6. THE BROTHER OF DEATH
With my schoolbag slung over my shoulder, I trotted down the pink marble staircase that descended from the foyer to the lower ground floor of the library. I was about half an hour late, and hoped Mr Seth hadn't given up on me. He didn't strike me as the most patient of men.
I needed answers urgently: about Dad, about my blood-splattered calculator, about the rat-lizard-bird creature and bugs that had wrecked Mark's party, and about what on earth was going on in Quakehaven. I prayed Mr Seth was still waiting there. The idea of traipsing out to Blakes Road and rapping on the butcher's door filled me with dread.
Opening the library door, I went inside, scrunching my eyes shut to ward off the sudden brightness. The main room was lit like a kebab shop. The walls were lurid: hot pink and yellow. In wild bursts, recycled air wheezed from vents installed in each of the three walls, like a circle of asthmatics blowing up balloons for a birthday. A virulent green door on the far wall was closed, cutting off the study room.
Fire extinguishers were attached to the end of each row of books, a precaution insisted on by Aunt Bea and the rest of the Council. Twenty-six years ago, an electrical fire had ripped through the grand buildings of Main Street, and gutted the original library. Since the fire, the Town Hall's basement had functioned as Quakehaven's 'temporary' library and, decades later, there were no plans to build a permanent one.
The green door crashed open. Mr Seth's wrinkled orange head and neck popped out, his black eyes glowering. "Here, lad!" he called, looking from side to side like a bank-robber scanning for his tardy getaway car. "Over here. Quick now!"
"I'm not a dog," I said, then obeyed his command anyway. Mr Seth's tangerine face and glossy black mane disappeared back into the study room. I followed it, easing the door shut behind me.
In contrast to the main library, the study room was dimly lit and dank. The walls were the faded beige of old stockings and the room reeked of moulding paper.
There were two other people in the room: Mrs Carruthers, who worked part time as a library volunteer and seemed to be enjoying a long tea break, and another old woman I had never seen before. Both ladies were swaddled in black and sat at the large, square pinewood table in the middle of the room, poring over thick paperbacks of crossword puzzles. At the front of the room stood Mr Seth, his back to an old overhead projector screen. He tapped his right foot impatiently like an ancient tap dancer.
"About time, lad," barked Mr Seth, not looking at me, but instead at the cross-word crones. In his pin-striped suit and silver bow tie, he looked like a croupier from a black-and-white film set in a European Casino. His black hair was parted severely in the centre and swept back with dollops of gel or bryl cream. His dapper look was marred by a scowl.
"I couldn't help being late," I said, and told him about the animal attack on Mark. Mr Lyons had kept the whole school cooped up in the assembly hall while a vet with a tranquiliser gun searched for the culprit. It was 4.30 pm before the frustrated vet confirmed that the coast was clear and Mr Lyons let us go.
"Did they find the beast?" said Mr Seth, smirking. "Did they track down the beast that savaged the boy?"
"No," I said. "And you know as well as I do that they won't find it."
"Really?" said Mr Seth, wiggling his eyebrows in mock surprise. "And why is that?"
I flung my schoolbag down. Mrs Carruthers looked up from her crossword puzzle, disapprovingly. "Because," I said, stooping down to unzip the bag and pulling out the small black box. "This is what attacked Mark. This thing you gave me."
"What makes you think I gave it to you?" asked Mr Seth.
"Who else knew about what happened to my old calculator?" My exasperation made me shout. Mrs Carruthers and her friend both tut-tutted.
"You mustn't jump to conclusions without studying the evidence, Patrick. That's a calculator in your hand. Not a wild creature. The only things it attacks are fractions and calculus."
"Stop treating me like a baby," I wailed. Mrs Carruthers' put her finger to her quivering lips to hush me. Mr Seth waved at her, shrugged his shoulders and winked as if to say: "kids of today, hey?”
Mrs Carruthers beamed back. She batted her eyes at Mr Seth like a teenage girl, then lowered her head, coyly.
"She's an old married woman, Mr Seth," I whispered, horrified.
"Widowed, I believe," he replied, his smile fixed on the coquettish hag. Her friend elbowed Mrs Carruthers' ribs and whispered something that triggered a riotous giggle-cackle from both ladies. I shuddered.
"Pay attention to me," I whined. It was like the old man had attention deficit disorder. "I broke my calculator at your shop. Then I went home, and looked under the trunk in Mum's room, just like you told me to."
"So easily led," Mr Seth said, shaking his head. "If I asked you to base-jump from a bridge without a parachute, would you? How dangerous to just launch yourself on an underground adventure without equipment. And at night! You could have drowned in a flash flood or hit your head and fallen unconscious. How reckless!"
"I blacked out," I admitted. "After the lights went off. The second trunk. The ladder cut my feet. Then it was the next morning, and I found this on my window sill." I brandished the calculator like a gun. "This thing you gave me - and don't deny it - bit my friend."
"This plastic case?" asked Mr Seth dubiously. "Did you see it bite?"
I paused and said: "No. I was in the bathroom when it happened. My friend -"
Mr Seth frowned, his dapperness buried under an avalanche of saggy-baggy wrinkles. I was suddenly a bit frightened. "Your friend? The boy bitten, you mean?"
"No," I said. "Another." Without knowing why, I was nervous for Joke. "Says he saw something, but not much," I lied. "Just a blur of movement and then the blood."
Mr Seth glowered at me for a moment, but I held his gaze, my legs stiff with nerves. He swivelled back to the whiteboard.
"What's going on?" I asked, trying not to wheedle. "Something's wrong, but I don't know what or why it involves me, or Dad. This is freaking me out."
"And so it should," Mr Seth murmured. "Something is very wrong, Patrick. And you seem to be the only one with enough sense to have picked up on it. This town is dying from the inside like an old oak."
"The Beltway?" I asked. "Plenty of people are trying to stop that."
"Quakehaven has far bigger problems than a ring road, Patrick. And I don't know if we have the time, or firepower, to save it."
I tapped the calculator. "Does this thing have anything to do with it?"
"No," said Mr Seth, as he scrolled the base of the projector screen with his palms like a rolling pin. "This thing, as you call him, is here to protect you."
"From what?" I asked, then gaped as the projector screen furled with a bang, revealing a shiny white board covered with tiny black scribbles. Mrs Carruthers gasped, her face white from jolt of sudden noise. Her friend did not react, and I realised she was deaf. Mr Seth mouthed 'sorry' at Mrs Carruthers and she nodded graciously and went back again to her puzzle.
"Let's begin, lad," said Mr Seth, poking the top left of the board with his index finger. "Listen carefully. You'll need a pad and pen. Schoolboys still carry those in their bags, I trust."
I nodded then, realising he had his back to me, said: "Yes."
"Good," said Mr Seth. "There'll be no time for revision. Pay heed to what I'm about to say. Your family's safety depends on it."