‘Cup your hands together,’ said Daisy. She placed her foot in his cupped hands and stepped up. Dennis staggered but kept his hands clasped. Daisy grabbed the ledge and pulled herself into the hole.
She turned around to face Dennis. ‘Can you get up?’
‘I’ll try,’ he muttered weakly. He made a feeble attempt to pull himself up into the hole, but he didn’t even get close. He slumped down with his back against the passage wall.
‘Can’t,’ he panted. His face was pale and drawn and his breathing laboured.
Daisy considered her options. It didn’t take long because she didn’t really have any. If Dennis couldn’t go any further, they would have to go on without him.
‘You stay here,’ she said. ‘We’ll be back with the stone soon. Everything will be fine, Dennis.’ She gave him what she hoped was an inspiring, confident and calm look.
‘Why do you look so worried then?’ said Dennis.
I’ll have to work on that look, thought Daisy.
Chapter 18
ALONE IN THE DARK
The passage Daisy and Ben now found themselves in was too low to stand up in unless you were a dog, and Daisy wasn’t, so she crawled along on her hands and knees.
It twisted and turned and sloped gradually downwards. Rocks jutted out at odd angles, forcing her to contort her body to get past them. Soon the passage tightened even further, forcing her to lie on her stomach. The rock was just centimetres above her head. She held her torch in her mouth and squirmed forward on her elbows, dragging the rest of her body along. Behind her, it sounded like Ben was picking his way through with not much trouble at all.
She wondered if the passage would get narrower and narrower until eventually it would be so tight that she wouldn’t be able to even turn around or go backwards and she’d be stuck and would die horribly of starvation and then cave rats – if there were such things – would eat her body.
She tried to stop thinking about that.
Soon the passage began to slope more steeply downwards. Daisy wanted to go feet first, but there wasn’t enough room for her to turn around. A trickle of water seeped down the passage and the ground was becoming muddier and slipperier.
Soon the slope was so steep that Daisy had to put her hands out in front of her to stop herself from falling forward. She came to a spot where the passage widened and decided to again try to turn around. She grabbed a knob of mud with her left hand to steady herself, and then reached out with her right to grab a rock. As she did so the knob of mud she was holding broke off and she began to slide.
She reached out, trying to grab something, but there was only mud (actually bat poo) and she couldn’t get a grip on anything. She picked up speed, unable to stop herself sliding faster and faster down the muddy, slippery slope until suddenly there was no longer a muddy, slippery slope beneath her.
There was just air.
Usually when you fall off something – a tree branch, a staircase, a roof, an elephant – you know how far you are going to fall, and roughly how long it will be until you hit the ground. So, as the ground approaches, you can brace yourself for impact.
But if you were to fall into darkness, and have only a small torch clutched between your teeth for light, you would have no idea whether you were going to hit whatever lay below in one second, in five seconds, in fifteen seconds or in thirty-three minutes. If you knew it was going to be thirty-three minutes you could, of course, use the time productively and pull out a book and read (whenever you go anywhere, you should always take a book, for precisely these types of situations).
There were two reasons why Daisy didn’t pull out a book and start reading during her journey through the air. Firstly, she (foolishly, in my opinion) didn’t have a book in her rucksack, and secondly, after 1.632 seconds, she hit water.
Freezing!!!! she thought. But it was also soft, which meant it didn’t hurt.
The impact forced her underwater, then she splashed to the surface. The torch had been knocked out of her mouth by the impact and she saw it sinking fast. She dived towards it, kicking herself deeper, but the torch was falling too quickly, and soon she had to return to the surface. A light source was important, but breathing was even more so.
She trod water. Her rucksack was weighing her down. She shrugged free of it and let it sink and then looked around, but there was nothing to see. It was now darker than the darkest pitch-black super-duper ultra-triple-dark-darkest dark ever.
‘Daisy!’ Ben called from above.
‘I’m in water,’ Daisy shouted back. ‘Stay there. I’ll get ashore.’
Shivering, she swam back towards where she thought the cliff she had just fallen off was. After a few strokes her hand hit rock. She felt around, hoping to find somewhere to get out, but the rock rose straight up. She searched around for foot or handholds but couldn’t find any. The wall was completely smooth, and she couldn’t touch the bottom, even when she pushed herself under.
She started to swim again, feeling her way along the rock wall, and then suddenly something wrapped around her ankle and pulled her down. If she had had time to think about what the thing felt like, she would eventually have decided that the word ‘tentacle’ fitted it best, but she was in such a state of shock that all she thought was, AHHHHHH!!!!!!
Luckily she had been breathing in at the moment she was yanked under, so she had a mouthful of air. That wasn’t going to last long though, and every second she was being dragged deeper. She kicked out with her legs, but whatever it was stayed wrapped around her ankle. She grasped around, searching for the rock wall, or anything to hold on to, but there was nothing except water, and that’s not good for grabbing. (If you don’t believe me, next time you are lying in the bath grab a handful of water and try to pull yourself upright.)
Another tentacle wrapped itself around Daisy’s other leg. She realised she was drowning, and that if she drowned she would be dead forever, or at least for a while. She kicked out with renewed vigour as her lungs started to moan and beg for air, but the tentacles just gripped her more tightly.
