The Black Tattoo

  "What about the other one?" asked Charlie suddenly.

  Everyone looked at him blankly.

  "The other Brotherhood person. You know... what's-er-name?" Charlie snapped his fingers. "Jessica?"

  "Oh," said Raymond, surprised. "Well, Jessica and Nick had a row."

  "What about?" asked Charlie.

  "After... what happened," Raymond said, "Nick had... doubts. He must've felt guilty for what happened to Belinda: maybe he wished he'd done like his dad had said and never brought the rest of us into this thing in the first place. At any rate, he made a decision. He announced he was going to find a new place to keep the Scourge: another tree, but somewhere secret, where supposedly none of us would know about it. Now..."

  He leaned forward in his seat, which creaked dangerously under his bulk.

  "Jessica disagreed with him," he said. "She reckoned no one should be trusted with the Scourge alone — none of us, not even Nick. And when Nick set out on his own anyway, Jessica stormed out too. She left the Brotherhood, left all of us. And no one's heard hide nor hair of her in what must be—"

  "So," Charlie interrupted, "two suspects."

  Everyone stared at him again.

  He scowled. "Come on, people, keep up. Whoever let the Scourge out this time had to be one of the Brotherhood; otherwise how would they have known about the demon in the first place? Right?"

  No one replied. Jack wasn't even sure he understood the question.

  "Look," said Charlie with a sigh, "I assume we all agree it wasn't Nick who was possessed — right?"

  Jack blinked — but Charlie was already pressing on.

  "Well, if it wasn't Nick," he announced, as if to a room full of idiots, "and it wasn't you two," he added, looking at Raymond and Esme, "then who else is left? Jessica and Felix! Come on, it's not exactly complicated."

  Jack winced inwardly. Charlie was making a kind of sense, he supposed, but he didn't have to be so smug about it.

  "So," Charlie repeated, "which of those two d'you think's the baddie? Felix or Jessica?"

  "Felix," said Raymond firmly. "He was the one who let it out last time, so—"

  "I think Jessica," said Charlie, interrupting again. "Especially if you've no idea where she is. That's right," he added, "isn't it?"

  "What is?"

  "That you've no idea where Jessica is," Charlie repeated sweetly. "Bit suspicious, that, don't you think?"

  Raymond opened his mouth — and closed it again, annoyed.

  "I'm afraid that's true," said Esme for him.

  "So," said Charlie again, grinning triumphantly, "how do we find her? How do we find this... Jessica?"

  Raymond looked Charlie dead in the eye. "I'm open to suggestions," he said.

  It wasn't the answer Charlie had been expecting. His grin became uncertain, then faded. An uncomfortable silence was just starting to develop, when Jack spoke.

  "Er... can I ask something?"

  In fact, Jack had a whole bunch of questions. How come Charlie was suddenly able to move at lightning speed and make magic powers come out of his hands? (He was still getting his head round that one, frankly.) And the enormous tattoo that had appeared on Charlie's back: was that some mark of the Brotherhood or what? But if Charlie wasn't going to ask about these things himself, Jack certainly wasn't going to do it for him. Not if it meant risking looking like any more of a spare part than he did already in front of Raymond and (especially) Esme.

  Everyone was looking at him, and he could feel his face going red. Jack took a deep breath and said: "Um... what does the demon want?"

  Charlie made a snorting sound in his nose.

  "Actually," said Esme, "that's a good question."

  "There's a place," said Raymond, "not far from here. We call it the Fracture."

  "It's a weak spot in the fabric of reality," said Esme. "A magical gateway: a door. The Scourge wants to open the Fracture and escape back to where it came from."

  "And where's that? asked Charlie, with a skeptical expression — and to be fair, even Jack wasn't sure how much more of this stuff he could take.

  Esme and Raymond looked at each other.

  "The Brotherhood's earliest accounts speak of the Scourge as having come from a 'dark place,'" said Raymond. "An ancient place: a dimension of chaos and violence. This place, apparently, is where our universe began and it's where — the record says — it will end. The last time we fought, the Scourge spoke of the place by name.

