Haunters (9780545502542)

by Taylor, Thomas

  You’re too weak. You’ll never make it.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t give up, not now. There were just too many unanswered questions. Somehow he heaved himself up again to the next knot, and then again and again. Just as his arms threatened to give out and his chest felt like it was going to explode, his hands found the bottom of the ladder.

  From there the climb was easier, though by the time he reached the roof and pulled himself over onto the slate tiles, Eddie was shattered, and his breath rattled in his throat. He lay there gasping. His burned coat was falling apart, and though there was only a light wind on the roof, it chilled him to the core. It would be suicide to rest now. He rose slowly to his feet.

  It was entirely dark by then, air-raid dark. With the blackout in force, it occurred to Eddie’s drifting mind that London was vanishing into a twilight more complete than anything it had known since the Romans had begun to build there. Even the sounds of a modern city seemed to melt away with the last of the day. For a moment he could have been in another time altogether, a traveler into the past. It was an idea that had always excited him.

  He dragged himself a little way up the sloping roof and pulled off his satchel. The feel of the notebooks inside was like the reassuring hand of an old friend, and he almost took them out. But his books were useless to him if he couldn’t see to write. He scrabbled in the bottom of the bag, pulled out his flashlight, and pushed the switch.

  Nothing happened. It was broken.

  Eddie clutched the bag tightly and pulled his hair.

  It was then that he heard a sound.

  He held his breath and listened. Was that a voice? His mind began to swim, but then the sound came again. Yes, someone was talking close by. And was that a faint crackling, popping sound, like burning pine? In his fevered mind’s eye Eddie saw himself writing fire? on a crisp new page, and burns!, but then crossing out burns! and writing a list of altogether more comforting words:

  Light. Warmth. Safety.

  Kat.

  He crept toward the sound, not even bothering to test his weight on the rickety tiles, until he reached the summit of the roof. Peering over the top he saw a ragged hole in the other side. It was lit from within by a flickering orange light.

  For a moment terror paralyzed Eddie as his mind flashed back to the fire that had so nearly killed him the night before. But then he noticed something else. Was his nose playing tricks on him or was that the scent of toast in the air? He crept nearer and looked into the hole.

  There was Kat, sitting some way back beside a glorious fire and holding a rough slice of bread above the flames with a long metal stick. Beside her was a very blond boy in a cap, who must be her older brother. Eddie watched them for a moment through the sheet of smoke that poured through the hole and out into the cold night.

  He’d found Kat.

  Without another thought he swung his legs over the side of the hole and dropped through.

  His arrival had an electrifying effect on the two people by the fire. Kat leaped up instantly and gave a short scream, dropping the toast, while her wide-eyed brother grabbed a copper kettle and held it out as if it were the most intimidating weapon you could wish for. The girl recovered first.

  “Eddie?” Kat shouted. “Eddie! You could’ve given us a heart attack! What’re you doing here?”

  “Eddie?” said the boy, lowering the kettle. “What, the geezer you work for?”

  “Not him, his family,” said Kat. “He’s all right. But, Eddie, what happened to you?” she added, as Eddie struggled to his feet, revealing the black and bloodied state he was in.

  “No! You weren’t in the house?”

  Eddie nodded, hanging back and staring at Kat’s brother. He clutched the notebook in his pocket. He wished the boy would go away and leave him alone with Kat.

  “Eddie, say something,” Kat said. “Don’t clam up on me now. What were you doing at the house? Didn’t you hear the sirens?”

  “It’s gone,” Eddie said, tilting his head so that Kat’s brother vanished from view behind the metal rim of his spectacles. “The house. All gone.”

  “I know it’s gone, dun’ I?” said Kat, looking away. “I lived there too.”

  Eddie took the rolled-up book from his pocket and began flicking through it.

  “Eddie …” said Kat.

  “What’s he doing?” said Kat’s brother, whispering.

  “Eddie,” Kat said, “this is my brother, Tomkin. Put the book away now and come and sit by the fire.”

