In the end he finds it by the noise. Pale pink and blue lights play on the windows, and the house seems to pulse with the beat. The twins are having another party. Well, he thinks, they can’t say they were off sick. Against his will, John feels his heart and his feet speed up in time with the music.
He pushes the front door. It swings open. He quickly slips into the cupboard under the stairs. It is dark, which seems safer than the colourful lights. A damp mop tickles his arm, reassuring and real. He peers through the keyhole. The party seems to be well underway. Everyone swaying in the flashing air. But it seems less fun than the party John was at. In the warm glow cast by the drink, he hadn’t noticed certain things. A lot of the kids seem to be hurt, or have old scars. One is missing a hand. And they drink and mingle but no one says more than hello to one another. Not like they’re shy – as if they know each other too well to bother. Some of the children are dressed really weirdly. One girl wears a voluminous old-fashioned nightgown. A blond boy wears what looks like a three-piece suit. Another wears tights and there are large shiny buckles on his shoes.
The music dies and the lights come up. John thinks, they know I’m here, and his breath stops. But their attention is on Drew who stands in the centre of the room.
“It’s time,” he says.
“How many?” says a small girl in a shimmering white shift.
“Four, today.”
The children bow their heads and someone sobs. But no one moves.
“Decide,” Drew says, “or I’ll choose.” When no one moves he goes around the circle and pulls four into the centre. “You made me do it,” he snaps at the little girl in the white shift, who has begun to cry.
The four make their way to the stairs in procession, heads lowered. They climb slowly and disappear out of sight, one by one, leaving silence behind them.
“Well, come on,” Drew shouts. “Gracious, it’s a party!” The music rises, and despite what he has just seen, John’s heart begins to pound in time.
“That’s how they first get us,” says Edmond. “With the parties.” He is standing in the cupboard next to John. “If you come once, you have to come back, no matter where or when it is. Time doesn’t mean anything to them. Past or future, you have to come. Got to fill the room. Sometimes I hide when it’s time to pick. Didn’t know you had thought of it, too.”
“What will Drew do to them upstairs?” asks John. He feels sick. He has heard of this. Kids lured in by gangs. It’s called grooming. And then bad, bad things.
“Her body is old now, it wears out fast,” says Edmond. “That’s why she needs twins. Matching spare parts. My brother volunteered. She used him first.”
Edmond’s hair falls aside and John sees that his right eye is missing. Edmond’s fingers explore the place where it was.
“Where’s Daisy?” whispers John. He couldn’t see her out in the party. He hopes she hasn’t been taken upstairs. He is afraid for her.
“There isn’t much Daisy left,” Edmond says. “Not after all this time.”
“Don’t be weird,” John says, frightened.
“Bodies are like houses to Hester,” says Edmond. “She finds one she likes and keeps it, until it can no longer be fixed.”
John wants Edmond to stop saying mad stuff so he shoves him hard. Edmond does not seem to notice. He is gazing past John at Drew who stands in the open cupboard doorway, golden hair slicked back on his head like an old film star. John sees that one of Drew’s ears is missing.
“I hoped you wouldn’t return,” Drew says to John. “I persuaded her that she didn’t need you. I even gave her something, to help her forget.”
“You tell me what’s going on, right now,” John says. He clings to desperate remnants of hope – that all this is a mistake, a misunderstanding, that he is drunk or mad or in a dream.
“What has always gone on,” Drew says, patient. “They have always taken children. People used to think they swapped them. Changelings, you know. Maybe that was confusion about the twin thing. They used to keep the children inside hills though, that’s true enough. They’ve moved with the times since then.”
All John’s anger slides into one channel, hot. He understands that he is being mocked. It’s that time outside the off-licence all over again. Everything that has been building since Alice died now fills the depths of him, licks up at the edges. “You think I believe that stuff?” He punches Drew hard in the face. He hears, but doesn’t feel, the sharp crack of his knuckles against cartilage. Drew’s nose explodes in a mist of red. He falls to the floor. John doesn’t see Daisy until her hands are around his neck. Stars bloom and cloud across his vision.
“He’s the only one who stood up for you,” Daisy hisses in John’s ear. “He betrayed Hester, trying to help you get away. You should be on your knees thanking him. But instead you’ve ruined his nose.”
“Now you’ve done it,” Edmond says. He tugs his hair over the gap where his eye should be and backs slowly into the shadows of the cupboard.
Drew looks at John with his ancient blue eyes. John wonders how he ever thought the two of them were the same age. “I tried to keep you out of it, old chap,” Drew says. “You’re not a twin, anymore, so you aren’t useful. You could have lived a long life. But she’s out of her hole now.”
There is a sound like stone grinding against stone. The lights and the music fade. The children huddle into corners. The room is lit with greenish light. The walls move as John watches. They creak with the pain of growth. New twigs and branches thrust out from their lengths, tender leaves push forth painfully, become dark and glossy, then curl up, brown. A spray of white hawthorn bursts into the air, showering blossom. Everything buds and grows and withers and dies before John’s eyes. Time churns at a sickening speed.
“Run,” he turns to say to Daisy.
But something has happened to Daisy. Her face has become a hole with children in it. She is made of layer upon layer of time. She is older than anything else in the world. She is made of wood, with a face like a woman trapped screaming in a tree trunk. Then she is John’s sister Alice, white and lovely in her grave clothes.
Vines race along the floor like snakes and curl up around the furniture legs, encasing them in sticky green. They flow towards Daisy and she catches them in her hands, strokes them like puppies and croons to them in a high voice. Then they wind their slim fingers around Drew.
“Don’t fight it,” whispers Daisy. But Drew does. He tears at the vines and shouts a word that sounds like moksha. She recoils, her green fingers loosen, only for a moment. Then she has him in her strangling grip once more. She takes his hand as the moss creeps green and living over his face.
“I’m sorry,” the thing that was Daisy says.
“No,” Drew says, “please!” Her fingers reach into his mouth, now, down his throat, and into him. It is over quickly.
Hester stands. She wears Daisy’s body with animal grace. “Let that be a lesson to you all,” she says. “Not to test me. Now I am going back upstairs with my new friend John. He’s no good for repairs, but I think there is something to be done. He owes me a brother, after all. Come, John.”