The moment he looked away, the Scoucher stormed out from behind a pile of paving stones next to an unfinished path. One reaching tentacle, even longer than the rest, brushed the back of Arthur’s hand as he turned to flee. It wasn’t much thicker than a shoelace, and he hardly felt its touch, but when he glanced down, blood was flowing freely.More blood than seemed possible from such a tiny scratch.
Arthur was halfway across a well-mown front lawn when someone called his name from the neighbouring house.
‘Arthur?!’
He knew that voice. It came from Leaf, the girl who had helped him after his asthma attack, whose brother and family were among the first afflicted by the Sleepy Plague. He’d seen her briefly the day before, while travelling via the Improbable Stair. He had no idea where she actually lived, but here she was on the porch next door, staring at him in surprise. Or staring at the Scoucher –
‘Look out!’ she cried.
Arthur changed direction, narrowly avoiding a sweep of the Scoucher’s tendrils. He jumped over a low brick wall, trampled through Leaf’s parents’ prize vegetable garden, leaped up the front steps of her house, and charged through the front door. Leaf slammed it shut after him. A second later it was hit by a sound like rain drumming on the roof – the impact of hundreds of tentacles upon the heavy door.
‘Your hand’s bleeding!’ Leaf exclaimed as she slammed home a large bolt. ‘I’ll get a bandage –’
‘No time!’ gasped Arthur. A lot of blood had come from the simple scratch, but the flow was already slowing.
Arthur opened the Atlas, ignoring its sudden expansion. He added in a low wheeze, ‘Have to . . . see how . . . fight . . .’
The drumming sound came again. Leaf gasped and jumped back as several tentacles ripped the draft excluder off the bottom of the door and slithered inside. She picked up an umbrella and struck at them, but the tentacles gripped the umbrella and cut it into pieces.More and more tentacles came through under the door. Then they started sawing backwards and forwards.
‘It’s cutting its way through!’ screamed Leaf. She pushed over a plant in a heavy earthenware pot and rolled it against the door. The Scoucher’s tentacles struck at the spilled earth for a second, then went back to their sawing. The door had a steel frame, but the tentacles cut through it quite easily.
Arthur concentrated on the Atlas.
What are a Scoucher’s weaknesses?How can it be defeated?
An ink spot appeared on the page, but was not blotted up. Words came quickly, and once again were in English and the regular alphabet straightaway. The penmanship was not up to its usual standard.
Scouchers are a particularly unpleasant type of Nithling. They issue from the narrowest cracks and fractures, and are consequently short of substance. Typically they gain a greater and more defined physical presence in the Secondary Realms by consuming the blood or ichor of the local inhabitants. Scouchers in their earlier phases may take a variety of shapes but always have several limbs that end in very fine tentacles, which are lined with tiny but extremely sharp teeth. They use these tentacles to cut their victims, who usually fall unconscious. The Scoucher then laps up the free-flowing blood –
‘Arthur! The door –’
‘How can I defeat a Scoucher?’ Arthur asked furiously.
Silver is anathema to Scouchers, as is ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum. Scoucher hunters typically use silver dust blown through –
‘Silver! Have you got anything silver?’ Arthur wheezed, clapping the Atlas shut.
At the same time Leaf grabbed his arm and dragged him across the room and into the kitchen. She slammed the kitchen door behind them and threw herself at the refrigerator, trying to slide it across. Arthur shoved the Atlas into his pocket and grabbed one corner of the fridge, rocking it out from the wall as the terrible sound of splintering wood suddenly stopped in the other room.
‘It’s inside!’
The fridge was barely set down before it rocked forward. Tentacles punched through the flimsy kitchen door and rasped across the steel sides of the fridge.
‘Silver! Silver will kill it!’ Arthur repeated. He opened the nearest drawer, but all he could see were chopsticks and wooden utensils. ‘A silver fork will do!’
‘We don’t have anything metal!’ Leaf cried out. ‘My parents won’t eat with metal.’
Several tentacles ripped the freezer door off and flung it on the ground. More tentacles swarmed in to grip the edges and the whole refrigerator shifted across the floor with the squeal of metal feet on tiles.
