Shadow Breakers (7 page)

“Feel it in the — feel it in the —”

And then it stops, goes silent.

I frown. The screen's still lit up. It looks as if it should be working.

Something else comes through the speakers.

Whistling.

A pure, clear tune, in an open, echoing space. I couldn't place it when I first heard it on the headphones in the Seaview Hotel. But now I recognize it. An old nursery rhyme tune from deep in the past.

Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies . . .

I tear the iPod out of the dock and hurl it across the room. It smacks against the tiles, skids, and comes to rest. Just to make sure, I unplug the dock as well.

I am shaking, sweating, breathing hard.

I'm not dreaming. Just like the time on the Esplanade when I saw the Shape. I'm awake. Something is happening to me, invading my life, and I can't seem to do a thing about it.

I'm in the library, trying to look stuff up for my Geography project, and something's thumped down on the table in front of me — a big blue box file.

“You've blotted my ink,” I point out, looking up at Josh.

“Who cares about that?” Josh says. He pulls my book out from under the file and glances at it. “
Chalk Escarpments of the South Downs
. God, how dull. Is that what twelve-year-olds study in Geography these days?”

“Joshua Barnes!” hisses the librarian, Miss Challis, glowering at him from her desk. “If you have a class to go to, please get there. If not, please be quiet! People come here to work!”

“Sorry, miss. Just going, miss.” Josh grabs my arm. “Come on.”

I'm gathering up my stuff, frantically stuffing it into my bag. “I've got netball next.”

“Nope. You just got lucky. Note from your mum,” he says, texting with one hand as he shoves me out of the library doors.

“I did?” I ask.

“Miss B will sort it out.”

“Josh, Miss B can't
forge
notes from my mum.”

“You'd be surprised.” He grins, waits for some stragglers to hurry past to their classes, then holds up the box file. “Well? Aren't you going to ask me what this is all about?”

I shrug. “What's . . . this all about?”

“Thought you'd never ask. Here!”

I realize just in time that he's going to throw me the file, and I catch it, gasping at the weight of it.

“Good stuff, Miranda,” he says. “Come with me.”

I don't immediately follow him.

“Miranda?” he says, doing a comical wave in my face. “All okay?”

“Um, yeah, yeah.” I shake my head. “I'm fine. I just . . . didn't sleep very well last night. I've been . . . drinking Cola-Maxx.”

“Oooh, careful with that,” Josh says. “Strong stuff, you know. Can get you hooked.”

“Can it?” I say in alarm.

“No! Are you okay, Miranda? Really?”

I nod hastily. “Really. Fine. Where are we going?”

It turns out we're going to the Physics lab, where there's a free computer. The technician glares at us but Josh just tells him we are doing some work for Miss Bellini. He trudges off. I bet he's going to check, and I bet we'll turn out to have a backstage pass from Miss B.

Okay, so I'm starting to enjoy this. It makes me feel like I can get away with all sorts of stuff.

I open the box file. It's dusty and full of old floppy disks, those big square things that people stopped using, like,
decades
ago.

“We'll never be able to read these!” I say.

“Oh, you think?” Josh taps something at the side of the computer — a cream-colored disk drive with a thin, wide slot, attached to the main machine by a wide strip of colored wires. “Miss B saved this from the scrap heap over the summer. A wise move.”

“What is all this, anyway?” I ask, handing Josh the first disk in the pile.

“Records of unsolved phenomena, going back thirty years. Ollie got it all for me. Data we always meant to get transferred onto something more up-to-date, but never did. But it means it's not exactly easy to access.” He slots the disk in and the drive chugs and whirrs like a food mixer. “Blimey, these old things make a racket.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything to do with unexplained power surges. Energy exchange. That kind of thing.”

“We've got to go through the whole lot?” I say in horror, looking at the endless lines of old-fashioned, pixelly white text scrolling on the black screen.

Josh claps me on the shoulder. “No, not ‘we.'
You
do.”

“What?” I look up.

He slings his bag over his shoulder. “Rugby practice,” he says with an apologetic grin. “And I don't have a note.”

“Why can't you do this?” I ask with a scowl.

“Cal asked me to get you to do it.”

“Oh, I see. And lover-boy
always
does what Cal says.”

He rolls his eyes theatrically. “It's not like that.”

“Isn't it?” I ask with an impish smile. “If you say so, Josh.”

He opens the stockroom door and pauses on the threshold. “Think of it as earning your stripes. Efficiency is ninety percent delegation, you know.”

And he's gone.

I hate this. I really
hate
it.

And Josh? He is
enjoying
it.

I sigh, looking at the pile of old disk records again.

