Shadow Breakers (11 page)

Ring around the rosie.

It's a young girl's voice — tremulous but clear. I am absolutely shaking in terror, because I know the song and I know the voice, even though I've never heard anything like it. The sound is old and new, young and ancient, clear and yet somehow cracked like old stone.

The most terrifying thing of all is that the voice is reaching into me. It's singing as if it knows me. The rhyme echoes up through the Abbey, filling the space, bouncing off the walls.

I look at Josh. He has heard it, too.

But he isn't scared. He looks totally fascinated, and he's holding up his phone — recording it all, I guess. I'm glad he's got the presence of mind, because I haven't.

“Time to get out of here?” suggests Josh, looking intently at me.

The voice is distorting now, sounding squashed and metallic as if it's been auto-tuned.

I try to move my legs, to break into a run, but for some reason my body won't obey my brain. My feet are glued to the floor.

“Come on, come on!” Josh says.

I look at him in despair and realize he's equally rooted to the spot.

“Block it out!” he snaps, and puts his hands over his ears.

I do the same, muffling the sounds of the singing. Finally, my right foot peels itself from the floor and I drag it along, a lead weight. It's like one of those dreams where you're running and can't get away.

Concentrate.

Life comes back to my right leg, and then my left.

I glance at Josh. He nods. We grab each other's hands and run full tilt for the oak doors.

The singing voice seems to chase after us, gathering momentum like a vast tidal wave of sound.

We skid to a halt.

The way to the door is blocked.
Something has appeared.

At first it's only half visible, half formed. A shimmering column of grayish light, flickering in the darkness, like a ghostly candle. And then, with a rush of cold air and an evil smell like rotting flesh, the shimmering blur turns into something more solid. A wizened, yellow face, twisted like bark and covered in pustules. A hunched body swathed in dark robes and long, dark hair.

The Shape. But more than that now.

The first thing I think of saying is, “Can you see it, too?”

“Oh, yes,” he says softly, almost absently. He doesn't know how important that is to me. Someone else seeing my Shape now.

The Shape seems to hiss and wave an arm.

I jump backward, but Josh is taking shot after shot on his phone. “Any ideas?” he mutters.

And that's when I get this stupid thought.

“Okay. Just one,” I say.

“Knock yourself out.”

I reach for the nearest pew and pull out a leather-bound Bible, embossed in gold with a cross.

“You've got to be kidding,” says Josh. “You've seen too many bad vampire films.”

“It's not the cross,” I say. “It's what it stands for. Belief sets up a protective barrier.”

“I don't think that's going to work. Do you believe in it?”

“Well, I'm kind of unresolved. Let's find out.”

I need to confront this thing. I need to do something. I've told the others most of what I know, but I'm still the one who senses the terror, the one who sees it in dreams.

I hold the book up like a shield and swing it from side to side.

The Shape pulses, but doesn't vanish.

“Throw it,” says Josh.

“What?”

“Throw it!”

And he grabs the Bible from me and hurls it into the swirling gray light.

The book crackles with energy as it bounces off its — her? — body, and stays, twisting in the air, for a second. Then, in the grip of some icy wind, it begins to peel away, layer by layer. First the leather cover is ripped from its binding, curls up and falls like a withered leaf to the floor. As one page after another peels off, the Bible turns banana yellow and crumbles to dust. There is a pungent odor of burning leather and a damp smell of decaying paper. The Shape seems, for a moment, to fold in on itself, as if bending over in some kind of pain.

Josh and I both stare in astonishment for a second, then we take our chance and run for the main doors.

Josh throws himself against them, pushing them open, and once we are both out in the night air again, he slams them shut.

The sounds from inside the Abbey are suddenly cut off, as if someone has thrown a switch.

And we keep running.

We don't stop until we are down by the Esplanade, leaning over the barrier, gasping for breath. Beyond, the sea roars.

Behind us, there are the sounds of dying nightlife — a few revving motorbikes, some people being turned out of bars, a radio blaring somewhere. Two lads, drunk and laughing, swagger past us and don't give us a second look.

I have the whole of the English language, or at least what I know of it, to express what we've just seen. The language of Shakespeare and a million other writers.

But all I can manage to do on this occasion is gasp.

He claps me on the shoulder. “You said it, Miranda. You said it.” Laughing, he holds his phone up to scan through the images.

“What did it do?” I gasp, still getting my breath back. “To the Bible?”

He shrugs. “Some kind of molecular discharge, I imagine. Interfacing with the physical world and releasing concentrated entropy.”

“Oh. Great. How about translating that into English for me?” I notice he is staring at his phone screen, not listening to me. “What's up?” I ask.

Josh shows me. The screen is blank.

“Nothing,” he says. “The entire memory — it's been wiped.”

The school is humming with the usual lunchtime commotion: thundering feet, shouting and catcalling, the crashing of crockery and scraping of chairs and tables. It all echoes in my head.

I am exhausted from last night, and feeling like I'm definitely coming down with something, but I am trying to rise above it, trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

Jade is being okay with me. It's almost like the pier incident never happened.

I don't understand or deserve it. I should be grateful but right now I can't really give my mind to her problems.

“So, the thing is,” says Jade, prattling away to me as we clatter down the stairs, “Ryan Crofts is kind of saying he wants to go out with me. Now, do I go out with him because he says he wants to go out with me, or is that, like, too sad? I mean, it looks a bit needy, don't it . . . ? I mean, Ryan Crofts is all right, but he's a bit, well, full of himself.” She stops dead so several other pupils almost cannon into her. Someone mutters “pikey” at her as they push past her, but for once she ignores them. “Babe, are you listening to me at all?”

