Here and there, fragments of flint and cement jutted from the wilderness. They seemed out of place, as if they’d fallen from the sky and been embraced by the wildlife. The further Nicholas went, the larger the stony edifices became; some even had large gaps that looked like they had once housed doors and windows.
The boy paused as he felt a familiar prickle across the nape of his neck, as if there were eyes upon him. He searched the foliage for another, and then he saw her.
Jessica appeared from behind a maple tree mere feet away. The golden locks of her hair shimmered, but there was something different about her. Her silken dress was grubby, and there was mud smeared on her bare knees.
“Hi,” Nicholas said, surprised at the woman’s appearance. What had happened to the immaculate, composed creature he’d met only a couple of days ago?
Jessica pushed her way through the garden. She seemed agitated. One of her hands was balled up in a fist by her side, while the other snatched up handfuls of the vegetation before tossing it distractedly to the ground.
“Norlath,” the woman said in a tight, desperate voice. “Have you seen Norlath? She was just here, not a moment ago.”
Nicholas frowned.
“I– I don’t know who that is,” he said. Jessica was right in front of him now and suddenly looked very small. A lost little girl.
She cast a furtive glance about her, and put a hand to her head, scratching at her scalp with her fingernails. “She was here,” she muttered. “She was just here, but I can’t find her. There was something I needed to tell her. It was important. The flowers were talking again and I had to tell her, because it was so marvellous. Black-eyed Susan and Sweet William, they were singing to one another.”
“I’ve not seen anybody,” Nicholas told her truthfully, thinking of the big empty house he’d just wandered through. “Is everything alright?”
Jessica peered up at the canopy of leaves above her and began to whisper to herself. “All in the downs the fleet was moored, banners waving in the wind. When Black-eyed Susan came aboard, and eyed the burly men. ‘Tell me ye sailors, tell me true, if my Sweet William sails with you…’”
Her breath caught in her throat and Jessica scrambled up to Nicholas, seizing the front of his jumper in her fists.
“You have to help me,” she pleaded, staring up at him, her eyes wide and glassy. The boy could see his own startled face reflected in them. “Please, please,” she begged.
“I’ll help you,” Nicholas said, upset by the change in the woman. “Just tell me what to do.”
Jessica collapsed against the boy. “Maybe you shouldn’t be here,” she hissed, her hot breath tickling his bare neck. “There are things here. Scratching around, pushing their way out of the ground. They’ll eat your tongue.”
Nicholas didn’t know what to do. He thought about putting his arms around her, attempting to comfort her because she was obviously upset, but it didn’t feel right.
“The world…” Jessica murmured sorrowfully into his shoulder. “It’s flailing and falling. The oceans spill over and shrivel and the air grows thick with poisonous waste. There are screams, but nobody hears them, and we all stand around laughing and playing like naïve children, unaware of the seeds. Death is coming. The end…”
“Jessica,” a snobby voice retorted, cutting off the woman’s ramblings. “What the devil are you doing?”
Jessica fell away from the boy.
“Isabel,” she mumbled, brushing absentmindedly at the folds of her dress. Nicholas turned in the direction of that snooty voice and found that the cat was watching them, its gold-flecked eyes both suspicious and arrogant.
“D–did you just speak?” he said to the animal. The creature shot him a disdainful glare, and Jessica seized her chance.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, suddenly more lucid than she had been only a moment before. “I’m sorry.” In a flutter of grubby white she was gone.
“What have you done?”
The cat was addressing Nicholas now, squinting balefully out from the shade of a bush. Its tail danced like a live wire, unsettling a crop of diamond-shaped leaves.
“What have I done?” Nicholas retaliated. “She’s the one acting nuts!”
“You provoked her,” the animal continued, though now there was doubt in her voice.
“I barely said a word,” Nicholas said miserably. He stopped short, adding apprehensively: “And why can you talk? Cats aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”
“I’m not a cat,” said the cat. Nicholas’s cynical stare prompted it to add: “Not normally, anyway. This is but a temporary… inconvenience.”
