Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows (32 page)

A woman had leapt from her chair and dropped to the body of the man in the suit.

“He's alive,” she said. “Barely.”

The mood of the crowd had shifted in an instant. Where there had been uncertainty, even an impulse to make light of the situation, there was now a deathly hush and the air felt charged with dread that Darwen could almost smell. It hung there, like electricity in the unnatural night. In unison, the scrobblers took a step forward, hemming in the crowd and raising their weapons so that soon everyone who had not yet put a helmet on had some kind of blaster trained on them.

“There now,” said the face of Greyling. “That makes life simpler, doesn't it? Choice is really overrated. And you'll thank me. Those helmets will bring you power and purpose. They will bring you clarity uncluttered by human doubt or weakness. You will never worry about a single decision ever again, and you will be free to wield your new strength without fear, without conscience.”

There was a silent pause, through which Darwen caught a scattering of sobs, and then they complied. All the people in the front row put the helmets on. Some merely looked scared of the scrobblers, but others seemed curious, even eager. Mr. Stuggs pressed his helmet into place. He looked excited at what might happen next, so that for a second Darwen was reminded of Alex's observation that the man was—at least in spirit—half scrobbler already. Darwen stared, then turned back to the seated crowd, watching in horror as Aunt Honoria lifted the helmet over her head. As she lowered it into place, his aunt's face was completely unreadable.

For a second, Darwen couldn't breathe. He saw her eyes vanish inside the dark visor of the helmet and he could think of nothing, even when a scrobbler behind him shoved a helmet into his own hands. He looked around and saw that the same thing was happening to Mr. Peregrine, to Alex and Rich. Their eyes met briefly, desperately, and they shared the obvious truth that they had failed. Indeed, their resistance had been so useless that the scrobblers weren't even paying them attention anymore. Alex stood looking lost, but beside her Rich was suddenly considering the microphone, which the principal had set down on the stage.

Darwen knew that look. “What?” he asked under his breath.

“The communication system,” said Rich. “It's wired to everything in Silbrica, Greyling said.”

“So?” asked Darwen. “You can divert the power away from his machines?”

“No,” said Rich. “But if I plug this microphone into that transmitter there, you can send a message through every portal in Silbrica. The energy surge may even lock the portals open for a while so anyone can pass through them. But the key is the message. Got anything you'd like to say?”

Darwen thought quickly. It wasn't much of a plan, but they didn't seem to have any other options. He nodded and stooped to the microphone as Rich casually reached for the jack plug on the end of the cable, plucked it out of the PA system, and, without raising his eyes, took three steps to where the scrobbler generator stood humming. He put the plug behind his back, facing the assembled people and their scrobbler guards, clicked it into place, and gave Darwen the smallest of nods.

Darwen took a breath, raised the microphone slowly to his lips, and said, “These are the mirroculists, Darwen Arkwright . . .”

“Alex O'Connor,” said Alex, leaning quickly in.

“And Richard Haggerty,” Rich concluded.

“On behalf of all the peaceful inhabitants of Silbrica,” said Darwen, “we summon all allies to Hillside Academy to stand against Greyling and the destruction he will inflict upon your world.”

There was no amplification. His voice sounded as it always did. But one of the scrobblers spun around and snatched the microphone from his grip.

Nothing else happened.

Darwen waited, staring at the blank face of the helmet he was holding with its little antenna in the back. He shot Rich a desperate look, but the bigger boy just shrugged. Had anyone heard? Would anyone come? It seemed unlikely, and they were already out of time. Any moment now, the device up in the clock tower would emit some kind of pulse and the transformation would start. He had no idea how long it would take or if he could reverse it once it had begun.

The scrobbler behind him nudged him with the business end of his energy weapon and the helmet chinked against something in Darwen's pocket. Eileen's compact. Darwen thought fast. They had never needed Weazen more than they needed him now. Maybe he was already here and watching, waiting for the right moment. . . . It was now or never.

Darwen dropped the helmet, snatched the compact from his pocket, and flipped it open, hitting the second button on the side as he did so. He didn't wait to see the hairy muzzle and bright, masked eyes. He just shouted, “Now!” and hoped that would be enough.

For the second time in as many minutes, his hopes were dashed to pieces by silence. The face of Greyling turned its rodent smile on Darwen, but nothing else happened.

Then, out of the unearthly stillness, Darwen heard a tiny noise somewhere beneath him, then a considerably larger sound, an electric bang, which was accompanied by the door into the clock tower blowing right off its hinges and flying in fragments all over the silent crowd, so that bits of wood rained down on their helmets. Then there was a blur of fur and brass and Weazen was out and shooting, a series of hard, precise flashes that sent scrobblers doubling up and collapsing where they stood. The others shifted their aim, trying to pick out the Peace Hunter as he returned their fire. The darkness was suddenly lit by a dozen arcing streaks of light and the firework explosions that came with them.

