Like Father (9 page)

15 Talking

“Who is Hodeken?”

Oma looked up at Danny, eyebrows raised. “Is a funny question,” she said, and then returned to the washing up.

Danny took another plate to dry.

“It was the name in Dad’s journal,” he said. “I expect it’ll come up in his appeal.” He watched her reactions closely, wondering how much she might reveal about the family’s past, how much of it might even be true.

“It means ‘Little Hat’,” she told him, a distant look in her eyes. “Is a
hinzelmannchen
, a household spirit from the old tales. A legend. Like Hansel and Gretel, Rumplestiltskin and Snow White, yes?”

“Fairy tales,” said Danny.

“The tales are not to be dismissed,” she said. “Is much truth in the old tales. Your Great Aunt Eva always loved Hodeken. Is the only story she remembered our mother telling to her. Hodeken, he lived with the Bishop of Hildesheim and the two of them, they had good times together and they helped each other greatly. Hodeken is a practical joker and he brings laughter to the life of the Bishop. But then they had a falling out and the Bishop banished Hodeken who was left to make a life wherever he could. After that neither of them were happy again for a long, long time.”

“And what is the truth in
that
old tale?”

Oma laughed, and flicked some foam at Danny. “The truth there is that you should listen to us old ones. If you go against the old ways like the Bishop did you ignore the old wisdom, too, and you will not be happy for a long, long time!”

He wanted to ask her if she believed in Hodeken, if what he had seen in his dream was the truth.

But he couldn’t. How to ask such a question? On this sunny afternoon, it didn’t seem like a thing he could ask without looking stupid.

And maybe, just a little, the answer frightened him.

~

Cassie would be able to suggest something. She had ideas and insight, where it was all Danny could do just to get by.

But he couldn’t ask her.

She would look things up, he knew. Investigate. He could do that just as well.

He went to the office and let himself in with Val’s key. This was the first time he had been here since he and Cassie had been spooked by the spirit hosts on that talk board.

That was the first time Hodeken had spoken to him. Voices on the screen instead of voices in his head or in his dreams.

He did a search on the Berlin Wall. It had gone up in the early hours of Sunday 13th August, 1961: first the barbed wire, and then a couple of days later, the bricks.

He looked for Hodeken, and found the page that Cassie had printed for him. Following another link, he found that kobolds were very devoted, and would become attached to a particular place or family. A chosen family was blessed: kobolds worked hard for their hosts and they would bring good fortune with their magic. But also they were considered the most dangerous and unpredictable of the beings of European folklore. They would taunt and trick and were a great danger to anyone who crossed them.

He wanted to find out how to get rid of them, but there was little that might help. Iron crosses and bells protected you against evil, as did jumping across running water and self-bored stones and daisy chains, but he couldn’t see how any of that would work for him.

It was all...

He put his head in his hands, and concentrated on calming his breathing. Cassie would be able to make this stuff sound relevant, but seeing it on these web pages with their picture-book illustrations... It seemed so trivial, compared to what had been happening.

He shut down the computer.

None of it seemed real any more. He was over-reacting. Getting carried away with it all. He was acting like a baby.

He just needed to sort himself out and it would all be okay.

~

That night, Danny was woken by a strange buzzing sound. He lay in the darkness, his heart racing, his head filled with all kinds of thoughts about what strangeness might be happening now. For a moment, he thought he might be dreaming of Berlin again, the pneumatic drills making holes for more fenceposts.

His phone. It was on his bedside cabinet, its vibrations amplified by the wood. He reached for it and squinted at the backlit LCD screen.

He had a text message. He clicked to read it, and saw that the number was blank. How could that be? He okayed it and the message appeared on screen:

spirit-talking - now

He grunted. It must be Cassie. What did she want?

He turned on the light, found his jeans and a sweatshirt and pulled them on. Stepping into his trainers, he took the office key and went outside.

The crunch of his footsteps in the gravel seemed to reach him from a distance as he crossed the parking area. He wondered, for a moment, if he was dreaming again, but no, it was too real.

He sat in the dark office as the PC started up.

Start the web browser ... type the address: www.spirit-talking.co.uk. He was doing this on autopilot, still half-asleep.

The site loaded slowly, as before. The stone-effect borders, the smiling photograph of the site’s owner, the welcome message –

Danny sat up with a start. The message said: “Welcome back, Danny.”

Somehow, the site knew who he was, even though he had never told it...

