Gallows at Twilight (34 page)

Eleanor stood up. Her expression was sorrowful.

‘Then you really are
nothing
like Josiah.’

Jake shot to his feet. The sudden movement startled the horses and they tugged at the reins tied to the oak trees.

‘What’s wrong with me wanting revenge? HE KILLED MY MOTHER! How could you understand what that feels like? How could you even begin to … ?’

It surged inside Jake, ran down his arms and broke between his fingers. Magic. But this time of a very different kind. Instead of the blue flicker of old, a scarlet flame lit up the night. He had seen such magic before—it was the hallmark of a dark sorcerer.

Jake stared through the magical fire and met Eleanor’s gaze.

‘I know, Jake,’ she said quietly. ‘I know.’

Unafraid, she came forward to meet him. At her approach, Jake sensed his hatred and anger fall back, like darkness retreating from candlelight. The red flame in his hand fizzled away and Eleanor wrapped her arms around him.

‘I know because I lost someone, too,’ she whispered. ‘Josiah was my soulmate and he was torn away from me. After he died, I felt very much like you feel now. I wanted to find Marcus Crowden and make him pay. But in time I realized that was not what Josiah would have wanted. Revenge is destructive. Only justice can help us overcome grief.’

‘But isn’t it justice for Quilp to die?’

‘On the gallows at twilight?’ Eleanor asked. ‘With the mob baying for his blood and you as the hangman?’

Jake didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

Eleanor turned to the fire and started ladling the soup into wooden bowls.

Jake was about to join her when the little hairs on the back of his arms bristled to attention. He peered into the early evening gloom. Wind stirred the long grass and the rain chased in sheets across the untended meadow. At the very edges of his vision, where the meadow blurred into the night, Jake could make out something white moving in the darkness.

A figure.

It was coming towards them.

Chapter 29

Army of the Dead

Jake left Eleanor by the fire and walked out alone. Squinting through the rain, he saw that the white-faced stranger had stopped at a point midway between their camp and the meadow edge. The figure stooped down onto its haunches. Its hands were busy, but Jake was too far away to see what it was doing.

He marched on.

A lisping cry, carried by the gale, reached his ears—

‘
Risssssse
.’

Jake shivered. There was something horribly eerie in the sight of the woman crouching on the ground. A woman, yes, her haggard face hideous even at this distance. But it wasn’t her ugliness or even that brittle voice repeating the same word over and over—
Risssssse—
that made Jake shudder. It was the apron tied around her withered body. A red-smeared apron that reminded him of the one worn by the lady butcher from Cravenmouth.

He remembered what his father had said:
They would lure orphan children to the old house with promises of food and shelter. They pretended to be kindly spinster women, but after a few weeks of fattening the kids up …
This was one of the Crowden sisters, Jake knew it. He wondered how many children had died at her hands. How many had been hacked to pieces by her knife and stewed in her cauldron. He imagined the sisters of Havlock Grange knee-deep in little bones, cawing over the corpses like the carrion crow had cawed over the bodies of the dead Roundheads. They were monsters, jackals, scavengers of human flesh. Like Quilp, they deserved no mercy.

Jake’s magic responded to these dark thoughts. It pulsed along his arm and ignited between his fingers—flames of warring blue and red.

The witch had been so preoccupied with her conjuring that it was not until Jake had reached the ditch that she looked up. She sat on the other side of the trench, her thin, bare arms extended over the edge. In her left hand she held a glass bottle stoppered with a cork and filled with some dark green liquid. Aside from her cruel eyes, Jake could see little resemblance between this crone and the handsome Marcus Crowden. Then she smiled, and the family sneer played around her lips.

‘Master Quilp told me that you had magic,’ she said, ‘but I do not see your demon.’

‘I don’t see yours either.’

‘I have already taken what magic I need from my cauldron. Enough to weaken you and to kill your pretty friend.’

The witch nodded towards the campfire. Jake took a quick glance back and saw that Eleanor was now on her feet and peering in their direction.

‘You
won’t
hurt her.’

‘Ah!’ The smile widened. ‘My soft-hearted sister was right—you already care for her, but does she care for you?’

Rage burned inside Jake. He repeated:

‘You
won’t
hurt her!’

