Aberrations_The Beast Awakens Page 6

  Another mystery solved, thought Crafty. Now he knew how the Chief Mancer had got his nickname.

  ‘You did well, young man,’ the mancer continued. ‘Even though you grabbed the aberration with only one hand, you still had the presence of mind, the speed and the strength to complete the snatch. You have made a promising beginning. Now, do you have any questions?’

  ‘About the snatch, sir?’

  ‘About anything to do with the Shole.’

  Crafty thought for a moment before speaking. He certainly had questions, but where to start?

  ‘Do we know how it began, sir? The Shole, I mean. I know there are lots of theories, but are we any nearer to the correct one?’

  The Chief Mancer stared at the ceiling and then closed his eyes as if deep in thought. ‘We know that the Shole was first observed in a small street called Water Lane close to Fylde Road, a busy thoroughfare in Preston. It’s not that far from the orphanage you just saw. Over the next ten years it gradually expanded to cover most of the town centre. At first it was a rough circle, but the second stage of its expansion has been more erratic, and mainly northwards. The Shole is like a great beast which is gradually awakening, growing and becoming increasingly dangerous.

  ‘Now, almost seventy years later, it has extended much further, and even threatens the heart of Lancaster and this castle. But why and how it began we still don’t know. That is why the gates are so important. The work we do feeds the research that may one day explain everything and offer a solution. We can only hope that we will be able to reverse the expansion of the Shole, or even end it altogether.’

  Crafty suddenly thought of another question – something that had been puzzling him since he first found out about the gates.

  ‘Couriers are used to carry messages to and from the Daylight Islands. Wouldn’t it be easier to use the gates to go to those communities directly?’

  The Chief Mancer shook his head. ‘The capabilities of the silver gates are limited. They can only be used to visit places directly within the Shole. The Daylight Islands are small patches which the Shole has missed and moved round. Besides, couriers have plenty of other important functions. On their travels through the Shole, they record any changes, along with locations that might be of interest. Essentially, they patrol the Shole.’

  They’d almost finished their ginger biscuits, so Crafty quickly got in another question before Ginger Bob could send him back to the Waiting Room. ‘Why do we call it the Shole, sir? I remember hearing it called the Shadow Land and the Shade, and once the Curtain, but since then it’s always been the Shole. It’s the only name my father uses.’

  ‘Well, those other names are good descriptions of what we see and experience. It is very much like a dark curtain advancing across our county, or indeed a shadow world. But Shole is the name that has stuck. Originally it was formed from the words Sink Hole: when whole farms suddenly disappeared, leaving only a darkness behind, folk thought they had fallen into a sink hole. But the word is also an adaptation of Sheol – and that, Benson, is another name for Hell …’

  Crafty went back to the Waiting Room, carefully mulling over what Ginger Bob had told him. The Shole terrified him, but he couldn’t help finding it interesting. What it was and what it did had aroused his curiosity, and he knew there was much to be learned from studying it. For the first time since he’d arrived at the castle, he wondered whether he might enjoy being a gate grub after all.

  The following day was Sunday – their day of rest – and, as promised, Crafty was shown around the city and the castle. As Lucky and Donna led him through the streets, they pointed out the main routes across the city and the best shops for warm, freshly baked bread and sausage rolls. They weren’t wearing their uniforms, and Donna was now dressed in a skirt and blouse with a cardigan buttoned to the neck against the chilly air. It didn’t feel much like summer.

  Donna took the lead, striding along energetically. There was something gawky about her slim body, as if she hadn’t yet learned how to control her limbs.

  They halted outside an apothecary’s window. ‘This is the best cure-all shop in the city,’ Lucky announced. ‘They’ve got potions for colds and the flux, and, if you’re really ill and need bleeding, those little beauties will do the trick!’ He was pointing at a box with a glass lid. It was full of fat brown leeches.

  ‘Think what the Shole would do to those creatures,’ Donna said, pulling a face. ‘Imagine one of them, the size of a big dog, slithering on to your body. It’d drain your blood in no time!’

  Crafty shuddered – he knew that doctors used leeches to suck the bad blood out of a diseased body, but he’d never been convinced that bleeding worked, and neither had his mother.

