Syren (10 page)

“Yes,” Wolf Boy replied, keeping his voice as gruff as he could. Then he cleared his throat and addressed the Witch Mother with the words he was allowed to speak. “I have come to feed the Grim,” he said. “What will you give me?”

The Witch Mother stared at Wolf Boy as she digested this information. Wolf Boy clenched and unclenched his hands. His scarred palms could no longer sweat, but a cold sweat trickled down his back.

The Witch Mother began to laugh. It was not a good sound. “Then you must feed the Grim!” she cackled. Turning to her Coven she laughed and said, “And I think we all know
what
we shall give him to feed it.”

The witches laughed, echoing the Witch Mother.

“Serves her right,” Wolf Boy heard Dorinda whisper to another witch.

“Yeah. Filthy little scumbucket. Did you hear what she called me last night?”

“Quiet!” ordered the Witch Mother. “Linda, go and get the Grim’s little…snack.”

There was more laughter, and Linda, who also sported a dead white face in imitation of the Witch Mother, glided across the kitchen. She drew back a greasy blanket, pushed open the door to the cellar and disappeared.

She returned dragging Lucy Gringe by her braids.

L
ucy Gringe, soaking wet and
filthy, came in kicking and screaming.

“Get off me, you weird cow!” she yelled, and swung a kick that landed hard on Linda’s shins. The rest of the Coven—including the Witch Mother—
gasped. Not one of
them
would have dared do that to Linda.

Linda stopped dead, and the Coven fell deathly quiet. Suddenly Linda yanked Lucy’s head back with a vicious tug and twisted Lucy’s braids up into a tight knot so that they pulled hard against her scalp. Lucy yelped, though Wolf Boy could see she tried not to. Linda narrowed her eyes, and twin blue needles of light shot through the gloom and played on Lucy’s pale face.

“I’d
do
you for that if you weren’t heading for the you-know-what—you dirty little ratbutt,” the witch snarled. She gave another tug on Lucy’s hair. Lucy twisted around and, to Wolf Boy’s admiration, she tried to land a punch. This time Linda deftly sidestepped her.

Wolf Boy was shocked. It was Lucy Gringe—
Simon’s girlfriend
. No wonder Simon hadn’t been able to find her. He relaxed a little. Simon’s girlfriend or not, at least he now had an ally, another human. There was something about the Coven that was
not
human. He could feel it: a cold disconnection, an allegiance to something else. He guessed that this was how people felt when surrounded by the wolverines in the Forest—totally alone. But now he wasn’t alone…another human being was in the room.

Linda dragged Lucy across the kitchen, kicking her way through the piles of trash. She stopped beside Wolf Boy and then, as though handing over the reins, she gave him Lucy’s braids to hold. Wolf Boy took them reluctantly and flashed Lucy an apologetic glance. Lucy took in the glance, then glared at the surrounding witches and tossed her head angrily. She reminded Wolf Boy of an unpredictable pony.

What bothered Wolf Boy was why the witch had given him Lucy’s braids to hold—what were they planning? As if in answer, the Witch Mother teetered up to him on her spiked shoes and stood so close that he could smell her cat breath and see the red blotches deep inside the cracks in her makeup.

She pointed a grubby finger with a loose black fingernail at Lucy. “Feed
that
to the Grim,” she spat at Wolf Boy. Then she spun around on her heel spikes and teetered back to the ladder.

Wolf Boy was horrified. “No!” he yelled, his voice shooting up an octave.

The Witch Mother stopped and turned to face him. “
What
did you say?” she asked icily. The other witches shifted uncomfortably. When the Witch Mother spoke like that,
there was going to be trouble. Wolf Boy stood his ground. He remembered what Aunt Zelda’s letter said:
You may refuse anything human.

“No,” he repeated firmly.

“Witch Mother, let
me
feed the filthy little fleabrain to the Grim,” said Linda.

The Witch Mother looked proudly at Linda. She had chosen a worthy successor. “Do it,” she said.

Linda smiled in her special ghastly way that the Witch Mother loved so much.

Wolf Boy saw Lucy go tense, like a wolverine waiting to pounce. He could see she was scanning the exits from the kitchen, but he had already done that, and he knew there were none—except down to the cellar. Two witches had positioned themselves at the kitchen door and Dorinda was lurking at the foot of the ladder. There was no way out.

