“I thought you said you were going to trust me.” Petra pointed into the chute.
David shut his mouth and put his head into the hatchway. He pushed farther and farther into the square metal hole, then yelped as two hands closed around his ankles and heaved. Petra’s laugh was cut off as his body filled the chute, and he was falling. He found himself hurtling down into the dark in what had to be a near-vertical drop.
In seconds he was out and facedown in a heap of dirty clothes. In the pitch black, David rolled frantically to free himself, but when he finally got the sheet off he banged his head on a low metal ceiling and fell back into the dirty linen, stunned.
It seemed to take Petra much longer than five minutes to get there, and when a doorway finally opened and that familiar tangle-haired silhouette appeared, David could tell she was still laughing.
“Come on out now,” she said. “You have passed the test.”
“Test? What test?” David asked as he crawled out of the laundry cupboard.
“You really do trust me. That was mad, what you just did,” said Petra. “But let’s not wait around here. Come.”
He followed her out of the laundry room, too glad to see her smiling again to be angry at being played with. And she had got him out of the Lodge. They moved swiftly down a corridor and then climbed two flights of stairs to the level where the canteen was. Petra ran here, silent in her boots, and David did the same. He followed her into a recess. She opened a service door at the back and they ducked through into a deep cupboard.
Petra walked straight to the back of it, pushing past mops, buckets, and brooms. In the gloom, David heard a metal panel being popped free, and weak light broke through from beyond. Behind the cupboard was a narrow rock passage that seemed prehistoric after the clean, modern surroundings of the rest of the base.
“What is this?” asked David.
“When they extended Unsleep House, they just went straight down into the mountain beneath,” said Petra. “There was a vast cavern there already, and even now there are still some unused natural passages like this one. It joins with the main tunnel entrance to the château’s cellar.”
“Is this how you get into the château normally?” said David, surprised. The only light came from a few flickering neon strips hanging from bundled cables that ran along the ceiling, and there were places where water dripped through.
“No,” said Petra, stepping into the passage. “I don’t know what this passage is, or why it is lit — it seems to have been forgotten. But this is the way I sometimes come when I want to go out.”
“Out?” said David as he followed her. They made their way along the tunnel in single file, Petra leading the way.
“Sometimes I need to be on my own,” said Petra. “Or at least not down in the base. Like your grandfather, I don’t like being cooped up underground all the time. The château is more like a real home.”
“But don’t you ever go home?” said David. “To your parents? Théo said that not all dreamwalkers live here. What about Christmas, holidays?”
Petra slowed down and then stopped walking. She stood with her back to him. David waited, wondering what he’d said. Eventually she turned.
“This is my home,” she said in a small voice. “David, I am going to tell you something, something that you will hear sooner or later. I want you to hear it from me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“When I first dreamwalked, I was only nine years old. I had no idea what was happening, of course; I thought it was just a wonderful dream. But I soon found out the truth.”
“Someone from Unsleep House came and picked you up?” said David. “They ‘activated’ you?”
Petra shook her head.
“They spotted me on the Map, but they didn’t reach me in time. Others were watching too.”
David said nothing. The air around him seemed suddenly chilly.
“The Haunting got to me first.” Petra looked at the ground. “They raided my home. I was taken.”
“Taken?” said David. “What about … ?”
“My family? The Haunting only take what they want, David, and they only want dreamwalkers. They can’t afford to leave witnesses.”
David didn’t know what to say.
“I was held for over a year,” Petra continued, forcing the emotion out of her voice. “They made me dreamwalk. They forced me to terrify people, to be a ghost. They told me my family would be hurt if I didn’t. So I became one of them.”
“You … you were a haunter?”
“Yes.” Petra’s face had disappeared behind a curtain of curls. “They told me it was my destiny, that this was what dreamwalking was really all about — being a ghost, haunting the past in order to change it. They promised me riches and power, and if I questioned them, they threatened to hurt those I love. They made me into a monster.”
“The statue! In the museum!” David said, suddenly remembering the terrifying image of the Gorgon with the snake hair and piercing eyes. “That really was you, wasn’t it?”
“That was the form they needed from me. I didn’t have any choice.”
“But you were rescued …”
“I escaped!” snapped Petra, her hair flying back so that her eyes flashed in the gloom. “I am the only one who has ever escaped from the Haunting. I drifted for a while, but then Unsleep House took me in. That’s how I found out that my family had been murdered. I did all those terrible things to protect them, but they were already gone.”
David stared. He felt numb inside.
“The King of the Haunting,” he said eventually, without really intending to say it aloud.
“Where did you hear that?”
“The professor said something about the Haunting being led by a king,” David said. “Did you … did you ever … ?”
“Meet him?” Petra’s eyes flashed again. “No, David. If only I had!” Then she spoke more coolly. “When I got here, I did all I could to destroy the Haunting; I told the professor everything I knew. But it wasn’t enough. King is just a word, after all, and no one knows what it means. So the Haunting are still free to keep doing what they do. They still take dreamwalkers as slaves. They still murder those who get in their way.”
