Like Father (12 page)

“Go on,” said Sharmila from behind the stall. “Any number ending in a five or a zero – guaranteed a prize.”

He looked at her, and saw that she was watching him with small eyes that were netted with blood vessels, talking to him through a thin-lipped mouth set in a leathery, wrinkled face.

“You know you have to,” she went on. “Get rid of him. How can you get back to the life you want with mad Rick in the way?”

Danny turned, and walked away.

Through the crowds, he held the tray before him as if it might ward off the demon that was haunting him.

He refused to look at anyone as he passed, but then, “Danny, trust me,” said a woman who stood right in front of him, blocking his way. She was a large woman, with billowing black hair. She leaned towards him as she spoke, and she stared at him with Hodeken’s eyes, set in a plump, puffed up version of Hodeken’s face.

Danny looked down, stepped around her, carried on.

From the corner of his eye, he saw someone. Sunil, he thought, watching him through his small spectacles. Watching him with Hodeken’s eyes.

“It won’t be long now, Danny,” he said with Hodeken’s voice. “We’ll get things back to normal. You just need to do your part.”

They formed a channel for him. Straight across the lawn, a gap opened up, lined on either side by staring faces, staring eyes. Each person, as he passed, was momentarily transformed. Features distorting, twisting, lines carving themselves deep on each face in turn, hairy growths popping out across the skin, eyes breaking out in a lacework of blood vessels.

“It’s okay, Danny,” said one, as he passed.

“Trust me,” said the next, acquiring Hodeken’s features just as its predecessor returned to normal.

“It won’t...”

“...be long now. You...”

“...just need to...”

“...do your part.”

“Get...”

“...rid...”

“...of...”

“...him.”

He threw his hands in the air and the tray went flying. The muslin cloth caught the breeze and drifted over heads like a kite, and bread rolls flew into the air like fireworks, raining down on the crowd moments later.

And the knife.

He had been carrying the knife he had spotted in the kitchen. Gripping it tightly under the tray. Bringing it with him.

He watched it shoot up, blade flashing in the sunlight. Then it flipped, at the height of its flight, and fell to the ground, blade plunging to its hilt in the soft turf.

He stared at it, his breath snatched from his lungs.

He couldn’t remember picking it up, but he knew Hodeken wanted him to have it. To be prepared.

He looked up, and they were all watching him.

He ran.

He pushed past them, through them, not caring who it was in his way, just desperate to get past them, beyond them. Away.

He came to the track into the growing plots, and Luke stood there with a garden fork held out like some kind of weapon. A small group was gathered around him, waiting for him to continue his explanation of the principles of growing vegetables by the cycles of the moon.

“Go on, Danny,” he said, in a high-pitched voice. “Get rid of him.”

The group of onlookers nodded, as if he had simply been explaining that you should always sow peas by the light of a new moon.

Danny turned, ran on.

By the lake, David was explaining to another group how Hope Springs’ waste was processed and cleansed by a sequence of reed-beds.

He paused and nodded to Danny. “Not long now, Danny,” he said through yellowed stubs of teeth. “You just need to do your bit.”

Danny ran, his head bursting. Behind him, he could sense a babble of voices, of demands, swelling up, trying to swamp him.

He cut through the willows and came to the stream.

He hesitated, looking back, fearing that he was finally going to crack at any moment.

He took a run and jumped over the stream.

And there was silence.

The babble had cut off, just like that. The pressure ... gone.

He landed, staggering forward, and caught himself against a low stone wall.

He stopped, and listened, but there was nothing.

He remembered trying to find out more about Hodeken. Searching the internet for ways to banish him. Iron crosses and bells were said to give you some degree of protection from evil beings. As did daisy chains and ... jumping across running water!

That was what he had done.

Could he really have banished Hodeken that easily?

He doubted it. But at least it had cut off the tormenting babble, the mad sequence of images.

20 On the cards

Can we talk? Danny Schmidt

He sat with his back against the crumbling grassy bank, and tossed small pieces of stick into the stream at his feet. He hadn’t known where to go. He had to be away from Hope Springs, away from the people, and he felt safer by the moving water.

