The Black Room

by Gillian Cross

  But Robert was faster than he was. His hand shot out and he grabbed Tom’s wrist. “This isn’t a game, Tosher. You made me tell you. Now I can’t let you go until you understand that it’s true.” He stood up and stepped across the ditch, hauling Tom after him.

  “What do you mean?” Tom said. “What are you going to—ouch!”

  His foot slid off the bank, twisting sideways, and squelched down into the bottom of the ditch. Robert pulled impatiently at his arm.

  “You’re coming to my house,” he said.

  Tom grabbed at the nearest excuse. “What about Helga?”

  Robert just shrugged. “You can drop her off on the way. But you’re not going home until you’ve talked to Emma.”

  6

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE, TOM FOUND HIMSELF wanting to see Emma Doherty—just because she was such a critical, sarcastic cow. She couldn’t really believe Robert’s weird story, even if she was pretending that she did. Maybe she had some reason for indulging Robert, but Tom knew she wouldn’t try to con him. She knew him too well for that.

  He was so eager to get the whole thing sorted out that he pitched Helga into the house without even wiping her feet. Then he slammed the door and left her barking while Robert hustled him off down the road.

  Tom’s mother wouldn’t have noticed if he’d dragged ten friends through the house, but Robert’s mother was different. As soon as they walked in, she left her computer and came into the hall.

  “Is everything all right?” she said.

  She always pussyfooted around like that. If Tom’s mother did notice anything, she always asked a direct question. Have you two had a quarrel? You both look dreadful! But Mrs. Doherty hovered uneasily, keeping her eyes away from their faces. Carefully not noticing Robert’s hand and the way it was gripping Tom’s arm.

  “Hi, Mom,” Robert said firmly. “Everything’s fine, thanks.”

  He stayed in the hall, smiling brightly at her. Not moving until she went back to work. As soon as she was out of sight, he made for the stairs, pulling Tom after him.

  “You haven’t told her all this stuff then?” Tom asked.

  “No,” Robert said shortly.

  “She’s your mother, isn’t she? Wouldn’t she like to hear all about your amazing adventures?”

  “No,” Robert said again. In a voice that meant he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore.

  He pushed Tom along the landing toward Emma’s door. It was firmly shut, as usual, but Robert didn’t wait to be asked in. He knocked once, quickly and lightly, and then opened it right away, without waiting for an answer.

  “Problems,” he said.

  Emma was lying on the bed reading, leaning back against a heap of cushions. She sat up quickly, and Tom braced himself for a rant. Don’t you dare come marching into my room like that! You’re such a jerk—

  But there was nothing like that. She looked startled and worried. “What have you done to yourself, Rob? You’re a real mess.” Then she saw Tom, and her expression changed. “Oh. It’s you. I suppose you’ve been fighting then.”

  Tom had almost forgotten about that. But now he saw himself in Emma’s mirror, with his eye swollen and his face smeared with mud. And Robert looked battered, too. His coat was torn and there were long bramble scratches on his neck and under one eye.

  “It’s nothing,” Robert said impatiently. He pulled Tom into the room and shut the door. “I just hit him. That’s all.”

  “You hit him?” That was the voice Tom hated. Hard and chilly and superior. The one Emma always used on Robert. You’re such a pathetic idiot....

  “It’s only blood,” he said dismissively, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand. “No big deal.”

  “I thought you two were supposed to be friends.” Emma looked pointedly at his jacket, and he realized there was blood on that, too.

  “We are friends,” he said. “Aren’t we, Robbo?”

  Robert ignored that. “I had to hit him, Em,” he said. “It was the only way to stop him. He was in the woods.”

  “And?” Emma said.

  Robert turned his head away. “He was ramming a stick into the tunnel. Jabbing it straight down. He could have hurt someone.”

  “So you hit him?”

  Robert nodded. “As hard as I could. But it wasn’t any use. I had to tell him in the end.”

