The Secret Prophecy.

Herbie Brennan.

Chapter 1.

The stairs were narrow, but Em was used to carrying the tray by now, so he managed not to spill the orange juice. He hadn't had his own breakfast yet-Dad came first these days-so the smell of the bacon was driving him nuts. Which made him hurry, but he still didn't spill the juice.

At the first landing, he came to the tricky bit. Directly ahead was the door to his parents' bedroom. Inside, his dad lay pale and sickly, but getting better by the day and doubtless ready to savage his breakfast. There were two eggs on the plate, alongside all the bacon. And a sausage. There was also the morning paper, folded so Em couldn't read the main headline. What he could read were a couple of paragraphs about a new strain of flu that had broken out in Nigeria. Scientists said it had mutated from a bird flu only found in vultures. The press loved that. They were calling it Death Flu, even though very few people had actually died and the Nigerian authorities were claiming it was totally contained.

Behind Em were three steps to a second landing where the staircase wound up to the attic that was Em's room, which was to say Edward Michael Goverton's room, aka the Swamp on account of the posters and the clutter and the sea of smelly socks.

Em gripped the tray firmly with both hands and used it to push the door. "Room service!" he called cheerfully. "Good morning, Dad. This morning we can offer bacon, two fried eggs sunny-side up, sausage with pork and apple filling, grilled tomato, mushrooms, and just the merest soupcon of baked beanies." Heart attack on a plate, but there was nothing wrong with his dad's heart: it was pneumonia that got him, a resistant strain until the doctors found the right antibiotic combination. But luckily he was recovering well. The doctors had seemed pleased.

His father was still asleep, which was odd. He was asleep on his back, facing the ceiling.

"Breakfast, Dad," Em said, aiming the words directly at an ear exposed by the duvet. "Wake up before I eat it for you."

But his father did not wake up. Em put the tray down on the bed and reached out to shake him by the shoulder. His father habitually slept in just pajama bottoms, so the shoulder was bare. As Em touched it, he discovered it was cold. Perhaps he'd been sleeping with it outside the covers; perhaps that was the reason the shoulder was cold. All the same, Em felt a little chilly himself.

Professor Ed Goverton was doing so well, Em thought. The doctors said he could get up for a while tonight, watch his favorite show on TV. Next week he could go out for short walks.

Em slid his hand down the shoulder onto his father's chest. The breathing was usually labored, but now he did not appear to be breathing at all. His body felt cold. Like meat.

Like dead meat.

Em jerked his hand away. He ran to the head of the stairs. "Mum!" he shouted wildly. "Muuuuum!!!"

Chapter 2.

There was no way they could get the coffin down the narrow staircase, so they lowered it from the window to the waiting hearse. It swung on canvas straps, and Em wondered how his father felt in the darkness inside the box, swinging like a pendulum.

Em was dressed in his Sunday suit, the one he hated, with a white shirt, black shoes, black socks, and, most importantly, a black tie. His mother had sewn a black band onto the arm of the jacket, muttering something about two weeks of mourning as if he was going to wear the suit after today. He watched as the undertakers removed the straps and lifted the coffin into the back of the hearse. There were several floral wreaths that had to go on top. The one his mother carried was the first.

Nearly all the lecturers were there, and some of them were dressed in suits as well, although many wore the academic uniform of tweed jacket and slacks, and all had black ties. There was a large contingent of students, not all of them from history courses. Prof. Ed Goverton was a popular guy.

Em blinked. Prof. Ed Goverton had been a popular guy.

The undertakers closed the back of the hearse, and the driver started off at a walking pace. Em and his mother-she was dressed entirely in black and was heavily veiled-led the mourners. She didn't look at him and he didn't look at her, keeping his eyes focused on the back of the hearse. It was a short walk to the graveside-the cemetery lay right next to the campus and had, until a century ago, actually been administered by the university. Today it was the preferred final resting-place of faculty, at least those with tenure and long academic associations. Like his father.

Em should have felt sad. He loved his father. He would miss his father. But all he really felt was numb, and a little scared. What would his mother do now? She was a qualified teacher herself, but not at the university level, so even if she found a job after all these years, they would still have to leave their lodgings. Which was maybe a good thing, although he was certain that it wouldn't happen yet. The board would let them stay on for a while until his mother found her feet. He was certain of that. His own situation probably wouldn't change. He'd still be at school for some time.

He'd never seen a burial before. The open grave seemed terribly deep, as if they were worried about you climbing out. They'd lined it with some sort of fake grass cloth. There were loads of people already waiting. Most of them he didn't even recognize.

