The Gathering

by Isobelle Carmody

  I tried to run but my legs were weak, uncontrolled.

  As the car bore down on me, I saw the man behind the wheel change into my father, his face contorted with fury.

  ‘Children should be seen and not heard!’ he growled.

  I screamed as the car ploughed into me.

  I sat up in the dark, my heart pounding, running to beat the pain barrier. It had been so real. I felt as if I had yelled out loud but there was no noise from my mother’s room. The queer reverberating scream that had ended the dream had been part of it.

  It took me a long time to fall asleep after that. I kept seeing the look on my father’s face before he ran me down. And he had said that same thing about children being seen and not heard as in the other dream. Maybe he had once said that to me, and for some reason my mind had dredged it up. Somewhere far off, I heard a dog barking, but the barking sounded like laughter too.

  The next day, my mother seemed sluggish and distracted, so she didn’t notice how quiet I was.

  ‘I think I’m getting a bug,’ she said in a nasal voice as we climbed into the car. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes seemed blurry.

  ‘Maybe you should stay home.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll get one of the doctors there to take a look at me.’

  Outside the stench was incredible, but she was oblivious to it, and to the heavy metallic gleam of the sky. The cloud cover completely blotted out the sun, casting a bleary light over Cheshunt.

  As we drove past the park, I thought of the dogs that had come from there attracted, Lallie said, by my fear. Last night the park had seemed wilder and darker, but today it looked almost normal. It was weird the way things seemed to change, but maybe that was part of the distorting effect of the darkness.

  My mother pulled into the kerb opposite the school and let me out.

  ‘Come to Elderew for dinner,’ she said. ‘I’ll call the school if I decide to come home. Okay?’

  As she drove away, two girls come out of a house with a clipboard. One of them was from my English class. She slid a sheet of pink paper into her pile and suddenly I thought of the pile of pink papers I had seen on Mr Karle’s desk the day I had been called to his office.

  Without thinking about it, I went over and asked the two girls what the survey was about. The one from class, Marigold, looked frightened and tried to walk around me. The other girl scuttled off as if I were a leper.

  ‘You might as well talk to me,’ I said determinedly. ‘If you don’t, I’ll hang around you so much people will think you’re one of my friends.’

  I was stabbing in the dark, but the colour drained out of her cheeks and she gave me a look filled with dread.

  ‘What do you want?’ she whispered.

  I pointed to her clipboard. ‘What are you doing with those? What is he trying to find out?’

  ‘It’s a survey,’ she whispered, looking around to see who was watching her talk to me. ‘Please. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘What is? Talking to me?’

  She nodded, and my blood ran cold. ‘Then tell me. It’s the fastest way to get rid of me.’

  ‘He gave us a list of all the kids’ addresses at the school. We have to go to all of the houses and get these sheets signed by kids’ parents. They’re surveys about setting up a youth militia in Cheshunt.’

  ‘Marigold!’

  It was one of the school patrol girls. ‘What is going on here?’

  Marigold looked too frightened to speak.

  The older girl glared at me, but her eyes were red and vacant looking, as if she were high on something. ‘Well?’

  ‘I asked her out,’ I said. ‘She told me to go away.’

  Marigold’s eyes flashed with dumb gratitude.

  ‘Then get moving,’ the big girl snarled. Marigold bolted and I sauntered across the road to the school feeling the school patrol girl’s eyes boring into my neck.

  A youth militia. Like Hitler’s Jugend. Something told me this was how Mr Karle planned to spread the darkness once he had disposed of us. The school patrol and the Gathering, set up to control kids, were only part of it. The other side were the gangs he sent out to cause trouble outside Cheshunt. It didn’t make sense that he was creating trouble and fixing it.

  But I was less concerned about that than the fact that the survey was taking in every student. What would happen when they called at Nissa’s address and found she was not living there?

  I would warn her and maybe she could use my address, or say she lived in Ercildoune and use Elderew. Surely the survey wouldn’t go that far.