  “You told him?” Emma’s voice went up three notches. It was the first time Tom had ever seen her look shocked. “But we said—”

  “I had to,” Robert said wretchedly. “He thought we had something hidden down there, and he was threatening to dig up the whole bank.”

  “But we said we wouldn’t tell anyone. Ever.”

  “What could I do?” Robert said helplessly. “He saw us there. He knows exactly where the cavern is. And I thought if I told him—if he understood—then I could get him to leave it alone.”

  “And did it work?” Emma said tartly.

  Robert shook his head and looked even more miserable. “He doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m crazy.”

  “It’s not that,” Tom said half-apologetically. “I just think—” He stopped short, because, of course, it was that. He thought the whole thing was crazy.

  “So what are we going to do?” Emma said.

  “That’s why I brought him here.” Robert tugged at Tom’s arm, dragging him nearer to the bed. “You’ve got to convince him.”

  “Me?” Emma obviously wasn’t expecting that. “What can I do?”

  “You’ve got to tell him what you saw,” Robert said. “He’ll believe you.”

  “Why should he? If he doesn’t believe you.” Emma stood up and walked over to the window, with her arms folded tightly around her body.

  She’s afraid, Tom thought. Whatever she saw, she doesn’t want to talk about it.

  But she did talk. She turned to face him and looked him straight in the eye. “I’m not surprised you don’t believe Robert,” she said abruptly. “I wouldn’t believe him either—if I hadn’t seen him.”

  “Seen?” Tom didn’t want to hear the answer, whatever it was, but there was no way of escaping it. She was going to tell him.

  “I saw Rob.” Emma said it slowly and deliberately. “I saw him as clearly as I can see you now. And he was tiny—less than half the length of my little finger.”

  Her eyes were a clear, light hazel, and there was a pulse beating in her neck. It can’t be true, Tom thought. It can’t. It can’t.

  “The other Robert hadn’t gone missing,” Emma said steadily. “You know that as well as I do. He’d been there all the time. Getting up and going to school, coming home and going to bed, just the same as usual. But he was ... blank. Like an empty person. Remember?”

  Tom nodded, before he could stop himself. That’s enough, he wanted to say. Don’t tell me anymore.

  But Emma didn’t stop. “And then suddenly, that morning, there were two Roberts,” she said. “The blank one next to me was the size he’s always been. But I knew that the little one was the real Robert. He—”

  Her voice stumbled for a second. Tom couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do anything except stare at her.

  Emma caught her breath and went on. “The tall Robert crouched down and stretched out his hand toward the small one. Their fingers touched, and they just—just—” She shook her head. “It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Robert reached out and put a hand on her arm, reassuringly.

  Tom stared at the hand. Until then, the whole thing had seemed like some wild fantasy, with no connection to the real world. I woke up and found I’d shrunk to the size of a thumbnail. It was crazy, but it didn’t change anything.

  Only it had changed things. Robert and Emma were both different. Tom leaned back against the wall so that they wouldn’t see him shaking.

  “People see all kinds of things,” Tom said. The words came out rough and hostile. “It’s called hallucinating.”

  “I’d like to believe that, too,” Emm
a said scathingly. “It would be much more comfortable, wouldn’t it? But it wouldn’t be true. I know what I saw and I know it was real.”

  “So you swallowed the rest of the story as well? All that stuff about the cavern and the little people?”

  Tom meant to sound scornful, to embarrass her into silence. But it didn’t work. She gave him a pitying look.

  “It explains what I saw. And the more Rob talks about it, the more I believe him. Because so many things fit in.”

  “Like what?” Tom said. It was almost a sneer—because what could fet in with a completely unbelievable story?

  “Like—” Emma frowned for a moment, thinking. Then she grinned. “Remember when you and Rob were doing that badge in Scouts? The one where you had to tie knots and splice ropes?”

  Tom tried not to grin back, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d been determined to get Robert through that badge. Evening after evening he’d sat with him, showing him how to loop the ropes around each other and pull the ends through in the right places. But he’d had to give up in the end. It was like trying to teach a chicken to do embroidery.

