Authors: Caroline Clough
Toby was dreaming a delightful dream. He was walking on the beach with his mum and Monty, and baby Sylvie was toddling across the sand screaming with delight as the waves licked at her bare toes. He was eating a huge ice cream with a big fat chocolate flake stuck in it. The sun was hot on the back of his neck …
“Belle!” Toby woke up to find Belle licking the back of his neck.
“Toby, wake up. It’s nearly twelve o’clock,” Jamie whispered in his ear.
“Huh?” said Toby groggily. He sat up, slowly stretching his stiff legs. He’d fallen asleep as the sun peeped into the café, when Jamie came to take over keeping watch. Toby had sat up all night, crouched behind the counter, his nerves jumping at any faint scratching in the dark. But
it was only mice scurrying across the floor, scavenging for crumbs. He hadn’t wanted to wake Jamie, who’d looked so peaceful curled up in his cardboard box, Belle standing guard over him, so he’d taken his turn too.
“I’m starving!” said Jamie, digging deep into the rucksack and pulling out two old cereal bars. He tore the wrapper off one and handed Toby the other.
“Don’t get too excited.” Toby smiled. “These will be as fusty as hell!” He bit into his and wrinkled up his nose. “Yuk.”
Jamie didn’t seem to mind. He couldn’t keep still and was bouncing around like a rubber ball. He packed and repacked the rucksack about ten times before Toby told him to calm down.
“Your mum might be ages. She might have problems getting out of the city and down here to the beach. If I remember, to get here she’ll have to cross a large open playing field if she’s coming from the town centre.”
“Maybe she’s already down at the beach,” babbled Jamie, his eyes darting to the back door and then to the front door of the café.
“Maybe,” said Toby, unconvinced.
This is such a long shot. I really don’t think his mum is going to turn up.
Twelve o’clock came and went. Then one, then two, and at five o’clock Toby knew she wasn’t coming.
“We’d better get going,” he announced, grabbing his cagoule. “I need to find some medicine before that dog, that Cerberus, whatever you call him, gets back to Aberdeen.”
“No! Please wait a bit longer,” begged Jamie. “I know she’s coming! I can feel it!”
“I’m sorry, Jamie,” said Toby, “but I don’t think she is, and I need to complete my mission. I need to get medicine for Sylvie. You know that, you saw how ill she is, and I don’t want to get home and find we’re too late.”
“No, I know you don’t. But please! Just one more hour?” pleaded Jamie, clutching at Toby’s arm. Toby could see the panic and fear in Jamie’s face as it crumpled up and tears rolled down his cheeks.
“OK, OK, you win,” he replied. “One more hour and that’s it, I’m off. OK?”
“Yeah, OK, Toby, that’s great. She’ll be here, I know she will.”
Jamie slumped down behind the counter, looking at his watch. Five minutes later he looked at his watch again. Toby sat down beside him.
“Look, I found an old menu,” he said, trying to distract Jamie. “Hey, they used to serve knickerbocker glories. Wow! They were my favourite. My mum always bought me one on my birthday. D’you remember all that sticky gunk that used to be on the top? And sprinkles?
Ummm! I can almost taste it.”
“My mum would never let me have one; said they were bad for my teeth.”
“Yeah, that’s probably why I was only allowed one on my birthday,” said Toby. “Mind you, my mum would have a fit if she could see my teeth now.” He pulled open his mouth to show Jamie his yellowing, chipped teeth. “I wish she could see them, though,” he finished sadly.
“I’m really sorry, ‘bout your mum.” Jamie patted Toby’s shoulder.
“Me too,” sighed Toby. “She was great fun. Totally kooky. I mean, as mad as … as …” He started to weep, the tears welling up and spilling down his dirty face. Sobs wracked his chest and he buried his head into his knees. He didn’t want Jamie to see him like this.
Pull yourself together, Toby. Stop it! Stop crying, you big baby!
Jamie stuffed a filthy grey hankie into his hand.