  "What place?" asked Charlie, becoming exasperated. "What are you talking about? What name?"

  Raymond looked at him. "Hell," he replied.

  For a long moment, there was silence.

  "When you say 'Hell,'" said Charlie slowly, "you don't mean the real thing: fire and brimstone, eternal torment and damnation, that sort of hell. Hell... do you?"

  "That's the one," said Esme dryly.

  "Cool," said Charlie.

  Esme blinked.

  "What happens if the Scourge goes back to Hell?" asked Jack.

  "It could form an army of demons and invade the Earth," Esme put in. "That's what we've always thought — right?"

  "We don't know for certain what the Scourge's intentions are," said Raymond, acknowledging her with a nod. "But if it's been imprisoned here all this time just to keep it away from Hell, well, you can bet whatever it want to do can't be good."

  Jack frowned again.

  "But... Hell!" said Charlie. "Has anyone been there? I mean," he grinned, "what's the place look like?"

  "I'm sorry?" asked Esme.

  "This gateway," said Charlie impatiently. "Has anyone ever opened it and, you know, had a peek?"

  "Listen, son," said Raymond, "maybe you don't understand—"

  "We think only the Scourge has the power to open the Fracture," Esme explained.

  "But even if anyone else could open it," said Raymond, his voice getting louder, "do you seriously think they would? " This is Hell we're talking about! If the Fracture were to be opened... why, who knows what might happen?"

  "Not you," snapped Charlie with sudden venom. "That's for sure." He looked at Raymond and shook his head in disbelief. "I can't believe you people!' he said. "Do you really mean to tell me that you've taken all this stuff, all this weirdness, on trust, without asking any of these questions before?"

  "Yes," said Raymond flatly. "We trusted Nick completely."

  "But now Nick's dead. And you, it seems, don't have the first clue about what's really going on!"

  Jack was staring at Charlie now. Tact had never been Charlie's strongest point, but the way he was acting was getting weirder and weirder. How did he manage to be so certain all the time? Where was all this confidence coming from?

  "Where is it?" Charlie was asking. "This... 'Fracture.' I mean."

  There was a pause. Esme and Raymond exchanged another look.

  Raymond grimaced, then shrugged. "It's... a pub," he admitted.

  Both Jack and Charlie gaped at him.

  "But it's no kind of pub I'd be seen in, that's for sure," Raymond added quickly. "The Light of The Moon, they call it now. It's all chrome and steel and stripped pine floorboards, and about as much atmosphere as the real bloody moon." He shuddered. "Horrible."

  "A pub," said Charlie.

  "Yes."

  "The gateway to Hell is in a London pub," said Charlie. "That's what you're saying."

  "Yes," said Esme.

  "And that's what this demon wants to do: to open the gateway to Hell."

  "That's what we think. Yes," said Esme.

  "O-kay," said Charlie. "Now we're getting somewhere."

  Everyone fell silent. Charlie rubbed a hand across his brow, back and forth. His eyes were open, looking down. No one spoke.

  "Well," said Charlie finally, looking up, "it's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

  He began to grin wildly.

  "What's obvious?" said Raymond.

  "What we do," said Charlie. "It's simple! We wait at the Fracture for the Scourge to make its move
, and then, when it comes, we kick its arse! "

  There was another pause.

  "You're going to kick its arse," echoed Raymond, looking hard at Charlie. "You," he emphasized, even more heavily.

  "I said we're going to kick its arse, actually," Charlie replied, his smile vanishing as quickly as it had come, "but if it comes down to it, then yeah, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to wait for it to come, I'm going to square up to it, and then I'm going to kick its—"

  And at that precise moment, a phone rang.

  It was a mobile phone. For a dreadful second, Jack thought it might be his, but it was Charlie's. Everyone watched as Charlie fished his mobile out of his pocket, looked at the screen, and scowled. It was no use — the thing still kept ringing. He pressed the button and held it up to his ear.

  "Mum," he said, "this really isn't a good time."

  Mrs. Farnsworth's voice was only audible as a sort of distant quacking. Everyone was pretending not to listen, but of course, they all were.

