Thirteen Days of Midnight (12 page)

I look at Mum, at her bronze hair, her lined, worried-looking forehead, the sheets dipping and raising ever so gently as she breathes in her sleep. Ham butts at her pillows. They could come back and kill her right now and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. I have to learn to use the Book. Just because I’m leaving doesn’t mean I won’t come back.

I drag my gaze away from Mum and look at Elza, thin-lipped, arms folded, a wet strand of hair trailing over her face.

“Well?” she asks.

“All right. We’ll try this your way.”

“Good,” she says. “Because, honestly, I need to get out of this house right now. I feel like I’ve got a nosebleed in a shark tank.”

I go into my bedroom, grab all of Dad’s papers, and shove them back into the document wallet Mr. Berkley gave me. Elza is in the hallway with the door open, holding the Book of Eight in one hand and Ham’s leash in the other. I don’t know how long this is going to take, and I can’t leave him here with nobody to feed him.

I notice the raincoat I wore to Berkley’s office hanging in the hallway, and it nudges at my memory. So many things have happened since Monday afternoon, and I’d forgotten some details. I dip into the inside pocket and bring out the metal case full of Dad’s rings.

“What do you make of this?” I ask Elza.

“We’ve got company,” she says, ignoring me. She gestures out through the open door.

I put the rings in my backpack, alongside my keys. I look out through the door, to where she’s pointing. My stomach lurches. A woman, dressed all in white, stands at the end of our driveway with her back to us. She’s still as a stone, despite the rain, and I notice her dress doesn’t move as the wind blows.

“You know that ghost?” Elza asks.

“New to me,” I say. Hopefully she’s come to apologize for the behavior of her colleagues. Which, admittedly, seems unlikely.

“We don’t have to go past her,” Elza says. “Fastest way to my house is out back, through the fields.”

“I want to know what she has to say. She can’t hurt me. Can she hurt you?”

“Not if the wyrdstone holds.”

I lock the front door behind us, and we make our way down the driveway. The gravel crunches under my feet, and rain hisses at the hood of my coat. The bare trees by our gate move in the wind. Their branches are black webs against the sky. Ham flattens his ears against his head as we approach the ghost. Hearing our footsteps, she turns.

It’s two spirits, I realize: a woman and a baby. The woman is wearing what looks like a wedding dress, white and ornate, with a full veil that obscures her face completely. Her feet are bare, but her arms are swathed in extravagant silk gloves. The second ghost, the baby, is wrapped in a well-washed blue blanket. Not one inch of its body is visible, but I see the blanket shifting as something moves inside. I’m amazed, as always, by how utterly real the ghosts are: every bobble and nub of fabric on the baby’s old blanket is clear and sharp to my eyes.

“What do you want?” I ask the woman.

“I am the Oracle,” she says. Her voice is soft and low, calming. “I bear the Innocent.”

I glance at Elza. Her eyes are fixed on the ghosts, taking in every detail.

“What have you done to Mum?” I ask.

“I bring omens, Master,” the Oracle replies. “I have tasted the wind. I have observed portents in the flight of birds.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you,” I say.

“You will shake hands with an ageless man. There will be no lines on his palm.”

“How do we open the Book of Eight?” Elza asks.

“You will walk the shores of an ocean of tears.”

“I’ve got the Book and Dad’s notes, and the Shepherd’s going to be sorry he even looked at my mum,” I say. “Tell the Host that.”

The Oracle doesn’t respond. The baby, the Innocent, makes a small sighing noise from within its blanket. I suddenly don’t want to be anywhere near the ghosts.

“We should go,” I say. Elza nods.

The Oracle steps aside. We make our way through the front gate. Ham flattens himself against me, shying as far away from the ghosts as he can. The woman’s veiled head tracks me as we leave.

“These omens I have received bode ill,” the Oracle says.

“Yeah, well,” I reply, “I could have told you that.”

Towen Crescent, Elza’s neighborhood, is a part of Dunbarrow I’ve never had a reason to visit before. It’s a fairly recent development, stuck right out on the northwest edge of the town, and Elza shows me a shortcut across some of the sheep fields behind my house. The houses were built between the smoke-spewing industrial estates and the highway, so the Crescent doesn’t have much in the way of central Dunbarrow’s tourist appeal. It’s a borderland, somewhere you go if you don’t fit in with the rest of our town. It makes sense to find Elza living out here.

