I sit up, gasping for air, my damp hair smeared across my head. It’s dark, the shadow is everywhere and it’s suffocating me, I can’t breathe. I fight my way out of the clammy sheets clinging to my legs and stand up shakily.
‘Jim, what are you doing?’ A girl rushes up and grabs me before I fall over. I let her steady me for a second, then push her away. I have things to do.
She follows me into the lounge room nervously, and several people stand up from couches and chairs as we pass. ‘Jim, what are you doing?’ someone else says. I ignore them and head for the front door.
‘Jim, no!’
I step outside and the cold wind freezes the sweat on my brow. It’s snowing. I peer through the darkness and the flurries of snowflakes and see several figures moving towards me, but none of them are the person I’m looking for. ‘Where are you?’ I call desperately. ‘Where are you?’
I think I see something else moving out there, deep among the trees, and my heart stops…
Strong hands grab me from behind, and several shots of pure white light go streaming past my head to explode out in the darkness, making the figures out there scatter. ‘NO!’ I scream, and struggle to break free from the arms locked around me.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ a harsh voice yells in my ear. The arms around my chest tighten, my feet are lifted clean off the ground, and suddenly I’m back inside. Some more people come in after us and the door is shut against the snow and shadows. The man with the harsh voice puts me down on the floor and I sit there shivering, rocking back and forth with tears streaming down my face.
‘I left her,’ I sob. ‘I left her.’
The next time I wake up I find I’ve been sleeping under guard. Claire is asleep on the bed next to me, Peter is lying on a mattress near the door with Win asleep in his arms, and Will is snoozing in a chair in the corner, a book drooping from his hand and a lamp burning next to him. I weakly kick my way out of the covers and swing my legs to the floor. My head violently objects to being upright, and feels like it might roll off my neck. Happily, it doesn’t, and after half a minute I feel able enough to try standing.
Claire sits bolt upright next to me. ‘Where are you going?’ she demands.
‘I need the loo,’ I say quietly. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘Oh,’ she says, and flops her head back onto her pillow. She’s asleep in seconds.
I reach the door and fumble about for the handle. Peter wakes and looks up from his pillow. ‘Where are you going?’ he asks.
‘Just to the loo,’ I answer. He looks suspicious but lets me go.
I totter out into Will’s living room. A snore startles me, and I look over the back of the couch to see Mr Lancer sleeping soundly, his head on one of the arms. He stirs. ‘Where are you going?’ he murmurs without opening his eyes.
‘Loo,’ I say. What’s with everyone?
The harsh light in the bathroom hurts my eyes, and my head is still spinning. I’m so shaky that I can’t even stand up to pee. Probably just as well. I’m not sure what my aim is like, but it can’t have improved any.
After the difficult task of urination, I splash some cold water over my face and on the back of my neck. I grip the basin and look at myself in the mirror, the drips running down my face and trickling down my back. I look terrible, all blotchy and gaunt. I could be a walking advertisement for the evolution process, displaying the stage between swamp-and jungle-dwelling.
At least my nose doesn’t seem to be broken. Also, my shoulder feels better.
When I come back out again, I see a light that wasn’t there before coming from the kitchen, and hear the sound of the kettle, so I totter along to investigate.
It’s Kit. I can tell it’s Kit and not Pippa by the way she stands, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter. Pippa always looks like she’s half an inch away from either coming to attention or breaking into interpretive dance, always watchful and alert. Kit seems more relaxed.
Also, this girl is wearing one of Will’s shirts and little else, which I just can’t picture Pippa ever doing.
Kit turns and smiles at me.
‘I’ve just been to the loo,’ I tell her, lowering myself into one of the kitchen chairs.
‘That’s nice.’ She comes up behind me, places a steaming cup of something or other at my elbow, and kisses the top of my head. ‘How do you feel now?’ she asks, going back to the kettle to fix her own drink.
‘Crappy.’
‘Hmm, yes, that’s been going around lately.’
