Magic Falls Part 30

Jack Whittaker stands quietly in front of the theatre crowd for a few moments, allowing them to quieten, and then begins to talk quietly.

“The question we all have, or at least that we should have now, is why is this happening here? Why is it happening in Britain?

“We’re a relatively small country, with a middling population. We’re cramped and we’re heavily populated for our size, but we don’t have anything on some other places. So why here?

“We’re a country with history, and nowhere more so than London. All these streets, when you walk them, have had hundreds and hundreds of years of history. There aren’t many cities like this. You walk down here and there has been so much death. So much history.”

He’s becoming more animated now, his hand waving about as he talks, before he runs it through his hair. 

“Do you ever wonder how many dead bodies this city is built on? You should. You should think about that. We reside on a bed of foundations made of death. When the black death happened and almost the entire city died, we stacked the bodies into the earth and we limestoned over them and we kept building and we kept living because this is London and that’s what happens.

“History seeps into the buildings. History seeps into the people. It’s impossible to walk around London and not be aware of the history. We walk through London’s streets like blood cells travelling down veins, keeping it alive.

“We’ve created monsters and legends. Here. “

He suddenly seems a little less sure of his ground, but as he continues talking, I realise it’s that he’s almost hesitant to move onto the next piece of subject matter. “Jack the Ripper butchered five women. Maybe more. Maybe less. He was never caught, and he became the most notorious serial killer the world has ever heard of.

“People who know their horror films and their grotesque histories may point to Ed Gein. May point to Elizabeth Bathory. May point to Charles Manson or John Wayne Gacy or Fred and Rose West or Ted Bundy or…” He sighs.

“It doesn’t matter. When it comes to the death and the slaughter of women, nobody has ever turned it into a mythology in quite the way that Jack the Ripper did.

“Because he was the first creation of the media, which has never found something that it could masturbate over quite like the death of young women. Journalists took a murderer who was unable to be caught and they turned him into a legend who wrote taunting letters to the police making clear that he would never be found.”

His face is ashen, and everyone can see just how much he believes what he’s saying. If he doesn’t, it’s remarkable stagemanship.

“They took a series of murders and they turned him into a sensation the likes of which the world had never seen before. They took the deaths of women, the butcher of them, and they made them romantic. The swirl of fog, the glint of a knife, a streak of crimson and a gentleman in a top hat and cape sweeps away through the night, delighting in his crime.

“For the first time, or at least the first time successfully, the media created its bastard child, and they called it Jack the Ripper, and everybody believed it, and everybody continues to believe it and everybody continues to want to know about it and learn about it and find out more about it. Do you have any idea how many books have been written about Jack the Ripper? And do you have any idea how many of them sell? That’s when the media discovered that it had that much power to not just report, but to create. To establish narrative and to make people believe that narrative.

“We prefer the story. Every time. London gets less snow than just about anywhere in the UK, did you know that? And yet the images of every Christmas are of a suddenly Victorian London covered in crisp fresh snow, because when Charles Dickens was a child, there was a cold spell, and he forever associated it with Christmas.

“That’s what belief is. It’s what we prefer to reality.

“And London thrives on this. Of course it does. It’s a cramped series of villages, with people who spend significant parts of their day under the ground, dreaming. It’s punctuated with buildings that do their best to reach to the heavens, corporate totems slamming into the sky.

“And as everybody knows, the streets of London are paved with gold.”

There’s a mild chuckle at this, although it feels more like those that are doing so are doing so because it feels like it should be a joke rather than actually is one.

“The capital of a small island on the coast of a continent that established an empire larger than the people that built the city in the first place. London is not the most likely place for anything to happen.  It isn’t the biggest. It isn’t the one with the most history.

“But it’s the city with the most belief. The most untargeted belief, as well. How many cultures has this city consumed? How many beliefs has this city fostered and fed on?

“This entire situation that is happening now is centred around belief.

“The world is changing. We’re talking to each other more and finding out more about each other and we’re stopping being scared of each other and we’re finding out more about who each other actually are. We have information at the tips of our fingers at all times.

“And we can disprove things faster than ever before.”

He smiles, back on more familiar ground of reaching out to elements that more people are likely to understand straight off the bat.

