Advent (31 page)

 
Go, he told himself. Go go go. Get away, get out. He tried to make himself think. It was impossible. His pulse thudded in his ears like a galley drum. It sounded like words, like the Corbo thing’s hideous pronouncement,
Bad time, bad time, bad time
. His feet thumped the same rhythm against the ground.

 
At the top of the field the iron gate leading through the overgrown wall was still open, though he could barely make out where it was. He had to slow down to find the spot, and when he put out his hand to push the bars of the gate, it was as if the metal was the beast’s claw, pressing on his skin again.

 
He stopped in the darkness under the tangle of dry stems, hands on his knees, breath heaving. For the first time he thought about where he was going. The front door of the house wasn’t far away. Should he warn them? Could he find Marina again, make sure she was OK?

 
What could he say?

 
What if they knew?

 
Was this what no one had told him about Pendurra? That it was haunted, that it was cursed even more horrifyingly than he was?

 
At the groaning sound of a heavy door opening he froze, holding his breath. The front door.

 
From where he crouched he saw light spill onto the gravel in front of the house. A vivid, slick red-orange light, quivering with sinister motion. Someone was there, coming out. He heard a step.

 
Something.

 
He bolted. He dodged and ducked through the garden, veering away from the clumps of darkness as they loomed up over him, following avenues of shadow close to the edge of the trees. When he reached the mouth of the decrepit driveway, he risked a quick glance back over his shoulder.

 
The light outside the house was gathered into an eerie floating ball like phosphorescence in pitch-black water. It hovered at the head of a stick, and the stick was held in a person’s hand, and the person, invisible behind the evil light, was coming towards him.

 
He put his head down, gritted his teeth against the burning protests in his legs and sprinted into the dark. He hadn’t seen who it was. He hadn’t wanted to. Now he only wanted to get out. Run up the drive, through the gates, out into the road, the real world, out out out. Anywhere else.

 
The driveway was completely invisible under the trees. He followed it without knowing how. He couldn’t slow down no matter how blinded he was. When another light winked suddenly through the cage of branches ahead, he yelped in terror, but an instant later he identified it as electric light, harsh and bright. The light in Auntie Gwen’s porch.

 
Someone stood there.

 
He almost fell again. Trapped, he thought, and for a terrible second he saw himself back in the stone tomb, the door slamming shut behind him. Then the person under the porch light moved. Perhaps she’d heard his steps under the trees. She turned and peered down towards him. He recognised the silhouette, and at the same moment he remembered her promise, which at the time had been the last thing he wanted to hear:
Tell you what – I’ll come back tomorrow, around this time, just to set my mind at rest.

 
He ran on. She stepped away from the porch as he came, staring curiously into the darkness from which he fled.

 
‘Is that . . . ?’

 
He twisted round to look back down the driveway. Through the screen of old trees he glimpsed the light that was never firelight, bobbing its way slowly up the path.

 
Hester Lightfoot only gaped at him, astonishment all over her face.

 
‘Get me out of here,’ Gav said. ‘Please. Now.’

On the other side of the river, Horace Jia slouched at the back of a bus and tried to cheer himself up with the thought that his day probably couldn’t get any worse.

 
He’d been late to school, of course. Really late. The kind of late where they’d probably ring Mum. He had his excuse ready – Horace prided himself on being prepared for things – and anyway as long as he kept coming nearly top in everything he knew Mum wouldn’t freak out about a thing like that, but he could do without a lecture, especially today. And he’d have to stand there and take it, or she might really flip out and take away the key to the boat. And then he wouldn’t be able to cross the river any more.

 
Not that he cared. (He slouched deeper, pressing his cheek to the vibrating window. Dark out already.) What do I care? he told himself furiously. Who cares about Marina anyway? She never listens to me. Thought I was lying. Thought I didn’t know what I saw. Did she think he didn’t have other people to hang out with? Maybe he’d forget about going over there. For ever. Leave her with her doddery old dad and mental Miss Clifton and that freaky Caleb bloke who looked like he never washed. See how she likes that. Maybe then she’d wish she’d been a bit nicer to him.

 
Maybe he’d even tell.

 
Tell.

 
The thing that mattered most to Horace Jia was that he had a secret. Having a secret was wonderful. Nothing could take it away. No one else owned it; no one else could touch it. It was there when he went to bed, there when he woke up, there whenever he wanted to think about it, a little warm golden nugget in the back of his mind. Sometimes it tingled as if it was a part of his body. Sometimes he thought he could make it tingle there just by thinking. Close his eyes and bring it close and send a shiver down his own spine.

 
But sometimes it wanted to burst out.
Hey, guess what. You know that weird old house across the river, the one no one knows anything about? I sneak in there all the time. Yeah, I do, I swear. And there’s this girl who lives there, and I’m her best friend, and she’s really . . . really . . .

 
He clamped his arms tighter across his chest. No way he could tell anyone. Even if it was the best secret in the world. If anyone else ever knew that he sometimes clambered over the wall from the footpath and ran up through the old woods and hung out with Marina, they’d stop him. It was probably illegal or something, even though Miss Clifton always told him no one minded as long as he kept quiet about it. Plus he always told Mum he was going to meet up with friends or go exploring on his own. If she found out he’d been lying about it for a whole year now, that’d be it. No more boat. No more freedom.