“No. Sorry. Not really.”

I can't kid myself. I've not been able to concentrate all day. I know my work is worthless. Maybe I'm getting the flu.

Jade is peering at me. “Either pale foundation is really in with the Weirdos this week, or you need to lie down, babe.”

“Um . . . yeah.” I slump against the lockers, feeling dizzy.

I feel Jade's arm catch me before I slide.

“Come on,” she says. “You need to go to the nurse's.”

I do go to the nurse's, and what's more I go home. Miss Bellini orders me to. And once I'm there, I crawl straight into bed. By now, the time on my watch says 12:54.

This thing — this gift, this power, whatever it is — seems to be draining the strength out of me. It's like I am newly connected to something and still stabilizing all my settings.

I wake up feeling better. Mum, still convinced that I've just got a cold, has brought me some hot lemon tea.

I go out onto the landing. Mum's just put Truffle down for his afternoon nap and I can hear him snoozing and snuffling happily in his room. I go in and look. Little hands above his head, little pink face soft and warm and contented. He can be an annoying whiner when he's awake, but in his crib he is always a little angel. I lean down and kiss him. “Sweet dreams, Truffle,” I murmur, then tiptoe out of his room.

The doorbell makes me jump. I duck back into the shadow of Truffle's room and listen as Mum goes down the hall. I hear the door open.

“Hello, Mrs. May,” says a familiar voice. “I'm Callista, from school. I've just come to drop off a book for Miranda. I hope she's feeling a little better?”

“Come on in,” says Mum. “I think she could do with some company.” She calls upstairs. “Miranda! Friend of yours!”

I'm shocked. Why is Cal here? Something must be happening.

I hear Mum taking Cal into the dining room. “You girls will have to excuse me — I've got some work to do. There's tea in the pot.”

I come downstairs and find Cal at the dining-room table. She's been home to change after school — she's wearing a loose white top and her hair's in a bun with wisps artfully hanging down.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello.” She smiles, but it feels artificial.

I pour cups of tea for both of us.

“Your hands are shaking,” says Cal. She looks at me with her sharp green eyes. “Are you sure you're quite well, Miranda?”

“Yes . . . yes, fine. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Nothing, really,” she says. “I just wanted to see you. You know, outside the rough-and-tumble of school. Josh says you had quite an encounter at the Abbey.” She keeps her gaze fixed on me as I reply.

“Yeah, I've emailed Miss B. It's in the report. With all the encryptions you showed me.”

Doing written reports on our activities should seem like extra homework, but it doesn't. It's thrilling, exciting. It makes me feel important, and wanted.

Cal nods. “We're getting somewhere. Good teamwork.” She leans across the table, suddenly, and holds my arm too firmly for comfort. I stare down at her hand. “Miranda. Listen. If any of this makes you feel . . . upset, or worried . . . you'll talk to us, won't you? To me, or Miss B, or Josh? Because so few people get this chance. Don't mess it up.”

I'm surprised by this passionate outburst, but I don't let it show. “Of course,” I tell her calmly. “I won't mess up.”

“Don't hold anything back from us,” she says. She looks straight at me as if she's trying to bore right into my mind. There's something older about her again, something scary and unsettling.

“Of . . . of course. Look, everything's recorded, like I said.”

“I don't want to upset you, Miranda.”

“You're not.” I look down pointedly. “But you are hurting my arm a bit.”

Cal slowly releases her grip but she goes on staring at me. “What we deal with, it's not the kind of thing you'll ever have encountered before. But that test in the Seaview showed you were the right one for us.”

My mum comes bustling in, searching for something in the folders on the bookshelf. “Don't mind me, girls,” she says absently.

“Mrs. May,” says Cal with icy politeness. “So kind of you to make tea.”

Mum glances over her shoulder and smiles. “Sarah, please,” she says. “Everyone calls me Sarah.”

“How long have you been in your line of work, Sarah?” Cal asks.

“Since just after Miranda was born,” Mum answers, pulling down a folder and putting her glasses on to scribble some notes. “I was in industry before. But holistic therapy — it suddenly seemed the right thing to do.”

“People need answers, right?” says Cal. “Outside what they call the conventional methods. A good place for it, this.”

Mum looks up briefly from her folder. “The ancient beliefs are still strong, you know. There's a lot about them that still holds true.”

“This town is full of that stuff, though, isn't it?” Cal says. “The ley lines converging, and the old barrows up on the hills, and the legends about the fishermen's ghosts in the harbor . . . legends of witchcraft and the Plague.”

I look uneasily from my mother to Cal and back again. It's almost as if they are playing a game with this conversation, each trying to make the other reveal something.

“Well, that's Britain for you,” says Mum with a smile, not looking Cal in the eye. “A great country steeped in folklore.”

Cal's not going to let it go. “But there's almost more of that than of your thing. You know. More old shadows and mystery than healing and balance. Do you think that's your job? Kick out the old, ring in the new?”

What is she
doing
? It's almost like Cal is trying to goad my mum into a response. Trying to get her to say something she can savage.

Mum seems more amused, though, than anything. One hand on her hip, she asks, “What are you trying to say, Callista?”

Cal holds up her hands defensively. “Nothing. Just, you know . . . of all the harbor towns you could have come and worked in . . . what a coincidence you end up here.” She shrugs, puts her bottom lip out, and blows a puff of air. “Y'know.”