With a deep sense of foreboding Archer crawled through the opening. Ahead it was completely dark. Worse, it didn’t open out into a room; instead it narrowed down into a tight little tunnel. In olden times it might have been a kind of water pipe that carried water from the well to stop it overflowing into the yard if it rained heavily. Archer couldn’t even crawl. He had to worm his way forward on his belly with his arms out in front, and sort of push along with his feet. He heard them scraping behind him. His back hurt where he’d gouged it on the rough stone when he’d slithered through the grille to escape Mayor Wilkes. Now this. Being here terrified him. His heart pounded. Blood roared through his head. The sides of the tunnel squashed his chest. The pressure made his ribs hurt again. It was hard to breathe. A heavy fungus smell filled his nostrils. The further he wriggled the colder it became. The boy feared the tunnel would narrow to the point he became stuck. Nobody will ever find me. I’ll be trapped for ever . . . Grimly, he pushed forward. Ahead, it was completely dark. What if he encountered an obstruction? Or rats? They could bite him to death. Trembling, he imagined furry snouts, with bristly whiskers, then teeth munching into his face. He shouted when something feathery stroked his face. Shaking his head to free himself from its clutch, he raked at it with his fingers.
Light soft stuff on his skin? A cobweb, that’s all. He struggled to prevent panic engulfing him. At that moment he realized if he started screaming he’d never stop. Onward, onward, onward . . . that’s the only direction. Now it would be impossible to squirm backwards to the well. He’d have to carry on. Archer believed in all kinds of monsters. What if a hand grabbed his face? It could sink its fingers into his eyes. Archer nearly choked with fear. Even to breathe was difficult. All his body hurt from head to toe. Normally, he’d go into emotional shutdown at times of stress. Only this time even that escape wasn’t open to him. He remained clear-headed. He knew the danger he was in. People die in situations like this. I’ve got to save myself. No one will come. Not Lou. Not Laura. I’m all on my own. Taking a deep breath, he squirmed forward. In that darkness it seemed as if he pushed himself down a tube that shrank ever smaller around him. That smell: rich, heavy, a raw mushroom odour. For a long time he struggled forward, his skin chafed from being scraped by stone walls. He moved a hand from side to side as a kind of antenna to get some sense of where the sides of the tunnel were – and what might be lying in wait to bite his face. He knew he’d become weaker. The walls pressing against his body leached their cold through his clothes into his skin. More cobwebs ahead. He didn’t see them but he certainly felt them. Probably spiders in there. With big black, bristly legs. He slashed at invisible cobwebs with his hand. When he’d done this before his knuckles had struck the tunnel wall with a painful knock. This time his hand swung outward into nothingness.
Heart beating faster, he pushed forward, feet scraping frantically at the floor. Then the stones under him vanished. He knew he was hanging out into a void. But what lay outside the tunnel? Another shaft? This might plunge down hundreds of feet. He might tumble into it to break every bone in his body. The light that suddenly appeared brought short-lived relief. He groaned. The witch, Jay! This was his doing. For through a ventilation block in the wall thirty feet to his right shone a dozen narrow rods of light as the sun dropped to the horizon. The light shining through the block didn’t reveal a lot. But it revealed he’d been here before.
Archer saw that the break in the tunnel opened into a cellar. Tree roots hung from the ceiling. The stink of decay filled the air. In the centre of this vaulted chamber sat a car. Filth covered it. Mushrooms had forced their bulbous growths through the side of the headlight. As he swung himself down on to the floor of the cellar he tried to see through the back window of the car. He knew that was where the vehicle’s occupant resided. Only before he had chance to get a proper look the cloud obscured the sun again. Darkness replaced the reddish light.
Standing there, heart pounding, Archer trembled. A cold, cold fear flooded him as he imagined something stirring in the back of the entombed car.
In a shaky voice he cried out, ‘I kept it safe. The bracelet’s in my pocket . . . you wanted me to give it to someone . . . I didn’t know who . . . don’t hurt me . . . I did my best . . . please don’t hurt me.’
Archer’s voice echoed back. This makeshift tomb beneath the castle had just increased its population by one.
