Haunters (9780545502542)

by Taylor, Thomas

  “We have everyone out now. All the most likely places — the docks, the Underground, the churchyards — are being searched, but there’re more places than ever, what with the raids on, and …” Grinn stopped. He could feel the boy’s gaze harden and take hold of his mind as it had done before.

  “… and we have a lead,” he added quickly, gambling that the idiot Rob Box was really bringing something useful. “Someone’s on his way here with a boy.”

  “Eddie?” Adam’s face lit up and his eyes sparkled. “Is it him?”

  “Well,” said Grinn, “I think he’s more in the nature of a witness, as you might say.” And he was immensely relieved to hear a loud banging on the door, right on cue. Adam raised one eyebrow and stepped back into the shadows.

  “Come in!” called Grinn.

  The door was opened by one of the men he’d left outside. Grinn caught a glimpse of a motorcar’s dimmed headlights before a hairy man dressed mostly in rags shoved his way through the doorway and began to struggle across the room. Locked in his arms, legs scrabbling for some foothold, was a boy in his early teens.

  “Mr. Box,” said Grinn. “And who’s this?”

  “Little runt’s a biter,” croaked Box. “Bleedin’ toe-rag! He was seen wiv a kid like the one yer lookin’ for, but lied about it. He knows somefink, so my guv’nor wants his ’undred up front.” He released the boy and held out his hand.

  “Thank you, Mr. Box,” said Grinn, who knew that utmost politeness was wise when dealing with other gang leaders and their lackeys. “If this boy leads us to our target, I’ll send the cash across in the morning. Your guv’nor knows the score.”

  Rob Box lowered his hand and glowered about the room. Grinn gave him a you-may-go-now look, and his men came and stood either side of their hairy visitor.

  “First thing, mind!” shouted Rob Box, waggling his finger before he was led out.

  When the door was closed, Tater came and stood over the boy crouching in the middle of the room. Still at his desk, Grinn switched on a flashlight and pointed it at their captive. It wasn’t Edmund Utherwise, that was clear, but with Adam somewhere in the room, Grinn would have to be careful. He just hoped Box was right that this boy knew something.

  “Name?”

  “Never!” shouted the boy, standing up and tightening his fists.

  Tater smacked him back down again.

  “Tell us your name, and then tell us where to find Edmund Utherwise,” Grinn said. “Help us and you can leave by the front door. Lie to us and you can swim home with a brick in your pocket.”

  “You don’t scare me!” said the boy, standing up again. “Bleedin’ pantomime, all this.”

  “Perhaps I don’t scare you,” said Grinn, “but my associate here just might.”

  The boy looked around in alarm, unsure which direction any new threat might come from.

  “What is your name?” said a cold voice behind him.

  The boy spun around and looked up into Adam’s face as it materialized from the shadows. He shrank back almost as if Adam’s gaze were driving him down forcefully. By the time he reached the floor his defiance had been replaced by pure dread.

  “Name!”

  “Tomkin” was the only word the boy could utter.

  David was sitting on the floor of his room, doodling dejectedly on an empty page of Eddie’s old notebook and brooding on how everything had gone so wrong.

  After he’d been escorted from the Map Room, the guards had delivered him and the other dreamwalkers to the Lodge. Dishita had marched directly to the Cave without a word, but David couldn’t bring himself to go there. He could guess the kind of reception he’d get. Instead, he’d hesitated outside his room and had been grateful when Petra paused with him. It had seemed like a good moment to build up to some kind of apology. He’d been wrong about that too.

  “I didn’t ask to be part of this,” he said to her. “Let’s face it, I’m hopeless as a dreamwalker. Maybe Roman’s right.”

  “Ah, stop feeling sorry for yourself.” The lack of sympathy in Petra’s voice should have warned him to shut up. “You survived, didn’t you? Think of Théo. Your mind is stronger than you realize, David, it’s the way you use it that lets you down. Go get some rest.”