‘And wobbly. And nightmarish.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She turns and peers at me from across the room. ‘You were very unsettled for a while there, but you seemed to calm down after your jaunt outside.’
I glance at her in surprise, but surprise hurts my eyes too much. I wince, rub them, and ask, ‘When was I outside?’
‘In the early hours of yesterday morning. You’ve been fast asleep for a good twenty-four hours since.’
‘I have?’ I say, frowning. ‘Kit, what exactly happened to me?’
She comes and sits in the chair next to me with a mug of her own. ‘Have you ever been poisoned before?’
‘No,’ I reply. ‘Claire tried to feed me bleach once when we were little, but Mum caught her before I swallowed any.’
‘Well, that’s pretty much what happened when you went into Grayson’s mind. You got an overdose of evil in your bloodstream and it’s taken this long for it to work its way out.’
Grayson’s mind. That’s right, I was sucked into it. But there was something else in there. Something with the same energy as what I felt in the woods.
The image of a shadowy figure walking through the trees floats to the surface.
I frown, trying to remember. ‘The other night,’ I say slowly. ‘There was someone outside.’
Kit snorts and takes a sip of her coffee. ‘There were several people outside, and none of them nice. You seemed to want to invite them in.’
I shake my head. ‘I was looking for someone. I did something…’
‘I think you were looking for you mum,’ she says quietly. She leans towards me and puts her hand on the back of my neck. It feels warm and dry and solid, and I feel less like an amoeba with it there. ‘I know you’re upset about leaving her behind, but it was the right thing to do, honey.’
I frown and nod and feel guilty.
‘So,’ I say, wanting to change the subject. ‘You and Will, huh?’
‘Drink your drink,’ she orders me, taking her hand away.
‘What is it?’ I ask, eyeing it suspiciously.
‘It’s good for you.’
I’m even more suspicious at that. I take a sip and it’s awful, all sour and scalding. ‘Why is it that everything that’s good for you tastes completely foul, like cough medicine, or sprouts?’ I complain.
‘I like sprouts.’
‘You would.’ I take another sip of my horrid drink, figuring I already feel terrible anyway. Then I ask, ‘What’s happening with my parents?’
She sighs, and I wonder if she’s going to try to avoid the topic, arguing that I’m not up to talking about it.
‘They’re probably still at your house,’ she says at last, staring into her mug, ‘and still under Grayson’s control. Physically they’ll be alright; he has no reason to harm them, not when he can’t get to you. It’s in his best interests to keep them in good health as long as he thinks he may be able to use them against you.’
‘And Garth?’ I ask, a sickening feeling thudding into the pit of my stomach. I haven’t even thought about him for days. Well, I was unconscious for most of them, I guess.
‘Him too,’ she says sadly. ‘We couldn’t find him in time. He’s alright, though.’
I feel angry at this comment. He’s not alright. My little brother has been taken over by a bastard who doesn’t think anything of causing others pain. He’s about as far from being alright as he’s ever been.
‘Why are you here?’
/> She hesitates. ‘I saw that things were getting out of hand and came to help.’
‘No, not you,’ I say angrily. ‘All of you. If the war is in the other dimensions, why are Guardians and Hoarders here at all? Is it just to screw my family over, or is there another reason?’
She runs a finger around the rim of her mug, thinking. ‘There is another reason,’ she says. ‘It’s a bit technical, though, and you haven’t been well.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I’ve still got my brain.’
‘Okay,’ she says and takes a deep breath. ‘This war between the Guardians and the Hoarders – has anyone told you what it’s about?’
‘Will said it was about energy. The Hoarders were using it all up, or something.’
‘That’s pretty much it. Once, there were energy deposits in both our dimensions that kept us sustained. But the way Hoarders use their power is very wasteful. You know the times when you’ve used energy out of fear or hate? Fear uses up energy very quickly, and hate feeds on itself, makes you lose control. It’s like an addiction: the more you use it, the more you crave it.’
