Marty was perplexed. “I’m special? You almost say it like it’s a good thing, having people trying to kill you.”
“Ah, but it is. It’s an unbelievable ting.”
“What is it then? Why is it the dark doesn’t affect me? Why is it the strangers run from me? Why is all of this happening to me?”
“I—I don’t know. Not yet anyway. I wanted teh keep yeh here, teh keep yeh safe till I figured out why.”
All of a sudden Marty was on his feet again. He wanted to cry out in agony at the throbbing ache radiating from the middle of his body. He wanted to flop back onto the floor, to curl up in a little ball and beg somebody, anybody, to take away the pain. But his brain was still too busy.
“That’s the reason, isn’t it. That’s why you took me back here. And that’s why you followed me to Wycherly Terrace, too. Because I didn’t have a rose.” Marty couldn’t believe it—had he really thought this man was any better than his history teacher?
“But Marty, for all we know yeh could bring an end teh this! Yeh could bring happiness back! Just imagine it!”
“Imagine what?! Imagine staying here for how long—weeks, months, years, waiting around until you figure out a way to use me? And then, once you do, stay here for a few more years until I manage to fix your world for you?!”
“Hopefully it won’t take as long as—”
Marty felt like his head had been replaced with a balloon. It was too much information, all at once, and it made him dizzy. Victor’s behaviour, he realised, made perfect sense. “You did it, didn’t you. It wasn’t Richard Mortimus, it wasn’t the strangers. You broke the mirror.”
Slowly Victor nodded, and when he spoke again his voice was deeper, rougher. “I had teh, Marty. Yeh don’t understand what’s in bin like, all dese years. It’s horrible, Marty, just horrible. I had teh do it. If not for me den for everybody else here.”
“You had to? What’s that supposed to mean? You say you want me to be safe, but I’ve been unsafe ever since I got here! I could be at home right now, but because of you, I’m stuck here. Because of you I’m never going to see my family again!” Suddenly Marty wished he had stolen the pruning knife.
“But don’t yeh want teh help? Don’t yeh want teh give us hope? It’s been so long, Marty.”
Victor gave him that strange longing look he’d gotten the day he arrived here. He shook off a shudder and stepped forwards. “Get out of my way. I’m leaving.”
“What? But where will yeh go? Yeh don’t know anybody else here. Yeh’ll perish.”
“I’d be better off back in that rubbish bin than I am here.”
For a few seconds Victor stared at him. He was clearly full of regret—for what, Marty didn’t know. Maybe he wished he’d told him sooner. Or hadn’t told him at all. But Marty didn’t care. Finally he stepped aside. “I’m sorry yeh feel dat way Marty, I really am.”
Marty stormed outside, but he’d barely set foot on the staircase when he heard someone coughing. Slowly he raised his head and there, standing at the other end, were Richard Mortimus and his twin sisters, Carol and Gertrude.
“This, ladies, is what’s known as killing two birds with one stone,” he said, flashing Marty his set of overlong, overcrowded teeth.
CHAPTER TEN
Marty never even got the chance to turn around: one second, the man’s leg was swinging towards him; the next, his nose exploded in pain and he flew backwards into the basement, landing hard on the floor and rolling across the room. Mortimus rushed inside, hauled him to his feet and slammed him into the back wall. From here Marty noticed a thick helping of dandruff on his shoulders.
“So it seems we didn’t lose him. My apologies, Gertrude; perhaps you didn’t deserve that beating after all.” Marty caught a whiff of the man’s breath and felt bile leap up his throat. It was like Mortimus had swallowed something so disgusting his stomach acids were unable to digest it.
Carol and Gertrude hurried into the basement. Carol was struggling with a large canister; liquid sloshed around inside with every step she took. Gertrude slammed the door shut behind her. Sure enough, her face was no longer white, but varying shades of black, blue and purple.