Thirty-Eight
‘You’re going to take me for one of your little walks?’ Victor echoed as he stood with Jay on the shore. The sky had grown even darker. Waves rose in angry peaks on the river. ‘Where? Back to Ghorlan, when she planted the tree on our first wedding anniversary?’
Jay appeared to be in a trance. Despite the cold, a sheen of perspiration had formed above those dark eyes that held so many secrets.
‘You do know this is cruel? You torment people with visions of what they can’t possibly change, then you inflict yet more tragedy on them.’
Storm winds blew harder. Steel fishing hooks danced in the trees as the gales tugged at them. Even though the storm had nearly reached Siluria, Victor felt as if he was becoming detached from reality. Branches on the uprooted trees had tapped against the trunks. Only now that tapping had been transformed into a knocking. A fist hammering on the door. Loud. Insistent. Someone wants in.
‘Here we go.’ Jay’s eyes appeared luminous in the gloom. ‘Here we go. I’m taking you back . . . I’m going to show you something terrible . . .’
A frightened stranger stopped Laura in an otherwise deserted street in the village.
‘It’s shocking, isn’t it?’ The middle-aged woman appeared to be in shock herself. ‘They say there’re now thirty people in a coma. It’s this second stage. I’ve got it, too. I can’t even remember my own name.’ Her eyes darted with fear.
Laura had problems of her own. ‘I’m looking for someone,’ she said. ‘You haven’t seen a boy of around eight with blond, curly hair?’
‘People dying. I’m going to be next. I know I am.’ The woman’s eyes went wild. ‘Oh my God! Where do I live? I can’t remember how to get back home!’ She clutched Laura’s arm. ‘Help me get home. You’ve got to help me!’ Without waiting for a reply the woman rushed away down the street. Every few yards she’d dart into a garden, then look searchingly at the front of the cottage as if trying to recognize if this was home. ‘Where do I live? For God’s sake help me!’
Laura’s first instinct was to go to the woman. But, no. Archer needed her more. She must find the boy. If he’d gone into emotional shutdown he could be lying out in the open somewhere, so she left the screaming woman. With luck a villager would take her in. Then again, so many were ill now, seriously ill. Laura’s anxieties were as turbulent as the weather. Victor had entered second stage. Was he really fit enough to search for Jay? Soon his mental faculties would slip from him. But what else could they do? With the island quarantined they couldn’t call in the police. They were alone here. They’d have to deal with this crisis by themselves.
Laura hurried along deserted streets. Doors banged in the breeze. Gales snarled through the trees. The River Severn appeared to be boiling. Mounds of water rose in the channel to explode into sprays of foam. In the hazy distance stood dark woods, beyond those the forbidding mass of the castle. The island was tiny, yet at this moment it seemed an impossibly vast place to search. What drove her was the mental image of Archer lying unconscious in some meadow or copse. As she headed for White Cross Farm she glimpsed another figure walking back through the mist to the village. Victor? She paused, hoping he’d found Jay; perhaps, Archer, too.
The figure moved with nothing less than arrogance. A second later she recognized it. Mayor Wilkes. Damn him, he actually seemed to be enjoying this. During the emergency the island had become his personal kingdom. Before he got close Laura cut off on another path that took her toward the farm. The urgency of her pace intensified. Laura had an overwhelming sense that time was running out.
This is fun. I?
??m actually having the time of my life. On the path back to the village, Wilkes smiled. He knew why he derived such rich enjoyment from recent events. It’s a sense of power. I’m in control . . . complete and utter control. He loved problems. Obstacles brought out the best in him. Now all this: the epidemic, the quarantine, the boy finding Ghorlan’s bracelet. God, yes, this sumptuous feast of adrenalin elevated him above mere mortals. His spirits soared; his mind enjoyed such clarity of thought.
As he approached his house he saw Dr Nazra. Poor, benighted fool. He’d chased after all his clueless neighbours trying to save their insignificant lives. Now the man had driven himself to the point of absolute exhaustion.
However, Dr Nazra called out in a bright voice, ‘Mayor Wilkes. Good news at last. Tomorrow the health authority is sending in a medical team: biohazard suits, field hospital, drugs, the works. It’s a miracle.’
