Vengeance Child

  ‘Laura!’ Still she didn’t hear. Behind him the liquid wall shattered timbers that held the path in place. He knew the wave gained on him. The only thing in his favour was that he’d got a head start. If he could reach Laura, he might be able to save her. Because if that thing hit it would kill her as surely as a bomb. Instead of shouting her name he sank all his energy into running. Vibration shook the ground. To his left the huge black flank of the ship slid past. Water foamed at the bow as the captain broke every safety rule in the book. Victor risked a glance back. The tidal wave was now perhaps fifty yards behind him. When it struck a bush it wrenched it from the ground. Debris in the menacing curl of water would act like a meat grinder if it hit a human being. Ahead of him, Laura walked; she’d got something on her mind that distracted her from the outside world. Once that tsunami struck she’d be gone. Victor, too. He glanced at the river. Ghorlan’s waiting. A cold embrace. Liquid eternity . . . He drove the thought from his mind. Ahead of Laura a line of bushes concealed steps up the banking. Being a stranger to the island, it was unlikely she knew they were there. If he made it in time, that would be their escape route.

  Seconds later he caught up with her. No time for explanations. Nothing but this. He grabbed her. Without slowing he ran with her in his arms.

  ‘Victor? What the hell are you doing? Put me down! Put me down, you . . .’

  Then her eyes went wide. She’d seen the ship. The tidal wave, too. Its sheer violence vibrated the earth under them. It thundered. A ripping sound reached their ears as it stripped turf from the banking.

  Victor reached the steps. By now, the tidal wave displaced the very air. A hurricane struck them that stank of river mud. The ship’s horn cried out again – a lament for dead souls. Bounding up the steps with Laura in his arms, Victor tried to outrun the lethal barrage of water. Bushes writhed to his right as the wave struck.

  As he passed the ten-foot mark, halfway up the banking, the crest of the wave smacked against his heel. Then it gouged out a muddy chunk of mound. Half-stumbling, Victor regained his balance, then carried Laura to level ground where they collapsed on to soft grass. Still, with their arms round each other they sat, trembling, as the man-made tsunami roared along the path, channelled by the earth incline. The wave only died when the ground opened out into fields. Even then a wash of brown water, at ankle-depth, swirled its way through stems of wheat.

  Twenty-Eight

  The cry had woken Archer. Frightened, he’d looked out of the window. A huge ship glided past the island. As big as an office block it dwarfed the houses. The wash from its bows ran up the beach in a big wave to smack against the jetty. In fact, it was so powerful it snatched away a dinghy, which vanished into the foam never to reappear. Archer realized that if it wasn’t for the village being built on higher ground the water would have gushed into the houses.

  ‘Jay said Laura’s name.’ He shuddered. ‘He’s done that thing to her.’

  Sleep had dispelled the effects of the seizure. Even so, he felt unsteady on his feet as he went to pull on his shoes. At least he’d been put to bed in his clothes so he wouldn’t waste time getting dressed. What matters now, he thought, what is ultra-important is to tell Laura . . . ‘You’ve gotta know that Jay’s put the curse on you.’

  Outside, the cold air stank of river mud. A mist made the houses all faint . . . all colours were washed out. All faded, weaker, sickly . . . It was like the village was slowly dying. Normally there wouldn’t be wind when it was foggy. Yet a hard breeze pushed the trees. Branches shook as if they protested at the rough treatment. Leaves, stripped from the twigs, raced along the ground in a river of green. And the gales made crying sounds across the roofs. It made Archer think of sorrow and weeping. There weren’t many people about as Archer headed toward the hostel. A cottage door had been left open. It banged furiously in the storm. All of a sudden a figure emerged from the murk. It was the island’s doctor; he spoke into a mobile with such grave tones they filled Archer with dread.

  ‘Listen . . . I am begging you to send help. Just this morning I’ve had to issue nine death certificates. I’m on my way now to another patient who is in a coma. At this rate half the island will be unconscious by nightfall. This isn’t an epidemic, madam, it is a plague.’

