The Hush by Skye Melki-Wegner Page A

darkness, there was another chorus of shrieks.
    Chester swallowed. ‘Can we fight them?’
    Sam gave a tiny huff of breath, right against his ear. ‘I can’t. They can’t hurt me, but I also can’t fight ’em. We sort of … cancel each other out.’
    Well, that made about as much sense as the second verse of ‘The Captain’s Cat’, but this wasn’t the time to demand any details. The Echoes’ tunes were growing louder.
    â€˜What about me?’ Chester said. ‘Can I fight them?’
    Sam shook his head. ‘You ain’t been trained yet. Keep quiet. They might pass by …’
    Hardly daring to breathe, Chester rose to his feet. Outside, he saw an endless realm of darkness: swirling rain, churning shadow. But the sounds of the Echoes were fading now, seeping like fog into the darkness. Their shrieks grew distant, one by one. A howl stuttered and faded like a fiddler playing a broken string.
    Chester allowed himself a slow release of breath. They were safe. The creatures had given up, they had gone. And then …
    There it was. One last Echo lingered in the black. It came right past the window, pale and translucent, floating from the dark into their bubble of Hush-light. It was humanoid, but eerily distorted: no face, no eyes, no distinctive features. Its entire body glowed white, like the shine of a colourless sorcery lamp. When it moved, it blurred like liquid. The Echo had its own tune, its own melody: a requiem that trickled down its limbs. The tune looped, again and again, wavering like a broken music box.
    Chester’s lungs burned. He didn’t dare take a breath.
    Beside him, Sam shifted a little sideways, moving his weight to his other foot. There was a creak in the woodenfloor. It was the tiniest sound – more like the meow of a kitten than the creaking of floorboards.
    But it was enough.
    The Echo whipped its head around. It rushed to the window, pressing its limbs against the glass. Then it began to melt. Chester felt his breath catch, cold and horrified, as the creature started dripping through the window. It was like watching a candle melt, except the candle was a pale human body with clammy translucent hands that seeped like wax.
    Sam swore. ‘It’s coming.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜It knows we’re here – it ain’t gonna give up!’ He turned to Chester, panic in his eyes. ‘Listen, you gotta fight it; I can’t touch the damn thing.’
    â€˜How?’
    â€˜Where’s your fiddle?’
    Chester shook his head. ‘You know I don’t have it! The sheriff took it, back in Hamelin …’
    â€˜Damn!’ Sam said. ‘All right, maybe you can whistle or hum or –’
    Chester hurried into the back room and produced the miniature silver flute they’d stolen from Nathaniel Glaucon. ‘I can play this.’
    Sam, who had followed him, nodded. ‘Good, good. Better than whistling. You gotta listen to the Echo’s tune and cancel it out. Echoes run off their own Music, it’s like oxygen to ’em – if you reverse their tune …’
    There was a sharp sucking noise from the window. Chester glanced through to the driver’s cabin and hisstomach curled. The Echo was making progress, melting through the glass. It squeezed slowly, like apple pulp seeping through a hessian sack, but wisps were already beginning to ooze into the cabin.
    â€˜Listen to it, dammit,’ Sam said, as pale as Chester had ever seen him. ‘Listen to its tune.’
    Chester listened. He heard the creature’s Music clearly now: a strong, steady melody. A four-bar requiem. It echoed through the cabin, playing off the ghostly limbs that had melted through the window. Those same four bars looped, again and again, like a child learning to play his first sheet of music, practising the first line until his fingers blistered. Chester couldn’t identify any particular