Graveyard Shift Read online

  Molly Willow, 6, and Mitch Willow, 4, died in their home on Henryd Street two weeks ago this Friday.

  Firefighters attempted to rescue them from the second-story bedroom where they were trapped, but their deaths were confirmed on arrival at the hospital. The cause of death was given as smoke inhalation. The children’s parents were not in the property at the time the fire broke out.

  A police spokesperson said the fire was not arson. The matter is still under investigation, with an electrical fault in the building suspected of being the most likely cause.

  Though the Willows were unavailable for comment as we went to press, a family friend told the Standard, “Words can’t describe what they’re going through now. It’s unbearable — they were still settling in to their new home when this happened. They can never go back to live there now.”

  It is understood that the Willow family moved to Henryd Street in late August. Their previous address on Spencer Rise, Dartmouth Park, had been their home for more than eight years. The Henryd Street property is earmarked for demolition after the investigation concludes.

  “So what do you think?” Becky asked as I finished reading and passed the clipping to Mr. October. “I’ve looked at it a dozen times. The kids were too young to call the new house a home. All they ever knew in their short little lives was the other place.”

  “Lu,” Mr. October said suddenly. “Turn this crate around, please, and take us to Dartmouth Park.”

  Lu nodded. She waited for a break in the traffic, then moved out.

  “Sukie,” I murmured. “That’s the address she mentioned to me.”

  “Who?” Becky said.

  “Someone I met at the Ministry today. She’s clairvoyant. You must’ve been outside at the time, and she tapped into your mind. That’s where she got the address.”

  My lips were dry by the time Lu led us up the slope onto Spencer Rise. The street was drenched in darkness, silent and still. You could easily forget you were just a few beats away from the city’s thudding heart.

  “Which number?” I asked.

  We were slowing, moving uphill at close to walking pace.

  “Somewhere near here . . . no, farther up on the left . . . in the twenties,” Becky said.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated. Even if she couldn’t yet see the dead, she could feel them nearby. When she gasped and opened her eyes again, Lu immediately came to a standstill.

  “They’re here,” Becky said. “I’m sure of it.”

  It wasn’t the only house on the street with a FOR SALE sign outside, but she didn’t pay any attention to the others. She’d hopped clear of the rickshaw and hurried through the creaky iron gate before I could read the number on the door. I was about to follow her when Mr. October caught my arm.

  “Wait.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They may not be alone,” he said. “If the enemy found the children first and are keeping them here, they won’t give them up easily. Best be prepared.” He leaned to one side, into shadow, emerging in a different guise, that of the swarthy pirate. “In case of trouble. That old body isn’t up to the task.”

  Becky was at the front door now, jiggling the handle as if she thought brute force would unlock it. I ran up the path to her.

  “It might be better if you wait out here,” I said.

  “Why should I?”

  “There are things I haven’t had time to tell you yet. It could be dangerous.”

  “You’re full of surprises. What next — monsters and bogeymen?”

  “Something like that.”

  She looked at me in disbelief.

  “At least wait till we’ve checked it out,” I said. “If it’s all clear, I’ll call you.”

  “But I followed you all that way just to tell you. I brought you to their door. You wouldn’t be here without me.”

  “That’s teamwork,” Mr. October said. “It doesn’t matter who plays what part, as long as the job gets done.” He edged toward us on the path, the Y standing out on his forehead. “Are we agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Becky said reluctantly. “I suppose.”

  “Good. Then I’ll proceed.”

  He lifted a hand to the door and pressed his palm against it, bowing his head as if in deep thought.

  “Now,” he said.

  Thud. The tumbler lock clicked open.

  Clink-clank. Then the two dead bolts below it.

  He gave the handle a sharp turn and push. The door swung open a fraction, then jarred and held fast.

  “Security chain on the inside,” he said. “Then they’re not alone. They have watchers. Lu?”

