Sharp Shot

by Jack Higgins

  A few more people followed, then the door closed. Jade let out a long breath. Maybe the woman hadn’t seen her after all.

  “You OK?” McCain asked.

  “Oh yeah. I just love haunted houses and ghost trains and stuff like that.”

  They were in a wood-panelled room. Portraits of sinister-looking people were painted directly on to the walls, frames and all. The eyes rolled ridiculously as the portraits watched the people in the room. A small boy laughed and pointed. A girl tried to hide behind her mother.

  Electric lights designed to look like candles flickered unconvincingly. A large chandelier hung from the ceiling on a chain, swinging dangerously—it seemed—to and fro.

  “At least we’re safe in here,” said Jade.

  But as soon as she said it, the door was flung open again. The woman following them stood silhouetted in the doorway. The young man tried to close the door on her, but she pushed him roughly aside.

  Jade looked around frantically for another way out. There wasn’t one.

  The woman pushed into the room. She reached up and took off her sunglasses. The eyes beneath were almost as dark and sinister, and at once she caught sight of Jade and McCain. Her lips twisted into a smile and she moved through the crowd towards them.

  McCain grabbed Jade’s hand, dragging her away. Soon they were facing a fireplace painted on to the wall like the portraits. McCain hammered at the wooden panelling, but there was no way out.

  They spun round, just as the woman pushed past the last people and stood in front of them. There was no escape now.

  6

  Jade and McCain had their backs to the fake fireplace. The woman reached inside her jacket, and Jade could guess what she kept there. Would she just shoot them where they stood—in front of so many witnesses?

  Suddenly the floor of the room tilted, as if the whole house had been tipped up. The woman staggered back, just as surprised as everyone else. McCain and Jade grabbed for the ridges of the wooden panelling, desperate to avoid being flung after the woman. But they were still easy targets.

  Then the lights went out. In the complete and utter darkness people screamed with a mix of terror and delight.

  The panel that Jade was holding began to move; it was sliding away from her. Light spilled into the room from behind the panel. It was a door, and beyond it was a corridor, the floor at an angle and lights flickering on the skewed walls.

  “Go!” McCain yelled in Jade’s ear.

  She didn’t need telling twice. Jade ran. She hoped McCain was close behind—and that the woman in the suit, the woman with the gun, was a long way back.

  Most people were walking slowly, looking at the pictures on the walls of the passage. Some were optical illusions; some were of fainting Victorian ladies menaced by ghosts and demons. One transformed from a handsome man into a rotting skull as Jade ran past.

  “Kids’ stuff,” she muttered, and kept running.

  Straight into a mass of cobwebs strung across the passage. To her horror and embarrassment, Jade shrieked. She clawed at the strands clinging to her face, and kept running. There was a loud bang behind her. Was it part of the haunted house stuff, a door banging or a gunshot?

  The passageway turned so abruptly that Jade almost ran into the wall. A continuation of the passage was painted on it—another illusion. But to the side, the passage opened out into a large ballroom.

  A glass screen separated off the side of the room, so that Jade was in effect still in a corridor. Through the glass she could see the rest of the ballroom. An enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling. Classical statues stood in alcoves. Huge windows were covered with lavish velvet curtains. And through the room, dancers moved elegantly and effortlessly to the slightly tinny sound of Sait-Saens’ distinctive Danse Macabre.

  Yet, as they danced, Jade realised they were not real. They were becoming insubstantial, like ghosts, and Jade could see through them. The dancers then reappeared as if solid, only now their clothes were faded and torn, dusty and grey. And the faces of the handsome men and beautiful women were pale, fleshless skulls.

  Another illusion, Jade realised, but she didn’t have time to admire it. More people were pushing into the ballroom area behind her, marvelling at the dance. They gasped as the dancers changed again. For the moment there seemed to be no way out. A hidden door would open, but only after everyone was in the ballroom and had enjoyed the illusion. Everyone— including the woman with the gun.