  “Well, watch this.” Emma tucked her hair behind her ears so that it hung down her back in a long red cascade. “Go on, Rob. Show him how you can braid. Do a really complicated one.”

  Robert gathered the hair in his hands. “Twelve strands?”

  Tom laughed before he could stop himself. That had to be impossible for anyone.

  “Right,” Emma said firmly. “Twelve strands it is.”

  She took a fistful of elastic bands off her dressing table and handed them to Robert. He divided the hair into equal sections, fastening the ends with the bands to keep them separate. His fingers were quick and confident as he snapped the bands into place.

  When the twelve strands had been separated, he started braiding them together so fast that Tom couldn’t quite see what he was doing. But he was sure it was going to be a mess. He looked forward to seeing Emma cut the tangles out of her precious hair.

  But there were no tangles. Robert’s hands moved without hesitating, weaving the strands together. Under, over, under, under, under, over. It was neat and intricate and complicated. Like the little ball of interwoven shoots that had blocked the tunnel.

  That’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Tom pushed the memory out of his mind and concentrated on the movements of Robert’s fingers, trying to figure out the pattern.

  But he couldn’t keep up. He could just see the braid taking shape as he watched. It was square and perfectly symmetrical, with four flat sides, thick and shiny at the top and narrowing slightly as it went down. Robert’s fingers kept moving until they had nothing left to weave. Then he took the last elastic band out of Emma’s hand and looped it around the end three times, to hold the strands together.

  “You see?” Emma said. “He couldn’t do that before, could he?”

  Robert let the braid fall. It hung down Emma’s back, smooth and even—and inexplicable. “I learned it in the cavern,” he said. “That was one of the jobs they gave me. Helping Lorn to make the ropes. This twelve-strand one is very strong.”

  Tom was silent for a long time. “Who’s Lorn?” he said at last. He didn’t know what else to say.

  “Lorn showed me the way to the cavern,” Robert said. “She saved my life.”

  Tom stared at the braid. Then he looked up and saw Robert and Emma watching him. Waiting for him to say that he believed Robert’s story now.

  But he didn’t believe it. He didn’t. Suddenly he was so angry that he could hardly breathe. “That’s just a braid!” he said loudly. “It doesn’t prove anything!”

  “You’ve got to admit—” Robert began.

  “I don’t have to admit anything!” Tom was shouting now. “You can keep your silly games and your precious little hole in the ground. But stop messing around with my head!”

  He pushed past Robert and ran through the door and down the stairs, so fast that he could hardly keep his footing. As he wrenched open the front door, a voice was pounding on and on in his mind. They’re lying. They must be lying. It can’t be true. He banged the front door behind him and raced across the garden and out into the street. It can’t be true, it can’t be true, it can‘t—

  He was moving so fast that he nearly bumped into a man coming along the pavement. He had to catch hold of the wall to stop himself.

  The man stopped, too, just for an instant, turning his head so that Tom looked straight at him. His eyes were a clear, transparent blue, as still as water in a well. As still as water that reflects the sky.

  It can’t be true, said the voice in Tom’s head.

  But it was fading now. He could see his own face, very small, in the dark center of the still blue eyes.

  It can‘t—said the voice in his head. And then it stopped, leaving a huge, empty silence.

  The man nodded gravely and stepped around him, going on down the road.

  7

  LORN knew THEY HAD TO DIG DOWN—BUT SHE HAD TO fight hard to persuade the others. Not for the first time, she wished that Cam was there. No one had ever argued with her. When she said, Do this, people jumped to obey her. They trusted her to run the cavern, even when they didn’t understand what she was doing. It was different for Lorn. She had to convince them.

  “I know it’s going to be difficult,” she said fiercely. Over and over again. “I know there’s a lot of earth to move, and we’ll have to shift it all outside. And I know it’s getting colder and colder out there. But we can’t do anything else. If we want to be safe, we have to go down farther under the earth.”

