Gallows at Twilight Page 9

  Thhhsssss—Thhhseeesss—Thhhuusss

  Hooded eyes flashed in the light.

  Snakes. Dozens of them. And yet like no serpents Jake had ever seen.

  Gigantic in size, they writhed across the dirt floor, their bodies tangled in one great slithering mass. At the sight of the strangers, forty heads lashed towards the stairs. They swayed together, just below the step upon which Jake stood. Forked tongues sizzled and venom dripped from the corners of hungry mouths. What struck Jake as particularly strange was the skin of these reptiles. Instead of scales, they had spongy, pale flesh that appeared transparent in the lantern light. Jake could see the throb of blue veins, the beat of red hearts and the flutter of monstrous lungs. Inside the prison of their long stomachs a hundred spiders and rats slowly decomposed. These sun-starved creatures must have been born in the darkness, Jake thought.

  ‘Maybe we should get out of here,’ Simon said.

  Jake nodded, and they began to retreat back up the staircase.

  Suddenly, one of the smaller snakes separated from the rest and darted up the stairs. It twisted its powerful body this way and that, finding purchase on the wet stones. Jake had no time to react. The serpent was on him in seconds. Its tongue lashed out and venom jetted from its throat. One of the poison sprays hit the lantern and ate right through the glass. Jake dropped the light. Stumbled backwards. The snake lashed out again, fangs bared. Before it could land a strike, Rachel had loaded her bow and loosed an arrow. Piercing the serpent’s throat, the arrow pinned the snake to the pit wall.

  ‘Jake!’

  Simon’s hand shot out, but he was too late.

  His face long with horror, Jake slipped off the step and tumbled into the pit.

  Chapter 10

  The Serpent Inside

  Jake hit the ground with a bone-juddering crack. Behind the roar of pain, he could just about hear the frightened cries of his friends.

  ‘Get up! Move!’

  ‘Jake, hurry!’

  Arrows thwwpped through the air and kicked up the dust all around. Jake rolled over onto his hands and knees and blinked the pit into focus.

  An undulating forest of long white bodies reared up before him. A pit of snakes, poised to strike. Why had Murdles led them down here? Had he figured out that Jake had no real magic? Was this his revenge?

  Magic. It was worth a try.

  Jake held out his hand and concentrated on the flow of power. He thought of his mother, his father, Marcus Crowden, witches, demons …

  Blue shocks crackled between his fingers. Some of the snakes scuttled back, frightened by the magical energy. An older and perhaps wiser serpent held its ground. It towered over the boy and its cruel, black eyes seemed to mirror Jake’s thoughts—it’s weak, it’s not enough. The snake’s mouth yawned wide. A hiss fizzled over its forked tongue.

  One of Rachel’s arrows missed its mark by inches and sailed past the serpent. There was no time for her to reload. Simon cursed and threw his lantern at the snake. Another miss.

  The white body arched. The head drew back. Lips curled over a pair of venom-drenched fangs.

  The snake launched its strike.

  ‘STOP!’

  An invisible force reached out and dashed the snake to the far side of the pit. Its gigantic body twisted through the air and struck the wall so hard that it exploded on impact. Jake saw the snake’s huge head disappear in a mist of blood and brains. One eye, still attached to its stalk, ricocheted off the wall and bounced across the ground like a wet marble. It rolled to a stop at Jake’s feet.

  The other snakes fell back. They slithered to the middle of the pit and disappeared into a large crack in the earth.

  It was only now, with the abyss empty, that Jake saw the child.

  ‘Your friends may descend from the Sacred Way,’ said the girl, beckoning to the others. ‘I bid them—come closer.’

  Rachel and Simon joined Jake. Together, they stared at the little figure.

  She sat on a high tripod chair that straddled the crack in the earth. In her right hand she held a laurel leaf, in her left, a small bowl filled with silvery water. A red shawl was wrapped loosely around her head and she was dressed in deep scarlet robes. These vivid colours contrasted sharply with her marble-white skin. Jake thought she looked about eight years old, and yet there were aeons of knowledge in those glazed eyes. Her nostrils flared. She breathed deeply and held out her hand.

  ‘Stop there, children,’ she commanded. ‘If inhaled, the vapours from the pit are apt to drive mortals mad.’