Darwen leapt forward, elbowing Principal Thompson in the back as Alex, neatly sidestepping the scrobbler that was guarding her, stepped up to the edge of the stage and shouted, “Run! Everyone, get out of those helmets! And yeah, it's a cliché, but for once it's really true: run for your lives!”

But as she said it, the clock face high above them burst into an eerie, greenish glow, so that everything below was cast in strange, leaping shadows. Darwen heard the hum of the broadcast rising in pitch and, in the same instant, saw tiny lights on the backs of the helmets burning glowworm green.

It was too late. Even those who had been in the act of removing their helmets stopped as if momentarily unsure who they were or what they were doing. They hesitated, and then they began to move again.

But now they were different.

Darwen could see it in their slow deliberation. Then, before his very eyes, some of them started getting bigger, their shirts and jackets tearing across the shoulders as their arms got longer and more apelike, the skin taking on a drab, olive hue, the fingers thickening and growing clawlike nails.

No
, he thought, but there was nothing they could do but save themselves.

“Come on!” he shouted to Rich and Alex, leaping down from the stage and bolting toward the first set of glassless windows that might get him out of the quadrangle.

But his path was blocked.

It was Eileen. She looked confused. She had a bruise above her left eye and there was a trickle of dried blood in her hair. She was holding the compact in her hand and it was pulsing softly. Darwen's mind raced and a terrible possibility occurred to him.

No
, he thought, gazing at the wound on her head.

“Eileen,” he managed. “Open your purse.”

She cocked her head on one side as if mildly surprised, but she smiled as if nothing was happening, unsnapped the bejeweled purse she always carried, and held it open. Darwen looked and squeezed his eyes shut to keep the tears in.

“What's the matter?” demanded Rich. “Eileen, help us get these people out!”

Eileen looked slightly baffled, gazing blankly at the compact as if she was listening to something far away.

“She won't help,” said Darwen.

“Sure she will,” Rich protested. “Won't you, Eileen?”

“You remember we couldn't understand how the Fixer moved through the portals?” said Darwen.

“Yeah, so?” said Alex.

“The Fixer can move through portals because the Fixer was once a mirroculist,” said Darwen, his words leaden with despair. “Isn't that right, Eileen?”

“What?” said Eileen, still sounding confused.

“The Guardians find work for their former mirroculists,” said Darwen, weary beyond anything he had ever felt. Weary and desperately sad. “Show them your purse,” he said to Eileen.

Eileen smiled and showed them the open purse. In it was a construction of leather and rubber and metal with green lenses, one of which had been cracked by a slab of stone flung by a scrobbler that had once been Blodwyn Evans. It was a gas mask.

Eileen drew it out, gave it a quizzical look as if she had never seen it before, then, as the compact in her other hand gave a single earsplitting beep, swept it over her head and became a completely different person, became—there could be no doubt—the Fixer.

Changes

D
arwen had suspected
it, had wondered about the way the Fixer had arrived in the mine just after he told her what they were doing, about the wound on her head caused by Blodwyn Evans in her half-scrobbler form. But suspicion isn't the same as really knowing. Now the fact of the thing chilled him to the bone and he was slow to respond, so that before he could reach for her, she had pulled that flintlock blaster with the mesh around the long barrel from her purse and was pointing it at each of them in turn.

“Eileen!” Rich protested. “It's us!”

“She can't hear you,” said Darwen. “Not really. It's not Eileen anymore. She's under some kind of mind control.”

The thing that had been Eileen tipped its masked face slightly to one side, sighting along the blaster's barrel straight to Darwen's chest. She showed no emotion and Darwen gritted his teeth, braced for the shot that would come, wondering vaguely if it would hurt to die.

There was a flash and a pop, and the weapon flew from her grasp. She clutched her hand to her chest in pain. To his right, Darwen saw where Weazen crouched, his own blaster still aimed at the Fixer. But then she was reaching into her purse for something else she could use against them.

As Darwen stood there, almost mesmerized by the Fixer's soulless mask, Rich closed fast behind her, holding one of the folding chairs in both hands. He swept it up and across with astonishing force, catching the Fixer on the back of the head. She went down like a sack of potatoes, and as Darwen stared, Rich snatched the mask from Eileen's face. He studied it, then put it on the ground and stamped his heel through the transmitter built into the back, then did the same with her tiny compact mirror.

“Nice one!” said Darwen, impressed.

“Come on!” shouted Alex, pulling at him. “Gotta go.”

Escape, however, looked unlikely. Where there had been only a couple of dozen scrobblers moments before, there were now hundreds. They were dressed as teachers and parents, but they were scrobblers nonetheless.

