Troubletwisters

  At that moment, Grandma X started to turn back from the railing. Jack froze in panic. She would see him for sure – but she paused to wipe her forehead with a large and very white handkerchief that came out of her sleeve.

  In those vital few seconds, Jaide pulled at Jack again, and this time he didn’t resist. They ducked back through the door and went straight down the hatch. Jack whipped it closed behind him and the twins hurried down the stairs as fast as they could.

  But they were in too much of a hurry, and Jaide was in front and couldn’t see. She miscounted the stairs and thumped down hard on the third floor landing. The dull thud seemed horribly loud in the darkness, echoing up the stairwell.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called Grandma X, frighteningly close above them.

  Jaide thought fast. She couldn’t run – that would be far too noisy. But she certainly couldn’t tell the truth about where they’d been.

  ‘It’s us, Grandma,’ she said, the tremor in her voice entirely real. ‘I . . . we . . . woke up when we heard a noise outside. I called but you didn’t answer, so we came up here to find you.’

  Grandma X came down through the hatch. Jaide flinched as she heard the boots coming closer, with a threatening tap . . . tap . . . tap. Even when her grandmother stopped, it was too dark for Jaide to see her, so she couldn’t tell whether she looked angry.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t answer, Jaidith,’ said Grandma X. Somehow she found Jaide’s shoulder in the gloom and gave it a squeeze. ‘You need to go back to bed now. We’ll talk more in the morning. Where is Jackaran?’

  Jaide opened her mouth and shut it again. Jack had been behind her coming downstairs. Grandma X should have run into him . . .

  ‘Uh, he must have gone back to bed,’ she said weakly.

  A very soft footfall to her left and below her suggested that this was not true. Jaide tried to look without turning her head, but couldn’t see a thing.

  ‘I’ll turn on the light,’ said Grandma X. ‘I don’t want you to break your neck. Unless you can see in the dark?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ said Jaide, though she had a very strong suspicion that Grandma X could see quite well. But if that was so, why hadn’t she spotted Jack?

  ‘I’ll only be a moment,’ said Grandma X. Jaide heard those boots tap-tapping up a few steps. At the same time, she heard the faintest of footfalls going the other way. Then there was the click of a switch and all the lights on the stairs came on.

  ‘No more wandering about,’ said Grandma X. ‘Come with me, and I’ll tuck you in.’

  Jaide looked down. Was that Jack, there in the shadow at the turn of the stairs?

  ‘Grandma,’ Jaide said in a desperate bid to give Jack more time, ‘is this house haunted?’

  Grandma X stopped on the step above and looked at her granddaughter.

  ‘Not as such,’ she said. ‘Why? What have you seen?’

  ‘That wind . . . the weird noises . . .’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Jaidith. You and Jackaran are completely safe in this house. Now, to bed.’

  They walked down together. Grandma X took Jaide’s hand, and Jaide was surprised that she’d never noticed the ring the old lady was wearing before. It was reversed with the stone on the inside, so Jaide couldn’t see it clearly – but it had to be the same one she’d seen shining on the hand of the apparition that had sent the rats off on their mission.

  At the door to their room, Jaide pretended to stumble. Grandma X helped her up immediately, but it gave Jack a few more seconds, and when they finally did get into the bedroom, her brother was back in his bed, pretending to be asleep.

  ‘Hop into bed now and shut your eyes.’

  Jaide climbed into bed and shot a glance over at Jack. He didn’t open his eyes, but she knew he was awake. When Grandma X was gone, they could discuss their close call and decide what to do next.

  That was the plan, anyway. But as Jaide pulled up the covers, Grandma X went across to Jack and patted him gently on the head. Moonlight spilled from her palm, and Jaide saw her brother twitch, the reflexive shudder of someone falling instantly asleep.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ said Grandma X, and took the few steps back to Jaide, her hand coming down to the girl’s head.