  Eddie was uncertain for a moment, but the promise of warmth was too much. He limped over and slumped down by the fire opposite the others. But now that he could no longer avoid Tomkin, he found he couldn’t look at anything else.

  “Oi, quit starin’ or your eyes’ll pop out!” Tomkin snapped.

  “It’s all right, Tom,” Kat said. “He doesn’t know you, that’s all.”

  “Neither do I know him. What’s he want here, anyway?”

  “Eddie,” said Kat, “why were you at home during the raid?”

  Eddie finally tore his eyes off Tomkin and looked down into the pages in front of him. He turned them fast until he reached one that was near the start of the book. Then he held it up. Amid a storm of scribbling and crossing-out, one question stood out clearly, surrounded by a heavy ink ring:

  What is David, really?

  “Eddie, what do you mean?” Kat looked wary.

  “He said he’d tell me. Last night,” Eddie replied. “He promised me.”

  “Who did? David?”

  Eddie looked down again and said nothing. He knew Kat wouldn’t want to hear that he’d listened to David, but he could tell she was trying to catch his eye.

  “Eddie, why are you here? What about Mrs. Utherwise? Why aren’t you safe with your ma?”

  In reply Eddie flipped the pages again and then held up the bloodstained, sooty double page where he’d worked out his reasoning for not going to his aunt’s house.

  “He’s a bleedin’ fruitcake,” Tomkin muttered to his sister. “Shame he’s not the eating variety.”

  “It’s just his way of doing things, Tom. Eddie, you shouldn’t be here. You’re hurt, and your mother must be going mad. You can stay here tonight, but —”

  “What?” cried Tomkin. “No, he can’t!”

  “Tom, it’s freezing outside.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want some nutter staring at me while I sleep.”

  “He’s not a nutter. He’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

  “Oh, is he?” said Tomkin, looking at Eddie through narrowed eyes. “And I’m just your dumb brother, I suppose.”

  “Shut up, Tom. And stop waving that kettle at him. Make yourself useful and get a brew on.”

  Tomkin went farther into the attic and began filling the kettle with rainwater, still glaring at Eddie. Eddie glanced back at him fearfully, then turned his gaze to the flames.

  The fire was built on a buckled metal plate propped on four short towers of bricks. Eddie stared at it. He turned its shape around in his mind until he’d worked out what it was, then he wrote thunder sheet in his book. He’d read that such things were used for sound effects in plays, but this one would never thunder again — fire had seen to that.

  “Eddie?” said Kat. “I asked you just now if it was David who told you to go back to the house during the air raid. Look at me, Eddie. Was it David?”

  Eddie nodded, but he didn’t look up.

  “I knew it!” cried Kat. “I told you, didn’t I?”

  “Who’s this David?” said Tomkin, fixing the kettle over the fire and allowing it to splash a little water over Eddie. “Come on, Kat, what is all this?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Kat answered. She sat down by the fire and threw a chair leg onto it. Then she shook her head at Eddie.

  Tomkin stuck his thumbs in his suspenders.

  “Try me,” he said.

  Eddie jabbed his glasses into place with his thu
mb. Why wouldn’t this hostile boy just go away?

  “David,” he said, straight at Tomkin, “is a ghost.” Silence hung in the air, but then Eddie spoiled the effect by adding, “Possibly.”

  “Right,” said Tomkin, the word stretching out with the boy’s smile of disbelief.

  “It’s true,” said Kat. “Eddie’s house is haunted. Was haunted, that is — there’s nothing left to haunt now. Anyhow, I know it’s true. I seen it once, didn’t I? Skulking in the shadows of Eddie’s room. Horrible and lost-looking, it was, like it shouldn’t ’ave been there.” And she shivered.

  Tomkin’s eyes twinkled at his sister, and he started to laugh, but the looks the other two gave him stopped him short.

  “Don’t tell me you’re serious,” he said. “I thought you said he was clever. There ain’t no such thing as ghosts.”

  “Not everything’s in your papers, Tom,” snapped Kat.