In front of Wolf Boy and Lucy was a pile of stinking garbage, which Linda now began to demolish. Wolf Boy gently tugged Lucy’s braids and they both stepped back from flying lumps of slimy turnip and decayed rabbit. Soon the kitchen was strewn with showers of trash, and Dorinda had a rotten chicken’s head peering out from the folds of her towel turban.
All that was left of the pile was a compacted black crust of ancient vegetable peelings and bones.

Linda surveyed her work with satisfaction. She turned to Lucy and pointed to the revolting mess. “Scrape it off, toad breath,” she hissed.

Lucy did not move. Dorinda—who was terrified of Linda and always tried to be helpful—grabbed a spade from a pile of implements in the corner and handed it to Lucy. Linda glared at Dorinda; this was not how she had intended for Lucy to remove the mess. Lucy seized the spade, but Linda was no fool. She saw the way Lucy was eyeing her. “
I’ll
do it,” Linda snapped, snatching away the spade.

Linda’s angry shoveling revealed a pressed dead cat, a rat’s nest with three babies—which she flattened with the spade—and finally a massive rusted iron trapdoor.

“Oooh,” Dorinda trilled rather nervously.

Silence fell and everyone stared at the trapdoor. No one—not even the Witch Mother—knew what lay beneath. Of course they had all heard stories, and if the stories were only a little bit true it was certainly not going to be anything soft and cuddly. Suddenly, very dramatically—because Linda liked a bit of drama—Linda raised her arms and began to chant in
a high wail, “Mirg…Mirg…Mirg ekawa,
ekawa
. Mirg…Mirg…Mirg—
ekawaaaaaaaa
!”

Wolf Boy had learned enough from his time with Aunt Zelda to know that this was a Darke Reverse Chant. But even if he had not known, there was something about the weird, catlike way Linda sang the words that made the blood feel cold in his veins. In front of him, Lucy shivered. She glanced back at Wolf Boy, the whites of her eyes shining. For the first time she looked afraid.

The chant died away, silence fell once more and an unpleasant feeling of expectation filled the air. Suddenly a tremor ran through the floor and Wolf Boy felt something shift. It was not a good feeling—he knew the rotten state of the Coven’s floorboards and joists. A small whimper escaped from Dorinda.

Linda’s eyes shone with excitement. She took the spade and stabbed it at the edge of the trapdoor, dislodging a mummified black snake that was curled in the gap. The snake flew into the air and joined the chicken head on top of Dorinda’s towel. Dorinda froze, not daring to move. With the snake gone, Linda got the spade under the gap around the trapdoor; she gave it a powerful shove, and the trapdoor began to rise.

Wolf Boy discovered he had been holding his breath. He breathed out, and when he breathed in again the smell of old fish and dirty water filled his nose. As the trapdoor rose, a swishing, gurgling sound emerged, and Wolf Boy realized that there was water below—deep water, by the sound of it.

The measured rising of the trapdoor mesmerized the occupants of the kitchen, including the cats, which for once stopped their hissing. Everyone watched the trapdoor slowly travel through 180 degrees and silently lay itself flat upon the floor, revealing a large square hole covered with a metal grating. Linda kneeled down, heaved off the grating and threw it to one side. She peered into the depths. Ten feet below, water rocked gently to and fro, its oily black surface just visible in the dim light. All seemed surprisingly calm. Irritated, Linda leaned farther—where
was
the Grim?

As if in answer, the surface of the water suddenly broke, and with a tremendous
swish
, a long black tentacle snaked into the air and thumped down onto the kitchen floor. Dorinda screamed. Wolf Boy reeled back—the tentacle had a strong stench of the Darkeness about it. Laughing, Linda smashed her spade on the tentacle. Wolf Boy winced—Darke or not, that must have hurt. The tentacle slithered
back through the trapdoor and fell into the water with a
splash
. The water rocked and rippled for a few seconds, a few bubbles erupted, and some lazy red swirls of blood drifted to its oily surface.

Linda turned to face Lucy with a triumphant smile. “
That
was the Grim, Rabbitface. It will be back soon. And when it returns you can say hello to it, can’t you? And if you speak nicely, it might be kind and drown you before it smashes you to bits. Or not. Ha ha.”

Lucy glared at Linda. This did not go down well with the witch; Linda liked her victims scared, screaming and begging for mercy. Preferably all three, but any one of those would do. But Lucy was not obliging and that was really getting to Linda. Angrily, she grasped Lucy’s arm and dug her nails in. Lucy did not flinch.

