Thirteen Days of Midnight (21 page)

I can’t be in this room. I dart through the wall into my room, which has been ransacked, clothes and bedding exploding everywhere. Something has torn at my wallpaper like an animal. Checking every room in the house, I find no other spirits and return to the garden shed, where Elza and Ham are cowering.

“What’s going on?” Elza asks.

“The Judge is in the living room, but he’s watching TV. You can get by. The rest of them aren’t here, so far as I can see. They must be at the Footsteps or something.”

“Or that’s what they want us to think.”

“Well, what can we do? OK, so you know where Mum’s bedroom is. Things have . . . gotten strange in there.”

“Are you sure about this?” she asks.

“The Book of Eight is up there as well. We need the Book.”

Elza breaks cover and runs across the back lawn, combat boots squelching in the wet grass. Ham remains in the shed, cowering under a tool bench. I decide that he’s been demoted to omega pack member due to persistent cowardice. I catch Elza up as she reaches the back door. Covering her fist with a rag from the shed, Elza smashes a pane of glass and reaches in to undo the latch.

“The key is under the flowerpot!” I hiss.

“Sorry. I’ve just always wanted to do that.”

“It was noisy! There’s a ghost in there, remember?”

Elza moves into the kitchen. Fragments of glass crunch beneath her feet. She takes a knife from the magnetic strip behind the stove.

“I don’t know if that’ll help you.”

“Never can tell. Oh, wow, is this a Svensberg limited edition?”

“Mum’s room is directly above us.”

“She has good taste in knives.”

“Elza —”

“Sorry. I get irrelevant when I’m scared.”

Her knuckles are very white as they grip the handle of the blade. The television switches to an advertisement, and I motion frantically at her to hide. She ducks into the pantry, breathing hard. The Judge picks up the remote and skips to the next part of the game. I move through the wall into the living room, and watch the back of his gray stubbly head until I’m sure he’s completely immersed. I flit back to the closet.

“If you see my body, are you going to stab me?” I whisper.

“Not if I don’t have to.”

“I’d just rather you didn’t stab me. I need that body in good condition.”

Elza moves across the front hall, the riskiest area, where the Judge could easily see her. She’s quiet and light on her toes when she wants to be, reminding me of a large black cat. She flattens against the coat closet by the door, waiting for my signal before climbing the stairs. The crowd noise on the television sounds like ocean surf. The Judge shifts his boots, so now the left foot rests on top of the right foot. I’m watching for any sign that he might be about to get up. After another minute I decide it’s safe. Elza climbs the stairs and edges across the landing, toward Mum’s room. Elza softly moves the door open, knife poised to strike, and then recoils from the dark doorway.

“Is she . . . ?”

“Yeah. Floating.”

The room feels even worse the second time I see it, more like a tomb than a bedroom.

“I’ve never seen anything like that.” Elza sounds both scared and fascinated.

“We need to get her out of here,” I say.

Elza closes the bedroom door behind her. The noise of the Judge’s rugby game fades away. It’s even darker now. I can just make out Elza’s face. I want my mum out of this house, away from the ghosts, somewhere safe, and I can’t ever touch her. I need Elza to understand this.

“I don’t know how to do that,” she says.

“We have to get her out of here! She’s my mum! I’ve left her like this for days! We have to do something.”

“We are doing something,” Elza says. “We need the Book and the sigil back. Luke . . . I get what it’s like. If that was my mum, I don’t know what I’d do. But we need to focus. We need to work out how to read the Book and banish the Host forever. That’s what’ll save her. You want to take her to the hospital? What are they going to do for her? She’ll be no safer than here.”

“You don’t know that! Elza, don’t talk like that!”

“Luke, your mum is
levitating.
How am I supposed to get her out of the house? Tie a rope around her ankle? Pull her down the road like a kite?”

I don’t say anything. I hate this. It feels like failing. Whatever the Host is doing to her, it’s too far gone for the county hospital to be of any use. I don’t want to leave her here, but I don’t know that we’ve got a choice.

“Get the Book, then,” I say.

Elza takes a deep breath.

“I’m a bit afraid to touch her. What if she wakes up?”

