Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (40 page)

    She didn't say anything.

    "Are you angry?"

    She shook her head. "It's the first nice thing anyone's done for me in five hundred years," she said, with a hint of a goblin smile. "Why would I be angry?" Then she said, "What do you do, when you try to fade?"

    "What Mr Pennyworth told me.
I am an empty doorway, I am a vacant alley, I am nothing. Eyes will not see me, glances slip over me.
But it never works."

    "It's because you're alive," said Liza, with a sniff. "There's stuff as works for us, the dead, who have to fight to be noticed at the best of times, that won't never work for you people."

    She hugged herself tightly, moving her body back and forth, as if she was debating something. Then she said, "It's because of me you got into this… Come here, Nobody Owens."

    He took a step towards her, in that tiny room, and she put her cold hand on his forehead. It felt like a wet silk scarf against his skin.

    "Now," she said. "Perhaps I can do a good turn for you."

    And with that, she began to mutter to herself, mumbling words that Bod could not make out. Then she said, clear and loud,

    "Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind

    Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,

    Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,

    Above, beneath, betwixt, between."

    Something huge touched him, brushed him from head to feet, and he shivered. His hair prickled, and his skin was all goose-flesh. Something had changed. "What did you do?" he asked.

    "Just gived you a helping hand," she said. "I may be dead, but I'm a dead witch, remember. And we don't forget."

    "But-"

    "Hush up," she said. "They're coming back."

    The key rattled in the storeroom lock. "Now then chummy," said a voice Bod had not heard clearly before, "I'm sure we're all going to be great friends," and with that Tom Hustings pushed open the door. Then he stood in the doorway looking around, looking puzzled. He was a big, big man, with foxy-red hair and a bottle-red nose. "Here. Abanazer? I thought you said he was in here?"

    "I did," said Bolger, from behind him.

    "Well, I can't see hide nor hair of him."

    Bolger's face appeared behind the ruddy man's and he peered into the room. "Hiding," he said, staring straight at where Bod was standing. "No use hiding," he announced, loudly. "I can see you there. Come on out."

    The two men walked into the little room, and Bod stood stock still between them and thought of Mr Pennyworth's lessons. He did not react, he did not move. He let the men's glances slide from him without seeing him.

    "You're going to wish you'd come out when I called," said Bolger, and he shut the door. "Right," he said to Tom Hustings. "You block the door, so he can't get past." And with that he walked around the room, peering behind things, and bending, awkwardly, to look beneath the desk. He walked straight past Bod and opened the cupboard. "Now I see you!" he shouted. "Come out!"

    Liza giggled.

    "What was that?" asked Tom Hustings, spinning round.

    "I didn't hear nothing," said Abanazer Bolger.

    Liza giggled again. Then she put her lips together and blew, making a noise that began as a whistling, and then sounded like a distant wind. The electric lights in the little room flickered and buzzed. Then they went out.

    "Bloody fuses," said Abanazer Bolger. "Come on. This is a waste of time."

    The key clicked in the lock, and Liza and Bod were left alone in the room.

    "He's got away," said Abanazer Bolger. Bod could hear him now, through the door. "Room like that. There wasn't anywhere he could have been hiding. We'd've seen him if he was."

    "The man Jack won't like that."

    "Who's going to tell him?"

    A pause.

    "Here. Tom Hustings. Where's the brooch gone?"

    "Mm? That? Here. I was keeping it safe."

    "Keeping it safe? In your pocket? Funny place to be keeping it safe, if you ask me. More like you were planning to make off with it - like you was planning to keep my brooch for your own."

    "Your brooch, Abanazer?
Your
brooch? Our brooch, you mean."

    "Ours, indeed. I don't remember you being here, when I got it from that boy."

    "That boy that you couldn't even keep safe for the man Jack, you mean? Can you imagine what he'll do, when he finds
you
had the boy he was looking for, and
you
let him go?"

    "Probably not the same boy. Lots of boys in the world, what're the odds it was the one he was looking for? Out the back as soon as my back was turned, I'll bet." And then Abanazer Bolger said, in a high, wheedling voice, "Don't you worry about the man Jack, Tom Hustings. I'm sure that it was a different boy. My old mind playing tricks. And we're almost out of sloe gin - how would you fancy a good Scotch? I've whisky in the back room. You just wait here a moment."

    The storeroom door was unlocked, and Abanazer entered, holding a walking stick and an electric torch, looking even more sour of face than before.

    "If you're still in here," he said, in a sour mutter, "don't even think of making a run for it. I've called the police on you, that's what I've done." A rummage in a drawer produced the half-filled bottle of whisky, and then a tiny black bottle. Abanazer poured several drops from the little bottle into the larger, then he pocketed the tiny bottle. "My brooch, and mine alone," he muttered, and followed it with a barked, "Just coming, Tom!"

    He glared around the dark room, staring past Bod, then he left the storeroom, carrying the whisky in front of him. He locked the door behind him.

    "Here you go," came Abanazer Bolger's voice through the door. "Give us your glass then Tom. Nice drop of Scotch, put hairs on your chest. Say when."

    Silence. "Cheap muck. Aren't you drinking?"

    "That sloe gin's gone to my innards. Give it a minute for my stomach to settle…" Then, "Here - Tom! What have you done with my brooch?"

    
"Your
brooch is it now? Whoa - what did you… you put something in my drink, you little grub!"

    "What if I did? I could read on your face what you was planning, Tom Hustings. Thief."

    And then there was shouting, and several crashes, and loud bangs, as if heavy items of furniture were being overturned…

    
…
then silence.

    Liza said, "Quickly now. Let's get you out of here."

