They were seen twice.
Once, they were just running across a road, and the car turned in at the other end. As they plunged into the darkness on the far side, they heard it speed up, heading toward them. But it was too far away to see exactly where they went. And they didn’t wait to be found. They streaked down the side of the nearest house and went straight over the fence at the bottom of that garden, into the next one.
“Stop here,” Robert breathed. “Try and figure out what they’re doing.”
They crouched behind a clump of bushes and listened. The car had stopped, and they heard someone coming slowly down the road, calling in a deep voice. After a couple of minutes, they saw a flashlight beam in the garden they had just left. It shined right down to the bottom fence, and the voice called softly from up by the house.
“Hope? Are you there? Can you hear me?”
It was Mr. Armstrong. In the garden on the other side of the fence.
The girl’s head came up and she looked around quickly. Tom thought she was going to answer, but Robert laid a hand lightly over her mouth, and she slumped back against his chest. Tom held his breath until the light moved away again and they heard Mr. Armstrong calling by the next house. Then they darted down the garden, away from him, and across the next road.
The second time they were nearly caught was when they had reached the very far side of the development. They hadn’t heard the car for a long time, and exhaustion made them careless. They came out opposite a big, twenty-four-hour supermarket, and Emma pointed at the line of shopping carts halfway up the parking lot.
“We could borrow one of those,” she said.
The girl was asleep by then, hunched against Robert’s shoulder. They had all carried her farther than they could ever have imagined, and the shopping carts looked like the most beautiful things in the world.
“Brilliant!” Tom said. “Let’s go.”
They crept across the road and into the parking lot. There were about half a dozen cars parked close to the store. Apart from those, the whole place was deserted, but the lot was brightly lit. Tom maneuvered a cart out of the bay, and Robert lowered the girl gently into it, trying not to wake her.
All they had to do now was go through the pedestrian area in the middle of the city and down the slope on the other side. That would take them to the back of the park and into the little woods.
If they hadn’t been so tired, they would have gone around the edge of the parking lot, staying in the shadows. But they were so tired now that every extra step seemed like a huge burden. So they headed straight across the lot.
And Mr. Armstrong’s car came suddenly up the hill from the development, on the main road to their right. He saw them. There was no doubt about that. The brakes squealed, and the car turned suddenly left, heading for the supermarket entrance.
“Run!” said Emma.
And they ran.
27
We’ll take her straight into the woods, ROBERT HAD SAID when they were making their plans. And then we’ll try and contact Lorn. But how could they do that with Mr. Armstrong after them? If they stopped, they’d be caught.
They pelted through the pedestrian mall at top speed, with the cart bumping along and swerving around corners. Tom was pushing it, and whenever they went through a patch of light, he could see the girl huddled up in the bottom, with her eyes wide open. One hand was twirling her hair, and the other was around the bars of the cart, gripping them tightly.
Someone was coming after them. But it didn’t sound like Mr. Armstrong. It was someone lighter and quicker. So Mr. Armstrong’s still driving the car, Tom thought. He could be coming around the other way to cut us off.
Robert had realized that, too. As they reached the end of the mall, he bent over to mutter to Tom. “We’ve got to split up. You and Emma go on with the cart, and I’ll take her and go a different way.”
“But won’t they notice you’re missing?”
“Not if we can get to the park before they do. Use the flashlight a bit, to keep them following.” Robert bent over the cart and put his arms around the girl’s tense, frightened body. “Come on, you,” he said.
“Hope,” said Tom.
“What?” Robert looked up.
“Her name’s Hope,” Tom said. “Not You.”
Robert shook his head and hauled the girl out of the cart. “Just run, Tosh. Don’t waste time fussing.”
“Dohfuss. Dohfuss,” the girl said lightly. She leaned sideways against Robert and closed her eyes. Her face was pale and she looked very tired.
“Take her home, Rob,” Emma said. “Then you’ll have Mom and Dad if you need them.”
“Run!” Robert stepped back into the shadows and nodded them on.
Emma took off her backpack and dumped it into the cart. Then she and Tom shot out of the pedestrian mall. The empty cart rattled and jumped, and its wheels sounded loud and hard on the pavement. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Mr. Armstrong’s car coming along the side of the square, not quite near enough to stop them.
“Let’s give him a run for his money,” he yelled.
They raced down the slope and around the corner. The big, ornamental park gates were locked at dusk, but that was just for show. There was no fence along the side of the park to keep people out at night. Just a hedge with lots of openings, and the woods at the far end. As soon as they were past the gates, Tom swerved left, off the pavement and into the trees.
He heard the car brake fiercely behind them.
“That’s one,” Emma panted. “At least.”
They were heading straight down the park, toward the woods. When they were halfway there, Tom glanced back over his shoulder and saw Mr. Armstrong coming after them. He moved in a strange, lumbering way, but it was faster than Tom would have expected. And he hadn’t been running for nearly as long as they had. Emma was starting to fail now. Tom could hear her breath coming in great tearing gasps, and she had one hand pressed against her side.
“Not far now,” he said, raising his voice above the rattle of the cart. “Keep it up, Em.”
