The divers attached ropes to the Pod Fighter and Ellie felt it rock in the water as it was winched up. Her heart beat madly as she prepared for it to break the surface of the river and when she saw the men leaning over the side of the boat, she panicked for a moment and tried to push the jammed windshield open with her hands, then thought of a better idea.
‘It’s OK,’ she whispered, with her mouth pressed to the monkey’s head. ‘We can do this. We just need to stay calm.’
She pulled Puck up so he was hanging off her neck, took a deep breath and focused her gaze on the windshield until it began to glow. Only Gorman realized what was about to happen. He saw Ellie’s expression change and recognized the intense concentration in her dark eyes.
‘Look out!’ he yelled, lifting his hands to protect his face. But it was too late; a second later, every man on the boat was hit by a shower of filthy water as the windshield was blown clean off the Pod Fighter as if a bomb had exploded inside it. The next few moments were a blur of watery confusion. Some of the men dropped their guns on the deck and had to bend down and fumble around for them in the darkness. Others were blinded by the dirty water and had to wipe their eyes on the sleeves of their plague suits. By the time they had recovered, Ellie was gone, the Pod Fighter was filling up with water and the Chief of River Police was staggering around the boat with a monkey attached to his head.
‘Help!’ he screamed. ‘Ahhhhhh!’
He lurched back and forth. Desperate to get away from him, the men forgot their guns and began running around as if they were playing musical chairs with no chairs left, and all this movement and noise made Puck even more afraid. Unable to see Ellie and wanting to stop the screaming and motion, the monkey bit the Chief’s right ear, then raised his head, bared his blood-covered fangs and screeched at the men as if he was possessed by the devil. It was the most terrifying sight they had ever seen and as the Chief’s blood bubbled in the monkey’s mouth, they froze as if the game had changed and they were now playing musical statues.
‘Don’t just stand there like a row of cabbages!’ Gorman yelled, frantically looking around for Ellie. ‘Just shoot it, you fools! Where’s the girl? Someone kill that monkey and find that FRAGGING GIRL!’
Ellie was clinging to the side of the boat in the darkness with the current tugging at her legs. The water was so cold she was already numb from the chest down and barely able to breathe. Choking and shuddering, she desperately tried to strengthen her grip against the deadly pull of the water.
Puck will never survive this, she thought desperately. The current is too strong, the water too cold.
Her jaw juddered and her left hand lost its grip for a moment and she only just managed to find another before she was swept away. She heard the Chief scream as Puck bit him, and Gorman yelling at his men, and spurred by a desperate urge to save her animal friend, she managed to clamber over the side of the boat and went and stood amongst them. They were spooked by the strangeness of her. In her wet white clothes, she looked like a child-sized angel, but her eyes were darker than the bottom of the river. She tucked her hair behind her ears and glanced at Puck, and he leaped powerfully from the Chief’s shoulder to land in her arms, where he clung to her with his back to the men and his face pressed against her neck.
‘Kill them!’ Gorman rasped, so consumed by rage he sounded as if he was trying to scream with lungs full of dry leaves. ‘Quickly!’
They heard a heavy splash and looked round to see that the terrified Chief had jumped over the side of the boat into the river. They watched the darkness swallow his flailing arms, then raised their guns and pointed them at Ellie. There was no hesitation this time; the child had a plague animal hanging off her neck with the Chief’s blood on its teeth, and by some witchery she had blown the windshield off a Pod Fighter. But stranger things were about to happen in the darkness, with the drifting, black water around them. They would remember meeting Ellie and Puck for a long, long time.
As they took aim and prepared to fire, Ellie’s eyes began to burn like black coals and her pale skin glowed as if a white light had been turned on inside her. The men felt a strange sensation in their hands, a tingling sensation as if their veins were being invaded by her energy, then their guns moved, squirming and wriggling in their hands as if they had come alive and wanted to escape. The child didn’t move, didn’t blink or make a sound, she just watched them calmly. They couldn’t shoot her. Their guns refused to point at her even when the men held them with both hands. And before they had a chance to figure out what she was doing, two of the guns were in Ellie’s hands and the rest were in the river. The men looked at their empty palms as if they’d never seen them before, then at Ellie, with fear.
‘Get away from us,’ she said quietly, edging towards the plank leading to the other boat. ‘Or I’ll kill you all.’
The men began to move back, terrified, and a few looked over the side of the boat and considered following the Chief into the freezing river.
‘Stay where you are!’ Gorman yelled at the men. ‘And you,’ he sneered, glaring at Ellie. ‘You take one more step and your brother, your mother and father will die. There are men outside your home in Barford North waiting for orders. You’ll only have yourself to blame, Ellie. I have the power to kill them all.’
Ellie froze, her heart feeling as if Gorman had run it through with a sword.
‘You know you can’t go home, Ellie,’ Gorman said, his eyes hard on her face. ‘I need you.’
‘I just want to tell them I’m not dead,’ Ellie said quietly, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘That’s all. I won’t tell them The Secret, I promise!’
‘Well, you can’t,’ Gorman stated, coldly. ‘You belong to us now.’
