Rip softly said, ‘I want my mummy and daddy.’ Tears welled up in his eyes. Mandy watched him for a moment, then leaned close to him and put her arm around his shoulders. ‘He’s just scared. They take more boys. I’ve been here a long time and they’ve taken away four boys.’ Lowering her voice even more, she tapped the side of her head with a finger. ‘Kay’s not quite right. He’s Neesa’s age, ten, but he acts like he’s five.’ She lowered her voice even more. ‘Neesa’s not right either. She sees things and hears things.’ Rip was surprised to learn Kay was ten years old. He didn’t look it, or act it.
Rip was sturdy and tough for seven. He had been around when his father had butchered animals and had helped his sister dress out rabbits she hunted. His nature was to get quiet and withdrawn rather than to cry or complain; softly he said, ‘I’m scared.’
Mandy patted him on the shoulder. ‘We’re all scared, boy. Are you hungry?’ she asked.
‘Food will help,’ Neesa said. Her eyes were bright and she nodded.
Rip sat all the way up and scrunched forward until he was able to put his feet over the edge of the bed, where he swayed dizzily before flopping over onto his back.
Mandy sighed and got up. ‘Stay there. I’ll bring you something.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t,’ he said, feeling queasy again.
‘Did you eat today?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know.’ He frowned. He couldn’t remember anything except an occasional comment in the dark by Growly or Weasel. Where were his father and mother? He couldn’t feel Mother at all, that was strange. It was like when he lost a tooth and there was a space there before the new tooth came in. Maybe this time there wouldn’t be a new thing coming. Lorrie? He reached for her and felt, very faint and far away, an echo of her presence. Maybe he was just too far away from his mother to feel her. But something told him that wasn’t the case. It felt like memory, but without the pictures and sounds that came with remembering.
‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked Mandy.
She dropped the plate of smoked meat, cheese and apples into his lap, giving him a cold look. ‘We don’t talk about them,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ he asked, reasonably enough, he thought.
‘That’s your bed,’ she said, pointing to a bed in the corner.
Rip knew that she was telling him to get lost. He slid off the edge of the tall bed carefully and stood, unsure for a moment if he was going to fall down. ‘Don’t be angry,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’ He shook his head. ‘Why are we here? Where are we? I just want to know what’s going on.’
‘Go sit on your own bed and eat,’ Mandy snapped. She hopped onto her bed and sat hugging her knees, glaring at him over them. Rip could see her eyes shine, as if she was trying not to cry.
Puzzled, and a little hurt, Rip went over to the bed in the corner and sat down. He hung his head over the plate so that they couldn’t see the tears running down his cheeks and stuffed a hunk of meat into his mouth. He didn’t want to cry, but he couldn’t help it. Even when Lorrie was mad at him, she didn’t treat him like this, like he just didn’t matter.
‘We don’t know anything,’ Kay said into the heavy silence, his crying fit over. ‘Nobody will talk to us. They bring us food, but they don’t say a word. They only come to bring us food and water and to clean up.’
‘Or to bring someone or to take someone away,’ Mandy added. ‘That’s all we know.’
‘But we think…’ Kay began.
‘We think our parents are dead,’ Mandy said.
‘No!’ Neesa shouted, her face red with anger as she slapped Mandy’s arm.
‘Ow! Get off my bed, right now!’ Mandy said and gave the younger girl a shove.
Neesa fell to the floor and began to cry. Kay rolled his eyes and pulled the pillow over his head, while Mandy crossed her arms and ignored them. Rip put his plate aside. He went over and put his arms around the girl and she clung to him, weeping as if her heart would break.
‘I don’t want my daddy and mummy to be dead,’ she wailed.
‘Maybe they’re all right,’ Rip said, trying to reassure her. ‘We don’t know.’
She sniffed and looked up at him, then nodded. ‘Yes, maybe they’re all right.’ She pushed herself up to her feet. She gave him a brief smile and crossed over to her bed, where she gathered up a roll of cloth and brought it back with her. She sat beside him and began vigorously rocking the bundle in her arms while singing loudly.
