The Black Room (22 page)

She was lying exactly where he had left her, very still and quiet. But he must have been even quieter. As he padded up to the ditch, he heard a faint, stifled sniff.

“If you make noises like that, someone's going to come and catch you,” he said. “What's the matter?”

She sat up fiercely. “I'm fine!” she said. And then sniffed again.

Tom sat down on the edge of the ditch. “What's up?” he said. “Were you scared?”

“Of course not.” Emma could still manage a touch of scorn. “What could he do to
us?
We can call the police if things get really tough. But that girl—”

Tom didn't need it spelled out for him. “Maybe she'll get better. Now that she's out of that hole.”

“Maybe,” Emma said. But she didn't sound convinced. She scrambled out of the ditch and started brushing bracken off her clothes. “I'm absolutely freezing.”

“You'd better make yourself a cup of coffee when you get home.”

“Are you joking?” Emma said. “Mom would be downstairs as soon as I turned on the pot. She's a really light sleeper. It took us hours to get out of the house tonight without waking her.”

“I'll make you a drink on the way home then. My mom sleeps as if she's hibernating.” Tom didn't really expect her to say yes, but she nodded briskly.

“That's great. Now let's get out of here.”

 

WHEN THEY WERE THERE, SITTING IN THE KITCHEN, TOM realized that she was deliberately wasting time. She drank her coffee as slowly as she could, cupping her hands around the mug and peering into it. And when Helga came nosing around her ankles, she stopped drinking and bent down to pat her head and talk to her.

Anything to avoid going home.

“It's no use,” Tom said at last. “You've got to be back before your mom wakes up.”

“I know.” Emma looked up and gave him a rueful grin. “But nothing's ever going to be the same, is it? Whatever happens.”

“I guess not.” Tom picked up his jacket. “Come on. I'll walk you back.” Helga perked up her ears and wagged her tail, and he shook his head at her. “Not you, silly dog.”

But he should have known that that wasn't good enough. Not when it was almost morning and she was expecting a walk anyway. She wagged her tail and gave a short, high-pitched bark.

“Shhh.” Tom put a finger to his lips. “Even Mom wakes up if there's barking.”

But Helga just barked again, sounding slightly injured, and he saw that they would have to take her if they wanted her to be quiet. He clipped on her leash and opened the back door.

Outside, it was still dark, but there was slightly more traffic about. They walked quickly past the park and across the road to Robert and Emma's house.

“Come in,” Emma said quickly. “Just till we see what's happened to
her.”

“To Hope?” Tom said.

Emma nodded and unlatched the back gate.

As she pushed it open, Robert appeared suddenly, whispering through the dark. “Where have you been? I thought you were never coming.”

“What have you done with Hope?” Tom whispered back. “Is she in the house?”

Robert shook his head. “I couldn't risk her waking Mom. She's in there.” He pointed at the little shed where he and Emma kept their bicycles.

“Is she all right?” Tom said quickly.

“Of course she is,” Robert muttered. “As all right as she'll ever be.” He went over and pushed the shed door open. “Where's the flashlight? Take a look at her.”

Hope was huddled in the corner, fast asleep in a pile of blankets. She had a banana in one hand, half-eaten, and her face was smeared with squashed banana pulp. All the plaits on her head were twisted together into one matted mess, and her wet clothes were starting to smell. Helga pushed her head around Tom's legs and sniffed curiously at the air inside the shed.

Looking down at Hope, Tom was suddenly so angry that he could hardly speak. Because he knew she couldn't ever recover from what had been done to her. Not in the normal course of things. She would never be all right unless this loopy idea of Robert's worked.

So it had to.

“When are we going to take her across to the park?” he said. “Any reason why we shouldn't go now?”

There was an odd, unaccountable pause. Then Robert said, “I don't think we ought to do that.” His voice was tight and miserable. “I'm going to phone the police and hand her over.”

“What?”
said Emma.

Tom was stunned. “So why did we go through all that performance tonight? We could have made a phone call in the first place. You were the one who insisted on doing it the hard way—because you said she was Lorn. Are you telling me that's all nonsense?”

“Oh no,” Robert said. “It's not nonsense. She's Lorn all right. I knew it as soon as I saw her winding that string into her hair.”

There was no mistaking the misery now. He sounded utterly wretched. Hope stirred and turned her head, wiping banana into her hair, and Robert's face twisted as if he couldn't bear to see it.

“So why have you changed your mind?” Tom was very angry now. If he'd known what to do, he would have scooped Hope up and taken her to the park himself. “What's different?”

“Suppose we take her to the park,” Robert said slowly, “and she—and the same thing happens that happened to me. Suppose she and Lorn go back to being one person.”

“I thought that was the point.” Tom glanced at Emma, wondering if he'd missed something. But she was looking baffled, too. “I thought that was what you wanted. One person.”

“Only if it's Lorn!” Robert said fiercely. “But we don't
know,
do we? Suppose it isn't Lorn. Suppose it's her. Hope. She won't be any better off then, will she? And Lorn will be gone. Vanished.
She won't exist anywhere.
I'll really have lost her then. How can I risk that?”

Tom was looking at Hope again. At her pale skin and her matted hair and the fine—too fine—bones of her head. There was a bruise on her right cheek, in the place where her fist landed when she punished herself for making a noise, and the palms of her hands were dark with ingrained dirt.

“You can't
not
risk it,” he said. Just as fiercely as Robert.

28

As LORN RAN DOWN THE TUNNEL, THE REEK OF THE earthsnakes faded gradually. When she picked up Bando's scent again, it was stronger, but there was something else, too. A sweet, rotting smell that she didn't understand.

She called his name, hoping he was close enough to hear. “Bando?”

