The Beast of Seabourne (10 page)

“Yes, Oz?” Soph answered, and Oz felt a surge of relief.

“Connect me to Ellie's phone, quick.”

No sooner had he uttered the words than he heard Ellie's phone ring.

“Yes?”

“There's someone here.” The words gushed out of him. “There's this woman and a bloke on a leash and…I think it's an auramal.”

“What?” he heard Ellie gasp.

“Look, you have to get Eldred back into his house, and you have to get out of there now. I'll meet you at the bus stop. Don't come back this way.”

“But what should I say?” Ellie asked.

“Say anything; just get him inside. Ellie, I have to go.”

Oz shut off the phone, heart banging against his ribs, thoughts tumbling over one another in their haste to organize. Gerber had access to artefact technology, and he, Ellie, and Ruff had had first-hand experience of some of his experiments. When they'd discovered the secret passages at Penwurt, they'd come across Edward Bishop, who had believed he was a polecat and acted just like one. In addition, all three of them thought the robber who'd threatened Mr Eldred in his shop, whom the old man had mercifully not been able to remember, had been something similar. Ellie had since come up with a name for these abominations. She called them auramals because of the way a strange visual projection surrounded them whenever one viewed them directly, but which disappeared when one saw them in peripheral vision.

Oz struggled to recall everything he knew about bears. Gingell, on one of his survival talk days, had told them campers had special bags that shut out smells to stop bears from rifling through them for food. Therefore, he knew they had an exceptional sense of smell. Gingell also had said a bear could rip off a backpacker's arm with one swing of its paw.

But all Oz could think about was Mr Eldred. Every fibre in his being wanted to run to Ellie and Ruff and get away, but he knew another few steps would bring the woman and the boy/bear into the lane. Ellie, Ruff, and Eldred's best chance of avoiding detection would be if he could delay the woman and boy.

What he needed was to create a distraction. He shut off the phone, put it in his pocket, and tiptoed back to the point between the garages where he could see the van. It was gone, but the woman and boy were moving towards him, heading for the lane. The boy's face swung from side to side as he walked, and he sniffed the air as he lumbered along.

Oz ducked back behind the rear of the first garage. He kept low and crossed the gap to behind the third building in the block, keeping it between him and the newcomers. They would be through and into the lane in a moment. Oz picked up a stone and ran it along the corrugated metal wall of the garage he was now behind. The harsh clatter reverberated into the quiet morning air like a machine-gun burst. Oz held his breath and, in the ringing quiet that followed, strained to listen. He heard something growl on his left. Praying that the boy and the woman would backtrack and take the direct route to the rear of the garages, Oz went back around the front of the garage, careful to again keep the buildings between himself and Gerber's Puffers—because that was what he was sure they were.

Taking one deep gulp of air, Oz made a dash for the first garage, crept around, and peeked back towards the rear of the garages.

Empty.

The woman and boy must have got to the end and walked around to where the noise had come from. He had no time to lose. Quickly, Oz got down on his hands and knees to inspect the old-fashioned wooden door of the first garage. It hung awry on rusty hinges, the halves joined in the middle by a padlocked chain. He felt a surge of relief for it not being one of the newer types of doors that opened from above.

There was a gap at the bottom, and Oz used both hands to pry it open. The wood was warped and half-rotten, and he was able to yank it forward a few inches, though the bottom scraped alarmingly on the tarmac and the chain clanked loudly as it resisted Oz's strenuous efforts. There was just enough of a gap for Oz to get his head through.

Twisting sideways, his shoulders chafing against the splintering wood, and straining with every ounce of strength he had, Oz squeezed the rest of his body inside.

There was no window. The only light came from the small triangle of daylight at floor level that he'd squeezed through. A tarpaulin-covered shape in the centre of the garage felt like a vehicle of some sort. His foot met something solid, and he reached down to feel a boxy metal jerry can that sploshed heavily as he picked it up. He put it in front of the triangular gap at the centre of the doors, put his foot against it, and moved one step to the side, into the darkness behind the door.