I'm not stupid. There's no way I'm looking through all this stuff on my own without any idea of what it might mean. So I do what any sensible person would do. I may not be an IT expert, but I can do this. I slot the disks in one by one, copy all the data onto a document, put it in my secure web space, and reboot.

Just as I'm slipping out of the deserted Physics lab my phone burbles at me.

It's a text from Jade.

Where r u babe? need 2 spk

I text her back, hurrying along the corridor:

2 busy now meet @ brk

I'm glad for the opportunity to chat. Jade and I have unfinished business.

• • •

At break time, I spot Jade instantly. She's hopping up and down on the far side of the playground.

“You're in deep, babe,” she says to me, narrowing her eyes. “Miss Venderman wanted to know where you was in PE. I had to cover for you. Said you'd been sick in the toilets and gone to the nurse's office.”

“Thanks,” I say. (
So much for the note from my mum, Josh,
I think bitterly.)

“Don't mention it,” she says, looking away. She offers me a licorice twist, which I take gratefully. The sharp taste reminds me I haven't had one for months. “So where was you?” she says.

“Don't tell me. The netball team fell apart without me?”

Jade gives me one of her sudden, warm grins. “Well, not really. Did you blow it off? Respect. Wish I could've.” She stares at me. “You
did
, didn't you? You cheeky cow, you blew it off! It's to do with the Weirdos, innit?”

“What did you want to tell me?” I ask, avoiding the question.

Jade glances around. There's a few older boys smoking in a huddle, and in the other direction a crowd of girls trading Zillah Zim cards. Some kids from our class are giggling and gossiping on the wall. She grabs my arm and pulls me around behind the garbage bins.

“Ow!” I rub my elbow.

“Sorry. It's just . . .” Jade looks down at the playground, as if unsure quite how to speak to me.

“Look, my telepathy isn't very advanced,” I say. “You're going to have to use your voice.”

She looks up, openmouthed.

“That was a
joke
, Jade. So come on. Out with it.”

She bites her lip, peers around the bins one more time to check we are not being listened to. “I'm worried about you,” she says.

“About me? Really?”

“You don't look well,” she says. “You taken a look at yourself, recent-like?”

I run a hand through my hair. “I feel fine, Jade. Really, I do.”

Jade flips a mirror out of her pocket and holds it in front of my face. I look at my wobbling reflection. I suppose I do look a bit gray, and my eyes are sleepy hollows. My hair is hanging down in limp strands, too.

“Somethin's botherin' you, ain't it?” Jade asks. “Somethin' big. I bet it's to do with them.”

“Them?”

“Yeah. Them Weirdos.” Jade lifts her hands and makes her fingers into claws. “You've not been the same since you started hanging round with them.”

“I'm really fine, okay?”

She scowls. “If you're sure. It's just that . . . you don't seem to have much time for your
normal
mates anymore.”

“Look,” I say, “let's talk after school.” I hesitate. “Maybe at your place . . . ?”

Jade's smile vanishes. “That wouldn't be cool.”

“Oh. Sorry . . . I just thought —”

She shakes her head firmly. “Me mum and dad, they . . . well, they, like I said, they work at home. Don't like me bringing friends back.”

“Right,” I say uncertainly. “Okay.”

That's a bit different from the other day, then. What's changed?

The bell jangles, and we have to go back inside.

I'm following Jade home. I don't like what I'm doing, but I have to make her realize I
do
still want to be her friend, only it's complicated. But I also want to know why she didn't invite me back to her house. What's going on?

Keeping her in sight, I hurry along Houseman Boulevard, the two-lane highway near the sea. There's Craghollow Park on one side, and hotels and nice houses lining the other. It's got wide walkways bordered by neat grass shoulders.

Jade is up ahead on the curve of the road, just where it heads down into town. I'm not going to catch up to her in time to see which way she goes.

I pick up my pace, and close the gap between us to a few hundred yards. And then I see her swing right at the statue of Queen Victoria, cutting into the park entrance under the canopy of chestnut trees. She's heading across Craghollow Park, striding quickly toward the exit on the far side that leads to the Millennium Estate, and now I've got this idea in the back of my head, one that I think is going to turn out to be right.

As I leave the park, I'm just in time to see Jade turn down into the tree-shaded boulevard of Shelley Drive. My instinct is looking good.

I hurry to the corner by the street sign and watch from the shadow of the hedge.

Jade gets her key out. She's going up the long drive of a big, redbrick, turreted building that dominates this side of the road. I watch her go up the steps to the front door, put her key in the lock, and go inside.

So I was right.

I didn't know.

But now she's going to think I did — that I didn't believe what she said about her mum and dad — and that was why I didn't want to come home with her. Because she lives
there
, in the Copper Beeches Children's Home.