“How many people here work in offices? How many people use facebook? How many of you have seen those bloody irritating emails that people send around when they’ve fallen for another urban myth? Or a warning from the police about something that sounds just plausible enough to be real.

“How many of you believe that if you put your PIN into an ATM backwards, you alert the police that you’re being mugged? How many of you believe that jews were warned not to go into work in New York on September the eleventh in two thousand and one? How many of you believe that the police decide the best way to dispel information about murderers, gangs and rapists is by chain email?

“How often do you see these status updates and chain emails and either bite your lip or send a link to snopes.com and point out that they’re disseminating misinformation?”

There’s a more genuine laugh now, and a number of hands raised. After the intensity and length of what he’s been talking about, it’s a nice tension breaker to involve them again.

“We believe, as creatures. It’s something we’re almost hardwired to do. And this belief is swirling around, latching onto anything and everything to try to find a way to live.

“Perhaps.

“This is the crux of all of this. This is what I think is happening.

“All of this belief is turning into creation.

“And we need to understand that. We need to understand the implications of that. Especially when a sword and a stone rises in the centre of historical monarchy and democracy. Especially when it happens and for whatever reason, the authorities try to deny it. The easiest way to make people curious about what’s going on is to tell them they shouldn’t be looking, and they’ve done that with one of the most well known landmarks in the world.”

He turns in my direction, and gestures. The lights rise in the theatre, or at least they do in the front section of it, allowing the audience to better see each other.

“And now, I want to introduce you all to the man in the centre of all of this. The man who understands what is going on better than any of us.”

I begin to panic, but I don’t even have time to do that properly. He points right at me.

“Darren. It’s time for you to meet the Knights of Reason.”

Magic Falls Part Seventeen

“You….what?” I ask, totally off-guard.

“mercy we want mercy”

“I…who from? From me?”

“yes from you mercy from you we beg darrenoneill we beg for mercy”

They seem to now have completely shrunk in front of me. The two aspects of them that I could see earlier, the two perspectives, have now deadened. The glamour is no longer there, and now I just see some small, desperate fairies making brainwashed children dance.

There aren’t too many children. Five..no, six. But they’re crying and exhausted, all of them. And underweight visibly.

“Let them stop.” I say, feeling my own anger rising in my voice.

“we…i…we cannot for long we need them to – “

“LET THEM STOP!” I roar at them, lost in my own fury. “They’re children!  They’re exhausted! Let them stop, now!”

They hesitate again, but when I take a step towards them, they cower back.

“we stop them we stop them we stop them we do as you ask we stop them”

As if their strings have been cut, the children drop to the ground, exhausted.

I walk over to them.

“no we stopped them you must speak to us now not them leave – “

“Shut up,” I say, ignoring them. “I’m speaking to them first.”

For the first time since I woke up in there, there are no other noises other than gasping and whimpering from scared, exhausted children.

“Kids….hey, kids,” I say.

Some of them look over at me.

“This is going to be okay, I promise. Okay?”

They look scared.

“Is one of you Andrea Whittaker?”

A little girl with brown hair raises her hand. I walk over to her and kneel in front of her. “Hi there,” I say. 

“I’m a friend of your daddy’s, and I’m going to take you home to him as soon as I’ve finished with the people who took you, okay?”

She sniffs and looks up at me with reddened eyes. “I want to go home.” She says, flatly.

“I’m going to get you home as soon as I can. All of you,” I say looking around at the others. “We’re going to be out of here very soon, so just sit still for a few minutes. Can you do that for me?”

To be honest, from the state of exhaustion they’re in, I don’t think they could go far.

“They need water,” I say to the fairies.

“we….we will….”

“I’m taking them away from here.”

“NO!” they scream at me this time, and they attempt to push their glamour harder, turning themselves into enormous demons staring down at me.

I stand and look at them, and start making my way towards them, challenging them. The glamour doesn’t last, and they shrink in on themselves like they’ve deflated, their snarl caught in their throat.

“Why me?” I ask. “Why did you want to talk to me?”

“…..”

“You want mercy, you want to, what, negotiate?” I say.

