering steps, he stumbled forward. Ignoring the screaming bird, he looked over the lip of the hole and into an impenetrable black abyss. He looked hard, sure Knell had sent him out here to see something, and he would not look away until he saw it. His intense scrutiny revealed something in the depths. Leaning forward, until his hands sunk into the torn earth, he saw a moon. No, he corrected himself, not a moon, a face, unlike any visage he had ever known. Inexorably it grew closer, as though his being there drew it upward as though he were a magnet and the face a piece of metal. Shallow, quick breaths squeezed from his constricted chest. The hideous grotesquery that resolved itself from the deep made him want to cry out in alarm. Hooked hands groped the air, wanting to snatch him and toss him into the pit. The pallor of the man, if he could think of the rising creature as a man, brought to his mind half cooked egg whites. Despite his tight chest he noticed the stinging acrid smoke wafting off the screaming bird. Now aware of the bird again, he threw himself backward. His back hit the garden hard. Two hands, the fingers broken and bleeding, flew out the hole after him, clutching the brick. Thick clouds formed, blotting out the sun. The blackbirds, which had hung back until that moment, took wing, further darkening the day. A yell of frightful anger tore itself free from Jack as the birds descended, hitting him with wing and beak. He sensed through the crazed birds the figure rise from the hole. Snatching at the blackbirds, Jack continued to scramble back. It took all his effort to draw in breath. A step below his dragging feet he spied the figure. The nightmare face rushed toward him. He could not breathe. Despairing, he felt himself about to lose consciousness, when the face he saw hanging over him materialised into Bill. An instant later, he felt air blown into his mouth.

Coughing, he turned his head, looking for the figure that had lurched up out of the pit. Where was it? He jerked his head to the side and saw Inara, her face as pale as melting candle wax, astride Black. Overhead dark clouds amassed, flickering with electricity.

‘What…?’ Jack began, and then the question faltered and died.

Jagged lightning screamed down from the sky, striking the Lindre. Sparks flew off her brass armour, and her stone limbs, blackened by the assault, struggled to deflect the web of electricity surrounding her. Blue and red fire fell with awful accuracy. Torched grass led from the bank where Bill stood over Jack, revealing the course the fight had taken. Yang stood to his left, watching the fire flicker across the armour’s dark swirls.

‘No,’ Jack struggled to say, ‘stop it, she was helping me.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Bill shouted over the clapping sounds of thunder. ‘I thought you were dead, but you were only unconscious. I gave you the kiss of life.’

The Lindre screamed as Krimble called down another bolt.

‘Inara, leave her alone!’ But the sounds of the storm drowned out his words.

The final flashing strike burnt the image of the Lindre on one knee onto his retinas. With smoke rising from the ruined heap of marble, he saw her ghostly image, dark against the green grass.

A crescentmoo
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and a sprinkling of stars filled the sky by the time the small group left the Lindre Clearing. The good mood they felt after finding their way free slowly dissipated as in a halting fashion Jack told them what the Lindre had revealed to him.

‘Why look for this cloaked woman?’ asked Bill, after Jack had fallen silent. ‘We should take Inara back home. The sooner we return to the village, with a hot stew in our bellies the better.’

Aged roots, clothed in green moss, and ill looking flowers, surrounded the group, making the prospect of continuing deeper into Crik Wood fraught with untold dangers. Twisted tree trunks leant close, eavesdropping on their hushed conversation.

‘She has the answers,’ replied Jack. ‘There’s something within us, giving us our Talent. I have Yang, you can command animals, and Inara can raise the dead. A desire for more power drove Krimble insane; he wanted more demons. What do the Narmacil get in return?’

‘We are not like Krimble,’ Inara said. ‘He was a murderer.’

‘Who controlled who? Did he want to steal the Narmacils from others, or did his demon wish it?’

Draping her fingers over Jack’s shoulder, Inara said, ‘You have it all wrong. The Narmacils are our friends, our benefactors. The gifts we enjoy, the abilities that define us, are due to them. Are you any different now that you know where Yang comes from?’

‘I was foolish and naive to think Yang’s actions were my own,’ replied Jack, looking over to where his shadow tore open a black pod, scattering tiny seeds over the ground. ‘He always got me in trouble – stealing things and upsetting Liza Manfry. An obsession with dead things, stuffed animals and dying plants, I put down to my own interest in the macabre. Knowing his fixations had nothing to do with me makes me question everything.’ Looking up sharply, he said, ‘I can’t say for sure whether my own interests are mine. What if the imp wanted me to like certain stories, or hobbies, to make me more susceptible to its wishes?’

‘If it wanted to harm you, it could have,’ argued Inara.

Jack stabbed his finger against his chest. ‘I don’t know who I am. Until I get rid of the demon, I will never know whether my actions are my own, or if the Narmacil is making me do it.’