  I pulled Becky aside as Lu advanced up the path, swiveled back on one heel, and aimed a high kick at the door. The door flew open with a crunch of splintering wood.

  “Remember what I said,” I told Becky.

  She nodded, clearly unhappy, and stood back as I followed the others inside.

  Apart from the cold — and it was freezing in there — the first thing I noticed was a weird indoor mist. It covered the floor like fog from dry ice, swirling around us up to our shins. There were several points of glowing light inside it, beams skipping to and fro like searchlights.

  We waded through the mist along a darkened hall, passing a set of stairs on the right. At the far end, an arched doorway framed a view of the moonlit kitchen.

  Everything in the kitchen had a silvery sheen. To the left, the back door’s glass panels hinted at the shadowy garden outside. The door had a cat flap set into its base, barely visible through the mist. Off to the right, outside the main window, a black skeletal tree swayed in the night air, the tip of its longest limb scraping the glass.

  “Nothing down here,” I said, testing a light switch. The electricity must have been cut off.

  “Don’t be so certain,” Mr. October said.

  He stood inside the archway, listening.

  Silence — no, not quite silence. Apart from the familiar noises of a house settling by night — ticking beams and joists and floorboards — there was a deep, slow-building rumble, more a vibration than a sound, like that of an underground train passing directly under us.

  “Shifters,” Lu whispered.

  “Shifters,” Mr. October agreed.

  Past him I could see Becky at the front door, half inside and half out, straining to hold herself back. Some of the mist was escaping the house, flowing around her ankles.

  “Upstairs,” she called, skipping away from it. “I think they’re up there. Check there first . . . but wait.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Careful. There’s something inside the mist.”

  She’d only just spoken when a slick, dark shape fluttered past my feet, crossing between two points of light. It looked more like a tadpole than anything, and was followed by another, larger dark form roughly the size of an eel. I stepped aside from it, remembering the creature sliding into the canal near the bridge.

  The tree scraped the kitchen window, sounding like claws feeling for a way in. The cat flap opened and closed with a dull thump. What I saw coming through it made the breath seize up in my chest. First one, then another, then a whole torrent, more than sixty of them before I lost count. To anyone else they might’ve looked like ordinary cats, but to me they were more like the thing that turned itself into a cat seconds before Mr. October threw the fireball. They moved silently and gracefully, as if their bodies were boneless. One by one they shot indoors, landed without a sound, and slid headlong into the mist, out of sight.

  “Shifters,” Lu repeated. “Watchers. Demons.”

  “Go to Becky,” Mr. October ordered me. “You’re not ready for this yet.”

  He pushed me away from the kitchen into the hall. The mist swept around our legs, alive with darting eel-shaped shadows under its frosty pale surface. The Shifters had entered the kitchen in feline form but now they’d become something else.

  “Lu, mind the door,” Mr. October said. “Any others you see coming
in, zap them. Ben, what did I tell you? Go to the front.”

  He sounded calm, fully in control, and I was glad to think that someone was. My nerves were squirming like rats in a sack.

  As I started back along the hall, the first of the Shifters leapt from its cover of mist and straight at Mr. October. He caught it one-handed in midflight. It twisted, shiny and glistening in his grasp, its black stubby head snapping at him. Then it suddenly stopped moving, stiffening as if turning to stone. Bracing his shoulder, Mr. October brought it back in a wide arc and hurled it at the wall above the sink where it hit the tiles, shattering into a thousand pieces.

  Another one surfaced nearer the back door where Lu had positioned herself. It reared up above her and tilted back its head, glaring down at her with six dead, black eyes, forked tongue flicking. Lu made a very slight but intricate movement with her hand, just an upward flick of the wrist. As she did, the creature’s head parted company with its stalk-like neck, sliced away with one clean sweep of Lu’s invisible weapon. The head flopped back into the mist; the body sank lifelessly after it.

  “Ben, watch out!” Becky called from the front door.

