by Kirsty McKay
The cold fear starts to flush hot, adrenaline coursing up through my body, willing me to flee. Vaughan said I’d be next on the list, and I hadn’t listened to him. I’d had those damn messages! Why the hell hadn’t I come down here earlier, with the crowd, and got myself a band? Stupid, stupid, stupid. In front of me, someone is waiting in the shadows, and behind me, the despair of darkness and the unknown depths of the caves. No escape.
I’m buzzing, but I’m like a fly stuck to the wall. I wait. Breathe. Try to calm down.
No more sound. My ears are so attuned now that I think I can even hear the sea outside, and the very distant cry of a seagull. Maybe that’s all I heard before? Just another minute, got to be sure.
Finally, I can wait no longer. If nothing else, I need to wee so badly I’m beginning to think of digging my own hole in the sand and squatting right here, right now.
OK, I’ll do this. Leg it. I’ll switch the torch on, point it to the ground to find my footing through the low tunnel, then when I can see the archway of daylight at the other side of the first chamber, I’ll sprint for home and never stop. I’m nimble, and I have the element of surprise on my side. Unless the Killer rugby tackles me to the ground, I’ll make it past them and out of the hideous, dark cave. And if they get me in the open air, at least it won’t be as horrible as being Killed in this tomb.
Or maybe there is nobody there after all.
I chuckle lightly to myself. Talk about spooking myself out.
I bend low, click the torch on by my feet, shielding the beam with my hand a little. I only have to get myself clear of these rocks in the tunnel, and then I can run like hell.
There by my left foot, is a red snake.
I jerk back with a yell, dropping the torch on the rocks. It dies instantly, and the dark takes me, smothering my face, leaping down my throat and pressing on my chest. How different it feels to be in darkness now I don’t have a light in my hands. I fall forward on to the hard, cold rock, shooting out my hands for the torch. Please, please, come to me. I can’t stand to be without you. I don’t know which way is up. I need you.
My hand closes around the torch, and I turn it on, feeling foolish now that I have the luxury of light.
That cannot have been a snake; Skola probably doesn’t have so much as a slow-worm. I find my feet, and I find what I’m looking for. It’s a red wristband, a double length of braided red plastic, with a snake’s head on one end. In place of the snake’s tongue is a catch; the snake’s tail has a loop. I wind it around my wrist twice and fasten it.
Ha ha, Alex. Bet you gave the sane members of the Guild a good old giggle when they dug these up.
I have no idea how this wristband got here, if someone put it here on purpose or by mistake, or if I dragged the thing in on my shoe somehow. I cannot get rid of the nagging feeling that Vaughan left it here for me. He said he’d try and get me an extra one. Maybe he knew that I’d heard him crying in this cave before, and maybe he knew I’d come in here to check it out. It’s a ridiculous notion, but it’s wrigging away in my brain . . . like a snake in the sand.
I extinguish the torch, scrabble through the tunnel on hands and knees, and as the passageway opens up to the outer chamber I rise up and run, taking huge, exaggerated leaps over the churned-up sand, my feet scrambling and ankles twisting on each landing, but I keep going, heading for the light. I’m nearly there, I can feel the fresh air on my face, and I’m nearly out when the Killer brings me down. I fall flat on to my stomach, the wind knocked out of me. I claw the sand, pulling for breath that isn’t there, dread filling me, and regret that the Killer has got me, has won.
But then nothing happens. No stab with a rubber knife, no dousing with a grenade of blood. Breath rushes back in painfully, and I roll over, blinking.
I am alone.
Stupid piles of sand! I’ve just barreled through a huge one, and that’s what felled me. No secret assassin, waiting in the shadows, just an almighty sand castle. I would laugh out loud if I had the breath to spare.
I get up, brush off the sand. My torch has died for good with the last clonk it received, but it doesn’t matter now, now I’m back in the light.
‘Are you OK?’
I shriek. A full-on, girly one that embarrasses the hell out of me.
Martin is standing behind me, grinning and toothy. He has a trowel in his hand.
‘Were you in the cave?’ I snap at him.
‘Yeah.’ He looks a little hurt. ‘I saw you running and trip on the sand. Are you all right?’
