Authors: Chris Speyer
‘I wasn’t much more than a boy when that was taken.’
‘But do you remember the owner?’
‘P’rhaps.’
‘Grandad, it could be important.’
‘Matter of fact, I do ’cause it was unusual.’
‘How?’ asked Zaki.
‘Why?’ asked Anusha.
Grandad looked from one to the other.
‘’Cause it was a young woman. Unusual in them days.’
‘What was her name?’ demanded Zaki.
‘Her name? No, I can’t recall her name.’
‘Please try,’ begged Zaki.
‘Was it Rhiannon?’ asked Anusha.
‘Why’s it so important?’
‘It’s important because I think we’ve met her!’
‘No, boy. She’d be dead by now. Or if she isn’t, she’d be an old woman.’
‘She’s on this boat anchored up Frogmore Creek!’
Grandad took the photograph from Zaki, ran his hand gently over the frame, then carefully returned it to its place on top of the television.
‘Same boat p’rhaps – different owner.’
‘It was a fishing boat – right? An open boat, and your dad put a cabin on her.’
‘Oyster boat from Falmouth. Now, I’ve listened to enough nonsense. Time I was takin’ you two home.’ It was clear that for Grandad the subject was closed. Zaki wondered why he was so reluctant to talk about it. Had the girl talked to Grandad all those years ago? Told him her story? No, she wouldn’t have; she kept herself to herself. But perhaps he had sensed there was something strange about her.
‘What are you going to do about not sleeping? How are you going to stay awake?’ asked Anusha as they followed Grandad out to the car.
‘I don’t know. I suppose I’ll just stay awake as long as I can.’
‘Maybe you should have sort of catnaps – don’t go to sleep for too long.’
‘Once I’m asleep I tend to stay asleep.’
‘I could telephone you. Wake you up every half-hour.’
‘You’ll probably get my dad or Michael.’
‘Have you got an alarm?’
‘Yeah – I’ve got an alarm.’
‘If you want to talk to someone, just call me. I’ll have my mobile in my room. Doesn’t matter what time it is.’
They’d reached the old Volvo. Its doors creaked and complained as they opened them, and they needed to be slammed shut. Then they were off back to Kingsbridge.
g
Zaki went straight upstairs to his room. He took the mask out of his rucksack and looked around for somewhere to hang it. Like all the rooms in the house, except Michael’s, the walls were bare. Michael had ignored their father’s fretting about the fresh plaster and covered his walls in posters.
There was a solitary picture hook on which hung a mirror. Zaki took down the mirror and leant it against the wall. He hung up the mask and sat on his bed for a moment looking at it.
The sound of Michael’s guitar came through the adjoining wall. The guitar stopped. After a pause there was the sound of a computer-generated drumbeat and the guitar began again over the top of the rhythm.
Zaki left his room and opened Michael’s door.
‘What you doing?’ He tried to sound cheery. It was the first time they had spoken since the moment Michael slammed the van door.
‘What’s it look like?’
‘Can I use the computer later?’
‘What for?’
‘I want to look up some stuff – that’s all.’
‘I’m going out later – so you can do what you like.’
Zaki hung in the doorway, hoping Michael would say something else. But he didn’t.
‘Is there anything to eat?’
‘There’s some pizza in the kitchen.’
‘You want any?’
‘I’ve had some.’
Zaki thought about asking whether their father had been home but decided not to. He waited a while longer but Michael remained hunched over his guitar, so he closed the door and went down to the kitchen. He found the cold remains of the pizza and put them in the microwave to warm up. When it was ready, he took his meal through to the front room to eat it in front of the television. He flicked through the channels until he came to a nature programme. On the screen, a wasp was injecting her eggs into the soft, yielding body of a caterpillar.
‘You found something to eat, then?’
Zaki looked up to find his father looking in from the corridor.
‘Mm – yes – thanks,’ he mumbled with his mouth full.
‘Good.’ His father continued on to the kitchen.
The wasp eggs hatched and the wasp larvae grew and swelled in the caterpillar’s body.
Zaki heard his brother’s bedroom door slam shut and the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.
‘Michael,’ his father called from the kitchen, ‘where are you going?’
There was no reply but Zaki heard the rattle of the front-door latch. His father hurried past the open living-room door.
‘Michael! I asked you a question! Michael!’
The garden gate opened and closed and, after a long pause, the front door clicked shut and his father returned, more slowly, to the kitchen.
