Just Dreaming

  “Or just run faster,” gasped Grayson.

  I glanced back over my shoulder. Anabel had stayed put around the corner. To make sure, I raised a finger. No telltale breath of air following us, no stray letter box in sight. It wasn’t raining snakes or feathers either.

  All the same, it couldn’t hurt to take Grayson’s advice, so we were rather breathless when we opened Mrs. Honeycutt’s door.

  “Come in unless you’re Death,” screeched the parrot.

  Mrs. Honeycutt was sitting in her armchair as usual. When the door latched shut behind us, she let her knitting sink to her lap and looked at us curiously.

  “It’s only us. Not Death,” Grayson hastily assured her.

  “I’m not afraid of death,” said Mrs. Honeycutt, and Henry, leaning against our table at the back of the room, involuntarily made a face. “Only of dying. What’s that door?”

  “Don’t let it bother you, Mrs. Honeycutt,” said Henry gently, as he signed to us to come over. “You have to finish that cardigan, and the pattern will call for all your attention. You do it so well.”

  Mrs. Honeycutt picked up her knitting again and went on with it as we stole past her on tiptoe, not that there was any need for that.

  “I can see you,” she said with a mischievous smile. “I can do a waffle pattern without looking at my work, you know. But now I must watch carefully as I shape the armhole.”

  “Exactly,” murmured Henry. And turning to us, he said, “That was a close shave. Let me guess: something nasty has been chasing you along the corridors again?”

  I dropped onto one of the chairs. “Anabel, feathers, darkness—the usual, that’s all.”

  “Anabel says she wasn’t to blame for the snake; it was the demon’s doing. Hey, that wasn’t here last time, was it?” Grayson pointed to the flowered china dish full of candies standing in the middle of the table.

  “No, it’s new,” said Henry, sighing. “Mrs. Honeycutt’s subconscious mind must have laid it specially for us.”

  “How nice.” Much moved, I cast Mrs. Honeycutt a friendly glance. Her curly lilac-tinted head was bent over her knitting again. We each took a candy—mine was lemon-flavored, Henry’s was a peppermint. Grayson complained that his didn’t taste of anything, and then told Henry what Anabel had said.

  “Suppose she really didn’t have anything to do with it?” I finally asked, changing the flavor of my candy to orange for the sake of variety. “Could be that someone else really did hide the snake. Someone who wanted to teach Arthur a lesson.”

  Like the demon himself, for instance? According to Anabel, he had snakes conveniently growing on his head. Although she had just mentioned that for the first time ever, as if it were Arthur’s snake that had given her the idea.

  Henry seemed to guess my thoughts. “The demon doesn’t exist, Liv,” he said mildly, “and you know that yourself when you listen to your healthy human reason.”

  “But while the demon exists in Anabel’s mind, he’s almost as dangerous.” Grayson took another candy and unwrapped it. It didn’t seem to bother him too much that he couldn’t taste anything. “I for one wouldn’t want to be bitten by a snake, or punished in some other nasty way. Which is what makes it more important than ever to convince Anabel that the demon isn’t real.”

  “And me too, if you don’t mind,” I said. “My healthy human reason is having a few problems right now with snakes and feathers.”

  “Okay, nothing easier.” Grayson leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. “I’ve found out more about that sect.”

  Henry and I exchanged a quick glance. “Ah, yes, the three-phase plan,” said Henry rather slowly. “Are we still at phase one?”

  But Grayson wasn’t misled by the note of mockery in his voice. “Listen, and you’ll be surprised,” he said. “The Wayfarers on the True Shadow Path were founded by an unemployed roofer from Liverpool called Timothy Donnelly. He was the son of an Irish steelworker and a schoolteacher, and for the first twenty-five years of his life, he apparently seemed perfectly normal. Until he’d just been fired from two jobs in quick succession, and he began getting messages from some kind of limbo, where a demonic deity had chosen him to create a new earthly paradise and lead humanity back to the True Path.” He took his elbows off the table, leaned back, and grinned at me. “How does that sound to your healthy human reason?”

