‘It was the thing that kept bothering me from the start. Why wouldn’t the Well Spirit let us pay back our debt by giving her more coins, or some really valuable offerings? I tried to ask her in one of my dreams, and she said something about if nobody drinks, water goes sour, but if everyone drinks, more water rises. I didn’t understand it until the other night, when the Well’s Angel in my dream explained it better. She needs the offerings, but that’s because her power comes from granting the wishes. If she doesn’t then the wishes, her water or well, go all stagnant and green and yick. She doesn’t want more wishes. She’s already got too many that she can’t grant, so they’re like a traffic jam, or a blockage in a pipe, or a dam in a river. There’s so many of them they’re weakening her.’
‘So . . .’
‘So we need to weaken her some more. We need her knocked silly by a hail of new wishes she doesn’t understand. Even if it just stuns her, it might give us enough time to rescue Carrie.’
‘Oh yes! And then when we’re at Carrie’s house we can try to find Josh too, can’t we? Ryan, I’m really worried about him. We’ve got to talk to him and . . . save him.’
Could Josh be saved? Ryan’s feelings about Josh seemed to be in a little box that he dared not open. He stayed mute as Chelle continued.
‘But, Ryan, if we go back to the well and put down lots and lots of coins, won’t she know it’s us and do horrible things to us? I mean, even if we tried to make them difficult, complicated wishes that didn’t sound like us, wouldn’t the inside, “conker” bit of the wish give us away? Because underneath we’d be wishing something like, “Leave us alone!” or, “Die, Well Spirit, die!” over and over again, and she’d notice, wouldn’t she?’
‘I agree, I don’t think it’ll work if it’s us wishing,’ answered Ryan. ‘She’d know it was us after we chucked in the first coin, and then we’d have trolleys jumping on us from the trees before we could throw the rest down. We need an army of wishers. It’s risky, because we don’t know what they’ll wish. But right now I’m afraid to go to sleep, and you’re afraid to use your loo, and both of us are afraid to go near water, metal or electrics in case something attacks us. This is stupid. We’ve got to do something.
‘We’re going back to Magwhite, Chelle. We’re just not going there alone.’
When Ryan and Chelle abandoned the library, each of them was clutching a collection of printed sheets under their coats. Both looked with some resignation at the dented carcass of a supermarket trolley that lay in the road outside. To judge from its posture, it had been gliding across the street towards the library when something had hit it.
‘You know,’ said Ryan as they turned their steps towards the bus stop, ‘I’m almost getting used to this.’ He was getting used to a lot of things, he realized, not just trolley persecution. Mere weeks ago, simply visiting Magwhite had filled him with an almost unbearable thrill of the forbidden. Now here he was, a veteran of disobedience, heading out to perform what was almost certainly a criminal act.
Gutters spewed water instead of draining it away, and cars slowed to churn through the brown flood in every dip. Ryan did not have to swing upside down to turn the world on its head now, for reflections were everywhere. He winced each time he had to cross a puddle. Perhaps the inverted reflection below him was really their enemy in disguise . . .
When the bus arrived, it was nearly empty. The pair climbed aboard and fidgeted in the back, Ryan continually wondering where Josh was and imagining strange sounds in the bus’s engine. They were a few stops short of Magwhite itself when the bus ground to a halt behind a queue of traffic, with a slushing of wheels through water. Most of the vehicles ahead were coaches, some of them labelled down the side in French or Spanish.
‘This’ll have to do,’ hissed Ryan. ‘We’re not far from the place I saw on TV this morning.’ They got up, and the driver looked at them quizzically but opened the doors.
‘You don’t want to be walking far in this,’ he said, jerking a head at the coffee-coloured current along the edges of the road, its surface still leaping with heavy drops.
‘It’s all right,’ Chelle assured him sunnily. As soon as they dismounted, however, they found the roadside streams soaking through their trainers. They scrambled up on to the verge and struggled on.
‘There it is!’ The diversion sign was where Ryan remembered. It stood in full view of the halted traffic, so they had to lurk until the jam melted and the traffic eased into motion. As the last vehicle took the turning, they ran out and grappled with the sign until its metal tripod closed, Ryan grabbing the frame and Chelle the legs.