The pizza seemed to stick in Zaki’s throat. He picked up the remote and turned off the television. He sat staring at the dead screen. This was awful. Someone needed to do something. He got to his feet and carried his plate into the kitchen, where he found his father, hands deep in his overall pockets, standing in the middle of the room doing nothing. He waited for his father to move. To say something. To look at him or smile. But his father remained as he had found him.
‘Don’t you think you ought to talk to Mum?’
Now his father did turn – slowly until their eyes met. His father shrugged and looked away. Zaki gripped his empty plate more tightly. He had a sudden urge to smash it on the kitchen floor but he resisted and placed it carefully on the kitchen table.
‘I just thought . . . she might know what to do.’
‘Maybe.’ His father picked up the plate without looking at him and put it in the dishwasher.
Zaki felt his stomach tighten with anger. Why was his father behaving like this? He wanted to hit him! Instead, he left the kitchen and went to his room.
He sat on his bed. Inside him, something was growing, hidden from the outside world.
He lay back on his bed. No! He mustn’t go to sleep. He got up and went to his brother’s room. Of course it was empty. He couldn’t talk to his father. He couldn’t talk to Michael.
He returned to his room and sat on the bed.
Then he remembered the slip of paper in his drawer with his mother’s number in Switzerland written on it. He retrieved it. He returned to the bed and sat staring at the number. Why shouldn’t he call her? Something made him hesitate. What was the problem? The problem was that he believed what Michael had said – that she wasn’t coming home. But he didn’t want to hear her say that that was true.
He forced himself to his feet. Somebody had to face what was happening to his family. He went out on to the landing, where there was a telephone extension. Was his father still in the kitchen? He listened. The television was on again in the living room. He picked up the telephone and dialled the number. As soon as he heard his mother pick up the telephone at the other end of the line he said, ‘Mum?’
‘Zaki?’
‘Mum,’ he said, keeping his voice down so that his father wouldn’t overhear.
‘What is it?’
‘Mum, we need you.’
‘Zaki . . . it’s a bit difficult.’
‘No. We need you.’
‘Zaki . . .’
‘We need you here.’
He put down the telephone before she could say anything else. Would she call back? Ask to speak to his father? He waited by the telephone. Nothing happened. He went back to his room and closed the door.
There was the mask on the wall. It was just a mask. Something carved out of wood and painted. Something someone had made. How could it help him? He took the bracelet out of his pocket and put it on the table beside the bed. It didn’t look very special. Yes, but what about all that weird stuff he could do? Make birds appear and disappear. Was he going mad? Had he imagined the whole thing? He decided to try an experiment.
He thought about the pet guinea pig he had had when he was younger. It was white with brown spots. He thought carefully about where the spots were positioned, pictured its bright little eyes and quivering whiskers, the little bit of pink on its nose, the sound its feet made on a polished floor. He let it take shape in his mind while staring at a dirty sock on the floor beside his bed. The sock developed a bright little eye and then the sock was gone and the guinea pig popped into existence around the eye. His concentration wavered and the guinea pig went back to being a sock. This obviously takes a bit of practice, he thought.
Each time he brought the guinea pig into being he held it there a little longer until, eventually, he was able to reserve a piece of his mind for the guinea pig while thinking about something else entirely.
He let the guinea pig run around the bedroom while he took a clean pair of socks from his drawer. He thought of two more guinea pigs. Two perfect clones of the first guinea pig scuttled about the floor, around his feet and under the bed. He wiped them all from his mind; three guinea pigs disappeared and were replaced by three socks. So what did that prove? That when something appeared, something else disappeared. The flapping plastic bag turned into the first seagull, the poster turned into the hawk, the socks into the guinea pigs.
All very interesting, but turning socks into guinea pigs wasn’t going to help him against Maunder! The logbook was still in his rucksack. Maybe he’d missed something. Maybe something she had written could help him. What did she say about the Devil Dances?
Zaki sat on his bed, the book open against his knees. He reread everything Rhiannon had written about the Devil Dances, about her transformation into the demon in Maunder’s house and about the events in the cave. He rested his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, trying to picture everything she had described. Did he fall asleep? He felt another face pressing against the inside of his, as though his face were a mask worn by somebody else. He felt his features stretching and distorting as the face inside pushed outwards. Then his mind filled with memories that weren’t his own. He saw Devil’s Rock, black against the sky. A wrecked ship lay on the reef beneath; bodies floated in the water, carts were being loaded by the light of flaming torches.
Zaki sat up quickly. He looked for the mirror on the wall but saw the mask, then remembered he had put the mirror on the floor. He picked it up and examined his face. Did he imagine it, or did he see a white scar running down from under his left eye, through his lips to his chin? Yes – it was faint, but it was there, like a pale puckered line. Maunder!