‘Is that when the power goes darker?’ I ask, thinking back to the pinecone, the Christmas tree and the music stand.
‘That’s it, yes. You may have noticed that when Guardians use it, it’s white – very controlled and doesn’t use up nearly as much energy. When Hoarders use their power, it’s red.’
‘Black.’
‘Red, honey. Anyway,’ she says, sighing, ‘like I said, there were energy deposits everywhere, until the Hoarders gained strength and began to drain theirs. When they started running low, they came to the human dimensions to look for new sources of energy. They didn’t find any strong enough for their purposes, but what they did find was a way into the Twelfth, which was, at that time, brimming with energy.’
‘But it isn’t now?’
Kit shakes her head. ‘We welcomed the Hoarders at first, but found out almost at once that they were after our power, and the way they would use it would drain it almost instantly. We knew the consequences of that, so we pushed them back into the human dimensions and have been fighting to keep them out of the Twelfth ever since. Unfortunately, keeping them out has meant using up our own power supply to do it. Right now the Twelfth is in little better shape than the Thirteenth.’
‘Hang about,’ I say. ‘You’re saying that both sides are using up power fighting over the fact that you’re running out of power?’
‘Essentially.’
‘But…’ Am I really thick, or is there a big problem here? ‘Won’t that run you guys out of power and, like, end the world?’
‘Well, usually we’re at a stalemate,’ Kit says. ‘The Hoarders didn’t have the power to make a serious assault on the Twelfth, so all we had to do was guard the gateway and stop them coming in. That’s where you get the name “Guardian”. Recently, though, they’ve been more liberal with their energy, which has been making us twitchy. It’s clear they’re up to something. We haven’t seen them this bad since we first pushed them back into the human dimensions.’
‘When was that?’
‘In Twelfth Dimensional time? About two weeks ago.’
‘That recently?’ I say, surprised. ‘I got the feeling it had been going on for ages. So it happened at the same time I got my power?’
‘I said Twelfth Dimensional time,’ Kit reminds me. ‘In human dimensional time, it’s been about two hundred years.’
I blink a couple of times. ‘You’ve lost me,’ I say.
‘Time doesn’t work at the same speed there as it does here,’ she explains. ‘To cut a long story short, one of the reasons we followed the Hoarders into this dimension was to give ourselves more time. A contingent was sent here to come up with a solution, to the Hoarders problem and the waning power. Two weeks in the Twelfth wasn’t long enough. Hell, two hundred years in this dimension hasn’t been long enough, either. We’re still not sure how we’re going to fix everything.’ She looks at me apologetically. ‘We’ve been kind of hoping you could help us out with that.’
I smile ruefully. ‘So you’re resting the fate of the world on a scrawny teenager who can’t even fight off a school bully? That’s desperate, Kit.’
‘Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we are desperate,’ she says seriously. ‘The last time I checked into the Twelfth they only had a few hours of energy left. That equates to a couple of years here.’
Jeepers. A couple of years. I wonder if I’ll ever get old enough to drink legally.
This concept is too much for me to think about right now, so I ask, ‘How do you get to another dimension?’
Kit shrugs. ‘It’s a bit like turning a corner no one else can see.’
‘And when you check in there, how long are you gone?’
‘For me, it’s only a few minutes. For anyone in the human dimensions, it can be weeks, sometimes months.’
‘Poor Will.’
‘Poor everyone. It’s a crappy situation.’ She leans forward and rubs my arm. ‘I do realise how much we’ve screwed up your life, Jimmy, but we need your help. Will you help us?’
I’m silent for a minute. A hero would agree straight away, but I’ve got one more question to ask.
‘Mr Grayson said that I was going to get lost in his mind,’ I say slowly. ‘That if I’d stayed there another few seconds, I wouldn’t have been able to get back out again.’ I look over at the small girl sitting next to me, and a lump rises in my throat that almost stops me saying the next words. ‘Is that what’s happened to Mum and Michael and Garth?’