“Wait!” said Rich. “Look. The signal isn't affecting everyone.”

He was right. While many of the scrobblers were engaged in the firefight with Weazen, some of those in the audience were cautiously removing their helmets.

Genevieve Reddock had already taken hers off and was glancing around uncertainly, while two rows ahead, Simon Agu had slipped out of his and was gazing, devastated, at the scrobbler that had been his father.

“Come with us!” shouted Darwen, but Simon's eyes were wild as he tugged at his father's suit, trying to get some sign of recognition from the thing that was wearing it. “Simon! That's not your dad. Get away from it!”

But Simon didn't—or couldn't—pull away, and a moment later the thing that had been his father took him roughly by the arm and jammed the helmet back on his head.

“We've got to get to that machine!” Darwen shouted, knowing even as he said it that their only chance of escape was in the opposite direction.

Weazen was ducking and scurrying through the quadrangle corridor, leaping and shooting through the glassless window frames. Once in a while, he got a lucky shot off, but he was really no more than a diversion, and the longer he tried to keep it up, the more likely it was that he would get hit. Darwen's face stung from the grit that flew every time one of the blasters hit the stone walls. Weazen was fast, but there were just so many scrobblers shooting at him. It was, Darwen knew, only a matter of time. . . .

Up on the stage, Mr. Peregrine was backing away from the particularly large and brutish scrobbler that had been Mr. Stuggs. It would have had him already except that the flittercrake was flapping around the monster's head, looping and diving, scratching at its green skin with its talons.

Another delaying tactic that would buy only a few seconds.

The scrobblers and gnashers were everywhere, grabbing whoever was closest to them, or picking up rocks and chairs to use as weapons, and looking to come after Darwen, Rich, and Alex.

“Get out of the quadrangle!” Darwen shouted, blundering past a hesitant scrobbler and making for the door.

“Oh no,” said Alex.

In the circumstances, it didn't seem that things could get worse, but then Darwen followed her gaze to the ragged windows of the perimeter corridor and he could see them: pale, phantom faces fading in from the shadow school.

The ghosts.

Despite the adrenaline surging through his body, he felt himself go suddenly cold as wet stone.

Some of the other students who hadn't yet been caught were spilling out of the rows of chairs and looking wildly for somewhere to go, but now their attention was seized by the spectral apparitions at the windows. Melissa Young screamed. Bobby Park covered his face and slumped against the wall, sobbing.

“Crybaby,” sneered a voice behind him.

It was Chip Whittley. His face was impossible to read, like he had put on a mask to conceal whatever might be running through his mind, the fear, the excitement, the wild, brutal delight, but he was still cradling the scrobbler helmet he had been given in one casual hand.

Yes
, thought Darwen
. Delight
.
He's glad. He can feel the power Greyling is bringing and he wants it. . . .

“You knew this was coming, didn't you, Arkwright?” he said, smirking, but oddly calm in the chaos. Nathan Cloten, helmetless and looking frightened, was just behind him, and a few yards back was Barry Fails. Unlike the others, Barry was wearing his scrobbler helmet, the visor up so that his baffled face was just visible inside. Was Darwen imagining things, or was Barry's face starting to develop a greenish tinge?

“You need to help us,” said Darwen. “We can stop it if we can just—”

“Why would I want to stop it?” said Chip, amused. “Time to step up and be a man. This is the world, Arkwright, and I'm going to take my place in it.”

“What are you talking about, Chip?” asked Nathan. “What's going on?”

“The future,” said Chip, considering the helmet in his hands. “What do you say, Nathan? Stay a kid all your life, or grow up right now?”

“This isn't growing up,” said Darwen. “It's becoming a monster. Look at Barry!”

Chip did. Darwen was right. Barry's skin was definitely green and the features of his face were thickening. His shoulders had spread so that the fabric of his Hillside blazer had torn at the seam down the back, and his arms seemed to have gotten longer.

“What's happening?” said Nathan, horrified, but Darwen's eyes were on Chip.

“Let's just get out of here,” said Darwen, “and then we can talk.”

He turned and took a hurried step through the door into the cave-like echo of the perimeter corridor, trying not to look at the pale ghost faces that were out there. Rich and Alex were already there, stock-still and terrified.

“What is happening to Usually?” gasped Nathan. “And what are those other . . . things?”

“Ghosts,” said Chip, at his elbow.

“No,” said Darwen. “More like shadows cast by us into the other world. I think . . .” he said, putting the ideas together as he spoke, “I think they are a side effect of Greyling's machines. He's the man whose face you saw on the clock tower. As he tries to change the adults and bring the two realities into the same space, he's creating a kind of echo. I don't think he intends it to happen. What he's trying to do is turn the grown-ups into scrobblers—his monster servants and soldiers—by drawing on whatever darkness or cruelty is inside them, but it's doing something different to the kids. I don't know why. The ghosts are like spirit echoes. They are images of our essences, our souls.”

