Caitlin
Roesbuck and The Foil Men
Chapter
Two
“The foil men?” Caitlin said, curiosity and disbelief tumbling out of her mouth.
“Yes. Come with me. We have to talk.” Her uncle raised his voice a little. “Caitlin isn’t feeling too well. I’m going to take her for a walk in the garden, if that’s all right with you? You can fill me in on the details later.”
Mrs Roesbuck nodded and murmured, absently.
Caitlin wriggled out of her mother’s arms, and followed her uncle.
He had a large, powerful stride, and the physique of a man who went climbing at the weekends on tufted hillocks, or who tried to impressed ladies by lifting a great deal of weights. This struck Caitlin as odd, because her uncle spent all his time beneath the ground, working on strange machines and reading interesting books. She wondered what type of vitamins he took.
He pushed through the screen door with the urgency of a man with a great burden. He turned to make sure that Caitlin had followed him.
“Walk with me,” he said.
There was a cobbled stone path that looped lazily through the lupine undergrowth, and they took it, ducking beneath the outstretched arms of trees that bent over them like the ribcages of iguanodons.
“You may not like all that I am about to say, Caitlin,” her uncle said. “Nor may you understand it. You are free to ask as many questions as you wish, but I will freely confess that I do not possess all the answers.”
“What are the foil men, then?” Caitlin asked, impatience mingling with her awe at seeing a hidden side of her uncle revealed.
“They are,” he said, his voice dropping to the reverent hush of the historian, “an ancient evil that has taken new form.
“Picture, if you will, a time when the world was new: lush, glorious, filled with all manner of strange creatures and beautiful vistas. Now imagine that these landscapes house hosts of spirits – beatific, benign – and dangerous. They are not good, or evil, for these are terms that Man will invent to describe what he can never understand. They are things that operate on pure, deadly instinct – lighter than air, with souls heavier than stone.
“The foil men were not always as they are now. When the world was fresh, they were content to glide through valleys and across the sea, taking no form, searching only for the next kill. But as the world aged, they grew tired of their infinite lives, and their envy of the creatures that hopped, skipped and lurched across the plains below them waxed every greater. So they took their first form.
“You won’t find their fossilised bones in the ground, or their footprints in rock, but they were there. Millions of years ago, the foil men took the shape of the most enormous dinosaur the world had ever seen. Each one towered hundreds of metres above the largest brachiosaur: their bellies would block out the sun and their feet could trample forests in an eyebeat. For thousands of years, that was how their airy stomachs were filled.
“Then came Man – ”
“…and girls.”
“Yes, and girls.” Her uncle smiled, a crease of humour in a stony face. “And the foil men became envious of the things Man… and Girls… made. Their tools. Their fire. Everything that was not born in the womb, but conjured from palms, fingers and opposable thumbs. And the largest among the foil men, whose name takes a full day to recite, decided that they would turn the tools of Man against him.
“So the cave-dwelling humans fled from their homes as the crude paintings on the walls came to life. They would leap from their hearths pursued by a herd of charcoal bison and a cadre of stick men wielding all-too-real spears. Or at night, the skins of the animals they slew would stitch themselves together into horrifying shapes and stalk the plains, devouring with ethereal teeth any human they came across.”
Caitlin was shivering now, her head filled with horrors primordial.
The path before them was completely overgrown, the grass sprouting from the flagstones like lettuce from an overzealous sandwich. They pushed through the tangle of boughs and branches to emerge, prickled and prodded, on the other side.
“But what about the foil men?” Caitlin said, “I understand all the stuff about magic paintings and things, but where does foil come into it?”
“Ah,” said her uncle. “It comes from the impatience of these creatures. Every new shape they assumed, every fatal prank they committed – it gave them a hunger. A hunger the like of which they had never felt before. They needed to change; they needed to keep pace with the world. And change they did; dog-faced gods for ancient Egypt; green knights and headless horsemen for the middle ages; and so on, and so forth – up until the present day.
“Until now, the foil men have stayed together. The horrors that beset the world have been unified, or at least simplified. But today – who can say? Some of them spread pestilence among cows and sheep and goats, or fool with the electronics of guided weapons. Some lurk in parcels as powder, or take form as the shadows in darkened rooms, where the absence of light is somehow greater – a primaeval darkness that cannot shakes the human soul.”
“Uncle, you’re scaring me,” Caitlin said, very quietly. She had never been afraid of the dark, but it sounded like now would be a good time to start. “I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I, Caitlin. Unfortunately, the foil men are already aware of your presence. I have to prepare you. The more you know about them… the more chance you have of surviving.”
“Oh,” said Caitlin, quietly. “Then I think I’d like that.”
“Then as I was saying… In the modern world, there are hundreds of forms that these creatures take – but their leader, the largest and most twisted of their kind, still prefers the old ways. The personal method of dealing death. He has gathered a group of like-minded spirits about him and changed them to his form, and they strike out, without warning, from hidden dwellings and mysterious caves. They lurk beneath the waves, in warped duplicates of human cities – crumbling masses of sand and stone – emerging only to claim the lives of those foolish – or brave – enough to stray from the common pack of humanity…”
“…like the man on the beach.”
“Exactly. He didn’t jump overboard… he was pulled. The shipping lanes are more dangerous than the coast, these days. These spirits have assumed a form at once terrible and beautiful to behold. From a distance, they look like the jagged outline of a man, shining limbs tapering to vicious points. They are as thin and sharp as a sheet of tinfoil, and if they turn sideways, you’ll lose track of them. They move as swiftly as the sun, which wafts them on winds of light, and their minds are focused on only one thing – the letting of blood. Once they choose a victim, nothing can shake them loose from their prey. Only when they have wrapped their wiry blades around it, and drained it of life, will they desist. And even then, they won’t be finished with you.”
