On impulse, I looked up the name of the teacher whose scrapbook the librarian had let me read. If I could track her down, she might be able to tell me something about the fire and the other kids involved. There were five Heathcotes in the phonebook. Three residential addresses and two business. I tried the first of the house numbers.
A kid answered, ‘Yeah?’
‘Could I speak to your mother or father?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, then he sang ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and hung up.
The second number was engaged and on the third, a girl answered.
‘Heathcote residence?’ She was pretending she lived in a mansion with a maid. I grinned and explained what I was after. ‘You got the wrong number,’ she said importantly. ‘That lady lives in Ercildoune. We’ve had calls for her before.’
I nearly dropped the phone. Controlling my excitement, I asked if she knew Irma Heathcote’s number.
It was the same as one of the business numbers I had written down: Heathcote Printery. When I dialled, it rang for a long time before someone picked up the receiver.
‘Irma Heathcote speaking?’ said an elderly woman.
My mouth felt dry. Swallowing, I apologised for calling so late and told her about the history project and the scrapbook.
She laughed. ‘Oh my goodness. How on earth did it get back to the school? That was my very first school, you know. I was a student teacher doing my first rounds.’ She laughed again reminiscently.
‘Do you think I could come and talk to you? I could bring the scrapbook.’ I crossed my fingers because I was unsure if the librarian would let me have it.
There was a pause. ‘I don’t see why not, young man. Though I’m not sure how much I can help you. When would you like to come?’
I thought fast. ‘Would Sunday be possible?’
‘This Sunday?’ She sounded startled.
‘If it’s possible.’
Another pause. ‘Well, I go to church, but if you came in the afternoon …’
‘That’d be great.’ I took down the address, thanked her and rang off feeling triumphant. My head started to hurt again, but I decided to try the second Sikorsky number. I was trying to imagine the sort of person who would write a soppy love poem when a man with a voice like gravel answered. ‘Yeah?’
Startled, I asked if Zebediah Sikorsky were there.
‘Who wants to know?’ He sounded middle-aged and rough. I told him my name and about the school project.
There was an odd pause. ‘Zebediah Sikorsky was my brother. He is dead,’ the man said gruffly, then he hung up
I stared at the phone with an awful feeling, though common sense had told me some of the kids in that photograph must be dead. The phone rang and I jumped about a foot in the air. When I picked up the receiver my hand was shaking.
‘Hello?’
Silence and a faint echo of static. I thought I could hear the sound of someone breathing. I hung up.
The phone rang again. I let it ring out, then I dialled the police.
‘D 24. Police, can I help you?’
I slammed the phone down and then took it off the hook before going to bed. I felt lousy, but I couldn’t sleep. One minute I would think about Anna Galway and wish I had asked her the name of the boy. The next minute I would be worrying about what the phone calls meant and wondering how much Mr Karle knew.
Calling the police had been instinctive, but then I remembered Danny’s story about the police.
My mother was gone by ten the next day, having rung the school to tell them I wouldn’t be in. She had even made me a packed lunch so I wouldn’t have to get up. Stifling guilt pangs, I gave her half an hour, then leapt out of bed and dressed. My head ached, but not badly.
I was supposed to be at the beach by eleven, according to the note. I stuffed the packed lunch and an orange in the backpack with a handful of dog biscuits and a bottle of water. Then I loaded The Tod in the bike basket and pedalled off, hoping she wouldn’t turn back having forgotten something. If she discovered me missing, it would be the end of glasnost. The Tod curled up right away and went to sleep.
It was a cold, grey day out, and looked like rain again. I had rugged up but taken a towel and bathers just in case the afternoon cleared. Once I was out on the highway, I pedalled fast, revelling in the wind on my face.
All along the beach side of the road were factories. They were operating, but they looked old and derelict. Further down, the factories gave way to fields of long, spiky salt grasses and white-rimmed salt pans. They were a murky pink colour, which meant that chemicals had been added. Right at the edge of the salt pans was a yard where snowy mounds of salt were piled.