“And does what?”

“And strangles me or something? I don’t want to stab her.”

“We don’t have a choice, remember?”

Gripping the carving knife, Elza walks softly across the dark bedroom. I glide alongside her, keeping a close eye on Mum. I think Mum looks more peaceful than evil, but something about the absolute stillness of her face is frightening. I never imagined I could be afraid of her. She’s not even angry if I get into trouble at school or forget to walk Ham or anything like that; she just flaps a hand and says
honestly
like it’s just typical of me, what she expected. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard her raise her voice. But here, now, as Elza’s hands move closer and closer to Mum’s body, closer to the Book, it’s possible to love her and be afraid of her. It’s possible to wonder what her closed eyes are seeing. What you’d see in them if she woke.

Elza grasps the Book of Eight and slowly starts to pull it from Mum’s arms.

Mum makes a small sigh.

Elza freezes.

“She won’t hurt you,” I say.

“Easy for you to say, Man Without Body.”

“I have a body. It might be coming back right now. We need to get out of here.”

Elza grits her teeth and slides the Book of Eight free. Mum’s arms settle into their new position, the Book no longer held against her chest.

Elza lets out the breath she was holding and walks as fast as she can out of there, closing the door behind her. I blink through the bedroom wall just in time to hear her squeak and muffle a scream.

The Heretic is standing on the landing, wreathed in fire. His jaw hangs open, and oily smoke boils from his nostrils and eye sockets. He reaches a fleshless hand out to me, grasping at the air.

“Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum!”

“What
is
that?” hisses Elza.

“That’s the Heretic. He’s harmless. Doesn’t even know who he is — be quiet!” I say to the thing.

“Is he trying to warn them?” Elza asks.

“He doesn’t have enough brain left to warn anyone.”

“Adveniat regnum tuum!”

“Shut
up
!”

“Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra!”

“He’s going to warn them whether he means it or not!” Elza whispers frantically.

“Please shut up! Heretic!”

“Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis —”

“Elza, go into the bathroom. Do it now.”

“— debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris!”

“What?” she asks.

“Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo!”

“Bathroom. Open the window, go out onto the garage roof. You can drop from there to the back garden. I’ll deal with the Judge. He can’t hurt me. Go.”

“Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum!”

Elza nods and slips into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. The Judge pounds up the stairs, potato face creased with annoyance.

“What are you yelling about? Bloody fuss, never a mome — Luke!”

“Judge.”

He pauses on the stairs. One fat hand is on the banister, the other clenches into a fist.

“Adveniat regnum tuum!”

“Told you to stop meddling. Nose out, I said.”

“You know I can’t do that,” I say.

“What the bloody — how’d you get in here?”

“The Shepherd doesn’t know everything. That’s all I can say.”

“Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra!”

“You got to leave” he says. “I got to tell them you were here.”

“Do what you have to, Judge. But I’m going to win this thing, and I’ll remember which side you were on.”

“Bloody”— he pulls at his collar — “bloody hell! The Fury — you know I can’t. Boss. Until you get that thing under control, I can’t do nothing but what they tell me.”

“Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie . . .”
The Heretic has begun to walk, waving its blazing arms. It melts through the wall in the direction of Elza and Ham, although the Judge, mercifully, doesn’t seem interested.

“I can win this. Believe me. I’m sending the Shepherd and the Fury back to Hell.”

“You got to go,” he says. “Give you fifteen minutes, but I have to report, tell them you got inside the house. I have to.”

I take a breath.

“Thanks,” I say. I imagine Elza, forcing herself through the tiny window, boots flailing against the mossy-green tiles. Imagine her dropping down onto the lawn, the Book of Eight held in the pocket of her raincoat. Hopefully she’s made it out by now, because I wouldn’t put it past the Judge to go outside and look around.

“. . . sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris!”
The ghost’s idiot chant is muffled by walls and windows.

The Judge gives me a little nod. The meaning is unclear. For a moment I think he’s going to go outside, but then he turns and walks back downstairs.

