Changeling (5 page)

Alexa stared up at her father. It was unusual for him to show any real emotions when he spoke, but the look in his eyes at the moment was nothing short of hatred.

‘What did he do?’Alexa asked.

Her father shook his head, unwilling to talk on the matter any further.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell Trey this before he went?’

‘Would he have believed me?’ Lucien replied, his face now as impassive and unreadable as ever. ‘Trey thought that I had deliberately withheld the existence of his uncle from
him. Do you think my telling him that the only living member of his family is a repugnant degenerate would have washed with him?’

Alexa looked back out at the river and sighed.

‘Poor Trey.’

‘Like I said, maybe the man has mellowed with age.’

She looked up at her father again and knew that he didn’t believe that for one second.

Trey placed an overnight bag of clothes on the back seat, and walked round to climb into the car that was waiting for him outside the hotel. Mr Galroth – or Lurch as Trey
had begun to internally refer to him – was sitting in the driver’s seat, having somehow shoehorned its extraordinarily long body into the vehicle. The car was a large four-by-four, but
even so the demon looked hunched and uncomfortable behind the wheel. It turned to look at its young charge in the passenger seat.

‘Your eyes,’ the nether-creature said, with a tip of its head. ‘You have bags under them. You look terrible.’

‘Good morning to you too. I’m fine. Just a bit nervous about today. But thanks for your concern, Mr Galroth.’

‘Galroth.’

‘What?’

‘Just Galroth, not Mister. I have no true sex. I am a non-gendered being.’

Trey puffed out his cheeks and waited.

‘And where is it that you want to go today?’

Trey sighed. ‘Look, can we cut the pretence and stop all this I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-doing-here nonsense?’

The demon stared at him for what seemed like an age until Trey began to squirm in his seat. Eventually the thing next to him blinked and shook its head, causing what little hair it had to brush
against the plastic covering that lined the car’s roof. ‘Trey, I really
do
have no idea what you are doing here. Mr Charron contacted me from his office in London and asked if I
would be kind enough to transport you wherever you wanted to go during your visit here in Canada, and to be on hand should you need me for anything. He has not provided me with any information
pertaining to your trip or the reason for your visit.’

A car horn sounded behind them. The creature shot its eyes towards the rear mirror to see the driver of the car gesticulating madly at him through the windscreen of a bright red sports car. The
horn sounded again, and Trey could hear the man shouting. The giant turned its body around in the seat and glared at the other driver. The horn fell silent.

‘So, where do you want to go?’the demon asked, turning back to the teenager.

Trey pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to his chaperone. ‘In a short while I’d like you to take me here. But first I’d like to go to a gift shop to
buy a present.’The demon looked at the scrap of paper, nodded its head and put the car into gear.

The house was set way back from the nearest road in a location that Trey guessed would politely be described as
isolated –
although bleak, desolate and godforsaken
were words that also sprang to mind as they approached. The only way to get to the house was down a rutted path that led through high woods on both sides, and had it not been for the satellite
navigation system in the car, they would never have found it. The track that they bounced along now was little more than two channelled grooves worn into the ground over the years by vehicles that
had gone back and forth along it. But the height of the grass growing on the raised central area, and the way that it brushed noisily against the underside of the four-by-four vehicle, suggested
that the track was used infrequently. Trey glanced at the map on the satnav system, looking for any signs that there might be another road or track that led through the woods, but there
didn’t appear to be one. He looked out of the window for signs of habitation in this remote backwoods location, and wondered why his uncle had picked a place like this to live in. And yet
there was something about the wooded landscape that stirred the teenager, something that appealed to raw emotions and feelings buried deep down inside of him. He shuddered, dragging his attention
away from the forest and focusing on the radio, switching the stations back and forth to try and locate one that was playing rock music.

The bouncing and jostling of the car’s uneven progress along the track was beginning to make Trey feel queasy, and after a while he was forced to look up again. The woods were more dense
now. Even at this time of day, with the sun high up in the morning sky, the trees’ thick overhead blanket denied light to the leafy carpet that had been laid down over the years, making the
woods appear dark and uninviting. They seemed endless; the trees that filled the land on both sides of the track stretched on forever until they merged into a great murky darkness away in the
distance.

