The Black Room (21 page)

There's something wrong with her,
Tom thought.
What are we going to do?
Because they couldn't let her go back. Not ever. Not to that horrible hole under the floor.

Emma was concentrating on more practical things. “No one's going to see us here. Not if we stay back between the houses. We can just wait for the car to go past.”

“No, we can‘t,” Robert said. “Look.” He nodded at the road.

As the car came toward them, someone inside was shining a flashlight from side to side, now on the left and now on the right, lighting up every house and every front garden. And every gap between the houses.

“They're bound to see us if we stay here,” Robert said.

“But where can we go?” Emma's voice was panicky now. “There's nowhere else to hide.”

“Yes, there is.” Without hesitating, Robert unlatched the gate behind him. “We can get in here. Hurry up.” Still carrying the girl, he went straight through, into the small garden behind the house.

“We can't go in there,” Emma muttered.

“Of course we can.” Tom pushed her, hard. “Quick—before the car gets here.”

Somehow, he got her through and lugged the bikes behind him. As he pulled the gate shut, Robert hissed from near his ankles.

“Get down. As fast as you can. Otherwise they'll see us over the gate.”

Emma flopped onto the concrete, and Tom crouched as low as he could, letting the bikes fall sideways against him. They were just in time. A second later, the flashlight beam swept across the gate. It shone through the lattice panel at the top, showing the diamond pattern, and the girl gave a small gurgle of pleasure.

“Quiet,” Tom murmured.

And then wished he hadn‘t, as she hit herself again.

They waited until the car had gone all the way up the road and turned left. Then they struggled onto their feet. Tom could see that Robert's strength was running out. It took him a lot of effort to heave the girl off the ground, and he was breathing hard as he stood up.

“Let's try the bike again,” Tom whispered.

Robert shook his head. “No chance. We can't risk being seen on the roads. We'll have to leave the bikes here and go through the back gardens. Maybe she'll walk a bit if we do that. Otherwise we'll have to take turns carrying her.”

“Leave our
bikes?”
Emma's voice was too loud for comfort. “But we can't just abandon them.”

“Depends what you think is important.” Robert shrugged. “Ride yours home if you like. I'm going this way.” He set off down the garden, hoisting the girl higher so that she rested against his shoulder.

“He's mad,” Emma said. “Completely mad. We can‘t—”

“Shhh,” Tom said softly. “It's her or the bikes. Did you really expect him to choose the bikes? How about you?”

“I'm following Rob, of course,” Emma said wearily. “But I don't know what Mom and Dad are going to say about the bikes.”

“I can come back and get them tomorrow,” Tom said soothingly.

He wasn't sure it was true. He couldn't imagine what would be happening by tomorrow. But he wheeled the bikes down the garden and pushed them behind a shed, hiding them as well as he could. Then he and Emma went to help Robert.

Getting over into the next garden was easier than he'd expected. There was a garbage can in the far corner, hidden behind a trellis. He used it to help himself over the fence, and then Emma climbed up and sat on top of it, reaching down for the girl so that she could lift her over to Tom.

“She's wet,” she whispered as she took Hope onto her lap.

She was very wet, Tom realized when she came down into his arms. And cold. And shaking. And she was very, very frightened. As he lowered her down, her fingers moved faster and faster through her hair, not using the wool now—that was already finished—but braiding new strands that she had pulled out of old braids. He could feel her tugging hard at them, as if she wanted to hurt herself.

“Where are the clothes you brought?” he whispered to Emma as soon as she was over the fence. “We've got to get her warm.”

Emma took them out of her backpack, and they pulled them on. It was hard to get the girl's hands free long enough to push her arms into the sleeves. Her whole body was tense with fear, and her fingers were locked in her hair. It took all three of them to wrestle her into a sweater and warm jacket, and the moment she was in them, she went back to her twisting, twisting, twisting.

Then they tried to get her to walk down the garden, but that was hopeless. She could stand, but she wouldn't walk. When Tom and Robert tried to pull her along, she bent her knees so that she was swinging between the two boys. In the end, Tom and Emma carried her between them, to give Robert a rest. Her body felt small and slight, but by the time they came out into the light at the front of the house, Tom's arms were starting to ache.

He and Emma kept the girl in the shadows while Robert went ahead, across the road. They could hear the car somewhere off to the right, but when it turned, it turned away from them. Robert scouted along a little way and then came back and beckoned.

“We can get through easily down there. Let's go.”

 

IT WAS WORSE THAN ANY JOURNEY TOM HAD EVER IMAGINED. He lost count of the number of gardens they crossed. Once there was a security light, and they had to bolt to the far end before anyone woke up. Three times they found themselves in gardens with high, flimsy fences that were impossible to climb, and they had to backtrack and look for another way. And all the time the car was circling around and around, waiting for a chance to catch them on the road. Waiting for them to make a mistake.

They were seen twice.

Once, they were just running across a road, and the car turned in at the other end. As they plunged into the darkness on the far side, they heard it speed up, heading toward them. But it was too far away to see exactly where they went. And they didn't wait to be found. They streaked down the side of the nearest house and went straight over the fence at the bottom of that garden, into the next one.

“Stop here,” Robert breathed. “Try and figure out what they're doing.”

They crouched behind a clump of bushes and listened. The car had stopped, and they heard someone coming slowly down the road, calling in a deep voice. After a couple of minutes, they saw a flashlight beam in the garden they had just left. It shined right down to the bottom fence, and the voice called softly from up by the house.

“Hope? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

It was Mr. Armstrong. In the garden on the other side of the fence.

The girl's head came up and she looked around quickly. Tom thought she was going to answer, but Robert laid a hand lightly over her mouth, and she slumped back against his chest. Tom held his breath until the light moved away again and they heard Mr. Armstrong calling by the next house. Then they darted down the garden, away from him, and across the next road.