Emma made a last, heroic effort, and they reached the end of the park and went through the hedge, into the woods. After that, it was easy. There were dozens and dozens of little, twisting paths, and Tom knew every one of them. Every patch of brambles and every muddy ditch. He’d pulled Helga out of all of them at least once.
He found the driest ditch for Emma and left her there with a clump of dead bracken trampled across to cover her. Then he enjoyed himself rattling up and down the paths, well away from anything important like Emma and the hedge bank.
Once or twice Mr. Armstrong tried to cut across and head him off, but his feet were heavy and clumsy, and he was starting to breathe hard. Tom just grinned to himself and changed direction. There was no way that anything like that was going to work in these woods. This was his maze.
When it began to get boring—and Robert had had enough time to reach home safely—Tom worked his way gradually to the very edge of the woods. Lifting Emma’s backpack onto his shoulder, he stepped out onto the pavement and gave the cart one last, huge push.
It rattled down the road, and he ducked sideways into a clump of rhododendrons, watching Mr. Armstrong charge past him and run after it. It didn’t take him more than a few moments to realize that he had been tricked. He turned around and began to walk back along the pavement.
As he passed the bushes where Tom was hiding, the light from a streetlamp caught his face full on. It was still completely without expression. He didn’t even look out of breath. Only his eyes moved, looking left and right as he went. Deep in the rhododendrons, Tom shuddered and kept very still.
A few moments later, he heard the car drive away. But he waited for a good quarter of an hour after that, just to be sure that it wasn’t some kind of trap. Then he slipped out of the bushes and went to find Emma.
She was lying exactly where he had left her, very still and quiet. But he must have been even quieter. As h
e padded up to the ditch, he heard a faint, stifled sniff.
“If you make noises like that, someone’s going to come and catch you,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
She sat up fiercely. “I’m fine!” she said. And then sniffed again.
Tom sat down on the edge of the ditch. “What’s up?” he said. “Were you scared?”
“Of course not.” Emma could still manage a touch of scorn. “What could he do to us? We can call the police if things get really tough. But that girl—”
Tom didn’t need it spelled out for him. “Maybe she’ll get better. Now that she’s out of that hole.”
“Maybe,” Emma said. But she didn’t sound convinced. She scrambled out of the ditch and started brushing bracken off her clothes. “I’m absolutely freezing.”
“You’d better make yourself a cup of coffee when you get home.”
“Are you joking?” Emma said. “Mom would be downstairs as soon as I turned on the pot. She’s a really light sleeper. It took us hours to get out of the house tonight without waking her.”
“I’ll make you a drink on the way home then. My mom sleeps as if she’s hibernating.” Tom didn’t really expect her to say yes, but she nodded briskly.
“That’s great. Now let’s get out of here.”
WHEN THEY WERE THERE, SITTING IN THE KITCHEN, TOM realized that she was deliberately wasting time. She drank her coffee as slowly as she could, cupping her hands around the mug and peering into it. And when Helga came nosing around her ankles, she stopped drinking and bent down to pat her head and talk to her.
Anything to avoid going home.
“It’s no use,” Tom said at last. “You’ve got to be back before your mom wakes up.”
“I know.” Emma looked up and gave him a rueful grin. “But nothing’s ever going to be the same, is it? Whatever happens.”
“I guess not.” Tom picked up his jacket. “Come on. I’ll walk you back.” Helga perked up her ears and wagged her tail, and he shook his head at her. “Not you, silly dog.”
But he should have known that that wasn’t good enough. Not when it was almost morning and she was expecting a walk anyway. She wagged her tail and gave a short, high-pitched bark.
“Shhh.” Tom put a finger to his lips. “Even Mom wakes up if there’s barking.”
But Helga just barked again, sounding slightly injured, and he saw that they would have to take her if they wanted her to be quiet. He clipped on her leash and opened the back door.
Outside, it was still dark, but there was slightly more traffic about. They walked quickly past the park and across the road to Robert and Emma’s house.
“Come in,” Emma said quickly. “Just till we see what’s happened to her.”
“To Hope?” Tom said.
Emma nodded and unlatched the back gate.
As she pushed it open, Robert appeared suddenly, whispering through the dark. “Where have you been? I thought you were never coming.”
“What have you done with Hope?” Tom whispered back. “Is she in the house?”
Robert shook his head. “I couldn’t risk her waking Mom. She’s in there.” He pointed at the little shed where he and Emma kept their bicycles.
“Is she all right?” Tom said quickly.
“Of course she is,” Robert muttered. “As all right as she’ll ever be.” He went over and pushed the shed door open. “Where’s the flashlight? Take a look at her.”
Hope was huddled in the corner, fast asleep in a pile of blankets. She had a banana in one hand, half-eaten, and her face was smeared with squashed banana pulp. All the plaits on her head were twisted together into one matted mess, and her wet clothes were starting to smell. Helga pushed her head around Tom’s legs and sniffed curiously at the air inside the shed.
Looking down at Hope, Tom was suddenly so angry that he could hardly speak. Because he knew she couldn’t ever recover from what had been done to her. Not in the normal course of things. She would never be all right unless this loopy idea of Robert’s worked.