  She couldn’t see McCain. Maybe he’d managed to slip away and get out of this nightmare haunted house, but for Jade it was a trap. There was only one quick way out. The glass partition between the audience and the dance floor came up to Jade’s shoulder. She braced her hands on the top of it, then hauled herself up and over.

  She tilted and twisted over the top, landing heavily on her back, but she was up at once. She needed to hide somewhere before the woman saw her —assuming she hadn’t watched Jade vault over the screen.

  It was at this point that Jade realised how the illusion of the dance was achieved. The dancers were on film, projected on to a glass screen behind the partition, reaching up almost to the ceiling. And now Jade was trapped between the partition and that screen, in a narrow glass-walled corridor.

  The woman was pushing through the crowd. People were shouting at Jade, telling her not to be so stupid and to stop mucking about.

  “There’s always one person who has to spoil it all, isn’t there,” a fat man said.

  Jade got some satisfaction from seeing him shoved heavily against the partition as the woman in the trouser suit barged through. But it didn’t last. As the woman prepared to vault the partition after Jade, her jacket flapped open, revealing a shoulder holster at her left armpit.

  Jade ran. She had no idea if there was a way out, or if she’d be trapped by the wall. But she put her hand against the glass and ran. When her hand disappeared into space just a metre from the ballroom wall, she almost cried out for joy. The screen didn’t reach right to the end; there was just room for Jade to squeeze through.

  The woman could probably follow, but Jade was slim, and even if she was pretty slim too the woman had a bulky jacket—and a gun. It was a struggle, but Jade got painfully round the end of the screen, and on to the empty dance floor.

  Looking back, she could see the dancers reflected on the glass. This time they were dancing the other way. A skull stared out at Jade, and from behind it she saw the woman’s determined face as she watched Jade for a second, before running for the gap at the end of the glass wall.

  There was a door at the back of the ballroom. Jade had no idea if it was even a real door, but she wrenched it open, and was relieved to find it gave out into another corridor. From the other side, it looked like a panel in the wall—probably for maintenance access.

  She was in another corridor, obviously further round the tour. With luck she was close to the end, but she had no way of knowing. And the woman would be after her soon. Jade set off at a run down the corridor, but she didn’t know if she was heading for the exit, or would meet the rest of the tour coming the other way…

  The ceiling ahead of her was moving. It was lower than the part of the corridor she was leaving, and curved. In fact, as she approached, Jade could see that the corridor floor became a bridge through a cylinder that was turning slowly. The cylinder’s surface was covered with shining stars and planets like the night sky.

  There didn’t seem to be much point to the turning cylinder, so Jade ran on. And wished she hadn’t. There were handrails along the side of the corridor and she grabbed at one of them. Even though Jade knew it was the ceiling and walls that were turning and not the floor, her mind and body were telling her the floor was tilting and she clung desperately to the rail as she tried to keep her balance.

  She inched her way along, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. Jade tried to fix her attention on the dark end of the bridge where it became a corridor again. She told herself the floor was steady, tha
t she wasn’t being turned upside down, but everything she saw told her that wasn’t true.

  Her head was spinning as much as the cylinder and she began to feel dizzy and a bit sick. She wasn’t even halfway over yet. The woman couldn’t be far behind. Just focus, Jade told herself; just don’t look at the walls or the ceiling.

  Then she realised. She shouldn’t look at anything. The way to get across quickly was simple. She closed her eyes and immediately she felt better—she could tell her feet were steady on a solid floor. Keeping hold of the rail, she hurried across the bridge.

  When she felt the end of the rail, Jade opened her eyes again—just in time to avoid walking into the wall at the end of the corridor where it turned sharply.

  She looked back at the bridge that had caused her so much trouble. The woman in the suit was running towards her, and had reached the far end of the bridge. Jade hesitated, expecting the woman to stagger and clutch at the handrail, and look as daft and disorientated as she must have done.