‘Yes!’ I bark back. ‘Thank you. I am.’ I look behind him, back into the darkness. ‘How long were you there?’
Martin shrugs, puzzled. ‘Four or five minutes. I was looking for a wristband, but I think they’ve all been taken already.’ He looks really disappointed. ‘You’ve got one, though. Where did you find it?’
My hand flies to my wrist. ‘I – it was just on top of the sand. At the very back of the cave,’ I sputter.
Martin sighs. ‘Lucky you.’
‘Yeah.’ I want to go, but I have to ask him. ‘Martin, did you laugh?’
He looks blankly at me. ‘When?’
‘Four, five minutes ago, when you first got here. Did you laugh, at all?’
He looks at me as if I’m deranged. ‘I’m here alone. What would I laugh at?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘But you didn’t?’
He shrugs again.
‘So . . .’ I’m confused. ‘You might have laughed? You don’t know if you did?’
He laughs now. It’s soft, and a little high-pitched, for a boy, but I have no clue if it’s the same laugh that I heard before. He shakes his head. ‘There’s nothing funny here, Cate.’
The way he says it creeps me out. I realize that while we have been talking, he has edged round me, so that now he is between me and the outside. I sidestep, and he mirrors me. I frown at him, and he tilts his head to one side, questioningly.
I hold up a wrist in front of me, like I’m Wonder Woman with her bulletproof bracelet. ‘I have a red band.’
‘Yes, I know that, you told me,’ Martin blusters, suddenly losing his swagger. ‘I suppose I’ll keep looking.’
‘You do that.’ I walk around him, and out of the cave.
That afternoon, I hide in the art studio, all alone. I plug my MP3 player into the music system, thumbing through my playlist until I find something cheery, and start work. For the first half an hour I’m watching the door for Flynny, certain he’ll be coming to find me, but after a while I lose myself in my screen printing, and three hours pass before my stomach and the clock tells me I’m going to have to run to make it to High Tea.
As I’m clearing away the final things, the door opens. It’s Mr Flynn.
I was sort of prepared for it, and inclined to believe what Vaughan had said about Mr Flynn not acting on what had happened the night before. But as soon as I see him, looking ridiculously handsome and dishevelled in a Sunday way, and wearing the most thunderous look I’ve ever seen on him – apart from the one he wore last night – I’m immediately reduced to Pathetic, Quivering Schoolgirl.
Of course, I don’t let him see this. I walk towards where he stands, in the doorway.
‘I’m going to be late for High Tea,’ I say.
‘Sit down.’
I sigh. ‘Ms Lasillo is on duty, she definitely will notice I’m not there, and would just love to give me an absence mark.’
‘Lucky you, it’s Mr Churley tonight.’ He nods to the nearest table. ‘Find a chair.’
I teen-shuffle to it, slugging my bag down and looking up at him.
‘Vaughan is OK.’
‘I know he is,’ Mr Flynn says. ‘I’ve just finished talking to him.’
This makes me sit up a little. ‘You have?’
Flynn nods. ‘He assured me that nothing untoward was going on last night. Beyond snogging and skinny-dipping.’
I can’t help the sharp intake of breath. Oh, Sweet Cheeses. I have to figh
t the overwhelming urge to put him right, but of course I instantly realize that this is the best scenario by far. Flynny thinks we were having a bit of reasonably innocent tongue-tussling down on the shore, followed by a dare to jump in the sea? Perfect. The Game is safe. I stay silent.
‘Vaughan tells me you used to know each other as kids?’
I nod.
Mr Flynn nods too. ‘This is not like you. I couldn’t smell anything on either of you last night, but if there was booze – or worse – involved, I suggest you do not do it again.’
‘There wasn’t.’ Ah. At least that part is true.
‘Fine.’ Mr Flynn walks up to the table and sits down beside me. ‘Cate, I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Girl is ambitious, clever, focused. Girl meets boy, falls in love, or lust or whatever—’
I blush and look down.
‘—and loses ambition, loses focus. Becomes one half of a couple, and little else. Lets it hold her back from jumping into all the other things she has to do with her life.’
‘That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?’ I mumble. ‘You saying it never happens the other way around?’
‘Sometimes, it does,’ Mr Flynn says. ‘But rarely, because most teenage boys don’t let a silly thing like love hold them back.’