The priest said stuff about his father at the graveside, but for Em his voice faded in and out. He couldn't believe his father had known so many people Em didn't know, had never met. Important people, too. There was a black Mercedes with diplomatic plates parked on the main driveway. He couldn't concentrate on what the priest was saying. His mother had taken his hand, drawing him close to her. He could feel her body shaking and knew this was because she was crying. They'd had their troubles, his mother and his dad, mainly because of his mother's problems; but there was no doubt they'd loved each other. Em wanted to comfort her but didn't know how.

He found himself looking from face to face among the mourners standing around the grave. There was Uncle Harold, of course, his mother's brother, and Tom Peterson, his father's closest friend on the university staff. But why did he know so few of the others? There was a pretty girl who couldn't have been more than a year older than Em himself. Who was she? There was an old man in a wheelchair. Who was he? There was a gaunt woman in black, veiled like his mother, who sniffled into a tiny handkerchief. There was a muscular man in a well-tailored suit and dark glasses. Who were they?

Em realized suddenly that the priest had stopped speaking and the undertakers were lowering the coffin into the grave. The canvas straps refused to slide freely so that the coffin went down in little jerks, but nobody seemed to care. It reached the bottom eventually, and the men dragged the straps back up. A sober professional approached Em's mother with an open ornamental box. It took Em a moment to realize that it contained soil. His mother released his hand and took some earth from the box. She stepped forward and tossed it down onto the coffin. The earth must have been a little damp, for it made a dull sound as it struck.

The man with the box was standing in front of Em now. "Go on," Em's mother whispered.

Em took a sprinkling of earth between his thumb and forefingers and tossed it into the grave. He could no longer see properly because his eyes were swimming with tears. He stepped back from the graveside and wiped them clear with the back of his hand. The man in the suit and dark glasses was turning away and pushing through the mourners. As he moved past the gaunt woman, his coat pulled open and Em caught the merest glimpse of a handgun in a shoulder holster tucked beneath his left arm. Then the coat fell back again, and Em's eyes refilled with tears.

It was like watching a scene underwater. The man shouldered his way through the mourners, headed in the direction of the parked Mercedes. The windows were tinted, so it was impossible to see in. As the man reached the car, a back window slid down and he leaned forward to speak briefly to someone inside. Then he stood back, the window closed again, and the car drove off. The man in the dark glasses climbed into a more modest car parked a little way beyond. He sat quite still behind the wheel for a moment, turned briefly to look in Em's direction, and then he too drove off.

Em wondered if he really was carrying a gun. It was so difficult to be sure of anything when your father was dead and you were crying so hard you felt your heart must be breaking.

Chapter 3.

There was a reception, the way you might hold a reception after a wedding. People came back from the gravesite to stand miserably shoulder to shoulder in the living room of Em's cramped home. Now they were chatting in low tones, drinking tea and eating crustless cucumber sandwiches cut into neat little triangles. Em's mum had made every one of those sandwiches herself and baked the apple tarts and buns laid out to follow them. It occurred to Em to wonder if she might be economizing now that they no longer had Dad's salary coming in, but he suspected it would be more a question of good form. It was probably not the done thing to have a funeral catered professionally. The done thing was very important in England, especially academic England.

Em didn't want to be at the reception, didn't even want a slice of apple tart; but it was important for him to be there. That was the done thing too.

Oddly enough, he recognized more people here than he had at the gravesite, staff members mainly, who came up to him and said things like "Oh, Em, I'm so sorry . . ." and "He was such a good man. . . ." Em tried to smile and nod and thank them, but all he really wanted was to get away and be alone for a while, maybe go and hide in his room.

There was no alcohol served at the reception, but Em thought his mother might be just a tiny bit drunk. It wasn't that she was a lush or anything, but she did sometimes take a drink to help her cope with stress. Now her eyes were a little too bright, her speech a little too loud. No one else would have noticed, or if they did they would understand it was the shock of the death.

The way the lodgings were laid out, it would be very noticeable if Em tried to sneak off to his room: the staircase led up directly from the crowded living room, and four of the steps squeaked. But there was nobody in his father's study, and the door was firmly shut. There was a neat little sign pinned at eye level. Just one word in Mum's blocky handwriting: PRIVATE. But one word was enough. Nobody would be in there now. Em made his way slowly through the throng until he was standing with his back to the door. In a moment when all heads were turned away, he slipped inside and closed the door quietly behind him.

