Dedication

For my son, Kyle, the inspiration for this series.

This is it. Kyle versus Dad. You against me.

May the best man win…

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Twelve Hours Earlier...

Chapter One - The Beginning of the End

Chapter Two - Power Struggle

Chapter Three - The Tower

Chapter Four - Familiar Faces

Chapter Five - Just Not Cricket

Chapter Six - Ready at Last

Chapter Seven - Mr Lazy Bones Wakes Up

Chapter Eight - The Truth is Out There

Chapter Nine - Taking Blame

Chapter Ten - Saying Goodbye

Chapter Eleven - Four by Four

Chapter Twelve - The Wrong Door

Chapter Thirteen - Danger Doc

Chapter Fourteen - A Cold and Lonely Death

Chapter Fifteen - Hello There, Mr Squirrel

Chapter Sixteen - The Long Walk

Chapter Seventeen - Ring of Death

Chapter Eighteen - Betrayed

Chapter Nineteen - The End of the Beginning

Thirty-Four Days Earlier...

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Also available in the Invisible Fiends series

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

What had I expected to see? I wasn’t sure. An empty street. One or two late-night wanderers, maybe.

But not this. Never this.

There were hundreds of them. Thousands. They scuttled and scurried through the darkness, swarming over the village like an infection; relentless and unstoppable.

I leaned closer to the window and looked down at the front of the hospital. One of the larger creatures was tearing through the fence, its claws slicing through the wrought-iron bars as if they were cardboard. My breath fogged the glass and the monster vanished behind a cloud of condensation. By the time the pane cleared the thing would be inside the hospital. It would be up the stairs in moments. Everyone in here was as good as dead.

The distant thunder of gunfire ricocheted from somewhere near the village centre. A scream followed – short and sharp, then suddenly silenced. There were no more gunshots after that, just the triumphant roar of something sickening and grotesque.

I heard Ameena take a step closer behind me. I didn’t need to look at her reflection in the window to know how terrified she was. The crack in her voice said it all.

‘It’s the same everywhere,’ she whispered.

I nodded, slowly. ‘The town as well?’

She hesitated long enough for me to realise what she meant. I turned away from the devastation outside. ‘Wait… You really mean everywhere, don’t you?’

Her only reply was a single nod of her head.

‘Liar!’ I snapped. It couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be happening.

She stooped and picked up the TV remote from the day-room coffee table. It shook in her hand as she held it out to me.

‘See for yourself.’

Hesitantly, I took the remote. ‘What channel?’

She glanced at the ceiling, steadying her voice. ‘Any of them.’

The old television set gave a faint clunk as I switched it on. In a few seconds, an all-too-familiar scene appeared.

Hundreds of the creatures. Cars and buildings ablaze. People screaming. People running. People dying.

Hell on Earth.

‘That’s New York,’ she said.

Click. Another channel, but the footage was almost identical.

‘London.’

Click.

‘I’m… I’m not sure. Somewhere in Japan. Tokyo, maybe?’

It could have been Tokyo, but then again it could have been anywhere. I clicked through half a dozen more channels, but the images were always the same.

‘It happened,’ I gasped. ‘It actually happened.’

I turned back to the window and gazed out. The clouds above the next town were tinged with orange and red. It was already burning. They were destroying everything, just like he’d told me they would.

This was it.

The world was ending.

Armageddon.

And it was all my fault.

The world changed.

It happened in an instant, but it felt like an age as my mind swirled with everything I had just gone through. Running from the screechers. My battle with the Beast. Discovering that Ameena wasn’t real – had never been real. But through it all one thought loomed larger than all the others.

My dad. A tape recorder. A bang from the tinny speaker as he shot and murdered my mum. His face, smiling at me. Leering, laughing.

And then an explosion inside of me. A rage, like nothing I had ever felt before. He had killed my mum. He had made me listen to her dying screams. And then he had run away.

But no matter how fast he ran, it would never be fast enough. I was coming for him. This, finally, would be the end.

Shadows engulfed me as I arrived in the Darkest Corners, the Hell-like alternate reality where all forgotten imaginary friends go. The world I’d left behind had been blanketed by snow, but here the ground was awash with filth and stagnant puddles.

The buildings around me were the same, but different. These were crumbling relics of those back in the real world, all boarded-up windows or burned-out shells. They were barely visible in the faint glow of the moon.

I spun on the spot, searching for any sign of my dad. He’d had only a few seconds’ head start, so he should have been somewhere close by. I peered into the gloom, trying to find him, but a sharp cry from behind made me turn.

Something skinny and rodent-like bounded towards me on spindly legs. Its tongue flicked hungrily over two sharp teeth and its beady eyes glistened in the darkness.

Back in my world I had unique abilities – abilities that would make dealing with a creature like this child’s play. I could conjure up a machine gun, or a chainsaw, or simply imagine the thing out of existence. I could do all that back there. Here I was powerless.

But I was too angry to care.

The rodent pounced and I was ready for it. I ducked to the side and made a grab for a rock on the ground. As the monster rounded on me I drove the grapefruit-sized stone against the side of its head. It went down with a squeal, and the rage that had brought me here tightened its grip round my chest.

I brought the rock down once more on the creature’s head. It squealed again. I kept going, kept hitting until the monster fell silent. My breath came in unsteady gulps as I stood there, staring down at the dead thing in the dirt. My eyes crept to my hand, and to the blood-soaked rock it held.

I looked down once more at the creature and told myself I’d had no option. It or me. That had been the only choice.

I dropped the rock. I turned away. And I saw my dad.

He was standing in a sliver of moonlight just twenty metres away. Close enough for me to see the grin on his face. Had he been smiling when he killed my mum? That was something for me to ask him when I was choking the life from his body.

‘Good work, kiddo,’ he called over. ‘I always said I’d make a killer out of you some day.’

I ran at him, no thought in my head but the need for revenge. No emotions left inside me but hatred and rage. His smile broadened, and I loathed him even more.

