Haunters (9780545502542)

by Taylor, Thomas

  When David looked back at the letter, something bobbed into his mind — a jumble of recent memories, fragments of fact, and unanswered questions that were finally resurfacing in the troubled sea of his memory. Only now he could see the connection between them, and it was a connection that made his eyes go wide. He lowered the letter and stared at the professor.

  “David, what’s wrong?”

  “I think I know who it is!” he blurted out. “The person behind all this. The King of the Haunting! Professor, it’s —”

  “No! Don’t say it!”

  David’s eyes went wider still.

  “You know, don’t you? You knew all along! But why … ?”

  “I suspected, David, that’s all. But if we’re right, then there’s nothing we can do, is there? That person’s history is too closely entwined with Eddie’s now for anything to be done about it, not without enormous risk to ourselves.”

  “But, Professor —”

  “No. We have no choice but to keep our defenses up and wait for time to rid us of that particular threat. Until then, I urge you to keep any suspicions you may have to yourself. Tell no one, David, is that clear? Don’t even tell the other dreamwalkers.”

  David stared at the professor. Could he really just say nothing? But then, it all seemed so incredible that maybe he’d got it wrong. On the other hand, if he was right, and if the professor really was too scared to do anything about it, then there was one thing he could do himself, wasn’t there? At least being stuck in a hospital bed gave him time for a little private dreamwalking. It was certainly something to think about.

  “How are the others? Dishita, Théo?”

  “Oh, they’re mostly fine,” said the professor, clearly pleased that the conversation had moved on. “There were some casualties, as you’d expect, but we’re lucky not to have lost more. Misty is back up and running too. Théo says hello, by the way. Says he’s looking forward to working with you again. And Dishita is singing your praises to anyone who wants to hear. She has asked to debrief you personally. I think she’s desperate to hear more about your battle with Adam. We all are.”

  “And Petra?”

  The professor frowned.

  “Poor girl.” He sighed. “It’s a terrible shame. Such a loss to the Project.”

  David felt his spine go cold. The professor was helping himself to another chocolate when David lost his cool completely.

  “What do you mean, ‘loss to the Project’?” he shouted. “She’s a person, not one of your machines! If she’s dead, or —”

  “Dead!” said the professor in surprise. “She’s not dead! Good heavens, no. It’s just that … well …” But the old historian seemed to have run out of words.

  “Look,” he said eventually, “there’s someone else here who can explain it better than I can.”

  He got to his feet and put his head out of the door. After a moment he stepped back. A girl wearing a long winter coat and sunglasses walked in.

  It was Petra.

  “Hello, David,” she said, with a smile almost like her old one. “I’m glad you’re awake.”

  “Hi” was all David could manage.

  The professor rocked back and forward on his heels and looked awkward again.

  “When I said ‘loss to the Project,’ I was referring to Petra’s injury. PPD, you see — Psychic Projection Disorder.”

  “You science guys,” said Petra. “Just call it what it is: burnout. What the professor is trying to say is that I can’t dreamwalk anymore. Adam did too much damage. I’m no longer a dreamwalker.”

  David was shocked. He tried to think of something to say, but when he began to speak, Petra stopped him.

  “Don’t. In some ways it’s quite liberating actually. I’m free.”

  The professor looked at them both.

  “I’ll give you two a moment,” he said, stepping toward the door again.

  “Wait,” said David. “You haven’t told me how Roman is doing.”

  The professor seemed bewildered. Then he saw the look on David’s face.

  “Don’t be too hard on Roman,” he said. “You didn’t see him at his best, and the pressures on him were very great. In the aftermath of the Adam Lang emergency he has even been awarded a medal, and I’m pleased to say he mentioned you in his acceptance speech. I realize you might find that a joke, but Roman cares for Unsleep House very deeply, and he’s a better judge of people and events than you might think.”

  “Better than my dad?” asked David, fixing the professor with a steady gaze. The professor sighed.

