Torment

by Douglas Hill

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Having succeeded in defeating the deadly Mr Redman, Nick and April are left alone with the knowledge that their only friends, Paddy and Julia, may be dead as a result. But as time passes April, whose psychic powers are increasing, begins to sense that they are still alive. So begins a journey in search of their friends. A journey for which even stronger magic is required. And a journey which takes them into a terrifying nether world where soulless beings walk a never ending path of mist and sorrow. And if they find their friends . . . what then? Even with the help of creepy skeletal Bertrand do they have the slightest hope of escaping the path and returning home? Or are they too doomed to be swallowed by the mists and lost to the mortal world forever . . ?

Release date: July 31, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

He was just a bundle of rags huddled against a wall. I barely glanced at him.

But then, by chance, I had a glimpse of him turning to watch me. And smiling. A smile full of malice and cruelty and evil triumph.

I’d seen that smile before.

And I knew that all the terror was about to start again.

I’d been hurrying along a busy street in the northern part of the city, through a dank early-December afternoon. It wasn’t easy to hurry, since the pre-Christmas spending craziness was well under way and the pavements were packed with slow-moving shoppers. Window shoppers, mostly. I’ve noticed that most of the actual spending at that early stage isn’t on gifts so much as on stocks of booze, to kick-start the ho-ho Christmas cheer.

Christmas is really for kids, I think, since they can be naturally cheerful. If they’re lucky. But if they’re not …

I had never got – or given – a Christmas present in my life.

My boozy mother spent what money she had in pubs, and probably never even knew when the season came around. After she died I was on my own, a homeless kid on the streets, surviving on the fringes of what people call normal life. Getting gifts was as alien to me as learning Martian.

But that Christmas was different. I’d been out during the day doing odd jobs for stallholders I vaguely knew in a street market. Earning a bit of cash, not just for food but maybe, for once, for a present.

For the friend who’d come into my life, putting an end to loneliness. For April.

She was working too, in the kitchen of a side-street cafe. There are always people who’ll pretend to believe that we’re over sixteen and give us work, because we can’t complain when they pay us badly.

In fact April is probably around fourteen, though she doesn’t know for sure. And I’m fourteen too – which I definitely know.

I’ve been fourteen for years.

We had just got back to the city a few days earlier. We’d been in the depths of the country – not by choice – and coming back had taken a while. You don’t travel quickly when you have no money.

And though April probably could have taken all the cash out of any bank without getting caught, she flatly refused to steal anything, ever.

You don’t live well, either, when your pockets are empty. We hadn’t gone to any of the city’s charity shelters, since they would have separated us. So we ended up squatting in a derelict house full of damp and mould and mice and probably a few rats. But we didn’t plan to stay there for long, and both of us had known worse.

‘It’s better than sleeping in doorways,’ April had said when we found the place.

She’d lived on the streets too, not as long as me but long enough.

‘Probably,’ I’d said. ‘Though some place warmer would be good.’

She’d laughed. ‘A room at the Ritz?’ But then her big hazel eyes went serious. ‘At least this is safer than the streets, Nick. And it won’t be too cold.’

She was right, of course. Though she might feel differently after a heavy frost or two in the depths of winter. I couldn’t ever get sick, but she could.

So I was weaving through the crowds that afternoon, jingling newly earned cash in my pocket, wondering if we could afford a cheap youth hostel for a night or two – not long enough to draw attention to ourselves or start anyone asking questions. I was also wondering if we should get curry or Chinese for supper.

And when I first glanced at the ragged beggar on the corner, I thought idly that he’d be jingling some cash too. He was doing well, plenty of coins bouncing into the greasy cap on the pavement by his feet.

I suppose people dropped their Christmas-kindly coins because they felt sorry for him. He was thin and hunched and grubby, with dirty white hair straggling down to his shoulders. And he was standing with the help of rickety, old-fashioned wooden crutches, and metal braces on his lower legs.

I didn’t expect him even to look at me. Beggars don’t ask street kids for spare change. But as I got past him and stopped at the kerb, waiting for a break in the traffic, I saw his reflection in the wing mirror of a parked van.

He had straightened up, on his crutches, and was staring after me. With that evil, gleeful, giveaway smile.

The last time I’d seen that smile, it had been on the bony face of a sadistic sorcerer named Fray, who was having fun slicing and dicing my flesh with more magical flying knives than I could count.

I didn’t look around or give any sign that I’d spotted him. I just dodged past the big van, so I was hidden from him, and drew from its sheath at my hip the knife that no ordinary person can see.

Its double-edged blade was tinged with bright gold. The glow probably would have been brighter if I was closer to the beggar. But it was confirmation enough that I was right about him.

I dashed across the street, dodging cars, getting a few angry honks and shouts from the drivers. But snarling at myself instead of them.

Not so long before, I’d had a chance to put an end to Fray, to finish him off when he was already half dead. But I hadn’t been able to kill him in cold blood. Anyway, I’d been sure that he was going to manage to die all by himself.

Bad mistake. He was alive. And in one piece – because, with his powers, the crutches and leg braces had to be part of the beggar disguise. And he’d come looking for April and me.