  And now Jake saw it—sulphurous smoke rising up out of the crack. It cloaked the little girl in a yellow haze.

  ‘I must apologize for my pets,’ she continued. ‘I was not expecting guests, and so was taking my rest when you arrived.’

  ‘You’re the Oracle of the Pit?’ Jake asked.

  ‘I am the Seeing Eye,’ she answered in a sing-song voice. ‘I am the Prophetess of the borderlands. I am Pythia, I am Delphi, I am Cassandra.’

  ‘Some prophet,’ Simon whispered. ‘Didn’t see us coming, did she?’

  ‘I see you very clearly, Simon Lydgate. Better than you see yourself, I’d wager.’

  ‘How’d you know my name?’

  ‘Only from my knowledge of your future. A most interesting future it is, too—many trials and surprises to come.’

  ‘What surprises?’

  ‘Ah, no, no, no. I am not a clear window into future times.

  I give my veiled prophecies and you must make of them what you will. One scrap of guiding knowledge for each of you. Who will ask their question first?’

  Simon nudged Jake forward.

  ‘Where can I find my father’s cure?’

  The little girl closed her eyes. She breathed in the toxic fumes that swirled around her. For a long time nothing happened. Then, with sudden and shocking ferocity, her hands gripped the arms of the tripod chair. The laurel leaf she had been holding was crushed; the little earthenware bowl fell to the ground and shattered.

  The Oracle’s chest rose and fell in violent spasms. She gripped the chair so tightly that her knuckles sharpened into bone-white ridges. Tremors ran along her spine and she gritted her teeth against the pain. Her mouth snapped open and, from deep inside her body, something hissed.

  Slick with saliva, an emerald green serpent reared up out of the child’s throat. The snake turned its head and blinked at Jake. Then, to his disgust, it started to speak.

  ‘Repeat your question,’ it lisped, in a voice not unlike the little girl’s.

  The child’s eyes remained closed. Perhaps she was unconscious. Or perhaps she was merely a vessel, Jake thought. Was this creature the true Oracle?

  ‘My father’s cure,’ Jake gulped. ‘Where can I find it?’

  ‘Thhsss. It is difficult to be sure,’ the snake said, writhing in the bowl of the girl’s throat. ‘You may find the cure you seek, but first you must obey the man whose tongue is as forked as my own. At first you will resist, but finally you will see that his plan is the only way to save your father. Obeying the man, you will have to travel far. You will go to the place of the gallows, where at the twilight hour you will face both friends and enemies. If you survive—and that is a big if—you must then follow the girl. She will lead you to the preacher … Ah, but I have said enough. Listen to the lying doctor and you will have your chance, Jacob Never Born.’

  The serpentine prophetess turned to Rachel.

  ‘Missss Ssssaxby. Your question?’

  ‘All I want to know is whether my friends will be safe. If the Demon Father goes to war, will they survive?’

  ‘That future is not set in stone. But let me tell you this— you must learn the grace of forgiveness, child. You must pardon him or for ever be haunted by regret. The Dream Men will soon be knocking at every door, you see?’

  ‘And now, Mr Lydgate.’

  Simon barked out his question without hesitation—

  ‘I want to know—did I kill my mother?’

&
nbsp; ‘That is a question of the past, not the future. I will tell you this—to find the truth about yourself, you must walk into a trap with your eyes wide open. Violence will be necessary, I’m afraid—the keyholder is a formidable foe—but after some unpleasantnessss you will know all. Who you are, what you are, and what horrors still lie in wait for you. That is the end of my prophesying … Unless … Perhaps the vapours have more to tell.’

  The snake’s nostrils quivered and it sucked down the smoke. Jake felt a wave of sickness as he watched the little girl’s chest heave. How was this creature connected to her?

  ‘Thhssss. I do not want to see this! Noooo!’

  The snake shivered. In a single smooth motion it slipped back down the child’s throat. The little girl blinked, choked, stared at Jake and his friends.

  ‘You brought this here!’ she cried. ‘This dread omen!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You pretend not to know, and yet he told you.’ She pointed at Simon. ‘Dark powers are gathering. They will be here soon. Those were his words. He told you, but you did not understand. See, it is written in the vapours.’

