The Beast of Seabourne

by Rhys A. Jones

  Still frowning, Bryn unfolded a detailed survey map on the floor of the van, and Oz attempted to retrace their journey. He deliberately made it look much more difficult than it was, because Soph had a perfect GPS system, and Oz could have pinpointed the exact spot with ease. As it was, Bryn peered at the point on the map that Oz indicated and then looked at him. “You’re sure it was there? I don’t see how any kind of cave system could exist so high up, myself.”

  Oz nodded. “Like I said, we were surprised, too.”

  Bryn nodded and folded up the map so that only the rectangle containing the area Oz had shown him was on show. “Well, we’ll take a look. We have a couple of sniffer dogs with us, too. If he’s there, we’ll find him; don’t you worry.” He hurried out, calling out orders as he made his way to the Land Rover. Through the window of the warm police van, they watched as a posse of six rescuers and two dogs set purposefully off, just as Miss Arkwright entered, looking flushed.

  “Right, you three.I’ve managed to convince the police and the ambulance people that you do not need to go to the hospital. None of you are hurt, are you?”

  Oz, Ellie, and Ruff shook their heads, much to Miss Arkwright’s obvious relief.

  “They’re trying to find us a driver as we speak. We’ve managed to pack up half the tents, but your things need checking once you’re feeling okay and the police have finished with you.”

  The policewoman shrugged. “I think I’ve heard everything I need to hear. This doesn’t sound like a police matter, though how on earth you managed to end up here when you should have been a hundred miles away is a total mystery.”

  “I shall be taking that satnav straight back to the shop when we get back to Seabourne, don’t you worry,” Miss Arkwright announced. “Now my priority is getting year eight back home safely. I just wish I had some help.”

  The noise of a car roaring along the stone track drew their attention. A battered-looking taxi screeched to a halt, and a man got out. They recognised him immediately, but his usually smiling face looked strained and anxious as he scanned the scene. It was obvious he was searching for someone.

  Miss Arkwright let out a muted gasp of shock, followed by a name that was also a question.

  “Tom?”

  She was on her feet in an instant and out of the van doors a second later.

  When Mr Gingell saw her, he ran across and pulled her into a crushing hug.

  “So much for being subtle, then,” Ruff said with a grin.

  “Aw, that’s really nice,” Ellie said. “Think he’s come all the way in that taxi?”

  “Well, if he’s here to help Arkwright, at least we know things will get sorted out quickly.”

  Ruff was right. Gingell set about getting the boys packed while Miss Arkwright sorted the girls. Half an hour later, after fending off a barrage of questions from their fellow pupils, Oz and Ruff found themselves, for a few glorious moments, alone, stuffing their sleeping bags into their rucksacks while everyone else enjoyed a late breakfast of bacon rolls, ferried up by Land Rover from a local café.

  “Reckon they believe us?” Ruff said after glancing back towards Miss Arkwright, who was talking with the policewoman again.

  “What’s not to believe?” Oz said. “The police aren’t interested. They haven’t put the break-in at the rescue centre and this together yet. No reason to.”

  “Yeah, but Skelton…”

  “There’s nothing we can do about that. We know he’s injured. We just wait and see what he comes up with as his story.”

  Ruff nodded. But from his expression, Oz knew he remained unconvinced as he tried thumping the last bits of his sleeping bag into an already overstuffed rucksack. Suddenly, he stopped and looked up at Oz with a strained, preoccupied expression.

  “That stuff that Skelton said about the Bane, do you think it’s true?”

  Oz recalled Skelton’s conviction that what was to come was going to change everything for the worse. That Gerber’s plans were unstoppable.

  “Yeah, I probably do.”

  The frown on Ruff’s face deepened. “When Skelton was pointing that Aikman gun at me and Ellie and made us tie that rope around Niko…” He swallowed loudly and shook his head. “I didn’t want to, because I knew what he was going to do, but I was too scared that he might do something to me first. I didn’t like that feeling.”

  Oz nodded. He knew exactly how Ruff felt. The horror of being helpless in the face of such threats left a dark hole in your insides. Somehow, it made you feel less than you really were.

