The Nightmare Game

by Gillian Cross

  The words hit Tom like a punch in the chest. He hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t thought, not for a moment, that he was doing that.

  Robert obviously hadn’t seen it either. Suddenly his face was white. “He can’t be in the cavern. He can’t. They wouldn’t let him in.”

  “You’ve got to understand—” said Magee. But they never heard what it was they had to understand, because he broke off there. For a second he leaned forward intently, listening. Then he slid off his stool. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  As he strode across the room, there was a sound of scuttling feet outside. When he opened the front door the little landing was empty, but they could all hear the noises on the stairs. Someone was making a clumsy attempt to creep away without being caught.

  Magee walked over to the top of the staircase. “Ah,” he said, looking down. “It’s you. Why don’t you come up and join us?”

  The footsteps paused. Hesitated.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Magee said. “And we’ve got some shortbread.”

  “What’s he doing?” Robert muttered. “We can’t talk with some stranger here. We’ve got to find out—”

  But it was too late to protest. The clumsy, blundering footsteps started again, but this time they were coming up. Tom saw Emma’s face change suddenly, as though she recognized them. When they reached the landing, she turned around in her chair.

  “Hello, Warren,” she said, as he appeared in the doorway.

  Robert jumped to his feet. “No,” he said. “Not him, Magee. He can’t come in here!”

  “Sit down!” Magee said sharply. “If you don’t like the company I keep, you can go elsewhere.” He nodded at Warren. “In you go.”

  Warren stood frozen in the doorway, looking terrified. Tom could see the fear coming out of him, thick and suffocating, like stinking smoke.

  “Go on.” Magee put a hand on his back and gave him a push. “Have some shortbread.”

  Warren lurched across the room and crouched down awkwardly to take a piece of shortbread. He crammed it into his mouth with both hands, peering at them over his fingers. The air pulsed in Tom’s ears and when Robert spoke, the words thundered around his skull.

  “You followed us here, didn’t you?” Robert growled at Warren. “You’ve been sneaking around, listening outside the door.”

  Warren didn’t answer. He just stared at Robert, as though he was too petrified to look away.

  Robert glanced at Magee. “He can’t stay here. You’ve got to make him go.”

  “We’ve heard a lot about what you want,” Magee said coldly. “Maybe someone else should have a chance to speak.”

  His voice was tenser than it had been. Through the black haze in his head, Tom thought, He can feel it, too. Warren’s getting to him—and he doesn’t like it.

  Warren had been following the conversation silently, pushing shortbread into his mouth and looking from one face to another. He gulped down the mouthful he was chewing and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Well?” said Magee, still in the same chilly, impatient voice. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

  For a second, Warren was struggling to speak. Then the words came in a rush. “What’s all that stuff about danger?” he blurted. “And people freezing to death? Dad always said Hope would die if anyone took her away. You’ve got to give her back. Where is she?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if we told you,” Robert said bitterly.

  But Warren wasn’t going to be fobbed off like that. “You think I’m stupid,” he said fiercely. “But I’m not. I found out where you lived, didn’t I? I scared you all. And I took your sister away—the same as you took mine.” His voice was rising, hysterically.

  “Oh dear,” Magee said, under his breath. “Oh dear. . . .”

  The stinking black fog thickened in front of Tom. He could still hear Warren’s voice, but the pressure in his head was beginning to distort the words. He wasn’t sure anymore whether he was hearing right.

  “I took your sister away,” said the hysterical voice, “and I made her my other dame, I made her tread my home. I did it, and you couldn’t stop me, even though you are the terror body. You were just a red toy brother—”

  The words were incomprehensible nonsense, but the pain was real. More violent than ever before. And it was even worse because Tom knew, this time, that there was a way out. He couldn’t—he mustn’t—

  But why not? If he didn’t play the game, Magee would do it. What was the point in waiting for that? Why not do it himself? Now?