Yang had dropped the pod and stood watching Jack with hands at his sides.

Poking his head around Krimble, Bill looked angry. ‘I don’t care how I got my Talent. I’ve waited all my life to find mine, and now that I have I won’t give it up.’

‘Calm down Bill, I’m not asking you to give up anything. I want to find Knell for myself. You can make up your own mind when you hear what she’s got to say.’

‘I don’t want to hear what she’s got to tell you. I’m not going home without my Talent. No one will believe what I can do if I returned alone.’

‘Go back then, but I’m going on until I find the answers.’

Heat rose up Bill’s neck in a sweeping rash before setting his cheeks aflame. Moving his jaw soundlessly, Bill reminded Jack of a cow chewing grass. Glistening alert eyes peered at him in hurtful reproach.

Jack wanted to smile, to show, despite his harsh words, how much he needed Bill’s help, instead his face closed, becoming stern. His cheek muscles bunched in an aching knot. Bill should understand his need to discover all he could about the Narmacil, which after all lived in him too. The prospect of continuing alone with his shadow into the woods sent a cold spray up his spine. Inara wouldn’t back him up, her unreasoned view of the harmless demons only fed Bill’s own desire to return to the village to show off his Talent. That’s all Bill wants, to lead Black past the Hanging Tree and over the bridge crossing the Tristle River, to rub everyone’s nose in his ability to control a wolf. Why shouldn’t he, for Bill, the only person in the village without a Talent, life was horrendous. The other kids targeted him with all their jokes; they taunted him by what they could do. Bill, like a man born with two heads, was an outcast. Only didn’t he see, raved Jack in his mind, until the night the demon hatched, Bill was the only clean person in the village.

The calm acceptance in which Bill took the existence of the Narmacil made Jack ponder whether his friend had prior knowledge. Consider the secret Bill had kept about his grandmother. Many nights they had sat in the graveyard listening to Mr Dash’s warnings about Ghost Walkers. Bill had remained tight-lipped, even when the old grave keeper muttered that; the woman possessed by a Ghost Walker was dead, murdered by the evil spirit. It proved he could keep his mouth shut.

‘You want me to go back,’ said Bill, his flush attacking his hairline. ‘You would see me traipse back through the marsh. I saved your life in the clearing, not to mention from the wolves, and just like that,’ he snapped his fingers, making the loose flesh under his arms jiggle, ‘you would see me go home alone.’

‘You’re willing to see me set off and find Knell by myself,’ retorted Jack. ‘I’ve told you how important it is to find her and you’re refusing to help. To have the final laugh, you’re letting the demon use your body, just like a snake finding an empty burrow.’ Crooked trees framed the woodland trail ahead. Looking along the path he had chosen for himself, accelerated his apprehension of his friends abandoning him to his quest.

‘Come on Yin, you’re being crazy.’ Not liking the idea of backtracking without Jack made Bill try another tack. ‘I’ve seen Yang get you out of tight scrapes before,’ he said. ‘No one will dare fight you; they all know they’d be fighting Yang as well. Shit Yin,’ he cried throwing his hands up as adrenaline pumped through his body, ‘why change who you are!’

‘I read comics, the grislier the better.’ Jack pointed at the jawbone peeking through Krimble’s cheek. ‘Creatures just like him pulling themselves from coffins, and werewolves lurking in a blanket of fog. Only now I don’t know if it’s me who likes those stories, or this.’ He indicated his stomach.

‘You like them Jack,’ said Inara. ‘Learn to trust yourself.’

‘How can I, knowing what’s inside me.’

Having Yang stand there watching him played with Jack’s nerves, as though a giant claw scraped a field-sized blackboard. Unlike everyone else, his demon was a physical manifestation with its own personality; he could not escape from it. It stood there like a petulant child listening to him voice his fears.

‘Listen to her,’ urged Bill, who waved away the stench coming off Krimble in a brown haze. ‘She knows about the Narmacils. All you’ve seen is one leap into me.’

Jack’s mouth swam with cool saliva, making him want to spit, but he didn’t want to show any weakness, seeing Knell was too important. Swallowing he pointed down the trail, still visible among the broad leaves and stalks of the underbrush. ‘I’m not arguing anymore, I’ve got to find her. I want you both to come; I don’t like being in the woods. It doesn’t mean I won’t carry on by myself, only I’d prefer your company.’ His heart pounded so hard after giving the ultimatum that he found it hard to breathe.

‘You don’t know where she is,’ said Bill. ‘Crik Wood is huge; you’d get yourself lost in no time.’

Jack turned to Inara. ‘Do you know where she could be? The woods can’t have that many settlements.’