  As she spoke, the threads of yellow smoke pouring out of the chasm thickened and turned an inky black. They shaped themselves into a familiar symbol:

  which held in the air.

  ‘Now they are gathered together in the new coliseum,’ the girl murmured. ‘Now their covenant will be sealed and they will fall like fire from the sky. Blood and death and destruction. You cannot stop them. It is too late.’

  The Oracle looked up at the circle of pale light overhead.

  ‘The universal coven has come.’

  A cry, somewhere between a human scream and an animal roar, bellowed around the pit. Jake spun round. He saw Rachel crouched on the steps, Simon’s head supported in her arms. The boy shuddered and screamed again, his eyes fixed on the trident.

  ‘We’ve got to get him out of here!’ Rachel cried. ‘Simon— he’s changing!’

  Despite forecasts for a fine summer evening, storm clouds had gathered early over north-west London. Swept in from all directions, they clubbed together to form a colossal black cloud. The odd thing was that this thunderhead just seemed to sit there. There was no rumble, no lightning flash, and not a breath of wind moved in the streets below. The unearthly stillness soon began to intrigue the residents of Wembley. People peeked from behind their curtains, took pictures with their mobile phones, and stood on their doorsteps exchanging weather-related wisdom.

  By late evening, the streets of Wembley were overrun by gawpers. For over five hours the thunderhead had not moved an inch. It was like watching an image paused on a giant TV screen. Nevertheless, at a quarter to midnight the crowd was beginning to tire of the spectacle. A few had started to shuffle off home when a collective gasp of surprise stopped them in their tracks.

  A funnel of cloud had detached from the thunderhead and plunged to earth. Like a dagger, it struck into the very heart of Wembley Stadium—that famous London sports arena.

  That new coliseum.

  Murmurs rose up from the crowds:

  ‘Never seen anything like it!’

  ‘Get the kids inside, Marge. Call the police!’

  ‘Be serious, Geoff—call the police about a cloud?’

  ‘That ain’t no cloud. Look! There are things moving inside it. Things flying down into the stadium!’

  ‘I think it’s witches.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Danny dear. I’ve told you before, there are no such things as—’

  ‘Oh my God—look at that!’

  Two shorter funnels of smoke branched off from the midpoint of the main shaft. They stretched away from each other, and then, quite suddenly, plunged down to form two sharp points.

  ‘What is it, Stan?’

  ‘Some kind of weird weather phenomenon. A twister, maybe.’

  ‘That ain’t no twister, you moron. Marge—get on the phone—999.’

  ‘It’s a trident.’

  ‘What did you say, Danny?’

  ‘It’s a devil’s trident. Witches and devils! Here in Wembley! Cooool!’

  High above the gawpers, hidden inside the central shaft of the trident, dark witches soared down into the great stadium. Most flew on the twisting earthen snakes once preferred by the Crowden Coven. Some stood upright on enchanted wooden planks: simple transports that had been used by witches since the Middle Ages. A few who had travelled from the East sat cross-legged on Persian carpets beautifully decorated with stars and crescent moons. The more gifted witches flew unaided. None used broomsticks—that ancient superstition was an invention of storytellers and witchfinders.

  The last of them left the funnel and dropped down through the open roof of Wembley Stadium. Then the trident drew itself back up into the thunderhead. Even from inside the arena, the witches could hear the gasps and cries of the crowds outside …

  The gawpers watched as the thick, black cloud sucked up the trident and then, very slowly, began to descend from the heavens. It fell over the stadium like a dark cowl, masking everything from prying eyes. One or two of the bolder souls who had gathered on Wembley Way, the wide avenue that led up to the stadium, tested their nerve by approaching the wall of fog. Shouts of warning and nervous titters ran around the crowd. One man, braver, or perhaps more drunk than the rest, reached out to touch the undulating darkness.

  The cloud lurched forward and swallowed him whole.

  ‘Arthur!’ his wife cried.

  A bloodcurdling scream answered her. Parents covered their children’s ears. Grown men cried out in fear and hid their faces. The screams of the man in the fog were suddenly cut short. Silence. The wind chattered through the streets of Wembley, and all eyes remained fixed on the mist.