“neeeee-goa-teeee-aaate”

“Then you start by explaining the deal. And if I were you, I’d start fast, because I’m about to walk out of here with the children.”

“no not the children please not the children please not - "

“What do you need them for?”

“……we hunger”

“You feed on them?”

“….no we do not feed on them no we feed….. we feed from them…..feed from their work their effort their dancing we feed”

“And when they can’t go on any more?”

“we......we find more”

I turn back to the children as I continue to speak to them.

“Then what makes you think that I’d be in any way interested in negotiating?”

“the war is coming and we know what you lost what you will lose”

They say it slyly, creeping towards me. I stop, frozen, thinking about Nina.

“Don’t you dare.”

“we know what you lose what you lost and we can help we can help you save it”

I think. I wait.

“all we want is the children that is all just them just enough just to feed just to be remembered”

“No.”

“please all we want is to be remembered magic is falling it is falling and we fall with it if we are forgotten please just mercy when they tell your legend - ”

“You don’t get mercy. You feed on children.” I’m scared of what I’m giving up. I’m scared of walking out of the deal. But I have to. “You don’t get to be remembered.”

I walk to the children, and I take Andrea’s hand, and I tell the rest of them to follow me. Now the glamour has fallen, I can see my way back to the circle… or at least to a circle. It may be ill-judged confidence, but I can feel their panic rising as I walk away from them.

“you will die but you will die after her after she dies screaming after your child dies”

I hold the children’s hands, and we stand in the circle.

“Nobody will ever use this circle again. And every circle I find, I’ll destroy,” I say, my anger at them refusing to fall. “You know who I am. You know what I am. You tried to threaten me, and I can take that. I even know that you feed on children because you’re desperate, because you’re hungry. And I may not be able to blame you for that, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t try to stop you.”

“no please we did not mean it please stay just leave one just leave one just one child please just leave one”

“You want my help to be remembered. To survive. To feed. That’s all you want, isn’t it?”

I can feel the circle letting us through now, beginning to send us back to Bretton.

“yes all we want is to survive please just leave one child please let us survive please let us feed”

“No.”

“but you will kill us if we cannot feed on the children we must feed on them we must”

“You don’t get them. You don’t get it, do you?” I say, as their world begins to fade from site and I can begin to see the trees around the circle back in Bretton again.

“This is a war and you aren’t on our side.”

And then we’re back in Bretton.

And Jack is there, and he runs over and he holds Andrea, and she holds him, and I feel so exhausted right now.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” he says to me.

“I…” The rest of the kids make their way out of the circle and gather. “They need help. They need to go home.”

Something about Jack is bothering me. Why does he look so different?

“I came every day,” he says holding Andrea. “I didn’t give up.”

God, I’m tired. Why does Jack have a beard? He didn’t have a beard earlier.

“Jack…how long was I down there?” I ask.

“….you…” he looks at me, and everything begins to swim. 

"....how long?"

“You were down there for three months.”

I pass out.

Magic Falls Part Fourteen

I march over to him, wanting to slap the cigarette out of his hand, but restraining myself at the last moment.

“Who the hell are you?” I snap at him.

“I’m Jamie Moore,” he says. “Old friend of Jack’s, in’t that right, Jack?”

“I’ve known Jamie for a long time,” Jack says. “A lot longer than you, Darren.”

I look back at Jack. “Then how have I never met him?”

“I’ve only just bloody met you,” he replies.

“I know,” I say. “But…” How do I explain that I’ve already known him for months and months before now? 

I know he accepts the idea, but how do I explain how well I already know him?

“Jamie’s the guy that put me in touch with you in the first place,” he says. “I know I shouldn’t have thrown away your paper, but you have to admit that your story was….well, it was weird, and then Andrea went missing, and Jamie told me you were key to it all.”

“Relax, mate,” Jamie says, walking around me and towards the circle. “The issue here isn’t me. The issue here is this thing, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Jack says.

“Y’see, Darren – “ he gestures around the circle. “A bunch of poncy art students sculpt stuff that mean that every kid that walks through these trees, in this secluded part of ground in a secluded area of West Yorkshire is thinking about fairies when they do it.”