She remembered her pocket-knife. Of course! She reached into her pocket, hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping, HOPING that it hadn’t fallen out.
Her lungs were getting really angry with her now. At some point soon they were going to burst her mouth open, and if that happened and all there was outside was water, things would get very bad, very quickly.
Her hand reached the knife. It was there! She pulled it out and tore the blade open, and then stretched her hand down towards her feet, slipped it between her ankle and the tentacle and ripped the knife through it. She found the other tentacle, and cut again. She was free, and kicked hard, her lungs throbbing. As she broke the surface she took a huge gulp of air.
‘Daisy!’ Ben shouted from above. He had probably been doing that all the while she was below. She had no breath to reply. She realised that the whatever-it-was would probably come back for her. Unless another whatever-it-was did first. There might be dozens of them.
She sucked more air into her lungs and had an idea. If she could work out where Ben was, she might be able to get her bearings.
‘Ben!’ she yelled.
‘Daisy!’ replied Ben, from above and behind her. That told her there was no point going that way. That would just lead her back to the cliff.
‘I’m okay,’ she shouted. ‘I’m trying to find the shore.’
She swam into the darkness away from where Ben’s voice had come from, fearing that at any second another tentacle would grab her and pull her under.
‘Daisy! I’m going to jump down to you,’ shouted Ben.
‘Ben, no!’ If Ben jumped into the water the creature would surely get him, and in the darkness she wouldn’t be able to find and help him. And Ben didn’t have a knife to cut himself loose. Or hands to use it. She couldn’t let him jump.
‘Ben! Don’t!’ she
shouted.
‘I’m coming, Daisy. Loyalty. It’s what we do, remember?’
If he followed her, he was dead. She had to stop him.
‘I can see light,’ she lied. ‘There’s a way out. It’s fine. You go back and we’ll meet outside.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes!’ she shouted as confidently as she could. ‘I can see the stone! It’s on the shore. I’m going to grab it. There’s a passage that leads straight outside. I can see daylight. I’m fine, Ben. You go back to Dennis and help him get outside. If you don’t do that, he’ll die. He needs you. We’ll meet outside, near the entrance where we came in. Try and get Sinclair out too.’
There was a pause. ‘Are you sure, Daisy?’
Daisy felt a lump in her throat. She tried to keep her voice light. ‘I’m sure. I’ll be out in a minute or two. Go, Ben!’
There was silence. Daisy imagined Ben hesitating, torn between doing what he was told and his desire to be with his human. ‘All right. Be careful, Daisy.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Ben?’
‘Yes, Daisy?’
She swallowed hard, struggling to keep her voice even. ‘You’re a good dog.’
‘And you’re a good human, Daisy.’
Up above she heard him trot away, and wondered if she would ever see him again.
Chapter 19
UNWANTED COMPANY
Daisy kept swimming, hoping she wasn’t going around in circles. After about twenty strokes her hand hit sand. She put her feet down and walked out of the water, hands outstretched in front of her like a zombie from one of those old movies she and her mum loved to watch while her dad, terrified, hid in the bedroom. She was on a beach. She felt her way slowly up it until, after about ten steps, her outstretched hands met a rock wall. Again it went straight up.
She heard a slow shuffling sound behind her. Something was emerging from the water. Whatever it was, it sounded big. She imagined it as a big, soft blobby thing, a bit like an octopus but bigger, but who knew if that was right? The creature might look like a shark with tentacles, or a fridge with legs or a giant pink pineapple.
Daisy felt her way along the wall as quickly as she could. Soon it began to curve gradually back towards the water. She could hear the creature shuffling along behind her.
Thinking of it as ‘the creature’ was too terrifying so Daisy decided to give whatever-it-was a nice, non-scary, peaceful kind of name. Something like … Fiona. That was it! There was a Fiona in her class and she was meek and shy and small and kind.
Daisy’s foot felt water. She blundered on a few steps, hoping it was just a puddle and that the beach would re-emerge, but instead the sand sloped steeply away and the water got rapidly deeper. And colder. Her teeth started to chatter.
She pulled out her knife and turned back to face Fiona. The knife had helped her escape before, but cutting off a couple of Fiona’s tentacles hadn’t exactly stopped her. Still, it was all she had. Knee-deep in water and knife outstretched, she braced herself against the wall, then realised that she could feel something on the rock behind her. It was a knob of stone: a handhold.
A tentacle flicked her ankle and quickly Daisy turned to the wall and reached up, searching for another handhold. She found one off to the left and pulled herself out of the water, then reached up for another. Soon she was several steps above the water.
Below, it sounded like Fiona was following her somehow, pulling herself up the cliff. Daisy redoubled her efforts, climbing higher and to her left, further out over the water. For a while she found plenty of foot and handholds, and then suddenly there were no more. Fiona was close now, just below her. Daisy reached out sideways with her left foot. Her toe scraped a bump, but she couldn’t quite reach far enough to rest her foot on it.