“What did you make of that?” I ask as we walk.

“Of the Oracle? Never seen anything like it. Ghosts are never that keen to talk to living people. Your Host isn’t shy.”

“Do you think that was her baby?”

“I hope not.”

“What about her prophecy? Do you buy any of that?” I ask.

“What, that she can see the future? I doubt it.”

“So you believe in ghosts, but not psychic predictions?”

“I don’t ‘believe’ in ghosts, Luke, and neither do you. I can see them. When I see someone’s prophecy come true, I’ll accept that as fact as well. Until then, I’ll have my doubts.”

The roads are deserted, the pavement dark with rainwater. The houses are pebble-dashed with steep orange roofs, the gardens cluttered with evergreens and the anemic stalks of telephone poles. Elza’s house, number 19, is at the end of a cul-de-sac, right on the edge of the Crescent. The front of the house boasts a small unkempt lawn, a stone birdbath, a few shrubs.

The house’s hallway is cramped and dark; most of the floor space is occupied with various plastic boxes, stacks of bathroom tiles, and planks of wood. The wallpaper is dark brown, the carpet is scuffed earthy red.

“Excuse the mess,” says Elza without a trace of shame. “We’re still in the process of unpacking.”

“How long have you lived here?” I ask, unleashing Ham, who follows her into the kitchen.

“About twelve years. Mum and Dad both blame each other for how it looks around here. I think for either of them to start unboxing things now would mean they were admitting defeat. You might meet them later, I don’t know. Mum’s working, Dad is off for a fortnight, bird-watching.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. He was laid off last month, so now it’s away to the lakes whenever he can. He loves it; he’s in heaven. Every day is the weekend for him. Practically springs out of bed. It’s quite sickening.” Elza shakes her head with mock disgust. She’s set the kettle to boil.

“No kidding.”

“Sorry, am I boring you?”

“Not at all,” I say. “It’s just . . . you know. Bird-watching.”

“My father happens to be extremely passionate about observing British birds. I hope you’re not trying to cast aspersions on his interest, about the lameness or pointlessness of such an activity, because I would be offended on his behalf.”

“It’s totally a cover story. Your dad’s a crack dealer. He goes off to London to resupply.”

“That would delight me. Anything but the truth. He used to take me with him when I was younger. Hours of sitting in a hide, almost motionless. No music. No sweets, because if you rustle too much, birds won’t settle. Plus there’s always some Roman legionary who died out there and you have to watch him wandering around with a Pict’s ax stuck in his head. It was torment.”

“Huh. Mum’s gotten keen on birds recently. They’d probably get along. Do your parents have second sight?”

“No,” says Elza, pouring water into her teapot, “they don’t. They got pretty worried about me, how I just wouldn’t grow out of having imaginary friends. I took my pills for a few years, but the dead people didn’t go away, and I realized there was nothing wrong with me. It was everyone else who couldn’t see things right.”

“That’s rough.”

I sit down.

“It’s life,” she says. “I don’t blame them for it. What would you have done? Second sight is hardly a recognized medical condition.”

“What I still don’t understand is how you were born with it, and I’ve only just developed it. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Which part?” she asks. “Your story makes more sense than mine. Dominion over a Host of spirits binds your soul to theirs. You’re closer to Deadside than other people are; they’re pulling you into it, as if you were tied to enormous helium balloons. As soon as you signed that contract, you started to get pulled upward, or deathward, whatever you want to call it. I’d be more surprised if you
couldn’t
see ghosts. Me, though, I’ve never known why. Best I can do is maybe there was a witch or necromancer somewhere in my family, centuries ago. My parents are totally normal.”

“It might be genetic, like a recessive trait. Is there any research into this stuff?”

“What do you think?” she asks.

“Why not? You could win a Nobel prize for this, easily.”

“I mean, how do you even go about proving your premise that second sight exists? Ghosts are harder to prove than you think. And necromancers are usually a secretive bunch. Your dad was a bit of an anomaly on that front.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too. The TV show and all. Why do it?”

“A question for another day, maybe. Let’s look at this book of yours.”

“Right here,” I say, tapping my bag. “The Host definitely can’t get in here, can it?”