Mum had transformed Dad's study into a shrine. His desk, which was typically a heap of papers, journals, and dog-eared reference books, had been tidied within an inch of its life and the leather-covered surface dusted and polished. There was neither computer nor typewriter-Dad had never really joined the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. Em knew he had been working on a book, the same book he'd been working on for years-a cultural study of the prophet Nostradamus-but the text was handwritten, with frequent cross outs and side scribbles, in a series of notebooks that were nowhere to be seen. Every so often his dad had been in the habit of carrying the most recent notebook into the university, where some long-suffering secretary would type up more of his scrawl. But nobody ever saw the result. The manuscript had been growing in the dark for five years, like some long-forgotten fungus.

Em realized he was crying again, but now that he was alone he didn't care. He walked to the bookshelves, bulging with his father's collection-mainly academic tomes on late medieval and Renaissance history, but with a hefty segment of books on Nostradamus. Most of these were academic references as well, but there was a scattering of brightly colored paperbacks with titles like Prophet of Doom and Armageddon Now: Our Final Days. Dad used to say that since academics wouldn't take the Nostradamus prophecies seriously, it was left to the nutcases to write about them. Em had once asked him if this meant he was a nutcase himself, since his book would include the famous prophecies, but Dad only grinned and refused to rise to the bait.

Em was reaching for a book when he heard the door open behind him.

It was the pretty girl he'd noticed at the gravesite, looking even prettier close-up despite the severely formal little black suit she was wearing. She had blond hair, cut short, and wide blue eyes. She stared at him soberly as she closed the door. "I'm sorry," she said at once.

His own eyes were still swimming, a fact that would have embarrassed him at any other time. But there was a numbness inside him that kept all emotions at bay. He looked back at her without saying anything.

"I saw you come in here," she said. "I expect you want to be alone." She sounded English, but with the slight overlay of an American accent.

After a blank moment Em said, "No. No, it's okay." He made a vague, meaningless gesture with one hand. She was right: he did want to be alone. But good manners meant he couldn't say so.

"I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am. I didn't have a chance at the grave, and there were so many people out there"-she nodded back toward the reception room-"I couldn't seem to get near you. But I know how you feel."

"Thank you," Em said blankly.

"No," the girl said, "I really know how you feel. My mother died three months ago. She wasn't even ill: she just died. It makes you sick and empty and scared, all at the same time, and nobody appreciates that; nobody knows how you feel. But I just wanted you to know that I do."

"I'm sorry," Em said apologetically. "I don't . . . I'm afraid I don't . . ." He let the sentence trail.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the girl echoed. "Of course you don't. It's Charlotte. Charlotte Peterson." When his blank look failed to shift, she added quietly, "Tom's daughter."

They'd been kids together, but he hadn't seen her in years. No wonder he hadn't recognized her. "I thought you were in California living with your mother." He realized at once what he'd said and flushed. "She's dead-sorry. You just told me. I'm so sorry, I didn't think." The thing was, Charlotte's parents had divorced years ago, and Charlotte went away to live in the States with her mother.

Charlotte said, "After my mother died, I moved in with my aunt for a little while. But I wanted to be with my dad, and I wanted to finish my education in England; and anyway, there was some legal thing about custody until I'm eighteen, so I'm with Dad now. I just got back. He told me what had happened-it was pneumonia, wasn't it?"

"Yes, pneumonia."

"We both thought I should come to the funeral."

"I see," Em said, because he couldn't think of what else to say.

There was a long, awkward silence while he looked at her. Eventually she forced a smile. "Well, maybe we could, you know, meet up sometime, not at . . ."

Not at your father's funeral, he thought. Aloud, he said, "Yes. Yes, that would be nice."

There was another silence, shorter this time, then: "I'll let you talk to your dad." Then she was gone, leaving Em to wonder what she meant; but on some level, he knew she was right, because he had come here to talk to his dad and not just to escape from the crowd. Despite all Mum had done to tidy it up, to turn it into a shrine to the dead, the study was still the one place in the house, the only place, where his dad was still around.

Chapter 4.

The idea was, once he'd helped Mum clear up, he could go to his room, maybe go online, try to chill. But when he reached the Swamp and switched on his computer, somehow the old MMOs had lost their appeal, along with everything else. All he wanted to do was kick off his shoes, stretch out on the bed, stare at the cobweb hanging from the crack in the ceiling. That was when he discovered how tired he was, closed his eyes just for a second. . . .

It was dark when Em woke, sometime in the middle of the night, not sure exactly. The confusion felt good somehow; but then it cleared and he remembered again that Dad was dead, even though, for a minute, he couldn't believe it. His stomach knotted, a familiar feeling.