  “It sounds like the poor old roofer had a screw loose himself,” I admitted. “Or else didn’t fancy doing an honest day’s work anymore and thought he’d try something else.”

  “Exactly,” said Grayson, pleased. “If you ask me, the probability of a demonic deity choosing an unemployed roofer from Liverpool to lead people back to the True Path is somewhere in the region of zero. The guy was either nuts or a fraud—or both.”

  “Still, he did manage to convince a few people of his idea.” Henry had begun building the candies into a pyramid. “He made those people his disciples, and in the end, they died with him in that barn, for whatever reason.…”

  “Oh, you mean that terrible thing in Surrey?” said Mrs. Honeycutt, surprisingly joining in the conversation. “I remember it well. The newspapers were full of it at the time. Those poor little children. Their own mothers and fathers, misguided souls that they were, poured kerosene over them and…” Mrs. Honeycutt put her knitting down. “Dreadful. And apparently no one noticed anything in advance. But that’s always the way.”

  Grayson nodded. “Because they were living in a remote old mill somewhere in the country, cut off from the outside world.”

  “A terrible place. I still remember the pictures.” Mrs. Honeycutt shuddered. “The walls had diabolical symbols all over them, painted in human blood; that’s what the Daily Mirror said.”

  “Must have made it a difficult building to sell,” murmured Henry.

  My mind was on Anabel again. And the human blood. “But just because back then the demon…,” I hesitantly began.

  Grayson jumped up. “Damn it, Livvy, once and for all: demons do not exist! More particularly this one! Don’t you both remember what a fuss Anabel always made about that dusty old book where she’d found all those rituals and incantations? The book that was supposed to have been passed on from generation to generation of her family?”

  I nodded, remembering the notebook with the bloodred seals that had gone up in flames in the mausoleum in Highgate Cemetery, to the accompaniment of Anabel’s dreadful screams. It hadn’t looked nearly as old as I’d expected, but Arthur had explained that it was a copy of the original. I did know that I hadn’t been able to suppress my disappointment when I saw the scribbled handwriting in ballpoint pen.

  “Of course I remember,” Henry said too. “Anabel, and later Arthur, always kept it locked up as far as they could. There were those gruesome fingerprints in blood among the incantations, and the last pages were sealed, although I’d really have liked to know what they said.…”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Grayson, “but if that book was really so special, how come anyone can go to the Internet and read all about those strictly secret rites for opening a door to our dimension for the Lord of Darkness and Shadows, etcetera, etcetera?”

  “What?”

  Grayson nodded, pleased with himself. “I knew you’d be interested. Our secret spells come from a serialized novel posted online by some guy calling himself BloodySword66, in a fantasy fan fiction forum.”

  I stared at him. Henry stared at him. Even Mrs. Honeycutt stared for a moment, before turning back to the cardigan that she was knitting.

  “Are you sure they’re the same secret rites?” asked Henry at last. “Or just something like them?”

  “If so, would I be here?” Grayson was looking very full of himself. “Five have broken the seal, five have sworn the oath, and five will open the gate. A circle of blood, wild, innocent, upright,” he declaimed. “Allow the Keeper of the Shadows access, sed omnes una manet nox.”

  I gawped at him. “You still remember all that stuff by heart
?”

  “Yes, here we go again,” said Grayson. “I fed all the silly ideas and set phrases about the demon that I could remember into a search engine, including the Latin tags that Anabel was always quoting from her book. The trick was not to look for them individually but all at the same time.” He paused for a moment for effect, and in the silence, only the click of Mrs. Honeycutt’s needles could be heard. “And,” he went on with a triumphant expression, “seek and you shall find, as the saying goes. Nights of the Bloody Shadows, a serial story in eleven chapters.”

  “Wow,” said Henry, impressed.

  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  Grayson grinned. “Surprised, are you? And hey, next time you two make fun of my three-phase plan and show off because you can turn yourself into—oh, how would I know what? Let’s say a pair of skates gliding along these stupid corridors in perfect harmony. Well, just remember that a proper piece of research can get you a good deal further.”