  But I couldn’t find her or any of the others before the bell rang. It was a weird day. The kids seemed like my mother, sluggish and kind of dopey. And even the teachers acted odd. Every now and then, in the middle of a sentence, they would just stop talking and tilt their heads as if they were listening to something. The whole class would just sit there with blank looks on their faces, until the the teacher picked up where they left off.

  At lunchtime, I saw Buddha and some of his gang way down the end of the oval playing some sort of game. From a distance, they looked like a pack of animals scrapping.

  I spent recess and lunch in the study cubicles right in the back of the library because there, at least, no one could accidentally on purpose try to brain me. Besides, it was probably the one safe place in the school, maybe in all of Cheshunt. It was sacrosanct in a place that harboured evil.

  Then I thought of the caretaker being burned there, and shuddered because, in this game, it was possible there was nowhere safe. No home free.

  I had started to think none of the others were at school when, at lunchtime on my way to the library, I noticed Seth and a bunch of year twelves starting their mural on one of the brick walls of the science block.

  Seth was joking with the others. He sounded carefree and happy and it was hard to believe this was the same Seth that had been drunk and crying on the beach.

  I couldn’t see his symbol anywhere but maybe he had put it in his locker.

  When I came back after the lunch bell, he and the other kids had gone, and I got a good look at the mural design.

  My blood turned to ice because, even barely begun, it showed a garden on a hillside just like the one in my dream. Looking at it made me feel sick and confused.

  The last class was with Mr Dodds, but he just told us to get on with our projects. He didn’t even ask me how the visit to the Examiner had gone. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked at me as if he had trouble seeing.

  After school, I felt a rush of relief at seeing Indian crossing the oval and ran to catch him. I expected him to tell me off for coming up to him like that where anyone could see us, but he only stared at me, his face grim.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I came to get you. It’s Lallie,’ he said.

  I was relieved. ‘I saw her last night.’

  Indian just stared at me, his eyes as cold as chips of ice. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I saw her. She turned up just in time to stop some of those feral dogs getting me …’ I faltered, seeing the look of incredulity on his face.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This morning, Lallie was found in the yard by the security guard …’

  ‘Oh no!’ I whispered, knowing it was my fault.

  25

  The others were waiting in the public library for Indian to bring me back, huddled together within the windy courtyard because the cold meant no one would come out to disturb us.

  The fat librarian had smiled at me as I came in, but I cut him off half way through news of a book I had asked him to order. He looked hurt, but I was too numb to care.

  All I could think about was Lallie saying there would be a price for her intervening to stop the dogs getting me. Was this the price? Her life for mine? Guilt tasted sour. Especially since it must have happened right after she left me.

  If only I had taken her home.

  Seth was ashen and stunned, the laughing golden boy
nowhere in sight. On the way Indian had told me he found Seth at the end of lunchtime, but hadn’t seen me in the back of the library study area.

  ‘How could this have happened?’ Seth was saying in hoarse disbelief.

  I knew, but the words were locked up in my horror. Even when the feral dogs had chased me, I had never really imagined anyone would be seriously hurt or killed. Not even when Lallie said the dogs might have killed me.

  ‘It was him,’ Danny said. ‘Somehow the Kraken did this to her so we’d be on our own. We should kill him.’

  I thought confusedly of Lallie telling me the Kraken’s power lay in the darkness inhabiting him, and was an illusion. She had underestimated the forces holding Cheshunt in thrall and now she was dead. Maybe that was not the only thing she had been wrong about.

  ‘She might wake …’ Seth said.

  I stared at him incredulously. ‘Wake? You mean, she’s not dead?’

  They all turned to face me.

  ‘I thought I said,’ Indian murmured, shocked. ‘She’s in hospital in a coma. An ambulance came and took her away. They don’t expect her to come out of it.’

