“They’ll be happy enough to see us as long as we’ve brought food,” she says. “That’s the trick to staying popular.”
Soon they’re all gathered in a grimy, puddly, more-or-less paved clearing in front of a long building with a curving glass front. The horses are misting with sweat and the Riders are beginning to drip. Everything reeks of damp. The dishes loom bleak and gigantic above, extracting moans from the breeze. There are littler ones and bigger ones, all of them stark and motionless and peeling. It’s like a family turned to stone, or to streaked concrete. The building doesn’t look anything like a stable but they tie the horses up outside it anyway, under a projecting roof. Rory’s incredibly relieved to be on his feet again, though he needs Ellie’s help to get down and his legs feel like they might be permanently bent. He and the remaining Riders, twelve of them—Sal, Soph, Haze, Sandra, Ellie, Rog, Perse, Wolf, the muscular young man who asked Rory about Tiffany Whatsername on Maries, another man and two women he doesn’t know—go in the building. It’s a cavernous echoey space with baffling posters and patterns and maps on the walls. The people who’ve invited them in are a man and a woman who don’t look anything like each other and yet are equally and identically crabbed and dirty and suspicious and old. Not old in years, maybe—they’re certainly not as old as Esme—but in some other way, as though too much has happened to them and they’re visibly fed up with it all.
“That was easy.” The man Rory doesn’t know comes strolling over to where Ellie and Sandra are standing with Rory. He cracks his shoulders and flexes his fingers. “Bit of a shame, really. I’d like to have given the Pack a taste of ol’ Headsmasher here.” He taps the handle of a smooth round club stuck in his belt.
“Would you,” Ellie says, her sarcasm plainly audible to Rory but apparently not to the man.
“We’ll do it one day,” he says. “Get a few of the lads together, find wherever they’re holed up, break a few skulls.” He rocks on his heels. “Long overdue, if you ask me.”
Soph joins them. “Hey, tiger. How’re we doing?”
“I’m OK.”
“Hungry?”
His expression must make it obvious, because everyone laughs.
“We’ll break out the picnic in a minute. Looks like we’re here for the night; have to deal with the nags first.”
“Oh?” says Ellie.
“Wonder-girl’s asleep, apparently. The old codgers won’t wake her up. Maybe it disturbs her oracular bits. Going to be too late to start back by the time they let us see her.”
“I’d better look after Drum, then,” Ellie says, and heads outside. Rory’s about to follow but Soph stops him.
“Manage all right on the ride?”
“Fine,” he says. He’s rubbing his back, so he adds, “A bit sore.”
Soph grins. “I meant in the town. It can be a bit unnerving your first time.”
“Why?”
“Why, he says. You’re a bit of an odd one, aren’t you?”
“Bet he’s too young,” Mister Headsmasher says. “Didn’t see anything yet. Same with the man-eaters. They got no interest in kids.”
The dismissive tone annoys Rory. “I did see—” he begins, and stops himself. He doesn’t want to tell these people about Silvia.
Mister Headsmasher smirks. “Never mind, son,” he says. “Once you start seeing the little people and the ghosties you’ll wish you hadn’t. Gives even me the creeps sometimes. Not anymore, but they used to.”
“Good on you,” Soph says to Rory, as if the man hadn’t spoken. “Why don’t you hook up with Sal there, she’ll get you sorted out.”
Rory’s introduced to the old couple who apparently live here. They look at him with squinty suspicion. Sal’s obviously trying to placate them as much as possible, acting polite and offering them as much food as the whole population of Home would have shared on an average evening, and that’s before anyone else even gets to think about eating. Eventually the Riders finish looking after their horses and break up into smaller groups and go out to the smaller buildings spread around the site. Some of the buildings are right under the satellite dishes, including the one Rory ends up in. Its tiny windows are blackened by dirt and moss and it stinks the distinctively unhappy stench of moldering concrete and stale indoor air. It’s all narrow corridors and tiny rooms and defunct banks of mysteriously clunky machinery. Everything drips with chilly gloom. Rory finds a swiveling chair and sits out of the way while a lot of disarming and unwrapping and eating goes on. Sal gives him food, bread and cold salty meat and two tiny hard tomatoes. He spins himself around slowly as he chews.