At least she’s singing, Rip thought. It was tuneless and wordless, but he thought it was supposed to be a lullaby and the roll of cloth a baby. He stood up and went back to his bed and his meal.
The cheese was wonderful: soft and mild in flavour, with a slightly nutty taste. He’d never tasted anything like it before and he looked around the plate greedily for another piece.
Two days later Rip woke up determined to escape his luxurious prison. He was too young to recognize that he had been drugged, but he knew something had changed since he woke. He was scared, and missed his family, but sensing Lorrie out there somewhere reassured him. But he knew, somehow, that his only hope of ever seeing his family again was to run away.
He didn’t like any of the other children. Well, he didn’t dislike Neesa, but she was very annoying most of the time. She was always singing. The first night he’d been unable to sleep because she never stopped. So he went over to her and asked her to shut up. Then he realized that she was sound asleep and still singing!
Mandy had rolled over and said, ‘She does that all the time. You’ll get used to it.’
But he did not think he would. And he absolutely hated Kay. He might be bigger and older, but like Mandy said, he acted like half his age. If he didn’t get out of here soon, Rip was sure he was going to try to kill Kay. He was a biter and a pincher and he liked to sneak up on you and do one or both. Rip had punched Kay in the stomach once, already, so hard Kay had almost thrown up, and had sat on the floor gasping for breath for a long time. Still, it didn’t seem to matter. Kay would stay away for a while, maybe an hour, then he’d pinch and run, trying to hide under the bed. He didn’t bother Mandy or Neesa the way he did Rip, so Mandy must have taught him to leave them alone. But now Rip knew he was going to have to beat Kay to get him to stop, and Rip didn’t want to beat anyone; he just wanted to go home. Besides, he didn’t know if he could beat Kay up, unless he somehow got on top of him.
He was also frightened by the feeling that someone was watching him. He’d wakened the morning before with a feeling that someone was leaning over him. But when he opened his eyes there was no one there. But the feeling didn’t go away until he reached out. Since then he’d felt as though someone was standing behind him, staring, or holding something over his head. Sometimes it felt as if more than one person was watching him.
‘Mandy,’ he whispered.
She looked up at him and he went over to perch on the side of her bed.
‘What?’ she whispered back.
‘Do you ever feel like…like someone you can’t see is watching you?’
Reaching out, Mandy grabbed him by the neck and drew him close. ‘Shut up!’ she said through her teeth. ‘Talking about it, or thinking about it, just makes it worse.’ She smacked him, then said out loud, ‘Now get off my bed.’
Mandy spent the rest of the day glaring at him and refusing to talk, and he couldn’t really blame her. She’d been right, things had gotten worse.
All that day he’d felt as if people were standing close to him, leaning over him and staring. He tried to ignore it, but it was so unpleasant that he’d hardly been able to eat supper. Then later that night he’d been wakened by the sense that someone had touched him. He opened his eyes to see the black silhouette of a man standing before him. And then the man was gone, just like that. Rip lay still, absolutely still, feeling as though the man was still standing there and that he meant no good, and that he had no face but what Rip had seen, a blackness like a shadow made solid.
&nbs
p; Rip was so scared he could hear his own heartbeat and he wanted to cry but he didn’t dare, so his throat ached and it was hard to breathe and his mouth was as dry as cotton and he had to use the pot but couldn’t. He wanted to wake one of the others so that he wouldn’t be alone in the dark, but he was afraid to speak out loud. Rip was so wide awake it never occurred to him that he might go back to sleep. But somehow he did. And when he woke, it was with the feeling that someone unseen was leaning over him. He lay there thinking, I’ve got to get out of here.
Twice a day a fat man with a mean face and a bad smell came to bring them food and take away the slops bucket, replacing it with an empty one. Other than that the door was locked and there were bars on the windows and they were up high anyway. So Rip would have to get out when the door opened.
‘I’m going to get out of here,’ he told the others.
The girls just looked at him; Mandy in scorn, Neesa with eyes wide. Rip didn’t think she knew what he was talking about.