  Dimly, through the fog, he saw Warren waving his hands about, talking faster and faster. “—you can’t have Hope as part of your Rescue Game. She doesn’t need Magee’s Cure, whatever it is. Curse Magee—”

  Magee turned and looked straight at Tom, his blue eyes piercing the fog. His voice seemed to be speaking straight into Tom’s brain. What’s stopping you? Can’t you hear him? He’s been driven mad. Completely ruined. Nothing’s going to save him except a total change. That’s what he needs. . . .

  Almost without willing it, Tom began to picture the bank behind the hedge. The rough clods of earth and the tiny little stones . . . the great, gnarled trunks of the hawthorn bushes . . . the dead leaves, edged with frost . . .

  Sending Warren there would plunge him into a new life, with a different name. It would shake everything up and give him another chance. How could that be wrong? Magee was right. He had to do it. He called up all the energy of his mind and felt the power come surging in.

  But Emma was faster than he was. She leaped out of the chair and stood in front of Warren, facing the rest of them.

  “Stop it!” she shouted. Her voice was clear and strong, cutting through the noise and the darkness inside Tom’s head. “I thought we were trying to help those poor people in the cavern. None of this is going to help them. And that’s what we all want, isn’t it? We’ve got to rescue them, before they freeze to death. We’ve got to rescue Hope—because she hasn’t got any other body. If she dies down there, she’s gone forever.”

  It was Magee’s voice that answered her, thick with anger and frustration. “You’d better give up on that. If she’s down in the cavern completely—with no shell left behind—then that’s the life she’s chosen. You’ll never get her back.”

  23

  “YOU’LL NEVER GET HER BACK,” SAID THE MAN THEY CALLED Magee.

  That was the first thing Warren had really understood. When he was outside on the landing, he’d listened as hard as he could, but nothing he’d heard seemed to make any sense. Hope was obviously still alive, but why were they talking about caverns and freezing? Was she in some kind of cellar?

  Being hauled into the apartment was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to him. He would have refused to go if he hadn’t needed to know what was going on. As it was, he’d gritted his teeth and made himself walk through the door.

  And now he’d heard things he did understand. But he couldn’t accept them. You’ll never get her back . . . that’s the life she’s chosen.

  How could that be true? Wherever they’d put her, it sounded like a horrible, dangerous place. He couldn’t imagine her surviving for five minutes. He had to rescue her—somehow.

  “Let me—let me talk to her,” he stammered. “She—she can’t really want to be there. Not Hope. I’m good at persuading her. When—when she wouldn’t come out of her room before, I used to go down and talk to her. She likes that. Let me go and see her.” He looked desperately from Magee to the boy called Tom, not knowing which of them he was asking.

  Neither of them answered, because Doherty was in front of Warren and tugged at Tom’s arm.

  “If anyone’s going into the cavern, it’s me,” he said. “You know it has to be me, Tosh. I’m her friend. Send me down there to fetch her.”

  He sounded desperate. Almost pleading. Warren stared at him. Why would a bully like Doherty call Hope his friend? She didn’t belong with him. She belonged in her o
wn place, with her family. Wherever they’d put her now, she must be petrified. Warren could still see her small, bewildered face peering over Doherty’s shoulder as he carried her off.

  “Hope’s nothing to do with you!” he said loudly. Standing up to Doherty made his whole body tremble, but he had to do it. “She’s my sister!”

  “Why didn’t you take care of her then?” Doherty whirled around in a fury. “Why did you let your parents treat her worse than an animal?”

  Confronting him was more terrifying than Warren’s worst nightmares. He was taller than any boy ought to be, and his eyes were wild and menacing. But that didn’t make him right about Hope.

  “You—you don’t understand,” Warren stammered. “We had to protect her—otherwise she’d have died. That’s what happened to Abigail. She was born first, and the social workers took her away. They put her in the hospital—and she never came back. We had to stop that happening to Hope.”

  Doherty and the others might not have seen the photo of Abigail on the living-room mantelpiece, but they’d seen Hope. Why hadn’t they realized that she needed protection?

