13 Curses (42 page)

Rain pattered at the windowpanes. The afternoon sky had darkened, and now dirty gray clouds swirled across it like a witch’s brew.

“When Florence goes to bed we’ll sneak out to the grave,” said Fabian. “We’ve got all evening to prepare. I’ll gather as many flashlights and candles as I can get away with.”

“What about protection?” Tanya asked. “If the fairies think we’re getting too close, they could attack.”

“Red thinks they want us to find the charms,” said Fabian, and went on to relate their earlier conversation.

“We should still be prepared,” said Red. “Just in case.”

The evening crawled, interrupted only by Florence’s call for dinner—none of which could be successfully smuggled up to Red. It was ten o’clock before they managed to bring her a meager plate of cold leftovers, and by which time Fabian, who had been going over and over the information they had from Elizabeth’s diaries, had pinpointed another possible location.

“The church!” he said, banging his fist on the bed and making Tanya and Red jump.

Tanya glared at him. “Quiet, idiot!”

“Sorry,” said Fabian, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “But it stands to reason that one might be there. It’s where the Elvesdens were married.”

“It’s worth a try if we can get in,” said Tanya.

“And if we’ve enough time—we’ve no idea how
long it’ll take to search the tunnel and the grave,” Red added, stuffing a whole potato into her mouth.

It was past eleven o’clock when Florence creaked up the stairs for the final time that evening. They heard her take Amos his bedtime drink, then come back down to her own room. Waiting a further twenty minutes to allow her to drop off to sleep, they slipped downstairs one by one and, after collecting Oberon from the kitchen upon Tanya’s insistence, went into the library.

Red’s fingers found the indents in the circular wooden panel at the edge of the bookshelf. She turned her wrist clockwise once, twice, and the mechanism clicked into place. She sensed Fabian trembling with anticipation behind her. It was the first time he had ever been into the secret opening in the library. As the partition swung open, revealing the small, black gap, she felt Oberon push past her legs, eager to explore. The musty air that met them sent him recoiling, and he hid behind Tanya’s legs.

“Coward,” Fabian muttered, but he didn’t sound much braver.

Red stepped into the passageway, flicking on a flashlight.

“Careful,” she whispered, as she stepped down onto the stone staircase. “These steps are steep. If one of us loses our footing we’ll all go down.”

Fabian was the next into the tunnel, holding a slim silver flashlight in his teeth. His hands were pinned on the damp walls to steady himself.

“Come on, Oberon,” Tanya hissed, as she followed them into the tight space.

Red looked back, past Fabian, to see Oberon’s long brown nose peering around the edge of the bookshelf. He looked petrified, shifting from one large paw to another.

“Make your mind up!” Tanya said crossly. “We haven’t got all night!”

“Just leave him!” Red said in a fierce whisper. “We haven’t got time for this!”

A low scraping noise alerted them that the partition was closing, and Red remembered that this entrance only stayed open for a short time before the mechanism sprung back. With seconds to spare, Oberon squeezed through the gap and joined them, the thought of being left behind evidently worse than the gloomy tunnel.

With a final click the doorway was sealed. There was nowhere to go except down. They followed the staircase, their footsteps tentative. The flickering of the flashlights was disorienting, and the dank smell of mildew invaded their lungs.

“Keep your eyes open for a charm,” said Red, flashing her light in every direction.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get this taste out of my mouth,” said Fabian disgustedly, shining his flashlight at the dripping green walls as they came to the bottom of the steps. His voice echoed off stone. They had arrived in a small cavern, with four tunnels ahead of them.

Red searched the ground with her light. Soon she
picked out a large pebble, wound and knotted with string leading off into one of the tunnels.

“Follow me,” she said.

No one spoke as they went into the tunnel. They sensed as well as saw the space become tighter above their heads. The air grew thicker and icier, like a freezing, rotting soup. Oberon whined, his tail tucked firmly between his legs.

When the air turned even cooler—but cleaner—Red knew the cavern was ahead. Only Fabian paused to look at the old-fashioned bed, table, and chair that stood abandoned there. They moved quickly on past to where the underground room closed off into a tunnel once more, following the limp string on the ground.

“It’s not far to the grave now,” said Red. “If we don’t find any charm in the tunnel we can search on the way back too.”

Following Tanya’s example, Red now carried the bracelet in a drawstring pouch of salt in her pocket. Though none of the charms had shown signs of enchantment after being reattached to the bracelet, she was taking no chances. Several times she drew breath in a false alarm as her flashlight caught some damp glimmer in the darkness, but always it turned out to be a water droplet or a shard of glass broken long ago.

It was Fabian who spotted it.

“There it is!”

It was not tucked in some underground crevice, or wedged behind some loose rock. It was on the
ground perhaps three meters away, directly in their path, brazenly waiting to be discovered. They stopped, their flashlights aimed at it, bouncing off the smooth silver.

“Which one is it?” Tanya asked, through chattering teeth. Oberon pressed himself into her legs.

“I think… it’s the Light,” said Red, stepping uncertainly toward it. As she did, her flashlight flickered. She shook it until it righted itself, then shone it farther along. “The exit is just up ahead. About twenty meters away.”

Tanya’s flashlight wavered and then went out, leaving their light reduced by a third. In the darkness of the tunnel it made a lot of difference.