Victor was standing flat against the opposite wall. Had they seen him? His eyes were darting back and forth between their captors and the door as if he were planning on making a run for it. If this had been earlier today Marty would have laughed at the idea. But now he knew the truth: Victor, just like everyone else in this world, was capable of absolutely anything. Well, except being trusted.
“Gertrude, get the girl. And you, Carol, you know what to do.”
As Gertrude made her way upstairs Carol carried the canister into a corner of the room. She pulled off the cap and began emptying a clear liquid over the boxes along the perimeter. For a single ridiculous moment Marty thought she was attempting to water them. Then he smelled something so strong it somehow blocked out the stench of Mortimus’s breath: petrol.
Carol was shaking the last of it over the staircase when Gertrude reappeared, dragging Lissa behind her. Lissa wasn’t fighting the woman but from the looks of it she already had: there was a large tear on the front of her uniform and her cheeks were shiny with fresh tears.
“Why are you doing this?” Marty said as Gertrude yanked Lissa into the basement.
Mortimus grinned. His teeth looked more like toothpicks. “We have orders.”
“Orders? From who?”
Mortimus didn’t answer, but clenched his teeth and became oddly still. He was scared, and a moment later Marty realised why: a loud breeze had started up on the street above and was making its way down here. It got louder and louder and then, as soon as it had started, stopped again. There was a crash and the door swung around, hitting the wall and knocking the top hinge loose. Where the door had been stood two strangers. They took a single step forwards and stopped, their booted feet hovering mid-step. Mortimus frowned. He looked back at Marty and a knowing smile appeared on his face.
“It’s you, isn’t it? It’s you they’re afraid of. You see, girls? I told you I was right about this little terror. I told you he was…what do you call it?”
Gertrude and Carol looked absolutely terrified. Slowly they shrugged, flinching like they thought their brother would come over and hit them.
“What do you think I am?” Marty asked.
Richard planted a hand around his neck, cutting off much of his air supply and all of his ability to speak.
“You mean to say you still haven’t realised it? You’re really that naïve?”
Marty blinked. He couldn’t do much else.
“You’re… good. That’s it. That’s what you are. I must say, I haven’t seen something like you in a long, long time. While it would have been lovely for the strangers to take you, it’s perfectly fine: you can watch them take your one and only saviour in your stead.”
And with that, like they’d been listening, the strangers turned to face Victor. Before he could even attempt an escape their familiar tendrils shot out, ravelling around his arms and legs, and despite everything Victor had done Marty found himself trying to plead. But all he could do was watch as even more tendrils encircled his head, muting his cries for help. The strangers lifted him off his feet and then marched back out of the basement, Victor floating along in front of them.
“That man has been a bane of mine for some time,” Mortimus spat. “His tainting was long overdue. As for his flowers… Carol?”
The bony twin retrieved a match from the innards of her ragged jacket and leaned close to the wall. She swiped the match across it, there was a loud flaring noise and a flame burst into life. Marty stared: it felt like months since he’d seen something of that colour, let alone felt its warmth. Carol stepped back and flung it into one of the boxes, where it immediately quadrupled in size.
“As for you,” Mortimus carried on, facing Marty again, “I could cut you, but where’s the fun in that? I’d rather have you burn along with those flo
wers. It’s a tad poetic, when you think about it: the very last traces of goodness in this world, all going down together in flames.”
In a matter of seconds the fire raced around the perimeter of the basement.
“Come along Carol, Gertrude.” Mortimus threw his head forward, connecting with Marty’s nose for a second time. Marty had nowhere to go but down. He saw spots, and by the time his vision finally cleared the trio were legging it out of the basement, the fire licking their feet as they hurried out the door, slamming it shut behind them.
Very gently Marty felt his nose. It was broken; it had to be. Warm blood was running from it, down over his lips and chin and dripping all over his clothes. Coupled with the deep gash on his chest he was quite sure he was losing dangerous amounts of blood.
“Marty? Are you there?” Lissa was on her feet, wandering around the room.
“Get down!” he yelled. “There’s clean air down here!”