  No, not again! Jaide thought. I must resist! I have to stay awake! I have to —

  But she couldn’t resist. Moonlight washed across Jaide’s face, and she fell into a dark, dreamless sleep.

  THE SUN WOKE JAIDE EARLY. She opened her eyes very slowly, fighting a mental fog that threatened to drag her back down into sleep. Cats, rats and cockroaches? Her thoughts wouldn’t line up straight, and neither would her memories. There had been a ferocious wind, and darkness, just like when their house exploded . . .

  Jaide’s heart suddenly hammered fast and she sat up, her eyes wide open as she looked around in panic. But it was daylight, and there was no whirlwind, and the bedroom was perfectly tidy. Everything was neatly packed away in the wardrobe, and their empty bags were zipped up tightly in the corner. The curtains hung straight and even their bedclothes were orderly, as though she and Jack had hardly stirred all night – as though everything hadn’t been upended by a tornado.

  And Grandma X had been standing there, Jaide remembered. She must have sent the wind and caused the darkness, for reasons Jaide still didn’t understand.

  Understanding wasn’t important. Jaide knew. She knew that things weren’t right in Portland, and hadn’t been from the start. And if tidying everything up was Grandma X’s attempt to make her think it had all been a dream, she wasn’t going to fall for it.

  Jaide swung her legs off the bed. An unexpected crinkling of paper stopped her from going any further. There was a note attached to the front of her pyjamas by a hat pin shaped like a peacock’s feather. The note had been composed on an old typewriter and the letters had drifted up and down from the horizontal as Grandma X typed them.

  Jaide snorted and stuck the pin deep into her pillow. She felt much more clearheaded now. Whatever had woken her, she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity that being up so early gave her.

  She crossed to Jack, who was drooling onto his pillow. There was an identical note fixed with an old sapphire and gold tiepin to his T-shirt. She unpinned it and rocked his shoulder back and forth.

  ‘Jack, Jack, wake up,’ she hissed in his ear.

  Jack didn’t respond. He was breathing all right, but no matter how she shook him, he didn’t stir out of his unnaturally deep sleep.

  ‘You better stay here, then, I guess,’ said Jaide hesitantly. ‘I’ll get help.’

  On bare feet, she crept to the bedroom door and tried the handle. Her fear that it would be locked was unfounded: it opened smoothly and with barely a squeak. She peered out into the hallway, and neither saw nor heard a living soul. In sharp contrast to all the creaks and groans of the night before, the house was so quiet now that it, too, seemed to be under a spell.

  As lightly as a cat – the stairs hardly complained beneath her at all – Jaide went downstairs and checked out the situation. The kettle was cold; the front door was locked. Grandma X was almost certainly asleep, two floors above, and couldn’t possibly hear her use the phone. At least Jaide hoped she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure of anything about Grandma X anymore.

  The phone was on its cradle in the hallway, on a small wooden table with animal feet. Under the table, Ari was curled up in a tight ginger ball. On tiptoes, Jaide approached close enough to reach out and gently lift up the phone. Ari’s whiskers twitched, and his tail lashed out once, but his eyes stayed closed. Jaide retreated, hardly daring to breathe.

  Susan had long ago made the twins commit her phone number to memory. Jaide took the handset into the cupboard under the stairs, shut the door, and tapped out the familiar digits in the dark. Only the voicemail picked up. Her mother had to be out
on an emergency call.

  But Jaide felt there was an emergency going on here as well. Only it wasn’t something she could put in a message.

  She hung up, then sat in the cupboard for a while, thinking furiously, full of hurt and anger and indecision. She was absolutely sure of one thing: there was no way she was going to wait for whatever Grandma X came up with next. She and Jack had to get away.

  If she could wake her brother up . . .

  Very carefully, she slid out of the cupboard and walked on tiptoe back down the hall. She was about to replace the phone when she noticed Ari was no longer under the table. Jaide’s head whipped from side to side, trying to locate the cat. She couldn’t see him, but that only made her more fearful. Dropping the phone back on the cradle, she ran for the stairs. Halfway up, she saw Ari waiting at the top, and froze.