He begins to walk around the circle as he talks, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up. “And this is an area of highly concentrated potential for magic. There are a few of them dotted around the country. But areas where ley-lines converge in this kind of number? There aren’t many of them. Bretton Hall is one. Trafalgar Square is another. Glastonbury, Stonehenge, Avebury, the Rollright Stones...there are a handful more, but Bretton? Bretton’s the one everyone forgot about.”

“You’re walking around it widdershins,” I say to him.

“What is that?” Jack asks. “Jamie said it earlier. What is it?”

“Just means anti-clockwise, Jack, that’s all,” Jamie says, continuing to walk. “So, you’ve got this place with this high potential for magic, and then you take all of this concentrated belief of little kiddies believing that fairies live in the area. And that gives off a very bad signal.”

He stops walking. “What kind of signal?” I ask.

He lifts his foot to step into the circle. “The kind the faerie folk listen to.”

He puts his foot down and steps into the circle.

Nothing happens.

“But, see, they don’t want to speak to me.” He says. “See, I reckon Andrea is safe, because the faerie aren’t stupid. They haven’t been doing this because they suddenly got hungry or something.”

“So why are they doing it?” I ask. I’m still rankling at the feeling I’ve been manipulated, but if Jack’s daughter has been taken, then that comes first.

“They’re doing it because of you, Darren.”

Everything suddenly seems very quiet. Very still.

“What?”

“They’re doing it because of you.”

“What the… what do you mean?”

“Did Darren have something to do with Andrea’s disappearance?” Jack asks Jamie.

“Not quite, mate.” He replies. “But think about it. They take the daughter of his best friend. Of one of the Knights. That was sending a message, that was. And one that had to be delivered loud and clear.”

“Jack and I have only just met.” I point out. “How can they know about…”

“Don’t play stupid,” Jamie says, with a thin smile, and he starts walking towards me. “You came back. The faerie, they exist with a… different perception of time to us. So from their point of view, it’s already happened, and it never happened at the same time.”

“You know I came back?”

“I know. They know. Others know.”

I can’t help myself any more, and I rush him, tackling him to the ground. My hands find their way to his collar as I pin him down and shout at him. “Who are you?”

Despite the fact that he landed roughly, he isn’t winded. He just laughs in my face. “Talk about an awkward bloody question.” He says, as he pushes me gently off. “Who I am doesn’t matter. It never mattered. But you’ll find out, don’t worry.”

The laugh takes the wind out of my sails, and I slump back. “How do I know if you’re on our side?”

“You don’t.” he says, lighting another cigarette. “But you don’t have much choice. Look, if it makes you feel better, I don’t have much of a horse in this race. I’m more about keeping the status quo, and that means pushing a few things into the right places. Putting square pegs into round holes, for example. And right now, you’re a square peg, and that circle is looking awfully bloody round to me.”

“You said they want to send me a message,” I say.

“He’s a fast learner, this one, isn’t he?” he says to Jack.

“What message do they want to make clear to me?”

“I’m not sure, but I suspect they want to negotiate. Y’see, they know all about this war that’s coming, and they want to make sure that whichever side wins, they’re not on the losing one.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“Nothing. It’s against the rules.”

“There are rules?”

“There are always rules. All I’ll tell you is this. Just think about who they usually prey on. Think about it, and otherwise, do what seems appropriate.”

I look at the circle. “Why me?”

“Because of what you are.”

“What do you mean ‘what I am’?”

“Sorry,” he says, standing up. “I misspoke. Obviously. I meant to say ‘who you are’, didn’t I?”

Didn’t he, indeed. I look over at Jack, who is looking… well, is looking completely out of his element.

I think of Nina, and I know what I have to do.

“How do I do this?” I ask. “I need to walk around it, or, say something, or…”

“For most people, sure,” he says. “If they want them. They’re absolutely sodding gasping to speak to you though, Darren. So I reckon all you have to do is to step in.”

“Will this get Andrea back?” Jack asks.

“No guarantees, my son,” Jamie says. “It’s all down to Darren, now.”

They both look at me as I walk to the circle.

I can feel a crackling around it. Like static.

I lift my foot to step into it, and then put it down inside the circle.