“I’ll say.”
“Don’t mumble,” said the cat. It drew itself deeper into the protective shade of the plant. With Jessica gone, it seemed suddenly aware of how exposed it was out here in the garden, and its eyes flashed uneasily up at the trees before returning to the curly-haired boy.
“Who are you?” Nicholas asked, his interest growing. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m Isabel,” the cat returned distractedly. “And I might ask the same of you. This is no place for children.”
“I’m staying here,” Nicholas said, choosing to ignore the insult. “I thought I was the only one, but Jessica mentioned somebody else, Norlath or something. She said she was looking for her.”
The cat gave as close to a tut as it could muster.
“Norlath’s gone, has been for many an age,” it said bluntly. “This was her garden. She was obsessed with it. Consumed her life.”
“Why would Jessica be looking for her if she’s gone?” Nicholas asked, still unnerved by the woman’s strange behaviour, not to mention the cat’s sudden eloquence.
Isabel didn’t have an answer for that. Instead, she started licking her front paw. Then, thinking better of it, she sat up straight and fixed her piercing gaze on the boy.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” she said.
It was a good thing that she’d spoken because in that brief moment of silence Nicholas had been given time to realise that he was having a conversation with a feline, a thought that was making him feel decidedly unwell.
“Right now, this place is all I’ve got,” Nicholas told her.
“What a sad existence you must lead.”
“Better than some,” Nicholas shot back. “Besides, I like it here.”
“Like it?” the cat retorted. “What is here for you? Cobwebs and melancholy? You should be out gambling with your years, causing mischief, fighting other street urchins for scraps and vittles... or whatever folly young boys meddle in nowadays.”
“You’re one to talk,” the boy said, the novelty of their conversation wearing thin. The creature’s consistently bristling tone was annoying. “You’re a cat!”
“You really don’t know much, do you child?” sighed the creature under the bush.
“I’d know a lot more if everybody wasn’t so bloody secretive around here!” Nicholas yelled.
“Petulant, too, I see,” the cat noted snidely.
That was it. He’d had enough. Sick of the miserly creature and her barbed tongue, Nicholas kicked a clump of dirt in the animal’s direction and stomped back towards the house.
As Isabel ranted and raved behind him – spitting insults he was sure hadn’t been used in at least a century – he burst into the white corridor and slammed the door shut behind him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nowhere Is Safe Now
SAM EASED THE MORRIS MINOR TO the kerb. Its engine spluttered as it slowed and the radio, through which Frank Sinatra had been softly crooning ‘A Foggy Day’, shuddered into silence.
In the passenger seat, Liberty unclipped her seatbelt and went to open the car door.
“Ahem.”
Sam cleared his throat disapprovingly, stopping her mid-motion. He got out of the car, crunched a path through the snow and opened Liberty’s door for her.
“M’lady,” he said.
Liber
ty stepped out.
“You consider me a lady, how remarkably misinformed you are.”
She had twisted ribbons of brown suede through her hair, affixing little beads with white feathers to the tips of her braids. Sam didn’t find the result wholly displeasing to the eye. Of course, fashion was a mystery to him.
He locked the car.
“Quiet, isn’t it?” Liberty commented. She was peering down the snow-swathed street. Sam thought he saw her shiver, then huddle deeper into her winter coat.
It was mid-morning, and she was right; the world was eerily quiet. When the freak snowstorms had first blustered in, there had been a sudden rush of activity. Children had been bundled up in their coats, retrieved from the backs of cupboards after only the briefest of reprieves. There had been snowball fights and snowmen and Sam’s neighbour had dressed up in a red suit and donned a fake beard just for the fun of it.
There had been a peculiar thrill to seeing snow during the summer. But as the bitter weather persisted, the children returned to their homes. Few now ventured out into the unnatural cold, save those forced to by work and responsibility. People were becoming as bitter as the present climate, grimly waiting for the summer to return.