All the twos. The time gleams on my silver watch, beside the bed, as I try to drift into sleep. The coast is never still, not even at night. I can hear the sea washing the bay, shouts carried on the wind from the harbor, even a distant throbbing boom, which is probably the late-night ferry to Brittany.

I close my eyes and think of the boat, a little glittering city on the water, leaving the harbor, keeping between the flashing lights that mark the safe route and heading out into the cold, blue-black darkness beyond.

I close my eyes, and the deep, rushing sound is now something else entirely:
the intense roaring of a fire.

I am standing at the edge of a field, and the slim figure of a girl is running toward me in slow motion. Behind her, an entire forest is on fire, a wall of flame, the smoke billowing into the clear sky. I try to focus, my eyes feeling heavy and crunchy.

The girl skids to a halt, staring at me with big eyes from a smoke-blackened face, her coal-black hair wild and singed. She shakes her head silently and turns as if to run away from me.

“Stop!” I call, or try to. I have no idea if the words come out, or if they're torn away by the smoky wind. “Come back! Tell me who you are.”

She stops, looking over her shoulder. As I approach her, I feel a sense of dread. Why? Surely she's only a girl, like me. She turns away from me. I can see my own hand reaching out toward her. Nearer, nearer, and nearer still. I am almost touching her shoulder.

And then she turns back toward me.

Now, framed by the wild black hair, is an ancient, yellow-skinned face, and it is covered with thick, dark pustules. She opens her mouth, showing stumps of brown teeth, and hisses.

The shock kicks all the breath from me.

• • •

I lie awake in my bed, counting, breathing, letting myself focus on the details of my room. The square of light that is my window slowly tunes itself in. I turn, look at my watch. 22:35. Still dark, the sea still breathing deeply.

I turn over, eyes wide open, staring at the wall.

All I want is a quiet life in my new town with Mum and Truffle, trying to forget that Dad's never going to hug me again, dance with me, pick me up and rub his bristly chin against my cheek the way he used to. To forget that I've been torn apart.

I can't do this on my own anymore.

I have to let
them
help.

I'm with Ollie at one of the computer desks. He's been working through all the data I transferred off the old floppy disks. Lyssa's doing something up on one of the little platforms. Sounds like she's sorting out piles of old books.

Over on the other side of the Datacore, as they call it, Josh and Cal are playing pool again. It's a game that seems to involve a lot of giggling and hair tossing (her), and a lot of cracking of bad jokes and posing with the cue (him).

I'm half watching them. He's helping her line up a shot, and that involves getting behind her, up close, placing his hands on hers.

It's time to ask for help, and it occurs to me that I'd rather ask Ollie than the others.

“What do you know about ‘Ring Around the Rosie'?” I ask him.

As usual, Ollie doesn't seem at all surprised to be asked random questions. “It's a rhyme,” he says. “About the Black Death, apparently.”

“The Black Death?”

“There's no proof or anything, and people claim it's all made up, but yeah, it's supposedly about the Black Death. Also known as the Bubonic Plague. From the Middle Ages. The ring is the rash that people broke out in, the posies of flowers were to ward off the Plague, and the
ashes, ashes
bit is the, well, dropping down dead.” He shrugs. “There's not meant to be anything to it, though. No evidence there ever was.”

“Right.”

“Something you want to share?”

I shiver, thinking about my dream. About the burning forest and the hissing Shape, the dark-haired girl with yellow, pustuled skin. And all the other things in my head. The burning smell, the sea fog, the heat of fire.

“It's just that . . . recently . . . I've been . . . hearing it.”

“Yeah? Hearing it how?”

I hesitate. “I'm not quite sure I understand what I'm going through here, Ollie. I don't think anyone can explain it to me.”

He pauses, then simply nods. “Okay. Oh, Miss Bellini wants to see you, when you're ready.”

I'm grateful for his tact. I glance at the giggling pool players, and head up the metal ladder to the Pod.

I find Miss Bellini looking down at the sprawling technology below.

“How much
did
this all cost?” I ask curiously. Then, in case that sounds rude, I go on, “If you don't mind my asking.”

Miss Bellini chuckles. She doesn't seem offended. “Very little, at first. And various legal quirks have been used to make sure the place isn't developed. After all, it suits our purposes to keep it as a ruin.”

I nod. I can see that. “And all this gear?”

“There are . . . benefactors,” says Miss Bellini enigmatically. “People sympathetic to our cause, who don't wish to become directly involved. But we put a lot of it together ourselves.”

“But what's it all about, really? I mean, how did it
start
?”

She bends toward me, her eyes full of some inner light. “This battle against darkness has been going on for a long, long time in some form. For centuries.”

“And how do you fit in, Miss B? How did you end up here, a teacher in a dead-end town and running this weird . . . setup?”

