Downfall

  Chapter 18: Crusade

  I didn’t even bother with a phone message. I just drove as fast as I could to Gaunt House. Jude’s car was back, or maybe still there from the night before. When I rushed into the chamber he was marking a map with pencil, surrounded by road directories, lists of gas stations, research on wedge tailed eagles and their habitat, and countless other printed pages. I spilled my news about the Floating Island, gasping out the words, and dropped to my knees to show him on a map.

  “This is Land’s End, right here. Here’s Eden Bay, see?”

  “I can’t see an island,” he said.

  “It’s not a real island. Look, it shows the sandbar, though, on this map with topographical features. See?”

  “Yes, I see it. And Cain knows you lived there?”

  “I think so. I told him once. And the fragments of visions, they all remind me of Land’s End. The Northwest Highway runs straight into the town.” I pointed at another map. “There’s a gas station just out of town, heading east. And wedge-tailed eagles are common. They clean up the roadkill on the highway. Have you got any more detailed maps of this area?”

  He reached across the mattress and pulled a dog-eared Country Maps towards me. I fumbled through it until I found the Land’s End pages. There were three for the town, one showing the fishing beaches. “Here’s Eden Bay. No trails, though. We need more detail. Satellite photos.”

  “Come on,” Jude said. “We’ll go to my place, get on the internet and see what we can find.”

  He got me to message Owen about my Land’s End theory and we drove the cars to his house. His parents were both out at work so we used the family computer to search satellite images of the area while his dog tried to get our attention with a ragged teddy bear. In moments we found what we’d been looking for.

  “There!” I exclaimed. “That’s a trail coming off the back of the beach. It goes out to the highway and runs between these two properties behind the dunes, look. I bet that’s the trail the pickup took in Nadine’s vision. And that means Cain might be going to ride that trail sometime soon. Is Owen coming? We need to get to Land’s End.”

  Jude checked his phone. “He says he’s phoned Nadine and Liz and is going to pick them up. He should be here within the hour ... so, by nine.” I groaned about the time wasted picking up Liz and Nadine but Jude just got to work printing off satellite images and maps. Finally, Owen arrived and honked the horn.

  After the initial discussion on where we were going, the trip was largely silent, or maybe it just seemed that way to me. I was strangely removed from the others, deaf to their conversation. We stopped a couple of times for fuel because the old van with five people inside was a gas guzzler. I’d done that drive northwest more than a few times up to the age of fourteen when I finally stopped going to stay with Mum. I still knew it like the back of my hand, right down to farm name signs, grain silos, and small town racecourses. I watched the clock. Was it tonight that this event―whatever it was―would happen?

  Around two in the afternoon, we passed the Now Entering Land’s End sign. Jude got Owen to stop at the gas station Nadine had seen in her vision. The apron woman was in there. She wore a nametag that said Pam. Jude approached her with a charming hello and the woman smiled at his lovely face.

  “Have you seen a guy with dark hair, rides a motorbike, maybe asking around for someone?”

  “Yes! Just the today, someone came in asking about a girl.” She caught sight of me and frowned. “Aren’t you that girl in the photo?”

  I didn’t know what to say so Jude answered for me. “Yeah. He’s looking for Frankie.”

  “He had a photo of a girl in a pink ball dress. Looked like her,” she said. “Good looking young man, nice manners even though he was on a motorbike. You looking for him?”

  “Yes!” Liz was unable to stop herself. “Did he say where he was going?”

  The woman found this amusing. “First he’s looking for you,” she said with a guffaw. “And now you’re looking for him! You young people need to learn how to communicate.”

  “We were supposed to meet him in Land’s End but we were delayed and his phone isn’t working,” Owen said.

  She couldn’t help us. “I hope you find him,” she said as she rang up our drinks and sandwiches on the till. “He might have moved on. I was going to ask him if he found you, if I ever saw him again.”

  We got back in the van and Owen hesitated, hand on the ignition. I knew why. Where should we go now? None of us knew what to do. Jude used his phone to try Cain’s number, with the same result as usual.

  “If he’s been on the road the battery could be dead,” I said. “Maybe that’s why he was using the phone box in Nadine’s vision.”

  “How are we going to do this?” Liz asked. “How can we stop him from getting hurt?”

  “We don’t even know if it’s him or the kids in the pickup who are gonna get hurt,” Nadine said.

  “The visions seem to show there’s going to be a crash or something on the beach track,” Jude said. “How about we wait on the track?”