He no longer felt as if he was cracking up.

He had already cracked.

He just had to hold the pieces of himself together somehow, now.

Cassie. Whatever it was that was happening – whether it was all inside his head or not – she was the only person he knew how to talk to.

His phone buzzed.

Where? ...C

Slowly, he thumbed in a response.

By the stream. Where we talked family names. D.

Ok ...C

~

“Thought you’d be down at the fete, trying to convince us yokels you’re not really a bunch of devil-worshipping, sandal-wearing, bearded weirdos.”

She came and sat down next to him, her knees drawn up under her chin.

“I was, but...”

“What?”

“Didn’t you notice anything odd?”

She looked at him, head tipped to one side, an eyebrow raised. “‘Odd’? You mean
odd
odd, not just Hope Springs odd? No, nothing. What did I miss?”

He shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “I think it was just me.”

“So,” she said, poking at some exposed mud with a stick. “Let’s get this straight. It’s like, you phone me, you get me to make excuses to my parents so I can slip away here, halfway up this blooming great hill and find you in your little hiding place. All that, just so you can tell me not to mind, it’s just you, forget about it. Have I got that right, or am I missing something, Danny Schmidt?”

He lay back and stared up at the deep blue of the sky.

“Way back,” he said. “When... you said you were just normal, just a normal girl trying to make yourself sound interesting. Remember?” He paused, then added, “We’ll I’ve worked it out. You’re not normal at all. Not ordinary. You–”

“Ho
ho
! So you don’t just get me up here to tell me nothing. Oh no, you get me up here to tell me I’m abnormal! Boy, when you dig yourself a hole you dig yourself a big and a deep one, don’t you? What are you going to tell me next? That I have BO and a face like monkey’s arse? Go on, Danny, keep going. I can hardly wait!”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She smirked, and poked her tongue out at him.

“You see inside things. That’s what I mean. Or something like it. You have insight. You know a lot about ... stuff.”

“That’s not hard,” said Cassie. “It’s not special. I’m interested in things. I want to find out how the world works. How
people
work. So I find out. I look for answers. I think about things.”

“But you know the right questions to ask.”

She threw her stick towards the stream, but it got caught in some nettles. “Maybe,” she said, “but I can’t throw straight, can I? I tell you, Danny Schmidt, you don’t talk much, but when you do you sure know how to
talk
.”

She leaned back on one elbow, so that she was looking down at him, blocking out part of the blue of the sky.

“Okay,” she said. “So you’ve smooth-talked me. You probably think you’ve wormed your way back into my good books. What now? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“That chatroom was just the start,” he said, struggling to work out how to begin, how to explain something he didn’t really understand himself. “This sounds mad...”

“So do most things, when you really think about it. You and me: we’re just a bunch of chemicals talking to each other. How mad is that? Go on: what’s been happening?”

“Hodeken... he’s been talking to me. Haunting my dreams. Sitting at the back of my mind. Nagging away at me. Taunting me. That’s what they do. I looked it up on the web. Kobolds taunt people, wind them up. It’s been driving me mad.”

“Why? Why would he do that?”

“Some kind of pact with my family,” said Danny. “Made in the Second World War. Maybe it even goes back beyond that and the war just stirred it up again. Hodeken sees himself as some kind of protector for the family. He won’t let go.”

Danny raised an arm, and pressed his forearm across his eyes. “He works out what needs to be done and then you have to do it for him or he drives you mad with his tricks and his taunting. I can’t let that happen, Cassie. I can’t let myself lose control because of a voice in my head. It happened to Dad. I have to be stronger than he was, but I don’t know if I can be.”

He felt her hand on his chest, pressing softly, soothing.

“So... it’s in your head, is it, Danny Schmidt? It’s all in your head? Do you think you should get some help?”

He felt a flash of anger. Why had he thought he could talk to her? She didn’t understand!

He concentrated on his breathing, but it was hard.

Eventually, he answered her.