  ‘Why is the city so quiet?’ he asked, turning away from the window to glance down the almost deserted street.

  It was long after the Sunday morning church services; by now the lanes should have been busy with people enjoying their leisure time. After all, it was their one free day. On Sunday afternoons Crafty’s parents had sometimes brought him and his brothers into Lancaster. In summer the streets had been thronged with people – you’d had to almost fight your way through the crowds.

  ‘A lot of people are leaving, more and more each week,’ Donna answered. ‘They’re going north to live in Kendal or even Carlisle. Everyone knows that the Shole is getting closer. There’s a real fear that it will soon surge again, engulfing the castle and the rest of the city. People are getting out while they still can.’

  As he walked back up the hill towards the castle, with Lucky and Donna chatting beside him, Crafty tried to dispel the image of the giant leech that Donna had conjured up. He was beginning to realize that the Shole changed things in terrible ways. It could take something small and innocuous – like a child – and turn it into a ravening monster. Leeches already loved sucking blood; what if they were a whole lot bigger, and ferocious to boot? He shuddered again at the thought of it.

  It was definitely chilly for summer, and a strong north-east wind was blowing them about, but they started their tour of the castle up on the battlements anyway. Crafty was keen to see the view. Outsiders weren’t permitted up there but, as part of the Castle Corpus, they were allowed access.

  To the north he could see the river Lune winding around the northern limits of the city before making its way west towards Morecambe Bay. To the south was the canal. In one direction it carried barges towards Kendal and the north; in the other it went as far as Preston. But no barge ever travelled south from here. The canal was cut off by the Shole.

  Crafty’s eye was caught by the county flag fluttering in the wind – a red rose on a white background. The whole country was divided into territories called counties, and theirs, Lancashire, was one of the largest. As its ruler, the Duke of Lancaster (called that because Lancaster was the main city) was a very important man, with the power of life and death over its inhabitants; only the King had more power.

  The wind was gusting so hard it was difficult to stay upright, but that didn’t stop Crafty noticing something he hadn’t spotted from his bedroom window. The dark wall of the Shole didn’t reach up into the sky as far as he’d thought. To the south-east, the green summits of the Bowland Fells protruded from it like islands in a dark sea. Unlike the Daylight Islands, those fell tops were uninhabited. Once there had been sheep, but by now they would probably have wandered down into the Shole – to die or be changed.

  ‘Windy enough for you?’ Donna asked with a grin.

  Crafty grinned back and nodded, laughing. She beckoned to Lucky and they all made their way down into the castle. Soon they were peering into the huge bustling kitchens, where aproned cooks were serving lunch. People were eating at long wooden tables. The aroma of food was tantalizing and the murmur of conversation even louder than the background clatter of dishes.

  ‘Why don’t we eat here?’ asked Crafty. Apart from lunch, which they ate in the Waiting Room, all his meals had been brought up to him in his room. No one
had said as much, but it was clear that you weren’t meant to visit other people’s rooms.

  ‘Only general workers eat here. Some of the guilds, such as gate mancers, have their own private dining rooms. Being mere gate grubs, we don’t rate that. It’s because the Chief Mancer doesn’t like us to fraternize, as he calls it. We’re kept away from other castle workers in case we give away secrets or learn theirs – that’s what I’ve been told, anyway. We’re not supposed to tell anyone what we do in the Shole. There’s a lot of secrecy here.’

  Crafty remembered what Ginger Bob had told him when they first met: We, the Castle Corpus, are a dedicated team of people. We divide up into groups with different specialities, but we work together in order to discover as much as possible about the Shole, in order to learn how to deal with it.

  Maybe that wasn’t actually true at all …

  Before long Crafty found himself walking past the Waiting Room. He pointed to the other doors. ‘What goes on in these rooms?’ he asked.

  ‘I think that one –’ Lucky pointed to the one on the right – ‘the Relic Room, is where they keep any objects brought back from the Shole. It’s a big laboratory and museum, where they study, catalogue and store anything we find. But as for some of the other rooms – well, what happens there is anyone’s guess. Like I say, people work within their own guilds, keep to their own specialities and don’t talk about what they or others do. It’s a sort of unwritten law for those who work here.’