‘Not so fast,’ he said, and the darkness around me shifted as if alive. Something snaked across my path and snagged my feet. I fell hard, clattering against the cracked tarmac and rolling to a stop.

Shapes emerged from the shadows on all sides of me. Monstrous figures and grotesque, deformed faces loomed down. The things in the darkness all looked different. There was nothing to link them to one another, aside from the hatred that burned in their eyes.

I tried to get up, but whatever had tripped me now held my feet together, keeping me from moving.

Shoes scuffed on the road. I looked up and saw my dad stop beside me. He was still smiling as he shook his head and made a soft tutting noise below his breath.

‘Too easy,’ he said. ‘You’ll never get to me like that.’

‘Kill you,’ I said, half sobbing. ‘I’ll kill you.’

He looked at the circle of freaks surrounding us. ‘Hear that?’ he said. ‘My boy’s going to kill me.’

The figures began to snuffle and snort with laughter. Someone behind me let out a high-pitched giggle. A memory of hearing it before stirred at the back of my head, but then was gone.

My dad looked down at me again. ‘You’re not going to kill me, kiddo. You can’t kill me. At least,’ he gestured around him, ‘not here.’

His knees cricked as he squatted down beside my head. He stroked my hair. I pushed his hands away and the night was filled with that laughter again.

‘It’s been a long road, son,’ he said. ‘You’ve worked hard, but it’s almost over. You’re almost done. The barrier between this world and yours is almost gone. One more big push should do it. One more big push and your world is replaced by this one.’

He straightened up. ‘But you can’t push it from here. You need to go back there. Use those abilities of yours. Do something spectacular. And then it’ll all be over.’

I gritted my teeth. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

His smile widened further until it was nothing but teeth. ‘Wrong,’ he said, then he drew back his foot and a jolt of pain snapped back my head.

‘Come on. Come on, wake up!’

My body and brain roused together. There were hands on my shoulders. I lunged forward, brushing them off and grabbing for whoever had touched me.

My hands found Billy’s windpipe and forced him backwards into the snow. Billy had been the hardest boy in my school once upon a time. Back when I’d been trying to stop Caddie and Raggy Maggie, he’d even stuck a knife into my stomach.

And now here he was, pinned beneath me, his eyes shimmering with panic, his breath stuck halfway down his throat. My hands twitched. I could squeeze, pay him back for the years of misery he’d inflicted on me. I could squeeze, and I could keep squeezing.

But Billy had changed. Or maybe Billy had stayed the same, and I was the one who was different. Whatever, he wasn’t a threat to anyone any more. He’d helped stop the Beast. Impossible as it seemed, he and I were on the same side these days.

I relaxed my grip, then removed my hands from his throat. ‘Sorry,’ I said, my voice hoarse. He gave a bug-eyed nod in return and gingerly rubbed his throat.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he croaked, and we helped each other up out of the snow.

The body of the Beast still lay motionless on the ground, its blood pinkening the snow around it. I forced myself to think of it in those terms – an “it”, a “thing”, because the reality was too terrible to consider. I didn’t want to remember what – or rather who – the Beast had once been.

But it had saved me, and that told me the person it once was had still been in there somewhere, buried deep down beneath the scales and the claws and the slavering jaws.

The other beast, the one that had started the whole nightmare off, was nowhere to be seen. We’d killed it, the three of us together – Billy, Ameena and me – but now it was gone. It was no great surprise. I’d learned from Mr Mumbles that if you killed anything from the Darkest Corners when it was in the real world, it was reborn back over there.

That monster still lived, but there was no coming back for the one who had saved us all.

Ameena was sitting in the snow, staring at nothing, her head shaking ever so slightly left to right. She’d discovered she wasn’t real, that every memory she had was false. She was “a tool”, my dad had said. A tool my terrified mind had created to save me from Mr Mumbles. With just a few choice words, he’d shown her that her entire life was a lie.

I stood over her, no idea what to say. What could I say? How could you help someone who didn’t really exist? In the end, I said the only thing that came into my head.

‘Hey.’

She blinked, as if wakening from a dream. Her head stopped shaking and tilted just a little. Her dark eyes peered up at me from behind a curtain of darker hair. She breathed out a cloud of misty white vapour.

‘Hey.’

‘You OK?’

She shook her head again. ‘Not great. You?’

I shrugged. There was a throbbing in my jaw where my dad had kicked me. Another addition to go along with all the other aches and pains throughout my body. ‘Been better.’

A piercing scream came from the direction of the police station. The screechers – the zombie-like things that had once been the people from my village – had been driven back by the battle of the Beasts. Now they emerged cautiously from streets and alleyways on all sides, their black eyes gazing hungrily upon us.

‘Screechers,’ Billy whispered.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I see them.’

They were at various stages of mutation. At first we’d thought they were all just zombies. Then we’d discovered that this was just the first stage in a transformation that would eventually see them become like the Beast itself.

Some of those that moved to surround us now were still shuffling on two legs. Others crawled through the snow, their shapes barely recognisable as human.

‘What do we do?’ Billy asked.

‘I don’t know.’

I could feel Billy glaring at me. ‘You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?’

‘I don’t know, Billy.’ I squeezed the bridge of my nose, trying to ease the headache that spread out from there. ‘It’s been a bit of a rough day.’

‘Well, it’s going to get rougher if we don’t do something,’ he pointed out. He looked around at the screechers. They were still approaching slowly, eyeing the fallen Beast, not yet realising it was dead. The moment they did, there would be nothing to hold them back.

I turned to Billy. ‘And what should we do?’ I asked him. ‘Because I’m open to suggestions here.’

‘We run,’ Billy said. ‘We can run.’

‘Run where, exactly?’

‘The church,’ he said quickly. ‘We can hide in the church.’