His breath sounded harsh and loud from his efforts, and he could feel sweat trickling down his neck. He inhaled a heavy mixture of diesel, dust, and old wood, and brushed cobwebs from his hair as he tried to calm his breathing. Once more, he found himself straining to listen in the thick darkness of the airless space, and then caught his breath.

A strange snuffling noise was approaching, muffled but very close. Reflexively, he moved back another step just as a hand shot through the gap and tried to push the jerry can away. Pins prickled his neck and shot down his arms into his fingers as he quashed a yell of surprise, but he had enough gumption to keep his foot where it was. The hand withdrew, to be replaced by a dumpling face, which sniffed and growled into the gap. Oz moved deeper into shadow and put his hand to his mouth to dampen the sound of his panting.

“What is it?” A woman's voice. “Can you smell his stink? Is it him?”

More snuffling at Oz's feet was followed by a deep, skin-crawling growl. A terrible thought struck Oz then. What if they summoned up that well-equipped van and got some bolt cutters, and simply ripped off the garage doors? He'd be trapped like a grasshopper in a matchbox with nowhere to go or to hide. There'd just be him, the woman, and the auramal bear.

Panic had him in its heart-hammering grasp. Was there another way out? Was there a grimy window somewhere he could climb through? Oz moved too quickly and barked his shin on something hard and metallic, wincing in silent pain.

Then there came a new noise. Another engine. Not the smooth rumble of the van but the higher whine of a car. The face disappeared from the foot of the door, and he heard the woman calling urgently. “Come. Come on! Leave it! Leave it, I say.”

Oz caught his breath. The noise of the car was getting louder. It sounded only feet away. He heard the mechanical
clunk
of a door opening, a tinny blast of some pop tune, and then the rattle of a chain and the scrape of another half-rotten door dragged across tarmac. A car door slammed shut and cut off the radio noise. Oz moved the jerry can and got on his knees. Through the triangular gap, he saw that the doors to the middle garage opposite were open, and a blue Renault was driving slowly through them. There was no sign of the woman and the youth.

Quickly, Oz stuck his feet out of the gap and pushed himself back out before the owner of the garage opposite could emerge. Covered in dust, the knees of his jeans grimy with oil, he ducked behind the garage and dashed along the space at the rear and out onto the street, heading towards the bus stop, glancing back over his shoulder every few yards in search of pursuit. Mercifully, he saw no one.

A bus pulled in just as Oz arrived at the stop. He managed to pant, “Come on, let's go!” to an anxiously waiting Ellie and Ruff before he clambered aboard.

“What the hell happened to you?' Ruff asked, staring at Oz's dusty shoulders and dirt-smeared jeans as they threw themselves into the back seats.

“Long story,” Oz gasped. He wiped sweat from his eyes and proceeded to give them every detail of what had happened at the garages. Ellie and Ruff stared at him with open mouths and unblinking owl eyes. It was only when he felt pain in his fingers that Oz realised that he'd been clutching the seat back in front of him so hard, it had stopped the blood from circulating. When he finally got to the bit where he managed to squeeze back out of the garage and run off, Ellie was frowning.

“And you're sure it was a bear?”

“Yes. I mean I didn't have time to take a picture, but his aura was massive.”

No one spoke. They both knew what Oz meant. They too had seen auras around other people whom Gerber had experimented upon.

“So, definitely not a dog, then?” Ruff said.

“No, definitely not a dog. I got the feeling he was there to sniff us out.”

Neither Ellie nor Ruff said anything. They both knew that too many weird things had happened when it came to the artefacts to simply ignore Oz's theories. But by their expressions, they obviously weren't a hundred percent convinced. Ellie was the first to voice their misgivings. “But how did they know where we were?”

Oz racked his brain for a memory that had kept nagging at him and then remembered the JG van he'd seen from Caleb's window at Penwurt. He took a deep breath. “Look, I know how it sounds, but maybe they're tracking us,” he said, watching the other two for their reaction.

He saw Ellie's eyebrows arch upwards, and Ruff, too, looked sceptical.

“But why now all of a sudden, when there's been nothing for months?” Ruff said.