  A third creature had broken cover, rearing up right behind me. I bolted away down the hall, sidestepping the growing number of shapes flitting around my ankles. The rumbling sound was louder now; the house was shaking around us. I heard Becky’s voice reach toward me through the dark, a small surprised gasp followed by the slam of the front door blowing shut.

  She’d tumbled inside just in time.

  “I’m OK,” she said. “The children . . . Let’s go for them now. It’s our best chance, while those things are being kept busy in there.”

  She nodded toward the kitchen, where Mr. October was aiming a forefinger at a creature snaking up one wall, readying himself to launch another fireball.

  “Well, are you coming?” she said indignantly, already on her way upstairs.

  The mist followed us all the way up, brushing our heels. At the top, moonlight flooded the landing from the open bathroom door. Two other doors faced each other from opposite ends of the landing, both closed. The children had to be behind one of them.

  “The one on the left?” I guessed.

  “No, the one on the right,” Becky said, starting toward it.

  She arrived ahead of me but waited until I caught up. She gave me a nod that seemed to say yes, she was sure. I threw the door open and we peered inside.

  On a single bed in the corner, Molly and Mitch huddled together among a mound of quilted pillows and throws. There was nothing else in the room. The air had a hazy look and smelled faintly of soot. The children looked up, trembling, their faces and nightclothes darkly smudged. Mitch still held his teddy bear, and for the first time I noticed one of its ears was missing. As he sat up, the bear fell upside down at his side, giving out a gentle rattling growl.

  “Do you know where you are?” I asked them.

  “It’s not our house anymore,” Molly said. “They’re making us stay but we don’t want to be here.”

  A confusion of shouts and crashes traveled up from downstairs. Something exploded against a wall.

  “Can you see them?” I asked Becky.

  She nodded. “Sort of. Not too well. I see traces of light and I hear them, though.”

  “Would you like to come with us?” I asked the kids. “We’ll take you away from here if you like.”

  Mitch rolled off the bed and came forward first, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll go.”

  After a brief hesitation, Molly followed. They stood before us, grubby and forlorn, flinching at a sudden caterwaul from the kitchen.

  “We won’t see Mummy and Daddy again, will we?” Molly said. “It’s all right, though; we know what happened.”

  “You’ll see them, you just won’t be able to stay with them like before,” Becky said. “Do you know who’s been keeping you here?”

  Molly studied the bare wooden boards under her feet. “They’re not nice to us. We don’t know their names, and their faces keep changing.”

  “Don’t let them come back,” Mitch pleaded.

  The mayhem downstairs — a series of crashes, a piercing scream — threw an urgent note into Becky’s voice. “You’re safe with us, but we have to go now.”

  “Follow her,” I said, ushering them past me. “Just stay with her. I’ll be behind you all the way.”

  They hesitated at the doorway, looking out. Becky moved to the stairs, waving them to her.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “It’ll be fine now. Just come this way.”

  The children exchanged a glance, nodded in silent agreement, then started along the landing together, Mitch dragging the bear behind him by its one ear.

  “That’s good,” I said, but I didn’t like the look of the mist. There were rapid movements close to its surface, and something cold and jellylike slid past my shin. “Don’t even look, kids. Only a few steps down and you’re out of here.”

  By the time I reached the stairs, Becky was three-quarters of the way down with the Willow children close behind. A smell of burning and something else, something rotten and poisonous, drifted toward me. It took me a few seconds to realize the house had fallen silent.

  “Mr. October?” I called. “Everything OK down there?”

  His reply was a long time coming. “It’s all clear, but keep your eyes open. There may be others. And if you’re coming down, I suggest you avert your eyes. It’s a wee bit messy in here. What about the children?”

  “We’ve got them,” Becky called from the front door, the children at her heels. “They’re fine. I’m taking them out.”

  “Oh.” He sounded surprised, even impressed. “Good work. You do that. We’ll follow.”

  “Hurry, don’t look back,” Becky told them, ushering them out to the moonlit path. Then she turned and glanced up at me with anxious eyes. “Will you get a move on? Ben . . . Oh my God, what’s that?”