 
So what? he told himself again. Who cares? He tried to think about other friends he could go and see, friends he could do normal stuff with – PlayStation and football – but when he imagined things like that, his secret went heavy and bright like gold inside him and made the rest of the world shadowy and too small, as if he’d switched the lights on during a movie.

 
Marina’d spoiled it. Going off exploring with that other kid in tow. Her and crazy Miss Clifton going mental at the weekend. They’d ruined it for him. Ruined his life.

 
The bus reached his village. He clumped off and marched home, keeping his head down. With any luck, he thought, Mum wouldn’t be back yet.

 
But it wasn’t his lucky day. He saw lights on behind the curtains as he came down the lane. Worse, there was another car pulled up tight against the garden hedge, right in front. A visitor.

 
Horace’s heart sank even lower. Mum had this thing about visitors and food. Anyone who set foot in the house couldn’t leave until they’d been offered everything from biscuits to cake to half that evening’s tea. And then there was the chatting, chatting, God, all that stupid gossip about people nobody cared about. What was there to gossip about? Everyone did the same stupid crap every day. The only thing that ever changed was that old people got sicker.
Is she any better? . . . Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.
He couldn’t face it. Not this evening, not after the morning he’d had.

 
‘Horace? Is that you?’

 
Who else would be opening the door, Father Christmas? ‘Hi, Mum.’

 
‘Come and say hello.’ He smelled tea and a whiff of ginger cake, but no actual cooking yet. She and the guest were in the sitting room at the back, out of sight. ‘Did you put your shoes neatly?’

 
Yes, he had. He aimed a phantom kick at them. ‘Yes.’

 
‘Did you have a good day at school?’

 
Sounded like they hadn’t rung her, at least. Unless she was just being polite while someone else was in the house. Too embarrassed to tell him off in public. Horace hung his bag on its peg by the front door, put his coat beside it. ‘Yeah, fine.’

 
‘You remember Reverend Jeffrey, don’t you?’

 
He froze with his arms still up by the peg, heart pounding. The day that hadn’t been able to get any worse wobbled, tipped and plunged down into total disaster.

 
Mum still hadn’t seen him yet. For a few crazy seconds he thought about legging it back outside.
Sorry, Mum, just remembered I left something on the bus!
Hide in the neighbour’s garden till he saw the car leave. But what good would that do? Avoiding the bloke wouldn’t help. If he’d told her, he’d told her. Even running away wouldn’t help that.

 
He shoved his hands down in his pockets. His right fist tightened round his keychain. He felt the little key, sticky with sweat. The key that opened the padlock that sealed the tin compartment in the stern of the boat where the tiny outboard lay stored. The key that meant while she was off cleaning rich people’s houses all day long at the weekend or in the holidays he could go where he liked. The key to his secret.

 
‘Horace? What are you doing? Come in. Don’t be rude.’

 
He shuffled miserably into the back room. Mum was in the high-backed chair she always took because she thought it was the uncomfortable one. Owen Jeffrey – one of the four people in the world who had the power to give away Horace’s secret – had been forced into the horrible puffy fraying armchair that cut your circulation off at your knees and made your back feel like it was being bent in two, otherwise known as the ‘good’ chair.

 
It faced the door. As Mum craned round to inspect him, Horace met the priest’s eye.

 
Owen winked.

 
‘Say hello, Horace. What’s wrong with you?’

 
‘Hello.’

 
‘Here, you can cut another slice of cake, and get yourself a plate. What happened to your hands? They’re disgusting!’

 
The bloke couldn’t have told her. No way she’d be fussing the same as usual if he’d told her. She’d have been in shock. And what else was that wink all about? Braced for the worst, Horace didn’t know what to do with himself.

 
‘Go to the kitchen, please. I don’t know how you get yourself so dirty.’

 
‘Hello, Horace,’ the priest said.

 
So what was he doing here? Had he just been waiting for Horace to get home, so he could make him admit everything in person? But he didn’t look like he was about to tell anyone off.

 
‘I only stopped in with a quick question,’ Owen said, stretching his back uncomfortably. ‘I’ll be on my way soon.’

 
‘Are you sure you won’t have some dumplings? I have the water boiling. They only take a few—’

 
‘No, thank you, Mrs Jia.’

 
From the kitchen, Horace listened to the familiar argument. He ran the water ice-cold before washing his hands. They felt clammy.

 
‘I have to get back for evensong,’ Owen was explaining as Horace returned to the sitting room.

 
‘But that is not for another hour! That’s better, Horace. Cut a slice for Reverend Jeffrey, please.’

 
‘Honestly, no. I’m quite all right.’ He leaned forward a little to catch Horace’s eye and repeated, ‘Everything’s quite all right.’

 
‘What is this? When did you become such a rude boy?’ Now Mum was doing her thing where she made a joke of him – another reason he hated it when there were guests around – but he was so relieved to discover that the priest obviously hadn’t told Mum anything about his visits to Pendurra, he almost laughed along himself.