‘Let’s get behind the hedge!’ There was a little gap that let them squeeze through into a dripping cornfield. They manhandled the sign along the edge of the field, the plastic envelopes inside their coats slithering against each other. Getting the sign over a stile back to the road was a clumsy business that left Chelle with pinched fingers and Ryan with a bruised temple.
‘OK, here.’ They set up the diversion sign, then with all their combined force twizzled the little signpost that stood at the junction so that its arms poked into the hedge. As another coach approached, they huddled under the trees and watched as it slowed and then obediently took a right turn to follow their new ‘diversion’. After scraping the worst of the mud from their legs, Chelle and Ryan scampered in the same direction, along the road to Magwhite.
Ryan had forgotten about the sign at the edge of the village with ‘Magwhite’ written on it, but the hedge had half-swallowed it already, so it was easy enough to pull branches down from an overhanging tree to conceal it.
By the time they reached the damp and deserted centre of Magwhite, they had been overtaken by three cars and another coach.
‘OK, Chelle, I’ll hold and you tape.’ The water had got into some of the plastic envelopes, smudging the print, and the masking tape peeled a bit in the wet, but nonetheless soon there were little plastic-coated posters stuck to walls, windows and trees.
‘CROOK’S BADDOCK FESTIVAL HERE TODAY’ read some. ‘WELCOME TO CROOK’S BADDOCK’ read others.
‘Hey!’ Both of them started guiltily. A man was crossing the road towards them, holding a road atlas above his head to shield him from the rain. ‘Excuse me – can you please the way to Crook’s Baddock?’ Ryan thought his accent might be Spanish or Italian.
‘Yes!’ Chelle bounced cheerfully. ‘Here! Crook’s Baddock here!’ She pointed downwards for emphasis.
‘And where is the festival, please?’ He had a gentle face, a moustache, and currently a diagonal crease of anxiety above one brow. Looking past him, Ryan saw a big coach with ‘Arriba’ in swirly letters along the side.
‘Well, the festival’s only just started because of all the rain, so nothing’s really open, but there are lots of lovely sites of interest . . .’ As Chelle’s rate of speech accelerated, the man’s diagonal worry line deepened.
She exchanged a glance with Ryan, then handed him the remaining plastic envelopes. ‘Guide!’ she exclaimed, pointing at herself with both hands. ‘I show you arooouuuund.’ She drew a big helicopter rotary circle about herself to indicate the whole of Magwhite. ‘OK?’
Ryan took the hint and slipped off towards the car park. Earlier that day they’d found a leaflet that showed a footpath winding down to the towpath. If Chelle did manage to install herself as makeshift guide, she would be leading her group this long way round, down the path, along the bank of the canal and then up the steps to the well. The job of creating ‘lovely sites of interest’ from scratch before she got there was left to him.
Despite himself, he felt queasy as he entered the car park. This was the first time he had been back to the real Magwhite since the theft of the coins. His hands shook as he scrambled up on to the clammy wall, and he felt a violent shock as he saw a trolley lurking in a nearby tree. It was a second before he recognized it as the one that he had wedged there with Chelle and Josh on that first rainy evening. The wind stirred the bough on whic
h it rested, and it gave a thin, metallic mewl as if in sleep. He slithered down the wall, his feet scrambling clumsily for footholds.
Leaves glued themselves to his trainers as he stumbled down the slope. A stump by the waterside became the remains of the Farthingmoor Gallows. The graffiti-stained bridge became the Bridge of Oaths. Then, feeling a little sick, he scrambled towards the well itself. He taped up a sign that read ‘Well of St Margaret the White’ and ran for it.
‘. . . and all the way down here is where Nell Gwyn used to row with the king, with a big picnic with whole pigs and lots of gin, which is made of juniper berries, did you know that?’ There was no mistaking Chelle’s approaching voice. Ryan made a couple of clumsy bounds and crouched behind a blackberry bush.
He could just glimpse Chelle through the trees. The moustached man they’d met earlier trotted by her side and seemed to be trying to translate her unceasing commentary. Behind them a trail of tanned, dark-eyed teenagers in plastic ponchos picked their way through the puddles of the path, staring at everything around them with incomprehension, misery and loathing.
