by V M Jones
‘Course there are,’ said Rich with his mouth full of bread. ‘Lots of different little animals, like at home. Think of all the stuff you find in forests. Owls, and bats, and rats and mice and ferrets and here in Karazan there’d be sn …’ — he gave Gen a quick glance — ‘things like that. Nothing to worry about.’
But that wasn’t what Kenta meant, and we all knew it.
‘Why did you ask?’ Jamie quavered.
‘Oh,’ said Kenta, trying to sound casual, ‘it’s just … I keep hearing funny little rustles, as if … something’s trying to creep closer, without being seen.’ She gave a forced laugh. ‘Silly — it’s my imagination, I know. I’m just not used to camping out at night.’
‘That’s right — it is silly,’ said Rich staunchly. ‘Pass your plate. I hate to see good food wasted.’
I didn’t say anything but I’d heard it too. Just beyond the ring of firelight — a stealthy brushing sound rather than an actual rustle: the sort of sound something would make pushing slowly and secretly through the undergrowth. Not a little thing like a mouse or a ferret or a sn … but a bigger thing. About the size of a human … or something that had once been human.
I could see the girls were dreading the moment when we’d have to let the fire die down, unroll our sleeping bags and try to sleep. But the food was finished, the clearing up was done, the talk had gradually wound down … and all too soon Richard gave a big, phoney stretch and said, ‘Well, guys — I guess we’d better hit the sack. Big day tomorrow, and all that.’
‘I’ll take first watch,’ I offered quickly. The way I figured, if there was something out there, it would make its move sooner rather than later. I reckoned attack was the best form of defence … and I had a plan.
‘Rich,’ I said casually, ‘let’s scout around for a bit more wood before we settle down. We don’t want people wandering off alone in the middle of the night looking for firewood.’
Together we moved out of the circle of light into the surrounding darkness, searching for fallen branches and dry sticks. We were on the opposite side of the clearing from where I’d heard the rustling. Through the tree trunks we could see the little campsite as clearly as if it was spotlit on a stage. The fire glowed warm and red; beside it were the logs we’d perched on to have our meal. Our backpacks were dark lumps on the fringes of the firelight, and beside them we could make out the shapes of Jamie, Gen and Kenta huddled as close as they dared to the fire.
I touched Richard’s arm. ‘Rich …’ He turned to me at once. ‘Kenta was right. There is something out there, just beyond the campsite. On the other side of the fire from where we are now. I heard it — and I think I caught a glimpse of it. Something pale and … greyish, about the size of a person, hunched over.’
‘I know.’ Richard’s face was grim. ‘I didn’t want to scare the girls … and I didn’t want it — the thing — to know I’d seen it. I planned to stay awake, then come and talk to you when the others were asleep.’
I swallowed, hoping my voice would sound as calm and steady as Richard’s. ‘We need to make the first move,’ I whispered. ‘Take it by surprise … whatever it is. That way, at least …’
‘At least we stand a chance. Good thinking. What do you reckon?’ Richard’s eyes gleamed. ‘A pincer move, maybe? You on one side, me on the other? Then … whammo!’
‘Yeah,’ I echoed, trying my best to mirror the enthusiasm in his voice: ‘whammo.’
I picked my way cautiously through the undergrowth. In daylight the forest had been easy to walk through — we’d automatically registered obstacles and navigated our way round them without a second thought. But at night it was different — way different. Even once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I could hardly see a thing. More than once I bashed my head on a low branch, or almost tripped over a protruding root. But because the campsite we’d chosen was so sheltered, the ground underfoot was soft, damp and springy with decomposing leaves, and my footfalls made no sound.
I crept through the darkness, keeping our campsite the same distance away from me, circling it warily. My eyes burned from staring blindly into the darkness; my ears strained for the faintest rustle and my heart thumped in my throat. Sweat popped out on my forehead, freezing cold in the icy air; my breath plumed out in front of me, pale smoke in the blackness. I crept on.