  The cat looked at her and yawned, showing all his very sharp teeth. Jaide stood absolutely still, wondering what she should do. Part of her was thinking, He’s only a cat, but another part of her was thinking, He’s a witch’s cat.

  Ari yawned again, then turned away and slowly padded up the next flight of stairs.

  Gone to tell on me to Grandma X, thought Jaide. She jumped up the next three steps and ran.

  In the twins’ bedroom, Jack rolled over and his hand touched the glass of the window. A moment after he did so, a moth with long, feathery feelers flew up and landed on the other side of the window. There was a faint crackle, a flash of silvery light, and the moth fell to the ground. It was immediately followed by another, which suffered the same fate. But a third moth did not touch the glass. Instead it hovered in place, and only its feelers ever so gently brushed the window.

  At that very instant, Jack’s sleep was disturbed by a feeling that someone was trying to get through to him, to tell him something. The voice was far away, and its words unintelligible, but the speaker was insistent, and he found himself straining to hear. Very slowly, a couple of words became clear, as they were repeated over and over again.

  +We want . . . we want . . . we want . . .++

  ‘We want . . .’ whispered Jack, still asleep, just as Jaide came rushing into the room. ‘We want . . . we want . . .’

  ‘What?’ snapped Jaide. She took him by the shoulders and shook him much harder than she had before. His face was very pale, and his lips were moving very strangely, almost as if someone else was trying to speak through his mouth. ‘Jack, who are you talking to?’

  ‘We want . . . we want . . .’

  ‘Jack!’ shouted Jaide, and she slapped him across the face.

  ‘You,’ said Jack’s mouth, and then his eyes flashed open and in his normal voice he said, ‘Hey! What’d you hit me for?’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Jaide looked worried and annoyed, both of which surprised Jack. He was the one who should be annoyed. His cheek was burning – it felt like she’d left her fingerprints there.

  ‘I was asleep! What are you playing at, waking me up like that?’

  ‘No time for that now,’ said Jaide. She was somewhat reassured by his perfectly ordinary irritation, and certain that if only they could get away, all the strange happenings would stop. ‘Get up and get dressed. We’re running away.’

  ‘We’re what?’

  ‘You heard me,’ she said, flinging back the covers. ‘Come on, before Grandma wakes up and stops us.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Jack. ‘I mean, I know there’s weird stuff going on, but do we have to run away? Besides, we don’t have anywhere to go.’

  Jaide thrust a note into his face. He blearily focused on the words his grandma had typed.

  ‘So?’

  ‘If she doesn’t want us to go to school, that’s the first place we should go. And Mr Carver will help us, I’m sure of it. He seemed nice, didn’t he?’

  Jack was having trouble keeping up.

  ‘No, he didn’t. He seemed like an idiot! Besides, you want to run away to school? Shouldn’t we try to get the bus over to Mum’s work instead?’

  ‘We don’t even know if there is a bus,’ said Jaide. ‘Besides, I called Mum and couldn’t reach her. It’s up to us now.’ She gripped her brother by the shoulders and turned him so he faced his wardrobe. ‘Just get dressed. I’ve decided we have to go.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you’ve decided!’ said Jack sarcastically as he forced his sluggish limbs to obey him. ‘Hang on! In the night . . . there was a wind, and it got dark, just like . . . just like at home —’

  ‘Yes!’ exclaimed Jaide.

  Jack stared at the tidiness of their room. Nothing was broken and everything was in its place.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes! Grandma X did it, and now Ari’s probably waking her up and reporting me, so get a move on!’

  Jack’s forehead wrinkled. Unlike Jaide, he wasn’t completely sure Grandma X was behind all the bad stuff, or whether she was working with the rats or against them. But either way, she was a witch . . . so the sooner they got away from her, the better. He agreed with his sister on that point.

