Thirteen Days of Midnight (26 page)

“It’s turned midnight! It’s Halloween!” I shout to her. “Hurry up!”

“Rain’s pooling here. It’s hard to draw it out.”

Elza bends forward and starts to work at the earth, slopping the paint with her hands. The flashlight is on the ground beside her, lighting her from below, casting a huge shapeless shadow over the wall of trees. Ham starts to bark, straining at his lead. I take my knife out of my coat pocket and unfold the blade. If it weren’t raining so hard, I could keep better watch on the south side of the hollow. I already know they’re coming: The air feels colder, in some way that’s deeper than just the wind and the rain. Ham is pulling his thin head backward, trying to slip his collar.

Elza stands up, wipes paint on her trousers.

“Done!”

“Good, now get out of here.”

“Can you feel anything? Did it work?”

“Yeah. I feel it.”

Nothing has outwardly changed. I’m still standing in the rain and wind in a remote part of the forests around Dunbarrow, facing death with a pocketknife and a store-bought gerbil. But I feel different, more important. I feel like I’m onstage and a spotlight just clicked on. What I do inside the magic circle matters; beings outside our world will be able to see, to notice me. My sigil is blazing with power on my finger, burning harder than it ever has before, sending jolts of cold up my arm and into my chest.

Ham slips his collar and bolts away into the woods, yowling.

“Ham! Oh, shit!” Elza cries.

“Elza, get out of here! They’re coming!”

There’s something moving in the trees. I can see my breath in the air. There’s a frost creeping over the gerbil’s plastic case, over the standing stones themselves.

“Last thing!” Elza shouts.

She throws me a bottle of cooking oil, then shoulders our bag and runs off into the woods, following Ham’s barks.

Something comes flying out of the forest to the south of the Footsteps. The Prisoner, blank white eyes rolling, floating over the moss and bracken at terrible speed. He ignores me and crosses the hollow in an instant, eyes set on the gap between the trees where Elza disappeared. The Judge follows, not looking at me, jeans rolled halfway up his shins, revealing his red boots. Both spirits are bigger and brighter, glowing like neon signs. You wouldn’t mistake them for living beings tonight. The ghosts dissolve into the rain and the dark and are gone, chasing Elza. Saying my heart is in my mouth isn’t even half of it: I feel more like every organ is trying to force its way out through my face. Ham is still yelping in the woods, his barks growing fainter against the noise of the storm.

I scoop the gerbil out of his case. I hold him over the flattest stone and pour the oil down onto his head. He squirms in my hand. The oil runs off his smooth brown back and onto my fingers. I can see something else moving in the woods. My sigil is humming with power, spreading a cold that feels like I’ve been dunked in the Arctic Ocean. I close my eyes, the pages of the Book of Eight appearing in my mind, as clear as if I were looking at them. I see the words I need, the words that will turn my murder into something more, words that will make my knife powerful. The gerbil struggles.

“Sorry, mate —
I hereby dedicate this sacrifice to Satan, our dark father. Please accept this anointed beast, and the blood I spill for you. Come to me now, in this hour of greatest darkness.
”

My sacrifice squeals in my grasp. I look down into his terrified furry face. I’ve never killed anything before — I mean, I’ve squashed insects and stuff, but that’s different. Ants don’t have faces.

“Look, I’m sorry. It’s you or me. No hard feelings.”

The gerbil is squirming. I aim the knife down at his belly. I stroke the point over his stomach and he looks up at me with helpless black eyes.
It’s a gerbil, Luke. You can kill it to save yourself. Elza could be dying right now. You can’t back out now. What about the animals that die in a slaughterhouse every day? You eat those burgers and barely think about it. What’s different about killing something yourself?

The rest of my Host insinuate themselves into the hollow, beyond the standing stones and the rim of my magic circle. The Shepherd is first, taller and paler than ever before, the lenses of his glasses glowing like lanterns. The Oracle follows, holding the Innocent in her arms. The Heretic is next, quietly chanting, heatless flames boiling from his withered body. I can’t see the Fury anywhere, or my mum.

