Thirteen Days of Midnight (30 page)

I look at Elza, at her dark messy hair and the streaks of gold the dawn is painting on her face. We made it. We’re still alive. The ghosts are gone and we’re still here, together in a sunlit forest. She’s stopped talking, and looks back at me with an intent expression.

There’ll never be a better moment than this. I lean forward and down, and her mouth meets mine. Her lips are warm and soft and I press her against the side of the car, running one hand down the back of her neck. Elza pulls me closer against her, her fingernails prickling against my scalp, her tongue —

Ham leaps up and nearly knocks me over. I stagger back from Elza, who laughs as Ham continues to prance and paw at me.

“I think he’s jealous,” Elza says. Ham scampers a few paces back down the road, then looks over his shoulder and whines.

“He wants us to follow him,” I say.

“Where’s your mum?” Elza asks.

“The demon was using her to . . . well, it doesn’t matter now. She was asleep next to me, in the stone circle. She seemed all right.”

“Well, this was nice, just the two of us,” Elza says, “but I think we should go and see if she’s awake.”

Elza picks a leaf from her hair as she speaks, and grins at me, and I look again at her face in the dawn light, the delicate orange leaf held in her hand, the perfect curve of her eyebrows and the masterful arrangement of freckles on her cheeks, and I think to myself that sometimes it is worth plunging into darkness, worth clinging to life even as a cold river tries to sweep you away, because there are moments like this waiting on the other side.

We make our way back from the track to the Devil’s Footsteps, all three of us bone-tired and dirty. When we get back home, I’m eating two dinners and then sleeping for a week. Ham leads the way, holding his straggly tail up like a banner. The peacock colors of the early dawn are fading, the sun now rising past the heather-covered hills that swell beyond the forest. The highest branches of the oak trees are highlighted in searing gold. Pigeons explode squalling from the bracken as Ham rushes past, making Elza and me start.

“What do they even do down there?” she asks. “Can’t they sleep in a tree like normal birds?”

“They’re probably eating worms or something.”

“Well, it’s inconsiderate. I thought my heart would stop. I’m still completely on edge.”

“The Host’s gone, Elza. It’s not coming back.”

“I know. I’m just amped up. I want to go and hit a punching bag.”

“Am I still going to see you now all this is done?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Will we still —”

“I heard what you said.” Elza looks at me, her green eyes filled with amusement. “I just couldn’t believe you’d imagine we’d just go back to you kicking a soccer ball at me from across the schoolyard? Of course we’ll still see each other.”

“Good. I’m not sure I’ve got any other friends left.”

“Well, that’s very flattering. Knowing I’m your only choice.”

“I didn’t mean it like that —”

“I know,” Elza says with one of her infuriating grins. “You’re extremely easy to tease. Anyway . . . that’s her, isn’t it? On the stone.”

“Yeah,” I say, “there she is.”

As we make our way across the clearing, Elza slips her hand into mine.

Mum’s sitting on the flattest stone of the Footsteps, the one she stabbed me over. White face, bronze hair, my raincoat wrapped around her body. Ham is already with her, pressing his head into her chest so she can rub his shoulders and neck. She’s staring absently up into the gold-tinted tree branches, and looks down only when we cross into the ring of stones.

“Luke,” she says.

“Mum.” I kneel down and wrap my arms around her, Ham butting and nibbling at both of us. I break away, and I see that she’s crying a little.

“What happened?” she asks. “Where are we?”

“We’re up at the Devil’s Footsteps. It’s near Dunbarrow High. You’ve been ill.”

Mum nods and looks at the trees. I don’t really know what else to say to her. How am I going to explain all of this? How can I say that I’ve missed her? That for days I thought she would die, too? That she killed me? That I’ve met her other son? I don’t know how to tell her any of it. I don’t know if I ever will. I settle for an introduction.

“This is Elza Moss, Mum. She’s a friend.”

“Ms. Manchett,” Elza says, extending her hand.