Wolf Boy was deep in feral mode and thinking fast. Any minute now he was sure that Lucy’s defiance was going to get her thrown through the trapdoor—he had to do something. Wolf Boy realized what he must do, but the problem was he was pretty sure it was something that Lucy would not take to very well. But there was no choice. He took a deep breath and said again, “I have come to feed the Grim.
What will you give me?”

Linda looked furious—what was the boy up to? But she knew the Rules of the Coven, and she wasn’t going to break them, particularly as she already thought of it as
her
Coven. “May
I
answer, Witch Mother?” she asked.

The Witch Mother was finding the whole Grim business rather a strain. Her memory was not so good nowadays. She was getting older and didn’t like changes in routine. And she particularly did
not
like tentacles.

“You may,” she replied, unable to keep the relief out of her voice.

Linda bared her teeth at Wolf Boy, like a dog that knows it has won a fight but will still not back down. “We give you this,” she replied, poking Lucy sharply with the spade. “What say you?”

Wolf Boy took a very deep breath. “Yes,” he said.

Lucy spun around and glared at Wolf Boy.

“Oooh,” Dorinda trilled, overcome with admiration for Wolf Boy.
“Ooooh!”

Linda looked somewhat deflated. She had decided to push Lucy straight in after the boy refused her—which she was sure he would—and she had been looking forward to it. She
had, in fact, decided to push the boy in too. Linda read a lot of detective novels and knew all about how important it was to get rid of witnesses. But she knew the Rules. She sighed petulantly. “Then let her be yours for GrimFood.
Hmph
.”

“Good!” said the Witch Mother cheerily, as though someone had just told her that supper was ready. “That’s settled then. Come on, girls. Time to go.”

Linda had forgotten this part—that the GrimFeeder must be left to feed the Grim
alone
. For a moment her self-control left her—believe it or not, Linda had been exercising a fair amount of self-control in her treatment of Lucy—and she stamped her foot and screamed,
“Nooooooo!”

“Come along now, Linda,” said the Witch Mother disapprovingly. “Leave the GrimFeeder to do his work.” And then, in a loud whisper, “We’ll go upstairs and listen. Much more fun that way. And less…messy.”

Linda refrained from saying she
liked
the messy parts, that ever since she dragged Lucy up from the cellar she had been really looking forward to the messy parts. Sulkily she followed the Witch Mother up the ladder. She was not, she told herself, going to put up with being bossed around for very much longer—not very much longer at all.

Wolf Boy and Lucy watched the spiky boots of the Witch Mother disappear through the hole in the ceiling. They heard Linda heave the Witch Mother onto the landing (the Witch Mother had trouble with her knees), and then they listened to the shuffling of feet as the witches gathered to hear the sounds of the GrimFeeding.

Right on cue a great gurgling came from the pit below. Three tentacles snaked out of the black water and slammed down onto the edge of the trapdoor with a tremendous
thud
. Lucy glared at Wolf Boy. Her nostrils flared like an angry horse, and she tossed her head. “Don’t even
think
of it, rat boy,” she snarled, “or it will be
you
in there with the tentacles.”

“I
had
to say it,” hissed Wolf Boy, “otherwise they’d have pushed you in. This way, we get some time—some time to think how to get out of here.”

Wolf Boy knew that the witches were upstairs waiting for the sounds of him feeding Lucy to the Grim, and he knew that they would not wait long. If they came down and discovered Lucy still in an undigested state, he had a pretty good idea of what would happen—they would
both
be GrimFood.

“We haven’t got much time,” he whispered. “I’ve a plan to get out of here, but you’ll have to do what I say. Okay?”

“Do what you say? Why should I?”

Suddenly, with a head-spinning lurch, the floor heaved and a wash of filthy water spewed through the trapdoor. The Grim had surfaced.

“Yes,” Lucy hissed urgently. “
Yes
. I’ll do what you say. I
promise
.”

“Okay. Good. Now listen to me—you are going to have to scream. Can you do that?”

Lucy’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yes. I can scream. How loud?”

“As loud as you can,” said Wolf Boy.

“You sure?”

Wolf Boy nodded impatiently.

“Okay, here goes. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaagh!”

The Grim retreated in a flurry of filthy water. Darke creature though it was, it lived a quiet life in the watery wastes of the Municipal drain, which ran along Fore Street and widened out to a comfortable space below the House of the Port Witch Coven. The Grim’s hearing was adapted to the gentle gurglings and gloops of the drain, not to the screams of Lucy Gringe. The Grim sank back down onto the muddy brick
floor of the Municipal drain and stuffed the tips of its tentacles into its multiple hearing tubes.