The Nightmare Game

by Gillian Cross

  “We’ve discussed all that,” Robert said patiently. He didn’t want to go through the arguments again. “It’s too late now, anyway. We’re here. And we’d better get on with it before anyone spots us. Come on.”

  Stepping onto the grass, he walked quickly to the side gate and tried the latch. It lifted easily. He opened the gate without a sound, beckoning to the other two as he crept through.

  Beyond the gateway, the garden was very dark, but he could just make out the shape of the shed at the far end. That was where the bikes were, hidden between the shed and the back fence.

  Emma came up behind him, not realizing that he was still standing there. When she bumped into him, she gave a small, startled squeak.

  “Sssh!” Robert muttered under his breath.

  “It was your fault,” Emma said indignantly. “You were in the way. If you’d just kept going—”

  “Sssh!” That was Tom, following behind her. “Get into the garden quickly, before someone comes. And be quiet.”

  Robert couldn’t believe they were being so loud. He’d learned about being quiet in the cavern, when he was small. If he’d gone outside and made the kind of noise they were making, some greedy predator would have come along and eaten him. Tom and Emma wouldn’t have survived for five minutes the way they were behaving now.

  He pulled them into the garden and shut the door, lowering the latch carefully. Then he turned and began to pad down the garden, keeping to the grass and feeling the way with his feet. The others followed, as silently as they could.

  They were halfway to the shed when a window opened behind them.

  “What are you doing?” said a child’s shrill voice. “Go away, or I’ll call the police.”

  A light came on suddenly, catching all three of them out in the open. There was a girl at one of the upstairs windows and she was pointing a powerful flashlight straight at them. They stopped dead, turning to face her.

  “It’s all right,” Robert said gently. “We’re not doing anything wrong. We’ve just come to fetch something that belongs to us.”

  That didn’t make any impression on the girl. “I’ll call the police now,” she said, “if you don’t get out of here. I’ve got the phone in my hand. Look.” She turned the flashlight toward herself and they saw her for the first time. She was only about eight. A thin, lanky girl with hanging hair and nervous eyes. Her left hand was gripping a phone and they could see it shaking as the hand trembled.

  “You really don’t need the police.” Emma was trying to sound gentle, too. “We’re not doing anything bad. Why don’t you go and fetch your mom or your dad? Then we can explain.”

  The flashlight whipped back toward the garden, dazzling them all, and the girl gabbled a sentence that sounded as if she’d learned it by heart.

  “It’s not convenient for my mother to speak to you at the moment.”

  As she said it, they heard another sound from behind her. It sounded like a much younger child, whining as if he’d just been woken up. The flashlight wavered again as the girl called back into the house in a sharp voice.

  “Get back in bed, Callum. Everything’s all right. I’ll come in a minute.”

  Tom shifted uneasily beside Robert. “Isn’t there anyone else there?” he muttered under his breath.

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” Robert muttered back.

  Emma raised her voice and spoke to the girl again. “We’ll only be here for a minute. It’s just that some stupid kids have dumped our bikes behind your shed, and we need to get them back.”

  The girl hesitated for a second. “There’s no bikes in our garden,” she said warily.

  “Yes there are. Look. We’ll show you.” Emma began to walk in that direction, very slowly, so that the girl could follow her with the flashlight.

  Robert nudged Tom. “Get going, Tosh. What are you waiting for?”

  Tom was staring back at the house. “How could anyone leave her like that?” he whispered fiercely. “She’s terrified.”

  Robert shrugged. “She seems pretty brave to me. And maybe she loves being in charge and bossing her little brother around. We don’t know what she’s thinking.”

  “I do know,” Tom muttered. “I can feel—” He broke off suddenly and began to follow Emma, making for the shed.

  Last time they’d been there, it had been much too dark to see what the garden was like. Now, as the flashlight lit the way ahead of them, Robert saw that the garden was as perfect as the house. The edges of the lawn were cut into crisp curves, and the beds around the sides were full of tidy shrubs standing in a layer of bark chippings.