He looked at the office door. He was surrounded by darkness, stranded in the pool of light from the computer screen. He couldn’t move. He sat with his hand gripping the mouse tightly, knuckles white with the strain.

And as he watched, the mouse pointer crawled across the screen of its own accord. It stopped over the talk boards link. The screen changed and he saw a list of available boards.

He blinked, and found that he could move again.

He should leave. He should just reach down below the desk and press the computer’s power button to turn it off.

He looked at the list of talk boards. “Talk Board #1, Talk Board #2...” And there, at the bottom of the list: “Danny’s Talk Board”. He moved the mouse, clicked, and the chat software started up.

The list on the right told him that the room had two occupants: Lady E and Cynthia. On the main screen a message appeared:

Danny Smith enters at 23.54BST

Cynthia says: Welcome, Danny Smith.

He typed a response, and clicked Send.

Danny Smith says: How do you know my name

Cynthia says: To know others, you must first know yourself.

Lady E says: Who is this? I hear voices. Who are you?

Danny Smith says: Cassie? Is that you? What are you messing about at?

Lady E says: Cassie? Who is this Cassie? Do you mean Konstanz? Konstanz, is that you?

For a moment, Danny had been convinced that Cassie was winding him up – maybe some kind of revenge for their arguing. But Cassie didn’t know that Oma’s name was Konstanz...

Danny Smith says: Eva? Is that you?

Lady E says: Who are you? How do you know my name? What are you doing in my head?

Danny Smith says: It’s Danny.

Danny Smith says: I’m your gret nephew. What do you mean in your head?

Cynthia says: Close your eyes and you will see further, Danny Smith.

He stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what was happening. Slowly, the words started to blur so that the letters ran together, merging and separating again so that he felt dizzy. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes.

And when he blinked again his eyes remained shut.

~

Danny was sitting in a garden, beneath a clear blue sky, apple blossom all around.

Opposite him, sitting with her legs crossed and a checked dress pulled daintily over her knees, was a small blonde girl, aged about seven or eight. She was looking at him expectantly, a faint smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

There was something familiar about her and suddenly Danny knew that he was looking at his great aunt. “Eva? Is that you?”

She nodded, and giggled.

“Your voice,” she said. “I heard you.” She tapped the side of her head. “How do you do that?”

“Where is this?” Beyond the apple trees there was a neat kitchen garden, and then a timber house. He heard voices from there, laughter. “Is this Berlin?”

“I have never been to Berlin,” said Eva.

“But ... you live there. You
lived
there. When you were older. When I saw you before you were older than this.”

“How could I have been older before? I’ll only be older
after
, won’t I? That’s how it works. Aging.” She giggled again, an infectious sound, like a musical instrument or an exotic bird call.

Suddenly, she was intense. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her eyes dark and locked on Danny. “You must trust him, you know. He loves us. He is our protector.”

Danny didn’t need to ask who she meant. He was about to protest when little Eva waved a hand and, abruptly, the garden changed.

He was alone now, and the air was heavy with black smoke that burned his throat as he breathed. Sounds of laughter and birdsong had been replaced by the distant wail of sirens and the drone of aircraft high overhead.

A child cried, another murmured softly, and a teenaged girl led a younger girl, Eva, round the corner of the house. A teenaged boy lay curled up in a ball in the grass, eyes staring and white against his blackened skin, clearly in shock.

Danny looked at the house, now black with smoke, its windows shattered, one wall caved in so that at any moment it might collapse.

“Mama mama mama!” little Eva cried, as her sister – Konstanz, Danny realised, his own grandmother – held her and tried to calm her.

Beyond them, another boy limped out of the smoke, emerging from the wreckage of a building. This must be Christian or Dieter. The boy shook his head. “It is no good,” he said. “She is dead.”

He must mean their mother – Danny’s great grandmother had died in a bombing raid, he knew. His great grandfather had died earlier in the war.

“We need help,” Konstanz told her brother. “It is just us now. We are all that remains of our family.” Four children, orphaned in a war that their country would soon lose, their home in ruins.

At that, Eva stopped crying and looked at the others. “Hodeken,” she said. “Will Hodeken help us?”

Konstanz and her older brother exchanged looks. They would humour her. They had to get through this together.

Eva turned to Danny and winked, and it was daylight again, the sky blue, the apple trees in full bloom.