Now I was halfway round. I imagined Richard picking his way through the trees opposite, sneaking closer to our quarry. I tried not to think what it might be … or what would happen if we captured it. I wished I had my pocketknife and a length of strong rope. I stumbled and almost fell, lurching forward onto my hands and knees, grazing my knuckles on the branch I’d tripped over. My hand closed instinctively round it. About the size of a baseball bat, solid and heavy … I straightened and stole soundlessly on, my makeshift weapon at the ready.
And then all hell broke loose in the silent forest. Ahead of me, I heard a sudden rustle and the hiss of indrawn breath. At the same time, beside the campfire, Gen’s voice, small and frightened: ‘Adam … Richard? Where —’
In the same moment from ahead of me in the darkness came an animal roar. Rich. Something huge and heavy crashed though the undergrowth; wood splintered, and the night was torn apart by a single, terrified cry.
An uninvited guest
‘Adam! Where are you?’ — one of the girls, shrill with panic.
‘Gaaaaargh!’
‘Sssssssssss …’
Desperately I lunged through the trees towards the sounds of the struggle, terror for Richard washing through my brain in a icy tide. ‘Richard! Hold on! I’m coming! I’m here!’ My lungs were raw; adrenaline burned like acid in my blood. I smashed though the bushes, branches tearing at me, twigs whipping my face, my clothes ripping. At last they were in front of me, shapeless in the dark — a writhing, twisting, struggling shape convulsing on the ground. I skirted the dark mass with my weapon raised, waiting for a clear strike.
Then one of the shapes reared up over the other, straddling it, its face — dimly lit by the distant fire — a mask of blood. ‘Stop struggling, or I’ll throttle you within an inch of your life! I mean it!’ The face was unrecognisable, but the voice — harsh and gasping, savage with pain and triumph — was Richard’s.
The dark shape on the ground lay still, face down in the dirt. I advanced on them warily, stick raised. ‘And I’ll smash your head in for good measure,’ I growled, hoping I sounded as fierce as Richard. Slowly, stiffly, he clambered to his feet, wiping a hand across his mouth and staring down at the dark blood.
‘Rich — are you —’
‘It’s by dose,’ he said briefly. ‘I’b fide.’
He aimed a none-too-gentle kick at the figure on the ground. ‘On your feet, whatever you are — one false move, and you’re mincemeat. Come into the light where we can get a look at you.’
I followed the two silhouettes into the circle of firelight. The other three were clutching each other on the far side of the fire, eyes wide. I stepped up beside Richard, my weapon at the ready. And then every nerve in my body went numb, and the stick fell from my hand. As if from very far away I heard Richard’s voice, anger edging into disbelief: ‘Who are you?’
I didn’t need to ask. I already knew.
It was Weevil.
Muddy, bloody and shivering, standing there in the firelight in his striped pyjamas.
‘Who are you?’ Richard repeated.
‘Yeah — and how did you get here? Because you’re from —’ Jamie hesitated.
Our world.
Weevil smiled. ‘Adam knows who I am,’ he said. ‘I live at Highgate wiff him. I’m his friend.’
‘Well, come closer to the fire then,’ said Kenta with her shy smile. ‘You must be freezing. And look at your slippers — they’re in tatters. Here —’ she dug in her backpack — ‘you can use my spare top if you …’
‘Hang on one second, Kenta.’ Richard was scowling. ‘This guy says he’s Adam’s friend … but Adam doesn’t seem very
pleased to see him. And how did he get here in the first place? Not with his friend Adam, that’s for sure. And what was he doing sneaking round our campsite, punching me on the nose when I …’
‘When you tackled me,’ finished Weevil. ‘In the dark, when I was all alone.’
‘Adam?’ said Rich. ‘Is this guy — what’s your name?’
‘Weevil.’
‘Weevil? What kind of a name is that?’
‘My name. Don’t you know what a weevil is? It’s a fing …’
Suddenly, numb shock gave way to fury. ‘Don’t listen to him!’ I yelled. ‘He’s not my friend! He’s snuck in here somehow — he said he could get in anywhere, and he was right! He wanted to come to Quested Court, but I wouldn’t let him! He — he steals everything! My penny whistle — my project — my hide-out — and now this!’ My words were harsh and jagged, and tears burned my cheeks. Everyone would see them — Weevil would see them — but I didn’t care.