“And here we are at the end,” says the Shepherd.

I stand holding the gerbil and the knife, sigil burning my hand, my gaze locked with his. He’s only a few paces from me, right up at the edge of the magic circle. He runs a hand through his beard.

“The Rite of Tears if I’m not mistaken?” he continues.

I don’t say anything. I know he can’t cross the boundary of the circle. At any moment I can make my sacrifice and complete the rite. I’m still in control. But I want to know where Mum is first.

“I must admit a certain grudging respect,” the Shepherd says. “You reclaimed the mastery of your earthly vessel, which is more than I expected. That you’re even attempting the rite indicates you discovered how to access the Book of Eight. Impressive. Doomed, but impressive.”

“Doomed? I can complete the rite whenever I want to. I’m only even listening to you because I want to know what happened to Mum.”

“Your mother is alive, I assure you. She will be with us presently. And I do not believe that you will complete the rite, or you would have done so already.”

My sacrifice isn’t even struggling anymore. He’s quivering in my hand, his tiny heart ticking like a stopwatch.

“Quite absurd,” the Shepherd continues. “I was taught to kill once I’d learned to walk. You have courage and will, but you lack ruthlessness. Your witch-girl is dying as we speak, but you cannot bring yourself to spill the blood of a mere animal. The contrast with your father is marked. There was very little Horatio was not prepared to sacrifice.”

“It wasn’t their fault,” I say, looking at the gerbil, thinking of Ham and Elza and Holiday and Mum. I put my signature on Berkley’s contract. I invited all of this into my life.

“No,” the Shepherd says, “but for the necromancer, the question of who ‘deserves’ what does not apply. Men deserve only what they are prepared to take.”

Slit its throat. It’
s an animal. If Elza dies out there in the forest —

“You don’t know what I could do,” I tell the Shepherd.

“No. I suppose one never does. Which is why we left nothing to chance.”

A cold hand grabs my left leg, squeezing as tight as a vise. I’m so shocked that I don’t even scream. I fling myself forward, falling hard against the low stone in front of me. I’ve dropped the knife and the gerbil, which has already run away into the darkness, completely lost. Without a sacrifice the ritual is impossible. I failed. My conscience held me and I failed. I’m scrabbling at the stone in front of me, trying to pull myself up, kicking out at the hand grasping my leg. It’s a real person, not a ghost, but how —

I kick free and scramble to my feet, turning my body to look at what’s attacking me. A human head, arms, and shoulders are sticking up from the disturbed earth at the center of the Devil’s Footsteps. The figure is completely choked by thick black mud, with only the eyes properly visible. Its hair is plastered down against its head. The figure pulls itself farther from the ground, torso coming free of the mud, white eyes locked on me.

“A man’s Host may not harm him, even on a day of power for the dead,” the Shepherd says. “But if the woman who gave him life is sufficiently influenced, she may be used to strike him down and break the Host’s bonds. It is an old magic, rarely invoked. A necromancer will generally slay his mother when he comes of age, to prevent her use as such an instrument. So, as you see, Luke, we may not enter your magic circle. But you will not be leaving it.”

Mum has finished wrenching herself clear of the ground. She stands upright, cloaked in earth from head to foot. The Fury stares with glee from behind her eyes. The rain beats down on both of us, mother and son. For them to use her like this . . .

I turn to face the Shepherd, already knowing I’m about to die, and my anger surges up through me, through my sigil, which sears my finger, and my anger is given shape and force by the black ring, a wave of power that strikes the Shepherd in the chest. The ghost ignites, white fire exploding from inside his eyes and mouth, white lines of force splitting his spirit flesh, and he’s screaming with pain and for a moment I think that I’ve found something he didn’t expect, some force they weren’t prepared for, but then Mum’s body clubs me heavily from behind, knocking me down onto the flat standing stone. The power flowing through my sigil is gone as fast as it arrived. I try to direct it again, try to turn the power onto the demon inside Mum’s body, but as I try to do it, there’s a hard thump in my stomach. At first I think she punched me, but then I realize, with pain like I’ve swallowed the sun, that I’ve been stabbed.

