The Black Room

by Gillian Cross

  But she couldn’t do it. Of course she couldn’t....

  SHE REALLY DIDN’T MEAN TO MAKE A SECRET PASSAGE. But somehow she found herself leaving that tempting space exactly as it was. Every time Bando brought more stones, she guided him toward the other end of the wall—until it was almost as tall as she was, and she knew that she would have to level it off soon.

  And then Bando picked another stone off the ramp—and called out gleefully, “This one’s huge!”

  His voice echoed off the stone, and it threw a long, dark shadow behind him as he hoisted it onto his shoulder. Lorn felt the shape of that stone inside her head, as though she’d already touched it. It was wide and flat and very long.

  Long enough to bridge the gap between the other two stones.

  Quickly and quietly, she moved along the wall, back to the low end. “Bring it this way,” she called back. “Over here.”

  Bando blundered through the darkness, breathing heavily under the weight of the stone. When he reached her, Lorn slid her fingers around his huge hands and guided them into the right position.

  “Put it here. That’s right. On top of these two.”

  Bando hesitated. “It feels as though there’s a gap,” he said doubtfully.

  “Don’t worry about that.” Lorn loosened his fingers so that the stone dropped into place. “It’s not very big. We can fill it up with small stuff later on.”

  That was all it took. He went for the next load of stones without asking any more questions, and Lorn knew that he would forget all about it in a couple of minutes.

  As soon as he’d gone, she knelt down and slid her hands into the space between the stones. Her fingers spread out to fit it, instinctively, as if they knew the shape. Yes, she thought. That’s how it should be‘. It was exactly the right width. All she needed to do was scrape down a little way into the earth, to make it deeper. She worked at the soil between the stones, her hands moving confidently as she scooped it out.

  By the time Bando came back with the next lot of stones, she had finished. She stood up and talked him across the storeroom, not thinking about what she’d just been doing. Her mind moved on, planning how to use the next lot of stones—and the next and the next and the next—to make a strong, impenetrable wall. A barrier that nothing could cross.

  Except the person who knew about the secret passage winding through it, like the hidden strand of hair in a twelve-strand braid. The strand that was almost invisible, unless your fingers knew how to find it in the dark....

  11

  “OPEN THE BAG!” ROBERT SAID, CALLING TO TOM AS HE ran back across the parking lot. “There might be an address inside.”

  Tom pulled the zipper open, but he wasn’t quick enough for Robert. Before he had a chance to look in the bag, it was wrenched away from him. Robert knelt down and dumped it on the ground, rummaging through it with both hands.

  There wasn’t much to look at. But on the bottom—under a neatly folded raincoat and three glossy computer magazines—was an empty wallet, with a name and address card in the plastic pocket inside.

  Robert pulled it out and sat back on his heels. “Warren Armstrong,” he said. Experimentally.

  Tom looked over his shoulder. “Is that the right surname? For Lorn?”

  “How would I know?” Robert shrugged. “People have different names in the cavern.”

  He said it as though it should have been obvious. Tom was irritated. “Why do they have different names?”

  “Because they are different,” Robert said impatiently. “Because it’s not allowed to remember what happened before. Because—oh, what does it matter?” He frowned down at the card he was holding. “Where’s Charrington Close?”

  Tom shrugged. “Search me.”

  “I’d better find a street map.” Robert scrambled up and slung the bag over his shoulder.

  “You’re not going there?” Tom said. “What about that man?

  “He’s only a man. I’m not going to be afraid of him, am I? Not after facing a hedge-tiger.”

  What’s a hedge-tiger? Tom thought. But he didn’t bother to ask. He’d only get another annoying non-answer.

  “Men can be dangerous, too,” Tom said. “That man is—” But he couldn’t explain the feeling he had about him. He wasn’t dangerous like a wild animal, all teeth and claws. It was a different kind of danger. Weird and disturbing.