I shook my head. ‘No, we can’t. It’s full of screechers. They’d—

Billy pushed past me, panic flashing across his face. He made a dive for Ameena, but she was too fast. I turned to see her sprinting away, running straight for the closest group of screechers.

‘Ameena, stop!’ I cried, but she didn’t slow. The screechers ahead of her began lumbering more quickly, teeth gnashing as they staggered forward to intercept her.

‘What’s she doing?’ he asked. ‘Is she trying to get herself killed or something?’

The realisation hit like a hammer blow. ‘Oh, God,’ I whispered. ‘She is. That’s exactly what she’s trying to do.’

Taking their cue from the others, the rest of the screechers began to pick up the pace. Their screams and howls filled the air as they began shambling and leaping and bounding towards us and towards Ameena.

I heard Billy whimper. ‘We’re going to die. We’re going to die!’

‘We can’t die,’ I said. ‘If we die, then he gets away with it. He gets away with killing my mum.’

A jolt of electricity buzzed through my scalp. I knew that using my abilities was playing right into my dad’s hands, but what choice did I have? If I died, he got away with it.

And there was no way he was getting away with it.

I closed my eyes. The blue sparks I saw whenever I used my abilities shimmered behind my eyelids as I raised both hands and let my imagination take over.

There was a whumpf as a circle of snow swirled up into a blizzard around us. It hit the screechers like a solid wall, battering them back, buying us some time.

Ameena stopped running. She didn’t turn to look at us, just sank down on to her knees and stared straight ahead. I set off towards her, pulling Billy behind me.

‘Come on, help me get her,’ I said. ‘We’ll take her to the church.’

‘I thought you said it was full of screechers?’

‘It is,’ I said, and the sparks flickered behind my eyes. ‘But leave that to me.’

We ran for the church, Ameena held between us. She stumbled along, keeping pace, but I knew if we let go of her she’d stop and fall.

The screechers were on the move again, thundering through the snow after us. Billy and I dragged Ameena up the stone steps and in through the heavy double doors. We fell inside and I closed the doors again with a slam.

We could hear the screams and the howls of the screechers inside the church. I nudged open the inner door that led through to the top of the aisle. The screams were coming from the little side room behind the pulpit, where I’d led the screechers when they were chasing me down.

‘Wait here,’ I said. Ignoring Billy’s protests, I stepped into the main church and made my way towards the pulpit. A towering statue of Jesus on the cross stood by the entrance to the side room. I spared it just a glance as I strode closer to the open door.

Halfway down the aisle I stopped. ‘Hey!’ I shouted, and my voice bounced back at me from the high ceiling. The screeches within the side room changed in tone. I heard a frantic clattering, and through they came.

They had entered the church mostly human, but now they were mostly beast. Two or three still stood upright, but their backs were bent and their shoulders were stooped, and jagged outcrops of bone tore up through their thickening skin.

Half a dozen more were on all fours, their bodies twisted and buckled, their limbs and necks broadening and stretching almost before my eyes.

There were no lingering hungry glares from any of them this time. They had no reason to hold back. They collided with each other in their hurry to get to me, and in a split second, the fastest and strongest was hurtling along the aisle towards me.

It had been a man, I guessed, although I couldn’t say why. There was something vaguely male about the scraps of humanity it had left, but then that may just have been my imagination.

It bounded like a big cat along the aisle, its glossy black eyes trained on my throat. It wanted to kill me, this thing. It wanted to open my neck, spill my blood across the floor. It wanted me dead.

But I could not die. If I died, he got away with it.

I raised a hand, felt the sparks flash. When I clenched my fist, something inside the screecher went krik. Blood burst on its lips as it let out a pained yelp. The next bound was its last. It slid to a stop at my feet, and it didn’t move again.

My eyes raised to the next screecher. It didn’t hesitate as it closed in for the kill – but neither did I. With a single gesture I hurled it backwards into the others. The sparks crackled like lightning inside my head. My hands moved like a conductor leading an orchestra and, one by one, the screechers fell.

In seconds there was only the echo of their screams around the church, and then there wasn’t even that.

The door behind me opened with a creak. I heard Billy draw in a sharp breath.

‘What… what have you done?’

‘Someone had to,’ I said, not looking round. ‘Someone had to stop them or we’d all have been dead.’

‘But they were people,’ Billy protested.

‘Were. Past tense.’ I turned to face him. He led Ameena in by the arm. ‘And how come you care anyway? You were all “destroy the brain” earlier. What made you start giving a damn?’

He looked me up and down. ‘What made you stop?’

‘Whoa.’ Ameena was staring down at the screecher by my feet. She shrugged free of Billy and took a few tentative steps towards it. ‘It looks dead. Is it dead?’

‘It’s dead.’

‘He killed it,’ Billy said.

Ameena’s eyes met mine. She cocked her head to the side a little. ‘You killed it?’

‘I killed it.’ She kept looking at me. ‘It would’ve killed us,’ I felt compelled to add.

‘Yeah,’ she said at last. ‘I suppose it would at that.’

‘How do you feel now?’ I asked her.

‘This is the church,’ she said, ignoring the question. ‘Where you blew up the donkey.’

Billy frowned. ‘You blew up a donkey? What, like…?’ He formed a pea-shooter shape with his hand, raised it to his mouth and puffed out his cheeks.

‘What? No, I didn’t blow up a donkey,’ I said. ‘I blew a donkey up. As in exploded it.’

Billy lowered his hand. ‘Oh. Right. Why did you do that then?’

‘It wasn’t a real donkey. It was concrete.’

‘Right,’ said Billy. He thought about this. ‘I still come back to “Why did you do that then?”.’

‘Forget it. Doesn’t matter.’ I turned back to Ameena. ‘You should sit down.’

‘I don’t need to sit down,’ she said, then she sat down anyway. ‘I’m… fine. I think.’ She looked at me with hopeful eyes. ‘Am I?’