“Thanks,” Toby mumbled, dabbing his eyes, but the tears wouldn’t stop.
“What happened?” Jamie asked quietly.
“She fell. She fell off the cliffs near the lighthouse,” murmured Toby. “She went out to find Monty. She must have heard him barking outside the compound. Dad thought I’d forgotten to put him in the barn that night. But he must’ve got out through that hole Belle found.
Dad turned the lighthouse lamp on and shone it on the shore. But it was already too late; she’d slipped and fallen in the dark. It was just a terrible accident. The dogs soon started to gather at the commotion, barking; that’s all me and Sylvie can remember — the terrible barking and the snarling dogs …”
“That must have been horrible,” said Jamie.
“Yes, it was,” sobbed Toby.
The two boys sat in silence, Toby clutching the hankie to his nose, and Jamie with his arms around Belle. The light in the café started to fade, throwing long shadows against the walls. After a while, Toby stood up and picked up the rucksack. He turned to Jamie.
“I’m sorry, but I really must get going. Sylvie’s depending on me,” he said.
“I know. I’m coming with you,” said Jamie, pulling himself up.
“I’ll go and have a look,” Toby told him. “See if it’s safe to cross that playing field.”
Jamie nodded. “Take Belle with you,” he suggested. “She’ll let you know if there are any dogs around.”
Toby climbed out the back door of the café, scanning the car park before sneaking down the sides of the buildings. Belle padded quietly at his side. He listened carefully but all he could hear was the distant breaking of the waves on the beach. He swung back on to
the beachfront promenade and round the side of the amusement arcade. In front of him lay a large open area of grass to cross. This was the dangerous part. There was no cover and they would be visible for miles. As the soft pink light of dusk bathed the seafront, Toby saw something on the ground. It was a large arrow,
spray-painted
on to the pavement, pointing towards a children’s play park. Toby stared at it, puzzled.
That’s strange; the paint looks fresh. Looks like it’s not been there long.
He bent down to inspect the arrow closer, glancing around to check for any dogs. Belle stood obediently at his side, sniffing the air. Along the shaft of the arrow, somebody had sprayed the initials KM.
Toby turned and ran back to the café, hugging the shadows of the buildings as he went. He burst in through the back door, leaping over the heaps of rubbish.
“Jamie! Come and look at what I’ve found!” he cried. Jamie was standing by the front door, watching for his mum.
“What? What is it?” he gasped, surprised by Toby’s quick return.
The two boys hurried back to where the arrow was painted on the pavement.
“KM — that’s Katie McTavish!” yelped Jamie. “She’s still alive! I told you! And this is her leaving us a trail to
help us find her!”
“Keep your voice down,” Toby hissed. “We don’t know what’s around here. And, anyway, this doesn’t prove anything. She was here, yes, but why isn’t she here now?”
“I don’t know, do I?” Jamie rasped back. “But I do know that I’m going to follow this arrow.”
“I’m coming with you,” declared Toby.
The arrow pointed across the road towards a car park. The boys crouched down and crossed the road quickly. There was another arrow sprayed in the middle of the car park. This one pointed to a hedge that bordered the edge of a children’s play park. The once manicured green lawns of the park were now like a prairie, full of thick swaying grasses.
“How would she have managed to paint on grass?” quizzed Toby. “You wouldn’t see the paint; the grass is too tall.”
“She didn’t need to — look!” Jamie pointed to a line of red that stretched from the car park down through the play park and towards a paddling pool that sat in a dip. On closer inspection, the red line was made of torn cotton strips tied in a line to the tall tops of the browning weeds.
“She’s torn up a jumper or something to make markers with,” observed Toby.
“I remember that hoodie,” remarked Jamie. “It was
her favourite.”
“Your mum wears hoodies?” said Toby.
“Yeah, well, she’s never been interested in clothes. Always too busy,” Jamie replied.
They pressed into the waist-high grasses, stooping down and pushing the tickly thistles and dry nettles from under their noses. Belle sneezed as thousands of seeds burst from their pods and filled the air with white fairy filaments.