    "But the doors locked." He looked at her. "Is there something you can do?"

    "Me? I don't have any magics will get you out of a locked room, boy."

    Bod crouched, and peered out through the keyhole. It was blocked; the key sat in the keyhole. Bod thought, then he smiled, momentarily, and it lit his face like the flash of a light bulb. He pulled a crumpled sheet of newspaper from a packing case, flattened it out as best he could, then pushed it underneath the door, leaving only a corner on his side of the doorway.

    "What are you playing at?" asked Liza, impatiently.

    "I need something like a pencil. Only thinner…" he said. "Here we go." And he took a thin paintbrush from the top of the desk, and pushed the brushless end into the lock, jiggled it and pushed some more.

    There was a muffled clunk as the key was pushed out, as it dropped from the lock onto the newspaper. Bod pulled the paper back under the door, now with the key sitting on it.

    Liza laughed, delighted. "That's wit, young man," she said. "That's wisdom."

    Bod put the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the storeroom door.

    There were two men on the floor, in the middle of the crowded antique shop. Furniture had indeed fallen; the place was a chaos of wrecked clocks and chairs, and in the midst of it the bulk of Tom Hustings lay, fallen on the smaller figure of Abanazer Bolger. Neither of them was moving.

    "Are they dead?" asked Bod.

    "No such luck," said Liza.

    On the floor beside the men was a brooch of glittering silver; a crimson-orange-banded stone, held in place with claws and with snake-heads, and the expression on the snake-heads was one of triumph and avarice and satisfaction.

    Bod dropped the brooch into his pocket, where it sat beside the heavy glass paperweight, the paintbrush, and the little pot of paint.

    "Take this too," said Liza.

    Bod looked at the black-edged card with the word JACK handwritten on one side. It disturbed him. There was something familiar about it, something that stirred old memories, something dangerous. "I don't want it."

    "You can't leave it here with them," said Liza. "They were going to use it to hurt you."

    "I don't want it," said Bod. "It's bad. Burn it."

    "No!" Liza gasped. "Don't do that. You mustn't do that."

    "Then I'll give it to Silas," said Bod. And he put the little card into an envelope, so he had to touch it as little as possible, and put the envelope into the inside pocket of his old gardening jacket, beside his heart.

    Two hundred miles away, the man Jack woke from his sleep, and sniffed the air. He walked downstairs.

    "What is it?" asked his grandmother, stirring the contents of a big iron pot on the stove. "What's got into you now?"

    "I don't know," he said. "Something's happening. Something… interesting." And then he licked his lips. "Smells tasty," he said. "Very tasty."

    Lightning illuminated the cobbled street.

    Bod hurried through the rain through the old town, always heading up the hill toward the graveyard. The grey day had become an early night while he was inside the storeroom, and it came as no surprise to him when a familiar shadow swirled beneath the street lamps. Bod hesitated, and a flutter of night-black velvet resolved itself into a man-shape.

    Silas stood in front of him, arms folded. He strode forward, impatiently.

    "Well?" he said.

    Bod said, "I'm sorry, Silas."

    "I'm disappointed in you, Bod," Silas said, and he shook his head. "I've been looking for you since I woke. You have the smell of trouble all around you. And you know you're not allowed to go out here, into the living world."

    "I know. I'm sorry." There was rain on the boy's face, running down like tears.

    "First of all, we need to get you back to safety." Silas reached down, and enfolded the living child inside his cloak, and Bod felt the ground fall away beneath him.

    "Silas," he said.

    Silas did not answer.

    "I was a bit scared," he said. "But I knew you'd come and get me if it got too bad. And Liza was there. She helped a lot."

    "Liza?" Silas's voice was sharp.

    "The witch. From the Potter's Field."

    "And you say she helped you?"

    "Yes. She especially helped me with my Fading. I think I can do it now."

    Silas grunted. "You can tell me all about it when we're home." And Bod was quiet until they landed beside the church. They went inside, into the empty hall, as the rain redoubled, splashing up from the puddles that covered the ground.

    Bod produced the envelope containing the black-edged card. "Um," he said. "I thought you should have this. Well, Liza did, really."

    Silas looked at it. Then he opened it, removed the card, stared at it, turned it over, and read Abanazer Bolger's pencilled note to himself, in tiny handwriting, explaining the precise manner of use of the card.

    "Tell me everything," he said.

    Bod told him everything he could remember about the day. And at the end, Silas shook his head, slowly, thoughtfully.

    "Am I in trouble?" asked Bod.

    "Nobody Owens," said Silas. " You are indeed in trouble. However, I believe I shall leave it to your foster-parents to administer whatever discipline and reproach they believe to be needed. In the meantime, I need to deal with this."

    The black-edged card vanished inside the velvet cloak, and then, in the manner of his kind, Silas was gone.

    Bod pulled the jacket up over his head, and clambered up the slippery paths to the top of the hill, to the Frobisher vault, and then he went down, and down, and still further down.

    He dropped the brooch beside the goblet and the knife.

    "Here you go," he said. "All polished up. Looking pretty."

    
It comes back,
said the Sleer, with satisfaction in its smoke-tendril voice.
It always comes back.

    The night had been long, but it was almost dawn.

    Bod was walking, sleepily and a little gingerly, past the final resting place of Harrison Westwood, Baker of this Parish, and his wives Marion and Joan, to the Potter's Field. Mr and Mrs Owens had died several hundred years before it had been decided that beating children was wrong, and Mr Owens had, regretfully, that night, done what he saw as his duty, and Bod's bottom stung like anything. Still, the look of worry on Mrs Owens' face had hurt Bod worse than any beating could have done.