A tentacle flicked her leg. Daisy held on tight and threw her left leg as far across to her left as it would go. This time it made it to the bump. Hanging on with her right hand, she pushed her left hand out to search for something to grab. She groped around, found a muddy crack and desperately clung to it. She pushed off with her right foot and swung to her left. As she did, her left hand slipped. She fell, and after 1.267 seconds again hit the freezing water.
The impact and the cold knocked the wind out of her but as she sank she saw something. That in itself was unexpected, because ever since she had lost her torch she had been in total darkness. A bit below the surface was a hole in the wall, about two paces across. The reason Daisy could see it was that a dim red glow emerged from the hole. She pushed up towards the surface, took a few huge breaths, and then dived again. Kicking hard, and without hesitating to think about how dangerous it was, she swam into the hole.
She found herself in a narrow underwater passage. Her lungs were already eager for air, so she pulled and kicked herself through the water as quickly as she could. The red glow was getting brighter. A few metres ahead there was a bend in the passage. Daisy’s lungs hammered for air. She decided to see what was around the bend and turn around if it was a dead end. But what if Fiona was waiting for her at the mouth of the passage? Well, at least this time she’d be able to see her. And she had her knife. She reached the bend. Around it the passage turned abruptly upwards. Surely it must lead up into fresh air.
Unless, of course, it didn’t.
Impulsively, Daisy grabbed the side of the passage and pulled herself around the bend and up. Her lungs were about to burst, but above she saw the surface. With a last surge, she kicked herself up out of the water and sucked in air.
When she had recovered enough, she hauled herself out of the water and looked around. She was in a cave the size of a large living room. She had emerged into a corner, and across on the opposite side were two passages a few metres away from each other. The room was filled with a red glow that came from a rock shelf that stood out from the wall. The shelf was at the height of Daisy’s shoulders and on it lay what looked like a black circle, the size and shape of a dinner plate.
Sticking straight up out of the middle of the plate was a red glowing stone. She had found it!
Daisy got up and walked over to it. Behind the plate, attached to the wall, was something entirely unexpected. Two computer screens. No keyboard, no mouse, no computer. Just two screens. Between each screen and the black plate ran a thin black cable.
The right-hand screen was blank. The left-hand screen had a straight yellow line moving slowly across it. Daisy wondered how long it had been doing that for, and whether the yellow line was getting bored of doing it. She stared at the screens, trying to make sense of them, but didn’t even get close.
Daisy considered her options. She had found the stone, but Gamion was surely on his way here. She could hide next to the entrance and whack him over the head as he entered. But there were two entrances a few steps apart, and even if she picked the right one to stand beside, she couldn’t see any loose rocks, which meant that she had nothing to whack him with other than her shoe, and it was just a sneaker. If only she’d worn high heels. Although that would have made the rock climbing tricky. She did have a knife, but would she really be able to bring herself to stab Gamion?
The other option was to take the red stone and get out. Then she could use it to de-hypnotise her mum and re-charge Sinclair and Dennis’s heartstones. Then maybe they could ambush Gamion as he emerged from the cave. That made more sense.
And then after they had done all that maybe she and her mum and her dad and her dog could all go home and order Thai takeaway with lots of chicken sticks and no yucky sauce and watch some movie about someone who gets in an awful pickle, but then it all turns out just fine in the end.
Daisy decided on the second option. But how would she get out of the cave? She couldn’t go back the way she had come. Even if she managed to swim back across the lake without getting drowned by Fiona, there was probably no way back up the cliff she had fallen down. She would have to
try one of the passages, and risk running into Gamion coming the other way.
She moved over to the stone and put her hand around it. It was faintly warm and she could feel, or sense, or something, its power. She tried to lift it out of its holder, but it wouldn’t budge. She pulled harder, and then tried wiggling it from side to side. It was no use. She looked behind and around the black plate for a switch or a lever or a catch or a lock or a handle or a button or a sign that read, ‘Hey you! Yes, you, the little girl who is looking for the way to release the stone. There’s a button here! Push it!’ or a something else that might release the stone.
Nothing.
Then Daisy remembered the parchment that her mum had given her. Did it contain information that might help? She unzipped her pocket and pulled out the plastic bag. Had the parchment survived the fall, the swim, the climb, the second fall, the second swim and everything else? The bag was still sealed and didn’t have any water in it. She peeled the sides back, extracted the parchment, carefully unfolded it and brought it close to the stone so that she could reread it.
Replacement instructions. Replacement must be done quickly.
Underneath the screens are three buttons of different sizes. Tap them in this order:
Big, small, big, middle, big, small, middle, middle, middle, small, big, big, small, middle, middle.
Cross to the opposite side of the room where, at about the same height as the screens, you will find a small knob of rock. Pull it to the left and then down.
Return to the three buttons and repeat the pattern.
Replacement may now be effected. Once replacement is complete, re-lock by repeating the above steps, but this time, instead of pulling the rock to the left and down, raise it up and then push it right, back into its original position.
And have a very nice day.
Were they instructions for removing the stone? There was only one way to find out.
Daisy heard something splash behind her and turned around. A tentacle was snaking its way out of the water.
Daisy Malone and the Blue Glowing Stone Page 16