Three Strikes

by Lucy Christopher

  Scowling, she forced her thoughts back to what she had seen the previous night. Not coffins, or being buried under six feet of earth. Definitely not that.

  ‘Sean, hang on a sec.’

  Bo strode over to him, not quite stirred to run.

  Sean was always somewhat dishevelled, and not entirely by accident in Bo’s opinion. From his fitted faux-grandad cardigans to his artful bedhead, Sean was never quite convincingly rumpled. Today, though, Sean looked like landfill that had been picked over by a flock of angry seagulls.

  ‘Hey, Bo,’ Sean said. Bo might have been insulted by his bored tone if she didn’t know what lay beneath it. It was Sky, of course. As far as Bo was concerned, Sean’s feelings for Sky had always been obvious, though Sky herself had never seemed to notice.

  Now she never would.

  ‘Cam says you’ve been going out walking late at night,’ Bo said, cutting to the chase. ‘Have you seen anyone else wandering around town? Like groups of kids?’

  ‘Uh … no. I mean, not that I’ve noticed. Why?’

  ‘Or have you had any weird episodes, like where you’re outside and then suddenly you’re back at home, with no idea how you got there?’

  Sean’s gaze sharpened. ‘I don’t think so, but I haven’t exactly been too clear-headed lately. What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Bo sighed. ‘Maybe it’s nothing.’

  Why was she even bothering to try and solve this mystery? This was Blackfin. Weird was the norm in this freak show of a town.

  ‘But … wait, I did see something strange when I was out last night, or maybe it was the night before. You know that new mechanic Gui has working for him?’

  ‘Jared? I’ve met him, yeah.’ Bo hadn’t thought much about him except that he was excessively pierced. She had counted five studs and hoops in his face alone, which surely had to be a hazard when working with machinery.

  ‘Well, I saw him driving along Provencher Street, really late, and I thought at first he’d been to the garage, like maybe he’d left something there and had to go and pick it up… Anyway. I saw him a few times while I was out walking, like he was driving in circles or something. Is that the kind of weird you mean?’

  Bo was about to say no, when something he’d said snagged on a fragment of memory. Last night, right before she’d heard that strange voice and spaced out, hadn’t she seen a van parked down the street?

  ‘What kind of van does he drive?’

  ‘A Volkswagen camper,’ Sean said. ‘Why? What does that mean?’

  It meant that Bo would be keeping an eye on the young mechanic, but she didn’t say that to Sean. ‘I wonder what he was doing.’

  Sean shrugged. ‘Just driving. It didn’t seem like he was heading anywhere in particular. But I only saw him for a minute and then I realised it was getting late, so I…’

  Sean’s face scrunched up in confusion.

  ‘You don’t remember going home, do you?’ Bo said.

  ‘Hang on … I heard the clock chiming, I thought I should go home, and then I … then it was morning, and Aunt Holly was knocking on my door and saying it was time to get up. I guess I was kind of distracted.’ Sean frowned down at his Converse like they might be able to fill in the blanks for him.

  ‘Do you remember hearing a voice?’ Bo asked. She thought she’d heard a voice right before her memory became a black hole. But it had seemed to come from nowhere, and had been so dreamlike Bo couldn’t say whether she had really heard it, or if it was just some strange memory fragment that had gotten mixed up with her dreams.

  Ugh. She hated this feeling of fuzzy-headedness.

  ‘A voice? What…?’

  ‘Forget it, it’s nothing. Catch you later.’ Bo turned to head toward her own house.

  ‘Bo, hang on. What’s going on? Bo?’

  But Bo walked on, pretending she hadn’t heard.

  Chapter Three

  Bo’s efforts to track Jared down at the garage hit a gigantic, Gui-shaped brick wall. Heading over there on her way home, Bo tried to keep a brave face on when she saw Sky’s father, but when he hugged her and invited her to stay for a cup of hot chocolate – which was always Sky’s drink of choice – they’d both ended up in a mess of tears and snot. Only after they’d gone through the better part of a box of tissues did Bo get around to asking about Jared. She learned that he’d left work early that day, and Bo couldn’t figure out how to ask where Jared lived without arousing Mr Rousseau’s suspicion. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was stalking his apprentice.