A factory klaxon rang to signal a tea break. The noise woke The Tod and he hung over the edge of the basket and barked. I don’t know what he thought the noise was. Maybe some big kind of bird that lives out there in the wetlands. He liked chasing birds.
By now, I could see the ocean out beyond the salt pans. Suddenly the highway curved down towards the sea and I was cycling right along the edge of the land. The road surface was about half a metre above sea level. Grey green saltbushes and what looked like blackberry runners bordered the dark blue water, a choppy white froth riding the wave crests and blowing back on itself. I stared out at the sea and rode more slowly, savouring the salty tang of the air. The water seemed to go on forever, and the clouds were radiant at the edges where they were thinner and the sun shone through.
At last, I came to the Lost Dog’s home which my map told me marked the turnoff to Shelly Beach.
You could hear some of the dogs barking, calling out for their owners to come and get them away from there. The Tod listened and then he started shivering and hunched right down in the basket.
I hated going to those places because I always wanted to take all the dogs home or let them go free, even though I knew most of them would go straight out and be hit by a car or starve to death. I sometimes wished I could have a place where I could take those dogs and let them live. The Phantom had this sanctuary called Eden and all the animals there lived together, even tigers and baby deer, because they’d never learned it’s kill or be killed. The meateaters ate fish out of the lagoon and the island was protected by the Bandar poison pygmies and by the piranha fish in the lagoon. I would have liked there to be such a place for pets who had been dumped or abandoned. They could feed the owners to the piranha.
I was so busy thinking of how I would organise my Eden that I didn’t see someone running out of the gate towards me. When the sound of footsteps pounding towards me penetrated, I cornered too fast, skidding in the gravel before I was back on the tar and riding as fast as I could.
‘Nathanial! Stop!’
I screeched to a halt, recognising Indian’s voice. He came running up, panting hard, red spots of colour in his cheeks. He was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a faded pink T-shirt, and his hair was hanging loose over his shoulders.
‘Hey, Conan. You scared the hell out of me,’ I laughed.
He didn’t laugh back. ‘The note was a fake.’
I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. ‘What?’
He nodded, still sucking in air. ‘I called around to Danny’s place this morning and he asked me why I hadn’t left him a note.’
‘But how could it be fake? Nissa might have left it.’
He shook his head and looked up the road. ‘Then why wouldn’t I have got one? And Danny? Besides I asked her.’
‘But… it was signed The Chain.’
Indian gave me a bleak stare. ‘Danny said. And that means there’s only one person who could have left it.’
‘The Kraken?’
He motioned for me to get off the bike, lifted The Tod out of the basket and dragged it over behind a clump of bushes and threw some leaves on it. ‘Nissa reckons it’s to flush you out. If they get you they’ll make you tell about the rest of us.’
I groaned and picked the dog up. ‘My mother rang the school to say I was sick!
’
‘Don’t worry about that now. If Nissa’s right, someone should be coming along to catch you red-handed any time now. Lucky you were early. I only just made it. If you’d gone down to the point there would have been no way back. They’d have had you.’
We heard a car in the distance and dived into the bushes. I closed thumb and forefinger round The Tod’s little muzzle, ignoring his disgusted look.
A minute later a police car pulled around the corner and sped off down the beach road.
‘What a surprise,’ Indian whispered. I felt too sick to joke. If it hadn’t been for Danny and Indian, I would have walked right into the trap.
‘We’ll wait until they go, then we’ll cross the paddocks. The others are meeting us at Moonlight Head.’ He smiled at my puzzled look. ‘We figured since the Kraken was so good as to set a meeting up for us, we might as well take advantage of it.’
‘But, if we’re all away from school today it’ll be obvious who we are.’
Indian’s grin broadened. ‘Danny rang the police anonymously and said there were three bombs hidden in the school. The whole place will be in an uproar for hours. There’s no way they’ll be able to say for sure who was or wasn’t there.’
