Dawn of the Demontide (11 page)

Jake checked his watch—3:30 a.m. He had about two hours until dawn. He mounted the bike, flipped the torch on the crossbar and pedalled along the lane. His legs pumped as he hit the main road and swept the bike in a wide circle. While he focused on the road ahead, fresh mysteries raced through his mind.

After Holmwood and Saxby left, he had waited until he heard Aunt Joanna climb the stairs. Half an hour later, her snores signalled that it was safe to leave. Before setting out, he had placed a can of spray paint and a wire coat hanger in his rucksack.

What did Joanna Harker have to do with all this?

Jake hadn’t seen his aunt for a long time. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d only met her once. An untidy hulk of a woman, she’d turned up unannounced at his sixth birthday party. When she bent down to give him a kiss, Jake had smelt whisky on her breath. His father had whispered a few stern words in her ear and she’d left pretty sharpish. After that, Jake only ever heard her mentioned in passing between his mum and dad. There had never been any talk of her being connected to the Hobarron Institute. And yet, in her conversation with Holmwood and Saxby, it sounded as if she had some authority within the organization. What possible role could she play?

Jake turned off the main road and into the woodlands. The forest path ran down to the river. All along the bank, he could hear the stir of wetland creatures in their hollows.

Hobarron’s Hollow. The place that Aunt Joanna planned to take him. He whispered the name over and over. Why should this place share the same name as a scientific institute? An institute whose real work was the destruction of demonkind. More troubling still was the fact that, due to the weapon’s failure, it looked as if a sacrifice was needed to stop the Demontide. Jake grimaced—it was pretty obvious who that sacrifice was going to be …

Twenty minutes of furious pedalling brought Jake to a huge iron gate. The rear entrance to Green Gables, Dr Holmwood’s manor house. The black eye of a security camera glinted down at him. In a flash, he snatched the spray paint from his rucksack and blinded the lens. Then he straightened out the wire coat hanger and threw it at the gate. Sparks crackled between the bars. As he suspected: electrified. He picked up the scorched wire and tucked it back into his rucksack.

Jake hid his bike in the undergrowth and slipped down the bank. Attached to the gate was a chain-link fence, about four metres high and topped with barbed wire. Jake followed it all the way through the forest. He had expected the fence to end at the river’s edge, but it plunged into the water and stretched out quite a distance from the shore. He took off his shoes and tied the laces around the straps of his backpack. Then he stepped into the icy water. Hissing through his teeth, he waded forward. Reeds caught at his legs as if they were another part of Dr Holmwood’s security cordon. When the water had reached his chin, he kicked off from the bottom and swam the last few metres around the end of the fence.

He had begun to make his way back to the shore when he saw a light track across the water. A man in uniform appeared from between the trees and spoke into his fist.

‘I’m at the south perimeter, no sign of an intruder. I’ll go and check the camera. Probably just short-circuited or something.’

A voice crackled through the walkie-talkie.

‘Come back to the hut first. I’ll walk down to the gate with you and we’ll take one of the dogs. If there
is
someone in the grounds, it could be dangerous. Remember what Dr Holmwood says about the enemies of the Institute.’

‘Spook stories,’ the guard laughed. ‘You know, for a clever guy, I think the doc’s got a few bats in the belfry. But OK, I’m on my way. Shuck needs a run anyway.’

Shuck. In the ancient legends of the eastern counties of England, Black Shuck was the name of a hellhound. That didn’t sound good.

Jake swam quickly to the shore and scrambled up the bank. Teeth chattering, he pulled on his soggy trainers. The backpack had half filled with river water which Jake now emptied out onto the ground. Green Gables was a ten minute walk through the woods. Jake set off, and was under the shadow of the house before three minutes had elapsed. The run helped him warm up.

Silhouettes moved across the window of the security guard’s hut. The small wooden building stood by itself, a stone’s throw from the main house. Two dirt bikes with helmets on their saddles rested against the hut wall. A fenced-in dog run was attached to the hut, kennels at the rear. Leashes with empty collars hung from the kennel roofs. Jake gulped. There was no sign of the dogs.

The hut door swung open and Brett, the guard from the Institute, strode out.

‘Come on, Shuck.’

