Pure Dead Frozen (19 page)

Bless the Bed That I Lie On

U
ndoubtedly it was the clones tucked inside his shirt that saved Titus and the baby from drowning when the vast wave hit them. Had it been up to him, Titus knew he couldn't have survived. After all, he'd only learned to swim earlier that year, and under Pandora's tutelage he could now barely manage a length of the moat, let alone stay afloat in this terrifying open water with a baby tucked in the crook of one arm.

Titus had no idea what had happened. Was he even alive? And if so, where on earth was he? He wasn't in Lochnagargoyle anymore, that much was certain. And if it really was water he was currently flailing in, it was like no water he'd ever encountered. Sure, it was wet, and its salt rimed his mouth, but it didn't
sound
like water. From all around came a faint murmur, like the sound made by thousands of hushed voices: the noise of a vast crowd of people all talking very quietly, as if they were in church or…or in a library. Occasionally he would distinguish an individual sound, even make out the odd phrase or foreign word, but for most of the time, all he could hear was a tangle of voices that his ears were unable to decipher. Ahead, he caught occasional glimpses of land he didn't recognize at all; at least, he
thought
he could see land, but in the darkness, the most he could see was a distant silhouette. What he
couldn't
see was Pandora, and this was terrifying—he was positive she must have been swept away by the same wave that had plucked both him and the baby from the shore. Plucked him, the baby, and…He tried his hardest not to follow that particular thought to its tragic conclusion, but it proved unavoidable. The wave had swallowed them all, including Strega-Nonna, crushing her limp body under the pounding tonnage of more water than he'd seen in his lifetime. Where Nonna might be now was anyone's guess, but mercifully she wouldn't be needing her body any longer….

“TIIIIITUUUUUUS!”

Had he heard that? His name, so faint and far away, its syllables part of the wind and the waves. He trod water for a moment, his arms aching with the effort of holding the baby's face clear of the waves slapping his face, as he strained to hear his name once more. He was tiring, and he knew that he had to find land soon, so he paddled on, the geriatric clones tugging him forward, their weak voices occasionally gasping out the odd insult to keep him going.

“Youth of today…born idle.”

“Call
that
swimming? I've seen faster bricks….”

“Come on, you great lummox. Put some effort into it. D'you think we
enjoy
towing you ashore? You weigh a ton, you do.”

“Eeeh, when I was your age, I used to swim across the loch every day with my bicycle on my back and my fishing rod between my teeth….”

And then his feet smacked off a rock, closely followed by his knees, and then he heard someone yell “TIIIIIITUUUUUUUSSS!” and he knew that he hadn't dreamt his sister's voice, for there she was, fairly dancing across the waves toward him, relief writ large across her face, her skinny arms wrapping around him in a most un-Pandora-like hug.

“Thank heavens you both made it. Come on. I was terrified I'd be stuck here on my own with…with that horrible bloke.” Seeing Titus's frown, she tried to explain, her words tumbling out one after the other in her haste. “D'you remember that weird guy, the creepy photographer who showed up last summer, the day Mrs. McLachlan vanished? Come on, Titus,
think
. The same guy who began to appear in all my photos? Yup. I thought you'd remember. Right, him. So I
knew
I'd seen him again, but I couldn't put my finger on when or where until now. It was this morning, when we went to the hospital to see Mum and the new baby and I was gazing out of the window and he was
there,
balanced on crutches, staring inside, staring at us…. The same guy. The same one who ki—who kill—”

She couldn't go on, and Titus couldn't finish the sentence for her. It was unthinkable that Strega-Nonna was gone forever. Neither Titus nor Pandora could even begin to imagine StregaSchloss without the old lady. Even though they rarely saw her in her thawed state—the telltale puddle of her melt-water only appeared by the range a few times a year—she was so much a part of their existence that her absence was about to rip a huge hole in the fabric of life at StregaSchloss. The baby stared up into Titus's face, watching as he blinked several times and looked out to sea, to where a last thin blade of yellow cut the sky in two.

“It's dark, Pan. Any idea where we are?”

“None whatsoever. All I know is that it's an island and that we're stuck here—at least until it gets light. There are a couple of trees and signs of an old campfire. That man—the one I was telling you about—he's over there, trying to get a fire going. The island's so small, I don't think we can avoid him, and besides…I'm
freezing
.”

She was right, Titus realized. There was hardly any shelter on the island, and the temperature was plummeting. Plus, he imagined that babies weren't equipped to deal with extremes of temperature, so if he didn't do something and do it soon, the baby would end up joining Strega-Nonna, and
that,
he vowed, simply wasn't going to happen.

Isagoth had managed to get a fire going, but it was only a feeble little flicker that dimmed alarmingly as he balanced more layers of wet twigs over its glowing heart.

“Ignite, dammit,” he commanded, kneeling down and trying to encourage flames by blowing on the embers. Smoke billowed around his head and he retreated, choking, wheezing, and enraged at the island's failure to provide dry kindling. “The wood's all
wet,
” he spat.

“Funny, that,” Titus muttered. “I noticed that about the water too.”

Isagoth's head whipped round, and he glared into the darkness beyond his fire. “Oh, it's you two,” he said, turning back to his fire-building. “Joy. You brought that infernal cheese factory along too….”

At the sound of Isagoth's voice, the baby began to sob. At the sound of the baby, Pandora gave a deep and heartfelt groan and gritted her teeth. Something about the sound of weeping babies made her feel as if her eardrums were being massaged with shards of broken glass while small lions were chewing on what remained of her brain. And just when she imagined that things couldn't get any worse, the sea gave up its dead, washing Strega-Nonna's body ashore like driftwood. Pandora had turned away from the baby to face out to sea, and thus she was the first to witness the return of her ancestor. A cry must have escaped from her then, because Isagoth slitted his eyes and stared at her, before following her gaze to a bedraggled bundle of rags and tatters. In one fluid motion, the demon was on his feet and running toward the high-tide mark, bounding across the pebbly shore before Titus and Pandora realized his intention. “Ssso, let's hope you had the sense to hang on to my stone,” the demon hissed, hauling Strega-Nonna's body about as if it were of no account whatsoever.

