The Girl and the Guardian
Page 14
Chapter Ten
Detour to Silverwood
Coming into Silverwood it was as if the dark clouds were specially gathered over this little township beside the old road, just to envelop it in grey sheets of driving rain. The wipers were on intermittent, and Mark reached over and flicked them onto high. Dad jabbed them back to normal. Shelley noticed he did seem very tense – even for him. He was muttering about the ‘damned rain,’ wiping his brow a lot, and rubbing the windscreen, which kept fogging up, and also looking in the rear view mirror.
‘Damn guy in that flash sportscar, he’s been right up my tail all the way,’ he muttered. Dad was irritable and paranoid like that, sometimes. It didn’t help his driving. Shelley glanced back as they slowed to turn in to the ugly toilet block on the main street. The red sportscar, its black canopy up, with dark-tinted side windows, pulled over on the other side and stopped, but no one got out. It was a very flash sportscar. The window went down. The man inside had dark glasses on. He was wearing a grey suit jacket. Shelley felt a chill run down her spine as she thought of granddad’s talk of sinister grey men who tapped phones and… followed cars? She looked at the number plate: XP 1307. She memorised it. ‘Just in case,’ she thought. ‘Not that it’s really going to be anything!’ her cellphone beeped.
REAL DUMP EH? BUT GOOD CLOTHES SHOP
GO THERE WIT U 1 DAY
LUVANA
Shelley felt a tug of affection for her friend, and wished she could go shopping with her instead of going on this long trek (though she couldn’t see any clothing shops in Silverwood, except a factory seconds outlet for lingerie. ‘Maybe Anna means that,’ she thought).
LUV 2 IF I EVA RETURN FROM THIS
SHEL
Shelley moved into the front when Mark went to the toilet. Returning to the car he kicked and fought her through the window, but ended up in disgrace in the back seat with mum after denting the front door. They set off again, up the old Silverwood road that wound into the hills before rejoining the main north road. Shelley noted with relief that the sportscar didn’t follow them. They passed a turnoff that said ‘Silverwood Psychiatric Hospital.’ Mum, sitting quietly in the back, let out a strangled cry and put her face in her hands. Shelley turned around and saw that she was trembling. Mark had refused to eat mum’s sandwiches and was munching on the potato chips (with noisy open mouth of course). Dad clutched the wheel and looked as if he wanted to say something to mum, glancing repeatedly in the rear-vision mirror and flicking his hand up to wipe his face. Was he coming down with a migraine? Sometimes when it hit him he would see funny lights and have to lie down in a darkened room. It was all just stress, of course. ‘But grownups don’t seem to be able to be honest with themselves and live for what really matters,’ she thought. ‘It’s their own fault, for making such a depressing world to live in. The Rat-race. The Daily Grind. And they call it the “Real World”! Well it sucks. Maybe we’re really living in the Matrix. If only there was a way out! I’d take it, even if I had to go through what Neo did to get out! I wish I could find a way!’
Little did she know the powerful effect such thoughts can have, or she might not have let herself wish that. On a sudden whim she took the strange leaf out of her pocket and stared at the ghostly image of the Lady on it. ‘If only…’ she thought, and she noticed her heart was beating faster. ‘But no, silly me. It’s just a leaf, and that world in the dream was just my imagination.’ She remembered one of dad’s books talked about wish fulfilment dreams. ‘What about the nasty people in the dream, though?’ she wondered.
Mum was still crying. Dad spoke in a loud voice, looking into the rear-vision mirror at mum. ‘I’ve just about had it, Ellen. You still haven’t got over it, have you? After all these years. You still think you were brainwashed in there. You got me to go along with your silly lie that that madman up north is my father, and that Shelley is our daughter. Well, that would make me a criminal, wouldn’t it, because you were only fifteen when you had her!’ He was shouting now. He didn’t often do it, but when he did it frioghtened Shelley. He went on, and there was a sense of doom in his angry words. Something irrevocable was happening.
I married you because I saw something special in you… I thought I could help you. I think we should just go back now, and go our separate ways!’ But he kept driving as if possessed. Mum said nothing, but burst into tears.
They were out of the town now, ploughing through wind-gusts bearing thick rain straight at the car. Mark lunged forward over the seat and turned the wipers on high. She was sure he turned slightly towards her and smirked, but for once he said nothing. She elbowed him, but missed. ‘Did he know?’ she wondered. It was a sickening thought. It was all right for him – he was born after… after whatever had happened when her mother had her… Shelley felt horribly hollow and shaky inside, and angry, and helpless. Whatever the truth was, it was too late – it had already happened.
Mum was still weeping. Shelley went over what dad had said, not wanting to provoke him by asking the questions burning in her mind. Did he really mean what he had just said? Could he really be just her… stepfather? The word sounded hollow and horrible in her head. But somehow she knew it was true. So that was the explanation for his tension and defensiveness, and so many little things she had heard them say to each other when they thought no one was listening.
Mum turned to Shelley, her eyes brimming with tears, and touched the side of her face with a trembling hand. Shelley felt her own tears stinging her eyes as she struggled to send the text message she had been writing to Anna. It read:
IT JUS GOT WORSE
THNKN OF RUNING AWAY
SHEL
Just as the ‘message sent’ envelope icon sailed across the screen, a bright flash lit up the car, then an explosive thunderclap straight after it, which meant, Shelley knew, that the lightning was very close. Dad jumped and the car swerved, but he didn’t slow down. Wiping away her tears, Shelley stared out her window, at the green hills obscured by slanting grey rain, wondering where the lightning had struck. Then her heart gave a huge leap. She forgot everything else – her family, her state of shock, her plans to run away. A huge horse was on the hillside only about twenty metres away, cantering through the rain. It glowed white against the drab hillside, moving in parallel with them, seeming to float rather than jump over the fences that went up from the road across its path. Its mane was long and silvery, and streamed out behind its graceful neck, and its tail also streamed out in the wind. She could see the rhythmic rippling of its muscles beneath the sleek silvery-white of its coat.
‘It’s keeping up with us!’ she thought, strangely soothed by the wild apparition. ‘It’s totally excited by this thunderstorm! What’s it doing now?’ It was plunging its head as it galloped, and appeared to be looking straight at her. Then she saw the horn in its forehead, where a moment before there was nothing. With a shock like lightning hitting her, the dream came back to her. Her heart was pounding. This time she knew she was awake, and the unicorn was real. A moment before everything was (relatively) normal; now it was full of magical danger – and an electrifying excitement which was close to terror.
There were no other cars on the road. The man who had moments before been father to her was still driving fast, too fast considering Shelley could hardly see anything out the front because of the rain. Before she could say anything about the unicorn galloping alongside them, mum leaned forward and almost shouted, ‘Stop the car! I want to get out NOW!’
Don’t be stupid, woman!’ dad retorted. ‘Can’t you see its RAINING?’ Suddenly dad wrenched the wheel around, cursing as the car spun.
‘Damn puddle!’
A great sheet of water sprayed up, slowing the car as they lurched off the road and veered into a deep roadside ditch full of weeds. There was the sound of an approaching car, and headlights on the road above. The red sportscar hissed past and disappeared into the cold grey rain.
Chapter Eleven
Out of the Storm