  “All right,” he said, “all right. I apologize for not telling you about that.”

  “But he was murdered! And I had to hear it from Adam, of all people — his killer.”

  “Oh, I was worried that might have happened.” The professor was clearly distressed. “David, I’m really very sorry. We just didn’t know how you’d react if you found out during the emergency. Your father was a key member of the Project, and we also felt his loss very bitterly. We couldn’t imagine that he’d been murdered or that one of the dreamwalkers was capable of doing such a thing. I suppose everyone was so dazzled by Adam they never stopped to question the effect his work was having on him. Everyone except your father, that is. Oh, dear. I promise that when you have recovered, I’ll tell you all I can about your father.”

  David lay in his bed and said nothing. Petra gave the professor a disapproving look. The old man seemed desperate to get out of the room. He stood and picked up the box of chocolates.

  “I’ll just go and see if your mother would like one,” he said and darted out of the door.

  Petra had taken off her sunglasses and David could see signs of strain in her eyes.

  “I still need these,” she said, waving the glasses. “But I’m much better, really. Don’t look so worried. I like your teddy bear, by the way.”

  David went red with embarrassment and threw the old toy at his mother’s bag, which was still by her chair.

  “My mum brought way too much stuff.”

  “Well, she has been coming here every day,” said Petra.

  “Every day?”

  “You look surprised, but I don’t see why. You are lucky, David Utherwise,” Petra said, and perhaps because these words were more revealing than she’d intended, she gave him a brief flash of her mischievous smile. David smiled back, but he couldn’t quite meet her eyes.

  “Petra, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then say nothing.”

  “But I could have stopped him, I could have hit Adam harder, got him away from you.”

  “You did all you could. Even now you don’t give yourself enough credit for what you have done. You won, David: You defeated your Goliath. I believed in you all along, and I was right to, wasn’t I?”

  “But you’ve lost … so much,” said David, wishing he could think of something better to say.

  Petra gave him a stern look.

  “Not as much as Carlo or Siri or some of the others.”

  “What will you do now?” David asked eventually. “Leave Unsleep House?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. I have some money, and the Project look after their ex-dreamwalkers very well. I might travel. I mean really travel — taking my body with me this time. Perhaps I will even try sunbathing. I’m not sure what I have to stay for, and I don’t miss dreamwalking as much as I thought I would.”

  “But you do miss it.”

  Petra looked at him.

  “I have been offered a job. On the linguistics team at Unsleep House. They always need language teachers. So, I have the chance to stay, and maybe I will. At least for a while. But I’m still deciding …” Petra let the sentence trail off. “They’ll ask you, you know. You are still dreamwalker number five until you tell them otherwise. You are going to have some decisions to make soon.”

  “I can really say no?”

  “Yes, you can,” she said, watching him closely. “You have a home to go to, remember
? If it helps, I hear they’re planning to make some changes after what has happened, to go back a bit to how things were in your grandfather’s time.”

  “A few more windows would be nice,” said David, “and I think Roman needs to go on a long, relaxing holiday. Perhaps he could go with you.”

  Petra made a face but laughed.

  The door opened, and the professor put his head around.

  “Sorry, Petra, but we ought to go. The helicopter’s ready. Good-bye, David — get well. We’ll speak again very soon.”

  Petra nodded and made to follow the professor out. At the door she turned back to David and gave a small wave.

  David felt the urgent need to say something to her, but he just couldn’t think what. His ears were hot. He blurted something out.

  “I’d like to see you again soon.”

  “Ha!” said Petra, looking down her nose. “In your dreams!”

  David was crushed and embarrassed, but then he saw the mischievous look again.

  “I meant that,” she said with a smile. Then she put her glasses back on and stepped through the door.

  David stood in the shadows, silent as death. His dreamself was so far back in a corner it was partway into the wall, but his head was still in the room. He could see what was happening. He could hear what was being said.