As my foot makes contact with the ground, it happens. I just have time to close my eyes

           and                                   

                                            then

                                everything                                          






Continue to Part Fifteen

Magic Falls Part 13

Back to Contents

I’m sure that Bretton would be rather pretty by day, but between the endless winter that’s been causing consistent dark clouds and the fact that afternoon is slipping towards evening, and it just feels desolate and cold.

We drive down past some grey buildings, and park near the bottom of them. Fields with strange sculptures sweep out to our right towards the main buildings, but I can see further out, and the fields go on and on. There’s a river in front of us.

The Hall itself is a large, imposing building. As we walk towards it, Jack points between some of the smaller buildings. “That’s the pillar I was telling you about.”

“Convergence of ley-lines?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are the police?” I ask. “If there have been kids going missing, shouldn’t this place be… I don’t know, under lock-down or something?”

“There’s nothing here, Darren,” he says. “That’s part of the problem. They’ve not found a bloody thing.”

I follow him as we walk past the hall and down towards the river.

“It’s not really good conditions for this kind of thing,” I say. “Wouldn’t we be better doing this in the daytime?”

“I want to show you where she went missing, that’s all. We can start looking around the rest of it tomorrow, but before we do anything else, I want to give you a sense of it.”

I nod. “If that’s important to you.” I don’t fully understand, but I do want to help.

“I…” he hesitates. “It just seems important. To see that bit, and then you have some sense of it.”

“Okay,” I say quietly.

He starts walking again, turning right and up a field, away from the path. The sculptures begin to get less abstract, and more defined.

“It’s not far from here,” he says. “See those trees?”

There’s a sculpture of a man crouching, but it’s giant. He’s set apart from the trees themselves. “Yeah.”

“It’s just the other side of there. This was part of the area the students got to design and build years ago.”

There are strange details, as we walk closer, including a tree in a phone box. Sculptures built into walls and paths and ponds, and utilizing the nature around them.

“I would not want to be drunk around here,” I say. The sheer strangeness of the area means that I miss the village.

“Look down,” Jack says quietly, and I do, towards the foot of the fir trees we are near, and I spot them.

A series of doors, windows and buildings carved into the trees themselves. I drop to one knee to take a proper look. “Wow.”

“I know.”

“They’re impressive.” And they are. A little fairytale village carved into trees. They look functional. “They… look like they fit.”

“They do, don’t they?” he says. “Like they’re meant to be there.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve seen it before, but…”

I stand up. “Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Why am I here?”

“What?”

“Seriously, what’s going on? There’s something here you’re not telling me.”

He looks away. “Jamie said you should be here.”

I don’t know what Jamie filled his head with, but I’m worried that Jack’s built me up as definitely being able to do something here. I feel like I’m an observer in a play, suddenly being asked to take a lead role, but with no knowledge of what’s meant to happen. Or even what my part is.

Wait.

An idea forms and instantly takes hold.

“Are you telling the truth about Andrea, Jack? I will kill you if – “

“Yes.” I see fear creep across his face, and I almost instantly lose my anger and indignation. “Yes, I’m telling the truth, about Andrea and the others. I just… Jamie convinced me that you’d be able to help, and…I’m desperate, Darren.”

“Okay.” I say. “Okay.”

The area is freaking me out slightly. More than slightly, actually. It feels like it’s…been allowed to grow wild.

“The last time she saw Andrea, she was standing here. She walked over that way – “ he points towards a path. “- for a minute, and then looked back and she was gone.”

He walks over that way and then looks back. I look around, and realize that while there are trees around, there aren’t many places to hide.

“It’s quiet enough here that if someone was around, we’d know about it, I reckon,” I point out. “Someone would have to be actively hiding to have snatched her.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jack says. “If Lorna didn’t see her, then she’d have heard something. She said she was singing a little bit to herself, and then it just stopped.”

One of the plus points about the fields surrounding this area is the comparative lack of hiding places. There are paths leading into another part of the forest, though, and I’m about to look further into them when Jack calls me back.

He points down towards me on the ground. “Look at that,” he says. “That’s strange.”

I look down. The dark, cold and rain are not sharpening my observational powers.

"What is?" I ask.