Chelle lifted her hood with a finger, cast a stealthy glance up the slope and caught sight of Ryan.
‘Um, and everybody should look at this bit of the canal,’ she added hurriedly, turning away, ‘because the poet Ingrid Pollus used to come here to . . . yearn. Because he and his true love used to meet here secretly on different banks, and he would shout his poetry to her, and they would both yearn.’ Chelle glanced over her shoulder again, to see Ryan in the embrace of a spray of bramble, and her voice rose in pitch and urgency. ‘And . . . while we’re looking at the canal you should pay very, very close attention to the ducks, because although they look ordinary they’re actually the only ducks in England with . . . teeny-tiny teeth.’ The man by Chelle’s side translated, and several people took a step away from the canal.
By the time Chelle had moved on to the swans, Ryan had extricated himself and reached the bridge.
‘Now up here are the really good bits,’ exclaimed Chelle joyfully, and she set off up the wooded slope, oblivious to the protests of several of her charges, who were examining their delicate shoes with dismay. ‘This used to be a gallows, and up here is the Well of St Margaret the White – and you’ve got to put a coin in the well and make a wish because it’s good luck.’
The moustached man translated for his students, pointing at the well. Word was passed down the chain, and the scowling children fumbled in their bags for wallets and bead purses. Encouraged by the slightly desperate smiles of their guardian, they trooped up one by one to drop in a coin. Ryan wondered how many of them were wishing for a big dry towel.
Chelle watched them with an expression of damp delight.
‘Tour over!’ she squeaked, as the dismal train started picking its way down again. The man with the moustache called out something to her as she turned tail and ran, perhaps a concerned question, maybe a word of thanks. She did not wait to find out which, but sprinted until she met up with Ryan at the far side of the bridge.
‘Teeny-tiny teeth?’ asked Ryan as they recovered their breath, and she bared her own teeth in an almost Josh-like grin.
They put up a few more signs along the towpath to guide people to the well. By the time they reached the road again, there was another parked coach, this time full of puzzled-looking old-age pensioners. Chelle and Ryan waved at them cheerfully and pointed towards the steps that led down to the towpath.
‘Do you notice something?’ whispered Ryan, as they huddled at the bus stop. ‘The rain’s slackening off.’ Indeed, by the time a bus to Whelmford arrived, there was a mere drizzle, and it made them realize how accustomed they had become to the downpour’s incessant hammering over the last few days.
Ryan and Chelle found a seat at the back of the bus, so that they could set about planning Carrie’s rescue in peace. They were so caught up in their schemes that it was a long time before Ryan noticed that he was idly scratching at one of his warts with the edge of his fingernail. He had grown used to the cold tingle of tenderness in them, as if the top layer of skin had been stripped away. Now, however, his nail was grating over insensitive calluses.
‘Chelle.’ He held out his hands. His warts were tiny and ordinary-looking, like little lumps of dried glue. ‘I can’t feel anything through them,’ breathed Ryan. ‘They’re just like . . . warts. I think it’s working. The rain’s stopping, and now maybe we’re losing our powers . . . I think we must have weakened her.’
They were so excited and happy about this that it took them some time to notice that their progress towards Whelmford was slowing. The bus’s little bunny-hop motions forwards were becoming increasingly infrequent and, after a particularly long halt, the driver actually sighed and turned off his engine. The traffic ahead was locked solid.
Diversion signs were meant to keep traffic flowing when some roads were blocked. But how bad could it be to move one little sign?
Again and again Ryan caught himself looking at his wrist where he’d once worn his watch. All the time he was making mental calculations, trying to guess how long it would take to rescue Carrie, then bus from Whelmford back to Guildley town centre and run to the library. Could they get back before their parents got worried? Could they get back before the library closed? In fact, could they get to Whelmford in time to get a bus home at all?
‘Down!’ Chelle pulled at Ryan’s sleeve, and then they peered as a familiar car eased past in the opposite direction, towards Magwhite. In the driver’s seat sat Donna Leas, leaning forward for a better view of the flooded road. In the passenger’s seat, biting his lips together and scowling over his folded arms, was Josh.