  But she just kept running, like there was no problem. Like she’d been trained for this sort of thing. Jade didn’t hesitate any longer.

  The corridor opened out into a platform area, with metal barriers to guide the people into queues beside a set of rails in the floor. The rails arrived from and disappeared into a low tunnel that looked like it was hewn from solid rock. As Jade was debating which way to go down the tunnel, there was a rumble of sound and a small carriage arrived.

  It was like a miniature horse-drawn open-topped carriage, only with no horse. A swirl of mist puffed out from under its wheels so that it seemed almost to float along its track. The sides were daubed with swirls of luminous paint. When the carriage stopped beside the platform, Jade climbed in without a second thought.

  The carriage didn’t move. The sound of the woman’s footsteps echoed down the corridor. Her shadow fell distorted across the platform where Jade had been standing. Jade was trapped.

  Then the carriage gave an unsteady lurch and started to move off. The woman skidded to a halt on the platform area, and Jade ducked down, but behind her, she could hear the faint rumble of another carriage arriving.

  Jade wasn’t sure if the woman had seen her, but she had to assume so. There wasn’t really anywhere else she could have gone. The carriage was moving steadily, and a locking bar had come down over her legs so it would be hard to get out. Not that there was anywhere to go, as the carriage was running through the rocky tunnel. Jade’s best hope was to get to the other end of this ride, then make a run for it before the woman could get out of her own carriage.

  She could see the tunnel ending up ahead. A spray of mist drifted down from the roof forming a curtain. It was cold and clammy against Jade’s face and she blinked it away.

  When she opened her eyes again, she almost screamed. A pirate was coming at her. A black patch covered one of the pirate’s eyes, while the other was an empty socket. His clothes were ragged and torn, his bony hands clutching a rusty cutlass that curved through the air towards Jade.

  At the last moment it stopped. The pirate figure swayed at the end of its mechanism before being hauled back to lunge again at the next carriage.

  “There’s a seriously sick mind behind this ride,” Jade muttered. Rich would love it, she thought. But it wasn’t her sort of thing at all. Past the zombie pirate, Jade could see she was now travelling through a foggy graveyard. Tombstones leaned at drunken angles, chipped and cracked. Two spades were stuck in a mound of earth by a freshly dug grave.

  With the fog swirling round the fake grass and polystyrene monuments, this might be her best chance of escape. Jade hauled herself out from under the locking bar, scraping her knees painfully. She glanced back, waiting until the fog seemed even deeper, then jumped from the small carriage.

  The ground was hard—wooden. Jade stifled a cry of pain, and kept low so she was wreathed by the smoky mist. She crawled quickly away into the cemetery, and slumped behind the largest tombstone she could find.

  The rails curved round, snaking through the graveyard area to get maximum use from it. Jade’s empty carriage was soon passing close by, and she realised there wouldn’t be much cover when the next carriage passed— the woman would have a clear view of Jade crouching behind the grave stone.

  Except that when the carriage did go past a few moments later, it was also empty. The woman had gone.

  Jade almost stood up in surprise, but immediately realised that wouldn’t be a good idea, and instead pressed herself low to the damp, misty ground. The woman must be out in the graveyard too—looking for Jade. She crawled after the carriages, keeping as low to the ground as she could, and making as little noise as possible. With hindsight, maybe she’d have done better to stay on board—the woman must have seen her getting out and followed. Her best option now was to follow the carriages to the way out of this smoky deathtrap.

  Suddenly, the ground that Jade was on moved. It was heaving itself upwards—tilting and turning. She gasped out loud in fear and surprise as she was rolled aside. The wooden lid of a coffin sprang up and fell to one side. The pale form of a skeleton sat up. Its head turned and it stared sightlessly at Jade. Then the jaw dropped open and it started to cackle with unearthly laughter.

  Jade rolled quickly away, shaking with fear. “Just for kids,” she muttered to herself over and over. Another dark tombstone loomed out of the swirling mist. “It’s just for kids. It’s not real. It’s not real.”

