Wailing, the lunar bear staggered forward. Looking up into its face, Zach could see two large wounds in the creature’s chest. Its white fur now spattered crimson with blood.
Numb, Zach looked up at the creature as it began to topple towards him, like a tree that had just been felled. Everything seemed to slow, as if time had stopped. The bear swayed, and then came crashing down on top of him.
Just as the lunar bear’s hot foul breath caressed his cheek like a kiss; Neanna was sweeping Zach away in her arms. The creature’s head thudded into the ground, and its skull made a sickening-crack as it hit the forest floor. Its huge head came to rest inches from where Zach was now standing with Neanna.
Holding the smoking crossbows, Zach looked down into the lunar bear’s eyes. The beast released a deep, rasping sigh, like a tube train rattling from a tunnel. Then fell still. William and Warden, led by Wasp joined Zach by the bear. For what seemed like forever, the four of them stood without speaking.
‘I’ve never killed an animal before,’ Zach said, breaking the silence.
‘It would’ve killed us all if you hadn’t,’ Neanna said.
‘We were all in danger,’ Warden boomed. ‘You did well.’
‘And besides,’ William said, ‘you’ve just caught us supper!’
Holstering his crossbows, Zach headed back towards the fire.
Chapter 9
Glancing back over his shoulder, his doorway closed with such force, Fandel’s teeth rattled in their wrinkled gums. He watched as the door folded in on itself like a piece of paper. It collapsed in half and then into quarters, then vanished altogether.
The flames from the torches which lined the corridor walls flickered, and for a moment everything went dark. Fandel didn’t mind the dark, in fact he preferred it. The corridor began to glow orange and red again as Fandel crept along it, casting long black shadows behind him as if he had wings.
This wasn’t the first time that Fandel had been through the doorways to Endra. He had visited many times before. The first trip had been by chance many years ago while studying at the Royal College of Medicine in London. He had been working late one night into the small-hours, trying to cram for a very important exam he was taking the following day.
Unlike his fellow students, Fandel had been left to study alone in the quietness of the college library. Creeping down in the dead of night, he would sit hunched over thick, leather-bound medical journals. His peers had long since gone back to their dormitories. Fandel had always struggled to make friends. Even as a boy he had been bullied and teased about his long legs and his gaunt, pale complexion.
‘Here comes the ghost!’ his classmates had often heckled.
‘It’s Spooky-Black,’ others would shout, making ghoulish sounds, chasing him across the school yard.
The day he realised how alone he was, Fandel had been surrounded by the rest of his class and been shoved to the ground. Wrapping his long legs and slender arms about himself, they emptied the contents of their half-eaten lunch boxes over him and beat him with their feet and fists.
‘Spooky! Spooky! Spooky!’ they had jeered as one.
Hiding his tears (he couldn’t bare them to see his pain), Fandel covered his eyes with his long bony fingers. Between every kick and punch he parted the first two fingers of his right hand and peered up to see who it was that dealt out this punishment. He needed to know who it was that delivered every kick and blow. He wanted to be able to remember their faces. Fandel wanted to make each of them pay one day.
‘Spooky! Spooky! Spooky!’ they mocked.
Glancing up between his fingers, Fandel scanned their jeering faces, and saw one like his – covered in tears. It was the face of his younger brother Edward, gazing down at him, jostled to and fro between the older boys.
Looking shocked and confused, but most of all frightened at seeing his older brother being treated in such a cruel way, Edward continued to cry. Fandel stared at his younger brother and their eyes locked. In them Fandel could see fear and his brother’s shame. It was that look of shame, which hurt Fandel the most. It wasn’t the chants of “Spooky” or the kicks and the punches; it was that look of embarrassment in his little brother’s eyes that hurt the most.
Wasn’t an older brother meant to be stronger and powerful – the protector and role model, and yet here he was, rolled up into a defenseless ball, humiliated and demoralised by the rest of his classmates.
Removing his hands from his face, Fandel looked at them. He stared up through his tear-drenched eyes and he hated them. He hated all of them, but most of all he hated Edward for looking at him in that way. He hated Edward for seeing him like this.
Then they stopped. His classmates had either grown tired or bored with their attack, but whichever it was they scooped up their school bags, ties and jumpers and sauntered back across the schoolyard where they began a game of football. Just one stayed, his little arms swinging against his trouser pockets and his perfect, round face smeared with tears.