Mum shakes Elza’s hand, looking at the dried paint on Elza’s sleeves and hands with obvious curiosity. Ham is on the other side of the hollow, rooting about in a bush. The wind makes ripples on the shining surface of the nearest puddle. Elza moves closer to me, and I feel her leg resting against mine.

“Why are we all here?” Mum asks. She’s taking this much better than I would. She’s got the bemused face of someone who thinks they might not’ve woken up properly. “I’ve been having the worst dreams. I dreamed I was . . . buried. I was underground, and I didn’t think I’d ever get myself out . . . and then I heard your voice, and your father’s . . .”

“We need to talk about that,” I say gently. “When you heard the news, you had a bad reaction. You weren’t well. And last night, you tried to run away —”

“What happened, love?” Mum asks. “What news? What did I do?”

I take a deep breath. I don’t like lying to her like this, but I don’t see another way. At least I can tell her part of the truth, tell her something I should’ve said last week.

“Mum, Dad died. He’s gone.”

“Oh, Luke.”

She starts to cry, and I’m crying, too, and as I put my arms around her I’m surprised to feel Elza embracing us as well, and we sit there like that for a long time, three warm bodies and three silent stones.

T
he last thing that happens isn’t that moment in the stone circle, isn’t the drive back to our house or the enormous meal I eat, after which I really do sleep for a whole day. The last thing that happens isn’t Mum’s hospital visits, or the police statement I have to give regarding the “grotesque vandalism” that we’ve suffered, an event I manage to link with the earlier report I filed when the Vassal and Judge first appeared in our kitchen. The last thing that happens isn’t me being removed from the rugby team for missing almost two weeks of practice (which I deserve, though it has Mark written all over it). The last thing that happens isn’t Ham’s emergency X-ray and subsequent surgery for stomach trouble, during the course of which the vet removes from his stomach a pair of rusty shears and a dense rock, which, when viewed from a certain angle, resembles a familiar shriveled face.

The last thing that happens arrives three weeks later, when I come down from my shower for breakfast. I’ve been sleeping better than I expected: no nightmares, exactly. My dreams are of cold night skies full of sigils and stars.

Anyway, I come down to find Mum already up, sitting at the kitchen table in her morning poncho. Her hair’s tied back, and she’s looking at a small, dark urn, sitting right in the middle of the table. I sit opposite her. I don’t ask what’s inside. I don’t need to. Eddies of steam emerge from her mug of green tea.

“Delivered this morning,” Mum says.

“So he —”

“They said he didn’t want a funeral. His instructions were for the cremation to happen in private, and for us to get the ashes. I can’t understand it”— Mum shakes her head — “but that’s what he wanted. We can remember him, just you and me.”

“Right,” I say. I think about Dad’s body, burned and compacted until it fits into something the size of a thermos flask, even as his spirit expands outward, crossing over into a place I can still barely imagine.

“I’m sorry,” Mum says. “I’d hoped you’d be able to see him again, when you were both ready. But this is all we have.”

I realize she’s expecting me to cry.

“It’s all right,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” Mum says again. “Things haven’t been quite what I’d hoped for, I suppose. You think you’re going one way, and you end up somewhere else.”

“Mum,” I say. “We’re really going to be OK.”

“I know,” she says. She sniffs. “I missed him so much. I haven’t been . . . myself, for years. I’ve sat around and waited for him to come back. And now . . . well . . .”

She waves a hand at the urn.

“I’m going to take this as a sign,” Mum continues. “Things need to change. I’ve sat and felt sorry for myself for far too long.”

“It’s all right to feel sad,” I say.

“Yes, of course it is, love. And you can feel however you want. But I just wanted to say . . . I love you, and I know the way things have been isn’t good. I’ve been told your dad left all his money to charity. It’s very kind of him, but it leaves you and me in a funny state. I’m going to need to start looking for work again. I’m going to make a change.”

“I think that’s great news.”

“Well,” she says, looking at the urn, “it’s odd, love. I feel almost . . . free. Like a weight’s gone from me. He can’t come back to us, so now I can move on.”