  Robert wasn’t listening, anyway. He’d already set off back to the square. By the time Tom caught up, he was in the bookshop, poring over a street map of the city.

  Tom peered down at the page, trying to read the names upside down. “Have you found it?”

  “It’s somewhere in this part of the map.” Robert pointed without looking up. “One of the little streets in this development up here.”

  Tom found it first. It was right at the top of the page, on the edge of the city. Directly under the double blue line that showed where the highway ran. He reached over and put his finger on it. “Must be noisy up there.”

  “Good for buses, though. There’s bound to be one that goes up there. It’s a really big development.” Robert put the book back on the shelf and headed for the door. He was almost through it before he looked back for Tom. “You coming, Tosh?”

  No, Tom wanted to say. Not there. But he didn’t. He nodded and followed Robert down the hill to the bus station.

  The bus took the main road going north out of the city. It plunged downhill and then up again, and on the right, the development ran all the way up to the highway embankment. Tom could see the cheap little houses laid out on the slope ahead. It was just starting to get dark, and the streetlamps came on as he watched, marking out a maze of twisting, interconnected roads.

  Just before the highway, the bus swung across the road, turning right into the development. Robert put his face against the window, counting the left turns as they passed them. When they reached the third one, he stood up and rang the bell, grabbing Tom’s arm with one hand and the sports bag with the other.

  “That’s it. Come on.”

  They jumped off the bus as soon as it reached the next stop and headed back to the little dead-end street. It was very short, with half a dozen houses on each side and an odd one squeezed in at the end. The extra house had an awkward, uncomfortable look, as though it had been crammed into a leftover plot of land. It faced straight down the street, blocking off the end, and the highway embankment loomed close behind it, topped by high fences to close off the traffic.

  Tall cypress hedges ran down each side of the little front garden, continuing past the house and on into the back, and the house sat in a dark gap between two streetlamps. All its curtains were drawn, and there was only one dim light showing, in the window over the front door.

  “Bet that’s the house,” said Tom.

  “You’re only guessing,” Robert said.

  He began to walk down the street, stopping at each house to check its number. But he needn’t have bothered. Tom was right. When they’d counted carefully, all down the road, number fourteen turned out to be the odd house at the end.

  “I’ll knock on the door,” Robert said. “And pretend I found the bag, lying around somewhere. You’d better keep out of sight, in case he recognizes you.” He marched up the path and rang the doorbell.

  Tom stepped back, so that the cypress hedge on the left of the garden shielded him. Now that it was almost dark, the hedge hid him completely, but he could peer through the branches and see the house, with Robert at the front door.

  Behind the blank, curtained windows, everything was very still. Robert rang the bell again. Tom saw a sudden brightness as one of the upstairs curtains twitched. Then the front door opened.

  It was the man. He didn’t say anything. He just stood in the doorway, waiting.

  Robert cleared his throat. “Mr. Armstrong?”

  The man bent his head, acknowledging the name.

  Robert held out the sports bag. Tom couldn’t quite catch what Robert said, but he was obvious
ly explaining how he’d found it. Whatever he said, it didn’t make any visible impression on Mr. Armstrong. He stood there, listening impassively, and then held out his hand for the bag. It looked as if he might take it and shut the door in Robert’s face without saying anything at all.

  But Robert wasn’t going to be put off so easily. “There’s one other thing,” he said, raising his voice and keeping a tight hold on the bag. “Can you tell me—?”

  The man in the doorway stiffened and drew back. It was only a slight movement. Robert probably hadn’t noticed it at all. But Tom saw it, watching from behind the hedge. Mr. Armstrong looked... offended.

  “It’s not anything important,” Robert said in a false, cheerful voice. “It’s just that I couldn’t help noticing this plait, and I wondered how it was made. I’m really interested in crafts like that, but I can’t figure it out.”

  Mr. Armstrong’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke for the first time, opening his mouth just wide enough to let out the words. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  Robert tried again. “I know it’s not important. But I’d love to find out about it. Who made it? Was it your daughter?”

