Read Online Thirteen Days of Midnight by Leo Hunt - Free Book Online Page B

it seems like Dad was keeping her in the dark about a lot of stuff.
    I decide to take Ham for a walk across the fields behind our house. The hedges shiver in the wind. Ham trots around, sniffing the damp earth. Other than seagulls squabbling above a newly sloughed field, we don’t see anyone, alive or dead.
    I spend the afternoon alone. My secrets are multiplying. The world as I understood it to exist last night is no longer relevant. There is an afterlife. I don’t have to take it on faith: I know. Mark texts me, reminding me about practice. I ignore it. I’m going to work even harder on pretending to be normal, but I don’t know how right now. I watch TV, play with Ham. Mum stays in bed. The Judge and the Vassal don’t come back, and I make my own supper.
    In the evening I’m doing my homework and hear someone screaming.
    As I push the bedroom door open, meat skewer in hand, it occurs to me that this has something to do with the ghosts and there’s probably nothing I can hit with a weapon anyway.
    The screams are louder now. They’re definitely male, so they’re not coming from Mum. The screamer gasps, shouts indistinguishable words, screams some more. Standing in the corridor outside my room, looking at the landing, I see something strange. There’s a source of very bright light at the bottom of the stairs. Deep yellows and oranges pouring up from the hallway, casting huge flickering shadows around the darkened landing.
    “Hello?”
    I’m answered by more shrieks. I’m poised to take the stairs two at a time, then stop.
    Standing in my hallway is a blackened human skeleton cloaked in flame. Scraps of flesh and hair are still clinging to the bones. There are stringy globs of fat dripping down the skeleton’s ribs and legs, pooling on the floor. The skeleton turns and looks at me, raising its arms up into the air. The blackened jaw falls open and fire streams around the thing’s head.
    “Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum!”
    “Who are you?”
    “Adveniat regnum tuum!”
shouts the thing. The jaw swings open and shut dramatically as it shouts, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The thing is grotesque but not exactly frightening. There’s something dismayed-looking about its posture, like it’s as confused as I am.
    “Are you always on fire?” I ask.
    The skeleton bellows with pain, the noise reverberates throughout the house. Ham starts to bark in the kitchen.
    “Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra! Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris!”
the ghost shouts, jaw flapping madly.
    “I’m six feet away from you. I can hear you fine.”
    “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo!”
    “What do you want?”
    “Pater noster, qui es in caelis! Sanctificetur nomen tuum! Adveniat regnum tuum!”
    Ham is still barking, throwing himself against the kitchen door. I have double chemistry tomorrow morning. This isn’t what I want to be dealing with. The ghost starts to walk up the stairs toward me, hobbling on charred stubs.
    “Sometimes one needs a classic ghost in the retinue,” says a voice from the landing behind me. “For old times’ sake. It’s tradition. You need a screaming skeleton in your collection if you wish to hold your head up in the company of accomplished necromancers.”
    “Thanks for warning me about this,” I say, waving my hand at the skeleton. The Vassal raises one thin eyebrow, tugs at his cravat.
    “The Heretic is . . . tiresome, I must admit. He’s the eldest of all the Host. He’s forgotten everything, even their reason for burning him.”
    “So all he does is scream?”
    “He can recite several prayers in Latin. It seems to be all he managed to retain.”
    “Awesome.”
    “His animus is badly corroded. He was bound by several necromancers before your father. There is power in old spirits, but a long binding dissolves their reason.”
    I can see the