  “Don’t think I said thanks for buying me some time to get away in the cave,” Oz said, in an attempt at making Ruff feel better. “Trying to get Niko to attack you like that…it was pretty cool.”

  “Yeah,” laughed Ruff in a hollow voice. “Not like me, was it? Course, I had Soph’s tutamenzon field to help. Trouble is, when you’re inside it, you can’t see it. Felt just like normal.”

  “That makes it an even cooler thing to have done, then,” Oz said, grinning.

  They fell into a small, comfortable silence as each dealt with his own thoughts. Nevertheless, something had happened on this trip; all three of them had changed somehow. Oz could feel it.

  “We can’t let them win, Ruff,” Oz said quietly after a moment.

  Ruff blinked, and his eyes, lost in unpleasant memory, refocused on Oz. “No,” he said grimly, “we can’t.”

  Chapter 23

  The Exile Returns

  They arrived back at the gates of Seabourne County to a rapturous reception committee, which included the press, a hall full of parents, and the Volcano. There were tears and hugs and flashing cameras, but it was left up to the Volcano to make a statement. She stood on the stage and tapped the microphone to get everyone’s attention, looking like an off-duty snow tyre in some tracksuit bottoms and a black padded gilet.

  “May I first of all, on behalf of the school, say how delighted we are to see you all safely back from your ordeal. It goes without saying that we will be conducting a thorough and exhaustive internal investigation as to how a field trip could have gone so badly wrong. Of our two casualties, Niko Piotrowski is doing very well and should be home in a day or two after some tests for concussion. However, there appears to have been no injury other than some slight memory loss. As for Mr Skelton, whom you all know injured himself while rescuing some of our pupils, he appears to be stable but still unconscious in hospital. I will be here at the school over the next few days—despite the fact that it is holiday time—should any of you feel the need for counselling.”

  The crowd of parents and children all started talking at once. Oz threw Ellie and Ruff a knowing glance, but this was neither the time nor the place for discussion. There were far too many large and flapping ears nearby. Suddenly, there was one voice that made itself heard above all the others in the room.

  “Excuse me?” It was a deep female voice, the accent reminiscent of Niko’s. “I am aunty of Niko Piotrowski. My sister Domenika, Niko’s mother, made me promise to come here. Please, who is Oscar Chambers?”

  The Volcano, momentarily taken aback by this interruption, recovered quickly to ask, “Oscar Chambers? Why? What has he done?” Oz smiled wryly at the fact that she was quick to add the last bit to her question.

  “My sister ask me to say thank you to Oscar Chambers personally. Niko has told his mother that Oscar Chambers and ummm”—she consulted a scrap of paper— “Ellie Messenger and Rufus Adams are all to be congratulated for rescuing him.”

  The keen, animated expression, which had flared in the hope that Oz was about to be accused of something untoward again, slid off the Volcano’s face like wet snow off a heated windscreen.

  “Well, really, I don’t think that this is the time or the place for such—”

  “Get them up on stage,” yelled someone from the audience.

  “Let’s have a look at them,” yelled someone else.

  The Volcano began muttering under her breath, but finally, she relented and
switched on her deputy headmistress smile. “Very well. Are Oscar Chambers, Ellie Messenger, and Rufus Adams here?”

  Crimson with embarrassment, the three of them climbed onto the stage to face the Volcano.

  “Well,” she said through a fixed smile, “it seems that you three deserve a special mention. It goes without saying that the school is extremely grateful for your…endeavours.”

  Oz heard her speak, but he couldn’t take his eyes off a muscle in her jaw, which was working of its own accord in a desperate attempt at biting back the words she was forcing out.

  “Right.” She beamed at Niko’s aunt. “Here they are. Are we all happy now?” Her smile lasted all of three seconds before she turned back and started ushering the trio off the stage. “I think it would be best if we get your children home as quickly as—”

  Niko’s aunt was not to be put off. She walked forward, stood beneath the stage, and reached up a hand to grab Oz’s, Ellie’s, and Ruff’s hands in turn.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice unsteady with emotion. “You find Niko and bring him back safely. You are all very brave.”

  “Three cheers,” yelled someone from the back.