There was no answer. And there was something strange about the sound of her voice. The space ahead seemed ... too big. Cautiously she called again.

“Bando? Are you there?”

The words dropped away into emptiness.

What was ahead of her? Some kind of cavern? Her mind tried out the picture and rejected it. There was space, but not like that. It sounded more as though the floor in front of her was about to disappear. She went down on her hands and knees and began to crawl forward carefully.

That was what saved her from falling. Her hands went down once, twice, three times—and then they skidded on loose earth and stones and slid from underneath her. She sprawled flat on her front, hearing the stones she had dislodged go tumbling down and down into—what?

It was very deep. The stones landed with a slow, soft
pfff,
and a breath of warm air came floating up toward her. For a moment she was terrified, thinking that she had found the monstrous animal from the tunnels, asleep in its den.

Then she began to decode the rich mixture of scents that the air brought with it. The smell of the animal was certainly there—as it was everywhere around her—but with it came the sweet scent she had noticed before. This time she recognized it—and understood.

The heat came from the plants that carpeted the den. The whole deep, rounded space was lined with decomposing leaves and moss, generating heat as they rotted. When she stretched her hands down, she could feel the plants' soft, decaying fibers. They had been put there deliberately, and worked into a thick layer that covered the floor and walls of the den.

She could only reach the very top of the layer, and the floor was far, far below. The ground fell away almost vertically, and she hung over the edge, listening and breathing and turning her face to the air. Trying to figure out what was down at the bottom of the hole.

Bando's scent was part of the complicated mix of smells that drifted up toward her. And there was a faint sound of breathing coming from way down at the bottom of the hole. She called out again, just loud enough to carry.

“Bando?”

The rhythm of the breathing faltered, and there was a faint, muffled grunt. It barely reached her, but she knew what it was. She had heard it a hundred times in the cavern, and she would have known it anywhere. Bando was down below her, in the monster's den.

“What's the matter?” she hissed. “Are you hurt?”

This time there was no response, not even a grunt. That meant he was unconscious—or worse. He must have gone charging over the edge of the den, without even realizing it was there. And then—what? Had he been hit by a stone as he fell?

Lorn didn't know, but she knew he was in appalling danger. And it was her fault. If he came around, he would be terrified, and she hated the idea that he might find himself alone. Her first instinct was to slide straight down the steep slope in front of her, to get to him as fast as she could.

But that was stupid. If she did that, they would both be trapped. If they tried to climb out of the hole, the rotting plants would just give way under their fingers. And if Bando was unconscious, she wouldn't be able to lift him.

She had to go back. To get help.

Turning away from the den was the hardest thing she had ever done. But she had to do it. Without that, Bando had no chance at all. Hauling herself to her feet, she began to run back along the tunnel as fast as she could.

 

SHE WENT THROUGH THE SECRET PASSAGE AND OUT INTO the storeroom, without pausing for a second. She was breathless from running and covered with slime from squeezing back past the earthsnakes, but she knew exactly what she was going to do next.

And she knew who could make it work, without asking endless questions.

Thank goodness for Cam,
she thought as she snatched a coil of rope from the stack in the corner.
Thank goodness she's back.

She raced straight up the ramp, but she slowed down as she went around the brazier into the cavern. She didn't want the others to wake up. The more people she had to speak to, the slower she would be getting back to Bando. Only Cam needed to hear.

Cam was sitting on the other side of the brazier, in a warm corner. As Lorn came into the cavern, Cam looked sharply at her. But she didn't say anything. Not until Lorn slipped across and knelt beside her.

Then she raised her eyebrows. “So what's up?”

“I've done something terrible,” Lorn said softly. “Bando's in danger, and I have to get back to him as fast as I can. But I can't get him out without some others to help. Can you send them after me?”

“Where?” Cam said. Short and efficient.

“Tell them to come down the ramp and then follow the rope.” Lorn patted the coil looped over her shoulder. “I'll leave a trail for them.”

“How many people?”

“Five. Tell them to bring blades—and to keep their ears open. And to go straight past the earthsnakes.”

Cam raised her eyebrows again, but she didn't waste time on nonessential talk. She just nodded briskly. “Be quick,” she said. “And careful.”

Lorn nodded back. “Thanks.” And then, “I'm sorry.”

“That's for later,” Cam said. “Now get out of the way before I tell the others.”

As Lorn headed back toward the storeroom, she heard Cam start to call the others together.
You can always trust Cam,
she thought. Then she slipped around the brazier and ran down the ramp, pausing at the bottom to knot one end of her rope around the end of a root.

She paid it out across the storeroom, catching up more coils as she passed the rope store. Then she was back in the secret passage, pushing the ropes ahead of her as she wriggled through.

She knew the others wouldn't be far behind her, but she couldn't wait for them. She had to get back to Bando. Before anything else happened to him.

29

“WE'VE GOT TO DO IT!” TOM SAID AGAIN. “WE'VE GOT TO take her across to the park!”

He said it more fiercely this time, trying to push Robert into agreeing. It had always worked before when things were difficult. They might argue, but if he tried hard enough, he'd always been able to get Robert to give in. In the end.

Not this time, though. Robert just stood where he was, blocking the doorway and looking miserable and determined. “We don't know what we're dealing with,” he said stubbornly. “It's stupid to rush in and start meddling. We need to understand more.”

Helga whined and pulled at her leash, looking up at Tom. He patted her head to reassure her, but she could feel his agitation, and she whined again.

“You'll never understand if you don't
do
anything,” Emma said. “I thought that was why you were so eager to track her down. So you could find out a bit more, and figure out what happened to you. You'll never get another chance like this.”

“Who cares about that?” Tom said impatiently. “The important thing is that
she'll
never get another chance. If we let her down now, other people will whisk her away, and she'll be like this forever.”