  ‘The Optimists’ Room and the Pessimists’ Room … sounds like a joke, I always think!’ Donna laughed.

  Crafty grinned. ‘And the Dead Room sounds like somewhere I’d rather not be.’

  ‘Well, that’s just about everything,’ Lucky told him, coming to a halt at the top of a spiral staircase.

  ‘Can’t we go down?’ Crafty asked.

  ‘We can visit a few other places, like the mancers’ rooms, but only when we’re summoned. To be honest, most of this place is out of bounds,’ Lucky explained. ‘Somewhere down below there’s a room they call the Menagerie. That’s where they keep the live aberrations we snatch. Some people say there’s also a labyrinth of tunnels that goes deep under the castle, and that some passages emerge at different places in the city – but I think it’s just speculation.’

  Donna shuddered. ‘We think they conduct research down in the Menagerie. At night you can sometimes hear screams … it’s horrible. There’s one other place we could show Crafty,’ she suggested to Lucky, ‘but we’ll need to go out into the yard to reach it.’ She turned to Crafty. ‘It’s called the Witches’ Well. That’s where they keep witches, either when they’re awaiting trial or before they hang them. There have been a lot of trials recently – the Church is getting very strict. If you slip the guard a coin, he’ll let you go down and see a witch up close. You can even talk to them.’

  ‘Aren’t they dangerous?’ Crafty asked.

  He wasn’t too keen on seeing a witch up close, and certainly didn’t want to talk to one. There had always been witches in Lancashire, and for the most part they’d been considered pretty harmless; most were healers, or would summon a bit of benign magic to help you – so long as you paid. But since the coming of the Shole it was thought that they had become more powerful, their magic slowly gathering strength. People were becoming more and more afraid of malevolent magic, which could be used to harm people.

  Of course, lots of things were blamed on the Shole. But there was no denying that witches could be dangerous – and the Church had taken full advantage of the situation, claiming to be fighting harmful magic. Which was probably why, Crafty thought, so many witches were being arrested and tried.

  ‘Yes, there are some witches you need to be wary of, but there’s only one down there at the moment, and she’s really old and a bit soft in the head,’ Lucky explained. ‘She couldn’t hurt a fly even if she wanted to. They call her Old Nell. She’s from a local village, the Crook o’ Lune, and folks there protested when she was arrested. She used to cure warts, ease the pain of toothache and see into the future a bit. But the villagers’ complaints did no good. The Church Court decided that she was a witch and now she’s going to hang.’

  A pang of sympathy went through Crafty, and he saw that Donna was pulling a face too. Poor Old Nell – it didn’t sound like she’d been doing anyone any harm.

  They came out into the yard and headed towards a big rusty gate set into the far wall. Beyond it Crafty could see a steep staircase leading down, and a red-faced guard with a club at his belt standing just to the left.

  ‘Well, young sirs and madam, no doubt you’re wanting to talk to Old Nell,’ the guard said with a grin as he saw them approaching. Then he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, indicating that he would need payment for the privilege.

  Grumbling, Lucky handed him a coin and the man eased it into his trouser pocket before unhooking a big key from his belt. After dealing with the rusty padlock, he pulled back the gate, which creaked loudly on its hinges, the base grating across the flagstones.

  ‘If you’re not back in ten minutes, I’ll come down with a small sack and bring up any bits of flesh and bone that are left once the witch has finished with you,’ he said, his face very serious.

  Crafty knew that he was joking, but it still didn’t do his nerves any good.

  The steps were dark, but there was a glimmer of light from below. Crafty followed Lucky and Donna down until they emerged into a big cell illuminated by a single flickering wall torch. It smelled terrible. There was no furniture, just a bundle of dirty rags in the middle. For a moment Crafty’s heart pounded as he wondered where the witch was – could she have escaped? – but then he saw a leg protruding from the mound, and realized that it was fastened by a chain to a ring set in the floor. Slowly the bundle of rags sat up to reveal a wrinkled old face, eyes like tiny brown buttons and a shock of white hair streaked with dirt.

