by James Erith
FIFTY-THREE
ISABELLA HIDES AWAY
Where the previous day had stretched their bravery, strength and courage to the absolute limit, the following day, mental torture grabbed at each of them like a bloodsucking leech.
The world as they knew it had caved in. It was now a world where nothing made sense. The magnitude of their survival felt like a punch that simultaneously winded and broke their noses.
More so for Archie and Isabella.
Archie couldn’t stop thinking of his visit from the ghost called Cain.
Every time he thought of the ghost, his heart raced because everything Cain had said had come true: the fact they were the “anointed ones” with special powers – as he’d seen in the cave paintings – the fact that the storm would break and target them – as it did – and the fact that he’d seen a picture on the cave wall of a woman. Was this woman Cain’s mother whom he’d asked him to protect at all costs, or the hag from his dreams?
Anyway, who was Cain and how did he fit in? Archie couldn’t figure if the ghost meant well or if his words fitted another agenda. He sensed that several parts of the puzzle were missing. Why did Cain really need him to protect the old woman? And how? I mean, she was a product of his imagination – his dreams – wasn’t she?
And when he thought of the ghost, he worried about what had happened to his friend Kemp in the alleyway. Had Kemp joined with Cain and merged with him as Cain had demanded? Had Kemp been dazzled by Cain’s promise of power and strength? That was the problem with Kemp, he thought, he simply couldn’t be trusted.
Archie’s hair was as tight as steel and he stroked his foremost spike, odd memories returning. What about the creature that hovered over Daisy? It had to be connected to her yelling, her crazed sleep-talking. He replayed the images of the white, spidery creature with the blue electric middle again and again until he felt a headache coming on. It must have been giving her a dream – or a nightmare.
He shut his eyes tight, trying to erase the memory, but it persisted like a stubborn head cold. Were dreams given? Was that possible?
Archie was so confused and exhausted that for a day he simply shut down and slept and mooched about the house, avoiding everyone. Although he was dying to tell Daisy about Cain, ever-present in the back of his mind was his promise to Cain that he wouldn’t tell a soul.
Deep down, a persistent nag told him that Cain might resurface at any time and the idea of Cain visiting him made his stomach churn. And if he did say anything, Daisy would only tease him for “being silly” and Isabella would think he’d gone mad. So for the time being, at least, it wasn’t worth mentioning.
Archie ran a hand over his head and shuddered. He didn’t like his ridiculous new mace-like hairstyle – or wire-style – but it filled him with curiosity. When he relaxed, the fibres softened, but when threatened or angry, the follicles tightened hard like steel. They seemed to act like antennae for his mood, for his defence.
When this happened, he noted how a curious physical strength built up in him, combined with an awesome sense of power, of being indestructible.
And though he dared not admit it, this strange new feeling felt wonderfully good.
ISABELLA’S HANDS touched on the soft cotton bed sheet and she allowed herself a smile.
She couldn’t remember much, just the terrible panic in the stairwell and then a pain in her arms. She clenched her fist, amazed to find there was feeling in her fingers, although a strange, painful, electrical current tingled through the palms of each hand and through each digit. Hadn’t she smashed her wrists? Then it started coming back to her: the storm, the ordeal in the cave, waking up and looking over the broken Vale of York. The excruciating pain.
It made little sense.
Her mind clouded and a frown built on her forehead like ripples in sand. Hadn’t they been stuck in the water? She opened her eyes and saw the familiar sight of her section of the attic room. Home! And what of their friends, what of Sue? With a cry, she sat up. Her body ached like mad and she examined her hands. A chill ran through her. The holes. The holes where the lightning bolt had smashed into her. She sank back into the soft pillows. She needed to sleep and think it through, work it out logically. Work it out like a scientist.
Perhaps then, it would go away.
She made her way over to the desk, and wrote in big, bold letters on a piece of A4 paper:
‘DO NOT DISTURB.
DO NOT TALK TO ME
DO NOT FEED ME.’
She pinned the note to the outside of the closed, thick velvet curtain that set her area apart from the rest of the attic room and shuffled back into bed where she slept, sometimes deeply, mostly fitfully, until midday.