“Petra, I’m so sorry,” said David in a whisper, “about your family.”
Petra looked at him with moist eyes.
“It is not for you to be sorry. You didn’t know,” she said.
“But I do know what it’s like to lose someone close,” said David.
“Your father. Yes.” Petra stepped closer then and took David’s hand.
“We’re dreamwalkers,” she said, looking up into his face. “Life is different for us, as you’ve seen, but death is too. When we lose someone it’s not the same as it is for other people. When someone dies they come to the end of their time, but that time — the time when they lived — is still out there somewhere. It still happened. And we are the lucky ones who can slip back and visit that time again and see those we have lost. It’s a wonderful thing we can do, David. The Haunting is wrong. This is the greatest gift of the dreamwalker.”
David blinked at her. He really hadn’t thought of it like that.
“So you do this?” he said eventually. “You visit your family as a dreamwalker?”
Petra smiled again, but her face was still sad.
“Once,” she said. “I did it once. But it was too hard. I wanted them to see me, but that would have been so wrong. How would they have reacted? How could I have explained? No. Instead I just stood there in a shadow and watched and …”
It looked to David as if she was about to cry, and he was amazed she hadn’t yet. He put his arms around her, unsure if this was really the right thing to do, or if he was allowed. Petra accepted his touch for a moment, but then gently pushed him away.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
They looked at each other for a moment.
“I don’t need to see my family again,” she said, “not li
ke that. But knowing that I could visit them, that they are still out there somewhere, happy and unaware in their own time, that’s a great comfort. You might find it a comfort also.”
David put his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor. Part of his mind was dealing with the unexpected thought that he could see his father again, in a sense. But another part of it was thinking of Petra and how close she was standing. Then she spoke again and broke the strange moment.
“You will find that some on the Dreamwalker Project still don’t trust me. You heard what Roman said in the Archive — once a haunter, always a monster, that’s what they think. I just wanted you to know the truth from me before you hear any stories, that’s all. Now let’s go find your grandfather’s study. Come.” She turned on her heel and set off down the corridor again.
David and Petra arrived at the end of the dripping stone passage.
“Ah, here is the way in.”
They stopped beside a small metal door that looked as though it was rarely used. There was a vertical bar up one side with a padlock through it. Petra gave David a crafty look, then kicked the bottom of the bar with her foot. The padlock dropped off, and David saw that it had been broken at some point in the past.
“Did you do that?” he asked.
“I don’t like locks,” said Petra. “Unless I’ve locked them myself. Come.”
The door led into a larger passage, still cut roughly from the rock, but in better condition. The light was more stable here. Soon David noticed that the ceiling had become vaulted and was made of white stone, greenish-gray with age and damp, and hung with cobwebs. They had reached the cellar. It was pitch-black from there on and David cursed himself for not thinking to bring a flashlight.
“This way,” said Petra, walking out into the shadows. She moved her arm, and a shaft of light sprung from a flashlight in her hand.
The cellar was enormous, with arched side bays full of boxes and crates, and high, cobwebbed racks, the odd wine bottle still resting there. Petra clearly knew where to go, and soon they were walking up stone steps, picking their way carefully in the little patch of light pointed at the girl’s feet. At the top was a large wooden door. Petra turned the handle and pushed it open.
“Wait a moment,” said David. “Aren’t there security cameras or anything?”
Petra shrugged. “I have never seen such a thing here.”
They stepped through the door and walked out from under an enormous carved staircase that dominated a paneled hallway. In front of them was a broad, glass-paned double front door, and on each side of the hall there were further doorways. Through one of these, David caught a brief glimpse of furniture draped in dust-sheets, stacked files, and an overhead projector, and he remembered that the Project had actually used this building until quite recently. Now, though, it felt abandoned.
Petra handed him the flashlight.
“The study is on the top floor,” she said. “This was your idea. You lead the way.”
They began to climb.
When they reached the first floor, David glanced uneasily down the long corridors. The ground floor had appeared well kept, but up here the building seemed in poor condition. The shards of light that entered between the wooden slats left crooked bars of shadow on the wall. David felt cold as they continued up the stairs, the wooden steps creaking beneath their feet.
On the next floor the shutters were also closed, and the flashlight illuminated great looping cobwebs and lost its brightness in the dust. Petra, who had kept behind David as they climbed, suddenly walked straight to a window in the middle of the landing. She climbed up onto the wide sill and undid the catch.
“What are you doing?” whispered David.
“I want to see the view,” said Petra, not whispering at all.
She gave the tall shutters a determined shove. They fell wide open, and David welcomed the freshness of the cool mountain air after the air-conditioned base. Beyond was a far-reaching view along a valley, ringed with the snow-capped peaks of the Alps. The late afternoon sun spilled on to the landing, and Petra stood in its light, breathing deeply. David saw that there were some things on the windowsill — magazines and books, a cushion, and an empty teacup.