  “It’s just that, when you showed me David fighting Goliath, I thought …”

  “What?” Petra’s anger finally flared. “Are you trying to blame me? That David still had an army behind him, still put his trust in others. It’s not my fault if you can only think about yourself.”

  “No, I didn’t mean …” David began.

  “Oh, just forget it.” Petra had given him a look of disgust as she stormed off after Dishita.

  And so David had not only messed up his chance to help find Eddie, he’d even managed to anger the only friend he had left. He scribbled furiously across the page. He was about to fling the book across the room when the buzzer rang. He got up and opened the door, hoping it wasn’t Dishita — she’d no doubt go double ballistic if she caught him defacing one of Sir Edmund’s precious notebooks on top of everything else. He was relieved as well as surprised to find Professor Feldrake standing there.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” said the old man. “I just thought I should see how you were. You had quite a shock earlier.”

  “How do you think I am?” said David. “I’m not exactly a hero around here.”

  The professor gave a wry smile. He came in and sat down in the chair at David’s desk.

  “I also thought you should know that I have been formally suspended as director of the Dreamwalker Project. Don’t blame yourself, though; it’s been coming for a while now. There are more than a few people who think an old duffer like me isn’t up to the job. They say I only got it because I was a long-standing colleague of Sir Edmund’s.”

  “You worked with Eddie?”

  “Oh, yes, almost from the start. He hired me as a historian to help with the very first research missions into the past. But that was years ago. I’m just an old dinosaur myself now, I suppose. It’s good to see you writing in his book, by the way.”

  “You put it in my room, didn’t you?”

  Professor Feldrake grinned.

  “I’m sorry, Professor,” said David.

  “Oh, don’t be. You’re his grandson, and a blank page is meant to be written on …”

  “No, I mean I’m sorry you’ve been suspended. It’s so unfair.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. I still have faith in this place, even with Roman in the driving seat. And so should you, David.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “What will happen now?” David asked.

  “Well, Roman has reduced the research team looking for Eddie. He says that without help from you it will be impossible to find him anytime soon, so the new focus is firmly on locating Adam and eliminating him. The Map Room sounds more like a military command post right now. Too much fighting talk for an old academic like me.”

  “But Adam’s too strong. I saw what he did to Théo. He nearly did it to me. We’ve lost too many dreamwalkers fighting Adam already.”

  “We?” said Professor Feldrake. “Are you finally accepting your true part in all this?”

  “There was a man behind Eddie with a knife!” David struggled to control his temper. “I’m sorry about what happened, but I thought he was going to die. My part in all this is to save my family. It’s not my fault if no one told me there would be plainclothes policemen there. Trust has to go both ways, doesn’t it? Maybe if people didn’t keep things from me, I would have done things differently.”

  “That’s a fair point,” said the professor. “A very fair point indeed. You remind me of someone I used to know.”

  “Right,” David said, not very interested in this. “Just as long as it’s someone worth being compared to.”

  The professor gave David an unexpectedly bright smile, then removed his glasses. As he cleaned them on his tie, he spoke again.

  “Y
ou know, this place was never supposed to be like this. The Dreamwalker Project didn’t even have a security advisor in the beginning. We were just a bunch of starry-eyed scientists and wonder kids, opening the lid on history for the first time. And your grandfather was the greatest dreamer of us all. Unsleep House was just the château back then, no need to dig down into the mountain or put soldiers at the gate. But the Haunting have changed all that; they’ve made us paranoid. No one has stars in their eyes now. I just wish you could have seen what we were, David, and not what we’ve become.”

  “Misty told me you don’t even know who’s behind it,” said David. “The Haunting, I mean. But how can you not know? Surely you at least know the name of the person Adam’s working for now.”

  “The King of the Haunting,” the professor said, almost to himself.

  “What?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Just a rumor. There is a word — a name perhaps — that’s come up time and again over the years, but, well, one word isn’t going to get us far, is it?”