It was almost an hour before the patrol car roared back past us and back round the corner, sending up an irritated spume of gravel.
When it had disappeared Indian stood up and stretched luxuriantly. The Tod did the same and we both laughed. Moments later we were running across the overgrown paddock towards a dark plantation of pines, The Tod bounding along behind us like a mutated rabbit.
At the fence line, Indian held the barbed wire up while I got through, and I did the same for him. The Tod scooted underneath, his ears pricked up with excitement.
We had to walk bent over to get under the pine branches, because the trees were so close together. There was a heavy silence in the deadness under them and it was unexpectedly dark, the smell of pine-needle sap almost overpowering.
We came out of the trees to a view that took my breath away. A steep rocky hill sloping down to a short, white curve of beach.
‘Moonlight Head,’ Indian announced, smiling at my reaction.
A sharp wind blew the smell of the waves into our faces as we clambered down the rocks to the beach. The waves unrolled on to the shore with a silky whisper and the clouds parted to bathe the beach in golden autumn sunlight.
‘Unbelievable,’ I murmured.
Indian gave me a meaningful look. ‘It feels like we’ve come out of a dark cave, doesn’t it. The road back there is the border of Cheshunt.’
It might have been my imagination, but it did seem as though a great weight had lifted off my shoulders now we had officially left Cheshunt. By the time we reached the sand, the waves crashing against the shore sounded deafeningly loud, as if they were a tidal wave building up steam.
‘It’s funny how people are about noises,’ Indian mused. ‘If that noise was a factory people would complain it was too loud, but because it’s the sea we just think how great it is.’
The Tod raced around in frenzied circles of delight, sticking his little snout in every hole or indentation. When he looked up at me I burst out laughing because his nose and face were caked with sand. His black eyes stared at me out of the sand mask as if to ask what was taking me so long, then he raced off again.
‘Hey!’
I jumped around and saw Danny waving madly from the far end of the beach. The Tod streaked off towards him, and we followed at a slower pace.
Danny punched me lightly in the arm. ‘You made it.’
‘Thanks to you and Indian,’ I said seriously.
He grinned. ‘Lucky I walked you home last night. So what happened?’
‘Wait,’ Indian said.
Ten minutes later we came around a clump of seabrush and the rest of them were sitting on towels in a sheltered part of the beach.
‘This is a good spot,’ Danny enthused. ‘The wind isn’t too strong. Less sand in your sandwiches. And best of all, you can’t be seen from above.’
Seth was wearing faded jeans and a bulky handknitted cream jumper, one hand wrapped loosely round the neck of a bottle of coke. He looked like an advertisement for something and so perfect he was not quite real. I wondered what was going on in his mind. There was a distant look in his eyes. His body was there but his head was somewhere else.
Nissa was in her usual ragged jeans and huge jumper, and she looked at us expectantly. Indian told them economically about the police car.
‘Police,’ Danny snarled. Seth said nothing.
‘How’s Lallie?’ I asked Nissa.
She gave me an intense stare, squinting against the glare of the sun. ‘She came to see me last night. She was still pretty bad. She said now the symbols were forged the Kraken would use all of his power to find us.’ She gave me a shrewd look. ‘Maybe he already knows.’
I felt defensive but I kept my mouth shut because I was beginning to realise that just because Nissa had an aggressive, direct way of saying things, it didn’t mean she was blaming me.
‘Did she say what we do now?’ Danny asked eagerly.
‘She was… vague,’ Nissa said slowly. ‘Worse than before. She said Cheshunt is making her sick. But she did tell me some things about the healing. First we have to find the right spot to do the ritual. The place where it all started.’
‘How?’
‘She said the eye that sees will know the earth that sorrows. That must mean Seth will figure that out somehow using his telescope.’ She frowned in her effort to remember the rest. ‘The sword has to open the wound. That’s me, but I don’t understand what it means.’
‘It must mean you have to fight. Cut someone,’ Danny broke in impatiently.