“Did you put fresh batteries in these, Fabian?” she said, shaking the offending flashlight and flicking the switch a few times.

“Brand new, all of them,” Fabian said in a small voice. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a candle and some matches. Lighting one, he passed it to Tanya.

Red took another step toward the charm. Her flashlight dimmed for a moment, then came back to full strength. Her breathing quickened.

“This isn’t a coincidence,” she whispered.

“You mean the way the lights keep flickering?” Tanya asked. Her hand shook, and she winced as hot candle wax dripped onto her skin.

Red nodded.

“Keep hold of the flashlight,” she said. “I want you
to carry on through the tunnel and get out through the grave. Once you’re out, try the flashlight again. If it works you’ll have to use it to guide us out.”

“What do you want me to do?” said Fabian, no longer attempting to mask his fear.

“Stay where you are, and shine your flashlight ahead to guide Tanya.”

Tanya moved past them, giving the charm a wide berth. As she and Oberon drew level with it her candle dimmed, then finally died, leaving the tunnel ahead pitch dark.

“Keep going,” Red told her, and as Fabian lifted his flashlight, she willed it to reach the farthest recesses of the tunnel. Instead, the shadows seemed to stretch even farther and Tanya was swallowed by the darkness.

Finally they heard her call out.

“I’m here, but I can’t lift the slab!”

Red cursed under her breath. She had forgotten about the heavy stone. It was difficult to shift, but not impossible. However, Red was bigger and stronger than Tanya—and lifting it from below was twice as hard as doing it from above.

“Go and help her,” she told Fabian.

“What about you?”

“You can come back once the slab’s shifted if I need you,” she said. “Go.”

She lifted her own flashlight as Fabian ran headlong into the darkness, for as she had expected, his flashlight went out as he passed the cursed charm.
She heard his voice and Tanya’s, but not their words, and then the scrape and shifting of stone on stone. Seconds later, gusts of cold, fresh air blew into the tunnel, and she sucked them in gratefully. Up ahead, she heard a shout of encouragement, and then light shone in from above. Tanya and Fabian had made it out, away from the darkness. She was alone.

Gathering her courage, she took another step toward the charm. It looked so innocent, lying there. It could be a dropped trinket, nothing more. But it was more than her imagination that sent shadows scudding across the walls of the tunnel. The shadows were lengthening, thickening. Another step, and Red’s flashlight was rendered useless. With a feeble sputter, the light went out for good. Trying to keep her nerve and a cool head, she stuck the flashlight in her pocket and continued. The charm was now only five paces away, and all she had was the thin light that came from Tanya’s and Fabian’s flashlights, twenty meters farther on, that barely stretched to her.

“Have you got it?” Fabian called.

“Not yet,” she shouted back, her voice echoing off the walls. She took another step. At first she thought the lights ahead had dimmed, but as a wisp of black swirled in front of her face, she knew that the shadows were growing. They were stretching along the walls of the tunnel as far as she could see, both going away from her and coming toward her. Time and again she thought she saw shapes within the shadows… a face, or perhaps a hand. But trying to distinguish anything
real was like trying to make sense of the shapes in a cloud formation. She was afraid now, unsure of what was happening. Slowly, slowly, she knelt down to the bone-chilling ground and began to crawl toward the candelabrum.

And that was when everything went black.

Tanya and Fabian were gulping in the fresh autumn air with relief after being stuck in the clammy tunnel. The moon hung overhead, highlighting the gravestones all around; it was an improvement to the tunnel, but a small one. Only Oberon appeared completely at ease with his surroundings.

Tanya leaned through the opening in the grave, stretching as far as she was able, and held her flashlight up for Red’s benefit. She too had seen the darkness thicken as Red had got nearer to the charm.

“It’s getting darker down there,” she murmured. “Our flashlights aren’t doing anything.”

“I’m going back down,” said Fabian. “Here, hold my flashlight.”

He began to scramble into the tunnel, squeezing himself through the narrow square onto the steps. In front of him, they watched as Red lowered herself onto her hands and knees and started crawling toward the charm. The light picked out her movements, and the tiny silver object in front of her. Suddenly she froze, and reached her hands out blindly in front of herself.

“I can’t see!” she shouted. “Are you still there?”

“We’re here!” Fabian yelled. “I’m coming back to you!”

“No! Stay where you are—something’s happening! It’s all gone dark! Are the flashlights on?”

“The flashlights are shining right on you!” Tanya called in alarm. “Do you mean you can’t see them?”

“I can’t see anything!” Red had stood up and turned now, facing back into the tunnel, back the way they had come. Her voice was high-pitched, nothing like the calm, cool Red Tanya knew.

“She’s panicking,” Fabian said. “We’ve got to get her out!”

“It’s the charm,” said Tanya. “Its power is working against her—it’s taking all the light and leaving her completely in darkness.”

As they watched, shadowy figure formations swirled all around Red. They were blurred and fragmented, but as one reached out with its shadow hands, holding them over Red’s eyes, both Tanya and Fabian saw it. The sight of it sent Fabian recoiling but he managed to stand his ground.

“Get out of there, Fabian,” Tanya said in a low voice. “If either of us go down there, the shadows will get us too, and then we’ll be no good to her. We need her to keep her head so we can direct her out.”

Fabian didn’t need telling twice.