“I dunno, but I got the feeling that, this time, there was more control than we've seen before. The woman had this box on her wrist, and when she pressed the button, the boy just transformed. Maybe they've been working on the auramal stuff to get it right.”

Ellie didn't say anything immediately. For a long moment, they all seemed caught up in their own thoughts.

“Come to think of it, I have seen lots of JG Telecom vans lately,” Ruff said eventually.

“They're everywhere,” Ellie agreed.

Oz nodded and felt a wave of relief wash over him that they weren't simply dismissing his theories out of hand.

“How did you get Mr Eldred to go back inside?” he asked.

“I got Soph to ring his house phone,” Ellie explained.

“Good thinking,” Oz said.

“Shame, really, because he seemed quite happy to talk about the shop.”

“Well, at least we got Bendle and Son as another lead,” Ruff mused.

“So, what now?” Ellie asked as she took the pebble out of her pocket and handed it back to Oz.

“We should go back to Penwurt and get Soph to find out as much as she can about this Bendle bloke. And,” he added without a vestige of a smile, “we watch our backs and hide our tracks from now on.”

Oz saw Ruff nod approvingly. It was, at least, a plan of sorts.

Chapter Five

The Room Of Reflection

They arrived back to a seemingly deserted Penwurt. Though they were all quite shaken from their morning ordeal, walking through the doors of the old place instilled an immediate sense of reassuring familiarity in Oz.

He called out to his mother from the hall but got no reply. In the kitchen, colour charts and paint manufacturers'

catalogues littered the table. Oz made them all some ginger and lemon cordial, and they drank without speaking for several seconds.

“Well,” Ellie said, thirst slaked, “that was different.”

“Yeah,” Ruff agreed. “Spying is thirsty work. And I wouldn't want to do it every day, thank you very much.” He looked about him. “I've really missed this place, Oz.”

“Thought you'd finished the basement?” Ellie said, picking up a glossy brochure.

“We have. Mum's decided that the tenants' rooms need decorating now, too.” A new thought struck him. “Fancy a tour?” They were all a little wound up. It wouldn't do any harm to take their minds off things.

Ellie and Ruff nodded, and Oz took them downstairs to the basement.

“Wow. I never knew it was this big.” Ruff's voice echoed in the cavernous space.

“It's huge,” Ellie agreed. “Great place for a den.”

“Let's go back up through the passages,” Ruff said, excitement animating his face.

Oz hesitated for just a moment before saying casually, “Sure.”

Though the pause had only been momentary, Ellie noticed. “We don't have to,” she said quickly.

“Yeah, why not,” Oz said, brushing aside the tiny skip of his pulse. He had not been inside the passages that ran in the walls of the old house since the night of the attack in this very basement. Structural repairs and his mother's dire warnings had seen to that. Now the repairs and decorating were complete, and, more importantly, Mrs Chambers wasn't around.

“Hang on; I'll get some torches.”

Oz ran up to the kitchen, and when he got back to the basement a few moments later, he found Ellie and Ruff both looking pensive and guessed that they'd been talking.

“What?” he asked.

Ruff kicked at some imaginary dust. “Oz, maybe it isn't such a great idea. I mean, last time…”

He didn't have to finish the sentence. They all knew that the last time they'd been in those passages they'd almost been killed.

“Look, I'm fine. I want to do this. Really.”

Ruff looked at Ellie, who gave a little shrug, as Oz knew she would. Ellie was not one to shirk a challenge. Moments later, Oz was leading them along the reverse of the route he'd taken that fateful night of the fire. They climbed up iron rungs instead of down and moved crablike along narrow walkways flanked by cobweb-encrusted walls. Eventually, they found themselves on the first floor of the orphanage block at the exact point where Rollins—Oz's attacker—had slammed the door on Ellie, Ruff, and Lucy Bishop, locking them in one of the old classrooms while he abducted Oz.

“It's a bit weird standing here, isn't it?” Ruff said in a slightly shaky whisper.

“Forgotten how chilly it was,” Ellie said, but Oz suspected the chill wasn't entirely from the temperature.

“We can go straight back to the library if you like,” he said.

“No.” Ellie sounded firm. “We only ever got this far. I'd like to see what's up at the other end.”