by John Marsden
It seemed like the staircase behind me was the less important, the less impressive. It was like it went up to a little out-of-the-way corner. Knowing Gavin I figured that they would want him as out of the way as possible, so I took that staircase.
This one was narrower and it creaked badly. The first step screeched and groaned as though it were playing a song from the flames of hell. I nearly bit my lip with the anxiety of trying to stand on it without any sound. I waited a full minute and then tried the second step. It was even worse. My throat was as dry as Antarctica. I couldn’t believe no-one had burst out of the room brandishing a gun and looking for the intruder. I decided to go for the big one and, stretching my right leg as far as I could, which isn’t very far, managed to skip the next two steps and go straight up to the fifth. Landing on it like that made even more noise, but I hoped one huge noise was not as bad as three big ones. I brought my left leg up as well, and stood there trembling, with sweat pouring off me. If only I could have sweated as much on the inside, then my throat might not have felt so parched, and my tongue might not have been sticking to the roof of my mouth.
Still no-one came, and I took the last two steps in another single movement. Well, a double movement by the time I got my left leg up there as well.
The darkness was pretty severe. There was a shape on my right that felt like a large photocopier, which surprised me a bit. I suppose terrorists have to photocopy stuff. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t a photocopier but a nuclear reactor or a superweapon. I’ve never seen a nuclear reactor, so I wouldn’t know.
On my immediate left was a door, and I thought there were two doors ahead of me, one further up on the left, and one straight in front. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I became more confident about what I was seeing. It was definitely a photocopier.
The difficult part was knowing what to do next. I chose the stupidest way of all, and did ‘eeny meeny, miney mo’. The winner was the door straight in front. So, on tiptoes this time, I went towards it.
I was almost touching the handle when I heard someone coming up the steps. This was another entry on the list of sounds you don’t want to hear. I broke out in a sweat that made my previous efforts seem like a faint mist compared to a torrential downpour. The footsteps were heavy and confident, as though the person had climbed these steps many times and felt right at home. I got down low to my left and squeezed in between the end of the photocopier and the wall, hoping that the person was not planning on running off a few copies of his favourite poem in the middle of the night.
He reached the landing below the one I was on, and paused. I shifted a little, to make myself more comfortable, although that’s a pretty silly word to use, as comfort wasn’t really a factor in my situation. I did want to avoid cramping though.
He turned up the other flight of steps, and as his footsteps started moving away from me, and I realised that I was safe for a few more moments, I peeked out. He opened what was the furthest door from me, although I could not see that until he turned on the light inside the room. From the glimpse I got it looked like a regular bedroom, but with a lot of stuff – just clothes – strewn on the floor. Then he shut the door, and the only light left was the thin ribbon down at carpet level.
I eased myself quietly out from the photocopier and went back to the door behind me. With all the stealth of a burglar I turned the handle, then gently squeezed the door open an inch. Nothing happened, so I pushed it open a little further. The air felt cold and dry. Somehow, although I had never noticed it before or thought about it, the air in a room where someone is sleeping or living or just being is moister. I opened the door further and slipped inside.
Again, the silence and emptiness told me no-one was there. I closed the door behind me, scrabbled for the light switch, turned it on for an instant, then off again. It wasn’t a bedroom at all, but a storage room.
Most storerooms hold, I don’t know, old towels, suitcases, preserved fruit. Piles of paper, your parents’ old tax returns. This one didn’t. What it held got my skin crawling and prickling again. This one held guns, more guns than I’d ever seen in one place. More guns than they’d use in a Hollywood movie even. Most of them in pretty good condition too, I thought, from the quick look I’d allowed myself.
Well, there was no getting away from it now. I’d found the right house. I didn’t know for sure whether Gavin was here, but this was the kind of house where I could expect him to be, and these were the people I needed to interview about him.
At least the knowledge gave me confidence. I went back to the door, eased it open again, and peered down the corridor. Dark and deserted as before. The thin strip of light at the base of the door opposite was no longer there. Either the guy had left the room again or, more likely, he’d gone to bed.
I groped my way to the window and drew the curtains. Then I took off my jacket and laid it along the floor, to block any light going through. Only then did I think it was safe to turn the light back on. There sure were a lot of guns, but I’d been a bit over the top in my first guesses. There were probably forty altogether. More than enough to blow holes in Ellie, Gavin and quite a few others. I wanted to sabotage them in some way but couldn’t think of how to do it. I opened a few cupboards. Ammunition, heaps of that too. It reminded me and I took out the magazine from my jeans and shoved it behind some of the boxes. Then other things, more like you’d expect in a storeroom. Boxes of tinned food. It made me feel very hungry. Slabs of Coke. Coke. A memory came back to me, of putting a tooth in a glass of Coke, years ago, to see if it would rot away like everyone said it would. Then Dad came along and drank the Coke, tooth and all, before I could stop him, so I never found out the result of my experiment. Instead I found myself in a different experiment: observing the effect on your father when you tell him he’s just swallowed one of your baby teeth.