‘Please!’ she begged. ‘Just let me see them! Just for a few minutes. I miss them so much!’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she cried. ‘Why won’t you let me see them? What do you want from me?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he said.
‘Please tell me!’ she cried. ‘Why won’t you tell me? You’ve taken me from my family but you won’t even say why! Please!’
‘No!’ he said angrily. ‘I’ll tell you when I’m ready to tell you, not when you decide.’
She looked away from him, tears burning the back of her throat. It was impossible. How had she ever believed she could escape Mal Gorman? She felt her body slump with sadness and the guns fell from her hands to the deck.
‘Get in that,’ Gorman ordered, pointing at the larger coffin. ‘And make Puck get in his before I decide to kill him for all the trouble you’ve caused me. You’ve ruined my holiday, Ellie.’
Ellie was shocked to see the coffins on the deck – the large one for her and the smaller one for Puck. Gorman grabbed her arm with his bony fingers. ‘No!’ she wept as he pushed her towards it. He was surprisingly strong for a walking skeleton. ‘We won’t be able to breathe in there! We’ll suffocate!’
Gorman picked up one of the guns and shot a few holes in the lids.
‘There you go,’ he snapped. ‘Air holes. Now get in.’
Her hands shook as she talked comforting words to Puck and encouraged him to lie down in his coffin. It was awful, he was looking up at her with his bright eyes full of trust and she felt overwhelmed by guilt. Poor Puck. As she closed the lid she could hear him hooting with fear and confusion inside. She climbed into the other coffin with silent tears running down her face, feeling a new emotion: a murderous anger and hatred like she’d never felt before. She felt as if something was growing inside her, revving up, a heat, a noise like a stampede.
Gorman stood between the two coffins and looked down on her. He was also feeling a new emotion, or at least one he hadn’t felt for a long time. He felt a bit warm inside, a bit glad. He had her back, alive, and all that effort and money hadn’t been wasted after all – and, he realized, he’d learned through this experience how to control her. Perhaps this new job wasn’t going to be so hard after all. All
he’d have to do is threaten to kill the monkey and the people she loved and she’d do whatever she was told.
‘Things will be better for you soon,’ he said, almost kindly. ‘In a few weeks you’ll have some new friends to keep you company.’
‘You’re going to steal more children?’ Ellie asked, glaring at him. ‘Isn’t killing two enough?’
Her chest felt hot and her head began to throb as her anger and hatred intensified, and the sound of the stampede become the roar of a single beast, a cloven rage beast in her mind.
‘A hundred children wouldn’t be enough,’ Gorman said. ‘One day you’ll understand.’
‘I hope not,’ she replied, bitterly. ‘Because if I did, it would mean I had become like you.’
‘Your new friends will want to come,’ Gorman continued. ‘They’ll be begging to work for me.’
Ellie glared at him, wishing he was dead, feeling all her hatred and anger coming out like black rods from her eyes. For a few seconds Gorman met her gaze confidently, he was even smiling a little, pleased with himself. She didn’t mean to do it, she didn’t even know she could do it, and when Gorman flinched and pulled his head back she made no link between her gaze and his pain. He opened his mouth to gasp and his body turned rigid as if he was being electrocuted. His shoulders jabbed up and his hands began to shake as if he was a malfunctioning borg. Then a thin trickle of blood ran out of one of his dry nostrils and he closed his mouth again and made this awful creaking noise as his teeth ground together. Ellie became aware that her eyes felt like magnets locked to his head, and she tried to drag them away, suddenly understanding what she was doing to him. Gorman realized too. He could hear the roar, feel her anger and hatred like scalpels slicing his brain. It was the worst pain he had ever experienced.
‘Shut the lid,’ he rasped, falling against a policeman, who held out his arms to catch him. ‘Shut it, quickly.’
The policeman kicked Ellie’s coffin lid closed, and the last thing she saw for several weeks was the paleness of terror on Mal Gorman’s face.
4
A VERY DISTURBED BOY
The Barford North Community Hospital was a hulk of rust-streaked concrete that looked like a prison. Unlike the private hospital in nearby Oxford, there were no plastic flowers in reception, no carpets on the floor, no relaxing music or smiling nurses in crisp white uniforms. In the Barford North hospital, the chairs in the waiting room were scratched and grey and screwed to the floor. There was no heating. The drinks machine coughed up watery coffee for two credits a cup and there was a drunken man asleep in the corner muttering something about kebab sauce.
Mika’s parents sat in silence waiting for news, huddled in their coats against the early morning cold. Tears ran down Asha’s face as she remembered how she’d shouted at him only moments before he’d started to choke – that she’d got angry with him, not only for waking them up in the middle of the night, but because he wouldn’t accept Ellie was dead. And now he might die too and those angry words would be the last he heard. She felt terrible guilt and sorrow. She loved her children so much the pain was unbearable, and she felt as if she would rather die too than exist without them.
David took her hand and squeezed it. He did not find it easy to show his feelings in front of strangers, and to the passing hospital staff he looked calm, as if he was waiting for a train, but inside he felt cut to pieces by grief.