  The doctor never even noticed Archer as he swept past. At that moment to Archer the man didn’t seem like a human being. He was a fabrication of dark shadows. A seething mass of worries, fears, of problems without solutions, an individual whose role it was to see death in men’s faces, to be in the company of the dying, then to certify their death. Archer couldn’t render that intuitive understanding in words. Instead, his imagination turned that figure into the essence of dread.

  These dark emotions made Archer move all the quicker. He had to warn Laura. Jay had repeated her name. The curse was on her. How long before the doctor, with all those grim shadows, came to sit beside her bed?

  The boy, however, came to a dead stop. For there, in the middle of the street, as if waiting for him, was another figure.

  ‘Jay. Get away from me.’

  Jay merely stood there. Still as a statue. Green leaves raced by his feet. Fog swirled round him. Slowly, Archer moved forward. He longed to flee from Jay, but he had to pass him to reach the hostel. He needed to find Laura. She must be warned. Meanwhile, the breeze ruffled Jay’s hair. The eyes were bright. As if he was excited about something. Those eyes tracked Archer as he tried to sidle by.

  Then Jay’s lips moved. Just a little. Barely a twitch.

  ‘Don’t you dare say Laura’s name again.’ Archer clenched his fists. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. It’s rotten. Laura loves us. She’s nice. You’ve put a bad thing on her. She’ll die now. And it’s all your fault!’

  Jay’s lips parted.

  Archer now stood just five paces from Jay. ‘D’you hear me? Don’t you dare say Laura’s name.’

  Jay didn’t blink. His stare blazed through Archer. For a moment Archer glimpsed hundreds of screaming men, women and children in that stare. A sickening deluge of sound. A ship was sinking into an ocean. He sensed the panic before it became a surge of rage. A fury. A distillation of pure anger. That emotion ripped through the eight-year-old. His nerve endings burned with it. He swayed. Suddenly it seemed like there was no earth beneath his feet. It was as if he was slipping downward. To join Dad in his grave, to smell wet earth, taste the rot, feel the worm . . . Then his senses snapped back to absolute clarity as he heard Jay begin to speak: ‘Archer . . . Archer . . .’

  With a howl of despair Archer ran past Jay toward the hostel. Yet even when he put his hands over his ears he could still hear the boy’s soft, insistent voice.

  ‘Archer . . . Archer . . . Archer . . .’

  Twenty-Nine

  Victor and Laura followed the wake of destruction. Because the path had been ripped out of the shoreline by the tidal wave they stuck to the top of the banking.

  ‘Damn ship,’ Victor growled. ‘It was too close to the island. It’s a miracle that the captain didn’t run her aground.’

  Laura had only just been able to find her voice again after the shock of what happened. ‘Does this happen often?’

  ‘Rarely, very rarely. The speed that thing was going.’ He glared at the ship as it disappeared into the mist. ‘It’s as if the captain was drunk, or . . .’ He grimaced.

  ‘Jay.’ Laura groaned. ‘I feel as if I’m trapped in a nightmare, and I can’t wake up. Tell me I’m asleep.’

  ‘You’re as wide awake as I am.’ The cold wind seemed to blow right through his flesh. ‘Jay took me to see Ghorlan. She’s been dead ten years, but I found myself back on the day of our first anniversary, she was planting a tree. A cedar. It’s a tradition from her village . . .’ The words ran from him faster. ‘I saw her. Even though I know she’s out there.’ He nodded out at the turbulent river. ‘She was angry that I hadn’t searched for her. But I had, Laura. Month after month. Beaches, the marsh, up and down the river. Every inlet. And two
days ago she damn well bawls me out for not looking!’ He realized he was shouting. ‘What did she think I’d been doing? Watching television? Lazing my time away in the blasted pub!’ He shook with anger. ‘But how can she have been there, Laura? After ten years in the river there’d be nothing left.’

  ‘Jay can do this. I’ve seen what he’s capable of.’

  ‘He’s evil.’

  ‘Little witch is what the others call him. But it’s not his fault.’

  ‘It is, Laura! Jay is responsible!’

  ‘He’s just a frightened little boy.’

  ‘Yesterday, I stood ten feet from him. He looked up at two airliners. You could see them in the sky, two white lines of vapour. Everything how it should be. As he watched he did something to them, like he did to the captain of that ship, and the planes began to converge. I knew that he’d got into the pilots’ heads. He’d make them collide. Hundreds would have died. I was seconds from picking up a rock and smashing his skull to pieces.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ Laura spoke calmly.