“I haven’t been here for a while,” said Petra, jumping back down. “But now you know all my secrets. The study is along there on the left.”
Leaving the window open, they continued down the corridor until they arrived at a closed door. It was locked.
“I don’t suppose you know where the key is,” said David, without much hope.
“Why bother with a key?” Petra said. “I didn’t have a key when I first came to the château. And you’re stronger than I am.”
“Break in, you mean?” David was surprised. “But what about alarms? And won’t Misty notice? I thought she was everywhere in Unsleep House.”
“Only in the new bits. There’s no Misty up here.”
David looked at Petra and remembered that he still had a lot to prove to her. He turned back toward the door. It was old, and the wood was dry. He could feel Petra watching him, but even if she hadn’t been, there was too much at stake to let a few boards of decaying oak stop him now. He stepped back and hurled himself at the door.
He’d expected to be flung back with a bruised shoulder, but instead the brittle wood just split right down the middle, disintegrating into splinters and dust. He shone the flashlight inside.
Everything in the room was covered in white sheets, but there was one large rectangular object in the middle of the room that was obviously a desk, and several others that could have been armchairs. The bookcases were also covered.
David smiled. He was standing in his grandfather’s own room, and really standing there, not dreamwalking. This was the strongest physical connection he’d yet had with the boy from his dream, though it was also the closest he could ever get to him in the present. Sir Edmund Utherwise had lived out his natural span — dreamwalking was now their only means of contact. David found himself fingering the notebook still in his pocket.
“Are we looking for something specific?” said Petra, breaking his thoughts.
David walked over to the nearest bookcase, pulled the dust-sheet down, and swung the flashlight across the shelves. Books, nothing more. He walked to the next case and did the same.
This time his flashlight revealed the wall of photographs he’d seen behind Sir Edmund in the photo. He quickly scanned the frames until he found the one he was looking for. It was exactly where it should have been. He took it down and shone the flashlight at it.
“Here, look,” he said. “You see this group of people? I think that must be Eddie and his mother saying good-bye to his father. It dates from around the time I first started visiting him. The end of 1939, I think, when the war started. Anyway, you see that girl there? I’ve seen her before. She was a maid or something at Eddie’s house.”
“You come from a rich family,” said Petra.
“Me? No! Well, in Eddie’s time maybe — I don’t live like this. But listen, this girl’s name was Kitty or Kat or something. I saw her come to Eddie’s door a few times. He never let her in when I was there, but I think she saw me at least once. The thing is, they didn’t behave like she was just his servant. It was more like they were friends.”
“I see,” said Petra, taking the photo. “I do remember her from my time watching you and Eddie, but she was just listed in the Archive as a resident in the building and was not part of my briefing. I was only there to watch you, David, and I was very careful. Eddie already had one ghost; he didn’t need another. You think she might be a clue to finding Eddie?”
“Well, yeah. Everyone assumes that because Eddie was such a loner, I must be his best friend or something, but why shouldn’t he have had someone else? I mean, how much does anyone here really know about Eddie when he was my age? And if you kept seeing a ghost, wouldn’t you want to tell someone? Ever since the professor first told me Eddie had gone missing, I’ve been trying to r
emember something Eddie said when I last saw him. It came back to me when I saw this picture. Eddie said he shouldn’t have trusted me and that someone named Kat had told him so.”
“Meaning this girl?” said Petra.
“I think so. The point is, I don’t know where Eddie’s run off to, but maybe she does. I want to go back in time and talk to her.”
“The professor needs to know about this,” said Petra. “We should get back.”
David followed her to the door, shining the flashlight once more around room as he went. He stopped.
“Wait.”
He walked back to the wall of photos and picked up another. It showed a man and a boy shaking hands in the Map Room of Unsleep House, and behind them, looking on and smiling, was the elderly Sir Edmund Utherwise. The boy was Adam Lang, and the person he was shaking hands with was someone David knew instantly. It was his own father.
He held the picture up to Petra.
“If Misty isn’t here, perhaps you can give me a straight answer now,” he said, unable to keep the anger from his voice. “What has my dad got to do with this place?”
Petra came back over. She looked awkward and embarrassed.
“I never wanted to lie to you. They told me that you shouldn’t know, not until the crisis with Adam was over.”
“Know what?”
Petra bit her lip.
“Tell me!”
“David, you grew up thinking that your father was a soldier, but that is not true. He was part of the Dreamwalker Project.”
David said nothing. He’d kind of worked that out for himself. But seeing his dad with Adam was horrible.
“He was a trainer,” Petra continued. “He taught us dreamwalking technique. He was a dreamwalker himself as a boy, and like many he stayed on to work here as an adult. They had to think of something to tell your family, so the soldier thing became his cover story. Sometimes the only way to keep a secret is to tell a lie.”
“But why keep it from me now?” David said. “He was my dad. Why shouldn’t I know?”
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