Wilkes snapped, ‘What about the quarantine?’
‘That stands, alas, but we’ll have help first thing in the morning. Isn’t that wonderful?’
Wilkes stormed up the garden path to his front door. He’d planned to let the boy stew in the well for a few days. Now if people were coming on to the island . . . that changed everything. After Wilkes had closed the front door behind him he went straight to a steel cabinet in his study. With a crisp efficiency, he unlocked it. For a moment he gazed at the high quality shotguns neatly arranged in the rack. He found himself enjoying the process of making the selection. Smiling, he chose the twelve-bore pump action shotgun. Didn’t I tell you that I love problems? Humming to himself he emptied a carton of bright orange shotgun cartridges into his jacket pocket, then resting the gun over the crook of his arm, he left the house. It was time to tie up all those irritating loose ends. Within moments he joined the path that would take him back to the castle.
Sometimes half-light. Sometimes utter darkness. A thick, black fog of nothingness that ate into Archer’s soul. The boy had shuffled across the vault as far as he could from the car and its dead husk of an occupant. Half-light. Darkness. The dark periods lasted much longer than those of light . . . yet such a dim light. Every so often the clouds outside would break to admit shafts of sunlight. When these struck the wall outside pencil-thin beams of light shone through the ventilation block. These silver rods would reveal the big gloomy interior of the vault. Archer did his best to seek a way out. Newer bricks, however, filled in the archways where the old doors had once been. He recalled Victor saying that the vaults under the castle had been used by smugglers in olden times. A few years ago it had been decided they were unsafe, so the boss of the castle had ordered them to be bricked up.
Archer began to speak. ‘Jay. I know you can hear me, Jay. Please let me out. I’m scared being in here. It’s me, Archer. We weren’t friends but I never hurt you or was bad to you. Please get me out of here. I’m frightened she’ll come out of the car. I’m worried what she might do to me . . .’
Jay repeated the words: ‘I’m going to show you something terrible.’
Victor had stood at the river’s edge. The branches tapping on the trunks of uprooted trees had turned into an insistent pounding on the door.
‘I’m going to show you something terrible . . .’
Victor didn’t so much hear the words as divine them, as if they ghosted from a world far away. Victor blinked. He no longer stood on a beach but in the hallway of an old house. Traffic droned in the road outside. Horns tooted. City noises. Fried bacon smells filled the air. The knock on the door sounded again. Not just insistent; this was someone who demanded entry.
‘I don’t know this place,’ Victor told Jay. The boy stood an arm’s length away. Victor appraised the thin neck. His powerful hands would make short work of the boy. He took a step nearer. At that moment light steps tip-tapped down the stairs.
‘Archer?’ Victor recognized the boy, though now he appeared younger, perhaps five or six. ‘What are you doing here? You should be back at the hostel with Laura.’
‘He can’t hear you.’ Jay regarded Victor with gleaming eyes. ‘No one can hear you, or see you here.’
A point proved when a man in his thirties, with slick, black hair, appeared at the doorway to the kitchen. The pounding on the front door continued. The man glared right through Victor and Jay as he addressed the little boy at the foot of the stairs: ‘Archer. Come here, son. That’s it, don’t be scared. There’s a good lad.’ Fear distorted the man’s face. ‘Go to the door, Archer. Don’t open it. Whatever you do, don’t unlock it. Just shout through that you’re home with your mother but your dad’s out of town.’
Archer trembled. ‘I want to get Mum a facecloth.’
‘Later.’
‘Her nose is bleeding.’
‘Archer, you little runt, do as I tell you.’
Even though this fraught conversation continued Victor spoke angrily to Jay. ‘Why are you showing me this?’
‘I want you to know why Archer is the way he is.’
‘Showing off, more like.’ Victor shook his head. ‘You’re like the ghost of Christmas past. Fine, you can inflict sorry scenes like this on me, but do you expect we can change any of this? This is the past. There’s no going back. It’s dead.’
‘Like Ghorlan.’