‘Jewellery!’ exclaimed Arthur as he looked around for something, anything silver. ‘You must have some silver earrings!’
‘No,’ said Leaf, shaking her head wildly. Her earrings swung too, without any sort of metallic jangle. They were ceramic and wood.
Another squeal alerted Arthur a second before the refrigerator started to topple over. He jumped away an instant before it fell and followed Leaf as she raced through the door at the opposite end of the kitchen.
Arthur slammed the rear kitchen door shut behind him. But this one had no lock, and from the weight of it, could barely stop a determined fist, let alone otherworldly tentacles.
‘Come on!’ screamed Leaf. She ran down a flight of concrete steps to the back door, Arthur close behind. ‘I know . . . we have got some silver!’
The back door led into a garage that had obviously never housed a car. It was part plant nursery and part storage area, with bags of potting mix stacked up next to boxes identified by contents and date.
‘Look for a box marked MEDALS or SKI JUMPING!’ instructed Leaf urgently, pushing Arthur on. She turned back herself and locked the door, using a key from the drip tray of a hanging planter. She was just withdrawing the key when several tentacles punched through the door and lashed across her arm. They cut deeply and Leaf staggered back, shocked into silence. She tripped over a tray of seedlings and fell heavily onto a sack of sand.
Arthur took a step towards her, but she waved him back, before pushing her hand hard against the cuts to try and slow the bleeding.
‘Silver medals,’ she coughed out. ‘In a box. Dad won lots . . . that is, came second . . . silver medals ski jumping. Before he met Mum and became a neo-hippie. Hurry!’
Arthur glanced at the door. The Scoucher was cutting through it as easily as it had the front door. He would have less than a minute to find the medals, maybe only seconds.
Rapidly he scanned the boxes, dates and contents labels tumbling through his brain. Children’s toys from ten years ago, an encyclopedia, Aunt Mango’s paintings, tax records, Jumping –
Something splintered behind him and he heard Leaf’s sharp intake of breath.
Arthur grabbed the box marked JUMPING, pulling down three others at the same time. They fell on his feet but he ignored the pain, ripping through the cardboard. A shower of small velvet boxes fell out. Arthur caught one, flipped it open, grabbed the medal inside, spun on one foot, and hurled it towards the Scoucher that was coming through the door.
The medal flew true, smacking into the thin figure as it bowed its head to pass through the doorway. The Scoucher took a step back, puzzled, but otherwise seemed unharmed as the medal slid down its chest.
‘Gold!’ shrieked Leaf.
Arthur was already bending down to get another medal. This time he opened the box and threw the contents in one swift motion. Something silver flashed through the air as the Scoucher charged forward. The medal hit with a satisfying clunk, but did not slide down. It stuck like a fried egg to a pan and started to sizzle like one as well.
The Scoucher let out a pathetic groan and folded in on itself. Within a second, it was rabbit-sized again, but without the shape of a rabbit. Just a blob of pinky flesh with the silver medal still sizzling on top of it. Arthur and Leaf stared as black smoke poured out of the blob – smoke that curled around and around but didn’t rise or dissipate. Then the Scoucher disappeared, and the silver medal spun and rattled on the
concrete floor.
‘How’s your arm?’ asked Arthur anxiously before the medal came to a stop. He could see the blood coming out between Leaf’s fingers. She looked very pale.
‘It’s okay. There’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen, under the sink. Bring me that and the phone. What was that thing?’
‘A Scoucher,’ shouted Arthur over his shoulder as he ran inside. He found the first-aid kit and the phone and ran back, desperately afraid that he’d find Leaf dead on the ground. Strangely, the cut on his hand had completely closed up. Though it had bled profusely for a few minutes, he could hardly see where it was now. Arthur immediately forgot about it as he crashed through the remnants of the door.
Leaf’s eyes were shut but she opened them as Arthur knelt by her side.
‘A Scoucher?What’s that?’
‘I’m not really sure,’ said Arthur. He opened the first-aid kit and prepared a wound dressing and a bandage, suddenly very glad he’d taken the course last year and knew what to do. ‘Keep the pressure on until I’m ready . . . Okay . . . Let go.’