“Quiet as the grave,” Sam agreed. “I suppose everybody is toasting their feet in front of a nice fire.” He stamped his boots enviously. Beside him, Liberty peered up at the house they had parked by and Sam wondered if she was already sensing the trouble awaiting them.
He went to the front door and was just about to knock when–
“No.”
Liberty was frowning, half squinting at the house as if attempting to read its mood. She tilted her head.
“Something’s not right.”
Sam nodded. “I know, but we can’t let that stop us,” he said.
“Use your key.”
He didn’t bother to ask how she knew that he had a spare for the Walden’s. Some people might find Liberty’s gift unsettling or intrusive. In fact, this had been the case on more than one occasion. Sam, however, admired her for it. She couldn’t help the things that she felt.
He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a crammed key chain. He singled one out and pushed it into the lock.
The air in the hall was stale and Sam felt a twinge of unease. Things had certainly changed in recent weeks. Lucy Walden was one of the most house-proud women he’d ever met, even more so than his Judith, bless her soul. He had often teased Lucy for her obsessive cleanliness, once commenting that there would be a frost in hell before any dust settled on her surfaces. There was a horrible irony in that now. The morning’s mail lay unattended on the doormat, while a potted plant near the stairs drooped, neglected.
Sam peered at Liberty. Her eyes were impossibly large in the dim light. It was a familiar look. Sam had been there when she was born and he’d watched her grow into a confident young woman. It hadn’t always been that way, though. He remembered her teenage years all too well. Her abilities had made school a nightmare. She’d come home stoic and tight-lipped more than once when he was there, shutting herself in her room.
Luckily, her father – Sam’s friend Alastair – shared her gifts and had taught her the best he could. Sam remembered how Alastair had explained what being a Sensitive was like. Alastair had once owned a battered old television set. It had never worked properly. The aerial had to be resting at just the right angle to display a fuzz-free picture. Alastair likened Sensitives to that television set. There were signals in the air and Sensitives were the receiver. Mostly the signals were emotions, feelings; sometimes they were images and facts. Like the aerial, Sensitives had to find just the right frequency.
Liberty took a breath beside him and Sam left her to work her magic. She didn’t like interruptions.
He opened a door. It had once been a lounge, but it was almost impossible to tell that now. Slashes had been gouged into the wallpaper and the chimney breast had been attacked with such aggression that half of it had collapsed into the room, bringing with it a layer of soot that smothered everything.
Anything that could be ruined had been. It looked as if a demented animal had been let loose on the room.
“What the–?” Sam began. “Trinity spare us. What could have done this?”
He tensed.
A noise came from above.
The creak of a floorboard.
“I don’t like it,” Liberty said.
“Can’t say I disagree,” Sam murmured. He couldn’t take his eyes off the living room. What could have done this? He answered his own question with a single word: Harvester. Liberty looked at him and nodded.
“Trap?” Sam said in a hushed voice.
“It’s not a trap if we know it’s a trap,” Liberty replied.
“One way to be certain.”
He went to the kitchen and took out a knife, then headed for the stairs. Liberty went after him and together they made a stealthy ascent.
The landing was deserted.
Sam took a few furtive steps, coming to Patrick Walden’s bedroom. The door was only slightly ajar, so Sam eased it open.
Even as his fingers touched the wood, Liberty let out a little moan.
This room had been relatively untouched by whatever furious force had destroyed the living room. Nothing seemed to be out of place here. Except for the bed.
A figure lay in it, motionless. The crisp white sheets were splashed with red.
Sam shuddered. He leaned on the doorframe.
“Patrick.”
“Killed while he slept,” Liberty muttered. “Cowards.”
For a fleeting moment, as the grief overwhelmed him, Sam wondered what Liberty sensed from the dead – if anything. Was it as if they were asleep? Perhaps a groggy blur of dreaming? Or was there simply nothing? An empty space where once life had been?