It wouldn’t do to get lost in there,
Trey thought, imagining wandering around among the tall, dark trees, with no point of reference to find his way out.

‘There is something up ahead,’ Galroth said, pointing with its chin at something it had seen through the windscreen. Trey looked up just as the cabin came into view. Even from this
distance, it was clear that the place was a ramshackle affair; the land surrounding the squat building was littered with abandoned cars and rusting machinery that the elements had attacked over the
years, turning them into ghastly orange-brown effigies. The whole place had a neglected and slightly sinister appearance.

‘Looks lovely,’ Trey said as they pulled up in front of the building. He turned to look at the demon. ‘Thank you … for the lift.’

‘I will wait until I know that you are safe,’ the creature said.

‘There’s no need. I’ll just—’

‘I will wait until I know that you are safe.’

Trey shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whatever.’ He climbed out of the car and grabbed his bag from the back seat. It was colder here. Despite the sun that drilled in low over the
building’s roof and made Trey screw up his eyes, the temperature was markedly lower this far into the forest. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with air infused with the rich, sweet smell
of the pine trees off to his left. He could feel Galroth’s eyes on his back, so he stepped up on to the wooden porch, the grey wooden stairs giving a short, sharp groan as they took his
weight. There was no sign of a doorbell or knocker, and Trey wondered if in fact anyone lived in the place. He balled his hand into a fist and banged on the wooden door, the sound echoing out
around the clearing and causing a murder of crows to take to the air from a nearby tree, their angry cries signalling the group’s displeasure at being disturbed.

The knock was answered by the barking of a small dog on the other side, and Trey could hear its paws scratching at the door.

He turned round and nodded at the demon still sitting in the car to his rear. Galroth stared back at him, statue-like. It appeared that the dog was home alone. Trey’s heart sank, and he
was about to return to the car when he heard the sound of a man’s voice.

‘Billy, shut your yammering or so help me, I’ll kick you so hard in the rear you’ll be wearing your butt as a new collar.’

Trey stepped back a little from the door. Nervous again, his heart beat out an unrelenting staccato rhythm in his chest, and he breathed deeply, telling himself to calm down. The sound of
numerous locks being turned and released was punctuated by streams of abuse hurled at the dog that, like Trey, seemed to be having a difficult time in controlling its excitement. When the door
finally opened, an old man in a shabby dressing gown was revealed. The small terrier was running in tight, excited little circles in and around the old man’s slippered feet while looking up
at Trey with a stupid grin on its face, its tongue hanging out on one side. Trey smiled up at the old man who seemed to be staring at a spot somewhere over the teenager’s left shoulder, his
eyes tracking slightly from left and right. The old man appeared to be completely blind.

‘Well? Who’s there?’ the man asked eventually. ‘Is that you, Jurgen? Because if it is, I am not in the mood for any of your stupid—’

‘My name is Trey. I’m looking for a Mr Frank Laporte.’

‘What do you want with Frank?’ the old man barked. ‘And who the hell told you that he lived here with me?’

‘I got his address from a friend of mine,’ Trey said, leaning to one side and trying to get a better look inside the house over the man’s shoulder.

‘You only answered one of my questions, kid. And stop snooping inside at my house.’

Trey stepped back and looked into the old man’s face again. The eyes were constantly moving; they skimmed back and forth across some invisible horizon, never stopping in their search for
whatever it was they sought out in the darkness. The little dog had calmed down now and gingerly stepped out on to the porch to take a sniff at Trey’s trainers.

‘I’m from England, my name is—’

‘I didn’t ask you where the hell you came from and I don’t remember asking you for your life story. Now, if you don’t mind, I was in the middle of my afternoon nap. So if
you’d be so kind as to leave my property, I’ll be sure to let Frank know that someone was looking for him when he gets back.’ The old man began to shut the door.

‘When are you expecting him back?’