Rapidly he got the dressing onto the deep cuts and bandaged Leaf’s arm firmly from the elbow to the wrist. There was a lot of blood, but it wasn’t arterial bleeding as he’d feared. Leaf would be all right, though she still needed an ambulance and professional help.
He picked up the phone and dialled 000, but before he could speak, Leaf snatched it away from him. She spoke quickly to the operator, shaking her head when Arthur tried to take the phone back.
‘You can’t call,’ she said after hanging up. ‘I’ll tell them some story. You have to go over to . . .’
She closed her eyes, and her mouth and forehead creased in concentration. ‘Go to the old Yeats Paper Mill on the river. Go under it to come to the House.’
It sounded like something Leaf had memorised from someone else.
‘What?’ asked Arthur. The Atlas had led him to Leaf, but – ‘How come . . . how . . .’
‘The girl with the wings, the one who was with you yesterday,’ Leaf said slowly. Shock was clearly taking hold. Arthur got a coat out of one of the fallen boxes and draped it over her as she kept talking. ‘Just then I kind of blacked out and it was like she was sitting next to me. She told me what I just told you. There was more, but you woke me up just when she was getting into it.’
‘The Yeats Paper Mill?’ asked Arthur. ‘Go under it?’
‘That’s it,’ confirmed Leaf. She had shut her eyes again. ‘It’s not the first true dream I’ve had. My great-grandmother was a witch, remember.’
Arthur looked at his watch. 11:32. He had less than half an hour and the paper mill was at least a mile away. He wasn’t even sure where his bicycle was. He could never make it into the House before the Grotesques unleashed their full plan.
‘I can’t make it in time,’ he said to himself.
‘Take Ed’s bike,’ whispered Leaf, pointing to the black-and-red racing bicycle racked up between three sturdy green mountain bikes. ‘He won’t be back from the hospital for a few days.’
Arthur stood up but hesitated. He felt he should wait for the paramedics to arrive.
‘Go,’ said Leaf. She tapped her forehead weakly. ‘They’ll be here in a few minutes. I can tell.’
Arthur hesitated until he heard the faint call of a siren. It got a little louder.
Leaf smiled. ‘Not second sight. Just good hearing.’
‘Thanks,’ said Arthur. He ran and wheeled the bike over to the garage door. The lack of an automatic opener puzzled him for a second, till he worked out he had to push the door up himself.
‘Hey, Arthur!’ Leaf called out as he got on the bike. Her voice was so weak that it came out as little louder than a whisper. ‘Promise you’ll tell me what this is all about.’
‘I will,’ replied Arthur.
If I get the chance.
FOUR
ARTHUR PEDALLED FURIOUSLY, coasted till he got his breath back, then pedalled furiously again. He wasn’t sure that he actually would get his breath back, as that familiar catch came and his lungs wouldn’t take in any air. But each time he felt his chest stop and bind, there was a breakthrough a moment later and in came the breath. His lungs, particularly the right one, felt like they were made of Velcro, resisting his efforts to expand them until they suddenly came unstuck.
He tried not to look at his watch as he cycled. But Arthur couldn’t help catching glimpses of its shining face as the minute hand moved so quickly towards the twelve. By the time he got to the high chain-link fence around the old Yeats Paper Mill, it was 11:50. Arthur only had ten minutes, and he didn’t know how to get through the fence, let alone get under the old mill - whatever that meant.
There were no obvious holes in the fence and the gate was chained and padlocked, so Arthur didn’t waste any more time looking.He leaned Ed’s bicycle against the fence, stood on the seat, and pulled himself up on one of the posts. Despite being scratched by the top strands of old, rusty barbed wire, he managed to swing himself over and drop to the other side.At the bottomhe checked his shirt pocket, to make sure it hadn’t been torn off with theAtlas inside.He’d lost it that way before and he was not going to lose it again.
‘Underneath . . . underneath,’ Arthur muttered to himself as he ran across the cracked concrete of the old parking lot towards the massive brick building and its six enormous chimneys. No paper had been made at the Yeats Paper Mill for at least a decade, and the whole place had been set aside for some sort of development that had never happened. Probably a shopping mall, Arthur thought sourly.