  It was strange, though, that Bo had no idea whether Jared lived in Blackfin or drove all the way from the next town every day for work – no small thing, with the imposing Lychgate Mountains standing between Blackfin and neighbouring Camberley. Blackfin wasn’t a big town, either, so it was even more odd that Bo hadn’t already learned this about Jared through the grapevine.

  As Bo sat in her room that night, peering out over the town through the telescope her father had acquired for her when she first expressed an interest in astronomy, she caught sight of him. Or of his van, at least.

  It was parked just along the road from the Peeps’ house, the lights off and dark within.

  ‘Let’s see what you’re up to, then.’

  Bo threw on a cardigan over her pyjamas and hurried out of her room. It was approaching midnight, and Bo’s mum and little brothers had gone to bed long ago, so she tiptoed quietly downstairs and out through the back door without being seen. She was out of the gate and halfway to the van when she heard a sound that stopped her in her tracks: the never-seen Blackfin clock merrily chiming an hour.

  She had heard the clock last night, hadn’t she? Bo had no sooner finished the thought than the chimes fell silent, and an eerie voice took their place.

  ‘Find me, Bruno … find the east door … I’m all alone in the dark…’

  ‘Oh, balls,’ Bo muttered, her head swimming. Then she remembered no more.

  Bo sat doodling in the margins of her physics notes at lunch the next day and listening to a Harry Styles medley (Sean really had a lot to answer for when it came to Sky’s playlists) as she went over what she remembered of the previous night. It had happened just like the night before: the sound of the clock, and a girl’s plaintive voice, and then … blackness. She’d woken up in her bed just before 2am with no sign that anything was amiss, other than that she was wearing a thick cardigan over her pyjamas and her mum’s gardening shoes. That, and a stiffness in her muscles that told Bo she had, without her permission, performed some kind of … exercise.

  But in that disorienting darkness, she had seen flashes of something else. Something between a dream and a memory. A teenage girl with black hair … a voice that was so unusual and compelling, Bo wanted to follow it into the woods … and a boy. A boy? Yes! There had been a black-haired boy, as well. The boy and the girl were so similar, they had to be siblings. Perhaps even twins. They were both fine-featured and slender, like a painting Bo had once seen of wood elves.

  ‘You needn’t be quiet on their account,’ the girl had said to him, laughing as she gestured to all the children following them. She had a faint accent, though Bo couldn’t place it. ‘They want to hear you.’

  ‘A trick!’ One of the children shouted. ‘Make him show us a trick!’

  Bo, or dream-Bo, felt a rush of excitement at the prospect, even though she had no idea what kind of trick the child was asking to see.

  The black-haired girl nodded. ‘My brother’s talents are even greater than mine. I can make all the little creatures dance, but he can move mountains. Go on, Bruno, show them.’

  But the boy had simply smiled and shaken his head.

  And then another figure – a man, dressed all in black and shouting at the girl, ‘Get out of here, you devil!’ – and the girl laughing at him as he tried to swat away the flies she made buzz around his ears just by singing to them… And then darkness, and weeping, and a terrible, choking sadness that still lingered in B
o’s chest even as the dream faded.

  Bo sighed over her doodling. Then as she looked at the pencil marks she had made, she realised she’d been doodling the same thing, over and over: a clock face, the hands pointing to midnight.

  It had been midnight when Bo first spotted the Swivellers outside the cemetery, hadn’t it? And right before she’d zoned out while chasing her little brothers through the streets, hadn’t she heard the clock chiming across town then, too? Although the clock itself wasn’t much help in telling the hour, it was definitely after eleven because she’d had a text from her mum at quarter past. And last night… Sean, too, had said something about hearing a clock chiming right before he blanked out. But Bo had been back in her bed by 2am last night, feeling as clear-headed as one could be at that sort of hour.