I gave a nod. ‘He could’ve been lying,’ I said. ‘He was probably lying. He does that. He—

‘He wasn’t lying,’ she said. ‘It was true. Everything he said – it was true. I can see that now. Before I found you fighting Mr Mumbles… there’s nothing. I don’t remember anything. Not properly anyway, just… images, like photos someone’s shown me.’ She shrugged and shook her head. ‘Hell, I don’t even know my last name. But then that’s because I haven’t got one. Because you never gave me one.’

I suddenly felt guilty for that. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it. You were being murdered by a maniac,’ Ameena said. She jumped up and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘That sort of thing can be distracting.’

She gave her arms a shake and kicked out her legs, and with that, the tension seemed to leave her. ‘So,’ she said, cracking her knuckles. ‘I’ve changed my mind on the whole killing-myself thing. Sorry about that. Such a drama queen sometimes.’

‘No problem,’ I said.

‘Good. Now what’s the plan?’

‘I find my dad,’ I said. ‘And then I kill him.’

She nodded slowly. ‘OK, well that’s a plan. That’s definitely a plan.’

‘What about them?’ Billy asked. He pointed back towards the door. ‘What about them out there?’

‘They’re not my problem,’ I said.

‘And what about us?’ Billy asked. ‘Are we not your problem either? Look, I know you’re angry at your dad.’

‘Angry?’ I said. ‘Angry? He killed my mum, Billy. Don’t you get it? He— The words caught in my throat. My eyes went hot and the room began to spin. I reached for a pew to support myself, but missed and dropped to my knees on the hard floor.

‘He killed my mum,’ I croaked as tears rolled like raindrops down my cheeks. ‘He killed my mum.’

A bubble welled up inside me. It tightened my chest and pushed down on my stomach. I tried to speak again, but the pressure inside me made it impossible.

Ameena knelt beside me. Without a word, she wrapped her arms round my shoulders and pulled me in close. We sat there rocking back and forth, my tears coming in big silent sobs.

When the tears finally stopped I just sat there, feeling nothing but empty. But then even that moment passed. I pulled away from Ameena, unable to look at her, and stood up.

Billy cleared his throat. ‘You OK?’

I nodded quickly to hide my embarrassment. ‘Fine.’

Ameena got to her feet and I realised she had a smear of my snot on her shoulder. I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her.

‘So, what are we going to do?’ Billy asked.

‘I told you. I’m going to find my dad and then I’m going to kill him,’ I said.

‘Right. So we’re sticking with that one then, are we?’ he asked. ‘You know you’re playing right into his hands, don’t you? He wants you to do your… magic, or whatever.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Looks like he’s going to get what he wants.’

‘Then he wins,’ Billy said. ‘And you’re right, he does get what he wants. Whatever he’s done to you – your mum, your nan – he did it all to make you do what he wants. He’s manipulating you, and you’re going to let him.’

‘Check out the voice of reason,’ said Ameena.

‘I’m right, though. If you keep doing your thing then the barrier breaks down and suddenly we’re up to our eyes in monsters.’

‘We’re already up to our eyes in monsters,’ I reminded him.

‘Yeah,’ Billy conceded. ‘But you and I both know there are worse things waiting over there. We’ve seen them. If they get through, they’ll kill everyone.’

‘Everyone important is already dead.’

A thud against the front doors cut the argument short. A muffled screech filled the church. A few seconds later there was a chorus of them howling out there as they hammered and pounded against the doors.

‘They’re going to get inside,’ Ameena said. She released Billy and he stumbled out of her reach, nursing his arm. ‘Decision time, kiddo. What’s it to be?’

The sounds of the screechers seemed to be inside the church now. I could almost picture them, their deformed heads forcing their way through the splintering wood, their teeth chewing hungrily at the air. It was Billy who made a decision.

‘Help me block these,’ he said, hurrying along the aisle to the inner swing doors. ‘It’ll buy us some time.’

Ameena looked to me. I nodded, and she headed off after Billy. There were two large tables by the doors, one stacked upside down atop the other. They grabbed each end of the top table and began moving into position in front of the doors.

They were right in front of the doors when they began to open. Teeth flashed in the gap. Billy and Ameena leapt back. A hundred thousand sparks filled my head and an invisible force pushed the door closed.

‘Stand back,’ I told them, and they darted over to join me. The table moved with just a thought from me. It tilted and fell so the top was up against the doors, which I was still holding closed.

Next I pictured the back pews sliding across the floor. The metal bolts holding them in place groaned, then snapped. I felt my brain tingle as the heavy wooden benches fell into place behind the table. Only then did I let the sparks fade away.

The doors swung inward a few centimetres then hit the barricade with a loud thud. Screeches of frustration came at us through the wood, but the barrier held steady for the moment.

‘Nice work,’ Ameena said. ‘That was close.’

‘Uh, guys.’ Billy’s voice was a low whisper. I turned to find him nodding at a spot several metres behind me.

Something stood there. Or rather, something flickered there. It was faint, like the outline of a ghost. A large ghost, with too many limbs. We watched it pacing towards us, then it faded away completely.

‘OK,’ Ameena muttered. ‘So what the Hell was that?’

I turned, casting my gaze around the dimly lit church. There were half a dozen or more figures dotted about, half appearing and fading before my eyes. I recognised some of them as the things that had surrounded me in the Darkest Corners.

‘It’s happening,’ I realised. ‘Like he said. The barrier’s weakening. They’re going to come through.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Billy said, although he didn’t sound convinced. ‘I mean, you can just stop, right? If you don’t do your mojo any more, they can’t come any further.’ He glanced from me to Ameena and back and swallowed nervously. ‘Right?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, but the doubt in my voice was obvious. ‘If I don’t do anything else, the barrier will stay standing.’

A soft hissing and crackling noise began to echo around the church. I looked up to the source of the sound and saw a speaker mounted high on the wall behind the pulpit.

The next sound I heard made my skin crawl.

Fiona, it’s time to get up now.