  I was irresistibly reminded of Mia. The two of them could set up a detective agency together some day. But of course he was right.

  “Skates!” Henry was chuckling.

  “But what does that have to do with this fan fiction forum you were talking about?” I asked. “Could Anabel have posted the text on it? Or Arthur?”

  Grayson sat down again. “If they were able to write and use a computer at the age of two, yes,” he said. “But no, Nights of the Bloody Shadows was published by that forum in 1999.”

  “1999? Did the Internet even exist then?” I murmured, and Henry was frowning as if working out a complicated mathematical problem in his head.

  But Grayson was already going on. “You do realize what that means?” He looked at us solemnly. “I have no idea how or why, but BloodySword66 wrote the novel that we know from Anabel’s notebook, so to speak.”

  Slowly, Henry nodded. In waking life, his pyramid of candies would have collapsed long ago, but here it had reached a considerable height. “So now the only question is, which came first—the notebook or BloodySword66’s literary efforts? And what does it all have to do with the sect?”

  “And do they belong together?” I said. “That’s another question. Did all that demonic garbage really come out of a story thought up by some would-be writer for a fan fiction forum?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” said Grayson with his eyes shining. “It’s a shockingly bad story, incidentally. I don’t think I ever saw so many adjectives all at once. And its basic plot is nothing new either. An ancient, demonic deity with all those names we already know comes back to life in a London museum specializing in the art of the ancient world, after being brought here from what was once Babylon or some such place in an old amphora, along with other things found in archaeological excavations.”

  “How original,” said Henry.

  “And the rest is more of the same.” Grayson leaned back, grinning. “A nerdy young archaeologist, not particularly successful with women but good at heart, is chosen by the deity to help it take physical form again by means of assorted incantatory spells and rituals, all described in detail. Because at first this deity is only a voice, and it consists of dark smoke, wind, and shadows. And an iron will that it can impose on anyone.”

  “And—let me guess—it wants human sacrifice in the shape of a virgin,” I said, and Grayson nodded. “Exactly, and the virgin picked for that part is the younger, mousy sister of the silly cow who has already turned down our young archaeologist’s advances in no uncertain terms. The chosen victim is actually much nicer than her sister, but the archaeologist realizes that only later.”

  “Sounds quite exciting,” I had to admit.

  “But I’m afraid it isn’t. Also it’s terribly confused, too many characters with too many names. More deities appear, including a talking scarab beetle that later takes possession of the nice sister, there are endless dialogues, sword fights for no special reason, and boring descriptions of everyday life. After chapter eleven, the story breaks off. The people in the forum weren’t all that enthusiastic about it themselves. By the end, it was getting more brickbats than praise, and I’m afraid BloodySword66 lost the plot, or else he simply got tired of it.”

  “Or he went off and founded a sect,” I suggested. “Or it was all entirely different, and—”

  “Whatever happened then, I’m going to find out,” Grayson interrupted me, sounding very self-confident. “Unfortunately that fan fiction forum closed down several years ago, and it didn’t include any contact information. But I’ve already tracked one of the administrators down to another forum—these fantasy enthusiasts give themselves the same names everywhere—and I’ve gotten in touch with him. Maybe he can help me to find out who was hiding behind the name BloodySword66. Then I could go into the case thoroughly and finally prove to Anabel that her delusions are based on nothing but a poor work of fiction.”

  Yes. It was possible. And a great idea. But all the same …

  “Are there feathers in this poor work of fiction? I mean, does the demon have wings?” I asked. “And how about dreams? Are dreams another part of the story?”

  Grayson didn’t reply. Instead, he looked up at the ceiling. “Did you hear that? Sounds like a ventilator. The ventilator in my room.”

  We stared up ourselves. There was only a light with a brightly patterned shade hanging over us. And there was no sound but our own voices.

  “But that’s…,” said Grayson, and then he had suddenly disappeared.

