flashing repeatedly through Seb’s consciousness. He saw Heath once more then the visions stopped and Seb felt just the worn surface of the doorknob beneath his fingers. He wondered if he should tell the others what contact with this object had shown him.
“Come on, Seb,” Zach nagged.
Seb turned the knob and pulled. The door didn’t open.
“Try pushing!” Scarlet said, getting impatient herself.
“But it opens outward …” Seb said, pushing all the same. The door moved and as he let go of the handle it slid silently inward.
“Mm, see?”
Seb frowned, puzzled, and reached up to his neck, nervous of another attack by those icy fingers. No sound, no icy touch. He relaxed a bit. He stood on the threshold of the dark chasm trying to muster the courage to step through.
The Caretaker spoke gently. “Seb, you do not have to go first. Let me.”
“I feel nothing,” Nat said aloud to them all, then smiled at Seb. “Really, nothing.”
Shored up by her certainty, Seb decided. Without a word he went through the doorway.
Trust
Seb stood in complete darkness.
“Where are you guys?” he whispered, stretching his hands out in front of him hoping to find a wall. There was no response.
He called louder this time, “Zach, Scarlet, Aiden …”
A pink glow appeared, then sparkles and Aiden’s happy little face smiled at him.
“Stop panicking, Seb, we’re all here!” Zach laughed. “A few too many of us if you ask me,” he said and Seb felt the bump and jostle of other bodies as his friends and the teachers moved closer.
Aiden’s freckles caught the light from the tin, sending out beams of illumination and lighting up this unusual group.
“That’s strange,” he said.
Muscling his way across to stand next to Scarlet, who inched closer to Seb, Zach boomed, “What’s strange, Aiden, other than you being our own little firefly?”
“Just that I can only see one pathway.”
“One path? Which way?” Miss West demanded.
“Down!” Aiden pointed to the ground about a foot behind Seb. A gaping hole, which looked like the opening to a well, yawned beside him.
“So Heath and Mr Duir went that way?” Scarlet asked.
Aiden looked up at Mr White, seeking guidance. Mr White shook his head.
“We have no way of knowing for sure. Doors, tunnels, pathways and presences is all the map will reveal. But since there is only one path …”
“Well this is going well; through the door and now the choice of going back or jumping into a black pit,” Zach moaned.
“At least, Zach, we do not appear to be lost among the dead.” Mr West said, chuckling.
“Maybe these are catacombs,” Zach said ominously.
“Shut up, Zach,” Scarlet snapped, staring down in to the hole. “It’s really deep. I can’t see the bottom.” She looked around them. “There’s no other tunnel; Aiden’s right.”
“Where’s the door back?” Seb tried not to sound worried.
“There!” Aiden said and Seb guessed he was pointing.
“You know no one else can see, right?” Zach laughed.
Aiden shook his head.
“How do you know it’s the same door?” Scarlet asked.
“I just do.”
“Well that’s a relief.” Zach gave a mock sigh. “I thought we would be stuck in this cosy huddle for good.”
“It needn’t be that cosy!”
Seb felt a slight bump as Scarlet pushed Zach away from her.
“So, who’s going first?” Zach said, laughing.
“Surely they wouldn’t have gone down the hole,” Scarlet said.
“Actually,” Dierne said, “Aelfric told me that the Elder Door will lead you to where you want to go but only if you trust it to take you there.”
“Meaning what?” Zach asked.
“Meaning, Zach,” Mr West said, smiling, “you have to take a leap of faith.”
“It gets better,” Zach mumbled.
“Zach, will you stop being so negative. Try and think of something to help,” Scarlet shouted at him. Her voice rang down the tunnel and bounced back so that Zach got a repetition of the scolding.
“Well Scarlet, other than telling us that this is a bottomless pit I don’t see what you’ve done to help,” he argued back.
“Dierne,” Aiden asked, “can you speak to Mr Duir?”
“No. There is still interference.” The Dryad sounded desolate.
“Can you and Alice take a look?” Mr West asked as his sister pushed her way to the hole in the ground and jumped, feet first, into it.
Seb was horrified. She had no way of knowing how deep that shaft was! She was probably lying dead at the bottom of it by now.
Mr West rushed across to look over the edge. As he did, in a pink-tinged haze of green, Dierne shot down into the opening.
