“Think it came from down here,” yelled Josh, disappearing down a flight of steps that led to the harbour. Ava followed, Chloe too, and then Bella.
“Hang on!” In the dark Aiden struggled to keep up and a second later he tripped into a stack of lobster pots that had been left on the side of the steps.
“Ow!” He sat down and rubbed his ankle, peering into the gloom ahead. He could just about make out the darker silhouettes of the others but he always struggled in the dark because of his spectacles. A moment later Bella raced back towards him, but she didn’t stop. She shot down another alleyway off to the side.
“Bella – come here!” He listened for her claws on the cobbles but now all he could hear was the sea.
Wobbling to his feet, he limped a little closer to the harbourside. The orange of the burning post office reflected in the water and for a moment he thought how lovely it looked.
Crash!
It was that breaking glass again. And this time it was much closer.
“Help!” It was a feeble cry, but it came from his left. Bella appeared from the same direction, barked at him, and ran back into complete darkness.
Aiden swung around. He wished he could see better at night. Bella could obviously see exactly what was going on, but he peered, trying to make sense of the dark shapes in front of him. Two very black things flanked the alleyway. They must be the tall fish warehouses, but between them was a less black thing. A gap that led into a space that he’d never noticed before. A courtyard. It didn’t seem to have any electric lighting, but the cobbles shone from the glow of a small window. A small orange window of flames.
Fire? Again?
Aiden ran towards it. The crashing noise must have been the panes of glass exploding outwards because something crunched under his feet. He could feel the heat.
“Help!” The call was louder.
“Where are you?” he shouted into the dark.
Bella growled and barked and ran in circles.
“Up here!”
He couldn’t see it at first, but there, above and to the side, was another window. Aiden was unsure if it was open or closed, and he couldn’t work out if the smudge he could see was a face or arms or what, but he knew it was too high to jump from, the cobbles too hard to fall on. He looked back at the ground floor. There was a door by the flaming window. The wood surround was already starting to burn. And inside, flames were licking around what he took to be the staircase. There was no way anyone was going to get out downstairs.
“Hang on!” he shouted, frantically feeling his way around the bottoms of the walls in case there was a ladder or anything that would help. All he found were some giant hooks at shoulder height that must have been used to dry nets sometime in ancient history. Nothing else. Nothing helpful. Briefly he thought of running for the fire engine. But there was no way he’d get up there and make himself understood, nor was there any way the fire engine would be able to get down here.
“We’re going to have to jump!” came the voice, and then a child crying.
“NO – don’t. Wait!” Aiden had a thought. “Wait a second!”
Turning and running from the alley, he swung to his right. Yes! Here were the lobster pots he’d fallen over, loads of them, and nets. He grabbed three, dropped one because they were so heavy, then dragged them down the steps and along the alley and dumped them under the window, Bella at his side.
“I’m getting some stuff for you to land on!” he shouted, running back for more. “But don’t jump yet.”
“What?” shouted another voice. “What have you got?”
“Lobster pots, wicker ones!” he shouted back.
“Be quick!” yelled the voice.
“I will. Ava! Josh! Chloe!” Aiden called into the dark while running back to the pile of lobster pots. Bella ran to the top of the steps and began to bark into the dark. “Bella, that’s just not helpful,” he muttered, loading himself with three more wicker cages and a net. He was scuttling back down the alley with them when Ava appeared out of the dark. “Quick! Lobster pots, nets on the steps, drag them down – people…” He pointed breathlessly at the dark window above the flames.
Ava didn’t even speak, but vanished, and a moment later, just as Aiden was trying to arrange the pots in the dark, she reappeared with Josh and Chloe and the remainder of the stuff.
“Will this work?” asked Ava, hurriedly stacking the cages on top of each other so that they covered the bottom of the courtyard. Sparks shot out of the broken window, but luckily the lobster pots were too wet to catch fire. They’d made a floor of the lobster pots. It wasn’t soft, but it was a lot softer than cobbles. Aiden just hoped it would stop anyone breaking anything.
“I think they should jump,” said Chloe. “Look!”
Aiden looked up. Flames had now appeared in another upstairs window, and a second later the glass blew out.
“How many of you are there?” shouted Ava.
“Four. And a cat!” shouted the voice.
“The baskets’ll crush,” muttered Aiden. “We need something more to break their fall.” And then he had another thought. He remembered the hooks he’d found earlier. They were all the way around the courtyard. If they could just catch the side of one of the big nets on the hooks, they could make a kind of trampoline.
“What are you doing?” said Ava, her face now quite clear in the firelight.
“We gotta jump!” shouted the first voice.
“Wait!” yelled Aiden. “Hooks,” he said. “The hooks in the walls!”
Catching on, Josh and Ava scrambled over the nets and managed to attach two sides of a net, while Aiden hooked the third side under the window. The fourth flopped over the lobster pots beneath it.
“We’re jumping!” shouted the voice.
Aiden ran for the loose side of the net.
“Aaaaah!” came a shout and someone or something bounced on to the net. Aiden was jerked forward, his fingers stinging from clinging so tight, but he pulled back on the net again, joined by Ava, Josh and Chloe and then by whoever it was that had jumped. Somebody in their pyjamas.
