“Why did you come here?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Jamie shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot and as far as I know, it works like this. The doors take you to places but you have to know where you want to go. We were in such a hurry to get out of there that we all just piled in so we’ve all been taken to different places. I ended up here.” He couldn’t keep the misery out of his voice. “We’re back where we started,” he went on. “Only worse. Scott and I were hardly ever apart and now I can’t find him … not even in the dreamworld. I can’t find any of them. And the door doesn’t work any more. I’m stuck here. And I’m on my own.”
“There’s something else,” I said. I was thinking about the photograph now, the one that had been shown in church. It had been taken ten years ago but it had shown Jamie’s face as it was now. In a nasty sort of way, things were slotting into place.
“What?”
“I know that Hong Kong was hit by a typhoon. Half the city was destroyed and thousands of people were killed. Miss Keyland told us about it in class. But that didn’t happen two weeks ago, Jamie. It didn’t happen the day you arrived. It happened ten years ago. Ten years…”
Both of us worked it out in silence. We didn’t need to speak. I’d read enough books to be able to work out what had happened. When Jamie had escaped from the Tai Shan Temple in Hong Kong, he hadn’t just crossed the world. He had taken a giant leap forward in time.
He had escaped from Hong Kong ten years ago and the whole world had changed while he’d been gone. And now he’d finally arrived.
But he’d left it far too late.
FIVE
Back to work. Everyone worked all the time, not just because we had to grow food and prepare for the winter but because if we stopped, we might notice that there was no real point in going on. We weren’t living, really. We were surviving. But back then I was too young to notice the difference.
Jamie and George weren’t punished. Maybe the Council had decided to make allowances because Jamie was a new arrival or maybe it just hadn’t been serious enough to turn any heads. Boys will be boys and all that. There were a nervous few days while we waited for the knock on the door but it didn’t come and soon the whole incident was forgotten … at least on the face of it. Jamie and George patched things up and stopped fighting, but they didn’t spend time together. When one entered the room, the other soon found an excuse to leave.
I tried to make up with George but it was no good. “You haven’t been the same since he got here, Holly,” he said, miserably. “I don’t know why you’re always on his side.” This wasn’t true, but from the moment Jamie had told me his story he had dragged me into his world, making me an accessory whether I liked it or not. I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about the Old Ones. I had nightmares about them. I wondered if they were somehow responsible for the way we lived now.
It had become easier to talk to Jamie. Maybe it was because I hadn’t laughed at his story and he knew he could trust me. He told me that he was planning to leave. He was going to escape through the wood and head south to London, even though I did my best to talk him out of it. First he would have to get through the perimeter without being seen. Then he would have to survive out in the wood with nothing to eat or drink. All the fresh water in the village was supplied by a well and it still had to be boiled before it could be drunk. Outside, there was nothing. London was miles away. And although I’d seen pictures of it at school, I had no idea what it was like now. Nobody did.
“What else can I do, Holly?” Jamie insisted.
“You can stay here.”
“And what about my brother? What about Matt and the others? Do you just want me to forget about them?”
“But how will going to London help?”
“There’s another door. It’s in a church called St Meredith’s. If I can find it, it may still be working. I can use it to get back.”
But get back where? Hong Kong wasn’t there any more … or not very much of it. And what about all the other cities with secret doors? A lot could have happened in ten years and at a guess, none of it would have been very nice.
I didn’t know what to say but in the end it didn’t matter anyway. As things turned out, Jamie’s time in the village was almost over – and mine too.
There was a holiday. We did have days off now and then – and this was a bright, sunny afternoon when everyone seemed to be in a good mood. At least most of the village had turned out in the main square and a little band – they called themselves The Optimists – was playing, even though their guitars were out of tune and we’d heard all their songs a hundred times before. There was soup and sandwiches to eat and the bakery had even managed several trays of doughnuts, although they would have tasted better if we hadn’t run out of sugar. Some of the smaller kids were playing football. All the adults, particularly the older ones, were dressed up in their best clothes. When I think back to the village, that’s how I like to remember it. We had very little, but even so, every so often we were able to have a good time.
I was sitting with George on the edge of the square where the road curved round past the town hall and that was why I noticed Miss Keyland, not joining in but walking past, in a hurry to get somewhere.
I called out her name.
“Oh … Holly!” She seemed out of breath. There were red pinpricks in her cheeks.
“Aren’t you staying?” I asked.
“No, dear. I’m just on my way to Miss Tristram.” Mary Tristram helped out at the school. She lived quite near us on the other side of the garage. “She’s not well.”
I glanced down. Miss Keyland was wearing heavy walking boots.
“I thought a walk might do her good,” she explained.
She hurried away and the next thing I knew, Jamie was at my side. “Holly, I need to talk,” he said.
George looked at him disdainfully. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He got up and walked in the direction of the band.