Except there wasn’t, really. Marty knew all about fire drills; Principal Quirke made the entire school perform one every single month. One of the most important parts of the drill was learning to stay close to the ground. That’s where all the clean air was, according to the local firemen. But unlike his classroom the basement had no windows, and so the smoke had nowhere to go but down.
“I can’t die!” Lissa coughed, now on her knees like Marty. “And certainly not in a fire—it’s a total cliché!”
Marty crawled in the direction of the door but it was already hidden behind a rapidly growing wall of flames. He looked back at the staircase, but it was so engulfed he couldn’t even see it. Forget what he’d been thinking earlier; this was what being stuck really felt like.
“Stay low!” he yelled. The heat was unbearable. He lay flat on the floor and the cool concrete brought him some comfort.
“This is the end for us, isn’t it,” Lissa cried from just a few feet away. “This is how we’re going to die.”
Marty said nothing. He didn’t want to believe her, but deep down he was starting to think she might be right.
“Look, there’s something I need to say, all right?” she said. For the first time, Marty couldn’t hear the slightest trace of contempt in her voice. “I know I’ve not been the nicest to you since you got here, but there’s a reason. You see, I—”
Just then there was a huge crash from above. It sounded like the entire building was caving in on itself, one floor at a time.
“What?!” Marty shouted back. “I can’t hear you!”
“I said I lost—”
There was a second crash—only this one sounded different. Closer. Lissa was right. This really was the end.
“I still can’t hear you!” The smoke was too thick; he couldn’t see anything now.
“I SAID I LOST MY—”
The lights went out. Something soft landed on Marty, guarding him from the heat, and he felt cooler. Something grasped his back and he heard a faint groan as the ground disappeared. He was being carried, across the room and up a set of stairs, and then the ground was beneath him again. Whatever was covering him suddenly wasn’t anymore, and there, frowning down at him, narrowing her eyes and raising her eyebrows at the same time, was… no, it couldn’t be. He was unconscious. He had to be. That was the only possible explanation for who he was looking at right now.
“Aileen?” he coughed, but the woman was already whipping the blanket over her head and darting back inside the burning building.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“What are you… But you can’t… What about…” Marty wondered if the dark had affected him after all; it would certainly explain why he felt like his brain had been replaced with a vegetable.
“The mirror…how are you here?” he managed eventually.
“You really thought that was the only way in and out?” Aileen performed another spectacular frown. This time, one eye narrowed and the other opened wide. “It really is a good job I decided to come for you. You’re not ready for this at all.”
Lissa moaned, but stopped halfway through when she noticed the black haired woman leaning over her. “Who the hell are you?”
Aileen didn’t respond; instead she reached into her back pocket, retrieved a large syringe, pulled off the protective cap and stuck it straight into Lissa’s neck. Lissa screamed and kicked but Aileen’s vice-like grip kept her firmly in place.
“What are you doing?!” Marty shouted. “Leave her alone!”
“Oh calm down. I’m saving her life.”
Marty tried pulling Aileen away but couldn’t. As the milky liquid emptied into Lissa’s neck her struggling gradually came to a stop. She grew quiet. By the time Aileen was finished she’d stopped moving entirely, and her eyes, while they remained open, stared blankly at the sky.
Marty jumped to his feet. There was still a great deal of smoke in his lungs and he started coughing. “Really? Cough! She seemed perfectly—cough!—fine before you jammed that—cough!—syringe into her—cough!—neck.”
Aileen pocketed the syringe. “I thought I told you to relax? She’ll be all right in a few short minutes. Now come along, you and I need to get going.”
“Where?”
“Home.”
“Home?!”
“Yes, home. Were you thinking of staying there?” She pointed down the street to the Rose, or rather, where it used to be. In Marty’s confusion he’d totally forgotten about the fire, which by now had turned Victor and Lissa’s home into a gigantic blaze. At this point the roses must have been completely destroyed. Now how would the people here survive?
“You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?”
Marty was outraged. “Hey, give me a break, all right?! I nearly died tonight!”
