And then again, the breathing, and a single word – my name: “Holly”. Spoken by something inside the mountain. Mocking me. Colder and crueller than any voice I had ever heard. I was holding the telephone so tightly that I was actually hurting myself, pressing it into the side of my head. But I couldn’t let go.
I don’t know what would have happened next but then the door was jerked open and Jamie grabbed hold of me, dragging me out. I shouted and dropped the telephone, watching it fall and dangle at the end of the wire. And then I was lying on the forest floor, almost in tears, more frightened than I had ever been in my life.
“What is it, Holly?” Jamie cried. “What happened?”
He was cradling me and now I really was sobbing. I couldn’t stop myself. “I don’t know,” I said. “There was a woman. But then there was something else. I heard it. And I saw…”
“What did you see, Holly?”
“I can’t tell you. A castle. Something…” I shook my head, trying to get the vision out of my thoughts. “But they’re coming, Jamie. She told me. They’re on their way.”
He held me, waiting for me to recover. Finally, when I was strong enough, he helped me to my feet and together we went home.
For the last time.
SIX
We ran back to the house. We didn’t know where else to start. My first thought was to get Jamie out of the village and on his way to … it didn’t matter where, he just had to go. But at the same time I knew that it was too late, that it would do no good. The voice on the phone had not been human. No person in this world would have been able to talk like that. And they had spoken my name, known it was me on the other end before I had said a word.
The Old Ones.
It had to be.
When Jamie had told me his story, that evening after the fight with George, I had believed every word he had said, even though common sense, everything I knew about the world, had told me not to. I hadn’t doubted him for a second. Why was that? Perhaps it was because I had been the one who had found him, and from the moment the door had opened we had been inextricably linked. It was as if it was all meant to happen. But now I saw that he had unwittingly brought danger to the village, to the only people I cared about.
“We’ll be with you very shortly.”
It wasn’t his fault, I had to remind myself. It was Miss Keyland. She had gone against what the Council had decided and in doing so she had sacrificed us all.
We got back just as Rita was preparing supper, already wondering where we were. John was standing by the table, laying out plates as if there was anything to put on them other than the usual bread and vegetable stew. Rita knew at once that something was wrong. I had torn my clothes stumbling out of the forest. My hair was wild. My eyes must have been shining with fear. Jamie was deathly pale, already blaming himself. I understood how he felt. Despite what I knew, part of me wanted to blame him too and wished that he had never arrived.
“What is it?” Rita asked.
“It was Miss Keyland,” I gasped. “We followed her. There was a telephone in the forest. Why did you never tell me about it? She called the police. They’re coming.”
It had all come out in a breathless rush. Rita stared at me.
“Coming to the village?” George had appeared on the staircase, dressed in a crumpled white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had heard what I was saying and I thought he would be pleased. If the police came, they would take Jamie away. That was surely what he wanted. But I was wrong. He stood there and his face was aghast.
“Did you hear what Miss Keyland said?” Rita asked.
“No. But I picked up the phone and I heard them…” I felt tears stealing out of the corners of my eyes. I couldn’t stop them. “They were horrible,” I said. “They knew my name. They knew everything.”
John glanced at Rita and I saw her shoulders slump, not in a gesture of defeat but of acceptance. It was as if she had been waiting for something like this to happen, and now that it had she was almost relieved. But when she spoke it was with quiet authority, the steel will that I had always known.
“George,” she said. “Go to the church and sound the alarm. Three rings, three times – you know the code. We have to alert the village.” George didn’t move so she turned her head and snapped at him. “Go now.”
George went. As he left the room our eyes met and I saw that he was worried about me and that he was apologizing, in his own way, for all the tension that there had been between us in the last few days. I tried to smile at him but I’m not sure what expression he saw on my face. Then he was gone.
Rita was already burrowing in a cupboard under the sink, pulling out a bundle wrapped in an old sack. “This is for you, Jamie,” she said. “I know you’ve been saving your own supplies but I’m sure this will suit you better. There’s water, bread, dried fruit and nuts. Enough to keep you going for a few days. Also a compass and a map. You have to leave the village at once – do you understand that? And I want you to take Holly with you.”
“But, Rita—”
“Don’t argue!” she said and I suddenly knew that she had been preparing for this, that the food and the compass had been there all along. How could she have known it was going to happen? She placed the bundle in my hands and just for one last moment we were close. “I always knew about the door,” she said. “Do you think I could live in a village like this and not hear all the stories? My grandmother told me about it before I was your age. One day a boy would appear through the door and that would be the end of the village. That was what she said. But it wasn’t all bad news. She also told me that it would be the start of a better future, a new life. Let’s hope so.” She kissed me very briefly. “Go back through the forest. The telephone box used to be on a road and if you continue north, you’ll find it. If you can’t see it, feel it under your feet. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Don’t come back.”
“But what about you?”
“There’s nothing you can do for us.”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie said, miserably. They were the only two words he’d spoken.