“Shush!” both the boys warned her.
They crept along, collecting the red cotton as they went. They didn’t want anybody else following the trail.
Not that that’s likely
, thought Toby.
We’re probably the only people mad enough to come into Aberdeen, apart from Jamie’s mum
.
The trail ended at the paddling pool, the once turquoise bottom of which had turned a disgusting black-green with slime and stagnant rainwater. Belle sniffed at the broken bottles littering the edge.
“Come away, Belle,” ordered Jamie. “You’ll cut your paws.”
“Now what?” Toby asked, searching the ground for more arrows.
“There!” exclaimed Jamie, pointing at a pile of coke cans.
“It’s a pile of coke cans, you nana,” said Toby.
“It’s a cairn,” said Jamie triumphantly. “Like you get on top of mountains. It shows we’re here. This is it.”
“What?” gasped Toby. “This is it? A smelly paddling pool?”
“Yeah, whatever it is, it must be around here somewhere.” Jamie started to rummage round the back of a derelict shed that had been the changing rooms and toilets. Toby squatted down and kept his ears open for any signs of dog activity.
After a few minutes he became sore and stood up briefly. Jamie peered round the side of the shed and motioned Toby to follow him.
There, hidden in nettles at the back of the shed, was a large concrete lid. Someone had levered open one edge and left a metal rod in one side to keep it open.
“Come on! This must be the start of the tunnel my mum was talking about,” gabbled Jamie.
“That wouldn’t make sense, Jamie.” Toby wasn’t so sure. Why would a tunnel start there? “It’s more likely to be ventilation or a maintenance shaft.”
“Give me a hand,” gasped Jamie, trying to lift the heavy lid.
“Use the lever,” urged Toby. “That’s what your mum’s left it there for, you noodle!”
“Oh, yeah,” said Jamie. “I was just wondering how my mum had managed to open and close this on her own.”
The boys levered the lid off the concrete collar on which it was sat, and peered down into the dark hole. Jamie pulled his torch out of the rucksack and, giving it a good wind first, shone it into the shaft.
“It’s not far to the bottom, actually,” he said, his voice echoing in the tunnel below. “I think between us we’ll be able to manhandle Belle down the ladder. Come on, Belle!” Belle wagged her tail furiously and poked at him with her nose.
“Hang on!” cried Toby. “I’m not going down there with you. I need to be going towards King Street, which I think is over that direction.” He swung his arm over to the right. “I remember Dad telling me that the Offshore Survival Centre is somewhere on King Street. There might still be supplies there.”
Jamie started to climb down the thin metal rungs lining the inside of the shaft.
“Please help me with Belle first, and then you can go. OK?” he said.
“OK,” agreed Toby. He pushed Belle towards the hole, but she braced herself against him and stood still, her whole body rigid.
“Come on! Hurry up!” Jamie’s muffled voice called from down in the tunnel.
But Belle wouldn’t shift. She lifted her head to the air and sniffed deeply. A low growl rumbled in her chest.
“Er, Jamie? I think you’d better come up here. She’s acting funny,” called back Toby.
Jamie’s head popped out of the top of the tunnel. “Get in!” he commanded Toby. “Get in the tunnel now!”
Toby didn’t wait. Whatever Jamie had seen, it must be bad.
“Belle! Come!” Jamie ordered.
Belle leapt towards the shaft, and Jamie grabbed hold of her collar. “Grab her back end and push!” he yelled at Toby.
Toby did as he was told, bundling the white furry bottom into the mouth of the shaft.
Belle wriggled and then jumped down into the passageway, past Jamie. Toby hauled the concrete lid half-closed then slipped backwards on to the rungs of the ladder inside. He grabbed the metal bar to lever the lid shut and, pitting all his strength against it, heaved on it. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of a pack of dogs trotting down the beach promenade towards them. A huge black dog strutted majestically at the head of the pack.
Cerberus was back.
