Seven Sorcerers (2 page)

When she was as small as Toby, Nin used to think that
THINGS lurked in the space under the stairs, hiding beneath the coats. It looked like the sort of place where THINGS would lurk. It was something to do with the way shadows hung around even after the light went on. She hardly ever thought about it now, but this morning she was feeling edgy, and the memory came back to her so strongly that she felt her skin prickle. She hurried past and burst into the kitchen.

In the dim, rainy-morning light, Nin could just make out the humps of the toaster and the kettle on the work surface, and the blank faces of the cupboards. No Toby.

‘You’re up early,’ Lena said, appearing in the doorway behind Nin and clicking on the light.

Nin jumped and spun around. ‘So’re you.’

Lena shook her head and pushed a hand through her tangled hair. She wasn’t dressed yet.

‘Didn’t sleep well,’ she sighed. ‘You?’

‘Rain woke me,’ said Nin, which was true.

Lena went over to the work surface, ‘Since we’re both here, how about I start breakfast?’

Without waiting for an answer she filled the kettle and put it on, then popped four slices of bread in the toaster and went into the cupboard for the teabags. Over her mother’s shoulder Nin saw that even the big box of Toby’s favourite cereal had disappeared.

‘Mum, is Toby OK?’ she asked anxiously.

Wednesdays were always bad, but this one was making a bid for the All-Time Most Horrible Day Ever.

‘Who?’ asked Lena.

After denying all knowledge of her second child, Lena sat at the breakfast table to wait for the kettle to boil.

‘You know,’ said Nin, wishing her stomach would stop turning somersaults on her. ‘Toby? Your son. About so big.’ She felt like she had taken a wrong turning into somebody else’s life. Bewildered didn’t begin to cover it.

Lena laughed. ‘I’m hardly in the frame for any more offspring. I’ve got my hands full enough with you! And in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m still single. Is this your way of telling your old mum to go out and get a life?’

Nin winced. Her father had been killed in a horrible accident involving a bull and the Park Road underpass three years ago. It was still hard to think about.

‘No, Mum,’ she said sympathetically. ‘I just …’

The moment was broken by the click of the kettle as it boiled itself to a standstill. Lena got up to make the tea just as the toast pinged up in the toaster. Nin hurried to get the marmalade and made a fuss about buttering the toast so that Lena would forget what they were talking about.

By the time Nin was washed and dressed, there was still no sign of Toby. She kept waiting for him to appear from some hiding place and carry on as if nothing had happened. After all, four-year-old kids didn’t just cease to exist!

Once she was at school, her brain was so taken up with the problem of Toby that she paid no attention at all in English, which was usually her favourite lesson,
and got told off twice for not listening in geography.

Everything Nin thought of didn’t work. He wouldn’t be upstairs in the second-floor flat where Granny and Grandad Covey lived because he would have come back down again by breakfast time. He couldn’t be with Granny Redstone, who had a house by the sea at Sandy Bay. Toby never stayed at Granny Redstone’s on his own. Not to mention that her mother would simply have said, ‘He’s at Granny’s, dear, don’t you remember,’ instead of wondering who Nin was talking about. And anyway, none of it would explain why all his belongings had vanished. Even his breakfast cereal.

The bogeyman must’ve run off with him, she thought, and laughed to herself. It was a grim laugh.

By mid-morning break the rain had finally stopped, so she dragged Linette over to a quiet corner of the school grounds. Linette was moaning on about her dad and how he wouldn’t let her do anything fun these days. Nin cut across a story about how he had made Linette eat nothing but cabbage for a week because she had spent her lunch money on crisps.

‘Never mind that,’ Nin said impatiently, ‘the weirdest thing happened this morning.’

Linette scowled at her. ‘Do you mind?’ she snapped. ‘I was talking!’

‘This is important,’ said Nin firmly.

‘Oh yeah? And my being starved to death isn’t?’

Nin shook her head. ‘Will you listen! Toby’s disappeared!’

Linette stared at her as if she’d gone off her head. There was a long pause.

And then it happened all over again.

‘Who?’ snapped Linette. ‘Am I supposed to know who you’re talking about?’

‘Yes!’ Nin wailed. ‘He’s my brother!’

Linette gave an impatient snort. ‘Honestly, Ninevah Redstone,’ she said over her shoulder as she stomped off, ‘sometimes I think you’re soft in the head.’

Nin got through the afternoon somehow. When the bell finally rang for the end of the day she snatched up her things and ran. She kept going, out of the school and past the bus stop. She didn’t think she could face hanging about with the others; she just wanted to go home. And she knew that, on foot, the quickest way home was to walk across the park and through the underpass.

Normally, Nin avoided the underpass like the plague. But today she was going to take the risk.

Someone shouted at her as she charged through the fifth years hanging about at the park entrance, but she ignored them. She ran on through the park, over the ornamental bridge and the ducks, past the Juniper Café and around the flowerbeds.