  ‘Is he all right?’ Arthur’s wife asked in a shivery voice. ‘Do you think he’s … ? Oh! There he is! He’s coming back out of the fog!’

  Something was coming back out of the fog.

  Something that had once been a man called Arthur Grant.

  Except this man no longer had a face. The figure staggered forward, arms flailing, reaching for the crowd. Its lidless eyes rolled in their sockets and its skeletal jaw snapped up and down. It took a long, rasping breath through skull snub nostrils. When it spoke, strands of torn flesh jiggled around its bony chin.

  ‘Don’t go in there,’ the skeleton man advised. ‘There’s something in the mist, and it’s hungry.’

  Arthur’s wife did not scream. She turned and ran. The crowds followed her example and within minutes the streets around Wembley had been emptied …

  Back inside the stadium, the witches’ patience was running thin. All one hundred and thirteen of them were now assembled. They had gathered in the centre of the famous England football pitch, standing on the thick cover that was laid out to protect the turf. To anyone else, being in that darkened stadium surrounded by ninety thousand empty red chairs might seem a little creepy. Not to the witches: they just wanted to know why they had been summoned.

  They grumbled and bickered. Their demons squalled and squawked. A tall Egyptian witch in long flowing robes recognized one of the members of the Kansas Coven and went over to greet him.

  ‘Oliver, how are you?’

  ‘Pretty good, Mathias, pretty good. Any idea when this shindig is due to start?’

  ‘Soon, I hope. It was a long flight from Cairo.’

  ‘Tell me about it. My li’l darlin’s all tuckered out.’

  The Kansas witch stroked the head of the green monkey-demon that clung around his neck. Shaped like the mouth of a giant leech, the circular sucker in the middle of the monkey’s face dripped with black pus.

  ‘Say, what do you think of this guy Crowden?’ Oliver asked. ‘Is he really four hundred years old?’

  ‘I believe so. Word has it that in 1645 he fought the Witchfinder, Josiah Hobarron, and was imprisoned in the Veil. He is a powerful Coven Master.’

  ‘No kiddin’.’ Oliver leaned in and whis
pered: ‘Between you and me, he scared the hell out of Simeon, our leader. He’s the guy with the bat-faced slug demon, by the way. There’s certainly something kinda freaky about Marcus Crowden— did you notice how he keeps his eyes hidden behind those dark glasses. What’s that all about?’

  ‘Perhaps it is better not to know.’

  ‘I hear that. So why do you think he’s summoned us all to London?’

  ‘It’s something big.’ Mathias patted the head of his demon—a creature that had the face and body of a black Labrador and the limbs of a gigantic centipede. ‘There’s not been a universal coven for … ’

  ‘TIME BEYOND RECKONING!’

  Every face looked up at the great lattice arch that soared over Wembley Stadium. There, at its apex, a hundred and thirty-three metres above the ground, stood the Coven Master. He swept two gloved hands through the air and the stadium floodlights sparked into life. The assembled witches blinked in the glare.

  ‘I thank you all for travelling so far, my friends.’ The voice boomed, as if amplified through a Tannoy. ‘I have had the pleasure of meeting your coven leaders, and I look forward to speaking with you all individually very soon. But now we must act quickly. I cannot maintain this protection for long.’ His hands gestured to the cloud that capped the stadium.

  A wizened old woman in Romanian peasant dress stepped forward. She held a two-headed frog in her hand. The demon’s grasshopper legs arched behind it and rubbed out a brittle chirrup. When she spoke, fear rippled through her voice.

  ‘I am Baba Balescu, Mother of the Bucharest Coven,’ she croaked. ‘We were honoured to receive you in our territory earlier this year, Master Crowden. We have shown our allegiance by placing your mark on our hillsides. But now we must ask—what is it that you want of us?’

  The Master smiled.

  ‘I want to give you power, Baba Balescu. Power beyond your wildest dreams.’

  A stir of excited chatter rustled through the universal coven. Simeon, leader of the Kansas Coven, spoke out:

  ‘What is this power?’

  The Master beckoned and the nightmare cabinet swirled above the heads of the witches. Its doors swung open and a fiery wind blasted their upturned faces. Those that did not turn away saw a glimpse of distant volcanoes, of rivers running with molten lava and the blackened earth of an infernal landscape.