‘Oh, they’ll come and get you really soon now,’ Kay teased. ‘And they’ll chop off your head, whoosh!’ He pretended to be waving a sword.
‘They’ll probably come for you first,’ Rip snapped. ‘You’ve been here longer than me!’
Kay gasped, taken by surprise by Rip’s vehemence and the truth of what he had said. Then he got mad and made to run at Rip.
‘Stop it, Kay!’ Mandy snapped.
By the way the other boy stopped in his tracks Rip knew he’d been right about Mandy teaching Kay a thing or two about behaving himself. Kay still glared, but he did it from a safe distance.
‘How do you think you can get out?’ Mandy said.
‘I don’t know,’ Rip said. ‘Maybe we throw a sheet over his head and while he’s trying to get it off we run out of the door.’
Kay made a farting sound and laughed. ‘That’s so stupid! He’s twice as big as you. All you’d be able to do is throw a sheet over his bum and his brains may be there, but his eyes and hands are what you have to worry about.’ He laughed and pointed at Rip. ‘Stupid!’
‘Shut up, Kay!’ Mandy snapped. ‘It’s what we’ve all got to worry about. We’ve been lucky so far, but that’s not going to last.’ She glowered at him, then lowered her voice. ‘Besides…it’s getting worse.’
Kay’s eyes widened and he cast a quick look around. Clearly he was startled that she would even hint at the presences that haunted them.
‘Yeah. So stop pretending that you’re not just as scared as the rest of us and help us think up how we’re going to do this,’ Rip yelled.
Kay looked resentful and mulish, but then he suddenly brightened. ‘Hey! I know, we can trip him! Then we can throw a sheet over him.’
Mandy looked thoughtful. ‘And we could maybe tie it around him so he couldn’t get loose.’
‘We could take his keys,’ Rip said, ‘and lock him in.’
‘We could whack him on the head!’ Neesa cried gleefully. ‘Bonk! Bonk, on the head!’
The others laughed. ‘Good idea!’ Rip said and patted the little girl on the back. ‘That’s just what we’ll do.’
When their burly caretaker came with their breakfast Rip and Kay were on opposite sides of the room playing catch with an apple. The man turned to put the tray of food on the table that was usually by the door only to find it had been moved to the centre of the room and shrouded in a sheet that trailed out onto the floor.
‘What’s that doin’ there?’ he growled.
Neesa raised the sheet on one side and said haughtily, ‘It’s my house and this is where it’s s’posed to be.’ She dropped the sheet.
‘You two,’ the man said to the boys, ‘move that back over here.’
‘No!’ Neesa shouted. It was amazing that so much angry sound could come from such a petite source.
‘Please,’ Mandy said, looking pained, ‘can we wait until she’s finished playing with it? If we move it, she’ll yell the house down.’
‘No! No!’ Neesa screamed, startling even her friends with the increase in volume.
‘All right!’ the guard shouted. He shut the door by kicking it with his foot, but couldn’t lock it because of the heavy tray. He glared at the children and the two boys slumped down and sat on the floor, Mandy continued to lie upon her bed with her eyes wide and Neesa was crooning to her doll under the table. Satisfied that no one would move, the guard marched toward the table.
Which was when Rip and Kay yanked the satin rope that had tied back the bed-curtains from its hiding place under the rug to about ankle height and the big man went down, the tray and the food on it going flying with a colossal crash.
The guard tried to break his fall with his hands, but the explosion of breath from him when he hit the floor and a quick, deep groan of pain as something–wrist, or arm–broke, was followed a moment later by the loud crack of his chin hitting the stones.
The man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he lost consciousness. The two boys traded places, winding the rope around the guard’s legs. Mandy leapt off the bed and pulled the sheet off the table and dropped it over the guard’s head; then she and Neesa gathered the points on either side of him and Mandy tied them in a knot, encasing him in a bag.
‘Let’s go!’ Rip said.