So it had to.
“When are we going to take her across to the park?” he said. “Any reason why we shouldn’t go now?”
There was an odd, unaccountable pause. Then Robert said, “I don’t think we ought to do that.” His voice was tight and miserable. “I’m going to phone the police and hand her over.”
“What?” said Emma.
Tom was stunned. “So why did we go through all that performance tonight? We could have made a phone call in the first place. You were the one who insisted on doing it the hard way—because you said she was Lorn. Are you telling me that’s all nonsense?”
“Oh no,” Robert said. “It’s not nonsense. She’s Lorn all right. I knew it as soon as I saw her winding that string into her hair.”
There was no mistaking the misery now. He sounded utterly wretched. Hope stirred and turned her head, wiping banana into her hair, and Robert’s face twisted as if he couldn’t bear to see it.
“So why have you changed your mind?” Tom was very angry now. If he’d known what to do, he would have scooped Hope up and taken her to the park himself. “What’s different?”
“Suppose we take her to the park,” Robert said slowly, “and she—and the same thing happens that happened to me. Suppose she and Lorn go back to being one person.”
“I thought that was the point.” Tom glanced at Emma, wondering if he’d missed something. But she was looking baffled, too. “I thought that was what you wanted. One person.”
“Only if it’s Lorn!” Robert said fiercely. “But we don’t know, do we? Suppose it isn’t Lorn. Suppose it’s her. Hope. She won’t be any better off then, will she? And Lorn will be gone. Vanished. She won’t exist anywhere. I’ll really have lost her then. How can I risk that?”
Tom was looking at Hope again. At her pale skin and her matted hair and the fine—too fine—bones of her head. There was a bruise on her right cheek, in the place where her fist landed when she punished herself for making a noise, and the palms of her hands were dark with ingrained dirt.
“You can’t not risk it,” he said. Just as fiercely as Robert.
28
As LORN RAN DOWN THE TUNNEL, THE REEK OF THE earthsnakes faded gradually. When she picked up Bando’s scent again, it was stronger, but there was something else, too. A sweet, rotting smell that she didn’t understand.
She called his name, hoping he was close enough to hear. “Bando?”
There was no answer. And there was something strange about the sound of her voice. The space ahead seemed ... too big. Cautiously she called again.
“Bando? Are you there?”
The words dropped away into emptiness.
What was ahead of her? Some kind of cavern? Her mind tried out the picture and rejected it. There was space, but not like that. It sounded more as though the floor in front of her was about to disappear. She went down on her hands and knees and began to crawl forward carefully.
That was what saved her from falling. Her hands went down once, twice, three times—and then they skidded on loose earth and stones and slid from underneath her. She sprawled flat on her front, hearing the stones she had dislodged go tumbling down and down into—what?
It was very deep. The stones landed with a slow, soft pfff, and a breath of warm air came floating up toward her. For a moment she was terrified, thinking that she had found the monstrous animal from the tunnels, asleep in its den.
Then she began to decode the rich mixture of scents that the air brought with it. The smell of the animal was certainly there—as it was everywhere around her—but with it came the sweet scent she had noticed before. This time she recognized it—and understood.
The heat came from the plants that carpeted the den. The whole deep, rounded space was lined with decomposing leaves and moss, generating heat as they rotted. When she stretched her hands down, she could feel the plants’ soft, decaying fibers. They had been put there deliberately, and worked into a thick layer that covered
the floor and walls of the den.
She could only reach the very top of the layer, and the floor was far, far below. The ground fell away almost vertically, and she hung over the edge, listening and breathing and turning her face to the air. Trying to figure out what was down at the bottom of the hole.
Bando’s scent was part of the complicated mix of smells that drifted up toward her. And there was a faint sound of breathing coming from way down at the bottom of the hole. She called out again, just loud enough to carry.
“Bando?”
The rhythm of the breathing faltered, and there was a faint, muffled grunt. It barely reached her, but she knew what it was. She had heard it a hundred times in the cavern, and she would have known it anywhere. Bando was down below her, in the monster’s den.
“What’s the matter?” she hissed. “Are you hurt?”
This time there was no response, not even a grunt. That meant he was unconscious—or worse. He must have gone charging over the edge of the den, without even realizing it was there. And then—what? Had he been hit by a stone as he fell?
Lorn didn’t know, but she knew he was in appalling danger. And it was her fault. If he came around, he would be terrified, and she hated the idea that he might find himself alone. Her first instinct was to slide straight down the steep slope in front of her, to get to him as fast as she could.
But that was stupid. If she did that, they would both be trapped. If they tried to climb out of the hole, the rotting plants would just give way under their fingers. And if Bando was unconscious, she wouldn’t be able to lift him.
She had to go back. To get help.
Turning away from the den was the hardest thing she had ever done. But she had to do it. Without that, Bando had no chance at all. Hauling herself to her feet, she began to run back along the tunnel as fast as she could.
SHE WENT THROUGH THE SECRET PASSAGE AND OUT INTO the storeroom, without pausing for a second. She was breathless from running and covered with slime from squeezing back past the earthsnakes, but she knew exactly what she was going to do next.
The Black Room Page 16