  Suddenly, the whole room burst into cheers and applause. Oz thought it was all really pleasant, but infinitely more pleasurable was the look on the Volcano’s face as she, too, was forced into applauding the three of them, an action she carried out with all the enjoyment of someone forced to swallow a rancid centipede. Finally, the applause died, and Niko’s aunt let go of their hands. They got lots of backslaps and many a “well done” in the next few minutes, but everyone was tired, and Oz was very glad when his mother—who had been talking once again to Ellie’s mum, Faye—turned to him with a critical eye and said, “Right, hero, best get you home, I think.”

  Oz followed his mother out, threw his kit into the back seat of the car, and waved to Ruff and his dad as they set off.

  “Well, Faye thinks that your science teacher must have been slightly bonkers to have mixed up Wales with Cornwall, fog or no fog.”

  Oz didn’t say anything. He was thinking about staring down the barrel of Skelton’s gun. Evil was more the word that sprang to his mind, not bonkers.

  “You must be exhausted,” Mrs Chambers said. “I’ve got some Bolognese sauce on the go. Take me ten minutes to rustle up some pasta.”

  “Sounds great,” Oz murmured. It was warm in the car, and the seat was very comfortable. His eyelids felt like they were made of lead.

  “Oh, and Caleb’s back. Got home lunchtime,” added Mrs Chambers.

  Oz’s head snapped up. “Did he? I’ll text him. Tell him we’re on the way.”

  Mrs Chambers smiled, and Oz saw that she looked almost as tired as he felt. He suddenly realised that most of the parents in the hall must have had a sleepless night. A call from the Volcano in the early hours to say that four pupils and a teacher were missing after a weird campsite attack would have guaranteed that.

  “I expect you and Caleb will have a lot to talk about, being that he’s missed all the excitement.”

  “Don’t worry, Mum. I’ll fill him in,” Oz said, and stared at the wonderful sights of boring old Seabourne drifting by outside, with its boring old shops and boring old people going about their mundane business. People who were all completely oblivious to ossuaries and auramals and Aikman gun-toting thugs intent on murder. Sleepy as Seabourne quite often was, it suddenly felt awfully good to be back.

  At Penwurt, while Mrs Chambers got some pasta boiling, Oz announced he was going to soak in a bath for fifteen minutes. What he actually did was take a five-minute shower, throw on some clean clothes, and rush up to the library. Sitting at a desk in exactly the same position as the last time they’d spoken face to face was a bronzed but unsmiling Caleb Jones.

  “Oz,” he said. “Your mother told me about the trip and… Look, you’d better sit down and tell me everything.”

  So Oz did. As quickly as he could, he gave Caleb a blow-by-blow account, leaving nothing out. For the most part, Caleb listened in anxious silence. However, when Oz described how Soph had managed to hoodwink Skelton into driving to Wales instead of Cornwall by projecting a holographic three-dimensional field around the minibus, Caleb shook his head in despair.

  “Oz, I warned you not to do anything—”

  “But it was us or them,” Oz protested. “They knew about McClelland. They’d nicked his files from the Mountain Rescue headquarters. It was only a matter of time before Gerber sent his men to search the mountain.”

  Caleb scowled. “Go on,” he said, his face very serious.

  Oz recounted the Beast’s attack in the ossuary cave, and once again felt a horrible, simmering guilt at the memory of Niko’s aunt thanking him for saving her nephew. But he quashed it and went on to tell of how Skelton was waiting for them on the mountaintop with a gun. As he described what Skelton had said to them, Caleb’s face darkened beneath his tan. Nevertheless, when he finally got to the end and their arrival back at the camp, despite the horror of reliving it, Oz felt lighter, as if a heavy stone had been lifted from around his neck.

  “When I got your text half an hour ago, I made some calls,” Caleb said, with still no trace of a smile on his face. “It’ll be on the news tomorrow morning that Skelton has gone missing from the hospital. The police are putting a spin on it, saying he’s lost his memory and for people to be on the lookout for him, but my guess is he’s been removed by Gerber’s people.”

  “Do you think he’s spoken to the police?” Oz asked.