That was my dad’s voice. My dad’s voice from the recording he had played me earlier.

‘No,’ I said softly. ‘N-no, please.’

The hospital machines beeped on the soundtrack. I heard my mum rouse and my dad smile. Even on the tape, I heard him smile.

That’s my girl. Open your eyes now. Open your…

My mum gave a groan. Ameena reached for me, but I pulled away. I stared at the speaker, and I stared, and I stared.

Wh-where am I? My mum’s voice, shaky and weak.

Look at me, Fiona. Look at me.

On the tape, my mum gave a gasp. ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t.’

As if echoing me, she cried out, and I could hear all the fear and the panic in her voice. I raised my hands, stabbing them towards the speaker. N-no. Please, no, don—

‘Kyle, no!’ Billy cried.

‘Do it,’ Ameena urged. ‘Shut it up.’

BANG!

The speaker exploded before the gunshot had a chance to ring. Before he had a chance to kill her again. The sparks buzzed across my head, then receded again, leaving only the charred remains of the speaker behind.

‘What did you do?’ Billy groaned. ‘What have you done?’

‘Leave it, Billy,’ Ameena said, and this time I let her press her hand against my shoulder.

A sudden fluttering up by the rafters made us all jump. A small black shape flapped around at the ceiling. We followed its flight until it landed on one of Christ’s outstretched arms. A beady black eye gazed blankly down at us.

Billy let out a nervous laugh. ‘God, that nearly gave me a heart attack,’ he breathed. ‘Just a bird.’

‘Not just a bird,’ I said, trying to keep my voice low and controlled. Ameena and I both stepped back, our eyes never leaving those of the bird. ‘It’s a crow.’

Billy shrugged. ‘So? What’s so bad about crows?’

‘Obviously you’ve never met the ones we’ve met,’ Ameena told him.

And he hadn’t. He hadn’t been there at Marion’s house when the Crowmaster attacked. He hadn’t seen Marion’s skeletal remains, the skin, muscle and sinew torn off by a murder of flesh-eating crows.

But I had seen it. And it was something I’d never be able to forget.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Ameena whispered.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He died here in the real world. That means he was reborn over there.’

‘Oh, now that’s just cheating,’ she protested.

‘No argument there,’ I said. The bird wasn’t moving, just watching us in silence. ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Billy asked. ‘However mean and scary you say it is, it’s just one bird.’

The cries of the screechers were louder than ever. The table and pews groaned against the floor as they were pushed back.

‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s never just one bird.’

And then, in a heaving torrent of squawking black, the space inside the church was torn in two.

We ran for cover as the crows came. They surged in their hundreds through a hole in reality itself, filling the church with the thunder of their wings.

Ameena pulled me down behind a pew as Billy took cover behind the one across the aisle. The crows were a dark tornado around us, squawking and cawing as they circled the inside of the church.

A figure stepped through the cloud of birds, short and stocky, his face hidden beneath a rough brown sack. Back at Marion’s house the Crowmaster had been revealed as nothing more than a little man called Joe Crow, who liked to dress in a scarecrow costume. The costume was gone now, but Joe was doing everything he could to maintain the Crowmaster act.

‘I see you, boy,’ he said. His voice was still like fingernails down a blackboard. The tattered eyeholes in the sack turned in my direction. I raised my head to reply, but a crow swooped down at me, forcing me to duck again. ‘You thought you’d seen the last of the Crowmaster,’ he said, and then there was that laugh of his again, audible even over the screechers and the birds: SS-SS-SS-SS. ‘You thought that your nightmares was over, but, boy, they’s just beginning.’

‘Shut him up,’ Ameena said.

‘How?’

She glanced along at the barricaded doors. It took me a moment to realise what she meant. Her eyes drilled into me, urging me on. Along the aisle, Joe Crow paced towards us on his tiny legs.

I nodded. The sparks lit up the inside of my head and the doors flew open. Joe Crow stopped advancing as the screechers burst through. Their eyes locked on him. Their jaws gnashed.

‘Aw,’ Joe groaned, ‘crap.’

They were on him before his birds could react, ripping and tearing at him, their teeth already slick with blood.

His command over them broken, the birds began to thud against the walls and fall to the floor. I moved to run for the door, but there were more screechers rushing through.

Ameena and I began clambering quickly over the pews in front, and Billy raced to do the same. The screechers were still busy with Joe Crow, and we hurdled our way to the front without them noticing us. Together, all three of us ran for the back room and hurriedly closed the door.

‘This way,’ I said, making for the rear exit that led out into the graveyard. As I pulled it open a hand clawed through the gap. Billy and Ameena rushed over and threw their weight against the wood. Between us, we forced the door closed, but the screecher on the other side was already trying to break it down.

‘What now?’ Billy yelped.

‘Magic them away,’ Ameena told me. ‘If you’re ever going to do your thing, now’s the time.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Billy told her. ‘You saw what happened. Those things are starting to come through.’

‘So what do we do, Billy? Just wait here to die?’

‘What’s it matter to you?’ Billy asked her, and I could see his old wicked streak shining through. ‘It’s not like you were ever alive to begin with.’

‘Ladder,’ I said, pushing between them. A metal ladder was attached to one of the walls. It led straight up to a hatch in the high ceiling. ‘It must lead to the tower. We can hide there.’

‘For how long?’ Ameena asked. ‘Up there we’ll have nowhere to run to.’

A clawed hand punched a hole through the back door. There was no more time to make plans.

‘Go,’ I said, gesturing for Ameena to lead the way up the ladder. She hesitated, but then set off at a breakneck rate. By the time Billy was halfway up, she was already at the top, pushing open the hatch and clambering through.

I went last. When I got to the top, Billy reached down and helped pull me up into the tower. The hatch closed over just as the back door came down, and we heard the screecher howl in confusion.

‘We’re safe,’ I whispered.

‘Maybe for now,’ Ameena added quietly.