  “No one knows how long he will live until his last hour strikes,” screeched the parrot.

  * * *

  TITTLE-TATTLE BLOG

  The Frognal Academy Tittle-Tattle Blog, with all the latest gossip, the best rumors, and the hottest scandals from our school.

  ABOUT ME:

  My name is Secrecy—I’m right here among you, and I know all your secrets.

  21 March

  Hey, are you all afraid of opening your lockers tomorrow? Are you wondering what’s going to happen next at our school? Have you maybe already signed the petition put forward by Mrs. Pritchard? The petition calls for several specially trained security officers to be engaged at the Frognal Academy.

  Well, if the police and Mrs. Cook are to be believed, all that about the snake was a one-off incident. In their opinion, it’s an adolescent trick, a joke that went wrong, but of course, all the same, it has to be investigated.

  You bet it does! Is it usual for students to put exotic venomous snakes in other students’ lockers, just because they’re bored and their hormones are playing up again? I mean, it really gives you ideas, when of course those annoying venomous snakes are easily available all over the place.

  Anyway, Mrs. Pritchard doesn’t see it the same way as the headmistress and the police. Her petition demands, before school is reopened to the students, a thorough inspection of all cupboards and lockers by a pest exterminator specializing in snakes.

  Sounds like a good idea! It could be that the snake is a common British locker viper, rearing its young among sports bags and shredded textbooks, and sooner or later biting everyone who’s given up French, or has been eating too many carbohydrates for lunch again. You can’t be too careful. And who knows, while the inspectors are at work they may find a few tarantulas, scorpions, and Siberian tigers lurking in the lockers, left over from other amusing student pranks, or simply never cleared away by the cleaners. Mrs. Pritchard has been complaining of their bad habits for some time. Seems like the dirt in the cloakrooms has ruined her daughter’s cashmere coat.

  But now, seriously, and for anyone who’s interested: It was a Malayan pit viper that bit Arthur, and no one knows how it came to be in his locker rather than anyone else’s. What’s certain is that he was incredibly lucky, because the bite of that snake is often fatal. Arthur is still being treated in the hospital, where he had to be given adrenaline and an antidote to the poison, and he’s still not well.

  So I just hope the police catch whoever thought it would be an am
using prank to play. And as soon as possible, before that person tries anything like it again. Because somehow we don’t share the same sense of humor.

  See you soon!

  Love from Secrecy

  PS—And no, guys, it wasn’t Theo Ellis trying to keep Arthur from taking the helm for the Frognal Flames again in the last match of the season! That is really the silliest conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard. Because first, Theo has plenty of other problems on his plate already (being prosecuted for breaking and entering, theft, damage to property, and disturbance of the peace isn’t to be taken lightly, even if Theo is allowed to attend school until the trial), and second, the Flames, unlike the Roslyn Raptors, have no chance now of winning the championship or getting a place among the top three teams, anyway. If you ask me, even the theory that the snake got into the locker by itself because it knew the combination is more credible than the theory of Theo’s revenge. ☺

  Tittletattleblog.com

  * * *

  19

  “NO ONE KNOWS how long he will live until his last hour strikes,” screeched the parrot again, while we were still staring at the empty chair from which Grayson had just that moment disappeared.

  I had instinctively reached for Henry’s hand.

  “Death stops for no one, young or old,” agreed Mrs. Honeycutt. “Only think of my poor sister. Snatched away in the prime of life, maliciously suffocated by her own husband…”

  I had goose bumps now. “Please say that Grayson simply woke up,” I whispered to Henry.

  He reassuringly pressed my hand. “That’s right. He simply woke up,” he assured me. “It’s a pity. I was going to show the two of you something else. Something that I found out some time ago … a very interesting discovery.”

  Another one? Had everyone but me been doing nonstop research? I almost felt guilty because I’d been so lazy in that respect.

  Henry smiled, as if he was reading my thoughts. “I found it out entirely by chance, when I was showing off again, gliding down corridors in the form of a skate.”