“George…!” I called after him, but he didn’t even turn round. “What is it?” I asked Jamie, not even trying to disguise my irritation.
“We have to go after her,” Jamie said. He was right next to me, talking in a low, urgent voice.
“Who?”
“Miss Keyland.”
“Why?”
“She’s made up her mind about me. She thinks it was a mistake not turning me in to the police. That’s what she’s going to do now. She’s going to claim the reward for herself.”
“No!” I shook my head. “I’ve known Miss Keyland all my life. She was my teacher … and my friend. She’d never do that.”
“I’m telling you. She’s on her way. We have to follow her. I can’t go on my own. I’ve never been outside the perimeter.”
“But how do you know she’s going to betray you? You can’t know that.”
“I do know, Holly. I read her thoughts.”
I still found it hard to believe. Jamie had told me about his powers and I’d had direct experience of them myself. But was it possible that dear old Miss Keyland could go against the wishes of the Council and put us all in danger? I thought about what she had just said – visiting a sick friend. I remembered the walking boots. “All right,” I said. “Let’s see where she goes.”
I glanced in the direction of George but he had already disappeared into the crowd. What would he think when he got back and found me gone? But there was no time to worry about that. Jamie was already moving away from the square, keeping his distance behind Miss Keyland. I caught up with him and we followed her up through the village, past the modern houses – including our own. The road climbed a hill then dipped down steeply. At this point, the white lines faded out and a short while later the tarmac itself became chopped up and disappeared into the mud and the grass. The very edge of the village was marked by a yellow bus, which had once ferried passengers to the surrounding towns but now sat rotting on its side, the glass windows shattered and all the upholstery and engine
parts long gone. Miss Keyland walked past it without giving it so much as a glance. I felt sad, seeing it. My mother had taken me on that bus – quite a few times, actually – and although it had been years since it had run, seeing it made me think of her.
The forest began almost at once, which was just as well as it would have been impossible to track Miss Keyland across open fields. I knew now, if I had ever doubted it, that Jamie was right. She certainly wasn’t visiting any friends.
I had memories of the forest being a very beautiful place, full of bluebells in the spring, cool and scented in the summer, somehow welcoming even when the leaves had fallen and the snow had come. And you would have thought that, left on its own all these years, it would have grown into a perfect wildness, a haven for animals and birds. But that hadn’t happened. The forest was dark and comfortless. Weeds, thistles and briars had taken over. As I knew from hours spent hunting, any signs of life were becoming increasingly rare, as if all the foxes, deer and rabbits had been swallowed up and suffocated. Even the leaves seemed to have changed colour. It had been such a slow process that it would have been hard to tell when exactly it had happened. But in the autumn they didn’t turn gold any more. They just died.
“Stand where you are!”
I heard the shout and grabbed hold of Jamie, dragging him behind the thick trunk of a horse chestnut tree. We had already reached the perimeter and there, in front of us, a watchtower rose six feet above the ground. Made of wooden beams and platforms with a ladder up the side, it stood level with the tops of the trees and was painted brown and dark green so that it would blend in with its surroundings. I knew the guard who had given the order. His name was Tom Connor and he was only a couple of years older than me, not that you would have guessed it seeing him in his khaki uniform, already scrabbling for the rifle that was slung across his chest.
He hadn’t seen the two of us. It was Miss Keyland who had caught his attention. Not so long ago, she had been teaching him. Now he was aiming a loaded gun at her.
“Hello, Miss Keyland!” he called out, more friendly once he saw who it was. “What are you doing?”
“I thought I’d try and find some mushrooms,” Miss Keyland replied. Another lie.
“Mushrooms? You’ll be lucky. But if you do find any, save some for me.” He raised his wrist. All the guards at the perimeter had watches. “You’ve got an hour and a half more light.”
“Thank you, Tom. I’ll be back before then.”
This was the tricky bit. We couldn’t pass the observation tower without being seen and if we tried and were caught, Tom would be sure to raise the alarm … he had a large bell attached to the roof just above his head. We had to wait long enough for Miss Keyland to have gone but not so long that she disappeared altogether. It was all a question of timing, and having judged the moment correctly – I hoped – I pushed Jamie forward and showed myself.
“Is that you, Tom?” I called out.
“Holly…?”
“Have you seen Miss Keyland?” I asked in my most innocent voice. “Reverend Johnstone sent us to look for her. He asked us to give her a message.”
I just had to hope that Miss Keyland was far enough away not to hear me. At least Tom didn’t question my story. “You just missed her,” he said. He turned round and peered over the treetops. “There she goes!” He pointed. “I can call out to her if you like.”
“No. We’ll find her.” Jamie and I hurried ahead. Tom smiled and waved.