“I’m sorry about the Vassal,” I say, and then fly out of my house like an arrow, through the insulated wall cavity, into the drab October air. The rain is falling at a slant, our gutters nearly exploding with water, every tree hissing in the wind like a radio tuned to a blank channel. Elza is over the garden wall already, and Ham is prancing and rearing up in our apple grove, just in front of the blood-magic boundary line. I whoosh down toward him, my second body —

— body boy’s body. Dogsbody. Dog body. Am Ham. Very brave. Well done. Good boy good girl. Love girl. Brave girl. Girl run Ham run. Bye bye unbeasts. Bye bye bad house. Am Ham. Love field. Love sky. Hello fields. Am Luke. Am Ham.

Ham run. Run Ham run. Run run run.

Once we’ve crossed a couple of fields, I squeeze myself out of Ham’s mind again, confident that he’s grasped the direction he’s supposed to travel. Elza glances over her shoulder every minute or so. The golden-leafed trees that surround my garden are almost out of sight, but she’s still convinced that something terrible will come rocketing out of them at any moment.

“So how are we going to get my body back?” I ask.

“I don’t know yet.”

“I mean, I think I need it. If I want to be a proper necromancer. I can’t use the sigil as a spirit. You can’t wear a ring on a ghost finger. Not that we even have the sigil. Last I saw it my body was wearing it.”

“I think that’s why they took your body over,” she says. “To limit your options. Gives them control. They can kill it during whatever ritual they’re planning for Halloween, I’d imagine.”

“Well, so we —”

“Luke!”

“What?”

Elza points at the horizon. We’re in the middle of a sheepless sheep paddock bounded by drystone walls. To our left are the outskirts of Dunbarrow; to the right, more fields, and eventually the motorway. Nobody is around. Directly to our front is a dense pinewood, which is where Elza is gesturing so frantically.

“I don’t see anyt —” I say, and then I do. There’s someone coming out of the pines, a long way off, just three dabs of white moving against the dark of the trees. I can’t see perfectly at this distance, but it looks like me.

“Speak of the devil.”

“Has it seen us?” Elza hisses.

“I don’t know. Where are we?”

“Near Bareoak Drive,” she says. “We’re not far from my place now.”

“Can I — it — get into your house?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t really know what hazel charms do against possessed people. I’d rather not find out.”

I look at the fields. We’ve got three to cross before we reach any buildings or streets. My body is four fields away, but I know it can move pretty fast if it wants to. I do work out after all. I think the angles work in our favor, but only just.

“Should I run?” asks Elza.

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s seen us, but if we move left . . .”

“We’ll be on higher ground, yes.”

“It’ll see us.”

“It’ll see us if we stay here much longer,” says Elza.

“OK,” I say, “move now. Run as fast as you can.”

Elza nods and then breaks as fast as she can for the left-hand side of the field. Ham follows me as I glide alongside. From the way he gallops, he clearly thinks it’s all a game.

Elza runs, boots splodding in the wet earth. My demon-ridden body sees us before we reach the wall and begins to sprint toward us, a tiny black shape bobbing on the slope in front of the woods. Elza scrambles over the drystone wall, dislodging some of the smaller stones. Ham whines and skitters around in circles before finally remembering he can jump over walls, and leaps, landing with a splatter in the mud.

We make it across the second field, but my body vaults the north wall just as Elza reaches the western one, and she’s flagging. Ham yelps as he leaps. Elza hits the ground with a huff that sounds pained. There’s thick mud all over her legs. It’s almost unbearable to watch like this and not be able to do anything. I see that my possessed body is gaining. Its footfalls are as regular as a drum. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t.

Elza is panting worse than Ham now, forcing herself onward. This final field is slightly sloped, with a low middle and raised sides. Elza pounds down the muddy slope, slams her feet into a cold, greasy pool that’s collected in the dip at the center of the field, and gasps as she pelts through the water, spraying coldness over her legs and back.

“You’re doing great!” I shout at her. “Keep going!”

“I’m not . . . a runner . . .” she pants.

“You’re running, aren’t you? I think that counts!”

Ham is soaked, too, pounding across the grass, fur sticking out from his sides and legs in dark dripping spikes. It’s raining again. The rain makes a hiss against the grass.