  “Yes, we can split into two groups,” I said. “Owen, you can drive a couple of us to the beach, leave us at that end of the track, and then the other group can go back to the highway and wait. Looking at the satellite pictures I think you can only access the track from the beach or the highway. One of our groups is bound to see either the pickup or Cain.” I put myself in the beach group because that’s where the visions had shown the kids in the pickup. I’d rather face them than Cain. The yearning to see him was shaded with dread now it was likely to happen.

  Jude nodded. “That works,” he said. “Owen, you take Liz to the highway end. Leave me, Frankie and Nadine at the beach end of the track.”

  Owen agreed and then we spent the remaining daylight hours in town, driving about aimlessly, hoping to spot Cain’s bike and prevent this incident before it even started to build. As it got towards late afternoon we searched along the highway for the track. We went right past it at first and had to turn back the way we came. The little track between two sheep farming properties was rough and ridged, which meant Owen had to bump the van painstakingly along past the fields, low scrub, and finally the dunes. He was forced to stop before we reached the beach. We’d gone as far as we could go without getting the van bogged in the softening sand. Jude, Nadine and I climbed out. Tears in her eyes, Liz demanded we take care, and then Owen reversed and turned the van for the highway. We walked the short distance to the shore.

  The beach was abandoned and silent. Jude got us to check our phones but none of us had a signal so far out of town. I watched the sun setting over the Floating Island as the tide swirled across the sandbar. The little cove still felt familiar, although smaller than I remembered. I picked up a pink shell lying on the sand beside me and thought about Vanessa’s sandcastle.

  “You must be pretty pleased with yourself, causing all this,” Nadine snarled.

  “Nadine.” Jude gave her a warning look.

  He walked down to the water and then wandered a little way along the beach. He seemed to be looking for tracks from the pickup.

  “If you’ve caused Cain to get hurt, I’m gonna hurt you,” she said under her breath.

  I tried to ignore Nadine, keeping my gaze on the ocean. The sun dropped rapidly below the horizon.

  “Pity it wasn’t you we saw in the visions.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. Pissed off, I stood and headed back to the track. Nadine and Jude didn’t need me to help them stop the teenagers in the pickup, anyway. I was just a normal. Owen could collect me on his way back to the beach after they’d made sure everyone was safe.

  The night was still and as I walked, all I heard was the final clicking of cicadas and the occasional loud bleat of a sheep. Dusk descended. Everything went thick gray before me, dropping quickly into pitch black. Now I regretted walking away from Jude and Nadine. I used my phone to light the path in front of me but this sapped the battery so badly I ma
de myself stop. I had to save it for emergencies, and I had no signal out here, anyway.

  I spotted a red light in the field to my right. Bonfire embers. I strained my eyes, trying to see if anyone was there, but the darkness was absolute by now. Maybe I could wait beside the fire for Owen? At least I would be warm. I felt for the wire fence and climbed over it carefully, heading for the dying fire. I’d only gone a short way when I hit something hard with my shin and stumbled, exclaiming in pain. I partly fell into stale smelling water. Ugh. It was a sheep watering trough. I extricated myself, swearing, and tried to squeeze the unpleasantly cold water out of my T-shirt.

  “Who’s there?” a male voice called sharply into the darkness.

  That scared me until I realized it must be someone seated by the fire. I gave a rueful laugh but before I could announce my presence, a pair of headlights lit up the track. I heard the familiar sound of Owen’s van bumping along the corrugated gravel road.

  “Little bastards,” came the man’s shout, and in the light from a sudden flare in the bonfire, I saw him stand up, raise a shotgun and aim it at me.

  I ducked and yelled but it was too late. A wallop of hot pain seared through my upper arm almost before I heard the crack of the gunshot. I dropped to the ground, my cries drowned by the engine, the crunch of gravel under the van’s tires and the farmer’s echoing gunshot. The van rumbled on towards the beach and the man stood still in the dim red light of the embers, peering into the darkness toward me. He raised his gun again before lowering it indecisively. I went to call out but stopped myself ... maybe, if he found me, he would simply finish me off.

  My arm felt like it was on fire but I locked my teeth together and lay still. Finally, he shouldered his gun and kicked sand over the embers of his fire before turning away. He walked up the slope of the hill and within moments disappeared from view. With my good arm, I dug in my pocket for my phone. It wasn’t there.

  Oh, God. I was going to die here, voiceless, weak, and alone.

  Six words.