Then, suddenly, the underpass was there. It loomed like a great dark hole ready to swallow her up. She slammed to a halt, nearly stumbling because she was going so fast the rest of her tried to carry on after her
legs had stopped. For a moment she thought she was going to be horribly sick in the geraniums.

Taking huge gulps of fresh air, she looked it over.

On the one hand it was a dark hole that ran on forever and hid such dreadful ghosts that she felt her eyes sting with tears of fright.

On the other hand it was a concrete tunnel under the road that would get her home quickly.

‘OK, Toby Redstone,’ she said out loud. ‘If you’re home when I get there and I have gone through this for nothing, I’ll put that monkey of yours in the washing machine and make you eat cereal without sugar for a week.’

The underpass didn’t get any less awful, but the firm sound of her voice did make her feel less sick. She balled up her fists, unstuck her feet from the path and stepped into the tunnel.

It was nearly as bad as she had imagined.

For a start it was darker inside and smelled far worse than it should, an animal smell, almost like the zoo. And it seemed bigger too, but Nin knew that this was only because she was afraid. The echo made the sound of her own feet follow her and up ahead she could see the corner.

A few yards along, the underpass turned sharply to the right making a blank wall that looked like a dead end. This meant that you never knew exactly what was around the corner. It wouldn’t bother most people, but it bothered Nin because it was the corner her father had died around.

Nin knew that what had happened to him was so strange it would probably never happen again to anyone else. Which made the chances of the same thing happening to
her
– his daughter – very slim indeed.

She knew that around the corner was just another stretch of underpass and some steps up to the road. It was just that in her head, the long stretch was extra long and extra dark, and almost anything – like a mad bull for example – could be lurking there.

Today there was nothing but a horrible-looking boy dressed like a tramp with a ragged black coat and a frayed red scarf. He was a few years older than Nin and she had seen him hanging around the town a lot lately. She strode past him, making sure she didn’t catch his eye.

At last she was at the steps and then she was out in the street again. Her spirits lifted and she hurried on up Dunforth Hill as fast as she could. It wasn’t easy.

To say that Dunforth Hill was steep was like saying that water was damp. On the plus side, the view was amazing. It had turned into a bright, sunny afternoon and if Nin had been in the mood to look she would have been able to see all the way across the patchwork of fields and the spangly strip of the river to Midtown.

The house loomed into view, sitting under the shade of the Christmas tree that Dad had planted when Nin was five and that had grown to be enormous. It all looked very ordinary and peaceful. For a moment she almost forgot that anything was wrong.

She let herself in with her key and stood in the doorway listening anxiously. Normally her mother would be there with Toby. Today the house was silent. They weren’t back yet, was all, she told herself. And then her heart plunged as the truth hit her like a falling brick.

Her mother wasn’t there because she was still at work.

And she was still at work because she didn’t have to leave early to pick up Toby any more.

And she didn’t have to pick up Toby any more because Toby had ceased to exist.

he evening had all the usual things in it except one. There was homework, which was supposed to be an essay on an historical figure of her choice, but which turned out to be the name ‘Toby’ doodled over and over again on the page. Then there was dinner, which Nin ate but barely noticed. And TV, where she got to choose what they watched and had absolutely no interruptions while she watched it.

It was quiet and peaceful and very, very empty. It was amazing how much she missed him. Far more than she would have guessed, considering the kid was mostly just a nuisance.

By bedtime Nin was numb with helplessness and worry, and on Thursday morning she told her mother that she felt sick. She had a plan and school didn’t come into it. Fortunately, having spent the night going round and round things in her head until she felt dizzy, she looked pale and drawn and Lena sent her straight back to bed. As soon as she heard the front door bang shut behind her mother, Nin got up. She reckoned that
Grandad and Granny would be down at intervals to check on her, but she could work around that. Then, apart from pauses to have a drink (brought by Grandad), eat lunch (brought by Granny), go to the bathroom and so on, she searched the house from top to bottom.

Still in her pyjamas she even searched her grandparents’ flat, watched over by Grandad with his usual strong cup of tea and a newspaper. Fortunately Granny had popped to the shops, which was good because she would have asked too many questions. Grandad rarely asked questions, although when he did they were often difficult ones. He might be more ancient than the ark, but Nin had figured out long ago that Grandad wasn’t daft. His pale eyes watched her from behind bushy, grey eyebrows.

‘Looking for anything particular, kid?’

‘Just something I thought I had.’ Nin hesitated. ‘Do you think that you can be absolutely sure of something and yet …’ She stopped, not sure how to go on.

‘The brain’s a funny thing,’ said Grandad after a moment, when he could see she wasn’t going to finish her sentence. ‘People think that memory is a fact,’ he went on, tapping his head with his finger, ‘that a thing is unchangeable once it’s in there. If they remember it then it must be right. But that’s just people wanting to feel safe.’