  "Look, Mum, can I call you back in a minute?" tried Charlie. "Me and Jack are sort of in the middle of something here."

  Listening, he frowned.

  "Well, no, I'm not at Jack's house. And what do you think you're doing checking on me anyw—?"

  "Charlie sighed again and put a hand up to his brow.

  "I'm with some friends of ours," he said. "Round their place. I'm in the West End, if you must know—"

  Quack quack.

  "Friends from school. Well, not school. I—"

  Mrs. Farnsworth kept talking, and a horrible expression appeared on Charlie's face.

  "No!" he said. "God! No! Look, I'm not with Dad. All right? Of course I'd tell you if I was with Dad!"

  The silence in the room became even more awkward.

  "What are you talking about, 'behind your back'? I wouldn't—"

  Suddenly Charlie just looked dreadfully, horribly tired.

  "But Mum, I—"

  Still the voice kept going.

  "All right," said Charlie quietly. "All right. I'll be there as soon as I can. Yeah. You too. Yeah. See you later. Bye."

  He pressed the button to end the call and looked up — just as everyone else looked away, pretending they hadn't been watching him.

  "Listen," he said, "Me and Jack've got to go."

  Jack was on the point of saying something about this, but the look on Charlie's face silenced him.

  "All right," said Raymond. "On you go, then."

  "We don't know whether anything would've happened tonight anyway," said Esme.

  "But I want you here bright and early tomorrow!" called Raymond. But on 'tomorrow' the double doors of the butterfly room had already slammed shut. Charlie and Jack were gone.

  "Well!" said Raymond after a moment. "A right little know-it-all, isn't he? Anyone'd think he was the one who'd trained all his life, instead of—"

  "Yeah," said Esme glumly.

  Raymond bit his lip.

  "All right," she went on, once she'd had a moment to concentrate. "I'll take first shift at the Fracture, I guess. You go see if you can't track down Felix and Jessica."

  Hearing the uncertainty in her voice, Raymond lifted his eyebrows at her.

  "I know!" said Esme. "I just..." She paused, shaking her head to herself. "I guess I always thought that when the time came it would all be clearer somehow. This..." She shrugged helplessly. "This isn't happening at all how I expected."

  "Me neither, petal," said Raymond grimly. "Me neither."

  * * * * *

  The train journey back to North London passed in silence. Charlie just sat there, staring ahead into space; he only looked up when other passengers jostled his legs, and the jostlers looked away quickly, perhaps sensing, like Jack, the fury that surrounded him like a storm cloud. The silence kept up as they left the station. They sky was starting to turn a darker, deeper blue as sunset approached, but Charlie just kept stumping on ahead, head down, and Jack found he was having to walk quite quickly to keep up with him. Only when they were almost as far as the front door of Jack's house did Charlie finally stop and turn.

  "Well," he said, still not looking at Jack, not really. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

  "I'll go across the park with you," said Jack.

  Charlie looked at him.

  "I need the exercise," added Jack as casually as he could. Lame as this was, it was the best excuse he could come up with. He had to get Charlie to talk to him, and keeping him company across the park might be the only way.

  Charlie shrugged — then made a face. "I tell you," he said, "I don't. Esme gave me a real going-over." Slowly, creakily, he rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen them a bit.

  "What about all that healing-yourself business?" Jack asked. "I thought you were supposed to be invincible now or something."

  "Not invincible enough, apparently," Charlie replied, and smiled.

  Jack smiled back.

  "Come on, let's go."

  They set off.

  Their silence was more companionable now, but Jack was still finding it hard to ask what he wanted. In the end, he just blurted it out:

  "Charlie, are you... okay?"

  Charlie looked at Jack but didn't stop walking. "Yeah," he said. "Why wouldn't I be?"

  "But isn't it... weird?"

  "What, the superpowers thing?"

  "Well, yeah!" said Jack. "Come on."

  Charlie made a dismissive gesture with one hand. "It's not that weird, you know."

  "No?"

  "No," said Charlie, frowning now.

  He thought for a moment.