“No,” he said. “It’s not that simple. I thought it might all be in my head until today. But at the Open Day he was there. Actually
there
. He took people over, one by one. Possessed them, so that their faces turned into his and they spoke with his voice. Nagging at me, taunting me.”

“What happened? What did you do, Danny?”

“I ran. I ran and I jumped over the stream to get away from them all and then suddenly it stopped. It’ll be back though. I know he won’t leave me alone now.”

“How do you mean, ‘stopped’?”

“Everything went silent all of a sudden, as soon as I jumped the stream. I read something about it somewhere, when I was trying to find out more. I was looking for ways to get rid of Hodeken, and I came across something that told you how to ward off evil: bells, daisy chains, a self-bored stone, whatever that is – and jumping over moving water! I didn’t plan it, I just did it. It was the quickest way to get away from all the madness.”

“Okay then, I’ve got it. You wear bells in your ears, a daisy chain in your hair and you live by a stream. That should do it.”

She had sat up as she spoke. Now she was leaning forward and rubbing at the dried dirt with a plimsolled foot.

Danny sat up, too, and watched her. “What is it?” he asked. “What are you doing?”

She stood and went over to the stream, then squatted to peer into the water. Squinting back at him, she said, “You said a self-bored stone. Come on.” She beckoned to him to join her. “Let’s look for one.”

He stood, and went over to the edge of the water. Kneeling in the dried mud, he stared into the swirling current. The stream-bed was lined with pebbles and larger stones, some of them furred with green algae that shimmered in the flowing water.

“So?” he said. “What am I looking for? What does it mean, a ‘self-bored stone’?”

Cassie had a hand in the water, rummaging through the pebbles, stirring up a swirling cloud of mud in the otherwise clear water.

“It’s a stone that’s been knocked about in a stream. All stones get smoothed off and worn away in the water, but a self-bored stone has a weak point somewhere in the centre and after thousands and thousands of years it ends up hollowing itself out, so you get a round stone with a hole in the middle.”

She stirred up the stones and mud again, frustrated.

Danny leaned over the water, and plucked a stone out. “Like this?” he said, holding it out to Cassie. On his palm, glistening wet, was a round pebble with a hole going right through it, just off-centre.

It was a curious object, but it hardly seemed like much protection from what he had been experiencing.

“How’d you do that?” demanded Cassie. She looked at the stone, and then at Danny. “Right,” she went on. “Now look through it.”

He held it to his right eye.

“What do you see?”

“The trees.” He turned. “Grass. Mud. An old fence post.”

“It’s supposed to be a window,” she told him. “Into the Other World. You should see fairies dancing in the grass, that kind of thing. Maybe they’re on their lunch break.”

He turned it on Cassie.

She looked scared.

Pale face, wide open eyes ... There was panic in those eyes, terror.

He took the stone away from his eye and she was normal, no sign of panic. She looked at him curiously. “What?” she said. “What is it?”

He looked at her through the self-bored stone again, and she was just Cassie, watching him and waiting. “I ... I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing. It’s just hard to see through that small hole.”

She took it from him and looked around before eventually handing it back.

“So,” she said, “what is it that Hodeken is after? You said he’s nagging you. What about?”

He couldn’t tell her. Not that much.

He blinked and saw the kitchen knife flying through the air and then plunging, right up to its handle, in the turf.

“The family,” he said. He could tell her part of it. “He thinks he can bring the family together and we’ll all live happily ever after.”

“Do you think he can?”

Danny shook his head. “Freakish as all this stuff is,” he said, “this isn’t a fairy-tale. You can’t just change what’s gone before. My father – he did what he did, and now he’s locked away. Which is right. It’s how it should be. He’s a dangerous man. It terrifies me to think just how dangerous he is. You can’t undo all that.

“Did I tell you he was appealing? I think that was Hodeken’s doing, but it didn’t work. They’re not going to let him out. Hodeken’s not going to get his way, but ... but I’m scared of what he might do before he realises that. I’m scared of what he might do to all of us.”