  “About what really happened?” Caleb let out a derisory chortle. “No. He was badly injured. Broken limbs and a smashed face. Gerber knows. You won’t have said anything either. This way, no one will be any the wiser.”

  There was a long, dragging silence before Caleb pierced Oz with an accusatory stare.

  “You could have been killed,” he said thickly.

  “I know,” Oz said.

  Caleb appeared to slump in on himself. “And it would have been all my fault.”

  “How would it have been your fault?”

  “Because I’ve known about Hamish for years.I should have gone to look for him myself.”

  Oz let out a hollow little laugh. “But that’s stupid. You would never have found that place in a million years of looking.”

  “I should have tried.” Caleb had both hands on the desk now, clenched so tightly the knuckles stood out white against the tanned skin. “Instead, I just sat back and hoped no one would work it out. Knowing that the ring was hidden…”

  “It doesn’t matter now, though, does it?” Oz held out his right hand. On the middle finger was the black ceramic ring. Caleb looked at it but did not touch it.

  “People have died because of this,” he said, his face suddenly bitter.

  “All the more reason that you tell us the truth from now on, then,” Oz said.

  Caleb bowed his head and muttered, “I’ve already told you. I am not worthy.”

  Oz took off the ring and pushed it into Caleb’s palm. The historian stared at it for a long, contemplative moment, but didn’t touch it with his fingers.

  “When Niko’s aunty came to thank me in the hall today, I felt sick,” Oz said, breaking the silence.

  Caleb looked up and waited for Oz to continue.

  “There I was, being thanked for rescuing Niko, when it was my fault that Gerber and Heeps has chosen him in the first place. Just because he was in my class. Just because he was my friend,” Oz said, his voice rising with challenge. “So, don’t tell me that all this is your fault, because that just isn’t true.”

  “You didn’t choose this path, Oz,” Caleb said, and there was something of the old Caleb in the way he spoke now, a little more of the calm wisdom that Oz needed. “It’s a hard and solitary and difficult one, filled with terrifying obstacles. But the truth is that it is the only path to follow.” He pushed his open palm forward. Oz took back the ring and slipped it onto his middle finger before taking a deep
breath and asking, “Do you know what the Bane is?”

  “No,” Caleb said.

  “It’s what Skelton said Gerber was planning.”

  “What did he mean?”

  Oz thought about Soph, and instantly she was there in the room. Her flawless face looked calmly at Oz and Caleb before she tilted her head and answered Oz’s unspoken question.

  “Bane. From the old English bana, meaning ‘slayer,’ and the Old Norse bani, meaning ‘death.’ Current usage, a person or thing that ruins or spoils; a deadly poison; death or destruction.”

  “Thanks, Soph,” Oz said softly.

  Caleb stared at her, his mouth turning down. Eventually, he said, “There have been rumours. What drives Gerber is a festering seed of bitterness. He rails against the world, wants to change it. With his artefact, he has the tools. We have people who know a small part of what he has planned.” He paused, looking up into Oz’s face. “You’ve done the Black Death in history?”

  Oz nodded.

  Caleb continued in his deep, unwavering voice. “A plague that killed millions. Imagine finding a cure for it. They’d make you a saint. That’s what Gerber wants, to tear the world apart so that he can change it to suit his own purpose. Except the big joke is that he, as well as curing the disease, will have invented it, too.”

  “You mean the Bane’s a virus?”

  “No, that’s too obvious. This will be something very different.”

  Oz didn’t understand all of what Caleb was saying to him, but he understood enough to know the Bane did not sound like good news. He steadied himself for what he had to say next. “There’s something else. When Skelton was pointing the gun at me, he said something about my dad. He said that they’d tried to get information from him but that he didn’t know anything…” Oz tried to swallow, but his mouth was a desert. “He said my dad was expendable. He said that the whiskey bottle on the seat had been a ‘nice touch’…”

  Caleb’s face filled with a dull repugnance. “Oz, Skelton is nothing better than a paid thug.”

  But Oz only half-heard him. “It’s funny, because I should have been upset, but hearing Skelton say those things just confirmed what I already sort of knew.” Oz’s voice was now nothing but a strained whisper. “Gerber killed Morsman, didn’t he?”