There were voices coming from outside his window. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but there definitely seemed to be more than one. He pushed himself off the bed and went to look. This part of the lodgings faced across a campus courtyard, poorly lit at the best of times but now with no lights at all. But there was enough moonlight to show a solitary figure staring upward out of the shadows. For a split second it seemed as if the man was gazing directly at Em or at least at his window. Then he looked away and walked off in the direction of the students' quarters.

The voices were still there, but now Em knew they were coming from inside the lodgings, not outside. It happened sometimes if there was a window left open down below. His attic room was directly above the little sitting room where Mum and Dad had sometimes chatted in the evenings. If the window was open, the sound of voices drifted upward. Usually this didn't disturb him, certainly didn't wake him; but the voices were louder tonight.

And his mother certainly wasn't talking to Dad.

Without bothering to switch on a light, Em padded across the room and opened the door. He was facing a flight of steps down to a tiny landing, then three more stairs to his mum's room and the room where he'd found Dad dead, then the long flight down to the living room. Who was Mum talking to in the little sitting room after midnight?

He hesitated for a moment and then walked down the stairs without switching on lights. There was a single standard lamp lit in the living room at the bottom, leaving it mostly in gloom. But there was light streaming under the door to the sitting room. Em took a cautious few steps forward. He could hear the voices clearly now, hear the conversation. One was his mum. The other was her brother, Uncle Harold.

So Mum had probably asked Harold to stay the night for some additional support.

Em turned to go back upstairs, then heard his mother say, "Harold, I'm afraid."

Uncle Harold's voice sounded loud but steady. "None of this makes any sense, you know? Eddie was a professor of medieval history, for Christ's sake! He couldn't have been any more harmless if he'd worked as an accountant."

"I know," his mother said. It came out as something close to a wail.

Uncle Harold's voice again: "So why would anybody want to harm him?"

Em's ears pricked. Who said anybody wanted to harm Dad? He was one of the most popular professors on campus. Everybody said that. Em couldn't think of a single thing his father might have got up to that could possibly have caused someone to want to harm him.

Except . . .

Em frowned. He was thinking of his mother's comment about the stretched salary. Could Dad have got involved with a loan shark? Those guys turned very nasty if you didn't pay them back. Everybody knew that. The really bad ones sent someone around to break your legs. Only Dad never had his legs broken. The worst that happened to him was he caught pneumonia.

"I don't know," his mother said in answer to her brother's question. "But then wives don't, do they? They don't know what their husbands get up to on their own. Gambling . . . other women . . ."

Dad mixed up with another woman? Get real, Mum!

Uncle Harold must have had the same thought, for he gave a short little laugh. "Come on, Caroline. If Ed ever so much as sneezed at another woman, I'll streak naked down the M25. And you know what he thought about gambling. . . ."

Mum's voice suddenly stiffened. "What I know, Harold," she said firmly, "is that my Eddie was murdered."

Chapter 5.

Em usually slept late during school holidays. Most mornings you couldn't wake him until eleven, maybe eleven thirty. Either way, he seldom climbed out of bed before noon, at which time he'd go down and listen carefully to his mother's complaints about his laziness, then have breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you'd call it. But this morning he was wide-awake at six thirty, downstairs a few minutes after seven, and headed straight for the kitchen.

For some reason he was starving. Yesterday's sorrow, last night's worries were still with him; but they no longer rested in his stomach like a leaden ball. That lump had somehow moved aside, leaving a hollow only food could fill. He started with corn flakes, found that the milk was curdled, and doused them in orange juice instead. When that failed miserably to do the trick, he got out the frying pan.

The pork-and-apple sausages reminded him of his father's last meal, the one he'd never eaten. So did the bacon and eggs. But there was nothing he could do about that. However miserable life was, you still had to eat. He considered opening a tin of baked beans, abandoned the idea because he couldn't see one with a ring-pull, but found two cold boiled potatoes in the fridge. He sliced them thinly so they'd crisp and dropped them into the pan.

Something made him think of Uncle Harold, and he realized he hadn't seen him sleeping on the living-room couch, so Mum must have tucked him into Dad's deathbed after all. Dad murdered-where had that come from? There had been no dagger in the heart, no gunshot to the head. Just some unexpected complication with an antibiotic-resistant bug. Em decided there and then he'd never start to drink alcohol. It was doing his mother no favors, however much it dulled her pain.

He finished his breakfast feeling better and stronger than he had for days. Then he finished the orange juice as well and wandered back into the living room. He was thinking of taking an early-morning walk, maybe down to the river before there were too many people about.

But there was something wrong. For a moment Em couldn't think what it was. Then he realized that the door to Dad's study was ajar.