He mustn’t wait any longer. He had to act. He found the CD of drum music that Anusha had given him. But he needed something to play it on. He went to Michael’s room and fetched the laptop and his brother’s headphones. Back in his own room, he set the computer up on the table beside his bed, put the CD in and put the headphones on. Then he put on the bracelet. The mask was on the wall in front of him. He was ready. Could he drive Maunder back into the bracelet?
The drum music began to play. Through the headphones it sounded as if the drum was in the middle of Zaki’s head. A second drum joined the first, then a third and a fourth. Mr Dalal had obviously laid one track over another. The rhythms crossed and recrossed but every now and then the drums would beat together in unison and the rhythm throbbed like a great heart echoing the beating of Zaki’s own. Zaki kept his eyes fixed on the mask. Slowly, the mask’s features came to life: the sightless eyeholes became eyes that fixed their penetrating gaze on him; the mouth widened in a terrible grin; the hair became alive with snakes. From the head grew a body, its belly smeared with blood. From the shoulders sprouted four arms that ended in four clawed hands. One hand gripped a rooster, on another perched a parrot; the third held a sword and from the fourth hung a human head. As the demon advanced towards him, Zaki saw that it was mounted on an enormous boar. Zaki wanted to turn and run, but he knew he must face the demon – speak to it, make it obey him.
‘Wait! Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘I am Riri Yakka – Demon of Blood. My home is the graveyards. I hunt the dead. Why have you called me?’
Zaki swallowed back his revulsion. He must make the demon serve him.
‘I have someone for you to hunt. Follow me!’
Now Zaki turned, or in his mind he turned, and he saw in front of him a tunnel, like the entrance to a deep cave. He plunged into the cave-mouth. The tunnel beyond the entrance was lit by a red glow that he realised was coming from the demon behind him. Zaki quickly set off down the passage.
Ahead of him the passage divided. What was this? A maze? A labyrinth? How would he choose which way to go? He decided that where he could continue straight ahead he would always go straight ahead, otherwise he would always choose left. That way, to find his way out of the labyrinth, he need only reverse the rule.
The passage twisted and turned, divided and divided again, but Zaki stuck to his rule and the demon followed close on his heels. Another division and Zaki chose left. A dead end! But he mustn’t turn round. Zaki began to walk backwards. Now, as he got closer, he could feel the heat of the demon’s body and smell its sulphurous smell, but he didn’t look – he mustn’t look. The heat became unbearable and the smell suffocating – then he felt the heat diminish and saw the red glow receding. The demon was moving back. When he reached the turning, Zaki turned right. From now on he would have to count the turns and remember the pattern. On they went, deeper into the maze. There were more false turns but Zaki forced himself to remember the number of lefts between each right. He repeated over and over in his head, ‘Three lefts, right – two lefts, right – five lefts, right – two lefts, right.’
Then, up ahead, the darkness seemed darker, as though a denser black crouched in the centre of the blackness. They had reached the centre of the maze. Maunder could retreat no further. The demon gave a warning growl and Zaki flung himself to the side of the passage as, with a deafening roar, the blood-streaked demon, sword held high, charged past. The hunt was on! With a howl of fear, the black shape hurled itself past the charging demon and raced back down the passage. The mounted demon turned and galloped in pursuit. The demon’s roars and Maunder’s cries echoed through the labyrinth, the hooves of the demon’s mount thundering through the tunnels. When the red glow from the demon faded, Zaki was left in total darkness to feel his way slowly back. If he clung to the left wall, he could miss a turning to the right. If he followed the right wall, he could miss a turning on the left.
Unable to see the turnings, Zaki soon knew he was lost. He listened, hoping the roars of the demon would give him a clue, but all he could hear was a steady beating as though the maze itself had a gigantic heart.
Suddenly, the maze dissolved as a circle of excruciating pain seared his left wrist. He was back in his room. The beat of the drums still pounded in his head. He tore off the headphones. The bracelet was burning his wrist. He struggled to pull the burning bronze band from his arm. As he tossed the scorching bracelet on to the bedside table, he saw that the engravings were shining and dancing. He dived from his room into the bathroom, twisted on the cold tap and thrust his blistering wrist under the flow of water. As he looked up, he saw his face in the bathroom mirror. The white scar had gone. He examined his reflection more closely and saw only himself.
He had done it! He was certain he had done it. He had driven Maunder back into the bracelet.