  It didn’t look like a garden where children ever played.

  The bikes were very well hidden. Tom had jammed them right in behind the shed, so that they were invisible from the house. Emma was leaning into the space and pulling at the nearest bike, but she couldn’t move it.

  “Hang on,” Robert said. He squatted down and took out the little flashlight he’d brought with him.

  Peering into the gap, he saw that Tom had locked all three bikes together. The loop of one of the locks had caught on a nail and there was no hope of getting them out without unhooking it. He wriggled the bikes, attempting to work them free, but there wasn’t enough space to maneuver properly. They would have to undo the lock.

  The girl from the house was still watching them. They could see the beam of her flashlight flickering up and down as she tried to work out what they were doing.

  “We won’t be long,” Robert called over his shoulder. Then he lowered his voice. “Can you reach in there, Tosh? It’s too narrow for me.”

  There was no answer.

  Looking over his shoulder, Robert saw that Tom wasn’t listening to him. He was staring back at the house, looking grim and miserable.

  Emma had noticed that, too. She gave Tom’s shoulder a brisk shake. “Stop daydreaming!” she said roughly. “We’ve got to get on with this. Unless you want that girl to panic and call the police.”

  “Be quiet,” Tom muttered. “You’ll scare her even more if you start shouting. Why can’t we just take the bikes and go?”

  “They’re stuck,” Robert said. Even he was starting to get exasperated.

  “Let me see.” Tom squinted into the space between the shed and the fence. When he saw the lock, he nodded. “I’ll have to get in there and undo it.”

  “The nails’ll rip your jacket to pieces,” Emma said.

  “Not if I take it off.” Tom unzipped it and pushed it into her hands. Then he looked again and took off his sweatshirt, too. “Might as well be as thin as possible. Hold the light steady, Robbo.”

  Emma stepped back, out of the way, to let Robert stand at the corner of the shed. Lifting his flashlight high, Robert shone it down onto the tangled bikes and Tom breathed in and wriggled toward the lock. When he was near enough, he stretched down to reach it with both hands, leaning away from Robert.

  As he bent, his shirt caught on a different nail. The cloth was pulled up, leaving the whole of his side exposed as he bent into the beam of the flashlight.

  Robert was shocked into speech. “What’s that?” he whispered softly.

  There was a dull red bruise under Tom’s ribs, running all the way across his side. It had a raw, new look, as though it had just happened.

  “What’s what?” Tom whispered back, glancing around. When he saw where Robert was looking, he dragged his shirt down hastily, tearing the material. “Oh. That. It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Robert was horrified. “You must be joking. How on earth—?”

  “Don’t fuss,” Tom muttered. He looked quickly at Emma, who was standing just out of earshot. “Let’s just get the bikes out of here as fast as we can. That girl’s frightened enough already. We don’t want her to panic and call the police.”

  That certainly made sense. Robert put his questions on hold and waited to take the first bike as Tom worked it loose. A few seconds later, he had all three of them and Tom was backing out into the
garden.

  “Let’s go,” Emma said cheerfully. She took her own bike and began to push it up the garden, waving at the window where the flashlight was still shining.

  The girl didn’t give any signal in reply. But as they reached the gate she turned off the flashlight and they had a brief glimpse of her standing in the window. She had a small child on each side of her now. They were both whining and tugging at her clothes and she kept thrusting their hands away irritably.

  “It’s not right,” Tom said as he pushed the gate open.

  “Perhaps their mom’s ill,” said Robert. “Or maybe she’s just a heavy sleeper. It’s probably no big deal.”

  “Yes it is,” Tom said stubbornly. “She’s always leaving them alone. Can’t you tell? Someone ought to do something.”

  Why did he think he knew? And why was he getting so agitated about it? “Isn’t there enough to worry about already?” Robert said. “At least those three have a roof over their heads.”

  “And plenty of food, I expect,” said Emma. “Not like some people.”

