Kill Fish Jones (24 page)

While he was in the library he also looked up ‘to divine' in a dictionary and found out that it meant gaining insight into the unknown by supernatural means, which didn't really help.

Dismissing the problem for now, he took a moment to read an article in the newspaper with the headline ‘Doomsday Hits Town'. There were some details about his failed attempts to kill Fish Jones that he wanted to check – like the name of his Innocent Bystander.

While he was doing all that he realised that if he found the deepest cave in a book, it would mean that humans had been there, or they wouldn't have written about it. If they had been there, then they would have disturbed the Mighty Curse anyway, and it would have woken up and destroyed the world. Clearly this hadn't happened, so the right cave wasn't going to be in any book. In the end he set the geography hands of his chronometer for the deepest, biggest space it could find, pressed send and hoped for the best.

He had an anxious moment when he felt his substance sleeting through thick darkness. Normally, chronometer travel didn't come with much sensation, but travelling through miles of solid earth and rock clearly made a difference. It wasn't comfortable at all, and he was petrified at the thought that he might have
got it wrong and would materialise mixed in with the rock, unable to move or even to reset his chronometer and escape. He would be trapped forever, like a fossil!

So his relief when he materialised in empty space was huge. But relief was almost instantly overtaken by wonder. He had expected a black hole, possibly containing the terrifying Avatar of the Mighty Curse. What he found instead was a vast cavern filled with beauty and magnificent design.

Perched on a huge pillar of rock in the middle of the cavern, Grimshaw gazed at the intricate upside-down spires that hung from the ceiling, and then looked down at the tier upon tier of pillars growing up to meet them. In many places spire and pillar had grown together to make columns of rock, decorated with random folds and ripples in the stone. It was like being in a fantastic Gothic cathedral. And everywhere was light. Actual light in the darkness! Not that he needed it to see things, because Grimshaw's vision didn't depend on light like human eyes did, but it was still very lovely.

Flicking his ears, Grimshaw peered at the rocks around him and discovered that they were shining all on their own. He had heard the word phosphorescent before and he knew what it meant, but he hadn't understood it until now. Looking closer, he saw that the rocks that weren't shining on their own were reflecting the ones that were. There were crystals embedded everywhere, multiplying the strange radiance. How many other
places were there, he wondered, full of such glory? And it had never been seen by any eyes but his!

Taking his time, he studied the cathedral cavern. It was vast, and the air, trapped here miles below the surface, was warm, damp and still. Swapping his pillar for one on the other side of the cave, Grimshaw found a deep pool, its surface shining with reflected light. He could hear the soft plip of droplets falling into it. Each tiny bead of water must have seeped down through many layers of earth and cracks in the rock, past old fossils and buried civilisations, until finally its long journey ended up here in this deep, undiscovered place. He wondered how many years it had taken for the pool to fill up and if, one day, the cathedral cavern would become a drowned palace.

Still, this wasn't getting him anywhere, and one thing was certain: in all this glowing wonder, there was absolutely no sign of an Avatar, mighty or otherwise. Apart from Grimshaw, that was.

He sat for a while, waving his tail gently as he admired the soft, eerie glow of the phosphorescence, until it came to him that he was on the wrong track. The Mighty Curse, like all other curses, had been made by man. A man who was a great magician, true, but still a man. So it wasn't going to be buried at the bottom of a place no man had ever been. It would be near somewhere that people lived, or had lived once, at any rate.

Grimshaw liked books and had experienced a few in the Lock-Out Club. His favourites were adventure
stories about things like long-forgotten cities in the heart of impenetrable jungles. Which right now seemed like an ideal place for hiding terrible demons. So he searched the Acts and Facts to find one.

An entry made centuries ago by a long-gone curse demon spoke of an ancient city, hidden deep in the heart of the Amazonian jungle. Pressing send, Grimshaw vanished from the cathedral cavern and felt again the sensation of being drawn through thick, dark earth. Suddenly this unpleasant feeling gave way to one of dappled brilliance and wet heat.

