I could go down to the storeroom now, Lorn thought. I could go without being seen.
It wasn’t a conscious decision. As soon as the thought came to her, she was sliding out from under her furs, making for the shadows at the side of the cavern. Her bare feet were silent on the trampled earth, and no one stirred as she went by.
Even the stokers weren’t a problem. It was easy to get past them without being seen. When Dess lifted a log over the rim of the brazier, Bando looked toward the fire, too, grinning in the red light. He loved watching the rush of sparks as the log fell into the flames.
In that moment, Lorn slipped quickly forward, past the brazier and into the shadowy place behind. Then, as Bando turned away to pick up a new log, she padded forward and down the ramp, moving silently on the soft earth.
When she reached the darkness beyond the ramp, she closed her eyes and let her mind change gear. Her other senses stirred and took over, and she turned her head and sniffed at the swirling air, flaring her nostrils wide to catch the changing scents. As she sniffed, she shifted from one foot to the other, listening to the faint noise they made on the soft earth.
In a few seconds, she knew exactly where she was aiming. She could feel the wall on the other side of the space and taste the damp sourness of the earth that held it together. Walking quickly and surely across the storeroom, she knelt down in front of the wall. And her hands went straight to the hidden passage.
She had disguised it with two stones, one at each end, so that even with a light, no one else would be able to find it. But she knew exactly where it was. With one tug, she pulled the loose stone out of the wall, rolling it away to one side.
There was a quick trickle of earth and then silence. She could feel a draft of colder air coming through from the other end.
Quickly, before she could think about what might happen, she went head first into the hole, squirming through the narrow space on her stomach. Some of the earth had fallen and settled, leaving unexpected ridges and gaps. As she worked herself along, she updated the images in her mind so that she knew the shape of the passage exactly.
When she reached the stone that blocked the other end, she wriggled forward and laid her hands flat against it. Putting all her weight behind them, she pushed once, twice, three times.
The stone rolled out of the way, and she fell forward into the empty space beyond the wall.
THE MOMENT SHE WAS IN THE TUNNEL, SHE FELT A CHANGE in the air around her. It was much colder on that side of the wall—cold enough to make her shiver—and it smelled quite different. Back in the storeroom, the walls were drying out already, in the heat that came down the ramp. This tunnel had the damp scent of living earth. And another scent, too, rank and animal. She stood up and took a long breath, trying to recognize the smell, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.
Then she put out a hand to touch the wall, and her knuckles brushed against soft, loosening earth. In the darkness, its texture against her skin was suddenly, shockingly familiar. Her mind flooded with—what?
Not memories, exactly. There were no pictures in her head, no sudden links with something in the past. It was more as though the damp smell and the loose earth ... belonged to her. As though she knew them better than anything else in the world.
Everything drew her on, into the tunnel. Go down, said a voice inside her head. If you want to be safe, if you want to understand, then you have to go down....
Clicking her tongue softly against the roof of her mouth, she turned her head to the right, letting the image of the tunnel sharpen in her head. It sloped slightly upward, and a faint draft of fresh, new air floated down toward her.
That way led to the surface, sooner or later.
When she turned the other way, the sounds and the smells were quite different. She could hear the tunnel going down into the earth, constantly twisting and turning, until her mind couldn’t work out the shapes anymore. The air there was breathable, but the animal smell was much stronger.
She turned that way, shuffling soft earth under her feet as she moved forward. With every step she took, the close, meaty scent grew stronger, clinging to the walls. She couldn’t help picturing the huge animal that had left the scent, pushing along the tunnel with its damp fur dragging against every surface. She imagined its head darting about and its hot, hungry eyes peering into the shadows while its nose sniffed greedily at the air.
Why take the risk of meeting a creature like that?
The rational part of her mind knew the danger she was running, but something stronger kept her moving on and down, putting one foot automatically in front of the other. After a few minutes, she came to a place where the tunnel forked into two, and she faced each branch in turn, speaking aloud to test how they sounded.
“I’m Lorn. I’m exploring.”
The left-hand tunnel twisted away to the right, rising slightly as it went. The other one sloped downward, going deeper into the earth. She chose that one, not understanding why but stepping decisively into it. Going farther down.
She had walked about a hundred steps when she heard the first, faint noise.
It wasn’t what she was expecting—and fearing. She’d been listening for scrabbling and scraping and the breathing of some big, warm-blooded animal. But what she heard was different.
It was a sticky, gliding, slithering sound, faint but unmistakable, coming from somewhere ahead. She could hear the suck and kiss of wet, ridged surfaces sliding against each other, in a pattern so complicated that she couldn’t work it out.
What kind of shapes would make that noise? Her mind slid away from the effort of visualizing them, refusing to turn the sounds into pictures. But she knew—she knew—that she had heard those sounds before. She screwed up her eyes and began to hum, forcing herself to concentrate on the echoes that came back to her.
I know what that is. I know—
Her mind reached out, determined and insistent. At first, it met the usual blank barrier that shut out all her memories. But this time, she wouldn’t accept the barrier. Everything was crying out to her now. The smell of the air, the feel of the earth, the slithering sounds deep under the ground.