‘No. I’d better tell you the exact words. The farseeing eye has to find the earth that sorrows. The sword must open the wounded earth to release the poisons. The torch must sear the earth to close the wound. And… the bowl has to gather the cleansed earth and carry it to the sacred place for the healing to be complete.’
‘Here,’ Indian murmured. ‘I have to bring it here.’
Nissa nodded.
‘What about Nathanial?’ Danny prompted. ‘What about the circle?’
‘She said something about the circle suffering no obstacle to the forging. It didn’t really make sense because she was sort of drifting. I wanted to take her home but she wouldn’t let me. I don’t think she wants us to know where she lives.’
‘Did she say anything about how we’re supposed to deal with the Kraken?’
‘She said he’ll try to break the Chain so that we can’t bind the darkness.’
Danny gave me a meaningful look. ‘You see, we are meant to fight him.’
‘Fight him how?’ I asked blankly.
‘With the symbols, of course. That has to be it,’ Danny said eagerly. ‘Lallie will show us.’
Nissa bit her lip and something in her expression made the saliva in my mouth dry out.
‘I’m afraid not, Danny-O. The last thing Lallie told me was that it was up to us now. She can’t help us any more. She can’t interfere.’
18
‘What do you mean she can’t interfere? She’s the reason we’re here!’ Danny said angrily.
‘No,’ Indian corrected gently. ‘We’re the reason Lallie’s here. Remember she said she came because we answered the Call.’
Danny snorted derisively. ‘That’s just words. She brought us together and said we have to fight him and now she’s deserting us.’
‘Not deserting …’ Nissa began.
Danny jumped to his feet, scattering sand. ‘If she’s pulled out, what’s the point in going on? All that stuff about healing – we don’t even know what it means. What is the earth that sorrows?’
‘Maybe this is some kind of test,’ I said.
He looked down at me searchingly, the wind ruffling his wheaten hair. I felt Nissa staring at me, but I held Danny’s eyes. ‘It’s like we h
ave to figure out the clues.’
‘She said he’s going to come after us. How are we supposed to defend ourselves? We’ve done nothing but run and hide from him and I’m sick of it.’
‘We have to be careful,’ Nissa said.
‘He’s the one who’d better be careful,’ Danny said savagely. Then he thumped the sand. ‘If only she’d told us how to use the symbols against him.’
‘Maybe they are just symbols,’ Seth said softly.
It was the first thing he had said, and because the wind was blowing towards me, I suddenly understood why he hadn’t offered the coke to anyone else. It was whisky or rum or some other strong alcohol and perfect Seth Paul was high as a kite.
Nissa’s hand snaked out and she knocked the bottle to the ground. Seth stared at her stupidly as whatever was in the bottle glugged out. Then he reached for it, but she kicked it out of the way.
‘Weak shit,’ Danny said in disgust.
‘You promised,’ Nissa said icily.
‘I couldn’t help it.’ His bleary eyes turned to me and I felt a mixture of embarrassment and pity and looked away.
Danny ignored him pointedly, turning to Nissa. ‘You’ve got the sword and that’s a weapon.’
Seth sat up clumsily. ‘The sword is to cut the… the earth for the healing.’
‘A sword is a weapon,’ Danny snapped.
‘She can’t fight the Kraken on her own. Lallie didn’t say that,’ Seth slurred.
Danny laughed mockingly. ‘Are you offering to help her? You couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag.’
‘Just shut up, Seth,’ Nissa said disgustedly. ‘You’re drunk.’
He flushed. ‘I just meant maybe we’re not supposed to use the symbols that way,’ he mumbled.
I felt a stab of pity for him and wondered how I had ever thought he was perfect. But, drunk or not, he was one of us and there had to be a reason for it. I thought of Lallie’s warning to him. She had told him to seek his own vision.
My own warning had been a cryptic command to understand the past. The only thing I could think it meant was that I should try to figure out what the ancient evil was that had bruised Cheshunt.
The Gathering Page 13