  If something really was going on in Blackfin, it only seemed to happen during a short window of time.

  Hmm. Bo could work with that. It was something she could test. She turned to a clean sheet of her notebook and began listing all the details that seemed to overlap, or might be important.

  Midnight – in at least 3 instances. Back to normal by 2am. Time important?

  All kids – little ones & teens. Significant?

  The voice – part of the dream? Or somehow to blame for blackouts?

  Bo hesitated before writing her next point, chewing thoughtfully on her pen. When she’d seen the Swivellers outside the cemetery, she hadn’t been affected by whatever was making them go spacey. She’d watched the Swivellers shambling around, and hadn’t experienced any kind of blackout herself. The second and third times, she had. So, what had been different?

  The track on the iPod changed, now playing a song called Sign of the Times.

  ‘Helpful, Sky. Really helpful.’

  Bo switched the iPod off, but as she did so she realised what she’d been missing: with the Swivellers outside the cemetery, she’d been listening to Sky’s iPod. The second time, though, Bo had taken her headphones off to yell at her brothers. The third time she hadn’t been wearing them at all. And those last two times were when she’d heard the voice.

  So … if she couldn’t hear the voice, then it wouldn’t affect her?

  ‘Well, that’s another thing I can put to the test,’ Bo muttered.

  ‘What, we’ve got a test? Oh God, I haven’t even studied!’

  Cam’s lunch tray clattered onto the table in front of Bo, sending her yoghurt pot rolling across the table. Bo watched her friend scrabbling to dig her physics notes out of her schoolbag.

  ‘Not a physics test,’ Bo said. ‘I was talking about something else.’

  Cam glanced up from flipping through her notebook. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Quite as in very, or just a bit?’

  ‘Very,’ Bo said. Cam sagged back in her chair.

  ‘Oh, thank God. What were you muttering about, anyway? Not more weird late-night shenanigans?’

  Cam had started repacking her books into her bag, but stopped as something fell out of the back of a notepad. It landed on her lunch tray. Bo recognised the handwriting on the note immediately; it was Sky’s.

  Coming to the beach bonfire tonight? I’ve got marshmallows we can burn. xx

  That beach bonfire had taken place a few weeks before Sky’s birthday. All three girls had gotten a little drunk on a bottle of strawberry liqueur Bo had pilfered from her mum, and their hotdogs had ended up as cinders. It had been a fun night.

  When Bo looked up, she saw Cam’s eyes were welling with tears. Bo quietly slid the napkin from her lunch tray over to Cam, who took it with a watery smile.

  ‘Nothing is the same without her, is it?’ Bo said. Cam laughed and shook her head, still dabbing at her eyes.

  ‘Sky would’ve hated to see us moping, wouldn’t she?’ she said, too brightly. ‘So, tell me, did you figure out what was happening with all the kids wandering around the other night?’

  Bo hesitated a moment, torn between wanting to share her worry with Cam, and not wanting to load any more onto her friend’s plate. Finally, she waved her hand dismissively. ‘Nah, it was probably just some random Blackfin weirdness, like always. And we know better than to pull on those threads, don’t we?’

  Jared was alone at the garage when Bo made her way over there after school. She hovered in the doorway, not quite sure how to get his attention when he was mostly obscured beneath a Ford Focus, with the radio blaring from the back office. In the end, she opted for nudging his leg with her boot. There followed a thud and a yelp as he whacked some part of himself against the car’s undercarriage, then Jared slid out from beneath the car. His piercings glinted in the light, a smear of oil across his forehead giving him an unfortunate monobrow. It furrowed in confusion when he saw Bo standing over him.

  ‘Uh … can I help you?’ he said, and wiped his hands on the front of his overalls before clambering to his feet. He really was rather tall.