  I thought confusedly of his sister, and knew as if I could read his thoughts, that he was thinking there were worse things than dying.

  ‘She’s not dead,’ Nissa added sharply.

  ‘He saw her last night,’ Indian said, sitting down beside Nissa.

  The wind whistled a desolate refrain, stirring the pot plants in the court yard, reminding them of freedom. Somewhere, I heard a girl laughing. In another universe maybe, where laughter was possible.

  ‘It was after I left you at the school last night,’ I said. ‘I was on my way home and these… feral dogs came out of the park and chased me. They were gaining and I hadn’t any hope of getting home, so I turned and tried using the circle to defend myself.’ I shook my head. ‘It sounds stupid now but last night it seemed like the only hope I had. It didn’t work of course, but before they could get me Lallie turned up with The Tod.’

  I told them the whole thing. Then I told them what Lallie had said about there being a price for helping me.

  ‘What did Lallie mean about his power being an illusion?’ Nissa asked.

  ‘An illusion to distract us from concentrating on fighting him of course,’ Danny said.

  ‘Why would he bother?’ Seth asked. ‘We don’t have any idea how to fight him. We can’t do anything without her. We’ll have to wait until she recovers.’

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Hero,’ Danny raged. ‘You probably wish she would die so you can just go dive in a bottle and drown your sorrows.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Nissa flared.

  ‘You shut up,’ Danny snarled.

  I sensed then that the whole thing was in danger of coming unglued. Without Lallie we were on the verge of flying apart like atoms.

  ‘Maybe we can heal her,’ Indian said softly. ‘With the bowl.’

  The arguments stopped instantly and Danny’s eyes glowed with fierce hope. ‘Let’s go now. We can ring the ambulance people to find out which hospital they took her to.’

  Nissa reminded us hospital visiting hours were strict in intensive-care wards; only immediate family could visit. ‘Better to go in the morning before school. There’ll be more people around then and we’ll have a better chance of sneaking in.’

  I felt uncertain about the healing bowl working on Lallie. The circle hadn’t stopped the dogs, and Lallie had said the symbols were just that. Symbols. But I said nothing because the rest of them needed to believe there was hope for her.

  Even so, Lallie had said the darkness was getting stronger and we should act soon. ‘What about the healing? Lallie said we had to do it soon or it would be too late.’

  ‘Tomorrow night, like we planned,’ Nissa snapped irritably and went on telling the others what hospital it was. It seemed she had learned about the accident in school.

  Only Seth looked as if he had any doubts, but he would not meet my eye. Perhaps he felt as guilty as I did that I could not truly believe Indian’s bowl would bring Lallie out of her coma.

  The others were arranging excitedly to meet at the Willington bus stop the following morning to go to the hospital. We would all be late for school, but the thought of school seemed irrelevent.

  After we parted, it was so late I caught the bus straight to Elderew for dinner.

  I picked at my food, rearranging it to look like I had eaten something, but my mother was too sharp. ‘Are you sick, Nat?’ she asked. ‘You’ve seemed off colour to me since that bump on the head. Maybe I should get you a check up.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said.

  She frowned. ‘Nathanial, if something were bothering you, you’d mention it, wouldn’t you?’

  I nodded, crossing my fingers under the table.

  Again I had the feeling she wanted to say something, but I was too worried about Lallie and the Chain to pursue it. I promised myself I would explain it to her, somehow, when it was all over.

  As I left to catch the bus home, I heard a voice calling my name. I turned to find Lilly Astaroth running down the path after me, her cape flapping in the wind. She was carrying a pile of notebooks. When she stopped, she was panting and out of breath.

  ‘I was hoping to catch you before you left. You remember I told you Anna Galway had no one? That no one ever visited her? Well… she didn’t have much but I thought you might like to have these. They’re her diaries. They’d just be thrown out and it seems so sad that no one cares. Anyway, here they are if you want them.’

  She thrust the pile of scruffy notebooks into my hands and hurried back up the path towards Elderew.