"Look at the ground. It's different around here."

I try, but for the life of me, I can't see whatever it is that he's talking about.

"What am I meant to be seeing?"

"No, not there," he says. "Take a couple of steps back, and then look again, but don't try to focus on any one part of it."

"You're making it sound like a magic eye painting. I could never do them either."

He gestures around in a circle. "Look. You see it?"

I don't, but I try to do what he says. Instead of looking intently, I try to look more generally, and take in the whole picture rather than a series of details.

And then I see it.

A darker, slightly raised piece of grass, with some mushrooms growing in it. It isn't strong, and it isn't obvious, but once you spot it, it's very much there.

"Strange, isn't it?" He says.

As I look at it, everything I know about it comes immediately to mind. All at once, unbidden.

"It's a fairy ring," I say.

"I don’t know what that is."

"You never heard about them when you were a kid?"

"I didn't pay much attention to things as a kid. I can tell you a lot about TV at the time, but not things I was told."

"They're supposedly planted by fairies. They're how they travel between their world and ours. And if you get trapped by one..."

He looks concerned all of a suddden, and I almost kick myself. "What?"

"...I don't remember. There's something though." Don't tell him about the dancing, I think.

“You know we’re both talking seriously about this, don’t you?” He asks me.

“Are we?”

“Well, I am,” he says. “I know it sounds stupid, but I am. I’m not ruling anything out. Whatever it takes to find Andrea… or…you know…what happened to her.”

I notice the effort he takes to stop his voice cracking. “Then we’re taking this seriously,” I tell him.

“So tell me what it is that happens.”

I take a moment before I do. “They’re traps. By the fairies. For children. You walk around it three times, or five times, or…whatever. It’s like ‘Bloody Mary’. Or ‘Candyman’. Something like that. You… I don’t know, you’re supposed to say a rhyme or a verse or something, and walk around it before trying to cross it."

"Widdershins." A voice that I don’t recognise says.

"What?" I look around, trying to see where it came from.

"You have to go round it widdershins. Or it doesn’t work." the same voice says.

I look behind me, and it takes me a moment to see him, and once I do, I wonder why I didn't see him earlier, as he's standing right there.

"Jamie!" Jack says, with a look of relief.

He's in his forties, I'd guess, and has dirty blonde hair. He looks smart and scruffy at the same time. He's wearing a white shirt and black tie, but it's loose and looks like he hasn't taken it off in days, and it's covered by an old, battered brown mac. He takes a drag from a cigarette. The smoke swirls around him.

"Hello, squire." Jamie says to me. "Been wondering when you'd finally turn up."

Magic Falls Part Twelve

GOING UP TO YORKSHIRE FOR A FEW DAYS. PHONE WILL BE ON IF YOU NEED ME. MISS YOU. DX

I press send and watch the message go to Nina. I know better than to call her right now. I don't want to pressure her any more than I know I already am.

"So what's going on?"Jack asks after a while.

I sit back in my seat and look out at the countryside as the train makes north. The rain streaks on the window.

"It's difficult to explain."I said.

"I think I've already shown I can take a lot in, and I need to talk about something other than Andrea for a bit," Jack said. "So, let’s go back over it all. You're from the future and we're already best friends."

"Well…not quite best friends," I say, with a slight smile. "But we get on, and we work for the same thing. The same aims."

"What's the same thing? These aims?"

I avoid eye contact and keep looking out the window. It has been a while since I've seen anything but the urban environment, and even in miserable weather, the move to browns and greens from grey and splashes of vibrant colour feels very different. There is colour in London, there's no denying that. But outside of parks and green spaces, even the trees feel grey.

"Too many things have changed already," I say, trying not to think about the Knights. "The more I try to force things to be the same as they were, the more I think I'm running the risk of guaranteeing that won't happen."

He nods. “Okay, I can accept that. Hypothetically, anyway.” He thinks it over, and then amends what he’s saying. “Well, at least when it comes to the stuff that you want to happen. But you told me that you came back because of everything that had gone wrong. So wouldn’t it be a good thing if everything were different this time?"

I wish that the whiskey last night had stayed at just the one. At three in the morning, when we were both drunk but feeling sober, I told him far more than I should have done. And he'd remembered every bloody detail.