The inside of the tower was dark and gloomy. There had once been a bell up there, but it had long since been removed. The rectangular openings in each wall that would once have allowed the chimes to ring out across the village were boarded over, letting only scraps of light seep through. The floor was thick with dust. Mousetraps were dotted here and there around the little square room. Billy kicked one to the side and it snapped shut with a clack.

‘Sssh!’ I hissed. I pointed down at the floor, and to the screecher that lurked below.

‘That’s our plan then, is it?’ Ameena asked. ‘We stay up here and keep quiet?’

‘You got any better ideas?’ I asked.

‘What happened to finding your dad? When did that plan stop?’

Billy answered for me. ‘When he realised he was playing right into his dad’s hands.’

‘We don’t know that’s true,’ Ameena protested. ‘Kyle, if you want to get him for what he did, you’re going to have to use your abilities. That’s just how it is.’

Billy looked Ameena up and down. ‘Why are you so determined he should go all Harry Potter all of a sudden? How come you’re acting so weird?’

Ameena bit her lip. ‘What can I say?’ she muttered. ‘It’s been a weird day.’

Weird day? That was an understatement if ever I’d heard one. It had been a weird month. The weirdest, worst month of my life. Possibly of anyone’s life ever. And even that wasn’t doing it justice.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I admitted. ‘Everything’s broken. I’ve… I’ve ruined everything. ’

Ameena rolled her eyes. ‘And I thought I was being a drama queen! You haven’t ruined anything, kiddo. Your dad has. All you’ve done is try to stay alive and try to protect people.’

I looked her in the eye. ‘That’s not working out too well, is it?’

My lip wobbled and I looked away again. My mum: dead. My nan: dead. My mum’s cousin Marion: dead. So much for protecting people.

And then there was Joseph, the mystery man. He’d popped up all over the place with his cryptic clues, helping me when I didn’t even know it. I’d watched him die too, right before my eyes, and I still didn’t know who he was.

‘We sit tight,’ Billy said. ‘That’s the plan. We sit here and wait for help to arrive.’

‘Help isn’t going to arrive, Billy. Grow up,’ Ameena said.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because this isn’t a bedtime story. There’s no knight in shining armour climbing up this tower. There’s no fairy godmother about to come swooping in. There’s just us.’ She pointed to the boarded-up window. ‘And there’s just them. If we want to live we have to fight. That’s how it is.’

Ameena turned to me. ‘And you’re the best fighter we’ve got. Much as I hate to admit it.’

Billy shook his head. ‘You’re not buying this, are you? You saw what was happening down there. I don’t want more monsters coming through.’

‘What’s the matter, Billy? Scared?’

‘Of course I’m scared!’ Billy yelped. ‘I’m terrified. I’ve never been more scared in my whole life, and if he starts doing his, his thing, then it’s all just going to get worse.’

Ameena spun to face him. ‘You don’t get it, do you? This is it. This is the end. It can’t get any worse.’

‘Don’t say that,’ I groaned. ‘As soon as anyone says “It can’t get any worse,” it always gets worse.’

‘Not this time,’ Ameena said, turning back to face me. ‘Everyone in this village has been turned into a monster, and they’re going to spread like a virus all over the planet. Your mum is dead. Your dad is out there somewhere, waiting to unleash God knows what on the world, and we’re stuck in an attic with a screecher downstairs and Billy No-Dates for company.’

‘Maybe… maybe someone will come,’ I said weakly.

‘No one’s coming!’ Ameena said. ‘There’s no one to fix this but us. But you.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Billy snapped. ‘Why do you keep egging him on? It’s like you want him to break down this big barrier thing.’ He looked to me. ‘She’s pushing you into it.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Billy,’ I said. ‘Of course she isn’t.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ Billy asked. ‘You said yourself you don’t know anything about her. How do you know she’s not working with your dad?’

Ameena drove her elbow into Billy’s face. He staggered back, his hands over his nose, a sharp yelp of pain bursting on his lips.

‘Whoa! What did you do that for?’ I asked. I was used to sudden bouts of violence from Ameena, but never like that.

‘You heard him.’ Ameena sounded defensive. ‘He was starting to rant. Ranting’s noisy, and the last thing we want right now is someone getting noisy.’ She smiled in that way that made her nose wrinkle up. ‘Am I right, kiddo? Course I am; I’m always right.’

I began to smile, then stopped. That word replayed in my head.

‘Kiddo,’ I said, my face fixed in a half-smile. ‘You called me “kiddo”.’

‘Yeah? So? I always call you “kiddo”, kiddo. It’s one of the things that makes me so adorable.’

A sickening stirring began in my gut. I glanced at Billy, who was still clutching his nose. He watched us in silence through eyes filled with tears.

‘He calls me “kiddo”,’ I mumbled, and I saw the smile fade from her face. ‘My dad calls me “kiddo”.’

She shrugged, but it looked forced and not at all natural. ‘Does he?’ she said. ‘What are the chances?’

I stared into her eyes, and in that moment I realised that I didn’t really know her at all.

Shadows moved behind her and the sound of in-rushing air filled the tower. The shadows became a man and the man became my dad. He wrapped his arms round Ameena and flashed me a wide grin.

‘Whoops,’ he sniggered, and then they were gone. I looked blankly at the spot where Ameena had stood. I was still looking at it when Billy spoke.

‘She’s gone.’

‘He took her,’ I said.

The floorboard creaked behind me.

‘No,’ Billy said. ‘They went together.’

‘No,’ I snapped, turning on him. ‘She wouldn’t. She’s… I…’ I curled my fingers into fists. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back.’

‘Back? What do you mean you’ll be back? Where are you going?’

But Billy’s voice was already becoming distant as I focused on one of the sparks and flitted myself through to the Darkest Corners.

The inside of the tower looked exactly the same, only now the hatch was open. The howls of the screechers had faded along with Billy’s voice, but now I could hear a steady creaking coming up through the hole in the floor.