  ‘Why do you think?’ A sudden drowsiness gripped him. ‘I’m not the skull breaking kind . . . unless . . .’ He shrugged as bloody images streamed through his mind of a rock in his hand that dripped crimson. With an effort he focused his thoughts. ‘Instead, I told him I was going to marry you.’

  ‘Marry me?’ Laura registered absolute shock. ‘What made you say that?’

  ‘I needed to say something powerful enough to distract him.’

  ‘Do you know what damage you might have caused?’ She walked faster. ‘Instead of making things better you’ve made them worse.’

  ‘Hundreds of lives were at stake. Either that or the rock.’ Victor kept pace with her. Ahead the village looked sombre as the approaching storm darkened the skies.

  Laura paused. ‘Most children I care for would be devastated by news like that. They’re emotionally dependent on the staff. To them marriage doesn’t mean love, it means that somebody they care about will vanish from their lives. If a carer at the lodge plans to leave or to marry we spend weeks gently introducing the children to the idea. We build in reassurances. We devise methods to compensate for the disappearance of the carer.’ She began to walk once more. ‘Jay’s fragile at the best of times. This could push him over the edge.’ Grimly, she added, ‘Only in Jay’s case the devastation goes beyond any trauma he might suffer.’

  They moved in silence through the meadows. Victor noticed that apart from the loss of the riverside path, together with a couple of dinghies that had been moored on the beach, the damage hadn’t been as great as it might have been. All the houses were built on elevated areas of ground. The flood hadn’t touched them. However – a big however – a flood of a different kind was poised to devastate Siluria. Whatever was in Jay would deliver a flood of suffering, of fear, of death. Victor had seen it happen. He didn’t doubt it was on its way. He shivered as a cold wind blew mournful notes through the telephone wires.

  The village streets were empty of people. Leaves swirled like green phantoms. Laura rushed in the direction of the hostel. Angry shouts from children burst from the building with the shocking abruptness of gunshots.

  ‘I told you,’ she muttered. ‘I told you they’d go crazy if they heard the word “marriage”.’

  Lou appeared at the doorway to frantically beckon Laura. The normally placid woman was at her wits’ end.

  ‘What can I do to help?’ Victor asked.

  ‘Stay here. If they see you they’ll go into meltdown. And as for Jay, God have pity on us.’ Laura vanished into the building.

  Mayor Wilkes emerged through wraiths of mist. ‘Brodman, have you seen what that bloody ship has done to my footpath? It will cost our entire maintenance budget to replace that. My God, I’m going to find out who is responsible for that ship then I’m going to sue the . . .’ Wilkes noticed Victor’s expression. ‘What’s wrong with you? Seen a ghost?’

  ‘You’ve got to get this quarantine lifted. We need help on the island.’

  ‘In your dreams, Brodman. They’ve locked us down with a code red health alert. We’re not only under strict quarantine rules, we are, as our esteemed GP put it, as good as exiled on the dark side of the moon.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t you know? That puke and poop bug mutated. A bad belly was only the first stage. Second stage happens up here.’ He tapped his head. ‘The virus attacks the brain. People who’ve had it appear to rally then they start getting forgetful, lose their faculties, they become lethargic, then they fall asleep. Eventually for keeps.’ Wilkes stared. ‘Good God, Victor. You’ve had it, haven’t you?’

  ‘And Mary, and my brother-in-law.’ Victor’s blood ran cold. ‘Second stage, you say? How long until it starts to take effect?’

  ‘I’m not the quack.’ Wilkes shrugged. ‘A few hours, maybe.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Today, so far, nine dead. With all this and the ship nearly ramming the island it’s like someone put a curse on us.’

  Victor rubbed his face. His skin felt strangely numb.

  With a degree of satisfaction Wilkes asked, ‘Are you feeling unwell?’

  ‘I’m going to stay well until I’ve finished what I’ve got to do.’

  ‘Not those flaming animals? Wait . . . Where are you going? Shouldn’t you be home in bed?’

  Victor fired back, ‘I’m going to find Jay.’

  ‘The boy from the orphanage? What the hell for?’