Quite a bit later the old woman comes and bangs on the door of the building. A lot of the Riders are dozing. Sal sits up and prods Rory.
“Ready to go?”
“Me?”
“I’d like you there. You’ve seen this thing in action.” She’s kept the staff close to her all the time.
“Where are we going?”
“To the oracle. She must have woken up.”
The old woman isn’t pleased to see Rory. “I’m not having two of you in there,” she says. Her lips suck when she stops between sentences. “One at a time. She gets upset.”
Sal’s holding the staff. It’s far too big for her. She plants it on the ground in front of the old woman.
“Rory won’t be any trouble,” she says. “He won’t say anything. He’s just coming to watch.”
“Trouble. Everyone’s trouble. No. Rules are rules.”
Sal sighs. She leans over the old woman. She stops pretending to be nice.
“He’s coming with me,” she says. “All right?”
The woman fidgets and sucks until she makes the mistake of meeting Sal’s look. “Suit yourself,” she mumbles. “Won’t be answerable.” She turns and heads away along a battered path. “Hurry up, then,” she says, though even Rory has to slow to a saunter to stay behind her.
Sal sticks out her tongue at the woman behind her back.
They’re heading towards the biggest of the satellite dishes. As well as being bigger than the others it’s clumsier, much heavier-looking, braced on gantries of rusting steel; it’s like some prehistoric stone monument compared to its sleeker companions. It sits atop a squat grey building in an area cordoned off by a chain-link fence. The grumpy old man’s waiting for them at a gate in the fence, bundled in thick waterproofs. The patchy rain has stopped but it’s a dismal late afternoon. The wind up here is already thinking about winter.
The man tries to make a fuss about Rory coming. Rory doesn’t hear what Sal says to him—he can’t help staring upwards: it’s like looking over the edge of a cliff, but upside down, as if the monstrous weight is going to suck him up to be crushed against it—but the argument doesn’t last long. The man unlocks the gate with the worst possible grace, banging the padlock open and leaving Sal to slide the metal slats herself. They screech in their clogged tracks.
From inside the building a high-pitched whimper answers the screech.
“There,” the old woman says, with enormous satisfaction. “You’ve upset her.”
The four of them cross scattered gravel and dead heather to a door. The dish is like a second sky above them, solid, threatening, the wind humming in the gantries. The woman bumps the man out of the way, unlocks the door, and calls into the dimness, “Amber lovey?” Or rather croons: it makes Rory think of the way Missus Grouse used to talk to her dog. “It’s your auntie come to see you again. And some,” she scowls at Rory and Sal, “nice visitors too. We’ve got some milk for you. Lovely lovely milk.” She motions them all in with one arm, into a dark corridor with corkboards on the walls. With her other hand she’s fumbling in the pockets of her coat. “Lovely lovely . . .”
A horrible scream rings out from deeper within. The woman’s half managed to extract a stoppered glass bottle of milk from her pocket; she flinches and drops it. It thuds onto linoleum. There’s a smell, a new smell, sudden and drenching, spicy smoke. It billows down the corridor lik
e a solid thing. The scream trails away. In its wake the old woman’s mumbling frantically, something like oh now oh dear oh dear. The man’s busy trying to grab hold of Sal when the bottle of milk rolls to a stop by his feet, cracks, and pops neatly apart. Milk pools around their feet. “No, Amber, dearie,” the old woman says, hurrying forward into the dark. A moan begins where the scream was. It’s a drunken wail of pain. The man’s trying to pull Sal away but she shrugs him off and goes after the woman.
There’s an instantaneous blinding glare. A strip of old fluorescent lighting has blinked on, showing the corridor and the door at the far end in a single searing glimpse before they all have to shield their eyes. The man quails and cringes. Rory scurries after Sal. The lights go off again and the moan stops. An afterimage of the corridor is imprinted on his eyes in black phantom light. “Hush now, hush,” the old woman’s saying. A grey dimness unfurls ahead; she’s opened the door and there’s the ghost of daylight in the room beyond. The smoky smell is even stronger, as if opening the inner door has unsealed it. Someone in there is keening and whimpering like a terrified dog.