“Jump, Tom!” yelled the small person standing next to him, and there was another jolt as someone fell into the net. That person scrambled to the side and something small and black and squealing fell from the window.
“Mr Tibbs!” shouted one of the rescued children, and the black thing scratched its way to the side of the net and shot past Aiden’s legs, closely followed by Bella.
“Mum!” shouted one of the children.
This time, they were all yanked forward and Aiden cracked heads with Ava, but the woman scrambled to the side of the net, got to her feet and grabbed at the net to steady it.
“David!” she shouted, and the last person leaped.
The net tore and for a moment Aiden wondered if he’d lost one of his fingers, but the man bounced to his feet, running away from the building, grabbing for his children.
“Run, run,” he shouted, pushing Aiden in front of him. “Run!”
And Aiden ran, shoving Josh through the gap that led to the steps.
As he turned the corner, the front of the building blew out.
“Boy,” said the dad.
“Not joking,” said the mum, hugging her daughter. “We’re so grateful,” she said, giving Aiden a hug. “Just think. You are an absolute hero!”
Aiden flushed deep red. “What about the cat?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Oh no! Mr Tibbs – he did jump, didn’t he?” asked the mum.
“Yes.” Chloe looked down at Bella. The last time anyone had seen Mr Tibbs was when Bella shot out of the alley, chasing him. She didn’t look a bit guilty and was much more interested in sniffing at the firemen’s legs. “But I’m afraid I didn’t see where he went next.”
“Stand back please!” shouted one of the firefighters as hot masonry crumbled into the street.
“Let’s get out of the way,” said Ava, clambering up the steps past the remains of the
lobster pots.
The little boy began to cry. “Mr Tibbs, where’s Mr Tibbs?”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” said the dad, following Ava. “The main thing is that we’re fine, and we know Mr Tibbs jumped clear. I bet someone’ll find him.”
“Do you know what started the fire?” Chloe asked, dragging Bella away from whatever was on the fireman’s boot that she found so interesting.
“It wasn’t anything that I can think of,” said the mum.
“Pretty sure we put the kettle on once or twice but we made tea, so it must have switched off or we’d have noticed. Were you playing on your computer game thingy, Tom?”
“Not when the fire happened. It was downstairs,” said the boy. “I’m tired, Mum – where are we gonna sleep?”
“So’m I,” whined the girl.
A policeman arrived, sweeping the family ahead of him towards the hotel at the bottom of the hill.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Aiden, rounding the corner and heading up the hill towards the glowing embers of the post-office roof.
“Two fires in one evening,” said Chloe. “Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?”
“Very,” said Aiden.
“I wonder…” said Chloe. “I wonder if we could talk to the people in the post office?”
“Well, they won’t be there any more, will they?” said Ava, pointing at the ruins.
“Stinks,” said Josh.
And it did. Burned wet straw – like fish, Chloe thought. Smoked fish. And Ava was right. There were only police and firefighters around. The actual post-office residents had disappeared.
“There you are!” It was Grandpa, followed shortly after by Grandma Primrose, who stared at the remains of the post office in horror.
“Oh my word!” she said. “We heard the fire engines – no idea it would be as bad as this.”
“You should see the house down the road!” said Josh. “We saved a whole family.”
“Including their cat,” said Chloe.
“Well, Aiden did,” said Ava. “It was Aiden who rescued them, really – we just helped a bit.”
In the dark, Chloe couldn’t see the colour of Aiden’s face, but she was pretty sure it was bright red.
The smell of the fire followed them all the way back to Clifftoppers, and all the way back they talked of Mr Tibbs but never spotted him. Ava charged up the stairs to have the first shower and it took ages to get Josh out of his, so Chloe was absolutely ravenous by the time they’d all changed into pyjamas and Grandpa said it was time to eat.
“Sit up!” announced Grandpa, taking a plum crumble out of the oven.
Grandma looked slightly anxious.
“What is it, dear?” asked Grandpa, rustling in the freezer in search of ice cream.
“I think,” said Grandma. “I think we had better be quiet about this evening. Chloe’s mum might have a fit if she heard what you children did.”
“We just helped some people escape,” said Josh.
“We witnessed the fire,” said Ava.
“Saved a cat?” suggested Aiden.
Chloe imagined her mother’s reaction to any of that. “Perhaps we should say nothing?”
“Good idea,” said Grandma, smiling. “Now, who wants crumble?”
“There is an upside,” said Ava to Chloe, as they lay in bed later that night.
“Oh?” said Chloe, thinking of the devastated post office, the homeless family, the cat.
“Josh seems to have forgotten all about the stupid headset thingy.”
“He has, hasn’t he?” Chloe thought back through the evening. Working through everything that had happened, everything she’d learned. “Thing is,” she said. “I think they’re definitely connected.”
“What?” said Ava. “The barrels and the fire?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Chloe. “No – the two fires this evening. The post office and the one with the family.”
Ava lay silent for a while. “I suppose it’s quite a coincidence.”
“There’s that, and…”
“What?”
“The mum asked the boy if he’d been playing his computer game.”