And there it was in front of him, a city so old and lost that no human eyes had looked upon it for hundreds of years. Grimshaw studied the city and the tropical forest that concealed it. The web was full of all sorts of information about jungles, for example …

Grimshaw flicked his ears. What was the point? They were only facts, and facts weren't the same as reality. Facts were just what was left when you took the reality out. He didn't need the web to see that the jungle was as different to the underground cathedral as he could imagine, but just as beautiful. Here the air felt like steam in a bathroom, only thicker and heavier. All around him, things buzzed, rustled and called. He knew that way up above him, above the trees that were tall enough to touch the sky, the sun was pouring its golden light down like a rain of fire. But he couldn't see it. The canopy of huge leaves and twisting vines cut out all but a few rays of sunlight, surrounding him in dappled greens and golds.

The city had become part of the jungle. Streets had been replaced by colonnades of immense trees, their roots ripping up the paving stones, and vines had torn down the ancient arches. Only the halls and palaces were still there, smothered in creepers and exotic plants. Now they were a playground for small monkeys, hunting territory for hungry leopards and (deep inside) sleeping quarters for legions of bats.

Grimshaw flicked from place to place, but nowhere did he see the slightest hint of a mighty Avatar. Clearly he was on the wrong track again. Even so, it was nice in the jungle.

Resting for a moment in the branches of a vast tree, Grimshaw watched the leopard cubs at play. Their glossy dark-spotted coats and their liquid eyes and graceful movements soothed him. One of them even climbed up and lay for a while with its soft side pressed against him as it yawned and dozed in the sultry air. He could feel it breathing, its life whooshing in and out of its velvet body in gentle sighs.

Sitting there, Grimshaw realised that however long he spent in Real Space, it would never be enough. He knew that the Earth wasn't paradise. It had terrible things in it. Death came in so many ways, often painful, and nature itself could wipe out whole civilisations with earthquakes, hurricanes and floods. But somehow the ruthlessness, the possibility of loss and suffering, made the beauty all the more beautiful.

The knowledge that sooner or later he would have
to leave the world and remain locked in the emptiness of Grey Space terrified him. True, there might be another Litany to work on, one created when they reburied Lampwick. And even when that was done, until Fish Jones completed the tasks he had to perform in the name of destiny, Grimshaw would be able to travel to Real Space. He flicked his ears thoughtfully, wondering if it was worth letting the boy live after all. But how long would he live for? A decade? Five? And after that? Centuries might pass with nothing happening. With Grimshaw being bottom of the curse-demon pile, scorned by everyone. Centuries before the last of Lampwick's bones crumbled to dust and ended both the curse and Grimshaw's miserable existence. By then oblivion would be welcome.

Closing his eyes against the thought, Grimshaw let himself relax, like the leopard, into the peace and warmth that surrounded him.

When he opened them again, he had an idea. The half-alive didn't dream, just like they didn't sleep, but as he lay there in a relaxed haze an image came to him. Water. Maybe the Mighty Curse was not buried in earth, but in water. Grimshaw flipped his ears thoughtfully, shaking off the lethargy that had overtaken him. Maybe this was what Flute had meant by ‘divining' the answer? This kind of trance-like vision.

He thought about it. Not the sea, that wouldn't be right, because although humans travelled about on top of the sea, they didn't have a lot to do with it in
the homemaking sense. A lake somewhere, perhaps? Grimshaw was about to set his chronometer to find the deepest water anywhere that wasn't the sea, when all of a sudden he remembered something else the Horseman had said, something he had overlooked. A feeling of excitement surged through him. Everyone knew that the Mighty Curse was created by Imenga, the most powerful wizard ever to have lived. But the Horseman had called him the great wizard of the Clouded Land!

The Clouded Land. Grimshaw had read and heard enough from some of the older demons to know that this could mean only one country. Britain.

So instead, he set his chronometer for the largest and (as an afterthought)
most mysterious
body of water in Britain and hit send. He materialised at the bottom of a lake somewhere in Scotland.