The lid was heavy and slid slowly across the gap. Jamie appeared alongside Toby and threw his weight into levering it shut. There was no time to lose. If the dogs found the entrance open, they would follow them into the tunnel.
“Push!” yelled Toby, bracing his feet against the sides of the tunnel. The lid scraped shut.
“Phew,” panted Toby. “D’you think they saw us?”
“I’m not sure. But they knew we were around here somewhere. They must have followed the boat from the cliffs as we sailed down here. It seems too much of a coincidence that they came back to the city and turned up in the same place as us,” whispered Jamie, sliding down the steps to the bottom of the shaft. He flashed his torch around the tunnel, which was lined with small
granite cobbles. There seemed to be a faint light coming from somewhere to their right.
“I think this tunnel goes out to the beach that way,” Toby said quietly. “If this was part of the sewers, that would make sense. They didn’t bother treating it in the old days. They just opened the tanks at high tide and —
whoosh
— out it all went.”
“Er, that’s disgusting,” said Jamie, wrinkling up his nose. “Oh, what’s this?” Tied at the bottom of the ladder was an old plastic bottle full of a yellowy liquid. The initials KM were sprayed on it. “I think mum meant us to use this,” he suggested. He took the lid off and squeezed the bottle at the ground. The yellow liquid squirted out with a pungent smell.
“Oh, that stinks!” hissed Toby.
“This must be the badger juice my mum’s been using to throw the dogs of the scent. Maybe we should spray ourselves with it.”
“Must we?” whispered Toby. “It’s vile. Why don’t you spray it at the bottom of the shaft in case they find their way up the tunnel from the beach?”
Jamie squirted the solution over the surrounding ground and their feet, including the soles of their boots.
“Hey! Belle, what are you doing?” grunted Jamie. Belle was rolling in a revolting, sticky puddle of mud and sludge. “Ah, good girl.”
“What
is
she doing?” asked Toby, watching in disbelief as Belle’s white fur turned to brown and then black with goo.
“Well, I think she’s camouflaging herself, but
she
probably thinks she’s putting on her war paint,” Jamie told him. “Dogs often roll in fox poo or something yucky and really smelly. Makes them feel more dominant, so other dogs will treat them like a higher-ranking dog.”
“Nice!” commented Toby. “We should be moving. Let’s go.”
“If we head up this tunnel on the left, it should take us into the city centre. Come on,” said Jamie, throwing the light from his torch ahead of them into the dark cavern. It was broad enough for the two of them to walk side by side, with Belle trotting behind, and tall enough for them to stand upright without stooping.
“Doesn’t smell that bad, considering,” remarked Jamie, clasping the torch with one hand and Toby’s sleeve with the other.
“Can’t smell anything other than the pong of that badger juice,” said Toby, rubbing his nose with the dirty hankie Jamie had given him.
They could only walk slowly along the cavern as its cobbled floor was slimy and slippery with green algae. Its walls glistened with water, and fronds of ferns and foliage sprouted out between the stones. The boys could
hear the echo of their own feet as they trudged along the tunnel. They felt the floor tilting underfoot as it led them up the hill into the city centre, making it harder to keep from slipping. Every now and then they stopped to listen.
“Think what it must have sounded like when there were cars and lorries on the roads above here,” said Toby. “I can remember coming into Aberdeen to see Santa at a big store one Christmas. It was so busy, we couldn’t find anywhere to park, and my mum nearly gave up and went home again. But I cried and she parked on a double yellow line and got a parking ticket. But I got to see Santa. He gave me a Playmobil fire engine. I’ve still got it somewhere.”
“My mum never believed in doing all that Santa stuff,” sighed Jamie. “She thinks parents shouldn’t tell their children stories like that.”
“Oh, well, I suppose she might be right,” said Toby. “You still got presents though?”
“Yes, one. We had one each,” replied Jamie. “I wanted a computer one year but I got this wind-up torch instead.”