Okay. So I'm feeling bold. But she isn't really answering my questions.

“You know,” she says carefully, “we are still fighting a war, Miranda. It may not look like a war to you, and this is only one small, insignificant corner of it, but a war it is. Against forces that want to drag this world into their darkness. Each time, the enemy has a different name, a different face. But you come to recognize it. A child with a gift like yours, especially so. Psychic, intuitive powers are a major weapon in the fight against the darkness.”

I wrinkle my nose. “You really think I have a gift?”

“Oh, yes,” she says, and she sounds perfectly serious. “You see things. You know things. For you, it will be confusing at first. A mixture of messages and sensations. Like everything coming through at once. Like you can't tell, sometimes, if you've had a dream, a daydream, or a psychic experience. Am I right?”

I nod.

She looks sympathetic. “That will pass. You'll come to understand it better. To control it, even. And of course, my dear, there may be more you can do. We're still learning about you, after all.”

“But it was just luck that I ran into you all, wasn't it? I mean, just coincidence?”

Miss Bellini smiles. “Things are rarely
just
coincidence, Miranda. A network of invisible threads binds this universe together.”

I'm thinking about my experiences at home. The darkness of my dreams invading the real world, and the song on my iPod that should not have been there. The girl and the burning forest. The Shape.

I tell Miss Bellini about the strange rhyme, and how I thought I recognized it. I haven't told her everything yet, about the dreams and so on, but I want to keep something back for myself until I am absolutely sure I can trust everyone.

“Ollie says it's from the time of the Black Death,” I say.

Miss Bellini nods. She doesn't seem surprised. “Set one thread vibrating,” she says, “and you cause others to shake, and others still, until, somewhere in the web, something snaps, something breaks. And before you know it, the world is out of kilter. And someone has to watch for these vibrations, and know them, and find what causes them. That's us.” She pauses, as if taking in what I have told her. “Thank you for telling me, Miranda. Now, come here. I'm going to show you how much you know without even realizing it.”

She pulls on a pair of gloves and beckons me over to her desk. She takes a small silver box out of the drawer. She opens it, and inside there is a little white ball, like a Ping-Pong ball, only smaller. She holds it up between her gloved thumb and forefinger, and places it on the desk. It doesn't look like plastic — it's so white and smooth it could be made of marble, or even ice. Beside it, she places three silver cups, the size of grapefruit halves.

“Just a game,” Miss Bellini says. “An old friend from a fair in New Orleans gave it to me. Look.” And she puts the ball under one of the cups, and slowly starts to move them around the table. After a few seconds, she stops moving them. “Which one?” she says with a smile.

I don't hesitate. I've been keeping my eye on it all the time. “That one,” I say, indicating the half sphere in the middle.

“Very good,” says Miss Bellini, and lifts up the hemisphere to show me I am right. “Now — again, only
faster
.”

This time, her hands flash across the table more quickly, and although I'm trying my hardest to concentrate and keep my eye on the cup I
know
the ball is under, it's just not possible. So when Miss Bellini finishes moving them around, and gestures for me to pick, I know — and I think she knows — that I'm just guessing.

I point to the one on the left. “That one.”

Miss Bellini sighs. “Oh, bad luck.” She lifts the hemisphere to show it's empty, then shows me the ball under the right-hand one. “The speed of the hand, Miranda May, deceives the eye.
But
. . .” She holds up a finger, smiling in that strange way of hers that makes her eyes crease. “Do it again. Don't look. Just think.
See
the ball in your mind. Now.”

Miss Bellini moves the cups on the desk, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. I try to do what she asked. Her hands move faster and faster. I think. I think.
I think.
Then she stops.

I don't know why, and it seems totally random, but something is screaming a word inside my head.

“Left,” I say. “Left!”

Miss Bellini lifts the left-hand cup.

The ball is under it.

I'm astonished, but I try not to show it. I shake my head, gripping the table. “I could . . . just be lucky,” I say.

“Of course. Very likely. You have a one-in-three chance of getting the right answer by pure luck, as does anyone.” Miss Bellini's voice is soft and warm. In class, I've noticed that she uses the same voice whether she is praising you or telling you off, so you're never
quite
sure where you are with her. I think this is part of why her pupils respect her. “So, let's try again,” she says.
“Go.”

The cups move, clicking and swishing, and after a few seconds Miss Bellini tells me to guess.

This time, that feeling tells me to go for the one in the center. I point to it. Miss Bellini lifts it up and I'm right.

I am startled now, my stomach churning with that mixture of excitement and anxiety you get on the first day of school.

Miss Bellini does the trick again and again. Each time, I
think
myself into finding the right answer rather than trying to look for it. Most times, I get it right. I'm only wrong once out of about ten turns.