“We called to him,” she said, “and he came. The others did not believe, at first, but I did. There is much truth hidden in the old stories, and I knew those stories that my mother used to tell me inside out. I knew that if we believed hard enough and our need was great enough then he would come.”

The little girl’s intensity was astonishing, her absolute belief in Hodeken. He would answer her call and he would protect them. How could anything resist Eva, even a legendary, powerful creature like Hodeken?

“What did you do?” asked Danny.

“With the last of our supplies we baked him bread, with the last of our water and milk we prepared him a drink, and with the last of our money we laid down an offering. We did this for two nights and he did not come. By the third night, strangely, our belief grew stronger and on this third night of asking he came to us. Without Hodeken we would never have survived the war and the British invasion. We owe him everything. And you do, too. You must trust him, Danny. You have to save the family before it finally tears itself apart. Hodeken always does what is best for us.”

“But what about afterwards? In Berlin, when you all tried to escape and things went wrong. And what about what he did to my father? He drove him mad.”

Eva shrugged. “I do not know about that. I don’t know what happens
after
. Hodeken is our protector. You must trust him, Danny.”

Danny stood, shaking his head. He started to back away.

“Trust him, Danny.”

A hand appeared around the trunk of a craggy old apple tree, and then a cap, a head, a face with crinkly leather skin and yellowed eyes.

“I told you so,” said a little voice. “He’s blind to the truth. Just like his father was.” He giggled, and then Eva joined in, and the two embraced.

Danny rubbed at his eyes, and when he opened them he was staring at the computer screen.

Lady E leaves at 23.57BST

He slid the pointer across to the exit button and clicked.

Danny Smith leaves at 00.12BST

The screen paused, and then jumped back to the main talk board listings.

He shut the computer down.

As he went across to the door, the memory of Eva’s voice came to him again.
You have to save the family before it finally tears itself apart.

He let himself out into the night.

Trust him, Danny.

16 Keeping it together

Danny spent Sunday working in the glasshouses, looking after Josh ... anything that might distract him.

In the evening, he shut himself in his room and tried to do his homework. He had the curtains drawn, and his bedside lamp, the desk lamp and the main light all switched on. The Doors blasted out of the stereo.

And the words on his paper all ran together. Meaningless.

He was tired, and he couldn’t concentrate.

She’s doing it again
.

He put his hands to his temples and pressed, squeezing his head. He had wondered before, so many times, what it must be like to hear the voices his father had heard. The first signs of the madness.

Now he knew.

Home-breaker. Slut. Splitting up the family just like she did last time.

The little voice in his head cut through everything.

What are they doing now?

He pressed harder, but even the blood drumming in his ears was nothing to the nasal tones of his tormentor.

Little Rick had come round earlier, and then he and Val had gone out. For a walk, they said. Just a walk.

Can you picture them, Danny? The two of them? “Walking”? You know what they’re doing, don’t you, Danny? You’re the one who can stop them. Teach them a lesson.

He grabbed a book and hurled it across the room, pages flapping as it flew through the air.

You don’t like it, do you, Danny? She doesn’t care about the family.

But it’s her life! He wanted to shout it out loud, but he knew that would not stop the voice in his head.

Let her choose. It was none of his business.

He stood, knocking his chair over.

Out, down the stairs, into the night.

Fresh air – he had thought that maybe the air would clear his head, but it was a muggy night, the air heavy and warm. Somewhere in the village a car tooted its horn three times.

Silence.

He breathed deep. He rubbed at his face. He had been crying.

He was cracking up.

Just like his father had.

Still: silence.

Then he heard voices. Raised – arguing? Excited?

He walked round to the side of the Hall, to where the lawns rolled down towards the lake.

There were two figures down there, beyond the marquee. They could only be Val and Rick.

He wanted to turn away. Leave them to it. Their lives.

But instead, he stepped towards the tall privet hedge that ran down one side of the grass. The ground was clear behind it, where nothing would grow in its shade. It made a rough path.

He walked along, behind the hedge, to a gap halfway down.

Straight across from where he stood, the marquee loomed large and almost luminously white in the darkness.

Val and Rick were by the water.

They were still arguing, but more quietly now. Their voices were urgent, harsh, but Danny could not make out their words.

He watched as Rick seized Val’s arms and she pushed him away, then he seized her again and she relaxed. Their voices were briefly silenced, before Rick started again, more softly.

Slut.

Danny wanted to turn away, but he could not.

He watched, as Rick held his mother. Val stood stiffly, looking over Rick’s shoulder.