The second time they were nearly caught was when they had reached the very far side of the development. They hadn't heard the car for a long time, and exhaustion made them careless. They came out opposite a big, twenty-four-hour supermarket, and Emma pointed at the line of shopping carts halfway up the parking lot.

“We could borrow one of those,” she said.

The girl was asleep by then, hunched against Robert's shoulder. They had all carried her farther than they could ever have imagined, and the shopping carts looked like the most beautiful things in the world.

“Brilliant!” Tom said. “Let's go.”

They crept across the road and into the parking lot. There were about half a dozen cars parked close to the store. Apart from those, the whole place was deserted, but the lot was brightly lit. Tom maneuvered a cart out of the bay, and Robert lowered the girl gently into it, trying not to wake her.

All they had to do now was go through the pedestrian area in the middle of the city and down the slope on the other side. That would take them to the back of the park and into the little woods.

If they hadn't been so tired, they would have gone around the edge of the parking lot, staying in the shadows. But they were so tired now that every extra step seemed like a huge burden. So they headed straight across the lot.

And Mr. Armstrong's car came suddenly up the hill from the development, on the main road to their right. He saw them. There was no doubt about that. The brakes squealed, and the car turned suddenly left, heading for the supermarket entrance.

“Run!” said Emma.

And they ran.

27

We'll take her straight into the woods,
ROBERT HAD SAID when they were making their plans.
And then we'll try and contact Lorn.
But how could they do that with Mr. Armstrong after them? If they stopped, they'd be caught.

They pelted through the pedestrian mall at top speed, with the cart bumping along and swerving around corners. Tom was pushing it, and whenever they went through a patch of light, he could see the girl huddled up in the bottom, with her eyes wide open. One hand was twirling her hair, and the other was around the bars of the cart, gripping them tightly.

Someone was coming after them. But it didn't sound like Mr. Armstrong. It was someone lighter and quicker.
So Mr. Armstrong's still driving the car,
Tom thought.
He could be coming around the other way to cut us off.

Robert had realized that, too. As they reached the end of the mall, he bent over to mutter to Tom. “We've got to split up. You and Emma go on with the cart, and I'll take her and go a different way.”

“But won't they notice you're missing?”

“Not if we can get to the park before they do. Use the flashlight a bit, to keep them following.” Robert bent over the cart and put his arms around the girl's tense, frightened body. “Come on, you,” he said.

“Hope,” said Tom.

“What?” Robert looked up.

“Her name's Hope,” Tom said. “Not
You.”

Robert shook his head and hauled the girl out of the cart. “Just run, Tosh. Don't waste time fussing.”

“Dohfuss. Dohfuss,” the girl said lightly. She leaned sideways against Robert and closed her eyes. Her face was pale and she looked very tired.

“Take her home, Rob,” Emma said. “Then you'll have Mom and Dad if you need them.”

“Run!”
Robert stepped back into the shadows and nodded them on.

Emma took off her backpack and dumped it into the cart. Then she and Tom shot out of the pedestrian mall. The empty cart rattled and jumped, and its wheels sounded loud and hard on the pavement. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Mr. Armstrong's car coming along the side of the square, not quite near enough to stop them.

“Let's give him a run for his money,” he yelled.

They raced down the slope and around the corner. The big, ornamental park gates were locked at dusk, but that was just for show. There was no fence along the side of the park to keep people out at night. Just a hedge with lots of openings, and the woods at the far end. As soon as they were past the gates, Tom swerved left, off the pavement and into the trees.

He heard the car brake fiercely behind them.

“That's one,” Emma panted. “At least.”

They were heading straight down the park, toward the woods. When they were halfway there, Tom glanced back over his shoulder and saw Mr. Armstrong coming after them. He moved in a strange, lumbering way, but it was faster than Tom would have expected. And he hadn't been running for nearly as long as they had. Emma was starting to fail now. Tom could hear her breath coming in great tearing gasps, and she had one hand pressed against her side.

“Not far now,” he said, raising his voice above the rattle of the cart. “Keep it up, Em.”

Emma made a last, heroic effort, and they reached the end of the park and went through the hedge, into the woods. After that, it was easy. There were dozens and dozens of little, twisting paths, and Tom knew every one of them. Every patch of brambles and every muddy ditch. He'd pulled Helga out of all of them at least once.

He found the driest ditch for Emma and left her there with a clump of dead bracken trampled across to cover her. Then he enjoyed himself rattling up and down the paths, well away from anything important like Emma and the hedge bank.

Once or twice Mr. Armstrong tried to cut across and head him off, but his feet were heavy and clumsy, and he was starting to breathe hard. Tom just grinned to himself and changed direction. There was no way that anything like that was going to work in these woods. This was his maze.

When it began to get boring—and Robert had had enough time to reach home safely—Tom worked his way gradually to the very edge of the woods. Lifting Emma's backpack onto his shoulder, he stepped out onto the pavement and gave the cart one last, huge push.

It rattled down the road, and he ducked sideways into a clump of rhododendrons, watching Mr. Armstrong charge past him and run after it. It didn't take him more than a few moments to realize that he had been tricked. He turned around and began to walk back along the pavement.

As he passed the bushes where Tom was hiding, the light from a streetlamp caught his face full on. It was still completely without expression. He didn't even look out of breath. Only his eyes moved, looking left and right as he went. Deep in the rhododendrons, Tom shuddered and kept very still.

A few moments later, he heard the car drive away. But he waited for a good quarter of an hour after that, just to be sure that it wasn't some kind of trap. Then he slipped out of the bushes and went to find Emma.