  But when it came to actually going out the bedroom door, Jack hesitated.

  ‘We should leave Mum a note,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why? We’ll call her from the school. And what if Grandma X reads it? She’s the last person we want to know.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I guess.’

  Impatience had made Jaide cross. ‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. Stay here alone if you like.’

  Jack vigorously shook his head. Alone was something the twins rarely were, and Jack didn’t like the thought of it at all. Besides, he wouldn’t truly be alone: he would have Grandma X to answer to when she woke up.

  ‘All right, then,’ Jaide said with her hand on the doorknob. ‘Let’s go.’

  JAIDE LED THE WAY DOWN the stairwell, shushing Jack as they reached the last wind of steps. She peered over the banister to see if Ari was around, but she couldn’t see him.

  ‘What?’ Jack whispered into her ear.

  She shook her head. Maybe Ari was still waking up Grandma X, or she was giving him instructions. Moving quickly now, fearing that something or someone might catch them on the brink of freedom, she ran to the door and turned the big, old key. It clicked, but not too loudly, and the door was open.

  They hurried out into the yard and froze at the sudden sound of voices. But it wasn’t Grandma X. It was some people in the yard next door. Even though it was still early, not much past six o’clock, there were workers there and one of them was complaining about a bulldozer that was running late.

  The twins didn’t stop to listen further. They hurried along the fence line, bent almost double, and ran out the gate into Watchward Lane. Jaide didn’t dare look back. She felt the presence of the house like a physical weight, with its windows like piercing eyes tracking her every move- ment. She wanted to get as far as possible from that terrible gaze.

  As the twins ran, they saw evidence of the previous night’s rodent assembly. The ground was scuffed by thousands of tiny feet and dotted with droppings. The air had a musty smell. Some of the trees had been gnawed at ankle height, and here and there were spots of dried, dark blood. Jaide shuddered, remembering the heaving mass of rats. She hoped they were all well away from Watchward Lane now . . .

  As she thought of the rats, she noticed a tiny movement out of the corner of one eye. She whirled around, but there was nothing there.

  ‘What?’ asked Jack. He was spooked as well. A moth was fluttering around his head, determinedly batting at his face and eyes, and he feared that at any moment a whole swarm of them might descend upon them, like the midges and crickets. ‘What is it? What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing . . .’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Let’s keep going.’

 
They reached Parkhill Street and turned right, cutting quickly past Rodeo Dave’s bookshop. It was shut, of course, like all the other shops at this time of the morning; there were few cars on the road, and no pedestrians at all. Portland wasn’t like the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep. Their father had often told them how much he wished the city would just stop for a while and give everyone a moment to think.

  Both twins at that same moment felt a pang of longing for their absent father. If he had been there, he would’ve known what to do. Grandma X was his mother, after all.

  The smell of the fish co-op grew stronger as they approached Dock Road. Jack’s head was cold and he wished he’d thought to pack his cap. Jaide’s red hair kept being blown into her eyes by irritating gusts of chill wind. But at least they weren’t trapped in the house anymore.

  Jaide had just started to think they had made it when all of a sudden Jack stopped and grabbed her arm. An orange shape jumped out of a hedge, landed in front of them with a yowl, and raised one white-mittened paw very like a policeman directing traffic.

  ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ Ari said.

  Jack couldn’t help but reply. ‘Be quiet! You’re on her side.’

  ‘You speak like you’ve never met a cat before. There’s only one side – my own.’

  Jaide looked at Jack in alarm. Ari was sitting in front of them yowling and meowing, and Jack was talking back?

  ‘Jack?’ Jaide was tugging his arm. ‘Jack, what are you doing?’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t look out for friends,’ continued Ari.

  ‘By spying on us, you mean?’ said Jack, shrugging off Jaide’s attempt to drag him past.

  ‘I’m just trying to help. You’re protected in the house. You should go back.’

  ‘At least no one’s going to shove us in an oversize oven out here.’