The forest got thicker and more tangled. The leaves and the branches seemed to be tied together, as if they didn’t want to let us through. We could hear Miss Keyland fighting her way ahead of us, but looking back, I realized that the observation tower was out of sight. We pressed on for about ten minutes. This was never the way I came when I went hunting and I just wanted to stop, to go home, to forget all about it. What did it matter what Miss Keyland did? If Jamie was right, if she really was calling the police, he would just have to leave. He had been planning that anyway. And what exactly was she doing, stuck out here in the middle of this wilderness? What made her think she would find anything here?
“There!”
Jamie had seen it first and we both crouched down behind a bush with sharp, spiny needles instead of leaves. It was in a clearing, which made it easier to see. And it was bright red, the colour vibrant against all these greens and browns. It was a rectangular box and even the straight lines seemed alien in the middle of a wood. I knew exactly what I was looking at. I had seen pictures in books.
It was an old-fashioned public telephone box, the sort that had been replaced by modern glass counterparts and then phased out altogether when people started carrying their own mobiles. What was it doing here? Of course, it would have once stood next to a road but the road had been carefully removed. The telephone box had been left behind and it was alien, like a visitor from a forgotten world. I had been in the forest loads of times and I was amazed that I had never seen it, but then, I had never come this way. How had Miss Keyland known it was there? Could it possibly be still connected?
We watched her go in. She opened and shut the heavy door behind her. Some of the little square panes of glass were broken but we were too far away to hear what she said. She dialled a number and began to talk. The conversation couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of minutes and then she hung up and came out again, retracing her steps and passing so close to us that I was certain she would see us. But her thoughts must have been on what she had just done. She was inches away from us but she didn’t look down or stop.
We waited until we were sure she had gone.
“I knew it,” Jamie said. “She’s told them I’m here.”
“Told who?”
“The police. The Old Ones. It doesn’t matter. They could be the same.”
“What now?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“They’ll come for me. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. I can’t stay in the village.” He looked at me and I was shaken to see how scared he was. “They’ll punish you for taking me in, Holly. You, Rita, John and George. They’ll punish the whole village.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You don’t know them.” Jamie closed his eyes, suddenly tired. He opened them again. “I should go now.”
“You can’t!” I said. “You’ll never find your way through the forest. Even in the day it’s hard enough.” I looked up. The sun was already dipping. Why did the days have to be so short? Already the treetops seemed to be closing in on us and if we didn’t go back to the village soon, we’d be stuck out here ourselves.
“I don’t want to bring trouble to you,” Jamie said.
He sounded so sad that I made up my mind. “Wait here,” I said.
“Where are you going?”
“We don’t know that the telephone is connected. And if it is, how do we know she called the police? I’m not even sure there are any police any more.”
“No, Holly!”
But he was too late. I had already got to my feet and was making my way over to the telephone box. I could feel my heart pounding. It was such an ordinary thing … or at least, it had been. But at the same time there was something strange and horrible about it – the thick, mottled glass, the bright crimson paint. As I approached, it could have been a spaceship that had landed here and was waiting to swallow me up and carry me away.
I opened the door. It was even heavier than I had imagined. The floor was a slab of concrete. There was a black telephone clinging to a panel above a box with a narrow slot to take a credit card, the little pieces of plastic that people had once used instead of money. A thick wire curled down from the handset. I didn’t want to touch any of it. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had made a telephone call – if I ever had. All I wanted to do was see if the phone was working.
I picked up the receiver, solid and strange in my hand. One end for the ear, the other for the mouth. I held it against my head but there was no sound. What now? Th
ere were buttons marked one to nine with a zero beneath. Once there might have been instructions but someone had taken them away. I looked through the window and saw Jamie waiting for me anxiously. The glass twisted him out of focus. It was as if he were bleeding into the forest around him.
What number was I meant to dial? The receiver was still pressed against my ear. Of course … it was 999. Everyone knew that. But before I had a chance to do anything, a voice spoke to me … a woman’s voice, not old, not young. She sounded almost bored.
“Hello?” There was a pause. “Who is this?”
I didn’t know what to say. Already I was wishing that I had listened to Jamie and hadn’t gone into the kiosk. I wanted to put the phone down and leave but I couldn’t. I was rooted to the ground, no longer in control of my own movements. I could feel my hand trying to crush the plastic receiver beside my ear.
“We’re on our way,” the woman said. “We’ll be with you very shortly.”
But it wasn’t just the woman’s voice that I heard right then. I became aware of something else … the sound of breathing. There was nothing human about it. At first I couldn’t even tell if it was coming from the phone. It was as if it was underneath me, far below the ground, the rumble of an earthquake about to happen. And then, a second later, it was all around me, inside the kiosk, suffocating me. I tried to put the phone down but I couldn’t.
I looked out through the windows but the forest had gone. It had simply been whipped away. Everything was white and, impossibly, it was snowing. Jamie had disappeared. Ahead of me, about a hundred metres away, I saw some sort of castle, built into the side of a mountain, enclosed by huge towers and walls. The clouds were racing past as if they had been speeded up. Everything was white and grey.
“Who is this?” the woman asked.