Yes, Coke should do the trick. Fill each barrel and I reckon it would do them terminal damage. I opened a can, took a swig, then went to work.
CHAPTER 13
MISSION COKE TOOK quite a while. I gave each weapon a couple of applications. It didn’t necessarily matter that I took a while, because I figured that the longer I stayed in the house the safer I’d be. The later it got the less chance there’d be of people wandering around the corridors. I was hoping the guy I’d seen had gone to bed and that there weren’t too many more after him.
But also I was a little afraid to open the door again. It sounds crazy, but for half an hour or so I felt quite secure. In that short time the room almost became my space. A little world where I could work away secretly, without interruption, and forget what was on the other side of the door, and even forget why I had come to the house in the first place.
Reality’s always waiting for you though. Even when you think you’re hiding from it really cleverly, it still ambushes you sooner or later. The time came when, with a sigh, I turned off the light, opened the curtains and went back to the door. ‘Here we go,’ I thought, except that there was no we, only one poor I. I took a breath, thought of all the people who were sustaining me right now, Bronte and Jeremy and Homer and Lee and Fi and even Jess and probably the spirit of Robyn and Corrie too, and slid out into the corridor again.
There was now a strip of light under a second door, the one next to the guy I’d seen earlier. I ignored that and turned to the door just down a little way and on my right. The thought of opening every door in the house disturbed me, but I couldn’t think of any other way to go about this. I squeezed the handle and nudged it, listening carefully. I decided on the spot that I’d try a new policy. I’d open each door and see if I got a Gavin vibe. If not I’d close it and continue. I just had to trust that when I opened the right door I’d know it.
This room was much darker than the previous one. There was no way I could tell what was in there but I thought that I could probably tell what wasn’t in there, and what wasn’t in this room was Gavin.
I went on up to the only other room at this end of the building. I h
oped to God he was in here. I really didn’t want to be in this house much longer. I hoped we weren’t operating on Murphy’s Law, or whoever wrote the law that the last room you look in is the one where they’ve stored the hostage. But this room felt cold, like no-one had been in it for a long time.
Time to go to a different part of the house.
The other light had gone off again. I didn’t feel like exploring those rooms now that I knew at least two of them were occupied, and at least one of those by a non-Gavin. Would have been funny if the guy’s name was Gavin. Funny but irrelevant. I suppressed that thought and moved down the stairs. They seemed to creak more going down than they had going up, and that’s saying something. Again I tried to take big steps, and I waited a long time between each one in the hope that anyone listening might have gone back to sleep before I made another of these awful rusty-hinge noises.
At the intersection I looked down the corridor to the right. Nothing. I got to the three doors up the other steps without too much drama. Those stairs didn’t creak nearly as much. Of course Gavin could easily have been in either of the rooms where I’d seen lights. But I gambled that he wasn’t. I wouldn’t like to share a bedroom with Gavin, and I figured they might be feeling the same way.
That left the door straight in front of me. I put my ear to it for a few moments but could hear nothing. I knew I wouldn’t, but I was trying to delay the awful moment when I would have to open the door. I was much more nervous with this one than I had been with the ones behind me, because I knew the odds of someone being in here were much higher. If two out of three were occupied, it raised the chances for the third one.
My throat was now so dry that I could have driven a Landrover down it. It wasn’t just my throat though, suddenly it was my whole mouth area, from somewhere up in the nostrils, and it went right down into my chest. My tongue felt so huge and thick and heavy that if someone had spoken to me I don’t think I could have answered. I already had one hand on the doorknob, but now I took a firmer grip, turned it and, for the fourth time that evening, squeezed a door open.
Someone was in there. I knew that at once. Mostly it was the feel of the air, which was heavy and humid. The kind of atmosphere that only a human can create. As well, I thought I could hear breathing. But I’m not sure if that was just my sixth sense, which was working pretty hard by then.
Now my problem was even harder. I’d found out that someone was in the room, sure, but I realised that had been the easy part. The real problem was now beginning. Who was it?
I honestly didn’t think it was Gavin. If I was relying on my senses, well, I had to trust them. Somehow the room felt too heavy. A little kid like Gavin – something in me felt that the air, the atmosphere, would be lighter. But I still had to be sure. I didn’t want to have to come to this room a second time. The trouble was that I didn’t trust my instincts enough.
I had no hope of seeing much, as I was now in the stomach of the house, or to be more accurate the chest, and there were no lights anywhere. But it’s amazing how much you can pick up without even knowing you’re doing it. I was sure now I could hear a kind of breathing, and equally sure it was coming from my left. I started to inch over there, using my feet to suss out each bit of floor, at the same time raising an arm in front of my face in case there was a mobile, or some other unexpected obstacle, hanging from the ceiling. My left foot, probing carefully, came into contact with something soft, maybe some clothes, and I did a little detour until I was on clear carpet again.
My stomach was getting pretty queasy, with being in this room, so close to a complete stranger, and for all I knew pushing his underwear around with my toe. But I had to keep going. I felt something with my hand that was a regular shape, not like the soft stuff on the floor. I ran my hand to the left and then the right, and could tell by the different layers that it was a bed, with a mattress, and at least one blanket.