  The King of the Haunting looked even older than he had expected, his body frail and ruined. Only his bald head and right arm moved as he manipulated a joystick on the armrest of his gleaming electric wheelchair. With a whirr, he rolled across the tiled floor toward a nervous young man with a goatee who sat at a bank of portable computer equipment in the center of the vast space. Far above, the roof was glass and steel, letting in the last of a winter sun. But the structure of the building was much older than the modern fixtures it now contained. This was a twenty-first-century office in the shell of a Victorian theater.

  On a gurney in the center of the room lay the body of an eighteen-year-old boy. There were electrodes attached to his temples. David couldn’t stop staring at him. He had short black hair and a handsome profile, but he was still — stiller even than David.

  Adam Lang.

  Beside him wheezed the artificial lung of a life-support machine.

  The old man stopped his chair.

  “Any improvement?”

  Goatee Man tugged at his beard as he shook his head.

  “Nope, nothing but flat lines on the EEG — no higher brain function at all. It could be years before he recovers. If ever.”

  “He’ll be no good to me by then,” said the old man, looking at a watch on his good arm. “Just like he’s no good to me now.”

  “Sir …” Goatee Man fidgeted in his seat. “… I still don’t get it. Why have we brought him here? It’s not safe for you. And here, of all places!”

  “I told you, I have an appointment. Any moment now, if I’m not mistaken. Until then, we wait.”

  “It’s just that … sir, I’m picking something up.”

  “So? That’s what you’re paid to do.”

  “Yes, but it’s centering on this very spot, getting clearer by the second.” Goatee Man’s eyes were darting over the screens in front of him. “A knot in the Psychic Field. Sir, I think there could be someone dreamwalking in the area.”

  “Oh, there’s someone dreamwalking in the area all right,” said the old man. “There has been for about three minutes. I’m just waiting for him to stop messing about and show himself, that’s all.”

  Then, before David could react, he whirred his chair around.

  “Isn’t that right, David Utherwise?”

  David waited for a long time while the old man’s eyes played over him in the gloom. He wasn’t sure why he’d come, or exactly what he’d wanted to say — he probably shouldn’t have come at all — but now that he’d been seen, it would be cowardly to just turn and flee. He stepped out of the dark.

  Goatee Man jumped when he saw him, his hand darting to a telephone handset, but the old man stopped him.

  “Relax. He’s not here … officially. Are you, David?”

  David said nothing.

  “Well now, how are you feeling?” The old man’s face broke into a leering smile that was probably supposed to be friendly. “You’re certainly in better shape than poor Adam here. Hospital food not too bad, I hope? I’m sure they’ll let you go soon.”

  “I know who you are.” David tried to keep his voice steady and strong.

  “ ’Course you do. You wouldn’t be here otherwise, would you … Utherwise?” And the old man chuckled at his own joke, croaking like a kettle full of frogs.

  “I came here …” David said, “… I came here to tell you to keep away from us, from my family —”

  “Nah, you didn’t,” the old man interrupted. “You came here because you couldn’t keep away from me, because you’re curious. Like all my best boys and girls. And that’s why I waited so patiently to see you.”

  “You knew I’d come?”

  “ ’Course! Smart kid like you. Take after your grandpa, don’t yer?”

  “Leave Eddie alone! I came here to tell you to keep away from my family. They call you the King of the Haunting, but I know who you really are. I worked it out.”

  “Yeah, you said. But let’s skip to the end, eh? You’re here ’cause you got questions. So ask away.”

  David moved from one foot to another, keeping his dreamself in clear view but out of the light. It was already a habit.

  “Why?” he said eventually. He couldn’t believe he was getting into a conversation, but the old man was quite right — he did have questions. “Why go for Eddie at all? What did he do to make you hate him so much?”

  “Philippa,” replied the old man immediately. He stared at David with a look of cold, lizardlike intensity before continuing. “Your little sis. Oh, yeah, I know all about Philippa. And your mum, and even your school friends, such as they are. But it’s little Philippa I want you to think about now. Got a clear image of ‘Phizzy’ in your mind? Good. Now imagine me strangling the life out of her!”