Jake threw back his arm and pitched the magical flame at the witch. She deflected the spell with a grunt and a twist of her free hand, sending the fire dancing away into the darkness.

‘No,
I
will not hurt your friend,’ the crone laughed. ‘
They
will do it for me.’

Quick as a flash, she took a dagger from inside her cloak and sliced open her arm, elbow to wrist. Blood gushed from the wound and rained down into the ditch.

Rained down onto the faces of the dead soldiers.

‘
Riiiiiise
.’

The witch used her teeth to pull the cork from the bottle. Jake knew he should do something to stop her, but a strange fascination had taken hold of him. He had seen witches use their magic before—to conjure hexes, to defend themselves—but he had never seen a spell concocted from words and raw ingredients. The witch sprinkled her blood and her potion into the gaping mouths and rotten eyes of the Roundheads. It ran down their stone-cold cheeks and soaked into the wet earth.

‘
Riiiiiise!
’

Exhausted, the witch fell back upon the ground, her injured arm clamped to her chest. Jake peered over the side of the half-made grave and saw the young soldiers sprawled together, still dead, still unmoving.

‘Some magic.’ Jake snorted. He began to summon a second magical flame. ‘I guess your brother got all the powerful mojo.’

‘You are in error, boy conjuror. See, my army awakens.’

A collective gasp rose up from the ditch.

The dead drawing breath into mouldy lungs.

Something tickled the back of Jake’s leg. It wrapped itself around his ankle and tripped him to the ground. The downpour had softened the earth but the fall still rattled Jake’s bones and the magic vanished from his fingers. He looked back at the thing that had tripped him. Reanimated, the buried human hand writhed in the rain.

And now more hands rose out of the earth. Eight pale palms—some with fingers stripped down to the bone—emerged over the lip of the ditch. They dug into the muddy ground and tugged at the clumps of meadow grass. Slimy with rain, the rat-gnawed heads of the four soldiers loomed into view. They moaned at the sky and their cry moulded itself into a word:

‘Flesh.’

‘Flesh!’

‘
Flesh!
’

The dead men pulled themselves out of the grave. They lumbered towards Jake, knocking shoulders like a group of drunks staggering out of a pub. Their raggedy clothes hung in strips from their bony bodies and their fleshless feet slurped in the dirt.

‘
FEE-LEEEESSHHH!
’

One of the soldiers, who in life could not have been much older than Jake, opened his mouth to repeat the chant. Worms had eaten through the muscles connecting his jaw to his skull and now the last of the skin tore away. His jawbone smashed against the ground and his teeth went skipping across the meadow. Unfazed, the soldier’s long black tongue slapped against the roof of his mouth—

‘
Chhlllesh! Chhllleeesh!
’

Jake scrambled to his feet and ran back towards the camp. The soldiers were slow and clumsy but, being already dead, it was unlikely that they would ever tire of their pursuit. Still, it would not take much to outpace them, especially with the horses.

Eleanor was still peering into the darkness. She had not yet seen the troop of living corpses. At the sight of Jake, she started forward.

‘We need to get out of here!’ he called, waving her back. ‘Untie the h—’

Hooves thundered behind him. As Jake turned his head, he heard the terrified whinnies of Pepper and Marian. The animals had sensed the thing that was coming towards them: a creature that had once been of their own kind, but that was now something
other
.

The ground trembled. Jake saw the flash of teeth and the white of rib. Frothing at the mouth, the undead horse bolted past the soldiers. Loose skin flapped behind it like party streamers caught in the breeze. The horse put a final burst of speed and the stray pieces of flesh holding its guts together gave way. Innards and entrails splashed across the ground, painting the meadow with a bright red streak.

Jake threw himself down. A second later, the horse flashed by, its hooves missing his head by centimetres. It was heading straight for the camp. There was no time for Eleanor to untie the horses and make her escape.

Jake shouted—‘Get into the tree!’

He saw the agonized look on Eleanor’s face. She didn’t want to leave the mares to their deaths. She started fumbling with the reins tied around the trees, but the horses had strained and pulled the knots tight. She would need a knife. She rifled through the saddlebag, all the while whispering to Pepper and Marian.

‘No time!’ Jake cried. ‘ELEANOR!’