I look up at him, sharply. ‘Are you having me on? That’s so completely misogynistic.’
‘No, it’s not,’ he says, equally sharply. ‘Often in life, not thinking about anyone else but your own sweet self is a major flaw. But not when you’re in your teens. Now is exactly the time when you should be thinking about you, and you only.’
I roll my eyes.
‘I know this,’ he leans forward, ‘because I lived it.’
‘What,’ I say sarcastically, ‘someone was so infatuated with you that they ceased to function?’
‘No,’ he says simply. ‘I was the love-struck one.’
I look at him, shocked.
He nods. ‘It’s true. I had an offer from an art school – Saint Martins, no less – and I didn’t go, because of a girl. Chose a part-time college instead, to be near her, and did a teaching degree. Started working to support her. She wanted to be a jewellery designer, and she was, for a while.’ He shifts his weight, and the chair creaks. ‘Now, I love being a teacher, but who knows what would have happened if I’d gone to Saint Martins instead of dancing to her tune and doing everything for her, at a time when I should have been focused on me? I don’t want you to repeat my mistake.’
I stay silent for a while, and trace a pattern on the table with my finger. This is all rather bizarre, because despite our closeness, this is the first time Mr Flynn has offered up any kind of personal history beyond insignificant fun facts. And also, it’s not relevant. Vaughan and I were not snogging, and we are not in love, or lust, or in any danger of being . . . that way.
Even as I think this thought, I feel guilty, because I’m not sure that it’s . . . one hundred per cent accurate. And I cannot allow myself to pursue that thought, not at the moment. Mr Flynn is right. I can’t lose focus, and the Game is the thing threatening to do that, not some boy. Probably.
‘Are you still with her?’ I say, finally.
‘What?’ Mr Flynn says. ‘Oh, the girlfriend? No!’ He laughs. ‘That was a million years ago. She’s a police officer now, down south somewhere, I think. Wife to Rob someone, mother of three chubby boys, according to Facebook. But that’s the point: when you’re sixteen you don’t realize how you’ll change, and how the decisions you make now can alter the course of your life.’
I nod sagely at the table. ‘Well,’ I say slowly. ‘I’m glad you did do the teacher thing, or you wouldn’t be here at Umfraville now, would you?’
‘Don’t suck up to me, Cate,’ he says. ‘It won’t work.’ But there’s a note of humour in his voice. ‘You should be glad I’m here, because nobody else would be letting you and that brass-balled boyfriend of yours off the hook so easily.’
‘Not my boyfriend,’ I say.
‘Glad to hear it,’ he says. ‘Now get to tea and if Churley gives you any rubbish tell him I kept you back.’
I get up. ‘Thanks.’ I point at the chair behind his desk. ‘Your jacket. Thanks for the lend. And by the way, nobody saw me wearing it.’
‘I should hope not. Now get lost,’ Mr Flynn rises too, and walks to his desk. ‘And Cate? If your work drops off at all, remember, I’ll be on you like a ton of bricks.’
I let that one hang in the air as I skedaddle out of the door as fast as my lucky legs will carry me, and race to tea.
Later, I hit the library for my scheduled hour of internet study time.
Housed in the mock-Tudor clock tower that dominates the quad, the Umfraville library consists of one very large room filled with floor to ceiling book stacks, and a couple of long, oak reading tables in the middle. There’s a mezzanine level above, with twenty or so small desks interspersed with shorter stacks on wheels. These desks are the best place to sit, because you don’t have any pesky teachers or librarians looking over your shoulder unless they come right up behind you. The desks have plug sockets, and you can even push the stacks around you a little to give yourself a degree of privacy. I bag one of the last desks with my back to the stairs; not too private, but it gives me a good view of the room, including the reading tables on the main floor below. Firing up my laptop, I take a quick glance around me, and log on to Crypt.