“Other world?” sputtered Nathan. “What other world? What are you talking about?”

Darwen turned to say something back but found himself face-to- face with a scrobbler that was blundering after them. It was wielding a length of metal pipe discarded by the workmen when they built the stage. Darwen looked around. Unless they were to mingle with the ghosts that crammed the hallway, gazing rapt at what was happening in the quadrangle, they were cornered.

Nathan cried out. Alex took Rich's hand.

The scrobbler took a wide stride, raising the pipe over its shoulder to strike, its masked eyes fastened on Darwen's. He backed into the rough stone on the far side, huddling into a protective crouch, and braced himself, hands up over his head. He shut his eyes, held his breath, and waited.

Nothing happened.

Cautiously, Darwen opened his eyes. The scrobbler was still there, looming over him, the pipe raised to strike. But while the thick fingers of its greenish left hand flexed and unflexed, the right, the one with the weapon, held quite still.

“Darwen!” exclaimed Alex. “Oh God, Darwen. Look at its clothes!”

Darwen dragged his gaze from the blank mask and as they traveled down the scrobbler's body, a new feeling took hold of him, a feeling mixed of equal parts horror and grief. The monster was wearing a recently torn but once elegant black business suit and a silver chain around its neck.

Her neck.

It was—or had been—Aunt Honoria.

For a second, Darwen could not breathe, could not think. His arms, upraised to protect himself, sagged. Faced with what his aunt was about to do, his body and mind just gave up.

They had lost, and fighting back no longer mattered or made sense.

How long he stayed there he couldn't say, but he gradually realized that Alex had extended a cautious hand toward the scrobbler's left arm, that Rich was reaching slowly, inch by careful inch, up to its face. He hesitated, then took hold of the visor and raised it.

Beneath the glass the strange hybrid was revealed. It was and was not a scrobbler. The skin was green. The teeth burst from the heavy lips like tusks. But the eyes . . .

Darwen shifted, trying to get a better look. They were not so much red as a deep and fiery chestnut, and as he watched, they seemed to fluctuate, first toward the crimson, then to their original brown and back. It was like looking into the energy pool in the Guardian chamber when the life of Silbrica had been dying, like some terrible struggle was going on inside.

“Aunt Honoria,” he managed. “It's me. Darwen.”

The red eyes blinked, staying closed for a second, and Darwen kept very still, aware of that massive fist with the pipe raised over its head. A tear squeezed out from under the greenish eyelids and ran down the scrobbler's cheek, and then the eyes were open again, and they were brown, a deep, rich brown that Darwen knew.

Darwen stood slowly, grasping the scrobbler's left hand, and slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the right hand with the pipe came down. The weapon slipped from its grasp and clanged heavily on the stone floor, but almost immediately an awful change came over the scrobbler's face. The mouth opened, the eyes squeezed shut, and the hands flew to the sides of the helmet. It rocked back and forth, producing a groan that rose in pitch and volume as the scrobbler doubled up.

Rich caught its shoulder, but it was too heavy for him and crumpled to the ground.

“What's happening?” Alex asked. “What's wrong with it?”

“It doesn't know what it is,” said Rich. “Or it realizes what has happened and can't undo it. Either way, it's in terrible pain.”

“Get the helmet off!” gasped Darwen.

“It's connected to her brain!” Rich answered. “Taking it off might kill her.”

“It's killing her anyway,” said Darwen, reaching for the helmet and pulling.

It took both of them, but they got it free. Aunt Honoria collapsed to the floor.

“Still breathing,” said Alex, dropping to her side, “but I don't know. . . .”

“We have to get to that machine!” Darwen said. “The signal is still in her head. In all of their heads.”

“It's too heavily guarded,” said Rich. “There were half a dozen scrobblers and a couple of gnashers up there when they caught me. They have strict orders from Greyling. No kind of diversion will move them.”

“Then we need to interfere with what it's doing,” said Darwen.

“Why?” said Chip.

Darwen turned. He had forgotten the other boy was still there. Chip still looked cocky, as if he was relishing the situation, but there was a caution in his face that he couldn't hide.

“Because this is what Greyling does,” Alex shot back at him. “He captures. He steals what people value most and he kills. You of all people should know that.”

Chip was still smirking, but his eyes were wary.

“What does she mean?” asked Nathan. “Why you of all people?”

“Talking nonsense,” said Chip, his eyes on Alex. “Just the usual O'Connor crap.”

“You saw it!” she exclaimed. “Back in Costa Rica. You know what he does. What he's doing right now!”

“Doesn't seem so bad,” said Chip, picking up the length of pipe the scrobbler-Honoria had dropped.