It was two hours after Mika’s dramatic arrival in an ambulance pod that a doctor came to talk to them. David and Asha followed him along a dimly lit hallway and stopped outside Mika’s ward. The doctor was a small, grey-faced man with serious eyes. He looked tired and anxious to get away.
‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know there’s nothing wrong with him,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘You can take him home.’
‘What?’ Asha cried, almost falling over backwards with shock. ‘He was nearly dead two hours ago! What do you mean there’s nothing wrong with him? That’s impossible! He couldn’t breathe! He was choking to death!’
‘That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting,’ the doctor said. ‘Parents are usually happy when I tell them their children are still alive.’
‘Of course I’m happy,’ Asha spluttered, her eyes filling with tears of confusion. ‘I’m just amazed, that’s all, he seemed so ill.’
‘Well, not any more,’ the doctor said, impatiently. ‘He suddenly came round while we were examining him and sat up in bed looking disorientated. When we asked him if he knew what had happened to him he came out with some incoherent mumble about water in the engine and popcorn. And he says everything looks dark, but we’ve run full tests and he’s perfectly healthy. His eyes are fine.’
‘So what do you think happened to him?’ David asked. ‘A boy doesn’t start choking to death for no reason.’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ the doctor replied. ‘Who knows the workings of a prepubescent mind? Has he got any problems in school or at home?’
Asha and David looked at each other and their hearts sank horribly.
‘Yes,’ David said, his eyes dropping to the floor. He didn’t want to tell the grey-faced doctor about Mika’s obsession with Ellie, but felt he had no choice. ‘His twin sister died a year ago and he refuses to believe she’s dead.’
‘Ah,’ the doctor said. ‘That could explain things. Twins have a strong bond – losing a twin brother or sister is like losing a part of yourself.’
‘So you think this was all in his head?’ Asha asked. ‘That he made this choking thing up?’
‘It’s possible,’ replied the doctor. ‘I think he should talk to someone. He needs to see a counsellor and come to terms with his sister’s death. He’s obviously a very disturbed boy.’
They nodded in reluctant agreement.
‘One more thing,’ the doctor continued. ‘I noticed Mika has webbed feet and yet he isn’t registered as a mutant on his medical records. Why is that?’
‘We didn’t know he was a mutant until a day after he was born,’ Asha replied. ‘Ellie’s mutation was more obvious – she was born with webbed fingers and they operated on her shortly after birth, but Mika’s toes were overlooked because nobody noticed. Does it matter?’
‘Legally he should be registered,’ the doctor said.
‘Why?’ Asha asked. ‘The mutation doesn’t affect him in any way, and mutated kids get bullied and treated as if there’s something wrong with them.’
‘I know,’ the doctor replied, shrugging. ‘But you must do it, it’s the law. You can register him in reception when you pay the bill.’
He turned and walked quickly away, leaving Mika’s confused parents trying to feel pleased he was better whilst coming to terms with the fact that he was a very disturbed boy.
‘Don’t worry,’ David said, hugging Asha. ‘He’ll be fine in a few months. We’ll get him to talk to someone about Ellie, yeah? And we’ll try not to get so angry with him. Perhaps we should encourage him to take up a sport or something so he doesn’t spend so much time brooding in Ellie’s bed. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Asha sobbed. ‘I just love him and I want him to be well again.’
* * *
A few weeks passed, and although Mika was sullen when he first started seeing his counsellor, Helen, he grew to like her very much. He went to her apartment every Wednesday after school. She was old and took ages to get to the door and she always ran out of milk and sugar sub or tea powder, so what Mika drank had an apology attached and something missing, but it didn’t matter. Although being with her was sometimes boring, a bit like visiting a granny, her apartment, full of old paper books, plastic plants and curious ornaments, was the only place Mika felt he could relax, because Helen was the only person who even considered the possibility that Ellie was still alive.
‘You know you’re not supposed to believe me,’ he said, sipping his tea. ‘You’re supposed to be curing my insanity, not making it worse.’
‘I know,’ she replied, giggling ho
arsely. ‘Do you want a biscuit?’
‘I’ll get them if you want,’ Mika offered.
‘No, you stay there, gorgeous, I can manage.’
Mika watched her get up from the sofa and shuffle towards the kitchen area. Rain hit the window like handfuls of grit, and the only other noises were the ticking of Helen’s old clock and the sound of her breathing as she slowly bent down to get the biscuits out of the cupboard. She looked as delicate as the antique china she had on her shelves, as if she would shatter if she fell, yet he knew her appearance was deceptive, that it hid a bomb-proof interior; she looked like a witch, dressed like a bag lady and wasn’t shocked by anything.
‘I’ve been having nightmares again,’ he said suddenly.
‘Oh yes,’ she replied, breathing heavily as she walked back to the sofa with the biscuits. ‘Anything good?’
‘Not good exactly,’ Mika replied, smiling – he liked her sense of humour.
Helen settled herself comfortably on the sofa as if she was about to watch a movie and held out the biscuits. They were digestives, the same packet she’d got out the week before and he knew they were stale and probably went out of date a year ago but he took one anyway.
‘Thanks,’ he said, trying to eat it without grimacing.
‘Well, are you going to tell me about your nightmares or was that just a trailer?’ she asked.