"And you believe me on all this?" I ask.

"Not quite. But I'm not ruling anything out right now. With the way Andrea went missing, I'm trying to take into account that there may be..." He waved his hand, as his thought visibly went back to his missing daughter.

"…More things in heaven and earth?"

"Well, earth, anyway."

I nod, and sip at the coffee in front of me. It tastes awful, but part of that is down to the hangover that is currently killing me. Jack has to be suffering as well, but he's handling it a lot better.

He eyes me while I do so, and then asks a different question. "How does this... magic...: he rolls the word in his mouth as if it is a cherry gone sour. "...work anyway? Why is it all happening?"

"I don't fully know," I say.

"Do you have your theories?"

I look at him. "Yes."

"Well?"

"I think we're taking on rationality as a belief. In a way we never have before, as a species. The biggest change that the internet has made to our lives isn't Amazon, it isn't Ebay, it isn’t entertainment... it's the ability to find information."

I find I’ve warmed to the subject without even realizing it. What is it about Jack that keeps me telling him everything? I don't seem to be able to keep my mouth closed around him.

"Some would contest that," he says.

I lean forward. "We're all talking to each other more, as a species. There are kids talking on instant messenger to other schoolkids all over the world. All those beliefs, all those cultures, and we're finding out how similar we actually are. We're learning more about each other, and that's just on a person-to-person level.

"You've got websites like Snopes now, that can give you the facts behind an urban legend just by searching for it. You've got Google and Wikipedia for all those legends and myths and histories, and we begin to see how many cultures had basically the same ones.”

I sit back, and almost to my surprise, I continue talking.

"Do you know how many cultures have some kind of myth that's similar to the birth of Jesus? Virgin births turn up all over the place. Once you learn something like that, faith and belief takes a bit more of a hit than it did before. And now, we're getting so used to asking questions, getting so used to trying to find out... Christ, do you know how long it took until someone cracked how Derren Brown predicted the lottery? Less than 24 hours until someone pointed out that a ping pong ball moved and had a video with graphics showing how he probably did it on Youtube.

"People are blindly believing less and less, and when that happens… I think something starts fighting back. I think we're looking at the death of magic. I think it's fighting for its life. Because it relies on belief. And that's dying."

He sits silently for a while, and he stays that way until we pull into Wakefield Westgate.

As we walk through the station to his car, he quietly says 'I think you're right. And if this is about belief, we could be in trouble."

He opens the car door, and we begin to drive. I wait for him to elaborate as we navigate the winding roads, and take in the view. Once you get out of Wakefield, it's a beautiful area.

"I told you that Bretton used to be an arts college."

"Yes."

"I went there years ago. There's a pillar in the middle of the campus, and the story going around then was that it marked a convergence of ley-lines."

"Does it?"

"I have no idea. I don't believe in ley-lines. But then, do you know who we were told used to love walking around Bretton's grounds?"

"Who?"

"Peter Sutcliffe. The Yorkshire Ripper."

"Did he?"

"Probably not. But it doesn't matter. You take hundreds and hundreds of young people and lock them into this place in the middle of nowhere. No regular bus service after dark. Pre-internet. And they're all creative and away from home for the first time, and they spend a lot of time vulnerable and scared."

"I can see how ideas would take hold."

"More than take hold. This was like a pressure cooker here. People went insane here in their own way."

"Your point?"

"Darren, if magic feeds off belief, this was a very, very powerful place. There are all kinds of legends and myths around this place."

I look up at the clouds. It feels like night has already fallen, and it's only the afternoon. As we near Bretton, it begins to hail as if on cue.

“This place…” he says, “took my daughter. And it’s beginning to feel that…something there is waiting for us.”

Magic Falls Part Eleven

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I open the door and let Jack in.

"What's wrong?"I ask.

"It's my daughter," he says. "She's missing."

The last I'd seen of Jack, he'd driven away, refusing to talk to me any further. I hadn't been expecting this turnaround.

"She lives with her mother, doesn't she?" I ask.

"Yes. I thought you might know that." He wipes his eyes again, and sits down. It is obviously an effort for him to keep his emotions under control.