I will remember. I WILL.
With all the force of her mind, she pushed at the barrier—and suddenly it broke. Images came pushing up from the darkness at the bottom of her mind, not separate and detached like pictures, but part of herself. As close as her own body.
And completely incomprehensible.
Noise is bad, noise from the mouth is bad, bad, bad. BAD
GIRL. And the hair goes. They take the hair away....
Over, over, under, over—no. No way to make the patterns
anymore. Only the fingers turning and twisting and
turning ...
Only the hands going up and down the black room,
hunting, wanting, empty, empty ...
Searching for anything to make the patterns.
And then finding the shapes. One, two, three ...
Her hands remembered. Not giant slithering shapes, but small, small, small. From before. She knew exactly how they had felt between her fingers. How they’d slid away, refusing to keep the patterns. The memory was real. It was hers.
But her brain couldn’t decipher it. Where had she been? And why had she been so desperate to twist those slithering, ungovernable shapes into neat, tight braids?
It didn’t make sense. She struggled to grasp the images, but they slipped away from her explanations, refusing to be understood. Determination wasn’t enough. She needed something more, another memory....
It didn’t come. Instead, a sound from outside broke in, forcing itself on her attention. Someone was calling her name, not very close, but nearer than any voice should have been.
“Lorn!”
For a moment, the word had no meaning for her. She was away in another place, feeling long, wet shapes slide through her fingers, and Lorn had nothing to do with her. She was ... she was—
“Lorn! Where are
you? LORN!”
It was Bando’s voice. And as she recognized it, she realized why it sounded so close. He was down in the storeroom, very near the wall, and his shouts were coming straight through the secret passage. Because she’d left the entrance open.
Turning around, she began to run back the way she had come. He mustn’t find that entrance. He mustn’t come through. And she had to stop him shouting, before anyone else came down to see what was going on.
When she reached the rough stones of the new wall, she flung herself down onto her knees, going feet first into the passage. As soon as she was in, she pulled the loose stone after her, to seal the entrance. Then she wriggled backward as fast as she could, desperate to get through.
Speed made her careless. Once she was in the passage, she stopped listening and thinking, and all her energy went into moving. She had no idea why Bando was blundering around the storeroom in the dark, but as long as he was on his own, she was sure she could stop him from suspecting anything.
She hadn’t counted on coming out right beside him.
He’d given up shouting. He was standing in the dark, leaning against the wall, and as she slid out of the passage, her legs brushed against his ankles. He yelped and bent down to push them away.
“Get off!” he said, sounding panicky and disgusted.
Then his fingers closed around her right ankle, and she felt him hesitate.
“It’s all right, Bando,” she hissed. “It’s only me.”
But it was too late. He’d found the entrance to the secret passage. She heard him catch his breath as he turned toward her, and his voice was shrill with panic.
“You’ve been through the wall, haven’t you? You’ve been in the tunnel!”
17
BY THE TIME TOM GOT BACK TO THE PLACE WHERE THEY’D left their bikes, he was so tired that he could hardly stand. As he slid down the embankment, he didn’t know how he was going to climb the rickety fence.
But Robert was there, waiting for him in the dark. Robert hauled him over onto the waste ground and guided him across it.
“Are you OK? I thought you were never coming. What happened?”
“I went down—I saw—” Tom couldn’t dredge up the right words to explain. His exhausted brain refused to work. He wasn’t even sure how much of what he’d seen was real and how much was imagination.
Robert gave him a careful look. “Save it,” he said. “We can talk tomorrow. You need to concentrate on getting home while you can still cycle.”
“But that house—”
“Tomorrow.” Robert bent down and unlocked the bikes. “If we start talking now, we’ll be out till midnight—and there’ll be too many questions to answer. Come around tomorrow morning, and then we can try and make sense of it all.”
For once, Tom was happy to be ordered around. He wobbled his way home, with Robert cycling carefully behind him, and went to bed as soon as he got in—before his mother had time to notice the state of his clothes.
Maybe it would all be clear and ordinary in the morning. He was just overreacting because he was so tired. There had to be a simple explanation for what he’d seen. There had to be.
“HOW DO YOU KNOW IT WAS A SECRET ROOM?” EMMA said. “And not just a hole under the floor?”
That was the question Tom had been asking himself ever since he woke up. He’d been so sure, last night. But what had he actually seen? Just a dark space with a trapdoor. It was probably the place where they kept their barbecue.
He shook his head. “It’s not what I saw. It’s the way they covered it up, with the rug and the television. It’s a pointless place to put a television. And they seem desperate to keep people out. There’s a hedge and a fence and blinds and a security light.”
Emma shrugged and sat back on her bed. “So maybe they keep their money under the floor instead of putting it in the bank. It’s a nutty thing to do, but it’s none of our business.”
“Except that Lorn’s in there somewhere,” Robert said.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Just because that woman looked a bit like her?”
“She looks exactly like her. And there’s the plait, as well.” Robert chewed at his lip. “It’s weird, Em. You’ve got to admit that.”
“Maybe you’re the one who’s weird,” Emma said. But it was a joke. Even Tom could tell that. She looked carefully at him. “Tell us again, Tom. Why are you so sure there’s something strange about this hole under the floor?”