  "It's like... once you're into it — once you can do the stuff, you just... do it," he said. "You know? You just get on with it, and it all just feels right. Everything's straightforward. Clear. Simple. Until your mum rings up and tells you you've got to go home for dinner."

  They crossed the road and went through the gate into the park. Jack said nothing.

  "I swear," said Charlie, "you should've heard her. Nothing I could've said would've made any difference. Straightaway she's like, 'You're with your father, aren't you? You're seeing him behind my back!'"

  "Oh, mate."

  "Straight up," said Charlie. "I couldn't believe it."

  Five or six older boys were playing football on the big stretch of grass to Charlie and Jack's right. At the end of the path, the church spire was already lit up for the night with its lights: it stuck out of the ground and into the evening sky like a giant, pale spike of bone.

  "It's going to get worse, isn't it?" said Charlie. "This thing with my folks, I mean. Mum's going flaky on me. And Dad... well." He stopped and turned to Jack. "You saw him in the restaurant. He just sat there looking all surprised, like he hadn't expected I'd be angry with him. Like I was just supposed to say 'Yeah, sure, split up with Mum and go live with someone else, I don't mind!' Honestly, he doesn't have a clue."

  Past Charlie's shoulders, Jack could see the footballers coming closer: one of them was lining up a shot at the goal — or the space between the two piles of jackets on the ground anyway.

  "Saving the world's easy," Charlie was saying. "I'd rather fight a demon, you know? Better that than have to go through all this—"

  Jack watched as the footballer took his shot: he knew, with a sudden and absolute certainty, where the ball was going to end up. And sure enough—

  CLUMP!

  It caught Charlie square on the back of the head, knocking him forward with the force of the blow.

  Suddenly all six footballers were laughing.

  "Sorry, mate!" called the one who had kicked the ball, smiling broadly as his friends caught up with him. They all looked about sixteen or seventeen years old — certainly a lot bigger and stronger than Charlie and Jack. One of them was laughing so hard he was making little snorting noises through his nose.

  Jack had seen these guys before. Year after year they spent the whole summer kicking their football around, and they never once seemed to get bor
ed with it. Jack looked from them to his friend. Charlie was just standing there stiffly — head still forward from where the ball had knocked him.

  "You all right?" called the lead footballer. The others were still sniggering.

  "Now, slowly, Charlie turned. "Who kicked it?" he asked. "You?"

  "That's right," said the guy. His smile was cocky, not apologetic at all — and certainly not apologetic enough for Charlie.

  "Come on," said Jack quietly, "let's leave it." But he knew he was wasting his breath.

  "Why don't you watch what you're doing?" said Charlie. "You stupid sod!"

  For a whole second the six lads stared at him. Then they burst out laughing again, all except for the one who'd kicked the ball, who just frowned.

  "Listen, mate," he said, "I've told you I'm sorry."

  "And I'm telling you, mate," said Charlie, "sorry's not good enough. Get on your knees. Right now."

  Now everyone was staring at Charlie, even Jack.

  "What?" said the lead footballer, grinning with disbelief.

  "On. Your. Knees," said Charlie, and at the sound of his voice, the boy fell as if he'd been shot.

  From where Jack was standing, he could see the back of Charlie's neck. He frowned. Weird black shapes were appearing under his friend's skin. Needle-sharp points of some inky-black substance were trickling up from under the collar of Charlie's T-shirt, widening into curved slivers of pure liquid darkness as they crawled up around his throat. Now the shapes were creeping down out of Charlie's sleeves, sliding past his elbows and down his forearms with an oil-dark, liquid eagerness.

  Jack recognized the shapes: the curves, the hooks, the spikes. He'd seen them that moring on Charlie's back.

  It was the black tattoo.

  It was moving.

  "Now," said Charlie, barely speaking above the level of a whisper, but something in his voice made strange explosions go off behind Jack's eyeballs.

  "Wet yourself."

  The eyes of the hapless footballer fell closed. A blissful expression crossed his face: there was a moment of silence, then a soft, trickling sound, and now everyone was staring at the dark stain that was spreading down one leg of his shorts.