"You look like you could do with a drink," I say. I certainly could.

"Please."

"What would you like?"

"Do you have whiskey?"

"God, yes."

I walk into the kitchen and pour us both a large drink, and then make my way back, handing him one of them.

"How long has she been missing for?"

"Two weeks now. I... we've been working with the police, but a friend of mine thought that you may know more about this."

"A mutual friend?"

"Jamie Moore?"

I frown. "I don't know him."

"Well, he knows you. He said you may be able to help."

I look down at my whiskey glass, and am slightly disturbed to realise that it is already mostly empty. The last few weeks of living on my own have not led to good habits.

"Tell me what happened." I say. "I'm not sure what I'll be able to do, but if I can help, I will."

"I need someone with an open mind. You already talked about magic. You talked about how more was going to happen. I think it's already happening, and this is what's happened to my daughter."

He is sweating and agitated. I can see his grey hair is flattened with perspiration and hair gel, which is unlike him. "I'm sorry about not believing you last time we spoke. It just sounded so... ridiculous. Unbelievable. "

"But you believe now?"

"Yes."

"What changed your mind?"

"It's connected with what happened to Andrea. It's not easy to explain."

"I'll help if I can," I say. "Please, just ... tell me what happened."

He nurses his drink, while he begins to talk.

I realise that this is the first real conversation with him that we've ever had. Well, that he's ever had. Not counting him surreptitiously throwing away the contact details I had written down for him.

This is surreal. Not just what he was saying, but the knowledge that we'd been such good friends, and this was something that he had never experienced. Last time around, I hadn't approached him first. He'd heard about me and Nina, and sought us out.

This was completely different. And not only because the last time I'd dealt with him, his daughter hadn't gone missing.

When he'd come to me before, he'd proposed the Knights. This time around, I'd effectively pushed the idea onto him. Stupid of me, really. I knew from experience that he generally needed to believe something was his idea in order to think it was a good one.

"It was in a place in West Yorkshire. Near Leeds. Well, Wakefield, really. There's this sculpture park. Used to be a college, too. Arts place.

"My ex-wife, Lorna, she... she took Andrea there for days out. It's a five hundred acre estate, and it's... well, it's lovely, really. It's in the middle of nowhere, and there's a lake, and a learning centre, and a mansion, and a cafe.... it's a nice place. That feels important to point out. It's this nice place in the middle of nowhere.

“And Lorna was there with Andrea, and they were just walking around. Andrea wants to do something to do with nature when she grows up. Landscaping or something, I don't know. But she loves fields, trees, plants... the lot. She's eight years old, and it's all she talks about.

“So there they were, walking around, and there are these bits of the park that are... they're like a fairytale village or something. Silly, really. Done by students back when it was a college. She really likes it.

“The place was deserted. That's what Lorna says, and you know... we don't get on that well now, we try and everything, but... I believe her. She's not stupid. And she takes Andrea's safety carefully. She's not... overprotective, but if she says she knew where she was, then she knew where she was.

“And they were in this field, walking away from these sculptures, and Lorna turned arouud and Andrea was gone. Just gone.”

His voice cracks and he downs his drink.

“The police looked, and they… there was nothing. She just vanished. They closed down the roads, because they thought someone had snatched her at first. But there was nothing.

“It was broad daylight, and there was nobody around. She just vanished.”

He stands up, putting the glass on the table and I notice that his hand is shaking. He turns, then sits. Uncomfortable, unsure if he should stand or not.

“I don’t…” I say, uncomfortable talking at all now. “I don’t know what I can do to help, here. This all sounds strange, but… why do you think…”

“She’s not the only one,” he says. “Don’t you watch the news? There have been others. Children vanishing into thin air. Nobody seeing a thing, but nowhere they could have gone.”

I realize my mouth is open, and my brain tries to catch up. I am speaking again, but not entirely sure what I’m saying. “But what does that have to do with…”

“Jamie said to talk to you. He said that you could help.”

“I…”

This is a friend of mine. I may be something of a mess right now, but Jack is my friend, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“I want you to come with me. I’m going back up there, and I want you to come. Help me search. Help me find her. Please.”