  Tom scowled at them both. “Don’t start going on about the cavern again. Haven’t you ever thought there might be worse things than nightbirds and hedge-tigers? Wasn’t Hope’s life worse than that, before we rescued her?”

  “Of course it was,” Robert said. “In a way. But—”

  How could he explain what it was like to live in constant physical danger? Tom knew that nightbirds and hedge-tigers were owls and weasels—but he couldn’t understand how different they were when they loomed over you with outstretched claws or sharp and savage teeth. If you could only see, just for a minute . . .

  But Tom wasn’t interested. Without waiting for Robert to finish, he jumped onto his bike and pedaled off.

  Emma pulled a face. “Well, at least you can’t say he’s a zombie,” she said wryly. “He’s certainly got a mind of his own.” She set off after Tom and Robert pedaled along slowly behind her. Still wondering.

  It wasn’t like Tom to be short-tempered and impatient. Something strange had happened to him. He certainly wasn’t blank and empty, but he wasn’t like himself either. He’d never been so vague and erratic before. What had changed him?

  And did it have anything to do with Hope—with Lorn—and the people down in the cavern?

  Robert’s head was bursting with questions. He didn’t know any of the answers, but he knew that he had to talk to Tom. As soon as possible. I’ll do it first thing in the morning, he said to himself as he cycled off down the road.

  BUT OVERNIGHT THE TEMPERATURE DROPPED, WITHOUT WARNING. And that put everything else out of his head.

  As soon as he woke up, he knew that something had changed. A narrow strip of sky showed pale and clear between the curtains, and when he pulled them apart he saw the dark leaves of the front hedge crisp with frost. Under the streetlamps, the grass verges beyond glimmered icy-orange. Last year, he’d seen the same thing and thought, How beautiful.

  Now he thought of death.

  Last year, he hadn’t known what it was like to live in a cavern under the ground, with no kind of heating except a brazier that burned little scraps of wood. Last year, he’d thought that the life he lived was the only kind of life that there was. He’d been very unhappy, but he hadn’t been in danger of dying.

  Now, as he looked at the frost, he could almost feel the cold air filtering down into the cavern where Lorn and the others slept. The brazier couldn’t give out any more heat. There were already two people stoking it constantly, day and night, and it was burning flat out. How could they all survive if it got any colder?

  Zak had spelled out the answer, ruthlessly. Their body mass isn’t big enough to retain the heat. . . . Lorn will die first. She’s very small. . . .

  Frantically Robert started dressing. He had no real plan. All he knew was that he had to do something. Pushing his feet into his sneakers, he went out onto the landing—and bumped into Emma as she emerged from the bathroom.

  She saw him heading for the stairs and pulled a face. “What are you doing? Aren’t you going to wash?”

  He couldn’t believe she was being so trivial. “Haven’t you looked outside? It’s frosty.”

  “So?” Emma said. “That doesn’t mean—” And then she got it, and her eyes widened. “Oh, of course. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to the park,” Robert said gruffly. “I don’t know what use I can be, but I can’t just sit around here.”

  “But suppose Mr. Armstrong’s watching already?”

  “I’ll just have to be careful. If you come, too, one of us can keep a lookout.”

  “OK.” Emma nodded quickly. “Give me a couple of seconds.”

  While she was dressing, Robert went quickly downstairs and found a few currants and a piece of bread to take to the cavern. It was frustrating to see all the tins heaped up in the cupboard. There was lots of food in the house, but none of it was any use to Lorn and the others. He could only give them a few tiny fragments at a time.

  Emma came running down the stairs, calling over her shoulder. “Rob and I are just going out for a walk. We’ll come back and have some breakfast before we go to school.” They went out quickly, before their mother had a chance to reply.

  The park hadn’t opened yet and the big memorial gates opposite their house were tightly shut, but that was just a formality. There was a fence most of the way down the side of the park, but once they’d walked past that and reached the woods at the far end, there was nothing to stop them heading straight into the trees.