“Uncle… Now I’m really scared… What am I – what are we – supposed to do?”
“We have to stop them, Caitlin, before they strike again.”
“How? How can we stop them? And how do you know all about them? How do you know all this stuff?”
“I have been fighting them since I was a child, my dear. Since I was about your age, in fact.”
He paused, as they worked their way around the gnarled and knotted roots of the old oak tree. They had followed the curve of the path for much of its course, and were in view of the house again.
“I’m sorry, Uncle, but I can’t think of you as ever being my age.”
He smiled, then, and it was like the last ebb of sunlight before winter draws in.
“It has been a long while since I thought of those times. You don’t get a lot of recreation in this kind of employment, as you may imagine.” His gaze soared beyond the garden walls. “Yes, I was once your age, and I lived in a magnificent house just like this one, with my brother and sister. But the whole house was ours, not just a few rooms, with corridors and secret passages that spiralled up to the rooftops and tumbled down, deep down, into the earth. I have no memories of going to school, although I presume I must have done at some point. All I can remember is the warm kiss of the afternoon sun as we ran up and down the central staircase, chasing, and running from each other.”
The corners of his eyes had drawn tight, and there was an uncomfortable set to his jaw.
“You see how these memories move me?” He said to Caitlin, and she nodded, though she could barely see the change. “Happiness is something I don’t often like to remember.”
“But I don’t want to be like that!” Caitlin said, her brows drawing together. “I don’t want to have to forget about running up and down stairs, or exploring the garden, or… or painting with my feet. I don’t want to forget. Why don’t the foil men just leave me alone? Why don’t you just leave me alone?”
Her uncle laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “After all I’ve told you, Caitlin… You know why you can’t run. You can’t hide, either. You’ll have to face them, eventually, now that they’ve chosen you. I have to prepare you, or… you’ll lose more than just memories.”
Caitlin bit her lip. Her voice, when it managed to escape, was sullen and tight, the grudging grunt of the teenager she still hoped to become. “What do you want me to do?”
“My equipment and books are all down in the basement. We should go there now, for safety, if nothing else. I’ll show you what I know, and how to fight them, if we –”
Her uncle broke off in mid sentence.
“Uncle?”
“Quiet, child… Stay very still.”
Caitlin froze, her blood dropping to minus two hundred and seventy degrees Kelvin and locking her to the spot.
The garden through which they had been walking seemed suddenly a threatening and dangerous place. High ferns, bushes and the shadows beneath the trees became places where the foil men lurked. The walls that enclosed the garden had stopped sheltering them from the wind, and had become a barrier to their escape.
The seagulls were silent again, as they had been on the beach, the air hanging heavy and expectant.
A rustle in the bushes sent their attention darting towards them.
Nothing emerged.
Caitlin remembered a film she’d once seen on a sleepover, where a group of clever dinosaurs had circled around some silly people and attacked them from all sides.
She immediately wished she hadn’t.
“Caitlin,” her uncle whispered. “Move towards the house, slowly and carefully. Stay alert.”
“Are you - ?”
“Yes, I’m coming. Now, go!”
They began moving again, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, all the while darting their heads around like guilty birds. Caitlin rippled at every crackle of leaves or snap of twigs. What was worse, she thought, was that the sounds seemed to come from all around them.
The house wasn’t far away. It wasn’t far away from any point in the garden, but the steps they were taking never seemed to bring them any nearer. The closeness of the foliage around them created a false perspective, giving them only glimpses of windows, lights, brickwork – never anything that would tell them that they were nearly home. And safe.
Caitlin’s uncle stubbed his toe against a root, but he bit off his stream of curses and held them silent under his tongue. “Keep moving!” He hissed at Caitlin, who had stopped to watch the display. She nodded, and crept off ahead.
Something tickled at her ear, and she brushed it off – only to discover that it wasn’t a thing at all, it was a sound, like the deep inhalation of breath before a python swallows its prey. She turned, to find nothing but the thickness of trees and the thinness of air. Her shoulders hunched, but she kept moving.
Voices carried towards them; the raised, vibrile tones of Ms. Britten, the husky authority of Mr Blofume. Caitlin raised her head, and the kitchen window became visible through the trees.
“We’re not safe yet,” her uncle declared, prodding her in the back. “Faster!”
Taking his grim words to heart, Caitlin upped the pace, walking briskly towards the back door, and sanctuary.
The sounds all
around them grew louder, like the swish and chop of scythes at harvest time, or
the dim whispers of the dead in a graveyard at
Something was striding through the trees behind them, stripping bark and cracking branches, a dervish of silver and aluminium.
“Forget everything I told you, Caitlin! Just run!”
Caitlin forgot. Forgot everything but the crumpling of trees behind her, and the warm mahogany paint of the door in front, forgot everything but the staccato beat of her heart, and the bitter taste at the back of her mouth. She ran, faster than she ever had before – faster even than on the sports day when she’d beaten Gill Mackenway in the sprint, and received a tiny knitted car for her troubles.
She burst through the back door, followed by her uncle, who slammed it shut. She saw a glimpse of sunlight striking something long, thin and metal, and then the door was closed.
The same something pounded and scraped heavily against the door – once, twice, three times – and then it was gone.
Silence.
“Are we safe?” Caitlin asked.
“For the moment,” her uncle replied, trying to get his breath back. “But we must get down to my basement! Everything has changed!”