I looked down in time to see Ameena jump the last few rungs and land lightly beside my dad. She raised her head and her eyes briefly met mine, then she was off and running with him through the door that led into the main part of the church.

My stomach flipped. I thought back to the figure in the brown hood I’d seen so many times with my dad. Ameena’s height. Ameena’s build. But it couldn’t have been her. I refused to accept it.

She had saved me. So many times, she had saved me. She couldn’t have been working with him this whole time. She couldn’t.

I called her name, hoping she would come running back to tell me it was all some stupid mistake. To tell me I was wrong, and that she’d never betray me. But she didn’t come back. No one came back.

The ladder was more rusted on the way down than it had been on the way up, but that was the Darkest Corners for you. It twisted things, corrupted them. Had it done the same to Ameena somehow? Made her as much a monster as the rest of them? No. No way.

Please no.

I jumped the last few rungs just as she had done and charged through into the main church. It now stood in ruins, most of the sky visible through the crumbled roof. The doors at the far end of the room were still standing. They swung closed as I raced towards them.

A ragged shape lay there in the middle of the aisle. As I drew closer I recognised the tattered remains of Joe Crow. They squirmed as if alive, and I saw his body begin to reform, like footage of rotting fruit played in high-speed reverse.

‘S-see you, boy,’ he slurred. A half-formed hand reached out for me. ‘Don’t you g-go nowhere.’

I clambered over the pews beside him, not daring to get too close. The rest of the aisle passed in a blur as I raced through the inner doors and out through the exit into the world beyond.

A foot stuck out from round the doorframe and I tripped. My momentum carried me down the stone steps and I landed on my back on the damp, dirty ground.

My dad stood at the top of the steps, laughing as he looked down. And there, beside him, was Ameena. My dad and Ameena. Together.

There had been a little hope inside me, buried deep down. A hope that somehow everything was going to be OK. A hope that, no matter how bad things seemed at the moment, they weren’t broken beyond repair.

That hope died when I saw them standing there together. My dad was grinning, but I didn’t look at him. Instead I just stared at Ameena and asked her, ‘Why?’

She shrugged and pushed her hair out of her face. ‘Nothing personal.’

‘Nothing personal?’ I said. I was on my feet in an instant. ‘Nothing personal; are you nuts?’

I began to climb the stairs towards them. Ameena raised her fists and bounced on to the balls of her feet. ‘Don’t,’ she warned.

I stopped. Not because I was scared of her, but because I suddenly had no energy left to climb with.

‘So, what?’ I asked croakily. ‘The whole time? It’s all been a lie?’

‘Bingo,’ laughed my dad. ‘All that stuff about you making her, about her being –’ he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers – ‘“a tool”? All rubbish. None of that was true.’

‘Then why say it?’ I asked. ‘What was the point?’

‘The point was what it’s always been,’ he continued. ‘To make you care about her. To make you want to protect her.’ His grin widened. ‘And you do, don’t you, kiddo? You care about her a lot.’

I didn’t answer. Ameena tried to hold my gaze, but glanced away.

‘Man, that must be a kick in the teeth,’ my dad chuckled. ‘There you are falling for her charms, and all the while she’s just trying to get you to use your abilities so you break down the barrier and she can get the Hell away from you.’

‘It was you in that brown robe all along,’ I said. ‘It was you.’

‘Bzzzzt! Correct answer,’ cried my dad. ‘And I think if you’re honest with yourself you always really knew that. You just didn’t want to believe it. Am I right? Kiddo?’

I didn’t answer, just kept staring and waiting for it to sink in. She’d been working against me. Right from day one, she’d been working against me.

My dad put a finger behind his ear and pushed it slightly forward. ‘You know, the walls between this world and yours must be paper-thin now. If you listen, you can hear your little friend Billy screaming.’

He was right. Billy’s screams were muffled, but there was no mistaking them. They came from high up in the church, a whole other world away. They were screams not of panic, but of pain.

My dad and Ameena stepped apart, leaving the path to the door clear. ‘You’ve got maybe a minute to get back there and save him,’ said my dad. ‘Or you can stay here and chitchat with us. The choice is yours.’

Far away, Billy let out a squeal of agony. My dad’s face lit up with a manic grin.

‘But whatever you decide, you’d better do it quickly.’

I threw the church doors open and sprinted along the aisle. I was still in the Darkest Corners – it was too dangerous to jump back into my own world until I was up the ladder and inside the tower itself – and Joe Crow had almost finished pulling himself back together on the ruined church floor.

He was drawing himself up on his stubby legs as I ran towards him. The sackcloth mask he had been wearing hadn’t made the trip back with him, and his wrinkled, old-man face twisted into a scowl at my approach. He snarled, revealing dozens of tiny, shark-like teeth poking out from his pale gums.

‘I see you came back, boy,’ he spat; then he stopped talking as the sole of my shoe slammed hard into the centre of his weather-beaten face. He stumbled backwards on to the floor, and then I was past him, through the door behind the pulpit and scrabbling up the rusted ladder.

I was halfway up before I realised I couldn’t hear Billy screaming, and all the way at the top before I realised I couldn’t hear anything from within the tower at all.

As soon as I was through the hatch I focused on a spark and moved between worlds. To my relief, Billy was there, almost exactly where I’d left him. He was kneeling down, facing away from me, his hands hanging limply by his sides so his knuckles were almost touching the floor.

He was half hidden by the shadows, but as I took a step closer I saw the spots of blood on the side of his face. I thought back. He hadn’t been bleeding after Ameena hit him, had he? In all the panic, I couldn’t remember.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’

Billy didn’t answer. Up close I could see that his whole body was vibrating. His breath was whistling unsteadily in and out, and he gave the occasional soft whimper as I took another creaky step closer.

‘I heard you screaming,’ I said. He flinched, but didn’t turn round. I took another step towards him. ‘What happened? Why were you screaming?’