Tears fill her eyes as she takes both my hands in hers. I couldn’t live without my family, just like she couldn’t live without hers. We have a moment of recognition for this common factor between us, before she answers.
‘No, sweetheart, it’s not the same at all,’ she says firmly. ‘He drew you into his mind to destroy yours; what he’s doing to them is deadening their senses so he can control their actions. Their minds are completely intact, just asleep.’ She squeezes my hands. ‘And we’re going to wake them up.’
‘Then I’ll help you,’ I say, and the room dissolves as I cry into the tabletop in relief and fear and fatigue and sickness and confusion and guilt for a good ten minutes. Kit runs her fingers through my hair and lets me. Then Claire comes in and takes me back to bed.
Chapter Sixteen: Reconnaissance
I wake up some time the next morning to an empty room. Feeling completely devoid of content and structure, like most of my English essays, I get shakily to my feet and wander over to the window.
The street outside, the hedgerows on the other side of the street, and the fields beyond the hedgerows have all been covered with a healthy blanket of snow, which continues to fall quietly from the sky, icing the tops of cars and fence posts. It’s also covered the tops of two Hoarders I can see standing on the other side of the road.
Just looking at them makes me feel cold. I shiver and pull a blanket off the bed to wrap around myself, like a human burrito, and shove my freezing feet into my sneakers, which I find lurking under the bed. Then I shuffle out to discover what my makeshift family’s up to.
Most of them are sitting around the lounge room, talking and eating porridge for breakfast. Winifred spots me first, and jumps off Peter’s lap to come hurtling at me. She almost knocks me over, and I feel my empty stomach jolt around dangerously.
‘Hail the conquering hero,’ Pippa greets me. ‘How are you feeling today?’
‘Better,’ I reply, shuffling past her and falling backwards into the space she and Peter have made for me on the couch. Win loses interest in me and races off to the corner of the room to tie some ribbons onto Gwen’s tail. Gwen sighs deeply but lets her. This must not be the first time she’s done it. ‘Did we know there were bad guys outside?’ I ask the others.
‘Yes,’ everyone choruses.
‘Oh. So what’s going on?’
‘Just planning our next move,’ Mr Lancer says. �
�We knew that something big was happening because of all the power the Hoarders have been using, but Will says that if Grayson’s stepped up, it’s something extra big. Apparently he usually likes to run everything in secret.’
‘So Will knows Grayson pretty well, then?’ I say. ‘Why didn’t he warn us that he was a Hoarder?’
‘Well, he knows Grayson, but didn’t know he was the local headmaster. Apparently he doesn’t read the weekly school newsletter.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway,’ Mr Lancer continues, ‘at the rate Grayson’s building his forces we’re fairly certain he’s going to try something before Christmas, and we want as much information as we can get about it, so we can stop it in its tracks.’
‘Isn’t Christmas the day after tomorrow?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ everyone says again.
‘Oh. Right.’ There’s a pause. ‘Any thoughts?’ I ask.
‘Many,’ he says, scraping his porridge bowl with his spoon noisily. ‘That’s the problem. We need some good hard evidence so we can narrow it down. The problem is getting the evidence. I could have snooped around if I was still just the maths teacher, but now I’ve outed myself, it gets a little bit trickier.’
‘That’s my fault, isn’t it?’ I mutter shamefully.
‘I choose to blame Mr Grayson myself.’
‘Well, isn’t there anyone else who can snoop about for us?’ I ask. ‘The place is lousy with Hoarders; aren’t there more Guardians too?’
‘There are,’ he says, ‘but we seem to be experiencing a communication problem.’
‘Come again?’
‘You know our mind-talking ability?’ Pippa says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, someone or something is blocking us. It’s like there’s an impenetrable dome around the flat – we can’t sense any Guardians outside it, and chances are they can’t sense us either. They might not even know where we are. In any case, they won’t make a move to either rescue us or attack Grayson without express orders from Kit.’
James Munkers Page 17