  “Hope can’t manage on her own!” he said wildly. “She’s not like other people.”

  “Did you never think,” Doherty said, and his voice was ice-cold now, “that she was like that because they kept her under the floor?”

  For a second, Warren couldn’t speak. That had never occurred to him, not for a moment. But, now that Doherty said it, he had a sudden, devastating glimpse of what it would mean if he was right. If his parents had made a terrible mistake—if they’d ruined Hope by trying to keep her safe—then all the work and trouble and secrecy had been totally pointless.

  And cruel.

  The whole world of people and feelings and things shifted in his head, scrambling together like the letters in a name. Even the bones of his skull seemed to be shuffling themselves. His stomach lurched and he looked around frantically, knowing he was going to be sick.

  Just in time, he felt Magee’s hand on his back, pushing him toward the bathroom. He stumbled through the door and across to the toilet. Kneeling down in front of it, he vomited violently, over and over again. He felt as though he was turning inside out. Breaking into pieces.

  The only steady thing was the pressure of Magee’s hand on his back. It rested there until he sat back on his heels at last, empty and exhausted. Then Magee took a step back and watched, waiting for him to speak.

  Warren looked down at the floor. “It’s not true,” he muttered. “What Doherty said—it’s not true.”

  “You don’t have to believe it,” said Magee. “You can go home and forget all about it, if that’s what you want.”

  Yes. He could. For a moment, Warren saw the choice, quite clearly. All he had to do was stand up and walk out of the apartment, clinging tightly to the world he knew. No one would stop him, if that was what he wanted. No one cared what he thought.

  But he didn’t stand up. The moment passed, and he was still kneeling on the bathroom floor, looking down at the carpet.

  “How can I go away?” he said. “Wherever Hope is, I have to find her. I need to know if she’s safe.”

  “Whatever happens,” said Magee, “you won’t get her back. Not the way she used to be.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Warren said shakily. “As long as she’s all right. Please send me there.”

  Magee’s mouth twisted wryly. “Ten minutes ago, I could have done it. But it’s too late now. You’ve moved on. If you want to make anything happen you’ll have to talk to the others.”

  That meant Doherty and the other two. Warren could hear them muttering together in the living room. Normally, whispering made him sweat, because it meant he was going to be hurt, but this time that didn’t seem to matter. When Magee held out a hand, he let himself be hauled to his feet. He let Magee lead him back through the kitchen and into the living room.

  Doherty, Emma, and Tom were huddled together on the stools. As Warren came in, they looked up and he swallowed quickly, tasting the sourness in his mouth. He wished he’d remembered to rinse it out. He felt grubby and gross and repulsive.

  “Sit down,” Magee said gently, pushing him toward the empty chair.

  Warren sank down into the cushions without a word and the other three ignored him. It was Magee they’d been waiting for. They all began to talk at once, interrupting each other.

  “There has to be a way of getting people out of the cavern,” Doherty said. “If I came back—”

  “—it must be possible for Hope!” That was Emma. She looked filthy and exhausted, but her voice was fierce. Why? Why did she care about Hope? Warren could hardly believe it.

  The other boy—Tom—was leaning forward, frowning at Magee. “How did Robert come back from the cavern?” he said. “What did you do?”

  Magee perched on his stool, waiting for them to stop. Gradually their voices died away and he began to speak.

  “I didn’t do anything to bring Robert back. That was someone else. Someone down in the cavern.”

  “Who?” Doherty said sharply. “Who was it?”

  Magee hesitated for a second. “It was—a person with a different kind of power from mine. I thought I’d got rid of him a long time ago, when I first found out how to play the game. But he learned another kind of strength, down on the dark ground—the strength that comes from choosing to be there completely, like Hope. To stay forever.”

  Doherty drew a long, slow, breath. “You mean Zak, don’t you?” he said.

  Magee nodded, watching his face. “Yes, I mean Zak. My brother.”