Chloe heard Ava turn over and knew that she was now facing her across the bedroom. “Yes, and?”
“Well, maybe she meant VR.”
Again, there was a long silence. “Ye-es, maybe.”
“And at the fire in the flat above the post office, we saw that woman passing a kid out of the window. So there’s a chance that kid had a VR headset too.”
“Mm-hmm…”
“You don’t think I’m right?”
“I dunno,” said Ava. “I really don’t.”
“I just feel that there’s something…”
There was a long pause.
“Let’s talk about it in the morning.”
Josh was out of bed before the others. He was waiting at the breakfast table when Chloe came down, he had his shoes on before Grandpa Edward had delivered the first hash brown, and he had eaten every scrap of his breakfast before Ava had even started hers. Aiden had convinced him that he needed to get a good look at one of the headsets before he even thought about buying one, but that didn’t stop him imagining what it would be like to wear one.
He’d be inside a world; it would be all around his head. He wouldn’t just move his hand; he’d move his whole arm. His whole body. He’d always wanted one. Well, he’d wanted one for nearly a month. And since he’d sat on his Nintendo yesterday on the train, he’d say he actually needed one.
“Can we go down to the harbour now?” he asked, his tongue practically hanging out.
“Wait, Josh,” said his sister. “Let me at least have some toast.”
“And I’d be very grateful if you could get that wood I collected yesterday down to the bonfire today,” said Grandpa Edward, pausing mid-egg flip. “I think if you do it together you can drag it all down in one go and give it to Jake.” He stopped and looked up. “You are all still happy about the bonfire, aren’t you?”
“I’d be happier if I could carry a barrel,” mumbled Josh.
“Yeah, totally,” said Ava. “Looking forward to it. Especially the barrel bit.”
“It’s so much fun carrying a barrel,” said Grandma. “Did it two or three times, didn’t I, Edward?”
“A veritable champion,” smiled Grandpa Edward, kissing the top of Grandma’s head.
With some satisfaction, Josh noticed that neither of them actually said anything about Ava carrying a barrel.
Grandma wiped a blob of marmalade from her chin. “Anyway, Grandpa’s made you a small picnic. Egg sandwiches for you, Chloe, ham for the rest of you,” she said, handing Aiden a bag.
Grandpa reached into his back pocket for his wallet and took out a twenty-pound note. “Here’s some money for pasties. You might need them, the picnic’s only emergency rations. The café’s open all day.”
Josh waited in a state close to agony for everyone to decide what they were going to wear, for Grandpa to give them all gloves for dragging the wood, for Ava to change her coat twice and end up wearing the same one she’d started with.
“Ava!” he said.
“Yes, Josh? What?”
Eventually they left the farmyard, ropes fastened around a pallet that Grandpa was donating to the bonfire and, balanced on top, a broken chair, a one-legged table, a woodwormed milking stool, three rotting apple crates, half a cot and about a million old baskets. Josh walked in front, warning cars that they were coming. Ava and Aiden did the first shift of dragging, sometimes with the ropes over their shoulders, sometimes just tugging at it. Chloe walked at the back, picking up the things that fell off. Which was plenty.
Then they all swapped, and Josh tried to speed things up, except Chloe got cross with him for going too fast and they got uneven and half the things fell off and Bella ran away with the end of the cot, and then Ava got cross and the sun came out and they all got hot, but eventually, they made it to the harbour.
“No!” said Ava as Josh dropped the rope.
“What?” said Josh, looking around at the others.
“No – you can’t go sneaking off and leave us to get this to the beach,” said his sister with something that Josh felt was very nearly smugness.
“I just—”
“Ava’s right,” said Aiden. “If you want to see the man with the VR headsets then he’ll still be there in ten minutes. Come on, help us.”
“Come on, Josh,” said Chloe.
Rather than call his sister names, a long string of names that she would probably report back to Grandma, or, even worse, Mum, he let out a long breath and kicked the pallet hard. Kicking the pallet tipped it slightly, setting in motion a slow avalanche of crates and baskets. This was why they finally arrived at the bonfire site twenty minutes later than they had originally intended, and why Josh only reached the market as Jasmine, the girl he’d seen arguing with her mum on the beach the day before, was leaving with a box clutched to her chest and an enormous grin.
“Thank you, Mum,” she said. “Race you back to the chalet.” She saw Josh and frowned, clutching her VR set close to her chest. Then, for no reason at all, she stuck her tongue out at him.
Josh ran past her to find that the man with the headsets was packing up.
“Sold out,” he said.
“What?” said Josh. “But it’s only half past nine! How could you?”
“Came with twenty-five. Sold twenty-five. Sold out, mate. Told you.” The man didn’t even look up.
Josh stood there, his mouth open, trying to understand what the man had just said as he watched him taking his stand down and cramming the table and gazebo into the back of a van.
“But you’ve got some in there – I can see them!” said Josh.
“Nah, mate – those are just boxes. Boxes, see?” He held one up in front of Josh’s face long enough for him to see the Xarca logo, but not long enough for him to actually get his hands on it.
“But are you coming back?” said Josh, following the man back and forth to the van.
The Fire Bay Adventure Page 2