Mum’s muddy body is tensed above mine, her eyes wide and white, filled with joy and rage, her teeth bared, one hand gripping my throat, holding me steady. The rain lashes down on both of us. She’s got the knife I was going to use on the gerbil, and as I flail at her face, fingers slipping in the grime, she stabs me three more times, this time between the ribs.

I’m getting weaker. The pain is so insistent that it becomes meaningless. I feel a desire to rest. Her body steps back, and I’m left lying on the flattest of the stones, rain falling down onto my face, hard and cool.

The Shepherd has seemingly recovered and he and the Oracle are standing over me now, Mum’s body beside them. I would like to close my eyes. I really am dying. I feel like I’m sitting in the seat of an airplane that’s about to take off. The Shepherd looks fainter and weaker, no longer glowing with the same intensity. I want to raise my sigil and burn him again, but I can’t even move my arm.

“It is as I saw,” the Oracle says from behind her veil. She sounds sad. The Shepherd says nothing. He stares at me with greedy fascination. I wonder how his revenge feels.

The sky, pitch-dark a few moments ago, seems to be filling with stars.

I
’m six years old and Dad’s leaving home. I sit on the landing and watch as he struggles with his cases. Mum is in the bedroom. It’s strange that he chose to leave this way, in the middle of the day, while I was awake. It’s like he wanted me to remember.

Dad extends himself halfway up the stairs and says good-bye, holding his hand out to me. He’s wearing a blue shirt and a red tie with polka dots. There’s a big black ring on his finger. His hand envelops mine, palm rough as tree bark.

“Grow up good,” he says, then turns away. He walks back down the stairs and shuts the door behind him. I hear the flat mumble of his car pulling out of the drive. I’ve never understood what his last three words meant.

My name is Luke Manchett, and I’m sixteen years old. I think I’m dead. I’m standing at the Devil’s Footsteps, looking down at my body, which is laid out over the flattest of the three stones. Everything is quiet. I’m surrounded by gray mist, and I can’t see the Shepherd or any other ghost. I’m all alone here.

When I look down at myself, my spirit self, I’m unhurt and unbloodied. The only unusual thing is there’s a thin white cord, almost invisible, sticking out from my navel and running into the body lying on the flat stone. It looks like spiderweb, or maybe a loose thread of cotton. I take it in my hands. The thread is warm.

“I wouldn’t advise that.”

There’s a man standing beside the tallest of the three stones. He’s tall, with a sharp chin and a deep tan. His hair is chilly white, greased back and away from his face. He has a small, neat beard and wears a wolf-gray suit with a shirt that’s deep midnight blue.

“Mr. Berkley?”

“It’s extremely delicate,” Dad’s lawyer continues, “and to break it would have very severe consequences for you.”

“Where are we?”

“This is a passing place,” says Mr. Berkley. “A border of sorts, between what I believe you refer to as ‘Liveside’ and ‘Deadside.’ ”

“So I’m definitely dead this time.”

“You are not yet dead, my boy. Your fate is unmapped. That slender cord still ties your animus to your soma. If one were intentionally astral traveling, it would resemble a thick rope rather than a thread.”

“Are you dead, too, Mr. Berkley?”

“That’s never been a concern of mine.”

“But what are you doing here? Do you work for the Shepherd?”

Berkley laughs. “I do not serve him.”

“Are you my spirit guide?”

“I am not your spirit guide. Please. I am aware you have had a traumatic experience, my boy, but you are remarkably slow on the uptake. Let’s try a small thought exercise. Some critical thinking. Question the first: You were mortally wounded during the course of which black magic ritual?”

“The Rite of Tears.”

“Correct. So my second question: What is the nature and purpose of the ritual you were performing?”

“It was meant to summon the Devil. But I failed.”

“Don’t go so hard on yourself. I wouldn’t describe it as a failure.”