“Hey, never mind, what does it matter?” Toby nudged him with his elbow. “Tellies and computers are not much good to us now, eh? We’d never have managed without that torch, so …”
“Shush!” Jamie held his finger to his lips. “Can you hear that? I thought I heard a tapping noise.” Toby
listened to the dripping of the water and scampering of tiny feet on the wet ground.
“That’s rats, that is,” he told Jamie. “I hope they haven’t super-evolved too. I didn’t like them to start with!”
“No, not
that
noise. The one I can hear is more like a regular tapping — listen.”
Belle whined and pushed at Jamie with her wet nose.
“Yeah, you can hear it too, girl, can’t you?” said Jamie.
Toby listened again. Very faintly, in the distance, there was a
tap, tap, tap
. Then it stopped and then it started again:
tap, tap, tap
.
“Could just be a loose tile banging in the wind,” Toby said, shrugging his shoulders. Jamie looked unconvinced.
They trudged on, skidding and sliding as the tunnel grew steeper and steeper, and the ground more slippery. They stopped to catch their breath. Ahead the tunnel split into two.
“Which way?” asked Toby. “The left tunnel or the right?”
“I don’t know,” said Jamie, swinging his torch in the direction of the left tunnel. “Maybe my mum’s left another clue?” He pointed the light at the floor. “There’s some more red cotton, here,” he cried, “but it looks like the water has moved it. It could have been pointing at either of these tunnels.”
Toby knelt down and studied the strips of red cloth.
They lay wet and crumpled in a small pile.
“We’ll just have to take a guess,” he said. “Unless Belle knows?”
Belle was standing with her nose pointing down the right-hand tunnel. Her tail was wagging slowly and her ears were pricked. She gave a short whine and looked at Jamie.
“What is it, Belle?” Jamie turned to Toby. “Looks like the right tunnel’s the one of choice.”
The boys quickly followed Belle along the right tunnel, which became less steep and soon levelled out.
“Did your mum say what happened to the tunnel once it got to Marischal College?” asked Toby. “I mean, does it come out in the cellars? Or into the street?”
“I don’t know; she never told me,” replied Jamie. “Wait, I can hear that tapping again.”
“You and your flipping tapping!” said Toby. But it did seem that the tapping was getting louder. Belle was bounding ahead now, going so fast that the boys had trouble keeping up with her.
“Slow down, Belle,” called Jamie as she disappeared round a corner in front of them. “We don’t know what’s round the next bend.”
They chased after her, coming round the corner in hot pursuit, but there was no sign of her. In front of them was a pile of rubble that, in the flash of Jamie’s torchlight,
looked like it filled the tunnel from top to bottom.
“Whoa!” yelled Toby. “The roof of the tunnel must have collapsed. But where’s Belle?”
“Maybe she’s under all that,” cried Jamie tearfully.
“No, this isn’t a fresh fall of rocks,” Toby told him. “Here, give me the torch. You see how the dust has settled — if this had just happened the air would be thick with it.”
“I’m so glad I’ve come with an engineer,” Jamie whispered, half to himself.
“There must be a gap somewhere, and it won’t be a small one cos Belle managed to get through,” said Toby.
“Belle? Belle? Come, Belle!” Jamie called his dog.
There was a scrabbling, and some rocks and stones fell from the top of the rubble. A dirty half-black, half-white dog’s head poked out from behind a large boulder near the ceiling. With a mighty wriggle, Belle jumped down and raced towards them.
“Belle, I’m so glad to see you!” sniffed Jamie, hugging the dusty dog.
She whined and ran back to the mound of rocks, then back to Jamie. She gave a short bark and jumped up at him.
“Quiet, Belle, we don’t want the dogs to know where we are,” Toby told her, but Belle continued to whine and run backwards and forwards.
“She wants us to go with her,” said Jamie.
“Well, we’ve not got much choice,” quipped Toby, starting to climb up the mound of rubble. His feet slipped and slid as he clutched at the crumbly rocks and pulled himself slowly to the top.
Jamie trained the light from his torch on the spot where Belle had appeared. Belle jumped up past Toby and squeezed through a crevice between two big boulders.