By now I had a little night vision, even in this very dark room, and could make out a shape under the blanket. It looked quite big, but Gavin was getting quite big too, and I started to think it could possibly be him. Now I had to let my fingers do the looking. Leaning forward a little, I forced myself to lift the blanket and wiggle my left hand in. I made it creep across the sheet, until it touched skin. My whole stomach flipped over at that point and I nearly threw up. I even made a retching noise and had to clamp my mouth shut to make sure nothing came out. I realised I was touching a hand, and had the dreadful idea that the man would suddenly grab me and haul me forwards. But it was a man. I was sure of that much. I could feel his thumbnail and knuckle, thumb or finger, I couldn’t be sure which, and they were definitely too big for Gavin.
I retreated the way I’d come, remembering to avoid the pile of soft stuff on the floor. Out in the corridor again, I closed the door behind me. I felt really weak now, and had to lean against the wall for a moment. Those awful minutes in the bedroom had drained me. I knew I couldn’t go through that again in every room of the house.
I was stuck for ideas, but I went along the corridor that seemed to lead into the next building. It was quite long, with no doors or windows, and I was sure that I was now in the house next door. At the T junction I turned left. There were two doors here, one of which looked like a very small room on the right, and another straight ahead, which could have been anything.
But something else was on the left. It was a little ladder. And looking at that, my Gavinometer suddenly started to register. I had the feeling that at last I was close.
I didn’t hesitate, but started up the ladder. I couldn’t see what was at the top, but once I got there I realised it was a funny little alcove, on a landing, and there was a door at an angle, and a smell of fresh sawdust. I found a handle and turned it, as certain as I could be that Gavin was on the other side. But I got no further. It was locked. Of course. It would be. A million curses ran through my head. Then I remembered the obvious, and groped around some more. I let out a sigh of relief as my fingers felt a yale key securely in its lock. I turned the key and turned the handle and pressed the door open.
It was pretty stinky. A wave of smell rolled past me, stinging my eyes. I blinked, then went in. The smell was familiar. Then, standing a metre inside the room, I heard breathing. The sound of people who are asleep must be as distinctive as their voices when they are awake, because I knew that breathing, and I knew that my long journey had resulted in success. Somehow, miraculously, I’d travelled all that way and found, in the attic of this old house, in a city I’d never visited before, in the middle of the night, my little brother.
CHAPTER 14
THERE WAS SUCH a fierce joy when I held him. We stayed pressed together, holding each other tightly, rocking and swaying a little and, in my case at least, never wanting to let go of him again.
To be honest I felt like a mother bird who has grabbed her duckling back from the jaws of the fox. I was full of joy at having saved him, disbelief that I could have, and the desire never to see him in danger again.
It was funny, he’d woken the moment I touched him, and seemed to know almost immediately who it was and what was happening. I felt his body stiffen as though a charge of electricity poured through him, and a moment later he flung aside whatever sheets or blankets he had, and we were holding each other as tightly as couple of wrestlers when there’s ten seconds to go and the gold medal’s up for grabs. When Gavin hugs it does tend to be a bit like a wrestler going for the death grip.
The trouble was, we might be lucky to get ten seconds. With so much reluctance that I could hardly bear to do it I finally pushed him away a little. I grabbed his hand and traced on his palm the word ‘go’. I’d communicated with him that way before, and it was the only option I had in this darkness. But I didn’t need to use it for long. He separated himself completely from me, shuffled across towards the door, and a moment later we had full electric light. ‘Gavin!’ I mouthed at him in horror and terror. ‘Turn it off.’
He shrugged and grinned and waved h
is hands. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘They can’t see it.’
It was true there was no window in the attic, as I realised when I looked around, but I didn’t know how much light would seep under the door. It certainly seemed tight-fitting enough. And maybe Gavin had his light on at all hours of the day and night and they were used to it. I suppose it wouldn’t bother them if he had his light on or off.
I gave up looking around at the room and concentrated on him. He looked terrible. Among the many awful things those bastards had done, putting him in a room without windows probably wasn’t the worst, but it was a pretty foul thing to do. He seemed taller than I remembered, but maybe he was just growing without my noticing it. He was a lot thinner, but the biggest shock was the paleness of his face. It wasn’t like they’d held him prisoner for so long that he’d lost his suntan, but maybe the 24/7 stress of being with them had robbed him of colour, made him whiter. I noticed, too, a twitchiness, a tremor, that I’d never seen before. His lips quivered, his hands jerked a little, his fingers kept crisscrossing nervously. I wondered if they’d broken his spirit. By God, that would have taken some doing. If they’d done that, then they must be experts at their job. I would have put money on Gavin to go through a cyclone on a bicycle, to ride a tsunami wearing floaties, to escape the Titanic paddling in an esky and singing nursery rhymes. But now something about him worried me and I just hoped I could get him out of the building and out of the city without him falling apart.