  I looked down at them feeling dog tired. If I lay down now, I felt as if all the skin would slide in a heap off my bones and I’d never get back up. The week before I would have been overjoyed to get my hands on something that might tell me more about the mystery of the caretaker, but with Anna and Zeb dead, and Lallie lying in a coma in hospital, the whole thing seemed unimportant.

  I stuffed the books into my backpack, and ran to catch the bus.

  At home, I sat on the floor in front of the gas fire with The Tod on my lap, stroking him. He seemed jumpy and every now and then he would look out the window and tremble.

  Maybe it was just me, communicating my black mood, but in the end, his eyes looking up at me seemed full of fear and sorrow.

  I stared into the hissing gas jet wishing I could turn the clock back and walk Lallie home.

  The Tod whined and I looked down at him.

  He had got off my lap and was sniffing at my pack. I patted my lap but he ignored the invitation. He sniffed again, then whined and pawed at the bag.

  He paused and looked up at me, then he whimpered again and pawed frantically at the bag and, suddenly, I knew what he was doing.

  He was trying to get at Anna’s notebooks.

  The hair on my neck stood up on end and I felt as if someone had poured ice water down my back.

  I reached over and dragged the bag towards me, undid the flaps and got the musty-smelling notebooks out. The Tod sniffed the edges excitedly and I calmed down because it was possible he had just smelled mice on the notebooks. As if to give credence to this, once he had sniffed the books thoroughly, he settled down to sleep.

  Without thinking, I opened one of the notebooks.

  It took only a page to know it was as rambling and confused and bitter as Anna herself had been. Worse, it switched back and forward fluidly between the present and the distant past, as if all the veils that separated one time from another had disintegrated in her mind. One minute she would be writing as a young girl, and the next she was a bitter old woman full of hate and spite.

  As a girl, she seemed less spiteful, but rather plain wilful and spoilt. As an old woman she was eaten up with grudges over petty, probably imagined, slights.

  I skim-read until I came across a small passage, where she mentioned the first time she had seen Zeb Sikorsky: ‘The moment I sa
w him, it was as if some missing piece had slid into me, and he was a quietness, a stillness in my heart.’

  After that the pages were filled with complicated schemes to get him alone. And then suddenly she would be writing as an old woman, cursing him for not loving her.

  It was petty, ugly reading and made me feel depressed.

  Rubbing my eyes, I thought of the serene blonde girl in my dreams who had tried to make Zeb dance with Anna and wondered whom she had been, and if she too had agreed Zeb should take the blame for what had happened.

  I read until my mother’s car pulled up in the drive, then jumped up, switched off the fire, and got into bed, jamming the notepads under my mattress. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting there, pretending everything was fine.

  I pretended to be asleep when she came in my room, and she stood for a long time, looking down on me. At last she sighed and went away.

  That night, I dreamed I was in the library, only it was night and the lights were out. I was hiding down between two shelves and I could hear people shouting just outside.

  I peeped around the corner and saw Zeb and Anna and a couple of other kids on the steps. There was an old man who looked vaguely familiar to me, and they were facing him, pleading with him.

  ‘Sam don’t do this. It wasn’t your fault,’ Zeb cried.

  The old man shook his head. ‘You don’t understand, lad. I deserve to die. For the children. I threw petrol on the wall and I burned the hut. I didn’t mean to but I killed them, and now I have to die too. A life for a life. I die just like they did.’

  ‘How could you know they were in there?’ Anna protested, but the old man struck a match and even in the minute glow I could see his face and body were glistening darkly. His eyes were red-rimmed and rheumy.

  My heart started to beat so hard I felt faint.

  ‘It’s justice …’ he whispered. ‘Just like he said.’

  ‘Sam, for God’s sake! Don’t!’ Zeb cried, but it was too late and there was a terrible scream from the old man as he went up in flames.

  I woke, shivering and sweating with horror.