He couldn’t work out what was going on. There were tensions and hidden meanings he could not make sense of.

Home-breaker.

The gap in the hedge was where a path led through to the main area of vegetable plots.

Someone had been dumping rocks here, debris from the diggings. Danny squatted.

Some of the rocks were fist-sized, rough-edged.

Go on. Scare them, Danny. Teach them a lesson!

The only sound now was the pounding in his head.

Stop them, Danny.

He picked up one of the stones.

Put a stop to this
.

He stared at the rock, at the way its rough surface picked up the moonlight.

He breathed deeply, steadily.

“What’s this? What are you doing?”

He looked up. It was Luke, peering at him in the gloom.

Slowly, Danny opened his hand, tipped it, and the stone tumbled to the ground.

Luke taught the lunaculture courses for the Hope Springs Trust: growing crops by the cycles of the moon.

“What are you sneaking around here for?” Luke had a penlight, and he flicked it on now, and shone it towards Danny.

Danny raised a hand, shielding his eyes from the light.

He stood, backed away, then turned and ran as fast as he could, as if by running he might leave everything behind.

~

He heard voices raised outside, early the next morning.

He had slept fitfully, twisting and turning through the night, waking in a tangle of duvet and sheet.

The voice in his head remained silent, but all the time, he knew that somewhere nearby – in the flat, he was sure – Hodeken was lurking. Hiding. Waiting for his next opportunity to taunt Danny.

Each time he had woken, he had done so with a vivid fragment of dream in his head. The moonlight, the privet hedge, a rock nestled in the cup of his hand. He could remember that rock’s rough surface, its weight as he held it.

He had been close to losing it last night. The self-control he had built up to protect himself was nothing to the siren call of Hodeken’s voice in his head.

He had been unable to resist.

What might have happened, if Luke had not come along and seen him?

What might he have done?

Sharmila called up the stairs to Val.

“What’s up?” Danny said, peering around his half-open door at Val, who stood on the landing, leaning down over the stair rail to listen to Sharmila.

“The marquee,” she said, turning. “Problems. I don’t know what, exactly.” She looked rough, her face pale and big shadows under her eyes.

Danny pulled on some clothes, and followed Val and Josh down the stairs. He walked across the car park, still puzzled, wondering what might have happened.

He looked around the corner of the Hall and ... the marquee had vanished.

No: it was just that it was no longer visible above the rose and honeysuckle hedge. As he approached the lawn, he saw that the marquee had, in fact, collapsed.

David was there, a gaunt man with silver hair and a pointed beard. He stood with his hands on his hips, as Sharmila joined him and put her arms around his waist. Rick and Warren were down on the far side of the fallen marquee, pulling at the white canvas as if trying to see inside. Tim and Won’t were there, too, pushing each other and watching Jade, who had come down here in just shorts and a tee-shirt, hair wet from the shower.

“What happened?” asked Val.

“Kids from the village,” said David. “Some kind of prank, I’d say. I don’t think there’s any actual damage. I’ve called the people who supplied the marquee, and left a message on their answerphone asking them to come out and help us get it back up. I think we need a community gathering, too. It’s just kids, I’m sure, but this may be a symptom of bad feeling in the wider community. We should work through the issues together.”

“When you left your message,” said Rick, coming up to join them. “Did you ask them to bring any tent pegs? Someone’s nicked them all.”

Danny just stood and stared at the fallen marquee. It humped up in the middle, where some of the poles had fallen over the trestle tables that had been inside.

It had been fine last night.

David had described it as some kind of prank. Danny’s mind raced. Hodeken was a joker, a prankster.

Could this be his work?

Back in the flat, Danny rushed to get ready for school. He was late.

He pulled on his shirt and looped the ready-knotted tie over his head. He took his blazer from the wardrobe, although it would be too warm today to wear it before he reached the school gates and had to put it on.

His bag. He reached up to the cupboard over the wardrobe, pulled the door open, and a shower of heavy wooden tent pegs tipped out onto him.

He put an arm up to defend himself, and staggered back.

An instant later, he stepped over and shut the bedroom door so no-one would see.

There were hundreds of the things, some still with moist earth stuck to them.

Hodeken!

He reached up, and took his bag, and put his books in it for today.

What to do with the pegs?

There was nothing to put them in, so he took his sleeping bag and started to put them in there. When it was full, he put it into the wardrobe and managed to shut the doors.