‘What are you, the goddamn police? Go on, get lost.’ The old man waved one hand in Trey’s direction, continuing to close the door with the other.

‘I’m his nephew,’ Trey said quickly before the opening could be shut completely.

The old man stopped. Tight lines formed on his forehead as he took in this last piece of information. His lips moved, mouthing words that Trey could not catch, and when he turned in Trey’s
direction again, his features were tight and drawn. He shook his head a little, as if unsure that he had heard correctly.

‘You’re Daniel and Elisabeth’s son?’

The old man seemed to stare straight at him, his eyes stopping their erratic movements for a moment. After what seemed an age, he inclined his head to one side and closed his eyes. ‘What
did you say your name was again?’

‘Trey … Trey Laporte.’

The old man nodded at this. He stepped back a little, pushing the door fully open with one hand before holding the other out towards the teenager.

‘Nice to meet you, Trey Laporte. I’m your uncle Frank. I guess you’d better get your stuff out of that car and come in.’

Trey watched the old man shuffle away down the hallway. He turned and walked back to the car and Galroth, fishing his mobile phone from his pocket on the way. He frowned at the
complete lack of bars on the signal strength indicator. He shouldn’t have been surprised; he was in the wilderness and he had the feeling that the nearest mobile phone mast could be a very
long way away. In addition, his cursory glance at the inside of his uncle’s house suggested that he’d be lucky to find running water in the place, let alone a telephone. He put the
phone back in his pocket and walked over to the car.

‘So that is your uncle,’ Galroth said with a nod towards the house.

Trey nodded. ‘You can go now. Thank you for bringing me.’ He glanced back at the house, unable to believe that a blind man could live in such a place. ‘I think I’ll be
staying here for a few days. My phone doesn’t work out here, so I need you to tell Lucien that I arrived safely and found my uncle.’

The demon stared back at him. ‘You are certain that you do not want me to stay? My instructions were to—’

‘I’m giving you
new
instructions,’ Trey said with a firmness that he had not intended. He sighed and smiled back at the demon. ‘Thank you, Galroth. Really. I know
you have my best interests at heart and that you are only obeying Lucien’s orders, but I’m fine.

‘Lucien and Tom will both be scratchy about you leaving me here, and Tom’ll no doubt bawl you out and tell you to come straight back. But I don’t want you to do that. I want
you to tell Lucien that I am fine and remind him that he said that he would not interfere with my visit here. I’ll try and call him soon, but right now I want to spend some time with my
family.’

Trey looked back at the house. ‘I don’t know when I might be able to get to a phone, but I’m guessing that it’ll be in the next day or so.’

The demon sighed. It fished inside its jacket pocket, took out a small box and opened the lid to reveal a number of small stones of a type that Trey had never seen before – each about the
size of a man’s thumb. They were bright red and slightly translucent, and as Trey peered down at them he could see that the insides swirled and eddied, as if a living, gelatinous substance
formed the inside of the crystals. Galroth took one of the stones between its thumb and forefinger, holding it up to the light and examining it for a second. Happy with whatever it saw, the
nether-creature deftly took one end of the stone and wedged it firmly into the entrance to its ear. The creature gave a little push with the tip of its finger, paused and then began to jam the rest
of it deep into the auditory cavity.

Trey watched in horror. ‘I don’t think that’s a particularly wise thing to—’

He stopped when he saw that the stone was now fully inside the creature’s ear. He was about to make some wisecrack remark when the demon took a deep, sharp breath in through its nostrils,
holding it in its lungs. The creature then pushed hard at the stone, forcing the finger impossibly deep into the ear and ramming the stone deeper and deeper inside its skull. Trey gawped when he
noticed that the demon’s long, bony digit was jammed in all the way up to the hilt, and guessed that the stone must be wedged smack bang in the centre of the creature’s head.

Galroth finally released the breath it had been holding, and removed its finger. The demon waggled its jaw from side to side, opening and closing its mouth a couple of times as it did so. Then
it turned to look at Trey, and handed him the other stone.