Haunters (9780545502542)

by Taylor, Thomas

  “The professor said you’ve been losing dreamwalkers,” David said. “Was that Adam too?”

  Petra nodded. They walked a little farther, and then she stopped before a closed door. Most of the doors had names on them, but not this one.

  “Carlo’s room,” said Petra. “He ran into Adam a few days back. They say he’ll be in a coma for years, or … well, he won’t be back here, anyway. And Siri is still in the hospital. She doesn’t speak, and they have already started emptying her room. And then there’s …” She stopped when she saw the look on David’s face.

  “It would do no good to hide these things from you,” Petra continued. “We have lost almost half our active dreamwalkers to Adam in the last week alone. This is why you need to stay focused, David. Adam is terribly dangerous.”

  They walked on in silence and eventually came to a room with David’s name on it.

  “Number five?” he said. “Is that me?”

  “Yes, you’re one of us now, part of the Dreamwalker Project. Five is your number. Mine is eleven. They’re not ranks or anything, but that didn’t stop Adam from insisting on being number one.”

  She glanced along the corridor toward another door, this one closed with security tape. According to the nameplate it was Adam Lang’s room. David tried to imagine that tall figure walking around this place in a dreamwalker’s black suit.

  “How old is Adam?” he asked.

  “Eighteen,” said Petra. “Mr. Perfect is coming to the end of his career. That is probably what made him go and join the bad guys.”

  “But why, though?” said David. “What’s really in it for him?”

  “The Haunting will give him anything he desires — and I mean anything — if he can destroy us. Adam has been their worst enemy for years, but they’ll happily forget all that if he shows them how to kill Eddie.”

  “But we can still stop them, right? I mean, surely there’s someone here who can stand up to Adam.”

  Petra pushed back her hair and looked at David directly. “Someone has to,” she said. “And I’m sure someone will.”

  David couldn’t hold her gaze.

  “Everyone says he’s the most powerful dreamwalker ever,” he said.

  “He’s the strongest we’ve known, yes, but now we have a new dreamwalker on our side, someone we haven’t tested yet.”

  David looked at her, uncertain.

  Petra gave a sigh of frustration, then pointed at a blue panel beside David’s door.

  “Put your hand on there.”

  David did so and felt something warm turn a complete circle inside the pad. The door slid open.

  “They took your details as soon as they had you on the plane,” said Petra, gesturing into the room. “Go on in; this is your new home.”

  David walked inside. The room was quite large and softly lit, but entirely characterless. There was a ready-made bed, a desk, and several empty bookshelves on the wall, but nothing homely about it at all. Over the bed was a prominent sign:

  THE

  DREAMWALKER’S

  CODE

  1. BE SEEN, BUT NOT NOTICED.

  2. TALK, BUT DON’T TELL.

  3. LEAVE NO STONE TURNED.

  “Shouldn’t that be ‘leave no stone unturned’?” said David, but the look on Petra’s face told him it shouldn’t.

  There was no window in the room, but one wall was made entirely of black glass, so highly polished that it was a clear mirror, floor to ceiling. Petra walked up to it and raised her hand. A video image appeared that took up most of the wall. The girl drew her fingers lightly through the air, shrinking the image size, then changed the channel several times with little flicks of her wrist.

  “You’ll get used to that soon,” Petra said, yawning.

  “So, what will Adam do now?” said David, sitting on the bed and rather hoping that Petra would do the same.

  She gave him a faint smile.

  “David, all you do is ask questions. But I want to go and lie down — Adam’s not the only one who has been busy. Perhaps we can talk about this later? If you really can’t wait, use the Showing Glass, but I think you should rest also.”

  David said nothing as Petra walked to the door. He felt a bit sorry for her — he knew he’d been firing off a lot of questions, but what did she expect? And there was one left that he just had to ask.

  “Petra, did you ever meet my dad? I mean, did he ever come here?”

  Petra paused at the door as it slid open.

  “Your father? Well, David, if he was a visitor to this place I see no reason why someone like me would need to be told about it.”

  What kind of answer was that? Had Petra been told to keep something from him too? David suddenly remembered that he hadn’t known her for more than a few hours, and he could see she was watching him closely from behind her unruly hair. He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised her finger to her lips.

  “Use the Showing Glass, David — that’s what it’s for. Or you could always ask Misty.” And with that she left.

  David stared at the closed door. Petra had spoken the name of the computer with contempt in her voice but mischief in her eyes.

  David lay back on the bed. He tried to get his head around the fact that he had gone from being an ordinary schoolboy to some kind of time-traveling ghost in a single day, but it still all seemed too bizarre. Surely all this was the dream, and he would wake up in a moment and find Mum knocking at his door, telling him he was late for school. He wondered about his mother for a moment, then sat up. She must have gone to the police hours ago. And what had she told Philippa? He remembered how she’d reacted when uniformed men had come to tell the family about his father’s death. What would be going through her mind now? David’s own mind began to race again, and he realized that he was nowhere near ready to rest.