There had to be underground storage or something here, but how could he find a way down?
Wheezing, Arthur ran to the first door he could see. It was chained and padlocked. He kicked it, but the wood held firm. Arthur ran along the wall to the next door. This one looked like it had been opened recently, and the chain was loose. Arthur pushed it open just wide enough to squeeze himself through.
He hadn’t known what to expect inside, but he hadn’t thought it would be a huge open space. All the old machinery and huge piles of debris from former internal walls had been pushed to the sides, leaving an area about the size of a football field. Light streamed down in shafts from the huge skylights and many holes in the tin roof.
In the cleared area, a strange machine squatted. Arthur knew instantly it came from the House and was not a relic of past papermaking. It was the size of a bus and looked like a cross between a steam engine and a mechanical spider, with eight forty-foot-long, jointed limbs that sprouted from a bulbous cylindrical body – a boiler – with a thin smokestack at one end.
The limbs were made of a red metal that shone dully even where the sun did not fall, but the boiler was a deep black that sucked up the sunlight and did not reflect it.
There were several huge bottles of the same black metal near the spider-machine. Each one was taller than Arthur and easily three or four feet in diameter.
Arthur sneaked across to a pile of debris and took another look. He couldn’t see anyone, so he slinked along to the next pile and then the next. When he was level with the machine, he was surprised to see a very normal-looking office desk next to it. There was a giant plasma screen on the desk, and a PC beneath it. Arthur could see a green activity light flashing on the PC, despite the fact its electric lead was coiled up on the concrete floor, not plugged into anything. He could also see something on the screen. Graphs and rows of figures.
Arthur was just about to creep forward for a better look when a Grotesque walked around from the other side of the boiler. Arthur wasn’t sure if it was one of the two he’d seen before.Whoever it was, it was no longer disguised in a modern suit. Its leather apron had what looked like scorch marks all over it, and numerous tools were sticking out of the pockets on the front.
Arthur ducked down behind some fallen bricks and froze. The Grotesque sang to itself as it picked up a huge pair of long-handled tongs from the floor and went over to the dark bottles.
‘Dou
ble, treble, quadruple bubble, watch the stock market get into trouble . . .’
Using the tongs with much grunting and shuffling, the Grotesque picked up one of the huge bottles and slowly manoeuvred it over to the boiler. It put the bottle down for a moment to open a hatch almost at ground level directly below the smokestack. Then it drew out gloves, a tightly fitting hood and goggles with smoked quartz lenses from inside its apron. It put these on, picked up the tongs again, and used them to lever the bottle into a position where its neck fitted into the opening in the boiler.
Then it spoke. Three words in a language that Arthur did not know.Words that sent a shiver through the soles of his feet and up his spine.Words that caused the heavy wax seal on the bottle to shatter and release the contents into the boiler.
The contents were Nothing. Arthur saw a dark, oily waft that was both liquid and smoke at the same time. Most of it poured into the boiler, but a few tendrils escaped, winding back towards the Grotesque, who stepped smartly back. It dropped the tongs and drew a glittering blade of crystal that crackled with electric sparks.
The Nothing that had escaped began to eddy and spiral, taking a definite shape. At first it looked like it would become some sort of animal, something tigerlike, with clawed paws and a toothy mouth. Then it changed to become a human shape, but one with bunched tendrils instead of hands.
A Scoucher!
The Grotesque sheathed its crystal blade and eased one of the many rings it wore off its middle finger. As the Scoucher’s shape became definite and it lunged forward, the Grotesque flicked its ring. It struck the Scoucher in the face, and once again Arthur heard the sizzling sound. A moment later, the Scoucher was gone, and the ring bounced on the floor with the clear bell-like sound of silver.
The Grotesque laughed and bent to pick it up. Arthur chose that moment to run to the next pile of debris. Instantly, the Grotesque swung around, its crystal blade in its hand once more. Arthur instinctively flinched, but the Grotesque did not rush over to attack. Instead it smiled and flourished its hand at the machine.