  ‘It’s vital I find him.’ Blood pounded in Victor’s ears.

  ‘You’re chasing one of those nutty kids? Dr Nazra said all you infected people would go crazy.’ Wilkes was delighted. ‘And, boy-oh-boy, is he right!’ He chuckled. ‘Brodman, you’re away with the fairies!’

  ‘One day you’ll thank me.’

  ‘Thank you? Yes, I suppose I will but not in the way you expect.’ Wilkes grinned. ‘By the way, this boy . . . Jay. He appears to have lost his wits, too. I saw him walking down this very street today. His eyes were blazing like he’d glimpsed paradise. And he was chanting names. Barking mad, if you ask me.’

  Victor’s heart lurched. ‘What names?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t remember now.’ Dismissive, Wilkes waved his hand. ‘Totally nuts, though.’

  ‘Wilkes! Which name?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  Victor dashed at the man, grabbed his jacket lapels in both hands, then hauled him until they were nose to nose. ‘Which names?’

  ‘Don’t you touch me with your filthy bug-infested—’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘You’ve just signed your immediate resignation, Brodman. You’re finished here.’

  Victor shoved the man back against a garden fence. At last Mayor Wilkes realized that the ranger wasn’t playing games.

  ‘OK, OK . . .’ Wilkes’ lip curled. ‘If it means so much to you . . . or to your nasty infected brain. The boy was repeating the island’s name: “Siluria. Siluria.” Get it? Oh, and the nurse . . . whatever they call the infernal woman.’

  ‘Laura?’

  ‘That’s the one, Victor.’ His tone suggested he was humouring him. ‘Laura, Laura, Laura.’

  Victor pushed the man away. A moment later he raced toward the hostel.

  Behind him, Wilkes took pleasure in shouting, ‘You’re second stage, Victor! Go home. Calm that infested head of yours.’ He barked out laughter. ‘Before you get yourself into even more trouble!’

  Thirty

  In the dining hall there was pandemonium. The hostel’s walls trembled as the children from Badsworth Lodge went berserk. After Archer had heard Jay repeat his name out in the street, the child had dashed in mad panic to find Laura. The other children wanted to know what had scared him so badly. The trouble was, he was so petrified it came out in confused phrases.

  ‘Jay’s done it again . . . the witch . . . I fell down here . . . then I woke up . . . and I know really bad stuff’s happening! The doctor’s got so worried.
Nobody’s coming!’

  A youth grunted, ‘Archer, we don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yeah, spit it, or bottle it,’ Candice snapped.

  Archer stared, unable to speak. At that moment Laura entered the dining hall. Seeing her jolted out a fact that preyed on his mind. ‘Laura’s getting married.’

  ‘What!’ All the children flinched at the shock news.

  ‘Archer, how do you know that Laura’s getting married?’

  ‘I met Victor. And Victor told Jay that he’s getting married to Laura. And another thing . . .’ The kids went crazy. They started yelling at each other, at Laura. One boy’s face went into spasm, the bottom lip extended so much his teeth were bared in a weird snarl. He punched out at a pair of teenagers who stood next to him. Candice ran to a wall where she beat her own head against the brickwork. While Laura raced to stop her, Lou tried to break up the fighting youths.

  Archer cried, ‘And another thing. Jay’s saying my name. He’s saying Laura’s. He’s put his witch curse on us!’ He kept shouting. Only not a single person heard above the racket.

  The big room echoed to the barrage of children howling – sorrow mated with rage. Even though no individual words were identifiable, the cacophony all stated the single terrible fact. If Laura marries she’ll leave. What will happen to us? Who will keep us safe?

  The teenager who’d started the fight grabbed a knife from the cutlery box. Lou had to wrestle the boy to the ground, before prising his fingers from the handle.

  Archer, meanwhile, shouted himself hoarse, trying to attract Laura’s attention. However, she’d wrapped her arms around Candice to stop the girl pounding her forehead into the brickwork. At last the self-harmer collapsed into Laura’s hug. There she wailed so loudly it shook the cups on the tables.

  Archer tugged Laura’s arm. ‘Jay’s done it to you, Laura. He’s saying your name. He’s saying it over and over. You gotta stop him!’