  He got up, stood before the black wall, and began waving his hands through the air as Petra had done, calling up panels and images on the mirror. After about five minutes of frustration, the basic commands became clear, and he felt ready to use the so-called Showing Glass. And somehow the machine recognized him, for his own name and photo appeared as the user, along with the words, David Utherwise, dreamwalker number five. Access level: limited.

  David resented the word limited, but thinking how Roman had treated him he wasn’t surprised. Swallowing his irritation, he typed out ADAM LANG and then waved send. An ID file appeared.

  At the top left of the file was a photo. David had no difficulty recognizing the good-looking, black-haired boy who stared back at him, a shade of arrogance in his eyes and mouth. A true golden boy. David knew the type from school. And suddenly it all seemed so personal — this person really was out to get him and his whole family. David shuddered and scrolled down to read the file.

  Adam Lang was from the United States, but he’d been with the Dreamwalker Project for over nine years. His profile gave few details of his personal life apart from an interest in something called Applied Psychic Field Theory. But there was a lot about his astonishing mental strength, including a chart showing Adam’s Psychic Projection Quotient against that of other dreamwalkers. No one came close, not even Dishita. It was clear that the “science guys,” as Petra called them, absolutely worshipped the great Adam Lang. David wiped the file away in disgust.

  The next page was titled “Career History” and contained many sections that were blanked out. This must be what “Access level: limited” meant. Around these, though, David could still see that Adam’s dreamwalking accomplishments were extraordinary, and no one, the file said, had done more to block the activities of the Haunting. When haunters tried to sell the Japanese the secret of the atom bomb in 1938, it had been Adam who’d personally devised the plan to stop them. And when haunters tried to engineer the early death of Howard Carter so that they could raid the tomb of Tutankhamen themselves in the present day, Adam dreamwalked for a record-breaking forty-two hours to ensure they failed. In fact, the list of secret honors Adam had been awarde
d filled a whole page of their own. David looked again at the smug face at the top of the file and wondered how much of Adam’s current behavior was thanks to the excessive praise that had been heaped upon him in the past.

  He cleared the screen and then typed in the Haunting.

  “Hello again, David,” said the voice of Misty. David jumped in his seat.

  “Would you like me to help you? I like being helpful.”

  David hesitated a moment. Did this mean that Misty was everywhere in the base, listening? Could this be why Petra hadn’t given him a straight answer about his father?

  “Er, hi,” he said. “I just wanted to know more about what I’m up against. Can you tell me about the Haunting, please?”

  “I would be delighted to,” said Misty, “though they cover their traces so well that even I have limited knowledge of them. Is there anything specific you would like to know, David?”

  “Yeah. Who are they exactly?”

  “The Haunting is a rival dreamwalking organization that seeks power over the present time through interference with the past. Whereas we study history in order to better understand the present, the Haunting terrorizes it in order to bring about a present more to their liking —”

  “I know all that,” David interrupted, “but who are they? Who’s in charge? Who’s going to be paying Adam his reward?”

  “That information is officially unknown.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “That information is unknown, David.”

  “But surely someone knows. Somebody has to be controlling the Haunting.”

  “My extended memory contains more information than the entire World Wide Web, David,” said Misty, with a very definite hint of artificial hurt pride in her voice. “Perhaps there’s some other question you would like me to answer?”

  David stared at his own reflection in the black surface of the Showing Glass. It seemed incredible that the Dreamwalker Project, with all the resources it obviously commanded, not to mention the wonder of dreamwalking itself, couldn’t identify the mastermind behind the organization trying to destroy it. Almost too incredible. But he wouldn’t get far by annoying the Project’s computer.

  “Okay, Misty. Here’s one. Is there no way to just stop Adam from dreamwalking? Some kind of gadget, or … you know, high-tech force field … thing?”

  “Do you mean the Inhibitor, David?”

  “Er … maybe. What is it?”

  “A function of the Metascape Map. If we wish to prevent dreamwalking at a given geo-temporal locale, we can disrupt the Psychic Field. It is in constant use at Unsleep House, preventing anyone from dreamwalking in at any time and date, and also preventing anyone from making an unscheduled dreamwalk out.”

  David ground his teeth. So there would be no chance of making a sneaky dreamwalk from his bed, then.

  “But could it be used to stop Adam? To keep him away from Eddie, I mean.”

  “Only if we knew where Eddie was at every single point in his life. Now that he’s run away, that’s no longer the case. David, may I ask you a question now?”

  David nodded, partly to test if Misty could see him as well as hear his voice.

  “Where is Edmund Utherwise?”

  “Misty, believe me, I wish I knew.”

  Everyone here seemed to think he had the answer to this question, and there were even people out there who wanted him dead as a result, but David really had no idea where Eddie might have gone. How on earth could he? However, even as he thought this, he experienced an unexpected twitch of memory, as if some recollection had just crossed his mind but was too fleeting and faint to grasp. Could it be that he knew something after all? He really needed time to think.

  “Misty?”

  “Yes, David?”

  “You’re a machine, right? A thinking machine?”

  “I’m an artificial intellect, if that’s what you mean,” said Misty in a voice full of synthetic self-satisfaction. “I am the first of my kind, and despite the lack of processing capacity made available to me —”

  “Okay, but does being a machine mean you can only tell the truth? I mean, can you lie?”