  “I haven’t got a daughter,” Mr. Armstrong said. His voice and his face were completely expressionless. “But I have got work to do. Thank you for bringing this back.”

  His hand shot toward the bag. He snatched it out of Robert’s hands and shut the door in his face. For a second, Robert was obviously too startled to react at all. Then he reached up and rang the doorbell again.

  Nothing happened.

  He rang again, holding his thumb on the bell. After a few seconds, the door flew open again, and Mr. Armstrong reappeared.

  “There’s no reward,” he said coldly. “Now go away. If I see you again, I shall have to call the police. Good night.”

  The door shut again, and Robert trailed back down the path looking angry and frustrated. Tom came out from behind the hedge to meet him.

  “I told you he was a horrible man,” he said.

  Robert nodded thoughtfully. “Why did he react like that? Was it because I asked him about his daughter?”

  “Maybe he did have a daughter,” Tom said. “And she died. Maybe his marriage split up, and he doesn’t get to see her anymore. Or maybe he’s never had one, and he just didn’t want to talk to you—because he’s a horrible man. You’re not going to find out, Robbo. He’ll never tell you anything.”

  “Then I’ll have to find out another way.” Robert looked back at the house, over his shoulder. Then he began to walk back down the road, toward the bus stop. “I’m sure there’s something weird going on in that house.”

  “You can’t do anything about it,” Tom said. “He’s not exactly going to let you in, is he?”

  “I’ll go around the back,” Robert said doggedly.

  “You can’t. Didn’t you see the fence at the side? I bet he keeps that gate bolted.”

  “I’m not going to use the gate.”

  “But there isn’t another entrance.”

  “Yes, there is.” Robert sounded almost as scornful as Emma. “I’ll go in along the highway embankment.”

  12

  “YOU’RE GOING along the highway embankment? EMMA said. ”What good will that do?“

  Robert ignored her. He had the street map spread out on the floor, and he was bent over it, studying the pattern of the streets.

  “This is the way to get in,” he said suddenly. “From this business park on the other side of the development. It looks as if there’s a piece of open ground between the offices and the houses.”

  For a second, Tom thought Emma was going to explode. “That’s how,” she said. “Not why. I want to know the point of all this scrambling about. You don’t really imagine you’re going to find Lorn, do you? And even if you do find her, she won’t know anything about you, or the cavern, or the other people in it. Not if she’s anything like you were.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Robert said without looking up. “You really don’t get it.”

  “Of course she doesn‘t!” Tom said stoutly. “Because there isn’t a reason. Except that you don’t know when to give up.” There was something surreal about agreeing with Emma, but he had to. Because she was right. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Look.” Robert sat back on his heels and took a long breath. “I saw one of my friends die. Then I lost the rest of them—after we’d been through all kinds of danger together. After they’d saved me from dying. If there’s anything that can help me understand why I went through all that, of course I want to find it. Wouldn’t you?”

  He said it fiercely, with such intensity that Tom didn’t know how to reply. What he had said suddenly sounded very stupid to him.

  “I guess I would,” he mumbled.

  Emma was watching Robert. “It’s Lorn, too, isn’t it?” she said. “You want to find her.”

  “Yes,” Robert said. He looked down quickly at the map, and there was an awkward little silence.

  “So how does it help if you climb along the highway embankment?” Emma said at last.

  Robert shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’ve got to do something—and I can’t think of anything else. If you don’t like it, leave me to do it on my own. No one’s asking you to get involved.” He went on scanning the street map.

  Tom waited for Emma to argue. That was what she usually did. If she didn’t get her own way the first time, she kept nagging away until Robert finally gave in. Not this time, though. She looked at Robert’s bent head for a moment and gave a grudging nod. Then she glanced at Tom.

  “Don’t let him go on his own,” she muttered.