“
Stop
that!” howled Pandora, revolted by Isagoth's vulture-like behavior. “Leave her
alone,
you monster. She's
dead
. Doesn't that give her the right to rest in peace?”

Isagoth ignored her, turning the lifeless body over with his foot and swooping down to prize something from Strega-Nonna's grasp. Bile rose in Titus's throat. Even in death, the old lady's grip was so powerful that Isagoth was forced to break her fingers one by one in order to extract his prize. Frozen with horror, Titus and Pandora clung together, sobbing along with the baby they held between them.

At length the demon stood upright, his legs straddling Strega-Nonna's remains, his face illuminated with pure, undiluted hatred. It was as if he was growing in maleficence right there in front of them, sprouting like some wicked seed, his mouth opening into a crack that allowed smoke to spill forth from his interior.

“Miiine,” he breathed in a voice straight from Hell. “My ssstone. At laassst MY time is come. BEHOLD, THE NEW ORDER OF THE WORLDS. WELCOME TO HELL.”

Round the island's high-tide mark, pillars of flame ignited with a roar, leaping up to rim the land with red fire. Overhead, the night peeled back like the lid of a sardine tin to reveal a sky so raw it appeared to bleed. Titus and Pandora saw the land melt and turn to magma at their feet, saw gouts of flame shooting through from beneath the Earth's fragile crust. Instinctively they made for the sea, dodging erupting columns of flame, screaming in terror as they ran straight through the burning fringes of the island and floundered across its muddy shallows. But where they had expected to find water, there was only sand.

“Where's the sea
gone
?” Pandora gasped, spinning round to try and find her bearings. “Where
are
we?”

Bruised clouds scudded past overhead as, all around them, the land heaved itself aloft, taking the form of dunes, vast cliffs, and massifs, which just as swiftly blew away to re-form in sculpted curves elsewhere. Shapes appeared at their feet, rotted hulks of what might have been vehicles, and in the distance Titus was sure he saw the tumbled remains of buildings, roads, and bridges, their rusted metalwork spanning valleys of dust. The children stumbled and tripped, still running, still in flight from the horrors they had left behind, their breathing ragged as they scaled dunes and sent avalanches of sand cascading down in their wake. They gained a little height and stood panting and breathless on a ridge, but all they could see for miles around was more of the same. Ahead lay endless empty acres, wave upon wave of nothingness stretching off toward the horizon.

It was exhausting territory, Titus decided, shifting the weight of the baby to his other arm and taking a deep breath before dragging himself across a particularly soft stretch of sand. His feet slowed of their own accord; he was sinking up to his knees in sand, his mind turning in a weary gyre of one-step-more-just-one-step-more-just—

He stopped to catch his breath again. Sand ground between his teeth, and he grimaced. In his arms, the baby stirred, his dark eyes opening on the strange new world he found himself in.

“Pan…,” Titus found himself whispering. “D'you…d'you think we're de—we've di—?” He stopped, cleared his throat, and began again. “No. Well. Thought not.
Obviously
not, huh? Not dead, I mean.”

Pandora stared at him, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “How d'you know?”

“The baby just peed down my arm. Somehow I'm
sure
that doesn't happen when you're dead.” He looked down at the solemn baby boy in his arms and managed a wan smile. “You have your uses, squirt, even if it's only to remind us that we're still alive. Just.”

“But where
are
we?” Pandora's voice was teetering on the verge of hysteria. “And where's the sea? And we left Strega-Nonna with that awful man. We didn't think about
her
. We just ran away….”

Titus wasn't listening. He was staring at something over their heads, his eyes narrowed in concentration. With a trembling hand, he pointed to a small shape flying toward them, its rapid approach quickly bringing it within range and allowing them both to recognize Damp, her eyes sparkling, her arms outstretched in greeting, and her mouth open in a wide grin of delight.

“LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEE,” she bawled, evidently delighted to find her siblings, even if it was in such a dismal location. “Lookit, Tyts. Look, Panda, see me!” And unable to resist showing off, Damp described a wobbly loop-the-loop before crash-landing in a giggling heap at Pandora's feet.

Dragging himself out from under the toddler, a small and mightily peeved bat unfolded his wings, spat out a mouthful of grit, and turned to address Damp.

“Well, ma'am. I have to tellya that your flight today contravened each and every Fedril Aviation Athorty regulation ever written and some that haven't even bin thought up yet….”

“Veeeesper,” Damp groaned, picking herself up and greeting her stunned siblings with a grin. “Shoosh.” She wobbled over to Titus and grabbed on to his arms, bringing the baby nearer to her. The baby blinked at Damp, his dark blue eyes gazing deep into her brown ones. Damp smiled. “Look, baby. I brunged your friend.” And from inside the collar of her fleece she hauled out a small, wriggling salamander and unceremoniously dumped him on the baby's chest. The salamander blinked, as did the baby.

“What the he—?” Titus couldn't frame the question, couldn't get over his shock at finding his little sister appearing right in the middle of what was rapidly turning into a complete nightmare. “Where did…? But why? How?”

The salamander slapped his forehead and reared up on his hind legs. “Pleath,” it lisped. “Lithen. Thith ith Hell, or Hade-eeth, if you prefer. It uthed to be the domain of Death, but not anymore. The Chronothtone hath fallen under the control of the Dark Thide, and now all ith Chaoth. Patht and Future are mixthed up with Heaven and Hell—”