  There was a brief pause.

  “I wouldn’t like to tell a lie, David. I really don’t think I could.”

  Good.

  “Misty, did my father ever come here?”

  Another pause.

  “I’m afraid I have to go now, David. I am required in the Map Room. I have enjoyed this little chat, and I hope we can do it again soon. Good-bye, David.”

  Silence.

  “Misty?”

  Silence.

  David sighed. He shut down the Showing Glass and flopped onto the bed. Exhaustion had finally caught up with him, despite all the extraordinary things he had to think about. And now he had one more thing to think about too. It was becoming clear that his father had been here. But why? And why wouldn’t anyone give him a straight answer? His thoughts began to melt together, and soon, despite his troubled mind, he drifted off to sleep.

  David slept for hours, and if he dreamed at all he didn’t remember a thing. When he finally woke up he was ravenously hungry and remembered that he’d eaten nothing all day. He got out of bed and saw that it was nearly ten P.M. He decided to take a shower, but on his way to the small bathroom he spotted that the wardrobe was slightly open. He slid back the door and found six identical black outfits, the so-called zero-retention suits, each with the number five stitched in gold thread and the strange logo on the back.

  Was he really ready to wear such a thing? As the son of a dead soldier, he hated the very idea of uniforms. But after his shower he put on one of the suits after all. As he admired himself in the mirror, he had to admit that the outfit looked cool.

  Dreamwalker number five.

  David was about to leave the room when something else caught his eye. On a bookshelf that he’d thought was empty, something slim was propped up in the corner. He could have sworn it hadn’t been there before. He picked it up and felt his stomach contract when he saw what it was.

  He was holding one of Eddie’s notebooks.

  David turned the book around and around in his hands, staring at it in amazement. He’d often seen these plain little books in the hands of the boy in his dream, but now he was actually holding one. And it was real — not some dreamed-up image, but a solid book of creases, yellowing paper, and rusty staples.

  “Blast it, Eddie, where are you?” The feel of the book in his hands made David’s long-lost grandfather seem suddenly very close, as if all he had to do was turn around to find Eddie standing there, squinting at him through his spectacles, ready with his pencil to scribble over yet another page. But Eddie wasn’t close at all. As David flicked through the pages, the furious jottings and crossings-out flashing before his eyes, he caught a whiff of age from the paper. He realized for the first time the enormous truth of just how far away Eddie really was, locked into his own time and lost in what might as well be another world.

  David stopped flicking at a page where a single question stood out in bold letters, heavily circled: What is David?

  Every line that had been drawn away from this question led to a tangle of crossing-out.

  David looked at this for a long time before he closed the book. All those times he’d seen Eddie with his nose in one of these books, he’d never realized that the subject of all that writing had been himself.

  Instead of putting the book back on the shelf, he rolled it up and stuffed it in his pocket, just as Eddie used to do. He and Eddie both had questions, it seemed. David swore to himself there and then that before all this was over they would both find their answers.

  David picked his way back through the maze of corridors to the canteen. He ordered an enormous meal and sat at a table on his own. People looked at him and sometimes whispered, and he could tell that he was being watched. Roman came in briefly and poured himself a small cup of coffee. He gave David a long, hard stare before stalking out. This didn’t help
David’s appetite, and he left his meal half finished after that. He went back to the Lodge, feeling highly self-conscious and more than a little out of place.

  Back in the corridor he decided not to return to his bedroom but instead to visit the place called the Cave that Petra had mentioned earlier. He pressed his hand against the panel, and the double doors slid open.

  His first impression was of a large crazy-shaped space with no ceiling at all, just a high shadowed vault where two rock faces arched together. Seeing this, David finally understood that the whole complex must have been built within a natural split in the mountain, beneath the château he’d been shown in the dreamwalk. The thought made him giddy as he walked to the center of the room.

  There were armchairs and sofas scattered in groups near a low-lit bar on one side of the cavern, while the rest of the space was divided into different areas, one clearly for gaming, another for dancing and music, and yet another housing a multimedia library with a giant screen. One wall was taken up by an enormous slab of yellow rock, which clearly didn’t belong to the mountain. On the rock a spindly human form was painted in a strong line of vivid blue, surrounded by a halo of fuzzy dots. At the feet of the figure crept half-human, half-animal shapes in reds and browns.

  Opposite this striking feature, an enormous window reached the whole height of the wall, sealing the cavern with a single sheet of glass. It was the first window David had seen since he’d arrived, and through it he could make out a black, jagged horizon beneath a twilit sky studded with stars.

  He noticed Petra curled up in an armchair. She waved at him, and he walked over to find Dishita sitting there too, still looking frail. There was also a dark-haired boy who looked familiar. When David got closer he realized it was Théo, the boy he’d watched narrowly escaping the Haunting on the Metascape Map. None of them was wearing a black dreamwalker suit as David was now, and his heart sank as he realized he’d got it wrong again.

  “Here’s number five!” called Petra. “All dressed up and one of us at last.”