  “No ghosts, that’s for sure,” Tomkin said, looking to one side. Eddie followed his gaze to the great piles of newspapers that stood around the attic at the fringes of the fire’s glow, and he remembered Kat saying her brother sometimes worked as a paperboy. Beyond the papers, points of reflected light winked back from peeling, gold-leaf costume parts and vanished into the eyeholes of long-forgotten masks. The bizarre shadows they made danced unsettlingly with the firelight. There was surely no worse place to deny the existence of ghosts.

  Eddie wrote something in his book, then handed it to Kat together with his pencil. Beneath the freshly written words What is David really? was nothing but empty paper.

  “You think I know the answers?” Kat said. “Oh, no, Eddie, that’s not why you came here, is it?”

  Eddie stared at her through his cracked lenses and said nothing. He could hear Tomkin snickering, but he wasn’t interested in that. If Kat had been right about David being dangerous, what else did she know?

  “Eddie …” Kat began.

  “Oh, come off it,” said Tomkin then. “You’re kidding, right? With all this ghost talk? I mean, come on! You’re not saying there was a real bona fide phantom, are you?”

  “Tell him, Eddie,” said Kat.

  Eddie pulled his hair a bit as he looked at Tomkin.

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” he said eventually, and he quickly and precisely described the strange ghost boy who called himself David: the way he would suddenly appear, the strange way he was dressed, and the impression he left that he had no idea he was a ghost at all. He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact way, like a scientist describing an unusual experiment, but it was clear that both Kat and Tomkin were affected by it. Kat pulled a large overcoat around herself and huddled nearer the fire. Tomkin tightened his scarf and did the same.

  “That’s a creepy tale you’ve got there,” he said, when Eddie had reached the end, “but I’m not ready to believe it. It must have been one of your neighbors, some kind of joke maybe. You toffs go in for stuff like that, don’t yer? Larking about. Or perhaps you were just dreaming — you said it only came at night, this ghost.”

  “I wasn’t asleep,” said Eddie. “He was really there. Yet … not there at the same time, though he appeared solid enough.” He leaned toward Tomkin as if he was about to tell him a secret. “Once, when he wasn’t looking, I touched him. My hand went straight through.”

  At that moment the kettle began to whistle and Tomkin jumped.

  “Jeez, can’t we talk about something else?” he said.

  “You’re the one who kept on about it.” Kat punched her brother in the shoulder. “ ’Fraidy guts!”

  “It’s just a story.” Tomkin punched back. “ ’Fraidy guts yourself.”

  “It’s no story,” said Eddie. “Kat, you told me once that a ghost is a dangerous friend. How did you know?”

  “The dead must be jealous of the living,” said Kat. “Stands to reason. I knew it’d try to kill you in the end. I told you.”

  She was still holding his notebook, and Eddie wondered why she wasn’t writing anything down. Kat shook her head again.

  “If you’ve come here for answers, I can’t help you, Eddie. Just be pleased the ghost’s gone, and go and find your ma.”

  “But there’s more to know,” Eddie said. “He talked as if he had a real life …”

  “A restless spirit who doesn’t even know it’s passed on!” Tomkin declared, but his mocking, false-dramatic tone fell flat.

  “Restless?” Kat shuddered. “You’re welcome here, Eddie, but I hope to heaven your ghost doesn’t follow you.” She closed the notebook and handed it back. “Tomorrow, you’re definitely going back to your ma.”

  Eddie took the book in silence.

  “Yeah, come on, mate,” said Tomkin, pouring hot water into the pot. The attic was filled with a comforting scent of tea that helped to take the chill from the atmosphere. “It’s all in yer head. You said it tried to kill you, right, but how’d a ghost do that if your hand could go right through it?”

  Eddie said nothing.

  “Nah, seems to me like it had to be some kind of dream,” said Tomkin. “I mean, if it can’t touch you and you can’t touch it, all you’re left with is a fat lot of nothing, ain’t yer?”

  “But there are still questions …” Eddie said, worrying at the corner of his book.