“Don’t be sorry. Be strong. And take care of Holly. That’s all we ask.”
Jamie nodded. We hurried out of the room and the last I saw of Rita and John was the two of them standing together. John had gone over to her and she had laid her head on his shoulder. It was more affection than she had ever shown in the whole time I had been with them.
As we left the house, the church bell began to ring – three peals, then a pause, then three more, then three again. About a minute later, something extraordinary happened. The village lit up. Of course there had always been lighting – street lights and arc lamps and bulbs hanging in porches – but I had never seen them all working at the same time and had assumed they were simply left overs that no one could be bothered to take away. But someone had started up the generator and thrown a switch and they had immediately flickered into life, casting a harsh white glow that made the church, the town hall and all the other buildings seem to leap out of the ground, and scattering the pathways with the deepest black shadows.
“What’s happening?” I whispered or maybe I just thought it, but either way there was no time to stop and find out, no time to take in the marvel of what the world had once been like. We ran the other way, leaving the village square behind us, retracing the steps we had taken just a few minutes ago. Even the houses at the edge of the village were partly illuminated and I was aware of people hurrying out, pulling jerseys over their heads as they went. Perhaps if I had been allowed to attend meetings of the Council, I would have known about these emergency plans. Everyone was coming together. The guards at the perimeter would have heard the church bells too. Perhaps they would have been told to defend themselves to the last bullet. Maybe they would fall back and help the village. I just hoped somebody would know what to do.
We passed the broken-down bus, with the forest very black, a seemingly impassable barrier, ahead of us. We ran into the trees, Jamie still not speaking. And m
e…? I wanted to get away. But even more, I wanted to see George. Perhaps I could have persuaded him to come with us. At the same time, I wished I could find Miss Keyland and confront her with what she had done. I wondered if we might not find somewhere to hide after all and come back in an hour or so when everything had quietened down. I looked over my shoulder and saw the church steeple silhouetted against a white glow that spread out like a fan in the sky. This was the village. This was my whole life. I couldn’t just abandon it, could I?
“Holly…”
“What?”
Jamie had grabbed my arm, stumbling to a halt. He had heard something. What was it? It was a thudding sound, in the sky above us. I looked up and saw what I thought were three stars – two green ones and a red one – moving across the darkness, incredibly fast. Then I felt a gust of wind across my cheek and knew that I was looking at some sort of flying machine. That was incredible. It was impossible. A helicopter or something had come out of nowhere. It was very low and it was heading for the village.
It made my skin crawl. I had seen planes before – maybe four or five times. I knew there were people who still flew. But the planes had always been tiny specks above the horizon, barely more than a glint of silver in the otherwise empty sky, soundless, belonging to that other world. This … helicopter … was landing right here. It was invading us.
It also reminded me, if I needed reminding, that time was running out. The police had already arrived. We had to get away. With a new sense of urgency we plunged into the forest, letting it devour us, separating us from the village.
But we hadn’t gone very far before Jamie stopped me again and this time I didn’t need to ask him why.
There were specks of white light, electric again, moving towards us in a long line that curved all the way round the darkness in front of us so that no matter which direction we took, we would have to confront them. I could see the lights dancing between the trees like huge insects, fireflies, but I knew they were torches held by human hands. How many of them were there and how had they got here so quickly? Before I could even start counting, a voice called out and I recognized Tom Connor, who was still in his observation tower somewhere above us but invisible in the blackness of the treetops.
“Stop right there!”
It was the same command he had delivered to Miss Keyland but now he sounded terrified and the lights didn’t hesitate, not for a second.
“I warn you,” he shouted. “I’m armed.”
There was a brief pause and then a tongue of flame unfurled itself from the darkness. It seemed very small at first, like someone lighting a match, but it grew monstrously, rolling forward, billowing out in a diagonal line from the ground to the top of the observation tower. Tom must have realized what was about to happen. For a few brief seconds I saw him, standing there in the middle of his useless wooden fortification, bringing up the useless gun that he had taken from his shoulder, bathed in orange. The fire rushed towards him, hissing through the night. Jamie grabbed hold of me and spun me round before it hit, but not before I saw Tom, a boy I had once played with, disappear in an all-consuming fireball and heard his single, unforgettable scream.
“We have to go,” Jamie said. “We have to get back.”
I looked round. The observation tower was on fire, the flames lighting up the forest all the way to the point where we were concealed. But for a dip in the ground, we would have been seen ourselves. The torches continued moving. Somebody – one of the other perimeter guards – shouted. There was a single shot, followed by a much louder, angrier stammer from a machine gun. Another pause. Then a body fell through the trees and hit the forest bed with a soft thump.
They were getting nearer. The police, the Old Ones, whatever they were. I wanted to cry out but I knew that to do so would be death. I allowed Jamie to pull me away and together we scrambled back the way we had come, running faster even than before, the path lit by a faint orange glow. There were more shots behind us and, as we went, another scream. I tried to block them out of my head. I wanted to find Rita and John again. I wanted to see George.