  FOR A MOMENT, NO ONE SPOKE. DOHERTY WAS STARING AT Magee, looking totally stunned, and Emma and Tom were looking at each other, uneasily. It was Tom who broke the silence in the end.

  “Then why can’t Zak do the same thing for all the others? Why can’t he help them escape?”

  “Most of them don’t want it enough,” Magee said wryly. “Zak senses what people are feeling, even more than I do. He’ll help anyone who really wants to make the journey—and believes that it’s possible.”

  “Robert’s shown them it’s possible,” Emma said quickly. “So why don’t they all—?”

  She stopped. Magee was shaking his head at her.

  “Too late,” he said. “It’s already too cold for traveling. And by the time the winter’s over, Zak will be dead.”

  Emma stared at him. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “He’s my brother.” Magee shrugged. “I can see you don’t understand the strength of that—yet. But you will. And when you do, imagine what it’s like for two brothers who both feel what’s going on inside people’s heads. The way Tom does.”

  Tom shivered, but he didn’t say anything. It was Doherty who spoke, very slowly, as though the words were hard to say. “So you mean—no one else is going to escape from the cavern they way I did? They’ve missed their chance?”

  Magee nodded. “They have. Unless—” He looked up, meeting Robert’s eyes full on. “A person who decides to stay in the cavern forever—like Zak—has the power to help everyone else escape. If that’s what she chooses . . .”

  He let his voice fade away. There was no need to finish the sentence out loud. Even Warren knew he was talking about Hope.

  But—

  Warren waited for the others to argue, to say the thing that seemed obvious to him. But no one said a word. In the end, he blurted it out himself, stumbling and stuttering because he was so frightened.

  “B-but that’s not fair! How could Hope make a choice like that? She—she’s not like other people. She doesn’t know anything about the world. How could she choose without understanding anything?”

  Magee shrugged. “All she needed to do was recognize the place where she belonged. The place where she could be most herself. Are you surprised she chose the cavern?”

  Half an hour ago, Warren would have disagreed, blindly, contradicting everything Magee had said. Now he forced himself to think. What would
Hope be like, if she was free to be most herself? What would she want then?

  “Suppose she’s changed her mind?” he said slowly. “If she’s different, she might want to make a different choice.”

  Magee raised his eyebrows. “You can go and call her if you like. If you call hard enough, she might choose again. But I think you’ll be disappointed. And, anyway, what about the others? If she leaves, they’ll lose their chance of escaping.”

  Doherty looked up sharply, but Warren didn’t care about any others. “Hope should have a chance, too,” he said doggedly. “Where do we have to go to call her?” Magee didn’t answer and he looked around at Doherty and Tom.

  Doherty’s face was wretched. “Calling’s no use,” he said miserably. “She won’t hear us properly. Down in the cavern, our voices just make a kind of rumbling sound.”

  “That’s it then,” said Magee. “There’s nothing else I can tell you.” He stood up to open the front door.

  “No,” said Warren. “Please.”

  He still had no idea where Hope was. The more they talked, the weirder it sounded. But he had something to cling to at last, and he wasn’t going to let it go.

  Magee stopped, with his hand on the door handle. “Please what?” he said.

  “Please tell me where Hope is,” Warren said nervously. “I don’t understand what’s going on, but I have to go and call her, if that’s the way to get her back. Only I don’t know where—”

  “Don’t tell him!” Doherty rounded on Magee. “If you do, he’ll tell his parents. And they’ll try—they’ll go and—and—” He stopped, shaking his head in frustration.

  “I’m afraid you need him,” Magee said smoothly. “If you’re offering Hope the chance to choose again, you can’t shut out any part of her life.”

  Doherty looked uncertainly at the other two. “We can’t tell him. It would be like sending Hope back to that horrible hole in the ground.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Tom muttered. “It was Mr. Armstrong who made that happen, and now he’s—not there. Don’t you understand? That changes everything. If we do manage to get Hope back, she’ll be able to go home.”