Scylla House

Chapter 1

"Do I have to do this?" Adrian complained, pushing the trolley back and forth idly. "Why don't you?"

Cameron grinned. "Because you look more like Harry than I do," he said. "Come on, it'll be funny."

"It's a fad," Adrian groaned, looking around King's Cross, "and it's not even a new one – people were bored of videos of kids crashing into walls, like, twenty years ago. We have a week in London, overseas, where we could be, I don't know, visiting the King, and this is what you want to do with it?"

"Laughing at you as you crash into a wall?" Cameron scoffed. "Of course this is what I want to do with my vacation. It's the perfect excuse to get a video of you doing something dumb."

"Fine," Adrian relented, "but if I break a bone, you're paying for my hospital bills."

"Good thing we're in the UK."

Adrian rolled his eyes. "If I'm doing this, I'm not letting it go undocumented. You're filming?"

Cameron held up his phone. "Now I am."

"Great," Adrian muttered under his breath as he pushed the trolley through the crowd. It still boggled his mind a little bit that this was where they'd actually filmed the Harry Potter movies, a monument of his childhood. Too bad J. K. Rowling had ended up a terf. He pushed his hair out of his eyes – if there was anything good about this trip to England with Cameron's family, it was the fact that his mother couldn't nag him about the state of his haircut. It was getting too long, falling in front of his face more than normal – he'd need to get a haircut sometime soon.

But not while in Britain. He looked up at the brick wall that arched up over them, wind catching on his Ravenclaw Quidditch t-shirt as the train on his right pulled away. He glanced over at Cameron, who sent him a thumbs up.

Now or never. In a few minutes, Cameron's parents would come looking for them, and they'd have to board their own train to some town in Scotland – he'd already forgotten the name. With a hard push, he started pushing the trolley, working up to a jog, then a slight run, but no faster. No matter what Cameron said, he was not going to sprint at a solid wall.

The bricks approached, dirty brown. As he got closer and closer, every instinct screamed to pull away. Adrian snapped his eyes shut when the barrier was a yard – a meter, they were in the UK – away. Better not to see his death, and just run at it blindly instead.

His muscles tensed in expectation, his eyes squeezed tighter. His momentum was too much – he was almost there – he was going to crash – he was crashing —

He kept running.

Adrian's eyes snapped open, dragging his heels and slowing to a stop. He felt like he was simply going to keel over and die from the shock – because this wasn't Platform 9 ¾, and that was not the Hogwarts Express.

The engine of an impossible train gleamed black chrome, an old steam engine that might have resembled the Hogwarts Express if it didn't scream of death. Gothic, its sides were molded to look like a cathedral, the carriages behind all with turrets and arched windows. A grill like prison bars guarded the front of the train, red flames flickering behind them with a malicious intensity. Intricate scrollwork and dagger-sharp metal ornamented every inch of the ghastly engine, like they'd consulted with Dracula on the exterior decoration.

The station echoed the train's grim appearance, except with more grime and filth. Soot stained the walls black, and beneath Adrian's navy converse, the concrete floor left dark smears on the edges of his soles. Pipes and cables ran up the walls, the rust creeping up the metal the only color in the monochrome of death's train terminal.