“I’ve got hazel charms on the front and back doors, and around my bedroom walls especially. Spirits can’t enter this house, except perhaps on Halloween. All bets are sort of notoriously off on Halloween, as I have already mentioned.”

“Yeah, I know. So we need to — hey! Get out of there! Bad dog!”

Ham has taken advantage of our distraction to rear up at Elza’s sink, and is busy extracting a Bolognese-encrusted wooden spoon from the sink. He drops it with a start and slinks back down to floor level.

“I can’t get over how huge he is. What’s his name again?” she asks.

“Ham.”

“Is it short for anything? Hamlet?”

“Uh, no, I named him myself when we got him. I wasn’t that old. He’s named after my favorite sandwich filling.”

“Of course. I suppose it was a bit much to expect any literary allusions from you.”

“I’m here for a ghost hunt, not so you can criticize my dog’s name.”

“Yes, yes. All right, bring your tea upstairs and we’ll get started. Do you mind if we shut Hamlet out in the garden? I can’t say I trust him in the house, sadly.”

“His name’s not — yeah. Fine. Come on, son.”

I grab Ham’s collar and lead him out through the glass door into Elza’s back garden. Ham drags his feet on the tiles, scrabbling in protest. I apply extra pressure to his neck, and he stomps outside in a huff. The backyard is long and thin, with a tumbledown shed and a scrawny apple tree. The hedges loom above head height, so he shouldn’t be able to escape. I turn back into Elza’s cramped kitchen. She’s standing in the doorway that leads into the hall, watching me.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. I just would never have had you pegged as a dog person.”

She gives me one of her infuriating grins and walks out into the hallway, then up the stairs. I follow her across a landing cluttered with cardboard crates and half-assembled furniture and into her bedroom.

Elza’s room is exactly what I expected. It’s tiny, and there’s stuff covering every available surface. There are old mugs and dirty plates in a greasy heap by her bed. There are posters for the Smiths and the Cure, David Bowie and Nick Cave. The wall above her unmade bed is covered in black-and-white photos of dead leaves, broken mirrors, abandoned buildings. Another wall is taken up by a bookshelf, which is collapsing under the weight of secondhand paperbacks and glossy art books. I can’t see any poetry, but I figure she’d probably hide it.

Elza slumps onto her bed and pats the space beside her. The sheets smell of cigarettes. She unzips my backpack and pulls out the Book of Eight and the bundle of Dad’s papers, scattering them all over the purple duvet. She frowns at his nonsense writing.

“Some kind of code, then.”

“Like I said.”

“And we can’t get this open”— she gestures at the Book — “because the clasps won’t come away. But you’ve seen one of your Host open it, so we know it’s possible.”

Elza looks at the Book of Eight for a few more moments, then leaves the room and comes back with a hammer and a chisel.

“You sure?” I ask.

“I mean, opening it is a matter of urgency. If you don’t mind me damaging it a bit, I think this is the best way to go. Those clasps look ancient. If you don’t mind,” she repeats, giving me a look that suggests she’s going to smash the Book open whether I mind or not.

I shrug. Elza puts the Book on the floor, kneels beside it, and arranges the chisel so it’s pointed directly into the hinge of one clasp. She raises the hammer in her right hand, then stops. For a moment I think she’s just trying to find the right angle to strike at, or is having second thoughts about breaking the Book, but she holds this position, kneeling, hammer raised to head height, for far longer than looks comfortable. Her arm is starting to shiver with tension.

“Elza?”

She’s frowning. Her jaw is clenched. Just as I’m starting to get properly worried, she sighs loudly and brings the hammer back down to the floor. She lets go of the chisel and sits back, looking at the Book with confusion and anger.

“Stupid thing’s strong,” she says.

“What?”

“Stronger than it looks. Must’ve hit it five times.”

“Elza, what are you talking about? You didn’t even try to break it open. You just sat there looking at it with the hammer raised.”

“I did?”

“I was here. Seriously.”

“My head feels weird.”

“I don’t think you should try to break into the Book again. I don’t think it appreciates people doing that.”

Elza picks up the chisel and examines the tip for damage. Finding none, she frowns and puts it down. She runs her hands through her storm cloud of black hair.

“Well,” she says. “This just got even more interesting.”