The shock as his body was catapulted from the hot, lazy air of the jungle to the icy-cold depths was immense. His un-material self swirled through the bitter, dark water as it closed around him, sucking him down and down and down. The weight of all the water was so great he could feel its resistance as he squeezed into full being, pushing its bulk aside as if it were solid rather than liquid. He opened his eyes on complete darkness – not even a glimmer of light filtered down to these black depths even though he knew it was the middle of the day. Fortunately, he didn't need light to see by, so he took a careful look around to see if the Mighty Curse was here.

He found a monster straight away. Unfortunately, it was a dead one.

Staring at the creature's whitened bones rising from the silt, Grimshaw sighed. It might have been a hell of a big monster when it was alive, but it had been a flesh and blood one, not an Avatar. He gazed at the length of its incredible neck that ran in wavy ridges along the lake bottom. In fact, most of it was neck; there didn't seem to be much body at all. Maybe it was some kind of serpent.

Grimshaw couldn't help a shiver. As well as dark and cold, it was so silent that it was like being in a world of eternal night. Then he slapped his head with his hand and groaned. He had just flipped here without thinking. His backpack would be soaked through, including Mrs Minchin and his notebook.

And then he had a moment of revelation. Divining! Flute had said that he did it all the time – and she was right. Divination was how he got clues on where to look for suitable accidents to finish off his Sufferers. All he had to do was look in Mrs Minchin and he would find directions to the Mighty Curse!

Before he could kick himself really hard for being so dense, the water swirled and eddied. He stiffened and peered around. He couldn't see anything, but it occurred to him that even if this monster was dead, it didn't mean there weren't others.

He gulped, swallowing a mouthful of ice-cold water. And then a great booming roar swept over him, a cry so
huge and so lonely that his blood chilled in his veins and if he had had any hair it would have stood on end.

Grimshaw shook, crouching into the silt. Above him something vast and long and snake-like undulated through the dark lake. Its terrible cry echoed out again, sweeping through Grimshaw to rattle his bones like a grim warning.

With a trembling hand, he spun the dials on his watch and hit send just as the great serpent turned its monstrous head to see what it was that had come to disturb its empty world.

Standing on the back step of Crow's Cottage, Fish watched the sun go down. It had been a beautiful day and the problem of the curse demon had seemed a lifetime away, but now the last edge of the sun was disappearing in a bank of purple cloud and who knew what tomorrow would bring. With a sigh, he closed the door on the gathering night and went to find Alice.

She was upstairs, lounging on the quilt and preparing to spend the evening eating biscuits. The evening air was cool and she was wearing her jumper. Fish reached for Jed's jacket and pulled it on, then settled beside her and tried to get comfortable. There was something sticking into him, and reaching round to his back pocket he pulled out his old book. It must have been there since he had rescued it from the wreckage on the morning when his life had changed forever. Its cover, though battered, was a reminder of happy times in his lost home. It was also a reminder of his situation now.

‘I'll read aloud from it if you like,' Alice said, pulling the lid off the container that Mrs Dunnet had put in with
the milk, bread and eggs. ‘We've got macaroons, ginger biscuits and cookies.' She began to fish around. Outside, the first drops of rain pattered on the window and the wind rattled the ancient frame.

While she rummaged, Fish absent-mindedly flicked the pages of the book, wondering if there was any way to break the curse and set himself and his mother free of the threat that hung over them. How could he find out? He flicked through the book a second time, then frowned and turned the light of the torch more firmly in his direction. The rain began to fall in earnest, drumming hard on the glass.

‘Some of the cookies are chocolaty ones too.' Alice dug one out and began to eat. She glanced up at the rivers running down the window pane and then at Fish. ‘What's up?'

Fish reached across her for the scrap of paper she had been writing a shopping list on and then looked for the pen. Silently, Alice retrieved it from behind the bottle of lemonade and handed it to him.

He flicked the pages of the book again, pausing every so often to scribble something down. Then he handed the paper to Alice. It said:

Toby

Green

Seven

Fortune