‘I know you’re surprised to see me, Adam. But you’re forgetting your manners. Won’t you introduce me to your friends?’
‘No! Get away from us! Go back where you came from! You’ve stolen everything else — you’re not stealing them too!’
The others looked helplessly from Weevil to me and back again. ‘I can’t get back,’ said Weevil. ‘I don’t know how.’ His voice trembled slightly, as if it was on the edge of tears. ‘I’m cold — and hungry.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ said Gen impatiently. ‘What do we do now? As if things weren’t bad enough! Adam — can you put your differences aside while we get to the bottom of this? And you — whatever you call yourself — I suppose you’d better come closer to the fire before you get hypothermia or something. I think you owe us all an explanation — especially Adam.’
‘He can give the explanation where he is,’ I growled. I could feel the new Adam sloughing away like a dry snakeskin. The old one was right there underneath — bitter, angry, unforgiving. ‘If he comes near this fire, I’m going. I’ll set up camp on my own. I won’t be with him — I won’t! I won’t let him burrow his way in — you don’t know him! You don’t know what he’s like!’
‘Adam.’ Kenta’s voice was very gentle. ‘I can’t believe … this isn’t like you. Surely he can’t be so bad? It’s frightening enough for us, being here in the dark. And we have each other. Imagine …’
‘The problem is, it’s dangerous,’ said Richard slowly. ‘Whether we like it or not, he’s here. And this … this is Karazan. There might be things out there, in the forest … Adam, we have to offer him the protection of our fire, at least. If we don’t, something might happen to him — and it would be our fault. But I don’t understand how he’s here at all. Did you go to Quested Court and convince Q to let you follow us?’
‘If you’ll let me sit by the campfire, I’ll tell you. Adam already knows part of it, don’t you, Adam? It’s all to do wiff computers. You can burrow inside and find out all sorts of fings, if you know how. That’s what I did. Not at Quested Court — at Highgate … on Adam’s computer.’
I gaped at him. ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said flatly. ‘There isn’t a VRE Interface on that computer. There isn’t even a single computer game — Matron sold them all. There’s no way you could get to Karazan from there.’
‘Fink about it, Adam. Not about what there isn’t, but what there is. Quentin Quested’s e-mail address — a hotline to his personal computer system at Quested Court. Did you ever find out what a hacker was? I said I could get in anywhere, Adam — and it’s true.’
‘But … my secret password …’
Weevil snickered. ‘Password? I found that out in less than five minutes. You silly fing. Trying so hard to make it secret — and then giving away two secrets in one! It gave me access to Quentin Quested’s computer — and it told me the key combination to bring me here to Karazan.’ He smirked round at us all. ‘Saved me a lot of trouble, that did. Fanks, Adam. Alt Control Q. Clever password — I don’t fink.’
I still didn’t believe it could be true. ‘But … how did you even know?’
Weevil smirked at me. ‘It started off wiff me just wanting to come to Quested Court and meet Quentin Quested. But then I read your e-mail to Richard …’
‘You what?’ growled Rich.
‘… and it made me fink. Imagine if we got to go to Karazan again, you wrote. Was it just an imaginary game, or could it have something to do wiff Quentin Quested’s “top-secret breakfrough in computer game technology”? And now,’ he finished with a smug smirk, ‘I know.’
I didn’t know whether to be angrier with Weevil or myself. How could I have been so dumb? But then, how could I ever have guessed what he would do? Suddenly I felt exhausted, as if my body and my brain had turned to putty. The day had gone on forever — all I wanted now was for it to end. Kenta stepped forward, as if she’d read my mind. ‘Well, it was very wrong of you,’ she told Weevil severely. ‘Like reading someone’s private diary, only worse. No one invited you here, and you shouldn’t have come. You deserve to be left out in the cold. But right now, we all need to sleep.’ She passed him her sleeping bag. ‘You can use this — but you can take it over to the other side of the fire, on your own. I’ll share with you, Gen — there’s plenty of room for two, and it will be warmer that way. Perhaps things will look better in the morning.’