“Trudy?” Mr West called out.
Miss West’s voice spoke back to them from no more than a foot away, “Trust!”
Now Aiden leaned over and bathed the shaft in pink light. Seb gasped and Zach laughed out loud. Standing inside the hole, feet firmly on the wall to the left of the opening, Miss West stood sideways. She looked for all the world like she was standing on a wall but her clothing hung towards her feet. It was as though gravity had twisted and she was upright while they were staring at her from a wall themselves. Dierne hovered beside her.
Seb, light-headed from hunger and disoriented, felt dizzy and suddenly fell forwards. As he passed the edge of the opening he flopped sideways and ended up sitting next to Miss West’s feet, staring out of the hole at Zach’s amused face.
“That’ll do it, Seb,” he said and then stepped into the tunnel. Carefully placing his feet on the side on which Miss West stood, his body tipped sideways and in an instant he stood upright next to her. “Well, that is just plain weird,” he chuckled.
In quick succession the others followed and Miss West marched off down the tunnel, anxious not to give them an opportunity to dither or question further.
They brought Aiden to the front to light the way and after only a couple of minutes came to an abrupt halt. It was a dead end; a blank wall faced them.
“I can still see the path,” Aiden said uncertainly. “But it’s up there!” He pointed to the roof. “It’s like the path curves up there …”
Mr White stared into the tin and nodded. “It does.”
“Well that’s tiresome,” Zach said.
Above, Seb could see a void in the ceiling, a hollow space.
“How about I put you on my shoulders, Aiden and lift you up there?” Zach wasn’t going to be defeated.
Then Seb, looking at the curve of floor as it rose up the wall to continue into the hole above, had a thought.
“The Elder Door will lead you to where you want to go but only if you trust it to take you there,” he mumbled and then started walking forward. As he did his feet followed the curve of the path and he carried on going, tipping gradually backwards. He began rising up the wall … and he continued on until he had walked up and into the hollow space in the roof.
“Seb, how did you know that?” Alice zoomed up to him.
“I didn’t.” Seb turned and looked at the others who now appeared to be standing on a wall, face down. It was the oddest experience.
As before, Miss West didn’t wait for further discussion. She raced up the wall and past Seb, calling to them all to hurry up. One by one, chuckling or exclaiming, they followed. Within minutes they came to another wall.
“The path continues on the other side,” Aiden said. “But it’s strange; I don’t see any sign of the wall in here.” He frowned as he looked into the tin.
“My turn,” Zach said. “Trust.” With a grin he walked forward … disappearing through the wall!
Miss West bolted after him and the others blindly followed. Seb, the last to pass through wi
th Alice, wondered at this place that seemed to be designed to play tricks on the visual senses. Then, as he passed the false wall, he heard Scarlet scream.
Her scream still ringing in his ears, Seb stared in horror around him. The path continued as Aiden had confirmed, however from above them and swooping down to travel along the tunnel, white misty shapes whooshed, like a host of ghosts. Others came towards them and vanished upward. They made a mournful, moaning sound which rose in pitch as each ethereal shape approached and descended as they moved away.
Aiden whimpered, dropping to his knees to avoid them. The pink light from his tin and face served only to make each one look more grotesque as they passed, paying no heed to the group of stunned onlookers.
Scarlet, like Aiden, was cowering below the shapes, trying to avoid letting any of them travel through her body. Seb, however, froze and several ghostlike forms whizzed through his chest and face. As each did he had a sudden flash of thousands of memories – quickly his head filled with sights, sounds, events, feelings, as each one touched him until he fell to his knees, gasping.
He felt firm hands support him.
“Seb, close them off,” Alice said. “Close your mind to them.”
The Caretaker helped move him to the edge of the passageway.
“Lost among the dead!” Aiden was nearly crying.
And then Mr West spoke calmly, the figures skimming his frizzy hair. “The dead, Aiden, if you want to see it that way, but actually just souls without hosts. I believe we have stepped into a ley line.”
Miss West gazed at the spectacle undisturbed, as did Mr White. Standing against the wall, out of the way of the souls, he placed a calming hand on Aiden’s shoulder.
Nat knelt beside Seb. “Seb, they are peaceful, unaware, almost sleeping.” Her words barely reached his consciousness.
Dimly