With her blonde hair fanning her dark eyes, Inara shook her head. ‘There’re a few houses near where I live, but they all have windows, and there’s not a hill like the one you described.’

‘It’s hopeless Yin. You could hunt for years and never meet Knell. Come back home, tell my grandfather about the Narmacils. He knows more than anyone about the woods. He may even know Knell.’

That was the last thing Jack wanted to do. If he went back home his mother would never allow him to leave the house. She must already be mad at him for running out after she had ground him. ‘No,’ he said.

Slipping through the trees Silver returned to the group with blood coating her lips from a fresh kill. Only Black marked her return.

Jack watched Bill, and spotted the subtle change in his countenance, a relaxing of the brow, a new slackness to the lips, and he knew he had won the argument; he would get to see Knell.

Absently scratching the brown cloth bandaging her stunted legs Inara also saw she had lost the argument. Her tremulous sigh, the only sign of her profound disappointment, left her lips unnoticed by the boys.

‘How’re you going to find her?’ asked Bill, beating nettles with a stick he took from Yang’s shadowed fingers. ‘We can’t just walk around, hoping to stumble upon her. The woods are dangerous, or have your forgotten the wolves.’

‘I haven’t forgotten anything…’

‘There’re worst things than wolves living amongst the trees,’ remarked Inara, ‘strange, terrible creatures.’ She looked through the bent boughs and at the gaunt branches teased by the passing wind. ‘You may have heard of some, thinking they were stories told to scare you. Werebeasts, the tell-tale clanking that warned of the wandering Myrm, the carrion faced Doctors, seeking out spare parts for their bodies. As outlandish as they may seem, they’re real, and they roam these hills. Until today you had no idea that the Lindre existed.’ Her expression did not change as she craned back her head to look at the stretching branches overhead. ‘Secretive creatures, older than the Lindre still live out here, they are always watching.’

‘You just want to scare me,’ said Jack.

‘She’s doing a bloody good job too,’ said Bill. ‘Can you tell us about these things in the morning? I’ll be able to handle them better in the light of day.’

‘If you aren’t scared you are deluding yourself.’ Her black eyes, darkened further by the shadow stretching down her white face, held Jack. ‘Your village and other settlements are relatively safe from the Myrm. Lone children traipsing through the woods are better sport. Why do you think the hunters of your village stay to their paths? They know what’s out here.’

‘Stop trying to scare me into changing my mind, I’m not going back.’

The smile Inara showed looked haggard. ‘If I thought I could change your mind, I would carry on until you screamed for me to stop.’ She tilted forward, feeding her chipped fingernails through Black’s shaggy coat. ‘You saved me from him,’ she tilted her head to Krimble, ‘so I’ll do what you want. Besides, I see you’re set on your mission to find Knell; nothing I say will stop you from going. Only I thought you should be aware of what’s awaiting us.’

‘Thank you Inara,’ said Jack. ‘I promise you’ll see your mother and father before too long.’

‘Don’t promise things you don’t know you can keep,’ warned Inara. ‘It’s good enough for now that I’m coming along.’

Feeling exhausted, all Jack wanted to do was to go to sleep. Rubbing his eyes made them sore and puffy. Bill and Inara, and even the wolves watched him, waiting for him to tell them their next step. Did they think he was the leader of the group? He supposed he was, he wanted to find Knell - no one else cared. Off to the side another figure watched him. Yang, always silent, always there, what must he be thinking? He wanted to ignore his shadow, to forget it was even there, but the moonshine did not allow him that luxury. The spying shadow imparted a feeling of an angry hissing snake, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. Yang frightened him, not Inara’s warnings of creatures in the wood.

‘Are you sure you haven’t heard any stories about Knell?’ he asked Inara. ‘She may have had a different name. Think about what I told you, the tree, the hill dotted with heather, the road and the houses.’

‘I know of no one like her.’

‘How about him?’ said Bill, pointing at Krimble.

‘No,’ said Inara.

‘Why not, he’s lived all his miserable life out here, if anyone would know, it’s him,’ argued Bill.

‘He’s right Inara.’ Jack’s mouth filled with distaste as he spat out his agreement. He never wanted to hear Krimble’s voice ever again, but if he knew something, they needed to know. ‘Can you make him talk? I mean Silver did a job on his neck; will that stop him from speaking to us?’

‘I don’t want to Jack.’ She touched her legs with a nervous hand. ‘He’s being punished for what he did to me, and for what he did to the others. My allowing him to speak lessens his punishment. I want him to wallow in silence, to have his thoughts crying out in his head while he feels his body decay and fall apart.’

White-eyes, like two boiled eggs, turned in their sockets. A burrowing worm made Krimble’s eyelid flutter.

‘You can make him stop speaking once he’s told us what we want to know,’ said Bill, poking Krimble with the end of his stick.