  “Questions!” Kat sounded exasperated. “They say curiosity killed the cat, don’t they? I take that as a personal warning, and you should too. Just be glad it’s gone.”

  She handed Eddie a woolen black overcoat. With so many homes lying in ruins, Eddie didn’t need to ask where it had come from. He took his own frazzled coat off and pulled on the new one, turning the collar up against the cold behind him. He clutched a hot mug of tea in his hands. He’d always thought he could count on Kat, but he hadn’t expected this. In the archway, after the fire, he’d tried so hard to work out the right decision that it was a shock to be told he’d got it completely wrong. It seemed that Kat didn’t understand after all.

  “Mother will leave town now,” he said in a small voice. “She’ll take the train to my aunt’s house. She’s probably already gone.”

  “Don’t expect us to sub you for a ticket,” said Tomkin, poking the fire.

  “I have some money. I’ll go tomorrow.”

  Kat gave a sigh of exasperation.

  “I’m not throwing you out, Eddie,” she said, “but surely you can see your place isn’t here. Get out of the city and be safe. You’re lucky.”

  Eddie didn’t reply, he was already writing. If he had to work it all out by himself, he might as well make a start straightaway. And maybe it was more urgent than Kat realized, because no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that someone — or something — wished him harm.

  After the shock of his interrupted dreamwalk, David was led out of the Somnarium in silence and away from the nervous activity of the Map Room. The professor had ordered him to go and rest and had sent Petra to show him his room. But David’s mind was racing now. The attack in the desert made him finally see the full implications of the Haunting’s desire to kill Eddie. By the time they’d reached a door marked DREAMWALKERS’ LODGE, he felt as if his stomach were full of ice.

  “Wait! How can I rest? Adam is after Eddie … I have to get out there and stop him.”

  He backed away from the door and turned around, but Petra held on to him.

  “Hey, calm down! You won’t be able to help anyone if you panic.”

  “But you don’t understand.” David pushed her away. “Eddie’s my granddad. If Adam kills him when he’s still a boy, before he’s even had any children, it’s not just Unsleep House that won’t exist now — my dad won’t ever have been born. And where will that leave me? Where will that leave … oh, my God … Philippa!”

  Petra grabbed David’s wrists and forced him to look into her eyes.

  “David, you’ve got to stay focused. Tell us where to find Eddie, and we can keep things the way they should be, the way they are now.”


  David looked at her, hardly seeing who it was. Until a few moments ago, his father had been just … just! … dead, but at least that meant he was beyond harm. After all, in the commonsense world, being dead already at least meant new stuff couldn’t happen to you. But time-travel changed all that. In the world of dreamwalking, even the dead were in danger. It was a moment before David was aware that Petra was still talking to him.

  “In your dreamwalks with Eddie, there must be something he said that can help us. Think, David. We could rescue Eddie now if you told us where to look.”

  “I don’t know where he is. How would I? It was just a …” But David stopped himself. He’d wanted to say just a dream, but he would never again be able to think of dreaming in the same way.

  Petra let go of him and gave him an encouraging smile.

  “Hold out your hand.”

  David hesitated, then did as she asked.

  “There,” Petra said, folding his hand in both of hers. “Completely solid and real, isn’t it? You’re still here, aren’t you? Well, that can only mean one thing — Adam hasn’t reached Eddie yet. So relax, David — take the rest you need. And search your memory.”

  She released his hand and activated the door release to the Dreamwalkers’ Lodge. The door slid open, and she stepped into a wide, floor-lit corridor. There were identical rows of sliding doors along both sides, stretching far down to double doors at the end. The look of the place was sophisticated and strangely complete after the bare rock and exposed cables of the rest of the base. It felt like looking into a rich man’s spacecraft or a very futuristic hotel.

  David hesitated on the threshold for a moment, then followed her inside. She was right. He himself was living proof that Eddie was still safe. And, yes, maybe a rest would help him remember something useful.

  “You have a room along here,” said Petra. “I’ll show you. The doors down at the end there are for the Cave. A common room, I think you’d call it.”