  In the end, after a day and a half of talking, she managed to persuade them all. At the end of the second day, they actually started to dig.

  And it was very hard. Much harder than any of them expected.

  The digging was exhausting, and they had to work in shifts, changing every couple of hours. Getting rid of the loose earth was even worse. They had to take it outside and scatter it—after dark, because it was safer then. The air outside was almost too cold to bear, and on the third night, Annet came back white and shaking. She huddled in front of the brazier, but it took her the rest of the night to get warm.

  We’ve got to hurry. We’ve got to finish before it’s too cold to go outside at all. Lorn didn’t say it aloud, because she didn’t need to. It was what they were all thinking. They were already working as fast as they could.

  By the morning of the fourth day, they had made a long ramp, leading down into a pit. Lorn walked to the bottom and looked up at the ring of faces staring down at her. As soon as she saw them, she knew that the pit was deep enough. Because the faces were ... the right distance away.

  “That’s the right level,” she called up cheerfully. “We can dig sideways now and start the new cavern. Let’s get going.”

  No one even smiled. For a moment, looking up at their weary faces, she thought she was asking too much. Then Bando waved a hand and shouted down to her.

  “Here I come, Lorn! Don’t worry. We’ll get it finished soon.”

  And he led the way down the ramp.

  NOW THEY HAD TO COPE WITH DARKNESS, TOO. THE SPACE behind the brazier had always been dim and shadowy, but once their eyes had adjusted to the gloom, they could see well enough to dig. As soon as they began on the cavern itself, they found themselves working in total darkness.

  Perdew tried to work out a way of using glowing logs to give some light, but they burned through too quickly and filled the small, cramped space with choking fumes. Until the space was big enough to bring the brazier down, they would have to be content with fumbling around and feeling their way.

  Lorn hadn’t realized they would all be so helpless.

  She’d always wondered why the others were slow and clumsy when it got dark, but she’d never understood that they were completely lost without light.

  The first time she and Annet had gone down to dig together, Annet paused at the bottom of the ramp and then began to s
huffle forward uncertainly.

  “What’s the matter?” Lorn had said. “Why are you doing that?”

  “I’m figuring out where to go.” Annet sounded surprised at the question. As though the answer was obvious.

  Annet’s voice filled the space in front of them, hitting the earth in some directions and traveling on, unobstructed, in others. The turn of her head stirred the air, setting up tiny currents that eddied around them, rebounding from the walls and carrying the smell of newly disturbed soil.

  “It’s this way, of course,” Lorn said, striding out into the dark.

  “Wait for me!” Annet scuttled after her and caught her tunic. “I can’t see a thing. How do you know where to go?”

  It was a senseless question. Because I know, Lorn wanted to say. She struggled to explain. “Can’t you hear the space? And feel it and smell it and taste it?”

  “Taste it?” Annet said. “How can you taste a space?”

  How could you not taste what was there? How could you not use every message that your senses brought, to understand what was around you? Lorn was silent because she didn’t know what to say.

  “Are you joking?” Annet said after a moment.

  There was something wary in her voice. A kind of nervousness. Suddenly, something else that Lorn had always taken for granted seemed ... odd. Another way she was dif ferent from all the others.

  “I’ve just got good eyes,” she said, passing it off as quickly as she could. “I don’t think I need as much light as you do.”

  But it wasn’t that. She knew she wasn’t seeing the space. Not with her eyes, anyway. It was another kind of seeing, built up by all her other senses, making dark, solid shapes in her mind. But how did I learn to do it? When did I begin?

  She had no way of remembering. No way of answering the questions. So she buried them deep in her mind and let the others talk about her wonderful eyesight.

  AND THEN THE EARTH COLLAPSED.

  They had been digging for almost two weeks by then, and Lorn reckoned that they had cleared half the space they would need for the new cavern. She had just finished work—digging as hard as she could for several hours—and she was so tired that she could hardly follow Annet and Dess up the ramp.