26
The Drowning House
For a moment, Ryan felt a terror that Josh had finished doing something horrible to Carrie and was heading back to the well to report. The next moment he remembered Josh’s scowl, and his pulse slowed a little. It was more likely that Josh had noticed his own powers ebbing and was off to Magwhite to find out why.
Ryan’s thoughts were in such a flurry that he paid little attention to another car that looked vaguely familiar, nosing through the water after Donna’s vehicle. Now once again he suffered the torture of waiting for the bus to crawl its next few feet.
‘We’re not going to get back before they miss us, are we?’ asked Chelle, her voice unusually level.
‘No, we’re not.’ Oddly, admitting the fact made them both feel better. ‘All we can do is get to Carrie and get her out of her house before Josh can mend the well.’ There was no doubt in either mind that the ever-ingenious Josh would come up with a plan.
‘Folks?’ The bus driver strained to turn his head. ‘There’s a diversion up ahead, so it looks like the Whelmford road is flooded. We’ll be taking a left and heading towards Poddington – jump out now if you’d rather take the last bus back to Magwhite . . .’
Ryan and Chelle exchanged miserable glances, and wriggled back into their sodden gear. They jumped down from the bus and trudged along the verge past the long row of cars, some with impatient drivers beating tattoos on their steering wheel. They got a few curious glances as they passed the diversion sign.
The road was a lacework of brown rivulets and puddles, and the sky had an October dullness. By the time they had hiked for a mile, their legs were prickling and shaking with the cold and Chelle was sneezing.
They were grateful when houses started to flank the lane. As the road dipped down towards the river, however, the water level rose, and soon they could not take a step without wading through water. Every window was dark, and most of the cars seemed to have gone. Masking tape was visible around the edges of many front doors. There was little sign of life but for the fat slugs that had sought the high ground of the wall tops, where they glistened like licked liquorice.
‘I think everybody’s gone away,’ Chelle said, ‘and I can’t hear Carrie’s thoughts at all, maybe my powers aren’t working right now, but maybe she’s gone, maybe the police
came and cleared everybody out . . .’
‘Not if they went knocking door to door,’ Ryan said grimly. ‘She doesn’t have one, remember?’
Turning into a little alley that ran between two houses down to the riverside, Ryan and Chelle quickly found themselves struggling through knee-high water and feeling a tug against their calves as if the current was trying to discourage them.
The only sign of the riverside walk now was the wire mesh fence which rose from the brown water, sieving a fringe of torn moss and chocolate wrappers. The current bulged and flattened like a tensed muscle and carried past plastic bags and doormats, along with the occasional footpath marker post that had apparently left its station to do its own exploring.
They crossed the little bridge and, to their surprise, found Carrie’s gate without difficulty. Beside it, a big, flat rectangular package mysteriously swathed in plastic sheeting leaned against the hedge. Ryan lifted the gate’s latch and gave it an experimental tug. It opened.
Maybe Will just looked in the wrong place after all, said the common-sense part of Ryan’s brain as the pair of them squelched into the sodden garden, the creeper drawing through their hair like a dank comb. But then Carrie would still have been able to get out, wouldn’t she? Unless . . . He remembered her shriek when she’d snatched up the phone. Unless . . . A pair of new-looking secateurs had been thrown at a marble fawn, decapitating it. Unless Josh did something so awful that Carrie’s really gone mad . . .
The curtains were drawn behind the French windows.
‘Carrie!’ squeaked Chelle suddenly. There was no answer but the damp flapping of a carrier bag that had been taped over a rosette-shaped hole in the glass. Ryan gave the doors an experimental tug, but they didn’t open. Chelle made spider-patters on the glass with her fingers. ‘Carrie!’ she called again, and this time there almost seemed to be a sound from the room.
Biting his lip, Ryan pulled his sleeve down his hand and poked it through the hole in the pane. After a moment’s fumbling his fingers discovered a key shape and turned it. The door swung open, hushing through water as if resenting the intrusion and pushing back the long corduroy curtain.
Verdigris Deep Page 21