Another noise snapped Sam to his senses. It was closer this time, coming from further down the landing.
He turned toward it, anger boiling through him. Whatever had done this was still in the house, he was sure of it. Had the doctor Lucy told him about returned to complete what he had started? Sam’s jaw set and his fist squeezed the knife.
Liberty placed a hand on his arm. He didn’t look at her.
“Too many have been killed now,” he growled. “I won’t suffer the monster to live.”
“Trap,” Liberty reminded him gently.
“The last he will set.”
Sam moved down the landing, toward the scuffling sound, and threw open Richard and Lucy’s bedroom door.
Nothing. No sign of life here either. Or death, for that matter. A small relief.
The room was, unsurprisingly, in a shambles. The bed was flipped over so that the bed frame lay atop the mattress. One of the windows had been smashed and some of the carpet had come up off the floorboards.
Sam scrutinised the debris. There had to be something here that would provide some clue as to what had happened.
Where were Richard and Lucy?
Another noise.
Sam stiffened and looked at the wardrobe in the corner of the room, the one thing still standing where it was supposed to.
Liberty appeared next to him.
“Somebody’s in there,” she said quietly.
Sam nodded and inwardly kicked himself. Why hadn’t he brought his rifle? He reminded himself that he hadn’t been expecting this. But then, the world was going to hell right now, wasn’t it? He should have been more prepared. The words the red-headed vixen had spat at him on the bus echoed in his ears.
“You’re losing your touch.”
And she had winked.
Sam puffed out his chest and strode up to the wardrobe. He reached for one of the doors, but before he had the chance to touch it, the door crashed open in his face and a screaming creature burst out at him.
Something sharp glinted in its hand.
It fell on the old man with haunted eyes and raised the shining object–
“Lucy!”
The cr
eature stopped at the sound of its name, straining to look at who had shouted.
“S–Sam,” she trembled.
Lucy Walden fell away from him, dropping the knife to the floor. She backed up against the wardrobe, shaking uncontrollably.
“Lucy,” Sam said, his voice filled with concern. He eased himself up from the floor. The woman was a mess; still in her pyjamas, her honey-coloured hair wild. There were grazes on her arms.
Sam moved toward her.
Lucy cringed away. “I–I almost… I almost–” she stammered, her eyes fixed on the knife on the carpet.
“No harm done,” Sam assured her. “Look at me, right as rain.”
She wouldn’t look at him, though. Her troubled gaze lingered on the knife and she was still shaking. She seemed to be deeply traumatised. What has she been through? A horrible thought struck him. What if she had done something to Richard and Patrick? What if she had killed her father-in-law? Sam pushed the disturbing notion away, not wanting to believe it.
He cupped her chin.
“Lucy.”
Finally she looked at him.
The tears came.
“Sam,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have come back.”
“Where’s Richard?” Sam asked. “What happened here?”
“Richard,” Lucy whimpered.
Sam wrapped his arms around her and she sagged against him, not bothered by his scratchy grey suit. Only a few days had passed since Sam left the Waldens to accompany Nicholas, and although he’d hardly left Richard and Lucy in the happiest of circumstances, what he had returned to was almost beyond comprehension. He swept Lucy’s hair out of her face.
She was terrified, that much he could tell. She clung to him like a child who was afraid of the dark.
“Lucy,” he appealed softly. “If you can tell me anything…”
Lucy gave no response; she simply leant into Sam’s shoulder despairingly.
He bent to look at Liberty. She was occupied with other things. He wondered if she could sense anything. He wasn’t Sensitive, but even he could feel the anxious energies throbbing through the house.
Liberty pressed a hand to her head, as if it was pounding, and Sam dreaded to think what she was picking up. She closed her eyes, a pained expression twisting her pretty face. Then her eyes snapped open.
Sentinel: Book One of The Sentinel Trilogy Page 16