The monstrous horse smashed its way through the camp. Sparks erupted from the fire and the cooking pot and its contents went flying into the night. The canvas shelter caught around the horse’s throat and was ripped from the trees with the ease of a hand cutting through a spider web. The horse galloped in a circle, flared its nostrils, and started to pace back towards Eleanor and the mares.

There was nothing Eleanor could do. She gave the horses a forlorn glance and scrambled up to the topmost branch of the nearest oak. The undead animal snorted its frustration and reared up in front of Marian. The terrified mare shied away, but her move came too late. A hoof crashed down onto Marian’s skull and she collapsed to the ground. Stunned, Jake could only watch as the skeletal horse bowed its head and started tearing into Marian’s flesh.

The dull moan sounded again—

‘
Fleeesh
.’

The soldiers were within a few metres of Jake. Behind them, hobbling along with the aid of a stick, the old Crowden sister.

‘Don’t worry, boy,’ she called, ‘I have mastery of my puppets. I have told them only to wound you, perhaps to rip off an arm or a leg, not to kill you. It is only the girl who will die tonight.’

Jake felt the magic pulse into his hand and he threw a fiery ball at the witch. It missed her by centimetres.

‘That’s it!’ she cried. ‘Put up a fight. It will make the game much more interesting.’

A skinless hand reached down and swiped for Jake’s head. He rolled aside, leapt to his feet and ran for the camp.

‘After him!’ the witch instructed. ‘Swift as the wind now!’

She pointed her gnarled fingers at the dead soldiers. Suddenly, they crouched forward, heads down, and started running after Jake with long, loping strides. The jolt of their feet on the ground was almost too much for their worm-weakened bodies and pieces began to fall away. Hands snapped from rotten wrists, ankles cracked and necks broke. By the time Jake reached the camp his pursuers were little more than bones strung together with shreds of skin.

Eleanor dropped down to the lowest branch, hands outstretched. Jake vaulted the dying fire and threw himself at the tree. Fear seemed to have given Eleanor supernatural strength—her hands locked like vices around his wrists and Jake was hauled into the safety of the oak. Together, they clambered to the highest branches.

Meanwhile, the undead horse was busy grazing on Marian, tearing at the tough skin with its big, bloodstained teeth. The thing chomped and swallowed, only for the chunks of meat to drop down its neck and fall through its empty ribcage onto the ground. Marian’s steaming blood spread around the tree and touched Pepper’s hooves. Desperate to escape, Pepper strained to free herself but the reins still held.

‘We have to help her,’ Eleanor said.

Jake looked from the gloating witch to her undead minions. Two of the soldiers were closing in around Pepper while the others waited beneath Jake and Eleanor’s tree. Long ribbons of drool spilled over their hungry lips and made their constant cry of ‘
Flesh
’ even more terrible.

‘Enough,’ Jake growled.

He climbed down to a sturdy branch that faced the soldiers and the frightened horse. Lying flat on his stomach, he held onto the branch with his left hand while, with his right, he conjured a ball of scarlet-tinged magic. He targeted the soldier closest to Pepper and hurled the hex.

The magic smashed into the man’s chest and sent him toppling to the ground. Jake had already conjured a second hex, and was sighting another target, when the felled soldier
moved
.

Its legs flinched. Its hands twitched. Lifting his worm-eaten head, the soldier looked up at Jake with an expression that mixed sadness with deep, gnawing hunger. Nearby, the witch remained focused as she directed her puppets. She clicked her fingers and the soldier began to crawl across the ground. It was only then that Jake saw that his spell had blasted right through the creature, severing its spine and cutting it in half. Leaving his flinching, kicking legs behind, the soldier used his arms to drag himself back to the camp. Guts and intestines trailed behind him like the tentacles of some hideous octopus.

‘Such an idiot!’ Jake muttered. He swirled the magic in his palm and flicked his fingers towards the creature. ‘Only one way to kill a zombie!’

The magic hit and the creature’s head exploded.

Jake looked up at Eleanor and grinned.

‘Gotta take out the brain!’

A flash of red light from Jake’s fingers and another zombie’s head was torn from its shoulders. Blood and brains misted the air. Next, he targeted the undead horse.