Tom didn’t know where to start. There was the way Mr. Armstrong had driven Robert away. Twice. And there was the woman, with her scrubbing and talking to no one. And—
“There was a tray,” he said slowly. He’d almost forgotten it until that moment, but now he could see it clearly in his mind. Bright, colored plastic, with food smeared across it.
“I saw that, too,” Robert said. “It was just someone’s supper.
“But you didn’t see it afterward. All messed up with food.” Tom shook his head. “Mr. Armstrong wouldn’t have done that, would he? Nor would the woman. You ought to have seen how she cleaned up afterward. And there was something else on the tray, too, when we first saw it. Something not connected with food. But I can’t remember—”
He screwed his face up, trying to picture how the tray had looked when they first saw it, but the images slid away too quickly to grasp.
“Here.” Emma pushed a piece of paper at him. “Try and draw it. That’s what I do when I can’t remember something.”
Tom scrawled a rectangle on the paper and then a circle inside it. “That’s the dish. Bright red plastic, with a spoon to match. And there was a dishcloth here. It was folded up in the beginning.” He sketched it in. “And over here—” His pen hovered over the paper, but he didn’t know what to draw. “There was another bright thing—but not red. Yellow, maybe. And tall.”
“I remember that.” Robert nodded. “It was a drink. One of those plastic sports bottles with a top you can suck.”
“Oh, yes.” Tom was vaguely disappointed. He’d been certain it was something odder. He drew another, smaller, circle on his diagram and frowned down at the space that was left. “Oh, and there was a pair of scissors, too.”
“Scissors?” Emma said. “What were they for?”
Tom shrugged. “No idea.”
Robert reached over and took the pen out of his hand. “They were for cutting,” he said in an odd voice. Carefully he drew in the scissors—and then another circle next to them. “Don’t you remember, Tosh? There were three bright colors. Red and yellow and—”
“And blue,” Tom said slowly. That was it. The thing he’d been trying to remember. “There was a ball of blue wool on the tray. Just like—”
“Just like the wool she used for that braid on the sports bag.” Robert put the pen down, very carefully, on Emma’s bedside table. He stared at the diagram. “Was it still there when you saw the tray again?”
Tom shook his head. “Only the scissors.”
“Lorn’s in that house somewhere,” Robert said stubbornly. “We’ve got to go back and look again.”
“But how can we?” said Tom. “They’ve already threatened you with the police. They’ve even got a picture of you.”
“What do you want me to do?” Robert said fiercely. “Walk away and forget all about it? Suppose there’s something really bad going on in that house? If there is a room under the floor, maybe Lorn’s a prisoner down there. A hostage.”
“Oh come on, Robbo. You’re getting carried away. It’s not going to be anything like that,” Tom said. And he laughed—but it was a nervous laugh. Robert was getting things out of proportion. Just because there was a hole under the floor, it didn’t mean—
But Robert and Emma weren’t laughing. They were both looking at him with sad, steady eyes. Almost pitying.
“How come you’re so sure?” Emma said. “You think bad things never happen?”
“You think all the stuff you read in the papers is fiction?” said Robert.
&n
bsp; Tom shuffled uncomfortably. “No, of course not. But it doesn’t happen everywhere, does it? Not all the time. There’s probably a very dull explanation for all this.”
“Let’s find out,” Emma said briskly. “We’re not going to discover anything by talking. We need to figure out how we’re going to take a look inside that secret room.”
“So how are you going to do that?” Tom said. “Knock on the front door and ask them to let you in?”
Emma raised her eyebrows at him. “What’s the matter? Scared?”
Her voice was starting to get spiky. Hag-like. She hasn’t changed at all, Tom thought. She wants to tell both of us what to do.
“Of course he’s scared,” Robert said impatiently. “You’d be scared, too, if you’d seen that man. But it doesn’t mean we’re giving up. We want to find out what’s going on inside that house, just as much as you do. Don’t we, Tosh?”
“If we can,” Tom said cautiously.
“We need a double-pronged attack.” Emma leaned forward and lowered her voice. “If we skip school tomorrow morning, and I borrow Helga ...”
18
IT SOUNDED LIKE A BRILLIANTLY SIMPLE PLAN. I’ll go to the front door and distract them, and then you two can take a good look around the back. And if you can’t find a way in—then maybe Helga will find one for me. Even though it came from Emma, Tom was happy to give it a try. He was even prepared to cut school—because that meant Warren would be out. And one of his parents, too, with any luck.
The only problem was that Emma didn’t have a clue about dogs. She thought Helga could be passed around like a parcel, and she expected her to trot along obediently, like a little wooden dog on wheels, doing exactly what she was told. The real Helga was a bit of a shock.
When Tom handed over her leash on Monday morning, Helga went crazy.
It wasn’t Helga’s fault. Tom had taken her for her usual early walk and then pretended to go off to school. When he came sneaking back—as soon as the house was empty—Helga thought she was in for a wonderful treat. Especially when she found they were going out again. She’d bounced through the front door, grinning ecstatically and licking any bit of Tom that she could reach.
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