Billy’s trembling was becoming more and more violent, as if his body was going deep into shock. He flinched again as I laid my hand on his shoulder.

‘What’s wrong, Billy?’ I asked. ‘What happened? Talk to me.’

With a sob, he slowly turned his head. I felt my guts twist in horror. I stumbled away from him, swallowing the urge to throw up. His eyes bored into mine, ringed with red and filled with tears.

I tried to speak, but no words came. Tried to scream, but my throat was closed tight. Instead I raised a shaking hand and pointed. Pointed at his face; at his mouth; at the thick black stitches that threaded through his lips, pulling them tightly together.

He tried to say something, but the words came out as a jumbled mumble of syllables. His fingers brushed against the stitches, then pulled quickly away. His eyes bulged. His nostrils flared. He let out a high-pitched moan that would have been a scream if he could open his mouth.

‘Wh-who…?’ I began, but a blast of music answered my question before I could even ask it.

It came from the room below, loud enough to shake the floor beneath us.

If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise…

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Not him. Not here.’

If you go down to the woods today, you’d better go in disguise…

Of all the fiends I’d faced so far, Doc Mortis was up there with the worst of them. He was a sadist, a madman who believed himself to be a surgeon, and who kidnapped innocent people and performed grotesque operations on them. I’d barely escaped his hospital. I thought he was dead. It appeared I was wrong.

A crash of breaking wood temporarily drowned out the music from below. One of the wooden boards that had been fastened over an opening in the tower wall was smashed in right behind Billy.

Before he could even turn, a freakishly thin figure reached through the gap. I caught a glimpse of its bald head and its surgical mask. Eyes that were no more than buttons stitched on to skin flashed at me through the gloom, and I recognised one of Doc’s porters.

A scarred hand caught Billy by the back of his jacket and dragged him towards the hole in the wall.

Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic…

‘Billy!’ I cried, reaching out a hand. His fingertips touched mine, but then he was gone, dragged out into the chill night air. I ran to the broken wood and looked out. Screechers heaved through the streets, but there was no sign of Billy or the porter anywhere. They couldn’t have gone far, though. I had to find him. Too many people had suffered because of me as it was.

The wind pushed against me as I squeezed out through the gap and on to the roof, which led down at a steep angle from the side of the tower. The roof extended a few centimetres past the top of the wall, and beyond that lay a dizzyingly long drop to the ground.

With great care I inched away from the tower, trying to get a better view of the roof. My feet slipped on the snow-covered slates and I had to grab for the broken board to stop me sliding off.

My legs kicked frantically, trying to back-pedal to safety. I dug in my heels and pushed until I was finally able to get back into a standing position.

I spent a few seconds getting my nerves back under control, then looked around for Billy. Aside from mine, there were no footprints in the snow. I craned my neck and looked at the top of the tower, but nothing moved up there in the dark.

‘Billy,’ I hissed. ‘Where are you?’ But only the wind replied.

Dozens of panicked screeches began to rise up from below. I leaned out, trying to see over the edge and down to the street. I held on to the wood with my fingertips, craning my neck in an attempt to—

Something slammed against my fingers from inside the tower. There was no time to turn and see who or what was responsible. My feet slipped out from under me and I began to slide towards the edge of the roof.

The sparks fizzled behind my eyes, and I had to grit my teeth and force myself not to give in. Billy had been right. Using my abilities was playing right into my dad’s hands. Was playing right into Ameena’s hands. He – they – were trying to make me end the world. He’d told me right from the start I was going to kill everyone on Earth. I wasn’t going to let him be right.

I closed my eyes and let myself go limp. It was the best I could come up with at short notice.

The edge of the roof came up quickly, the ground almost as fast. The snow was thin beside the wall, the church sheltering that spot from the worst of the snowfall. I landed with a crunch on icy gravel. The impact forced a yelp from me and a dozen deformed figures turned to look in my direction.

I climbed clumsily to my feet, using the church’s brickwork to pull myself into a standing position. A jolt of pain shot up my spine from where I’d hit the ground. I glanced frantically left and right, searching for a way past the screechers, but the screechers were busy with problems of their own.

Something that was more Beast than anything else pounded through the snow on all fours, its huge head lolling left and right. Hot saliva dripped from the monster’s mouth, melting the snow where it fell. It advanced slowly on the screechers, then occasionally leapt at them and snapped its vast jaws.

I pressed myself in tight to the wall, half hidden in a narrow alcove. The screechers who had seen me hesitated briefly, but the beast-like thing began to gain on them and their instinct for survival forced them to leave me behind.

I waited, holding my breath until this new Beast had herded the screechers away, then I crept out across the snow and into the street. The darkness was drawing in, and only a few of the streetlights were working. Staring into the gloom, I tried calling Billy’s name again – quietly, so as not to attract unwanted attention.

No such luck. A screecher appeared in the doorway of the church. Its black eyes scanned the street. Its nose, now elongated into a narrow snout, snuffled hungrily at the air. Its head snapped in my direction and I began to run, tripping and stumbling through the deep snow.

The house I’d hidden in with Ameena and the others was right ahead. The door was closed, but I knew it was unlocked. The howls of the screecher grew louder behind me as I slipped and skidded along the path. I grabbed for the handle and tumbled inside, kicking the door closed just as the screecher launched itself towards me.

There was a thud and the letterbox flapped open. My fingers were too cold and my hands were shaking too badly for me to work the lock. It took four or five attempts before I managed to slide the snib closed. Outside, the screecher gnashed and snarled as it hurled itself against the door.

Turning and running for the stairs, I took them two at a time until I reached the top. One of the doors on the upper landing was in pieces. The body of the screecher that had once been Billy’s cousin lay just beyond it. Gusts of icy wind blew in through the room’s broken window.

I picked another door and found myself in a small bathroom. The light switch was outside the room. I flicked it on as I ran past, and slammed the door behind me.

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