  ‘You can,’ Bo said, keeping her tone business-like. ‘I saw your van near my house last night, and before that in the street a couple of nights ago. What were you doing there?’

  Jared blinked. ‘Aren’t you… weren’t you friends with Gui’s daughter, Sky?’

  He hadn’t been living in Blackfin before Sky died, so he’d never seen her with Bo.

  ‘Yes,’ Bo said. ‘But that doesn’t answer my question.’

  ‘Why are you asking about my van?’ His tone was wary now, as though he was talking to the police instead of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. Bo rolled her eyes.

  ‘Look, I’m not trying to get you in trouble or anything. I mean, do I look like a grass?’ He narrowed his eyes in appraisal, but Bo didn’t wait to hear his reply. ‘Of course not. I just need to know why you were there.’

  Jared laughed. ‘Okay. Which street was I parked on?’

  Bo gestured through the open door, pointing along the road to the exact spot where his camper van had stood idling right before the first time she experienced a blackout.

  ‘A couple of nights ago, you say?’ Jared looked to be considering the question, but Bo got the distinct impression he knew perfectly well where he had been, and what he had been doing there. No, he was considering her. Eventually, he sighed. ‘Look, I haven’t exactly got a place to stay right now, so I’m kind of living out of my van. And I know people around here won’t want me parked outside their house or sleeping in their driveway or whatever, so I move the van late at night, park up, sleep, and move on at first light so nobody will see me while they’re out walking their dogs early bells. Okay?’

  Bo chewed this over. ‘You were just … sleeping?’

  Jared shrugged.

  So you had nothing to do with the whole town sleepwalking? You weren’t sitting in your van and working them all like some freaky puppet master?

  Ha. She couldn’t exactly ask him that, could she? So instead she said, ‘You haven’t noticed people walking through town late at night, and acting all weird?’

  Jared shook his head slowly. ‘I can honestly say I have not. Is this one of those things that just happens around here?’

  ‘Probably,’ Bo admitted, grudgingly impressed that Jared had picked up on the town’s quirkiness already. ‘One other thing, though: when I saw your van, I’m sure the engine was running. You wouldn’t leave it running while you were asleep, would you?’

  Jared shook his head. ‘I must’ve been awake then – probably reading or something. I sometimes leave the engine on for a bit if it’s cold and I want to run the heaters.’

  ‘And you didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary? Like a strange voice, maybe?’

  He smothered a grin. ‘If you’re hearing voices, you should be talking to a doctor, not a mechanic.’

  ‘Ha,’ Bo said, flatly.

  So Jared had been awake, and unaffected by the peculiar voice she’d heard. Unless he’d gone into the same comatose state Mrs Brady had? And where had all the other adults in Blackfin been while their children were o
ut wandering the streets?

  Hmm.

  Could it just be teens and younger kids who heard the command to go night-walking? Did everyone older just go into a blank-stare state? But surely if anyone was out driving at that time of night and spaced out at the wheel, they’d have an accident? Even as Bo thought this, she mentally waved the thought aside; people in Blackfin generally stayed indoors after dark. It was just another of those things the adults expected Bo and others her age to accept without question. But Bo was finding it harder and harder lately not to ask questions.

  Yeah, because Sky was always around to do the asking.

  Bo took a shaky breath, trying to focus on Jared staring down at her instead of the hollow ache beneath her ribs.

  ‘How old are you?’ she asked. Jared looked startled. ‘Look, I’m not sizing you up to be my boyfriend. I’m just trying to figure something out.’

  ‘I’m nineteen,’ he said.

  Double hmm. Maybe he had been affected like Mrs Brady, and just sat in his van staring at his book while the sleepwalkers – Bo included – passed by outside. Well, it was another theory to test out, she supposed. She filed it away for later speculation.

  ‘Does Gui know about you sleeping in the camper van?’ Bo said.

  ‘No.’ Jared looked at her sharply. His eyes were the same gunmetal colour as his piercings. ‘And I don’t want him to hear about it, either.’