  Go with him yourself, Tom would have said a week ago. If you’re that bothered. I’m not taking orders from you. But she wasn’t giving orders now. She was ... asking him for something. He met her eyes and found himself smiling at her.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he’s OK.”

  IT WAS TOTALLY DARK BY THE TIME THEY LEFT THE HOUSE. Tom had borrowed Emma’s bike, and he and Robert cycled across the city to the north side. But they didn’t follow the bus route. Instead, they took a narrow road that ran up the back of the housing development and stopped dead when it reached the highway.

  Robert had been right about the open ground. It was a bit of wasteland at the back of the business park. They pad-locked their bikes together and hid them under some bushes.

  The highway embankment ran in a straight line behind the business park, across the end of the waste ground and past the back of the housing development. There was a fence along the bottom, but it looked battered and overgrown.

  “No one’s going to notice us unless we crash about,” Robert said. “Let’s go.”

  He began to move quickly and quietly over the scrubby ground, keeping to the shadows. Tracking games had always been a nightmare when Robert was involved. Tom could think of dozens of times when he’d given their team away by stumbling around in the bushes. But now he moved like a commando, silent and almost invisible. As if it mattered.

  Nightbirds, Tom thought before he could stop himself. Hungry monsters out hunting. Watching Robert, he could suddenly imagine what it must be like to be in real physical danger. To look up and see a dark, predatory shape looming over you, blotting out the sky.

  “Are you coming?” Robert called softly from somewhere ahead.

  Tom set out after him, horribly aware of the sound of his own movements. He didn’t catch up until he reached the embankment. Robert was on the other side of the fence, looking up at the steep, dark slope, and he gave Tom a hand to help him scramble over. High above them, the traffic was thundering by, but the steady swoosh-smoosh-swoosh seemed remote and unreal, like a noise from another planet. Reality was the dark slope where they stood, thick with brambles and small bushes.

  Tom peered into the undergrowth. “We’ll never get through that.”

  “Yes, we will,” Robert said easily. “There’ll be animal tracks through the bush
es. And I’ve brought some clippers in case we get stuck. Come on.” He went down on to all fours and began to crawl forward.

  The ground was even wetter than Tom had expected, and he made a small, disgusted noise.

  “Shhh,” Robert hissed. “Once we’re past that lane, we’ll be beside people’s gardens all the way. Keep your mouth shut and follow me.”

  Then he was off, without giving Tom time to reply.

  IF THEY’D WALKED ALONG THE ROADS, THEY COULD HAVE reached the house in ten or fifteen minutes. But the journey along the embankment took well over an hour.

  They might as well have been a million miles away from the houses they were passing. Tom found himself totally focused on the faint scuffling, scuttling noises in the bushes around them. Or the rustle of dry leaves suddenly disturbed. Once there was the gleam of a pair of yellow eyes, startlingly close.

  “Cat,” Robert said. With an edge of distaste that Tom didn’t quite understand.

  They stayed close to the cold ground, wriggling under thorny branches and huddling behind bushes, always stopping and starting. It took so much concentration that it was a shock when Robert suddenly pointed ahead. Tom looked up—and saw a line of gardens running at right angles to the highway. It took him a moment to understand that they were looking at the back of the houses on one side of the Armstrongs’ street.

  The Armstrongs’ house was almost completely hidden behind one of the cypress hedges. The sharp point of its roof was just visible, sideways on, rising above the feathery tops of the trees. Tom hadn’t realized that the hedge went all the way around the house.

  Why? The embankment would have cut out enough light on its own. Why would anyone decide to plant a tall, thick cypress hedge as well?

  There was no chance to ask Robert. He was off again, working his way higher up the embankment, toward the fence at the top. Reluctantly, Tom followed him, digging his fingers into the loose earth. When they reached the top, they huddled against the barrier. It was cold and noisy and uncomfortable up there, and they had to hang on to the bushes to stop themselves from sliding down again.