  “It may not be real,” an American voice said. “But this is. And believe me, you’re in big trouble.”

  What Jade had taken for a tombstone was the woman. As Jade looked up, she reached into her jacket. She was taking something out—not the gun, something from her pocket. It looked like a leather wallet.

  Jade froze. The woman was staring down at her. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

  Then a spade split through the misty air and slammed into the woman’s back. She staggered forwards, her face a mask of surprise and pain. The spade flashed again. It caught her only a glancing blow on the head, but it was enough to send the woman crashing to the floor. McCain chucked the spade down after her, and hauled Jade to her feet.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Together they ran after one of the carriages that was disappearing into the side of a cobwebbed mausoleum.

  The rails dipped into a dark tunnel. There was a dim light at the end of it. McCain and Jade ran towards the light. Another of the carriages turned into the tunnel behind them, picking up speed as it started down the slope.

  “It’s going to catch us!” said Jade.

  Ahead of them, the dim light suddenly flared and brightened. Then, just as abruptly it faded again.

  Jade was racing down the slope now. She almost twisted her ankle as it caught on one of the rails. She could hear the rumble of the carriage close behind her. McCain was a silhouette sprinting ahead, but any moment, the carriage would roll into both of them.

  Then finally, they emerged from the tunnel. McCain leaped to one side, Jade dived to the other, and the carriage shot past them. It started to slow immediately, the rails rising uphill again to take the carriages through the next part of the haunted house tour.

  The mad scientist’s laboratory.

  It looked like the converted dungeons of a medieval castle. The place was lit up brightly by another flash of lightning. A wooden workbench was covered with glassware—test tubes and flasks, bubbling liquids and a brain in a jar. Huge metal coils ran up into a vaulted stone roof. Cables and pipes hung down. A large body lay on an operating table—mercifully covered by an oil-stained sheet. Thankfully, there was no sign their pursuer. McCain picked himself up and grinned at Jade as she too got to her feet. But then she saw his grin fade as he stared over her shoulder.

  Jade whirled round.

  A figure stepped from the shadowy alcove behind her and a tall man dressed in a dark suit reached out for Jade. He was just inches away from her, and there was no wa
y she could escape. His lips parted in a horrible smile.

  7

  Though he tried not to show it, Rich was impressed. An area of the car park had been cordoned off, and a black helicopter stood in the middle of it. The side door was open and the pilot sat there, his legs dangling over the side. It was a big helicopter—bigger than the one McCain had driven into, and large enough to carry half a dozen people easily.

  “Come on, son,” said the man in the suit and dark glasses. He nudged Rich forward, though he sounded and seemed deferential.

  But then, Rich reminded himself, the man had a gun, so he could afford to be. “My name is Rich,” he told the man—it was about as much defiance as he could muster. His heart was still pounding and his legs were still weak from the chase over the rollercoaster.

  “Sure thing, Rich,” the man drawled in his American accent as they approached the helicopter. “And my name’s Chuck.”

  “Good American name.”

  A smile appeared beneath the dark glasses. “Short for Charles. That’s a good British name.”

  Several people had gathered round the edge of the taped off area, watching with interest. They probably thought it was some sort of display or exhibit. Rich wondered if he could shout to them for help, tell them that he was being taken away against his will and his sister was in trouble too. But he didn’t want to involve anyone else. Who knew how desperate these guys were? They had guns, fast cars, helicopters…They were pretty serious.

  Too serious, he suddenly thought, to be chasing someone who just owed them money or a favour. What was really going on?

  Then he reached the helicopter. The pilot eased himself back inside, so that another man could lean forward from one of the passenger seats.

  “Hello, Rich. It’s been a while.”

  Rich just stared. “You?! What are you doing here?”

  The man’s teeth were sharp and pointed and stained blood red. His jacket was pinned to him. His face was a pasty mask. He reached out a gloved hand, as if in greeting.