It’s a clean bare room with a thin strip of windows high up. A single thick column of concrete fills its center. There’s a bucket of water, a camp bed and sleeping bag, and an unplugged electric heater. And a girl, a doughy-faced girl with straggly gingery hair, curled up on the floor at the base of the column, wrapped to her shoulders in a yellow sheet. She’s trembling and pushing herself along the floor in a ball, like an insect with its legs pulled off. The old woman’s knelt beside her and is cooing into her face. The girl twists in revulsion and screams again. Rory’s never heard a sound like it. It’s not pain, it’s not even normal fear, it’s like some limit of perfect terror, as if she can see the ceiling cracking and the thousand-ton false sky above them about to fall. The old woman’s cooing rises to a panicky no, no and she cradles the girl almost violently, like she’s pinning her down. Squeezing his hands over his ears, Rory sees another afterimage, impossible but perfectly clear, as if imprinted over the room: the dark negative of a forest, wide gnarled trees widely spaced, something unnamable moving among them like a dancer.
The scream stops.
The old man stumbles into the room behind Rory. He tries to kneel beside the girl as well but the woman pushes him away. “There there,” she’s saying. “No need for all this fuss.” The girl twists herself upright and backs against the column. It’s covered in tiny pencil marks, Rory now sees, little scribbles all around it and from top to bottom. The girl sees Sal and Rory for the first time. Her eyes go shocked and dull-witted and she whispers, “Dad?”
“It’s not your daddy, is it, Amber lovey? Silly girl. It’s your auntie, isn’t it? Auntie Sibyl. Here we are. Just Auntie Sibyl. Everything’s all right, see?”
“Dad?” The girl’s looking around. She sounds like a normal ordinary girl. “I got it. I still got it, ain’t I?”
“’Course you do, dearie.” The old woman’s hoarse with empty reassurance. “’Course you do. This is all your fault.” Rory can’t tell which of them she’s spat the aside towards. “’Course you got your special. Holding it now, aren’t you? Silly old Amber.”
“Where is it?”
“In your own hands, silly.” The woman’s unwrapping the yellow sheet. Her hands are quivering as if the girl’s an unexploded bomb. “Shall we look? Shall we let Auntie find it for you? Here we are, see?” She’s pushed the sheet apart. Amber’s arms are folded tight over her chest and she’s clutching something in her hands, pressing it against herself. “Look, there’s your special. Had it all along. Didn’t Auntie tell you?”
Amber looks down at her hands. She opens them a little. The thing is a little silver statue, a crucifix. “Stop pawing all over her.” The woman bats away the old man, who’s trying to help. While they’re whispering crossly at each other Amber stares up at Sal.
“Hello again, Amber,” Sal says.
“Don’t—” the old couple begin, in the same breath.
Amber interrupts them. “All right?” she says shyly.
“I’m fine,” Sal says, “thanks for asking. How are you?”
The room seems very quiet. The smell has gone. The dumpy girl smiles, rather stupidly.
“These are the nice visitors I told—”
Amber’s look slides to Rory. “Hello,” she says.
Rory’s suddenly intensely conscious of not knowing what to do with his hands.
“Hi,” he says, swallowing.
The man and woman try to silence him with simultaneous angry stage whispers. Amber stops them.
“Shush,” she says. She holds the little statue out towards Rory. “Would you like to see?”
“Oh no, Amber lovey. Don’t show anyone your special.”
“OK,” Rory says. “Thanks.” He steps closer to the girl.
“It’s special,” Amber says, holding it up. It’s about the size of one of her hands.
“Nice,” Rory says.
“It’s Jesus.”
“Right.”
“Me and Dad found it.”
“Oh.”
“Actually me. Dad couldn’t fit through the door. So it was just me.”
“Cool.”
“Dad’s dead now, and I’m mad.”
The old woman pats the girl nervously. “What a thing to say,” she says. She’s half trying to be reassuring to Amber and half trying to make a cross face at Sal, with the result that neither effort comes off. “We’re perfectly all right, aren’t we? Shall Auntie get you some of that lovely lovely—”
“Cracked,” Amber says. “Spilt. Gone.”