  The woods were still dark, their narrow, twisting paths shaded by tangles of brambles and gaunt, leafless branches. They hurried along one of the paths, toward the hedge that separated the woods from the playing fields.

  When they reached the hedge, Robert led the way along the little ditch just inside it. Even in the dim light, he knew exactly where to cross the ditch, but he took his time, stepping very slowly and placing his foot down carefully on the other side. While he was still glancing around, to make sure that no one was watching them, Emma dropped onto her knees and peered into the shadows under the hedge.

  “Look,” she whispered. “It’s sheltered. There’s no frost here.”

  Robert knelt down beside her. He ran his hands lightly across the hedge bank until he found the tiny tunnel entrance. Emma was right. The ground was very cold, but not frozen. Step by step, he walked his fingers up the bank to the little patch of warmer earth, close under the bushes.

  “The fire’s still going,” he murmured.

  “A bit more insulation might help.” Emma leaned forward and scooped up a handful of dry leaves from under the hedge.

  “Careful!” Robert said sharply. The picture in his mind was clear and violent. Thick fingers digging. Heavy. Hard. Nails crashing into soft flesh and crushing tiny bones . . .

  “I know, I know,” Emma said. “But we’ve got to do something, haven’t we? We can’t worry about every little danger.”

  She knew she was wrong, though. Robert could tell from the way her movements changed. She arranged the leaves carefully down the slope, not scattering them at random but placing them, one by one. As she reached up for more, she slid her fingers gently into the brittle heaps.

  When there was a thick layer of leaves all down the slope, she sat back on her heels, looking satisfied. “That has to make a difference.”

  Robert shrugged. He was snapping twigs into neat, short lengths and stacking them next to the entrance tunnel, so that they were ready for the woodpile. He hoped that would make a difference, too. But how could they tell? How did they know what it would take to keep the cavern warm enough?

  Emma stood up and started to move up and down the hedge bank, hunting for more wood. “If we break up some wood at home, we won’t need to hang around here so long,” she said over her shoulder.

  As she spoke, Robert thought he heard something else in the woods behind them. A faint noise, like feet stepping along the soft earth path. He put
up a hand, to tell Emma to be quiet.

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered.

  He waved his hand impatiently and listened again, but there was nothing now except the rumble of traffic on the road outside. He covered the wood stack with leaves and stood up. His feet were numb and the knees of his trousers were damp.

  “Let’s go,” he muttered. “You’re right about the wood. I’ll put it in my bag.”

  Slowly he stepped across the ditch. Then he turned and looked back at the entrance to the cavern. I was in there with them, he thought. I was there. But it was already becoming distant. Less real.

  Emma came past him, pulling at his arm. “We’re going to be late,” she said. “Get a move on, Rob. Or do you want to stand there until you freeze to death?”

  Robert stared after her as she went back along the ditch. How could she say something like that, so casually? Did she think it was all a game?

  7

  EVEN WITH EMMA HARASSING HIM, HE WAS STILL LATE FOR school. She grabbed a piece of toast and went off straightaway, but he needed to wash and change his clothes. The school bell was already ringing when he finally turned in at the gates, and by the time he made it to the classroom, roll call was over.

  Mrs. Pearson looked at him sharply over the top of her glasses. “Late?” she said, with a question in her voice. Robert wasn’t one of those people who made a habit of missing roll call.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, not offering any excuse.

  Mrs. Pearson frowned and looked back at the attendance sheet. “You were late on Tuesday, too. What’s the matter, Robert? Have you started oversleeping?” She raised her eyebrows, and someone tittered at the back of the class.

  “Sorry,” Robert muttered again, ducking into his seat next to Tom. As Mrs. Pearson moved to mark him late, Tom leaned sideways to ask him something. But Mrs. Pearson’s head snapped up before he could get the words out.

  “There’s no time for chattering. You all need to listen hard. Even you, Thomas Hastings. There are dozens of notices today.”