  “His name is King?” David said. “Or do you mean … ?”

  “That he is a king?” the professor chuckled. “Or perhaps that’s just what he calls himself. Or perhaps it’s a code word, or …” The professor replaced his spectacles. “Don’t waste your time thinking about it, David. As I said, it’s just a rumor.”

  David stared at the old man, and wondered if the professor knew more about this mysterious king than he was letting on.

  “So, what happens next? Does Roman really think we can stop Adam with force?”

  “Roman hates Adam more than you can know,” said the professor. “And maybe he’s got it right. We no longer outnumber the Haunting, but some sort of final showdown between us is at least logical. And we still have some pretty talented dreamwalkers on our side. Dishita in particular wants revenge for Carlo and the others. And Petra will no doubt surprise us as usual.”

  “Petra?” said David, trying not to sound too interested in one dreamwalker over the others.

  “Oh, yes. There’s more to her than meets the eye. She’s fluent in five languages, you know. Or is it six? In any event, she’s very capable.”

  “But what good are languages against Adam?” cried David, losing control of his voice.

  “I know, I know,” said the professor quietly. “But it’s out of my hands now. The people who fund the Project are desperate for an end to the crisis, and they’re backing Roman all the way. As far as they’re concerned we have an all-out psychic war on our hands, and Petra is just one of the troops.”

  David tried to imagine Petra facing Adam in a mind fight. The thought made him feel sick. It wasn’t just the dreamwalkers Adam had recently beaten; in the years when he’d worked for the Project he’d defeated dozens of haunters too. Petra would lose that fight, and David couldn’t shake off a vision of her in a coma, growing old and mindless on life support. And would Dishita really do any better?

  “But if we did find Eddie,” David said, “we could still get him to safety, couldn’t we? I mean, well out of London and away from Adam? We could still solve all this without anyone getting hurt?”

  “Well, yes, we could move him to some secret spot Adam would never guess. We’ve helped people stay alive before. Why?” The professor looked suddenly hopeful. “Have you remembered something?”

  “I don’t know.” David drummed his fingers on the wall. “Like I said, I just have the feeling I’ve seen or heard something that could help. I might remember it …”

  The professor gave a weak smile.

  “That’s the way. Keep thinking positively. You never know what might turn up. I have to go, but I promise I’ll let you know if anything happens. I’m sure you’ll have a part to play in all this before the end.”

  The professor stood to leave, but when he reached the door, he turned with a strange, almost crafty look.

  “Oh, and don’t let being under house arrest bother you, David. Since when did a locked door stop a ghost?”

  The professor stepped out, but paused in the doorway. He waited for a moment, as if weighing something in his mind, then spoke again.

  “After all, whatever you dream you can do, Davy, you can do.”

  The door slid shut. David stared at it in astonishment. The professor’s words sounded exactly like something his father used to say. What was the connection between his dad and this place? He rushed to the door and opened it, but the professor had already left the corridor. David ran to the main door from the Dreamwalkers’ Lodge, but his way was barred by two security guards. The professor had gone.

  David returned to his room and crashed on the bed. His mind, overloaded, wandered crazily over the events of the last two days. Could he, even now, remember something useful?

  He picked up the old notebook again.

  “Eddie, where would someone like you hide?”

  David thought of his lost friend and tried to visualize him as his own grandfather. It wasn’t easy. After all, David had only ever seen him as a boy. The one picture the professor had shown him of Eddie as an old man was all he had to go on.

  David sat up. Something was nagging at his mind again. He went to the Showing Glass and switched it on. It took him just a few moments to find that very same picture, attached with many others to Sir Edmund’s official file. He increased its size so that it filled the whole glass wall.

  Sir Edmund Utherwise, distinguished scientist and founder of the Dreamwalker Project, looked back at him, surrounded by shelves, leather spines, and framed photographs. David wondered where the picture had been taken. The base was so modern that this paneled study couldn’t possibly be part of it. Even Professor Feldrake’s office, with all its clutter and books, was obviously built recently. He looked again at the room behind the old man. Books. Photographs …

  David went very still.

