shaking.
“My hero,” said Melody.
“You have no idea how close to the wire that came,” said Happy. “It feels like my brains are leaking out my ears.”
“What makes you think you have any?” said Melody.
Happy glared at her. “Everyone’s got ears! I think I’d like to go home and lie down now, please!”
“Later, lover,” said Melody. “I’m a bit busy right now.”
The Black Dogges were still circling, still closing in relentlessly. JC turned to the old man.
“Talk to me, Mr. Tiley. Tell me the legend of the Black Dogges. The stories everyone tells. Including the not- at-all-nice bits you don’t normally admit to in front of strangers.”
“It goes back years,” Tiley said slowly. “Long before there ever was a factory here. On this place, back in the eighteenth century, there used to be an old manor house. The Winter family lived in that house and owned most of the land around. There was a quarrel, so they say, between the landed gentry Winters and a local working family, the Tileys. A quarrel, over a woman. A rape, they say, though most of the names and details are lost to us.”
“I never heard any of this,” said Susan. “You never told me any of this before, Gramps. Mum and Dad never said anything…”
“It was an old story,” said Tiley. “You didn’t need to be burdened with it. Sometimes, the past should stay in the past, so the rest of us can get on with our lives.”
“The story,” prompted JC. “The quarrel between the Winters and the Tileys. What came of it?”
“No justice then, for poor working folk,” said Graham. “No law, for poor black folks. So the head of the Tiley family at that time, he used the old knowledge to curse the Winters. He used the old forbidden words, and the Black Dogges came, to harass and hound the Winters to their deaths. Don’t ask me what kind of curse; that part of the story is long lost. Perhaps deliberately lost. The Dogges bedevilled the Winter family, and even people connected to the Winters. The Dogges followed people down lonely roads, late at night, speaking prophecy, always bad, always true. Other times, they chased men and women till they fell, then tore them apart. They came and went, and no- one could stand against them.
“They travelled the whole district, making the Winters’ life a misery, until finally the family left the house, and the area, and spread themselves across the country. The Dogges couldn’t follow, they were bound to the place of their summoning. But with no Winter left to torment, they appeared less and less, and finally vanished. The story continued, as stories do, changing down the centuries till the original details were forgotten. But we remembered. We Tileys. The manor house was torn down. The factory came much later, still owned by the Winters, from a distance.
“There were still sightings of Black Dogges, or stories of sightings, but no-one really believed in them any more. A different world, now. And then… he came back. The fool. Albert Winter. He was going to sell the land the factory stood on, but he wanted to see it for himself first. I wrote to him, telling him not to come, but of course I couldn’t say why, only that it was dangerous… So he came back. To where his old family home used to stand. And the Dogges came back.
“They woke up, they rose up, and they chased him till he died of it.”
“Oh, Gramps,” said Susan. “You should have told me.”
“I should never have brought you here, child,” said Tiley. “But I never really believed, till now… I believed in the Clear White Light.”
“You should have told me! It’s my family, too! I had a right to know!”
“I wanted to protect you! The curse should have died long ago. It shouldn’t still have a hold over the Winters, and the Tileys.”
JC moved away, to talk quietly with Kim. She was hovering a good foot above the floor, her shape so thin and insubstantial it was barely there, just a young woman made of flickering light. JC had to say her name several times before she finally turned her head to look at him.
“Kim,” said JC. “If the Dogges are still here, then the shade of Albert Winter must also still be here. Show him to me.”
Kim nodded, painfully slowly, then raised one hand and pointed. JC looked, and there was Albert Winter. Running, still running, fleeing desperately from the Black Dogges that still pursued him, and always would. Ghost Dogges chasing their ghostly victim, forever. He ran and ran, staggering and lurching, running endlessly round the perimeter of the factory, and behind came the Dogges. They pressed in close, hurting and harrying him, driving him on. Sometimes he fell, and the Dogges would savage him, tearing away chunks of ghostly flesh with ghostly jaws, leaving wounds that healed immediately, so the man could be forced to his feet to be chased again. They would chase him forever, in a hunt that would never end.
Some curses are worse than others.
Graham Tiley and his grand-daughter could see it, too, now. Tiley cried out at the sight of it and had to turn his head away. Susan hugged him to her, glaring defiantly at the Black Dogges around them.
“We have to stop this,” said JC. “The Past should stay in the Past
… Albert Winter, he’s the focal point! He’s why the Dogges manifested again. But to put him to rest, we have to stop the Dogges. Interrupt the curse. We have to save the ghost of Albert Winter!”
“I’d quite like to save us from the Dogges as well,” said Happy.
“Science can’t touch them,” said Melody. “I think the Dogges are older than Science. Or whatever these things were, before they were made into Dogges.”
JC looked at the old man. “You! Tiley! It’s your curse. Your family summoned up the Dogges, and your curse holds them here. Release Winter’s ghost from your curse, and the Dogges will be able to leave.”
“I can’t!” Tiley said miserably. His dark face was wet with tears. “I’d free him if I could, but I don’t know how! I don’t remember what words called them, no-one does any more.”
“Terrific,” said JC. “No, wait a minute… What did you say, Melody? Back before they were Dogges… They weren’t always like this! Whoever summoned them out of the Past imposed these shapes upon them! That’s the key!”
He strode right up to the nearest Black Dogge. It snarled at him, growling so low he felt it in his bones as much as heard it. Great lips pulled back to show savage teeth in powerful jaws. Claws on huge front paws dug deep into the concrete flow as the Dogge tensed, ready to spring. JC leaned forward and thrust his face right into the Dogge’s, meeting the blazing blood-red eyes with his own glowing gaze; and then he spoke sharply to the Dogge.
“Bad dog!”
It looked at him. Its jaw snapped shut, and its head came up. No-one had ever spoken to the Dogge like that before. It stared at JC, fascinated. The other Dogges stopped in their tracks to stare at JC. And the ghost of Albert Winter was finally able to stop running.
“Bad dog,” JC said firmly, holding the Black Dogge’s gaze with his own. “This is wrong! You were never meant to be like this. You are a dog, made to take the shape and form of a dog, and a dog was always meant to be man’s best friend. Some poor fool called you here and imposed this shape on you to follow the old stories; but revenge was never your true nature. You’re as cursed by this as your victims. But the man who summoned you here is long gone, and his need for revenge died with him. You don’t have to serve his anger any more. You don’t have to be like this, any more. You’re free to be… just dogs. Good dogs. Man’s best friend.”
And the Black Dogge sat down on its haunches and nodded its great head slowly. Inwardly, JC breathed a deep sigh of relief. He hadn’t been entirely sure that would work. In magic, the true naming of a thing is the true nature of that thing. And so Dogge became dog. JC gestured at Graham Tiley.
“That man there is a Tiley, descendant to the man who brought you here, and bound you in this form. He is ready to release you. Isn’t that right, Mr. Tiley?”
“Yes,” said Graham Tiley. “The past, with all its crimes and all its revenges, should stay in the past. You’re not needed here any more, so run free, noble dogs.”
The great dark shapes simply faded away, gone in a moment, gone back into the Past. The ghost of Albert Winter looked slowly about him.
“Go to him,” JC said to Tiley. “Forgive him. And then show him the way to leave, through the Clear White Light.”
“Of course,” said Tiley. “Maybe… he was the ghost I was looking for, all this time.”