“Again. You nearly died again. I was going to give you another chance, but with your track record you probably wouldn’t have lasted any longer. Agley wanted to start betting on how long it would take—”
“Wait a minute,” Marty interrupted but Aileen kept talking.
“—you to croak but I refused. One of us has to be the responsible one. I swear, sometimes I think—”
“Aileen, wait a—”
“—he isn’t cut out for this job. I’m the one who does all the work and—”
“Hang on!” Marty yelled, and Aileen finally stopped rambling. “How did you know I nearly died already?”
She looked at him like the answer should have been obvious. “Eh, we’ve been spying on you?”
Marty stared back. “I don’t see any cameras.”
“Ha! We’re a little bit more advanced than that.”
“Well, what then?”
Right at that moment, as if on cue, a crow dropped from a nearby drainpipe, fluttered across the street and landed softly on Aileen’s shoulder. Looking closely, Marty noticed its eyes were actually tiny cameras. A tiny wire was sticking out of its neck, like an antenna.
Marty was so shocked he was almost thrown off balance. “That is not a—is that a remote control crow?!”
“Excuse you! It is not a toy. It’s a fully-fledged, state of the art robot. Agley designed it. Somehow,” she scowled.
Marty couldn’t decide which was more unbelievable: the crow or the fact that the tomato-faced man had made it.
“But why? Why were you watching me?”
“You hardly expected us not to, did you? Do you have any idea about the lengths we went to find you? We’ve been looking for you for thirteen years. We weren’t even sure it was you when we found you. That’s why we had to push you through the mirror. We had to see.”
“You had to see?! And if you were wrong about me, what then?” Marty suddenly remembered those two girls. He shuddered.
“Of course, we were only chasing the reflections,” said Aileen, completely ignoring the question. “They were the ones who were actually looking for you, but for various reasons it was in our best interest to get there first.”
“But why? Why were they looking for me?” As soon as Mart
y asked it the answer came to him. “Let me guess—they wanted to kill me.”
Aileen nodded so nonchalantly she might have been agreeing to a cup of tea. “We’re still not sure who has been putting them up to it. But we do know why. Clearly, they’re worried about your ability. They want to put a stop to you before you stop them.”
Marty closed his eyes and thought back to the moments before the fire. What had Richard Mortimus said? We have orders. He opened them again. “Someone told Mortimus to burn the place down. What if it was the same person who set the reflections on me?”
She nodded. “It’s perfectly possible.”
“But these abilities. What are they, really? I know the dark doesn’t affect me, the strangers can’t get close to me. But what else? And why me?”
“At this point we’ve narrowed it down to some sort of power.”
“What, like a superpower?” It sounded so ridiculous Marty found himself smiling. He hadn’t smiled in a long time. It hurt.
“Maybe. It’ll be a lot more impressive once we discover the full extent of it. That’s something we’ve yet to do, but we did only find you a couple of days ago. This is why I need to bring you home. Once we fully understand how your powers work we can teach you how to properly use them.”
On the ground, Lissa started groaning again.
“Come along now, quickly. It’s better if she doesn’t see us leaving.”
Marty couldn’t believe his ticket home had come so quickly. If this had happened before the fire, he’d probably be hopping up and down, absolutely hysterical at the prospect of finally getting out of this place. But while his beaten body still wanted to get the hell out of here, his brain had other ideas.
“I’m not going.”
Aileen flinched. “What did you say?”
“Look, the strangers took Victor tonight. If I go back with you, what’ll happen to him? I’m the only one who knows or cares. I’m the only one who might be able to save him.”
“Seriously?” Aileen stepped forwards. “That man lied to you, and still you want to save his life? Wow, you really are an idiot.”
Marty didn’t move. “He was right, though. He thought I could do something to help this place. Maybe I can.” It was only now, saying it out loud, that he actually understood why Victor had done what he’d done. He just wished he’d told him sooner—maybe then they wouldn’t be in this mess.