  I was halfway downstairs when something snared my ankle, tightening around it like a noose. A gray-gloved hand cut above the mist’s pale surface, holding me fast, yanking me down. As I tried to kick it loose, a foul earthy scent rushed up at me, and I saw that the hand holding on to me wasn’t gloved at all — it was covered with gray, decaying flesh.

  The dead, old smell of it made everything inside me go loose. A blind panic seized me as the demon shot up to full height, transferring its grip from my ankle to my throat and slamming me back against the wall.

  Its face was familiar. I’d seen it — or one like it — only a few days before. Beetles scuttled around its pale dead flesh. The scent of the grave clogged my nostrils as its breath wafted over me. If a face without eyes could express anything, the Deathhead was expressing triumph. Delicious victory. Its mouth, with shorn-off lips, was as close as it could get to a smile.

  “Feeding time,” the demon whispered, squeezing my throat. “You stole two souls from us; now I have to steal something back.”

  Please, I tried to say, but I couldn’t make a sound.

  I heard Becky screaming below me and Mr. October barking instructions, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. Everything around me was blurring and turning soft. The world was slowing to a standstill.

  Raymond, I thought — a thought out of nowhere. Raymond had had ahold of me, and so had Synsiter, that morning by the canal. Things had a way of happening when bullies came after me, but how? What had I done?

  But I was drowsier now, couldn’t recall, couldn’t think.

  Let me sleep, I thought. Let it stop.

  The demon’s grip tightened, lifting me up off my feet and clear of the stairs. My body fell slack and a thick gray fog came rolling in. There were footfalls on the stairs not far below me, and somewhere in the gray I heard Lu yelling: “See what you want, Ben. Try to see it. If you can think it, you can do it!”

  And I did. It was only a simple thought — for all I knew it might be the last thought I’d ever have — and if I’d been able to make a s
ound I would’ve screamed it out loud: Enough.

  That was all. Enough.

  The Deathhead suddenly relaxed its choke hold on my throat, then dropped me altogether, whipping its hands clear and staring down at them in empty-eyed terror. The strong fingers were withering to stumps, dissolving away as if they’d been soaked in acid, drooping boneless from what was left of its hands.

  The demon howled and tottered across the stairs, thumped against the banister, then turned to face me, hissing between its teeth. As it did, my vision cleared just enough to see Lu running up toward it, making that quick-fire motion with her wrist. Seeing her coming, probably knowing what she meant to do, the Deathhead didn’t waste another second. It plunged back inside the mist, becoming just another dark shape swimming beneath the surface.

  Lu had ahold of my hand now. “Come on, you come with me, Wonder Boy.”

  Before I could catch a breath, she’d half dragged, half carried me the rest of the way downstairs and out the front door to where the others were waiting on the path. The fire children stood on either side of Becky. Mr. October was nodding appreciatively. Lu slammed the door behind us, sealing the mist inside.

  It took some time for my head to clear. I stood inside the gate, nursing my throat, croaking when I spoke.

  “Thanks, Lu. Thanks, Becky. You were great in there. Fearless.”

  “So you all were,” Mr. October said, “but we have to keep moving. They’ll be furious about what we just did, and we have to attend to these two before they come after us again. Lu? Our transport!”

  Soon we were rolling again, the three of us together on the seat with the children at our knees and the house falling back into shadow up the slope behind us. A mournful cry followed us on the air, a hollow call that seemed to rise up from the depths.

  Mr. October puffed air from his cheeks and changed his appearance to the old man in readiness for what would come next. “Deary me, I could do with a holiday,” he said.

  “Is it like this all the time?” Becky asked.

  “Sometimes it’s worse,” he said. “It could get worse yet tonight, now that we’ve rattled their cage. And I still have more rounds after we’ve seen the children off safely. Lu, would you call dispatch and see what they’ve got?”