‘COME ON, BELLS,’ Daisy said, from the other side of the curtain, as she read Isabella’s notice. ‘You need food. Lunch is on the table.’
Isabella groaned. She didn’t want to see anyone, and she certainly didn’t want to talk to anyone. Couldn’t Daisy read?
‘You missed breakfast and you didn’t eat anything last night. You’ve got to eat.’
Still no response.
Daisy persevered. ‘You can’t hide away in your bed all day.’
I can, Isabella thought. And I will.
Daisy opened the curtain and strode in.
‘GO AWAY! Can’t you read?’
Daisy ignored her and sat down on the side of her bed. ‘How are your arms?’
Isabella rolled over so she faced away.
Daisy sighed. ‘Look, Einstein, you can’t stay here all day – you’ll get bed bugs and—’
‘Please, Daisy. Go away. Just leave me, please.’
But Daisy was in a stubborn mood and she was bored. ‘Make me.’
Isabella pulled the duvet over her head.
Daisy smiled, stood up, fluffed up her blonde hair, puckered her lips and made her way to the mirror. She stared at her red eyes. ‘Freaky, but kind of cool, huh? What do you think?’
Isabella groaned.
Daisy turned her attention to Isabella’s neat bookshelves. ‘Where’s your Bible?’
‘Please, Daisy—’
‘Think I might do that homework – you know, the Creation story, the bit Solomon’s been going on about.’ Still no response. ‘God, you and Archie are so boring, feeling all sorry for yourselves.’ She flicked through a copy of Shakespeare’s plays, read aloud two passages, folded it and tucked it under her jumper. ‘Old Man Wood’s disappeared again. Gone to check on his cattle – how about a game of something?’ She sat down heavily on the bed and traced a finger up Isabella’s body.
Isabella popped her head out. ‘If I give you the Bible will you GO AWAY?’
Daisy cocked her head to one side. ‘Might,’ she said, pouting her lips. ‘On one condition – that you come down later for tea. Mrs P’s knocking up a stonking curry. Helped her put the ingredients in – eleven in all – and I slipped in an extra chilli. Gonna be a corker. And, Banoffee pie for pudding, which is your favourite.’
Isabella stirred.
‘Anyway, Mrs P’s been droning on and on about my eyes, it’s sending me nuts. She’s talked more in the last few hours than the last year put together. Hey, look at these.’ Daisy popped on a pair of thin, metal-rimmed pink-tinted glasses. ‘Lush, eh? Found them in Mum’s drawer.’
Isabella’s head popped out. She pointed at the bookcase. ‘Second row. Says Bible on it,’ she said, as her head flew back under the duvet.
Daisy stood up and traced her fingers along the spines of the books. She pulled one out and sat down on the bed. ‘So which bit is it? Genesis, creation or something—’
‘For goodness’ sakes,’ Isabella cried. ‘It’s at the beginning of the whole thing,’ she said. Did her sister have no concept of how insane the last forty-eight hours had been? Was she unaware of the scale of the disaster? ‘GO AWAY!’ she hissed.
Daisy stood up. ‘Sure, you boring boffin. If you want to talk, chat about anything – I’m, you know, around. Not too busy to
day. Diary pretty much empty.’
Isabella cringed and realised Daisy was only trying to help. She popped her head out again. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Daisy. I know you’re trying to help … it’s just that I’m not ready.’
Daisy smiled. ‘Yeah, cool,’ she said as she turned to leave. ‘You know, Bells, whatever happened, happened. We can’t change it and we don’t know what’s coming. That’s it really. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.’ Daisy opened the curtain. ‘Laters, right?’ she said as she drew it behind her.
Isabella gripped her duvet in her fist. Why couldn’t she go with the flow like Daisy rather than be tormented by questions and riddles and trying to make sense of things that didn’t make any sense? Go with the flow – if only it was that simple.