  ‘Well, well!’ the witch croaked. ‘If it isn’t three gate grubs come to talk to Old Nell. Come to hear your fortunes, have ye?’

  None of them replied. Crafty couldn’t imagine how she’d known that they were gate grubs. None of them were wearing their uniforms. Was it a lucky guess, or was she using some kind of magic?

  ‘But what sort of grubs are ye?’ she continued, unperturbed by their silence. ‘Do you serve a silver gate or a black gate?’

  ‘We serve silver gates, Nell,’ Lucky replied in a shaky voice. ‘I’ve never even heard of a black gate.’

  ‘Then let me be the one to reveal a secret of this ancient castle. Let Old Nell put ye right. A silver gate is a portal to the Shole, whereas a black gate is a portal to Hell.’ She cackled wildly, causing them all to jump back a little.

  ‘It can take you to Hell?’ Lucky asked dubiously.

  ‘Yes, to Hell, little grub. Ye might’ve heard of it!’ the witch said sarcastically. ‘It’s where the damned go after death – both humans and other creatures. It’s where I’ll go once I’ve swung on the end of the hangman’s rope and stretched my neck a bit more than I’d like. A lot goes on under this castle, far from the light o’ day. Aye – there are gates that take you to Hell just as easily as to the Shole.’

  Crafty saw Donna shake her head slightly. She didn’t believe the witch either, though she certainly looked scared.

  But Crafty wasn’t so sure. He’d been able to hear the whispering of his two dead brothers. He knew there was more to the afterlife than just being buried. Why shouldn’t there be gates to where the dead were – to where they went after they’d finished whispering?

  ‘So do you want to hear your fortunes or not?’ Old Nell persisted. ‘Don’t be shy. I’ll start with you, skinny girl!’ she cried, pointing at Donna, who gasped. ‘You’ve not long left on this earth. Enjoy your last bit o’ daylight. You’ll be the first o’ these grubs to die. And it’ll be very soon. Not a nice death either, I’m afraid. Hanging would be less painful – although I must say I’m not looking forward to it much.’

 
‘Take no notice, Donna,’ Lucky said, his voice filled with anger. ‘Why say such cruel words, Nell? We came to talk to you. We thought you’d like a bit of company!’

  ‘A bit o’ company! Don’t make me laugh, boy. You came to gawp at an old witch and have a bit o’ fun. I know your game. And just so you know, you’ll be the second to die. Hope you’re enjoying my company, young scallywag!’

  Crafty was alarmed by Old Nell’s tone, which was mirthless and bitter. She didn’t seem to be joking.

  Then her brown button eyes fixed on him and her mouth cracked into a horrid smile. ‘Come a little closer, Crafty,’ she said, beckoning him with a finger, its nail cracked and bloody.

  How did she know his name? Crafty shivered, but took a couple of steps towards the old witch, obeying without thought.

  ‘No, Crafty!’ yelled Lucky. ‘Don’t go any nearer!’

  But he was unable to stop himself. Was this magic, or simple curiosity?

  He took another couple of paces, and suddenly Nell lunged forward and grabbed his ankle. Donna and Lucky shrieked, but didn’t dare come any closer.

  The witch squeezed his ankle tightly. Her hand was very cold, and his eyes were drawn to hers as she held him with her fierce gaze. He couldn’t move – not even to raise his little finger. He could barely breathe.

  ‘Well! I don’t know what to make o’ ye, Crafty. You’re not like your friends. There’s more to you than meets the eye. The Lord of the Gates – that’s what you be, make no mistake. But that’s only if you live long enough.’

  She stared at Crafty for a minute longer – he felt her eyes looking right into him. Then, suddenly, she released his ankle and he staggered backwards.

  ‘Be off! All three of ye, begone!’ Old Nell hissed fiercely.

  Terrified, and not needing a second invitation, they made a dash for the door. Then:

  ‘Stop!’ Nell shrieked, and they came to a sudden halt, limbs in a tangle, almost jammed together in the doorway in their frantic haste to escape.