Victor knew that this walk of Jay’s through bygone dramas was just the start. Quickly, he closed his eyes then opened them again in the hope he’d find himself back on the Silurian shore. The hallway remained resolutely in place around him. Floor tiles. Potted fern on a stand. Photographs of sports cars on the wall. Meanwhile, Archer’s father angrily told the boy that he must not open the door to whoever pounded on its panels.
‘If you screw up,’ the man hissed at Archer, ‘I’ll rip your face off and stuff it down your throat.’ Then the bully of a father headed down into a basement.
Archer opened the door to three men in leather jackets. Before they could speak the boy said, ‘He’s down in the cellar. You’ll find him hiding behind the washing machine. He made a secret space in the wall behind the washer.’
Startled, Victor looked at Jay as the boy addressed him in a strangely adult way. ‘The morning this happened the father punched Archer’s mother in the face. He broke her nose. Archer only wanted the beatings to stop.’
‘What’s the point in showing me this, Jay?’
‘Everyone thinks the men burst into the house. Instead, it was Archer who betrayed his own father to them. Don’t you understand yet?’
‘Understand what?’ Victor seethed with anger.
‘I’m trying to make you understand that just because we believe something in the past happened in a certain way, it might not be what really happened.’
The three men, guided by Archer, descended into the basement, where they dragged the man from his hiding place. Victor didn’t hear what was said, but he did hear the gunshots when one of the men fired a handgun at point-blank range. Bullets ripped through flesh, exploding bone. Blood jetted from the wounds, then the man dropped lifeless to the floor. Victor noticed how Archer was staring with contempt at his dead father when the house melted away to be replaced by an entirely different location.
Thirty-Nine
‘I know this place!’ Excited, Victor hurried through a gate into the back garden of a modest suburban house where the sun shone brightly on to red brickwork. ‘It’s my old home.’ With a huge grin, he pointed at a greenhouse filled with tomato plants. ‘That’s what I managed to damage with my bow and arrow when I was your age. The arrow smashed a pane, then hit a load of tomatoes. Juice and bits all over the inside of the glass. My dad went mad.’ He paused. ‘But am I here? Can you really take people back in time, Jay? Or is it this virus inside of me? Am I back on the beach, dreaming all this?’
Jay gazed at him. Victor had witnessed the bloody death of Archer’s father. Anxiety crackled through his nerves. Had Jay brought him here to show him something awful?
‘Jay, why am I here?’
‘People are coming,’ Jay intoned. ??
?They can’t see us.’
Four youths charged into the back garden. One had a bright orange basketball, which he hurled at the hoop. It bounced back toward the greenhouse. A slender man, with curly black hair, caught it.
‘Careful,’ he said laughing. ‘My dad’s only just forgiven me for shooting an arrow through the glass.’
Victor gazed in wonder. ‘That’s me when I was nineteen. Those are my friends from high school. The guy in the glasses is Benjamin, he studied law; the one in the white shirt is Rajeed, now a computer technician; the one just catching the ball from me is Scotty. The last I heard he ran a hotel in Cyprus.’ Astonished, he moved into the centre of the lawn as the four played basketball around him, shooting the hoop fixed to a garage wall. ‘Jay, I know what this is . . .’ His skin tingled as emotion nearly overwhelmed him. ‘This is the last time we were all together. We were all nineteen. My parents threw a party because I’d been accepted on to a conservation programme in Kenya. This was a Sunday. I flew out to Africa the day afterwards. I spent a year working in a nature reserve. We built stock-proof fences, dug irrigation canals, rigged up observation hides for tourists; all kinds of stuff. That’s what I’d dreamed of doing since I was four years old. My God, look at my face! You can see how excited I am.’
Victor paused to listen to the conversation. Benjamin was teasing a much younger Victor Brodman. ‘When did you lose your mind, Vic?’
‘What do you mean?’ He shot the ball at the hoop. It plopped smoothly through.
‘Good shot. This African thing. Scotty was telling me that not only are you going out to work on a game reserve for nothing, you are actually – actually – paying your so-called employer for the privilege. Listen to someone oh-so smarter, my son. When grown-ups go out to work they get paid something called cash. Now cash comes in oblong pieces of paper, or in pieces of metal called coins.’