“—lovely lovely.” The woman’s patting her pockets, mumbling vacantly. She shuffles around on her knees and hisses at the man. “What have you done with the milk?”
“Amber,” Sal says. “May I show you something else special?” She sounds sane, grown-up. She’s like fresh air blowing into the room.
“It was in a box.” Amber hasn’t taken her eyes off Rory. “A green box. Daddy knocked the lock off. It was where the nutters lived. The Christians. With their holy acorn.”
“Now now, let’s not tell the nice visitors all—”
“Acorn,” Amber says, sharply, to shut the old woman up. Her expression is still earnest, friendly, dim. “Acorn, acorn, acorn. Velanídi zhulud ghianda eichel. It came from Arcadia. She brought it all the way. With her talisman.” Amber lifts the crucifix higher, inviting Rory to look. “She thought it would save her because it’s God.” She waggles it at him. “See? God.”
Rory’s feeling trapped. “I think Sal wants to show you something,” he says.
“It’s OK,” Sal says. “Let her speak.”
“I can’t help it,” Amber says. A trace of worry comes over her. She hugs the crucifix to her neck. “I can’t stop speaking.”
“Hush now, lovey. You mustn’t upset yourself.”
Amber turns to the woman in petulant little girl fury. “I can’t hush!”
“She’s upset now,” the old man says. “You’ve got her all worked up.”
“Things happen,” she tells Rory. It’s like she’s apologizing to him. “And I say them. I have to. Even when no one’s here.”
Rory glances at Sal, desperately hoping for some sign that they can go now, but Sal’s watching the girl.
“It feels like being sick,” Amber says. The old woman tuts and clucks. Amber nudges her out of the way impatiently. “You understand. Don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Rory can’t guess what might happen if he disagreed with anything she said. Maybe she’d attack him. Or scream again, that would be the worst. “Know what you mean.”
Amber’s fixed her attention on him now as if he alone in the whole world can save her. “She’ll follow you,” she says. He feels a pulse of sudden shame in his heart. “Across the water. She thinks you belong to her and she doesn’t want you to get away. She’s afraid of what went with you. She hasn’t been afraid for ages. She gave it up with her hymen.” On
the last word her voice changes, abruptly, impossibly: it becomes someone else’s, a deep, resonant, man’s voice. The whole room seems to waver. A dry scented wind rustles through phantom trees. The old couple whimper and Sal flinches in shock, as if something huge has swooped overhead. Amber clutches the old woman. “What am I talking about, Auntie?” Her own voice has returned. “What’s that word?”
“It’s nothing,” the woman says. “You’re having one of your funny turns, that’s all.” She hisses over her shoulder at the man, “Get them away!”
“All right now,” the man says, getting to his feet and plucking Sal’s coat. “That’s enough.”
Sal stares at Rory. “Who’s following you?”
“Never mind that,” the man says. “Out, you two.”
“Everyone out,” the woman says.
“He’s coming,” Amber says. She grabs the woman’s arm so hard it makes her gasp in pain. “He’s coming.”
“No one’s coming, lovely. Hush.”
“Out!” says the man, but he’s having no effect on Sal at all. Amber’s fastened herself to the old woman like a frightened toddler, but she’s looking only at Rory.
“Don’t go,” she says.
“Auntie won’t go, lovely. Auntie won’t leave you.”
Sal brushes the man’s hand away. “She wants us here,” she says.
“Don’t you tell me what—”
Amber cuts him off with a shriek. “Don’t go! You have to listen!”
Sal snaps at the man. “Get your hands off me.” She elbows him away and crouches in front of Amber, propping herself up with the staff. “We’re listening, Amber,” she says.
“Ah!” Amber’s increasingly wild look switches from Rory to the staff. She jerks herself back against the column. Her fingers scratch against the floor. “Unlife! Unlife!” She kicks the old woman away with a ferocious spasm. “They should have left it drowned! He went down in the storm but he wouldn’t stay down. They’re coming. They’re all coming!” She flings herself forward on her knees and grabs Rory around the waist. “He’s nearly here! Don’t leave me!”
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