  The old man raised his livid right hand and made a crushing motion in the air. David’s fists bunched instinctively, and he stepped forward, but the old man’s ugly croak stopped him.

  “There! Answered your own question, din’t yer. You’d kill me if I hurt your sister, wouldn’t you? Or you’d try. Well, your Eddie as good as killed mine. It’s as simple as that.”

  “He didn’t! It wasn’t his fault! She wasn’t going to survive the war anyway — the professor said so. You can’t blame Eddie, Tomkin.”

  “Don’t call me that!” the old man spat back. “Little Tom! I haven’t been Tomkin for years. It’s Thomas King now, as it always was. Kat’s the only one who can use my nickname. Only she can’t, can she? My little Katkin! She died fetching help for your precious Eddie. And so precious Eddie has to pay.”

  “It was an accident! Just let it go. Eddie’s dead now anyway. Leave his life in peace.”

  Thomas King rolled toward David, stopping just a few paces away. He looked David square in the eye.

  “Yeah. Yeah, he is dead, isn’t he? But you’re still here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When that bomb landed, it did more than take away my sister and my legs, it nearly took my mind as well. After, I could still remember Kat, but it took me years to get the details back. I couldn’t even remember having lived in this theater till Adam found Eddie in it. All I could recall was one thing: the bespectacled face of your granddad leering at my Kat. Disgusting!”

  “He liked her, that’s all. And maybe Kat liked him back. Did you ever think of that?”

  “Shut up! She didn’t like him, she just felt sorry for the little runt. She was so kind …” King’s voice caught in his throat. “… too kind. And look where it left her! See what kindness does? I hate your Eddie more than you could ever understand. He might as well have killed me along with Kat!”

  King’s clawlike hand was
raised again, twisted into a fist. Then it dropped.

  “But I’m tired, David. So tired of it all.”

  In the old man’s face David could see the proof of this clearly enough. Years of anger, bitterness, and the restless thirst for revenge had left Thomas King with the pinched face of a gargoyle. And a heart of stone to match.

  “And you’re right.” King narrowed his eyes with a crafty grin. “I am still here, aren’t I? While Eddie’s all dead and rotted to worm food, I outlived him. Stole his discoveries and survived him. So maybe, I’m saying to myself, maybe this last failure is what you might call a sign. If even turning the great Adam Lang against Eddie can’t get rid of the little bleeder, maybe it’s time for me to think again. Look at things another way, p’raps. What do you think, David?”

  “I think you’re mad.”

  “You might be right.” King chuckled. “Yeah, I think you might be. But the thing is, David, old son, tired though I am, mad though I may be, blocked though I always find myself when I go after your lousy, stinkin’ ancestor, one fact remains: Your Eddie owes me. No matter how you cut it, he owes me a sister, and he owes me for a lifetime of misery. That’s a lot to owe a chap, I hope you’ll agree, David.”

  “I’ve said all I’ve got to say to you.” David began to edge away. It was time to leave. Why had he even stayed this long? But as he turned, he saw that somehow, while the old man had kept him talking, figures had slipped into the room. In the shadows around the wide space one, two, three … no … six haunters had entered, silent as the ghosts they were. Six! David knew then that he’d walked into a trap. He was surrounded.

  “Ah, you’ve seen my boys and girls at last.” Thomas King wheezed with glee. “Good. Now maybe you’ll listen. Your granddaddy owes me, David Utherwise, but I meant what I said — I’m ready to move on. Your granddaddy owes me, but I’m going to give you the chance to pay.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah.” Thomas King settled back a little into his chair, his body sounding like gristle. He grinned at David. Then, with a new burst of whirring, he directed his chair back to Adam’s mindless body.

  “As you know, David, I run a special little organization, an organization that does wonderful things and that pays spectacularly well. An organization that employs people like you. And as you also know, I have a vacancy.”