“Jamie, there’s light coming from the other side,” Toby called softly.
Jamie hitched the rucksack up on his back and climbed up beside him. They perched on the chalky broken stones and peered through the cleft in the rocks. From somewhere, clear natural light was flooding into the tunnel on the other side.
“I can hear that tapping noise again,” said Jamie.
“So can I,” agreed Toby. He flattened himself against the rock and then crawled through the small space leading to the other side.
The tunnel on the other side was bigger and opened into a chamber with a vaulted ceiling. The light was coming through a glass panel in the roof of a tunnel to the left of the main chamber. Toby stood underneath it and looked up.
That’s weird, that’s SO weird. I remember this place, but where is it?
Looking up through the glass Toby could see a room.
It was covered in cobwebs but he could still make out paintings and a coat of arms on the wall, complete with a swag of tartan cloth that hung limply, heavy with dust. Toby stared and stared. The scene was like an old black and white photograph that had grown brown and faded with age. It reminded him of something.
“I remember,” he muttered. “I’ve been in that room. It’s a café. It’s in Provost Skene’s House. That’s right — there was a pane of glass set into the floor. You could look down and see the chamber below. I went there with Mum and I wouldn’t walk across the glass cos I was scared I might fall through it!”
“I know where the tapping’s coming from!” exclaimed Jamie, appearing beside him.
“I know where we are!” said Toby. “We must be right under the road in front of Marischal College.”
“Never mind that now,” cried Jamie. “That tapping’s coming from behind another pile of rocks at the end of this chamber.
Toby followed Jamie to the bank of pebbles and stones. He could hear now a distinct distant
tap, tap, tap
. He picked up a stone and tapped it hard on the wall of the chamber.
Tap, tap, tap … tap, tap, tap
.
There came a reply:
tap, tap, tap … tap, tap, tap
.
“It’s Mum; I know it is!” Jamie screamed in delight.
“Hush,” said Toby. “She must be stuck behind these
rocks. But why doesn’t she use another exit. By my reckoning, she must be in the tunnels that go under Marischal College, so why doesn’t she get out that way?”
“I don’t know. What are we going to do? I don’t know what to do!” babbled Jamie.
“Shush for a sec. Let me think,” urged Toby. “You start to make a hole through the rubble here, but be careful. It might not be stable. Watch for any loose stones. And I’ll go up through Provost Skene’s House and try to reach her by going through the College. OK?” Jamie nodded. “Right, first I’ll need you to give me a leg up.”
Jamie stood under the glass panel in the floor of Provost Skene’s House, with Toby on his shoulders. “Hurry up,” he cried, “I can’t hold you much longer.” Toby was trying to lift the pane of glass.
“Hold still!” Toby ordered. “I can’t do it with you jumping all over the place.” He grunted, and with one final effort the glass sprung up out of the panel and fell sideways on to the floor of the café.
“That’s it,” said Toby. “One last push up and I’ll jump. One, two, three!” Toby launched himself upwards as Jamie pushed him up off his shoulders.
“Are you OK?” Jamie asked as Toby dangled from the gap, scrabbling with his feet to get through the hole. His body disappeared, and then a hand reappeared and gave
the thumb’s up.
It was strange inside the café. Huge grey ropes of cobwebs hung from the lights to the tables, and out to the chairs. The pictures on the wall were ripped and torn, and some of the furniture was broken and overturned. Daylight was fading, and the low light filled the ghostly room with an eerie glow.
It’s like something out of Dickens
. Great Expectations,
was it? Miss Haversham? Mum liked that when it was on the telly. Now, how do I get across the main road without being seen?
Toby opened the door into a small courtyard and slipped out, staying close to the side of the building. He crept to the edge of the wall and looked left and then right. What he saw next froze his heart.
On the other side of the road was a monumental
gothic-looking
building, with tall spires and fancy turrets and towers. Sitting in the immense doorway was Cerberus, surrounded by his bodyguards.