A large, elegant Doberman trotted out of the hut. Brett fitted a leash around its neck and its ears pricked up on either side of its head like two demonic horns. Jake waited until the men and the dog had disappeared from view. Then he made a dash for the hut.

Brett had locked the door behind him. It appeared to be a simple catch. Jake took the wire coat hanger from his bag and slotted it between the door and the jamb. With a little jiggling, the catch flipped and he was inside.

A bank of monitors marked
Driveway
,
Forecourt
,
Rose Garden
,
Main Hall
,
Cellar
,
Woodland Path
stood along one wall. The screen labelled
Rear Gate
was blank. Jake watched as Brett, Shuck, and the other guard crossed the rose garden. At that pace, it would take them maybe seven minutes to reach the gate—another ten or so to check the area and alert the house. At best, he had twenty minutes to get into the house and rescue his father. That was
if
he could get into the house.

Jake had visited Green Gables many times. The place was a high-tech fortress, the doors electronically secured. With one eye on the monitors, he searched the coats that hung behind the door. Nothing but sweet wrappers and pocket fluff. He turned his attention to the filing cabinet. Papers, bills, receipts, old security tapes …

The minutes ticked by and his search became frantic. No longer caring about the evidence he would leave behind, he tore open files and ransacked drawers. His gaze shifted to the screen marked
Woodland Path
. The guards and the dog flashed across the monitor. Soon they would be at the gate.

He spun around and, in his panic, knocked a mug of cold tea from the desk. Jake cursed. Then, seeing what lay beneath the cup, his heart leapt. His luck was holding—Brett had been using his keycard as a coaster. Jake grabbed the card and checked the house monitors. Each showed an empty room. An idea popped into his head. If this was the
only
monitoring station, he might be able to buy himself a little more time. He grabbed a hammer from a toolbox under the desk and set to work. Within seconds he had smashed every one of the monitor screens.

The silent fortress waited.

Jake went to the back door. A card swipe device was bolted to the wall. He tried the keycard. The LED flashed red. Maybe the card was faulty. Maybe that was why Brett had been using it as a coaster. If he ran back to the hut …

A low growl came from the bushes directly behind Jake.

‘Oh crap,’ he muttered.

There was no hope of running back to the hut now. Any sudden movement and the dog would be on him. He tried the card again.
Red.

‘Good doggy,’ he said, frantically swiping the card. ‘Good pooch.’

The LED flashed:
red, red, red, red
…

The growl deepened. Paws padded onto the path.

‘Good Rex. Good Rover.’

…
red, red, red, red
…

Wet jaws slapped together. The hound came closer, closer.

‘Come on, come on!’

Swipe.
Red
. Swipe, swipe, swipe.
Red, red, red.

Claws clicked across the paving. Saliva slopped onto the ground.

Jake felt hot breath against the back of his legs.

‘Don’t eat me,’ he pleaded.

Swipe.

Green.

The door swung open.

Jake moved just in time. He heard the snap of the dog’s jaws followed by a yelp of frustration. The beast pounced as Jake closed the door. A thrashing head with spittle-flecked jowls caught against the door jamb. Jake fell back into the hall while his foot kicked out at the door. For a moment, he thought that the massive hound would succeed in forcing its way into the house. He could hear the scrabble of its hind legs, could feel the power of those heavy-muscled limbs. The battle of wills between Jake and the dog lasted less than a minute. To Jake, it felt like hours. Finally, the dog let out an exhausted pant and pulled its head back. Its collar caught against the jamb and slipped from its neck. The door slammed shut.

The silver name tag twinkled up at Jake, and identified his attacker as ‘
Cerberus
’. A dark catalogue reference told him that, in Greek and Roman mythology, Cerberus was the ancient guardian of the underworld—a monstrous beast with three heads.

‘Cerberus.’ Jake nodded. ‘Figures.’

Despite the rumpus, the household remained undisturbed. Jake got to his feet and crept along the corridor. His plan had been hazy at best and now that he was inside Green Gables he wondered how he would find his father. There must be over a hundred rooms, most of which he had never seen.