Isabella closed her eyes and thought of Sue, her best friend in the whole world.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. She had sent Sue to her death by slipping her a bit of paper with details of a rickety old boat in a rundown boathouse. A stupid little old boat no one had even looked at for years – what was she thinking? She pictured it in her mind. Sue alone, cold, wet, begging for help, drowning. She wouldn’t have stood a chance, not three minutes against that storm – not a chance in hell.
Oh Lord, she’d only tried to help – if only she’d known, if only she could have done something else.
Isabella cried until her tears ran dry as she mourned for her friend.
THANKS to the strange sparkly potion called Resplendix Mix, which Old Man Wood had found in the cellars beneath Eden Cottage, Isabella’s injuries had very nearly healed up. She hadn’t known it but, when she exploded out of the stairwell and smashed into the ceiling of the cave, both her arms fractured under the pressure, though incredibly, her hands had perfectly cushioned her head and didn’t bear a single scrape or a blemish aside from the existing holes in her palms. Her skull, shoulders, hips and arms bore scuffs and lacerations and a patch of hair had been removed by the rocks and her face looked as if someone had taken a cheese grater to it. But, overnight, her bones were as good as new and her scabs had all but disappeared.
Isabella, though thrilled to have mended in astonishingly quick time, was a little confused and concerned as to how Resplendix Mix worked, and what the likely long-term side-effects might be. In all the science and medical journals she’d ever read she had never heard of anything like it. Had the potion manipulated the cells in her body to recreate the bones and tissues? Was it a form of genetic science working at a hitherto unknown level, or was this a reversing potion of sorts?
But more importantly, what was Old Man Wood doing with it in the first place? Was Old Man Wood a scientist like her, or some sort of amazing chemist?
When they quizzed Old Man Wood about how it worked or what its properties were, he replied that he had no idea whatsoever, and this was the truth. And when asked where he had got it from, he took a deep breath and told them that it had been given to him a long, long time ago, most probably by an apothecary. And this was also true. But although Daisy accepted this as perfectly normal, Isabella’s suspicions grew, namely because apothecaries didn’t exist anymore. They were now called pharmacists or chemists.
Whatever their suspicions, the potion was like magic and, Old Man Wood told them, the faster an injury was acted upon, the quicker it healed. Hence, Isabella’s arms had healed almost instantly in contrast to Archie’s cuts on his legs when he crawled up the lane during the storm. The one negative effect was that, as it mended, the pain was excruciatingly hot.
Archie thought it was like pouring antiseptic on an open flesh wound and eating a hot chilli at the same time, multiplied by at least ten. So when Old Man Wood had held the bottle to Isabella’s lips in the cave, she had blacked out as the Resplendix Mix went to work.
As they sat down at the kitchen table for Mrs Pye’s curry, Isabella moved her arm back and forth, testing her limbs, and said, ‘I have a question for you, Old Man Wood. Why isn’t Resplendix Mix prescribed in hospitals or doctors’ surgeries?’
Old Man Wood raised his head for a minute, shook it before gathering a forkful and cramming it in his mouth.
‘I mean, look at me,’ she continued, ‘almost fully healed apart from these stupid holes. If it was readily available to everyone, what a huge burden it would take off the National Health Service. Think of the enormous benefits – benefits that could be used right now – out there,’ she said, waving towards the window, ‘and its properties could probably be transferred to other schools of medicine—’
Daisy groaned. ‘I preferred you when you were asleep.’
Isabella shot her a look. ‘No, seriously. No hospital waiting lists, no injuries that couldn’t be dealt with. No nasty scars.’ She nudged Old Man Wood. ‘Do you know what’s in it?’
Old Man Wood shook his head.
‘I’ll analyse it,’ Isabella said. ‘Then we can manufacture it here and sell it worldwide. We’ll make a fortune.’
‘I don’t think Mum and Dad would be too happy with that,’ Daisy said.
‘But they’re never around, so they wouldn’t know.’
‘They’ll be back,’ Mrs Pye said. ‘And at least we know they must be safe and sound.’
‘Yeah, but they don’t know we’re safe, do they?’ Archie added.
Isabella ignored them. ‘Well, I’ll do it when I’m a little older, in America or somewhere like that,’ she scoffed. ‘There are tons of excellent commercial scientists over there who would bend over backwards for this kind of thing.’
