Page 98 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

An unholy bellow smothered the ghostly explanation. A roar like a tin shack being torn to pieces. Not a teratism, Silas knew it unequivocally. But what the hell was it?

Never should have said I’d come find you.The child squealed.Should have stayed in my bloody chimney like Tommy said. We’ve been dodging the hungry ones and the witches for months. A few of us have managed to stay free, and that crazy necromancer bitch didn’t seem too bothered about huntin’ us down… Don’t think we was what she was lookin’ for anyways. So I survived all that, only to become gristle in a hungry one’s tooth because we wanted to stop you running around in bloody circles.

‘That’sa hungry one?’ It was all terribly wrong.

The ravenous creatures grunted, snuffled, then moaned a little as if they were truly starving, but he’d never heard a hungry one sound like a dragon disturbed from hibernation.

Another bellow, this time undoubtedly coming from somewhere beyond the top of the marble stairs. And certainly much closer.

Shouldn’t you be breaking out that blade of yours about now, ankou?

George wobbled like jelly and clutched at Silas’s trouser leg. He felt the tug of the material, a touch on the corporeal world that was almost as rare as the existence of hungry ones. George Brewster was a poltergeist, one of those noisy, restless spirits who was capable, through some strange quirk, of being able to interact with the world they had left behind. Usually through small, relatively irritating ways: a smashed dinner plate here, a slammed door there, with the rare few making themselves heard in ghostly whispers.

Silas turned over the thoughts in his head like they were precious gems. He could have cried with the relief it was to no longer be so in the dark, so blank of mind.

Where’s your fucking blade? I don’t wanna be gobbled up and shat out like a cowpat.

Sweet Jesus. What unpleasant detail.

‘Just take me to the lost souls. I’ll deal with the hungry ones if the need arises.’

Judging by the proximity of the sound, the need would be arising very bloody soon if they did not move. Now. The bandalore was not answering him, not even a hint to say it had heard a word of his pleas to return. But he was not about to admit that to the nervy ghost.

‘Go!’ Silas shouted.

The ghost child ran at the wall to their left, vanishing into the woodgrain. Silas sent one last glance up the staircase, but there was no hint of the hungry one. He stepped through the wall. Right at the moment another shudder ran through the Sanctuary.

‘What is causing that?’ he shouted. The child dashed on ahead, slipping across a hallway and into the next wall that lay in his path. ‘It sounds like the place is about to come down on us.’

The witch is trying to bring down the tree. That’s what One Limb Jack said, anyways. And it’s pissing her off no end. That’s why the others thought now was the time to sneak out and find you. While Macha and her minions are distracted.

‘I need to know more of this tree.’

Jack said there’s a tree growin’ where it ought not be.

That hardly took genius. They were buried beneath an asylum.

‘What sort of tree?’

One with leaves and branches, I suspect. It would account for how he knew it was a tree to begin with.

Silas ground his teeth. ‘Now is really not the time for –’

Idle chatter? I agree entirely. You’re a grumpier bastard than I imagined. If I were a bettin’ fellow, I’d say you haven’t got yourself between that daemon’s legs yet and you’re all pent up.

Jesus, this chimney sweep had a one-track mind.

‘How dare you,’ Silas spluttered and then made a damn fool of himself. ‘I’ll have you know you would have lost your bloody money.’

Good for you, Mr Horseman Mercer, good for you. A fine arse on that one. I’d go there in a heartbeat, if I had one. A heartbeat, I mean. Though I’d need an arse too I suppose –

‘Good god.’ Silas was choking. ‘Get on, will you?’

His cheeks were roasting. From the hurried pace, he liked to think. And not because of the appalling conversation with a ghost who had the face of a twelve-year-old and the mouth of a dockworker.

They moved through another wall, then ran down a stony corridor, this one made from the plain coarse stone that Silas was beginning to believe was the Sanctuary’s bones, the sections that had not yet been cast with any illusions. Each time they pushed through to yet another passageway, he held on to the frail hope that he might run straight into Pitch.

He bit at his cheek, trying not to imagine he may well be moving further and furtherawayfrom the daemon. Leaving the prince to fend off the Dullahan and whatever else the Morrigan had in store for him on his own. A wretched notion that made Silas feel ill.