The corridor opened out into a huge entrance hall. Like the rest of the house, it was a scene of luxurious splendour. Beautifully woven tapestries hung from the walls. A staircase made of iron and glass swept down from the floor above. The marble floor, polished to perfection, gleamed … Except that wasn’t quite true. No, not polished to perfection. From the door to the stairs, two parallel tracks tarnished the marble.

Jake imagined his father being dragged from the ambulance and across the wet ground outside. Perhaps the muddy heels of his dad’s shoes had made those tracks. Jake followed them up the glass staircase and onto the landing. There the tracks skirted right and into the west wing of the house. In the thick pile carpet of the corridor they became furrows. It was as if Adam Harker had laid out a trail for his son to follow, like a man in a labyrinth dropping pebbles behind him.

Jake now entered a part of Green Gables he had never seen before. The corridor, decorated with crimson wallpaper, stretched out before him like a long, red throat. The walls were high and, above a rail four metres or so overhead, the faces of men stared down at him. Jake’s gaze skipped between the portraits. The costumes were Jacobean, Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, but the men all possessed similar features. It was not hard to work out that these were ancestors of Dr Gordon Holmwood. Beneath each was a golden name plaque. Jake reached the last—a stern-looking character with a short beard and heavy-lidded eyes. His plaque read:

The tracks ended at the door beneath Tiberius’s portrait.

There was no swipe card device outside.

‘Open bloody Sesame,’ Jake growled.

He rattled and pushed at the handle. To his surprise, the door swung back to reveal a big, well-furnished bedroom.

That the door to Adam Harker’s cell should open so easily was not difficult to understand. Not when Jake saw the state of his father. He rushed to the bed and lifted Adam’s head from the pillow.

The man had been heavily drugged.

‘Dad? Can you hear me?’

Jake slapped his father’s face. He tried to pull Adam into a sitting position but the dead weight was too much for him. The man flopped back onto the bed. Then his eyes fluttered and Adam focused on his son.

‘Go,’ he said, his words slurred. ‘Don’t st-stay here. Dangerous. Can’t help me.’

‘I’ll bring the police.’

‘Told you. No pol-eeese. Wouldn’t believe you. Elders too powerful.’

Jake thought of Silas Jones being interviewed by Dr Holmwood and knew that his dad was right.

‘I can’t leave you here,’ he said.

‘Must. Go.’

‘Listen, Dad, I overheard Dr Holmwood and Aunt Joanna talking—they want to take me to a place called “Hobarron’s Hollow” … ’

Adam nodded. ‘The Demontide will start in the Hollow. The D-Door will open and demonkind will be s-set free.’

‘But what about the weapon you and Mum worked on? I’ve seen a blueprint—a diagram of a box with wires coming out of it.’

‘We created the weapon to f-fight the darkness. But it never worked. Never functioned. Wi-without the weapon, the Elders will need a sacrifice to stop the Demontide. They wi-will kill a child … ’

‘But there must be another way of stopping it.’

‘Muh-maybe. The answer is in the Hollow, Jake. Fr-frozen in Time.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Adam’s eyes glazed over. ‘Ab-ra-cad-abra … ’

‘Dad?’

Adam struggled to focus. ‘To understand you must find Tinsmouth. He—he lives inside the lion’s head now.’

Tinsmouth. The man who had murdered little Olivia Brown at the Hobarron Fete. Why would his father want him to seek out a man like that? Anyway, surely Tinsmouth was still locked up somewhere.

Loud, angry voices echoed from downstairs.

Jake tried again to lift his father. Adam pushed him away.

‘Go. Run. Stay—stay away from the Hollow. Only death waits for you there … ’

For a moment, Adam appeared to come out of his trance. He fixed Jake with a sad stare.

‘I love you, Jake. My son.
My son
… ’

His eyes rolled white and he fell back onto the bed.

Footsteps thundered along the corridor.

‘The door’s open!’ Holmwood’s voice raised in anger. ‘Someone’s in there!’

Jake raced across the room, slammed the door and jammed a chair under the handle. Then he returned to the bed. He leaned over and put his lips to the unconscious man’s ear.

‘I’m sorry, Dad, but I’m going to Hobarron’s Hollow. Weapon or no weapon, I’ll find a way to stop the Demontide. No one is going to be sacrificed—enough people have died already.’ He bent down and kissed his dad’s forehead. ‘Then I’m coming back for you.’