‘Bells, I’m not sure you’ve thought this through,’ Archie said. ‘If you did make this stuff, then in one go you’re wiping out all the hospitals and doctors and nurses and physios and first aiders. I mean what would all those people do?’
‘And they’d brand you as a witch,’ Daisy said, mischievously. ‘They’d burn you alive.’
Old Man Wood hummed. ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure it works with everyone. And I’ve a feeling that, in the wrong hands, it’s downright lethal.’
‘Ha! So you do know what it is,’ Isabella said.
Old Man Wood furrowed his brow. ‘Nope. Not really littlun. It’s just a feeling.’
Mrs Pye beamed at him. ‘Your Old Man Wood has a ton of remarkable strings to his arrows.’
Daisy coughed. ‘Isn’t it, strings to his bows?’
‘Or arrows to a quiver?’ Archie added.
Mrs Pye shot the twins a beady look. ‘Bloomers. You two getting all clever on me? You know what I means. Now eat up.’
The children didn’t know what to say to this, but the medicine was part of a broader subject that needed examining and it was proving extremely difficult to expand Old Man Wood’s general lack of knowledge on these things.
FIFTY-FOUR
ISABELLA DOES NOT BELIEVE
The children’s sense of confusion centred around the dreams they’d been given, and now that silence filled the kitchen, aside from the clanging of cutlery and the odd loud slurp, Archie thought it might be a good time to revisit the topic.
‘You know when we talked before about our dreams,’ he began, ‘when we figured out they’d been the same?’ he searched around the table to see if anyone was listening. ‘Well, do you think they might be coming true?’ he paused. ‘I mean, the flooding happened, and we all saw it coming, especially you, Bells, and don’t get me wrong but there’s no way we should have survived. It was only through our, you know, efforts and the other strange stuff that—’
Mrs Pye broke in. ‘Well, now that you’re on talking about dreams, that means bed, and I is pooped. So I leaves you and loves you to get some dreams in meself.’
Old Man Wood stretched his arms wide. ‘And I’m going to sit next door – softer, there.’
The children thanked Mrs Pye for the delicious curry, hugged her goodnight and shut the door.
They sat down again.
‘Good point, Arch,’ Daisy said, leaning across the table. ‘But I don’t get what the old woman we
dreamt about – the one you killed in my dream, Archie – has got to do with it. Maybe we’ve got to protect her or something so that she won’t be killed.’ She flashed Archie a look. ‘What do you think?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said as his thoughts turned to his conversation with the ghost, Cain. Archie rubbed a hard spike on his head. He didn’t know what to make of the woman either, but Cain wanted him to protect the Ancient Woman so perhaps that was what they had to do. The last thing he wanted was her death on his hands. ‘What if there’s a deeper meaning?’ he added. ‘Something else.’
‘Cool, have you thought of anything?’ Daisy said, wiping the side of her mouth.
Archie shook his head. ‘Not really, Daise,’ he said. ‘But I was hoping we could talk about it—’
Isabella leaned back in her chair and flexed her hands. ‘Come on, kids, this is ridiculous—’
Daisy put her hands up. ‘Only thoughts, your brainy-ness—’
‘I’m sorry, you guys,’ Isabella sighed. ‘Frankly, it’s too much for me to get to grips with right now, so I’d rather we didn’t talk about the old woman.’
Daisy shot her sister a look. ‘Well actually, boffin-brains, I think we should. We’re in this together and dreaming of the Ancient Woman is our only common denominator.’
‘No. I’m sorry,’ Isabella said, amazed that Daisy knew what a “denominator” was. ‘It’s not going to happen.’ With a loud scraping sound, Isabella slid her chair back and stood up. ‘You two – by all means discuss it to your heart’s content and do whatever you feel you’ve got to do. Me? I can find better things to get on with, like study.’ She grabbed her plate and made her way to the sink.
‘Hang on!’ Archie said. ‘What about Sue—?’
‘And the fact that I sent her to her death!’ Isabella snapped.
‘You don’t know that—’
‘There’s no way she survived—’
‘We did—’