‘I hate you!’ Fandel hissed, pulling himself up and brushing the dirt from his school uniform. ‘Stop looking at me like that!’
Watching his older brother straighten his tie and blazer, Edward continued to sob.
‘I’ll show you!’ Fandel cried. ‘I’ll show all of you that I’m not the weakling you think I am. One day I’ll be more powerful then you could ever believe!’
Edward just stood and sniffed, confused that his big brother Fandel could hate him. After all he hadn’t called him names; he hadn’t kicked and punched him. Edward had just wanted to help him but was too small.
Snatching up his bag and looking back at Edward, Fandel said just above a whisper, ‘if you want spooky, I’ll show you spooky!’ He then walked away.
If Fandel had been a loner before, he became a complete recluse after this incident. Spending hours locked away in his bedroom with his head buried between the pages of science manuals. There were also the books he kept hidden away under the mattress and in a secret shoebox at the back of his wardrobe. These were the books he didn’t want anyone to see, the books that spoke of dark things. These were the books that taught the secrets of the Demonic Arts. They had titles like ‘The Eternal Wisdom’, ‘The Satanic Formula’ and ‘The Spirit Guide’. Each of these books had been bound in a black, leathery-type material that felt cold and waxen to the touch…like the skin of a corpse.
Fandel hadn’t ordered these through the library. He hadn’t come across them buried beneath piles of yellow-stained newspapers in the second-hand bookshops he frequented. They had been left just outside his bedroom door; stacked in neat little bundles and tied together with tangled lengths of hair.
Fandel had no idea who had left these for him and why, and he wouldn’t find out for several more years. Not until he was studying alone one night to be a doctor, bent over his medical books in the quiet of the college library.
The bang had been so sudden and violent that Fandel had jumped from his seat scattering his revision notes into the air. He watched as they see-sawed to the library floor. Bending at the waist he reached over with his long arms and gathered his notes together. His handwriting was messy and readable only to him. The words were written in black ink that spiraled and looped across the pages, as if a spider had dipped its feet in an inkwell and then raced across his work.
Gathering the last of the pages together, Fandel heard another bang. This time it was quieter and was followed by another and then another. Placing his work on the table he called out, ‘hello. Is anybody there?’
He waited in the stillness of the library but there was no answer apart from the constant banging. Creeping around the edge of the table, Fandel followed the sound. It seemed to be coming from between two rows of shelves that were crammed with books from top to bottom. Making his way towards the end of the row of books, Fandel peered down the aisle. Narrowing his dark, beady-eyes, he looked with curiosity at the door which stood in the middle of the aisle between the two rows of bookshelves.
The door didn’t seem to be attached to anything. There was no frame or hinges, yet it swung open and closed, and this was the source of the banging sound.
Glancing back over his shoulder at the table where he had been working moments ago, Fandel could see his paperwork scattered across the table beneath the glow of the lamp.
‘Hello!’ Fandel called out again. ‘If this is some kinda joke then I’m not laughing!’ Again he was met by silence and the bang, bang, bang of the door opening and closing.
Fandel turned back to face the door. It was tall and black and looked to have been made from iron. In its centre was a doorknob which had been fashioned to look like a clenched fist. He glanced back over his shoulder one last time, just to make sure that this wasn’t some elaborate hoax concocted by his fellow students to get a big laugh at his expense. Without further hesitation, Fandel walked towards the opening and closing doorway.
As he drew nearer, the door handle appeared to change shape. When he was close enough, Fandel saw that it wasn’t changing shape at all. The closed fist was opening and stretching out its black fingers.
Within touching distance of the door, Fandel paused. The hand closed again leaving its forefinger sticking out. Curling like a question mark, the finger began to beckon him forward. Doing as it suggested, Fandel moved nearer, all the time keeping his eyes fixed on the door handle. When he was millimeters away, the doorway swung open.
On the other side of this door stood a shrouded figure. The cloth that covered this figure from head to toe looked thin and almost lucid. It twitched and shifted in the wind that howled on the other side of the doorway. Something seemed to scuttle across its odd looking surface and disappear into the folds of the shroud. Screwing up his eyes to get a better look at whatever it was that had scuttled across the figures robes, Fandel saw it was similar to a spider with a hard, turquoise shell and had as many legs as a centipede. It raced across the fabric and disappeared again. Then Fandel saw another and another and another and another. There were hundreds of them, no, thousands of them. Each one of these insect-like creatures was spinning and weaving a complex cloak about the figure.