Lazar (18 page)

Now she would have to put her ring on, if she was
to cross over to the other side.

Having zoomed in, Hal was now able to make out
all the detail in the map. The comparatively empty area near the centre must
have been the market square. Margaret had just crossed over it and gone between
two houses. These immediately became two rows of two, then two of three and so
on as a narrow street took form like some extrusion stretching backward in the
train of Margaret’s icon.

If he had got his bearings right, Hal thought,
that street was heading west. And if that was the case the West Gate should be
somewhere just off the bottom of the screen. He slid his mouse and moved the
map up slightly. Yes, there it was. And there was Jan’s icon passing through
it.

Jan was surprised to discover how much easier it
was for her to find her way through the phantom city at midnight than it had
been that afternoon. By torchlight the contradiction between what she saw and
what her fingers told her was not so disconcerting. Paradoxically, her problem
now lay not in trying to locate the invisible shapes of the past but in
avoiding the unseen thorns and nettles of the present.

Eventually she made it through the undergrowth
and struggled out on to the windswept strip of land at the edge of the cliff
top. The black monolith of the ruined tower rose up immediately before her.

Hal sat transfixed as he watched the icons move
inexorably toward one another up and down the screen, each spreading pools of
detail like two spotlights on a page. He leant forward and looked more closely.
The pools of detail touched, then began to overlap, gradually revealing the
nave and transept of a medieval church.

Hal estimated that the icons would meet somewhere
near the bottom of the tower.

Jan had nearly reached the edge of the cliff
before she saw Margaret hurtling toward her. She stopped abruptly, temporarily
taken by surprise at the sight of her friend coming through the air in her
direction. And then she felt the urge to turn and run.

This was a different Margaret, not the one that
she had known. In the brightness of the summer sun, that Margaret had appeared
to be a living, breathing thing, a creature made of solid flesh and blood. But
by moonlight…

…this Margaret looked just like a ghost. Her
pale, white skin and yellow hair shone with a luminescent pallor. She was
radiating light, not reflecting it.

And she was getting closer, very quickly.

Jan stood rooted to the spot. She could not take
her eyes off Margaret’s face. It was a mask of fear, despair and … hatred. Its
mouth, at first wide open, as if screaming, suddenly contorted into a thin and
twisted smile of vengeful satisfaction.

The fear that had vanished from Margaret’s face
now leapt straight into Jan’s heart and froze her blood. As she fought to catch
her breath a single thought was roaring in her head.
Take off the ring! Take off the ring!

Her left hand moved toward her right – but
far too slowly. Margaret’s ghost was bearing down on her at terrifying speed.

Hal saw the icons coincide. There was a flash. The
screen went blank, then flickered back immediately. The map of medieval
Wickwich was complete.

And then all hell broke loose. Hal’s speakers
burst explosively into wild and strident life. Bells clanged and rang and
peeled out loud, and through their thunderous clarion a sepulchral voice
intoned “Hell-o Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch; Hell-o Jan-net, well-come to
Wick-witch; Hell-o Jan-net…”

Margaret ran straight into Jan and sent her
senses reeling. For an instant Jan was overwhelmed. So many sensations, all at
once – to see and taste and smell and touch – and each of them so
powerful that it felt as though she was experiencing them for the first time in
her life. The images of medieval Wickwich, captured by a snapshot flash of
lightning and etched upon the eye; the searing pain that shot right through the
finger; the salt spray in the nostrils and its tang upon the tongue. And the
bruising claps of thunder and the pummelling of bells.

And the voice that knelled repeatedly as it
rolled across the sky: “Hell-o Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch; Hell-o
Jan-net, well-come to Wick-witch; Hell-o Jan-net…”

Where was it coming from? Was it calling out
above the storm, or from somewhere deep within it? Or was the voice inside the
head? And who was Jan-net?

She span right round. There was no one to be seen.
She felt surprise, but why? Had she been expecting to see someone standing
there? Yes. Where had she gone?

Nowhere.

She
was here.

“And just what do you think you’re playing at?” Hal’s
father burst into his son’s bedroom and stormed across the floor. “Do you know
what time it is?”

“Midnight,” Hal replied distractedly. He was
stretched over the top of his computer, frantically scrabbling behind it in a
desperate attempt to locate the speaker cables. He found them and yanked them
out. The room went silent. He stood and turned and stared. “Exactly midnight.”

The look of panic in Hal’s eyes put his father
off his stride.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his irritation
gone within an instant. “Is something wrong? Where’s Jan?”

The bells stopped. The thunder faded. The sky was
silent, but not everything was still. There were voices in the distance, at the
far end of the street. They were getting louder – calling, shouting,
baying like a pack of bloodhounds hot upon the scent.