Lord Loss. Darren Shan
gave me the Tottenham kit. We fight all the time, but I love her deep down. And not that deep either.
I’m not going to leave her alone with Mum and Dad to face whatever trouble they’re in. Like I told myself earlier — we’re a family. Dad’s always said families should pull together and fight as a team. I want to be part of this — even though I don’t know what ‘this’ is, even though Mum and Dad did all they could to keep me out of ‘this’, even though ‘this’ terrifies me senseless.
The landing. Not as cold as downstairs. I try my bedroom, then Gret’s. Empty. Very warm. The chess pieces on Gret’s board are also missing. Mine haven’t been taken, but they lie scattered on the floor and my board has been smashed to splinters.
I edge closer to Mum and Dad’s room. I’ve known all along that this is where they must be. Delaying the moment of truth. Gret likes to call me a coward when she wants to hurt me. Big as I am, I’ve always gone out of my way to avoid fights. I used to think (fear) she might be right. Each step I take towards my parents’ bedroom proves to my surprise that she was wrong.
The door feels red hot, as though a fire is burning behind it. I press an ear to the wood — if I hear the crackle of flames, I’ll race straight to the phone and dial 999. But there’s no crackle. No smoke. Just deep, heavy breathing… and a curious dripping sound.
My hand’s on the door knob. My fingers won’t move. I keep my ear pressed to the wood, waiting… praying. A tear trickles from my left eye. It dries on my cheek from the heat.
Inside the room, somebody giggles — low, throaty, sadistic. Not Mum, Dad or Gret. There’s a ripping sound, followed by snaps and crunches.
My hand turns.
The door opens.
Hell is revealed.
DEMONS
→ Blood everywhere. Nightmarish splashes and gory pools. Wild streaks across the floor and walls.
Except the walls aren’t walls. I’m surrounded on all four sides by webs. Millions of strands, thicker than my arm, some connecting in orderly designs, others running chaotically apart. Many of the strands are stained with blood. Behind the layer of webs, more layers — banks of them stretching back as far as I can see. Infinite.
My eyes snap from the walls. I make quick, mental thumbnails of other details. Numb. Functioning like a machine.
The dripping sound — a body hanging upside down from the webby ceiling in the centre of the room. No head. Blood drops to the floor from the gaping red O of the neck. Even without the head, I recognise him.
“DAD!” I scream, and the cry almost rips my vocal chords apart.
To my left, an obscene creature spins round and snarls. It has the body of a very large dog, the head of a crocodile. Beneath it, motionless — Mum. Or what’s left of her.
A dreadful howl to my right. Gret! Sitting on the floor, staring at me, weaving sideways, her face white, except where it’s smeared with blood. I start to call to her. She half-turns and I realise that she’s been split in two. Something’s behind her, in the cavity at the back, moving her like a hand-puppet.
The ‘something’ pushes Gret away. It’s a child, but no child of this world. It has the body of a three-year-old, with a head much larger than any normal person’s. Pale green skin. No eyes — a small ball of fire flickers in each of its empty sockets. No hair — yet its head is alive with movement. As the hell-child advances, I see that the objects are cockroaches. Living. Feeding on its rotten flesh.
The crocodile-dog moves away from Mum and also closes in on me, exchanging glances with the monstrous child, who’s narrowing the gap.
I can’t move. Fear has seized me completely. I look from Mum to Dad to Gret. All red. All dead.
Impossible! This isn’t happening! A bad dream — it must be!
But even in my very worst nightmare, I never imagined anything like this. I know that it’s real, simply because it’s too awful not to be.
The creatures are almost upon me. The croc-dog growls hungrily. The hell-child grins ghoulishly and raises its hands — there are mouths in both its palms, small, full of sharp teeth. No tongues.
“Oh dear,” someone says, and the creatures stop within spitting distance. “What have we here?”
A man slides out from behind a clump of webby strands. Thin. Pale red skin, misshapen, lumpy, as though made out of coloured dough. His hands are mangled, bones sticking out of the skin, one finger melting into another. Bald. Strange eyes — no white, just a dark red iris and an even darker pupil. There’s a gaping, jagged hole in the left side of his chest. I can look clean through it. Inside the hole — snakes. Dozens of tiny, hissing, coiled serpents, with long curved fangs.
The hell-child shrieks and reaches towards me. The teeth in its small mouths are eagerly snapping open and shut.
“Stop, Artery,” the man — the monster – says commandingly, and steps towards me. No… he doesn’t step… he glides. He has no feet. The lumpy flesh of his lower legs ends in sharp strips which don’t touch the floor. He’s hovering in the air.
The croc-dog barks savagely, its reptilian eyes alive with hunger and hate.
“Hold, Vein,” the monster orders. He advances to within touching distance of me. Stops and studies me with his unnatural red eyes. He has a small mouth. White lips. He looks sad — the saddest creature I’ve ever seen.
“You are Grubitsch,” he says morosely. “The last of the Gradys. You should not be here. Your parents wished to spare you this heartache. Why did you come?”
I can’t answer. My body isn’t my own, except my eyes, which don’t stop roaming and analysing, even though I want them to — easier to shut off completely and black everything out.
The hell-child makes a guttural sound and reaches for me again.
“Disobey me at your peril, Artery,” the monster says softly. The barbaric baby drops its hands and shuffles backwards, the fire in its eyes dimming. The croc-dog retreats too. Both keep their sights on me.
“Such sadness,” the monster sighs, and there’s genuine pity in his tone. “Parents — dead. Sister — dead. All alone in the world. Face to face with demons. No idea who we are or why we’re here.” He pauses and doubt crosses his expression. “You don’t know, do you, Grubitsch? Nobody ever explained, or told you the story of lonely Lord Loss?”
I still can’t answer, but he reads the ignorance in my eyes and smiles thinly, painfully. “I thought not,” he says. “They sought to protect you from the cruelties of the world. Good, loving parents. You’ll miss them, Grubitsch — but not for long.” The creatures to my left and right make sick, chuckling sounds. “Your sorrow shall be short-lived. Within minutes I’ll set my familiars upon you and all will soon finish. There will be pain — great pain — but then the total peace of the beyond. Death will come as a blessing, Grubitsch. You will welcome it in the end — as your parents and sister did.”
The monster drifts around me. I realise he has no nose, just two large holes above his upper lip. He sniffs as he passes, and I somehow understand that he’s smelling my fear.
“Poor Grubitsch,” he murmurs, stopping in front of me again. This close, I can see that his red skin is broken by tiny cracks, seeping with drops of blood. I also notice several appendages beneath his arms — three on either side, folded around his stomach. They look like thin, extra arms, though they might just be oddly moulded layers of flesh.
“Wh-wh… what… are… you?” I moan, forcing the words out between my chattering teeth.
“The beginning and end of your greatest sorrows,” the monster replies. He says it plainly — not a boast.
“Mu-Mum?” I gasp. “Dad? Gr-Gr… Gr…”