“I’ve got to go,” Cassie told him now. She had been looking at her watch as he spoke. “I’m sorry. I told Mum I’d be back by six and it’s half-six already. Walk with me?”

They crossed the stream and cut along a low wall to join the lane between Moreton Farm and the village. From there they could look down the hill to where Danny had helped with the car parking that morning. Most of the vehicles had gone now. The Open Day must be over.

At the top of Swiss Lane, Cassie took Danny’s hand and squeezed it. “Want to come round tomorrow morning, around ten? We can ask some questions. You said I’m good at that.”

She smiled nervously, and waited for him to answer.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’d like to do that.”

She nodded. “Got to go.”

When he was a few paces down the road, she called after him, “Danny? One more thing. Danny: be careful. I mean that, Danny Schmidt. Be very careful.”

He carried on walking. He knew how to do that. Be careful. He spent all his life being careful.

~

It was a quiet evening, and he was thankful for that. Val and Josh stayed down at the marquee, helping clear up. Danny should have been there, too, but he couldn’t face it. Not so soon. Oma was in her room, suffering from one of her bad heads, so until Val and Josh returned Danny had the place to himself.

All the time, his head was quiet and he wondered if it really could be that straightforward, if he really had driven the kobold from his head.

He poured himself a bowl of cereal and thought about doing some of his homework, then turned the TV on for the Bond film instead.

He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t follow what was happening in the film, but that didn’t matter. It distracted him.

His phone vibrated against his leg. He took it out and checked the little screen: Cassie.

“So what is it, then?” she demanded, before he had a chance to say anything.. “Why now? Why can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“I... “ He stopped, started again. “What do you mean? Why can’t
what
wait? I don’t understand.”

“Your message. You texted me.”

Danny shook his head, still struggling to catch up. “No, he said. “I didn’t text you. I didn’t do anything.” He thought for a few seconds, then added, “This message: what number did it come from?”

“Yours, stupid. Why do you think I’m calling you?”

“Are you sure?” Then: “What did it say?”

“It said, ‘spirit-talking - now’.”

“And have you been there?”

“Think I’m stupid? Whenever I get strange requests from male admirers I always check them out first. It’s a matter of principle.”

“Don’t go there,” said Danny urgently. “Do you hear? They’re trying to get to you. They’re trying to get at me through you.
He
is ... Hodeken.”

“You’re telling me that message wasn’t from you? You’re winding me up, aren’t you? You have one twisted sense of humour, Danny Schmidt.”

“Just don’t go there, do you hear? Don’t do anything until I come in the morning, okay?” But he was talking to the connection tone. Cassie had rung off.

He took the phone away from his ear. The small screen told him he had a message from Cassie. How could she have texted him while she was on the phone to him?

He opened it.

spirit-talking - now

He called her back. “Cassie? Trust me on this? ’Til the morning?”

“It wasn’t you, was it?”

“It wasn’t me. ’Til the morning?”

“‘Til the morning.”

~

It was going to be another hot day. As early as he reasonably could, Danny set off down the long drive from the Hall to the main road through the village. Over on the lawn a group of people were dismantling the marquee and loading it up into an open-backed truck.

He had to get to Cassie, just to be sure she was okay. But by going to her today was he just drawing her in deeper...?

He paused on the bridge over the brook and looked down at the rushing water. He needed to stop. Think. He mustn’t rush into anything. He let the sound of the water soothe him, then a car swung round the bend in the road, breaking the moment. He walked on.

At the top of Swiss Lane, he hesitated again. There was the house, its bright yellow paintwork ablaze in the harsh sunlight.

He saw a face at the front window. There and then gone. She had seen him.

He went down the road and Cassie swung the door open. “I thought you’d forgotten which house,” she said. “Stood there so long. I say hell
o
, the yellow one – remember? Hi, Dad. You remember Danny, don’t you? The German kid. He was here before. I told you all about him. Hardly speaks a word of English.”

Cassie’s father stood in the kitchen doorway in a dressing gown, with part of a newspaper held in one hand. “Morning, Danny,” he said, grinning. “
Guten morgen
.”