On our way to the city, April and I had travelled in blissful peace, meeting no dangers at all. In that quiet time we guessed that our enemies were busy clearing up and reorganizing after what we’d done. And we aimed to keep our heads down and make the lull last as long as possible.

But now, a lot sooner than we’d hoped, we were being stalked again.

So no more mistakes, I told myself. And we wouldn’t be just running, as I’d done so often before. There didn’t seem much point in running, anyway, from an evilly powerful sorcerer who had located me in one of the world’s most crowded cities.

But also, things were different now. April and I together could keep ourselves safer than I’d ever managed on my own. And maybe, I thought, we might even find a way to deal with Fray if – when – he came after us.

Turn and stalk the stalker, I said to myself. I’d done that before too.

The knife’s glow soon shifted back to its usual silver as I put distance between myself and my enemy. But I kept it in my hand anyway, so I could check its blade as I raced through alleys and along backstreets. It was a slightly longer route, but I moved faster once I got away from the crowded shopping streets. And it was mazy enough to slow down anyone trying to track me.

All along the way the knife stayed silvery and I saw no one and nothing that looked suspicious. So I’d started to relax a little by the time I reached the house.

It was in a short terrace, most of it looking ready to fall down even though some buildings still seemed to be occupied. The place we were staying had a damaged roof and boarded-up windows, but the main room on the ground floor was more or less intact. At least it kept out the wind and rain, if not the cold.

April was there before me – small and slim in jeans and a charity-shop fleece, her long, glossy chestnut hair the brightest thing in the room.

But she was standing stiffly against the peeling plaster of one wall, looking tense and troubled.

Because we had visitors. Not invited, and not welcome.

Three older boys, probably in their late teens. Hooded jackets, jeans, heavy boots, shaved heads that looked like lumpy doorknobs with ears.

The one looming in front of April was the biggest and ugliest, with a spotty, meaty face and blunt features crammed into the middle of it. He was even uglier just then, twisting his face to look threatening. His mates, one tall and bony and the other tall and porky, were grinning as their leader snarled at April.

Three big louts menacing one small girl. It wasn’t fair.

They had no idea how unfair.

‘You gotta have a phone,’ the big one was saying as I stepped into the room. ‘Everybody’s got one. Maybe we’ll jus’ take them jeans offa you, check the pockets …’

Then it registered, a bit late, that someone had come in behind them. They all turned, but when they saw me they relaxed.

‘Who’s this, then, yer boyfriend?’ the big one said to April. ‘Come to save you, has he?’

The other two chortled, watching eagerly as he stamped towards me. I sheathed the knife, since I don’t use it against ordinary people, and waited. Unnoticed by the thugs, April stepped away from the wall, raising one small closed fist and giving me a meaningful look.

I’m no mind reader, but we knew each other pretty well by then. I was fairly sure I knew what she meant.

‘You better have a phone, or somethin’ worth takin’,’ the big one growled as he reached out a beefy hand towards me.

I slid aside, dodging the hand. Then I hit him.

It wasn’t a punch, more like a sweeping backhand smack. I was shorter and a lot lighter than him, and I knew that even my best punch, let alone a slap, would barely make him blink.

But I also thought I knew what was going to happen. And I was right.

As my hand whacked against the thug’s heavy jaw, he was violently flung across the room towards one of the boarded-up windows. Smashing through the boards, ripping them away from the window frame, he crashed heavily down on to the pavement outside in a shower of splinters.

The other two went white, frozen for an instant with wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock. Then as I took a step towards them, hands raised, they whirled and scrambled wildly for the door. I heard their terrified gabble outside as they dragged their stunned leader away as fast as they could.

I turned to April, laughing quietly. I’d laughed more in the few weeks with her than in the whole of my life before.

‘You came in at the right time,’ she said. ‘They followed me from the bus – and I was worried about using PK too openly.’

‘So you made me look like a kung-fu master instead,’ I said.

‘It should make them think,’ April said, ‘before they go robbing other kids.’

They’d probably start robbing old ladies instead, I thought, but I didn’t say so. ‘I wish you hadn’t broken the window though,’ I said, teasing. ‘Now it’ll be even colder in here.’

‘I’ll fix it after dark,’ she said, ‘when no one can see.’

She didn’t mean night-time DIY. She would put new boards back on the window in the same way that she had flung the thug through it. Magically.

But not with what mages call the ‘higher’ magic, using spells and power objects and all that. April’s magic was psychic – mental powers like ESP, psychokinesis – or PK – moving things with the mind and so on.

She was probably the most powerful psychic I’d ever met or heard about. Not a good choice of victim for muggers.

‘We could use the broken boards to make a little fire,’ she went on, ‘if we could find a metal bucket or something to make it in.’

As long as we keep it well hidden,’ I said, getting serious. ‘And ourselves. Because I just ran into someone we know … Mr Fray.’

She went pale and tense, as I knew she would. And with the December twilight gathering spookily around us, we perched on the old mattresses that were the half-ruined room’s only furniture and talked about what to do.

It wasn’t only Fray’s reappearance that worried us. He was high up in an evil organization of sorcerers, which a friend once said was like a magical Mafia. They called themselves the Cartel, and they were devoted to crime, power-seeking and vileness of every sort.

And at least some of them were devoted to finding A. . .