Ooh. Everyone has registered! There’s a complete user list on the newsfeed:
Grand Master
CharlotteCorday
DeadMcTavish
I_did_it
Banana Hammock
AllKillerNoFiller
13*is*my*lucky*number
IceColdBlonde
General Disarray
Clouseau
Skulk
Smee
Becky_is_Dead
RAW
sooperdooper
Nimrod
Hmm . . . this Game just got even more crazy; crazy-good. I chew on a thumbnail, and study my screen. Who’s who? Grand Master is obviously Alex. I think sooperdooper is Anvi, because she’s always saying ‘sooper’ . . . unless it’s a bluff. Becky_is_Dead is clearly a bluff; Becky herself would never put that in a month of Sundays. I suspect RAW is Becky, because it’s her initials, and I doubt she would bother putting much effort into her username now she’s dead and effectively out of the Game.
But other than those two, I haven’t got a clue who everyone is. Apart from me, of course.
Wait – I count the names: sixteen of them. That’s not right. Thirteen Guild members and one Grand Master, that’s how it should be – oh, no – there’s Vaughan now too. But that still only makes fifteen in total. Somebody has registered twice. Is that allowed? Some kind of error? I make a mental note to ask Vaughan later.
Right, better get on with some actual homework.
I’m only minutes into researching art nouveau, when Guild IMs begin to pop up.
Smee
Who got a wristband, then?
sooperdooper
Yeah, fess up!!!
Grand Master
No telling online, folks. Otherwise we can connect usernames to Guild members and your covers will be blown.
sooperdooper
Oh yeah, never thought of that!! Or perhaps it was all part of my plan . . . mwah–ha-ha-ha!!!
Yeah, sooperdooper is definitely Anvi; all those headache-inducing exclamation marks. I read the messages as they come in, and write a couple. It feels totally decadent. Then Alex messages us again.
Grand Master
Check out my new posting on Crypt for details on the lucky winners
Ack. I glance at the clock on my laptop, and reluctantly log out. I’m longing to read who my fellow invincibles are, but I’ve only got forty minutes internet time remaining, and a lot of work to do. I was checking Guild members out at tea, looking for another red snake, but I couldn’t see anyone wearing one. I had pushed mine up my sleeve, because
I didn’t know if it was wise to have it on display yet. After tea, I exited the hall and Alex whispered in my ear – no, in fact, he hissed, nothing else, just one long ‘hissssss!’. Just like a snake. I nodded at him, and he left, grinning.
Damn. I have to log in to Crypt again. Just a peek. With a quick glance to see that no one is looking my way, I type in my password, and go to the home page. Sure enough, there’s a new post:
INVINCIBILITY CLAIMED!
I AM ECSTATIC TO ANNOUNCE THAT ALL OF THE
RED WRISTBANDS HAVE NOW BEEN DUG UP
FROM THEIR SANDY GRAVES! THERE ARE THREE
IN PLAY, AND THREE ONLY. THE LUCKY PLAYERS
ARE:
ANVI
MARTIN
CATE
WEAR YOUR BANDS. WEAR THEM WITH
PRIDE. YOU HAVE THE WEEK TO RELAX . . . BUT
USE THIS TIME TO GATHER INTEL ON YOUR
FELLOW PLAYERS FOR THE VOTE NEXT
WEEKEND.
AND REMEMBER . . . JUST BECAUSE THE
PLAYERS ABOVE HAVE GOT BANDS, IT DOESN’T
MEAN THEY’RE NOT THE KILLER!!!
LOVE, YOUR GRAND MASTER XOXOX
Martin! The little weasel. Said he didn’t have a band when I met him at the caves. Was he telling the truth? Or is it possible he found it afterwards?
I go back to my Art homework, but keep logged in, and the IMs ping every few seconds. Everyone is excited, chatting about who found the bands and who didn’t, but trying not to reveal identities at the same time. It’s really distracting, because I want to study the chatter, try and guess who everyone is from the personalities emerging. Sooperdooper is excitable, Smee is a character of few words, General Disarray is sarcastic, superior. And of course, I’m checking out who is at the other computer terminals around me in the library, watching who is typing, and when, and if anyone is giggling or pulling faces at the messages. All the Guild members are here – except Vaughan, I haven’t seen him – but on another night we could all be in our studies, or elsewhere on the map, online. I see now how this tracking thing is going to be invaluable to guess who’s who. As far as I can make out, all users are contributing to the conversation, including the extra user, whoever that might be. The only one who isn’t posting is me. I write a couple of quick IMs to avoid standing out.