  He reached out and zoomed the image down to one particular black-and-white photo. It showed a small group of people standing on the steps of a large town house. In the center was a man in a Second World War officer’s uniform. Beside him were a woman and a boy. It was Eddie, looking just as David remembered him, except perhaps slightly less sad. So this man must be Eddie’s father, going off to war, and the woman Eddie’s mother. There were five other people around them, some of them at least looked as if they must have been servants.

  And one of these was a girl.

  David zoomed in closer. She had a strong, defiant gaze that didn’t quite fit the housemaid’s pinafore she was wearing. When he tried enlarging her image even more, the picture became too much of a blur, but he was left with the strong feeling that he’d seen this girl somewhere before. Who was she?

  And finally it came to him.

  He knew then that at all costs he had to get a closer look at this photograph.

  David stood in the hall and buzzed Petra’s door, bracing himself for the worst. After a moment it slid open.

  “Hi,” he said. “Um … can we talk?”

  Petra let him in without saying a word. David wasn’t sure how best to handle this frosty reception, so he just came straight out with it.

  “Petra, where was Eddie’s study? I mean, Sir Edmund Utherwise’s study? You know, the one in the photo the professor showed me when I first got here. Was it in Unsleep House somewhere?”

  “Yes,” said Petra. “His study is on the top floor of the château. Sir Edmund hated it down here. He called it ‘the mole hill’ and refused to be moved. Why?”

  “Is? You mean it’s still there?”

  “Yes. They just locked it up when he died. The science guys want to keep it exactly as it was. A sort of museum for them, I guess. What is this, David?”

  “Listen, I need to get into the château. I want to look in the study. How can I do that?”

  “You can’t,” said Petra. “You’re under house arrest, remember? You can’t even leave the Lodge without an escort.”

  “But what if I weren’t under arrest?” said David. “How do you norm
ally get to it from here?”

  “There’s a tunnel from the upper level of the base that leads into the cellar of the château,” Petra said. “But you would never get there. The upper level is heavily guarded these days.”

  “Isn’t there some other way? There must be a fire escape or … or whatever. It’s very important. I think I’ve found something.”

  “Oh?” said Petra, her face stonier than David had ever seen it. “Like what?”

  “Look, Petra, I’m sorry about what happened at the station, about making a fool of myself, about … everything. I just want a chance to put things right. Help me get into the château and I’ll show you.”

  Petra stared at him for a long time before she spoke.

  “They assigned me to protect you, David. That’s all I’ve ever done. If I’m going to help you now, I need to know that you will trust me from now on, without hesitation. So will you?”

  “I will,” David replied. “I couldn’t wish for a better bodyguard than you, Petra. And I really am sorry.”

  Petra thought about this for a moment. Then she gave David a brilliant smile.

  “Good,” she said. “Because I already have a plan.”

  “I hope you don’t mind other people’s underwear.” Petra grinned.

  David tried to keep calm as she wrapped a sheet tightly around him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the laundry chute hatch in the corner of her room. What kind of plan was this?

  “Are you sure this is the only way?”

  “Yes, stop fidgeting.” Petra seemed to be enjoying herself. “There’s always a pile of dirty clothes at the bottom. Well, almost always. You’ll be fine.”

  When Petra had finished he had to hop to reach the hatch.

  “This is ridiculous,” he protested, trying to hide his alarm. His arms were bound tightly at his sides, and he suddenly realized he was going to have to go headfirst.

  “You want to get out of the Lodge, don’t you?” said Petra, not quite suppressing a laugh. “I’ll meet you in the laundry room in five minutes.”

  “But is it steep?” David peered into the dark of the hatch as Petra held it open. He was going to fit, but with only a finger’s width to spare. The chute sloped away at an alarming pitch.