The children gathered up the spilled bread, cheese and fruit in pillowcases and ran from the room. To Rip, it was like leaving warm water for frigid air and his teeth gave an involuntary chatter. He looked at the others uneasily and they looked back, pale and obviously frightened. Mandy glanced back into the room behind them.
‘No!’ Rip said and slammed the door, turning the key he was happy to find still in the lock. ‘We can’t go back. Let’s get out of here.’
Their heads swung left and right and they found they were in the middle of a corridor which looked identical at either end; stone walls, high small windows on one side, tiled floors, huge blackened beams high overhead.
‘This way,’ Neesa said, pointing to the right.
‘Why?’ asked Mandy.
Neesa said, ‘Because that’s the right way.’
Mandy glanced at Rip and ignored Kay, then shrugged, heading off to the right. It might be the wrong choice, but at least it was a choice. Judging from the view from their narrow window they must be at the top of the house. ‘Look for stairs,’ Neesa whispered.
Mandy gave Neesa a look, but didn’t say anything.
Rip felt awkward, because he had been the one to force the idea of escape on the others, but someone had to do it. He didn’t know why the older children were content to let whatever horrible things happened to the children who had gone before continue, but he wasn’t going to endure it. He didn’t know if he could act like a leader, no matter how many times he had played one in his imagination, but someone had to do things. If he hadn’t locked the door they all might have bolted back inside. It wasn’t safe in there, but out here felt really dangerous. It seemed to be getting colder for one thing and he felt as though a lot of people were crowding the hallway, or were about to.
Stairs, Rip thought desperately. Where are the stairs?
Neesa was crying, quietly in a tired and really frightened way. Tears poured down her face and she was struggling not to make much noise, but still gave out a high-pitched moaning that didn’t seem to involve breathing since it was continuous. She clutched Rip’s hand like a hot vice, tugging him along, one way, then another. No one else had an idea where they were going, so they just let her lead.
Rip thought she was too scared to complain. He knew he was. He held her hand as much to reassure himself as to keep her close. Otherwise all he’d have to think about was the invisible something that always seemed just about to pounce on them. Or the biting cold that let him see his own breath even though it wasn’t even close to autumn yet.
They’d been creeping about this huge house for what seemed like hours and they were all exhausted. They’d found stairs, but when they’d gone down two flights they’d had to turn around to avoid someon
e coming up the stairs. Whoever that was had them running up three flights before they took off down the corridor to the next turning. They’d ducked into a room while footsteps paraded up and down outside the door and something seemed to hover just above their heads. At least it had been rest of a sort or by this time they wouldn’t be able to move. After the footsteps had stopped they’d sneaked out and managed to get down two flights but until now they’d still been trapped on the same floor they’d started on.
And all the rooms were empty and full of dust and unseen watching eyes.
Rip released Neesa’s hand and tiptoed to the staircase. Crouching down, he looked over the edge and watched, straining his ears to hear any motion on any of the floors below. Satisfied at last, he waved the others on and they crept down the stairs. Before they could get to the next staircase they heard footsteps and went racing down the corridor in front of them, hearts pounding.
The sense of an invisible pursuer sharpened as a feeling of anger reaching out to smash them began to build. The children ran faster and found it hard going, the air here seemed thinner somehow and the cold bit deeper causing them to stumble and to sob.
We’ve got to hide, Rip thought.
Down the corridor before them a door seemed to beckon. He grabbed the handle and pulled, only to find it locked. Yanking out the guard’s key he tried to fit it into the lock, but his hands were shaking too much. It was like a live thing struggling to get away and he let out a frustrated sob. Mandy grabbed his shoulder and he gasped in surprise.
‘Let’s go!’ she said in a shrill whisper. She tugged on his shirt.
But Rip grabbed onto the door handle, not meaning to be dragged away, and by a miracle it turned. It had only been stuck! Now he grabbed Mandy’s skirt and opening the door dragged her in after him; the two other children followed. He and Mandy together shut the door and leaned their weight against it. Something on the outside hit it hard, rocking the door in its frame and causing a trickle of plaster dust to hiss to the floor.