Ham stretches in the early sun that streams in through the window. His stitches seem to be healing well.

“Where do you want to scatter the ashes?” I ask.

“I was thinking maybe the ocean,” she says. “The beaches near that old castle. He never went there, but I think he’d have liked it.”

I nod. I’m about to go get my school uniform when she says something else.

“Dad’s lawyer gave me something for you as well.”

“Dad’s lawyer?”

My stomach churns.

“Yes. He delivered the urn himself. You just missed him. Really quite handsome.” Mum laughs. “He wanted to give me his condolences in person. And he had something for you as well, Luke. Something of Dad’s. I left it up in your room.”

“Wow,” I say. “I’d better go see what it is.”

I take the stairs slowly, feeling sick, remembering what I saw when I shook Berkley’s hand. He — it — was at my house just ten minutes ago. . . . Somehow I’d started to hope the Devil was a figment, a fantasy. Here’s a fresh reminder that my debt is all too real.

The package lies on my bed, marked
LUKE
in neat letters. I tear it open. Inside, as I knew I would, I find a small green book, fastened shut with metal clasps, and an old ring with an octagonal black stone. I lay the Book of Eight and Dad’s sigil out on my duvet. There’s a note as well, written in ink on a square card.

As I read the last line, the paper begins to brown and age. Within a moment, all I’m left with is a few flakes of something like ash floating in my bedroom’s still air.

That afternoon I go into the garden shed and empty out a toolbox and then put the Book and the case with Dad’s rings inside. I waterproof it with a plastic bag and tape, take a spade, and set off into the fields beyond our garden. If Berkley insists that I keep them, then I will. I just don’t want them in my room.

I choose the northern corner, farthest from our house, and start to dig. The earth is cold and hard, and though it’s a small hole I’m making, the sun is setting by the time I’m done. I lower the toolbox, swathed in plastic, into the ground.

I’m not burying Dad’s body, and his ghost is long gone, but what I’m covering with earth — the Book and his sigil — they’re what he really was. This is what he loved most of all, more than me or Mum or my unborn brother. With each spadeful of dark earth, I’m putting a wall between me and him. I want it all behind me. When I’m finished burying the box, I smooth out the ground and mark the spot with a flat slab of stone from our garden wall.

Sometimes I don’t know why I let Dad go free. I can hardly say he deserved it. What he did to me and Mum is only the start of it. Ahlgren, all the other people Dad must’ve killed . . . perhaps he should’ve gone to Hell. Maybe the Devil was right. In the end, I think I saved Dad to show him he was wrong. Wrong to leave me, wrong not to face who he was, wrong to abandon the one person who still wasn’t able to give up on him, even when I knew the truth. Wherever Dad is, I hope he has time to think about that.

The sky is blushing deep red, and the trees on the far side of the field are reaching their shadows out toward me. There’s a bird, two, a flock of crows: eight of them, coming squabbling overhead, heading out for the moors beyond our valley. The soft wind is like the sound of your own blood, flowing. I watch the birds until they’re out of sight, then I turn and walk back toward the house.

It’s no small thing to grow a whole novel from the initial seed of an idea, and I certainly couldn’t have made it this far without help. Firstly, I’d like to thank my agent, Jenny Savill, who believed in the story, and without whom Luke and company would have become the abandoned populace of a long-forgotten Word document. I’d also like to thank my editors: Jessica Clarke, Kate Fletcher, and Kristina Knoechel, who worked tirelessly to mold the story into the strongest shape it could take.

I’d like to thank everyone who read and commented on the early drafts of this novel, including Emily Burt, Tristan Dobson, Victoria Dovey, Sammi Gale, Lewis Garvey, Alex McAdam, Danny Michaux, Oliver Pearson, Jenn Perry, Eleanor Reynard, and Daniel Winlow.

Finally, I’d like to thank my family for their unwavering support and kindness over the past five years.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2015 by Leo Hunt
Cover photograph copyright © 2015 by Viviana Gonzalez/Getty Images (moon and sky)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

First U.S. electronic edition 2015

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2015934259