Jamie looked over at me and pulled a sympathetic face. ‘Yeah — and in the morning, when it’s light, we’ll have a private meeting,’ he said importantly. ‘Just the five of us — to decide what to do. But now, I’m sleepy — and I vote we don’t let this Weevil have a turn on watch. Not till we’re sure he can be trusted. And that —’ he said with a meaningful glare at Weevil — ‘just might be never!’
But the only thing that looked better in the morning was Jamie’s orange face, which had faded overnight to a more natural-looking tan. Apart from that, things looked just the same — to me, anyhow. Weevil’s presence cast a shadow over the whole forest — the whole of Karazan. A shadow even the rising sun and the dawn chorus of birds could do nothing to lighten.
The freeze-dried scrambled eggs we made tasted slimy and bland and reminded me of Highgate. My eyelids felt as if they were made of sandpaper, and my head ached from lack of sleep.
The five of us squatted together round the fire, nibbling at our eggs and sipping our mugs of cocoa, having Jamie’s secret meeting. Weevil sat a few metres away in Kenta’s sleeping bag, his back to a tree, watching and doing his best to listen.
‘Whatever we do, we can’t win,’ muttered Richard. ‘There’s no two ways about it: Weevil — what a dumb name! — was wrong to come. But he’s here now — and the only way for him to get back would be to use —’ he lowered his voice to a whisper so low we could barely hear the words — ‘the microcomputer.’
‘But we need that,’ hissed Jamie in alarm. ‘What if he nicked it? Then we’d be sunk! I vote we don’t even tell him about it.’
‘He probably already knows,’ I said bleakly. ‘He seems to know everything else. And anyhow, he doesn’t want to go back — he wants to be here, with us. And if he doesn’t want to go, he won’t.’
‘So what do we do?’ asked Gen. ‘Ignore him, and hope he goes away? Pretend to be friends, but keep an eye on him?’
‘I hate excluding people,’ Jamie muttered, not meeting my eye. ‘It’s happened to me often enough, and I know how it feels. It’s a kind of bullying, my mum says. Sometimes people really do just want to be friends — but they haven’t had any practice at it, so they don’t know how.’
I snorted, but said nothing. Jamie blushed.
‘What about food? And water? We can’t just leave him to drink from streams and things — it might not be safe. It seems unkind, having our breakfast while he sits there with nothing. I feel really uncomfortable about it. I’m not hungry — can’t I give him …’
‘For heaven’s sake, Kenta — you’d give him the shoes off your feet if you had the chance,’ said Gen. �
��Adam — you’re very quiet. What do you think we should do?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ I said dully. ‘I really don’t. What I’d like to do is go back to Quested Court, dump him off, and start all over again. But every minute we waste is a minute more for Kai in Shakesh — and for Hannah.’
‘Do we have to make a decision now?’ asked Richard slowly. ‘Can’t we get moving — find the north road, at least? What he does is his problem. He can tag along or not — his choice. If you feel bad about him being hungry, Kenta, you can give him the leftover bread — that’ll make him wish he hadn’t come, if nothing else. We’re talking in circles. We might as well do that at the same time as we walk — but we can do the walking in a straight line, at least.’
Richard’s straight line was surprisingly easy to find.
The north road turned out to be a broad, well-worn track, winding over a rickety bridge and away into the forest. We headed back into the shade of the trees with heavy hearts, sorry to leave the blue sky and sunlight behind. ‘It’s a shame about that map,’ Kenta murmured. ‘I wish we knew exactly where we were going … or at least how far it is. Will we be walking for a day? Two days? For all we know, this forest could go on forever.’
‘It probably does,’ grumbled Jamie. ‘And my feet are hurting already.’
None of us said so, but I knew we were all thinking of Weevil. He was trailing behind us like a shadow, Kenta’s sleeping bag wrapped round his shoulders to keep out the cold, shuffling along in his tattered slippers. We’d all seen Kenta drop back and slip the last of the pot bread into his hand, and knowing her, giving him a kind word along with it. So at least he wouldn’t starve — though it would serve him right if he did, I thought bitterly.