Normally, we wouldn’t have been able to move so fast, not at night, but the village was still illuminated ahead of us. We ran past houses with open doors and gates; signs that the inhabitants had left in a hurry. The church bell was silent now and had remained so since the original alarm. But everyone in the village must have heard the gunfire. We heard a further burst even as we reached the garage, softer and less distinct but still unmistakeable. The petrol pumps watched us as we went past, two old soldiers who had been left on the sidelines. The white glow of the electric light was stronger right ahead of us. We allowed it to draw us in.
And so we came to the edge of the square, lingering in the shadows where we wouldn’t be seen. I couldn’t tell if all the villagers had assembled but certainly most of them were there, pushed back against the sides to make room for the helicopter which had landed right in the middle. I searched anxiously for my own family but couldn’t see any of them. I noticed Mike Dolan and Simon Reade – together as always – and Dr Robinson and Sir Ian Ingram were close by too. Their eyes were fixed on the helicopter. All of them looked small and afraid.
The helicopter was black and yellow, shaped like a bullet with three huge blades, now hanging limply, and thick metal runners. The front was all glass and I could just make out some of the controls with a few lights winking inside the cockpit. I had never seen a helicopter before, except in pictures, and looking at it now, the real thing, I found it impossible to believe that anything so heavy and so cumbersome could actually rise off the ground and fly. And to have it sitting in the middle of our village! All those years spent hiding and now it had landed as if it had known where we were all the time.
There was a woman standing beside it. Was she the woman I had heard on the phone? She was wearing a black leather coat that reached all the way to her calves, with black leather boots below. It certainly wasn’t a uniform. It must have been the way she liked to dress. She had long ginger hair that fell in untidy curls and a thin, very pale face. Her eyes and lips gave nothing away. It was impossible to guess her age. She was quite near to me but she gave the impression of being far away, melting into the darkness that surrounded her. The darkness suited her.
Two men stood behind her, both wearing black police uniforms and helmets and visors that covered their faces. They were armed with machine guns.
“We know that the boy is somewhere in the village,” she was saying. She wasn’t the woman I had heard on the phone. Her voice was extraordinarily clear, reaching everyone in the square as if it was being secretly amplified. “He is the only one we have any interest in. Tell us where he is and we’ll go away.”
“I’ve got to tell them…” Jamie whispered to me.
“No.” I gripped his arm. “You can’t.”
Everyone knew the woman was lying. They had heard the shots in the forest. The village had been discovered, invaded and in that moment all its defences had gone.
I saw somebody push their way through the crowd and Miss Keyland appeared. She was wearing a shawl against the chill of the night and, as usual, her yellow wellington boots. She wasn’t looking very pleased with herself. I think she was only just beginning to understand the consequences of what she had done.
“My name is Anne Keyland,” she announced.
“Yes?” The helicopter woman sounded uninterested.
“I was the one who telephoned you.” This caused a ripple, a mutter of disgust that spread through the crowd. The people who were nearest to her shrank away and suddenly Miss Keyland was on her own, separated from the rest of the village, watched from every side. I saw Sir Ian shake his head in disbelief. But she went on anyway. “You promised a reward for the boy. There are a lot of things we need here. The crops are beginning to die out. We all know that. The water levels are lower every year. We have no more medicine if anyone gets sick, no oil for the generator. These are all things you can give us.” She had ra
ised her voice and I guessed that she was speaking to us all now, trying to explain what she had done. “You promised me that no one would get hurt.”
“I promised it if you co-operated.”
“We are co-operating.”
“Then where is the boy?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know, you’re no use to me.” The woman’s hand had disappeared into her pocket and drawn out a small gun. Without even hesitating, she shot Miss Keyland where she stood. There was a spray of blood, picked up by the lights. Miss Keyland crumpled in a little heap. Nobody moved.
“So who is going to tell me where I can find Jamie Tyler?” the woman demanded.
Once again I felt Jamie tense up beside me and knew that he couldn’t stand any more of this, that he was going to make himself known. But before he could move, I heard a voice call out and recognized Rita, although I couldn’t see her on the other side of the square, lost in the crowd. “Jamie’s not here,” she said. “He left before you came. He went through the wood, heading over to the east.” Rita had built a lie into her response. She knew full well that Jamie and I had headed north. She had no idea, of course, that we were both back in the village.
“Is that true?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “Then I’ve been wasting my time.”
She raised a hand, almost like flicking away a summer wasp. It was a signal for all hell to break loose.
The two guards raised their machine guns and opened fire, the noise of the bullets deafening as it echoed off the buildings on every side. The circle of villagers, silent and resentful one moment, broke apart and suddenly everyone was screaming and stampeding into one another, forgetting everything in a desperate attempt to find a way out. At the same time, they found that the entire square was surrounded. The policemen from the forest had arrived even while the woman was talking and had taken up their positions, kettling us, with riot shields … and worse. They had flame-throwers, machine guns, huge batons and gas canisters. They stood there, waiting to pick their targets off one by one.