The Nightmare Game (20 page)

Tom was swamped by the realization. Swamped by the misery and pain and desperation he could feel.
No. I don't want to understand him. I don't want to.

But he couldn't help it. He'd lost the power to shut out what other people were suffering. Standing there, facing Mr. Armstrong, he found himself wanting to reach out. Wanting to help.
But what can I do? There's nothing—

“Are you all right, Daniel?” said a quick, nervous voice from behind him. “What's happening down there?”

Tom turned, and saw Mrs. Armstrong. She had wriggled out of Robert's arms and flung herself down on her knees beside the opening. She was peering frantically into the dark room and behind her was Warren, leaning over her shoulder.

Tom was caught in the center of the tiny, suffocating world the Armstrongs had made for themselves. The world that imprisoned them as surely as they'd imprisoned Hope. He could feel the forces of fear and need and pity that held them together.

And he couldn't bear it. He felt as though he would die if it didn't stop.
I can't, I can't—

And then he remembered Magee's voice, coming down the telephone.
You'll find it out for yourself. When the pressure's strong enough.

The pressure couldn't get any stronger than this. Surely it couldn't get any stronger. But what was he supposed to find out? What had Magee told him?

Somewhere deep inside him, he felt a fierce anger beginning to grow. The pain was killing him, and it wasn't
his
pain. The anger gathered inside his head with a power he had never dreamed of, pushing the pressure away.

And, in that second, Magee's words sounded in his mind, as clear and sharp as if they'd been spoken in his ear.
All you have to do is visualize the place.

He knew what place that was. The picture came into his mind immediately, almost unbidden, as sharp and remote as the image in a magnifying glass. He saw the hedge and the earth bank, the tunnel entrance and the tiny, intricate landscape of earth and stones shadowed by coarse, dying plants.
There,
said a voice in his mind.
There, not here.

The real world was blurring in front of his eyes, pressing in harder and harder, but now he could sense the way out. He forced himself to look into the very center of the pressure, where the pain was worst. The eyes that glared back at him were tortured and terrifying and he had to fight the appalling pity that hit him. If he gave in to that, he would be totally overwhelmed.

He didn't have to sympathize. Keeping the picture of the tunnel entrance steady in his mind, he pushed the pain away.

That hurt's not mine. It has nothing to do with me.
All his energy funneled into that single thought, as he focused on the image of the cold, dark earth.
There, not here.

And suddenly the pressure fell away.

His vision cleared and the pain evaporated completely. For a moment, he didn't understand what he'd done. Then the realization flooded in, raw and shocking. And with it came the knowledge that he had to go and find Magee, as fast as he could. He had to
make
him explain.

Because he was still looking into the same face as before, but the eyes looking back at him weren't tortured now. They were blank and empty.

Zombie's eyes.

IN THE COLD SPACE UNDER THE GROUND, LORN WAS WORKING FRANTICALLY. It was the only way to keep her mind still and her body warm. But it seemed like an impossible task.

How could she make the shape of something that her mind refused to picture? How could she share a memory so frightening that her brain shied away from it? She was attempting to conjure up a terror that came in the darkness—but gave shape to the whole world. An all-embracing fear, too big to see.

At the beginning, she concentrated on the shape itself, working at the great mountain of earth she had collected. But there was no way to make it
big enough.
Any image that her mind could hold was too weak, too trivial.

In the end, she understood that she had to work in the space around it, carving out pitiful scraps of space for herself, so that the great, ragged bulk in the center took shape by itself. When she hummed, she could feel its huge mass, blocking the tunnel behind her so that she had to make herself small to squeeze past. It demanded to be seen. To be shown to the others. But how could she make that happen? Her brain knew how to construct pictures out of smells and sounds and the movements of the air, but the others couldn't do that. They needed light. And if they brought the light with them, trooping down in a line, one behind the other, they would never see what she wanted them to see.

The people at the front of the line would arrive first and they would have time to get used to the shape she'd built. By the time the others got there, they would be peering and touching and chattering—maybe even laughing. The great darkness she had made would be diluted and lost before they could all feel the shock of it.

The impact had to be sudden. It had to appear out of nowhere, like a great monster rearing up ahead of them, seen and not seen. Terrifying because they couldn't understand it.

That moment was all she wanted. She wanted them to know what she meant when she said,
This is what it was like. That's why the story has to be told my way.

If she had that, it wouldn't matter anymore whether she was called Lorn or Hope. Because they would know who she was, deeper than any name.

If only she could make them see. . . .

She paced up and down the tunnel, fretting away at the problem. Now she had stopped digging, it was hard to keep warm. Even when she was walking briskly, she had to wrap both fur blankets around her body, very tightly, to stop the shivering.

But eventually, she realized what she had to do. Eyes were the key to the whole thing.
HE
had to have eyes. She wandered along the tunnels until she found a length of root that she could hack free with her blade. Carrying it back to the thing she was making, she clambered slowly up the side of the mass of earth, wedging her feet against the stones.

It was tricky work that took all her concentration. She sang a long clear note, to keep the shapes exact in her head as she drove the jagged root into the earth in front of her. Working it around slowly, she made a hole right through to the other side.

The second hole was harder. The earth was already loosened and it shifted as she tunneled into it. There was no need for singing now. As she worked the root carefully around and around, she could tell exactly what was happening from the trickling sound of the soil.

She was almost through to the other side when she heard another sound. It was almost like an echo of the noise she was making—but it was coming from above her head. When she stopped moving to listen, the sound was unmistakable.

Outside, above the ground, someone was scratching at the earth with a stick. Someone was digging down toward her. Digging into the tunnel.

WHEN HE CAME AROUND, EVERYTHING HAD CHANGED. HE KNEW it before he opened his eyes, from the damp smell of the bare earth around him. From the clammy roughness against his bare skin.

He had no idea where he was, or how he could possibly have arrived there. The last thing he remembered was being down in Hope's secret room, struggling to save her from the marauders who had carried her off before. He'd been ready to defend her, to the last drop of his blood.

What had happened?

He lay still, struggling to construct an explanation. He needed a theory that would offer him a clear and effective course of action. That was his usual way of proceeding. At every difficult point in his life he had made himself stop and
until he could be sure that he was in control once more. But this time it didn't work.

He was very, very cold. So cold that (unthinkably) his mind couldn't control his body. His eyes opened of their own accord, unbidden, and he saw—

He was lying on a rough slope littered with boulders and huge clods of earth. Huge barbed branches arched overhead and beyond them, impossibly far above, were giant treetops, outlined against a darkening sky.

This can't be real.
He tried to close his eyes again, but his will wasn't strong enough to control them. His shivering body clamored for warmth and shelter, and there was nothing near him except a few heaps of dead leaves farther down the slope.

He slithered down toward them, but there was no help there. The leaves on top were stiff and leathery and those underneath had decayed into a wet, stinking sludge.

His teeth were already clattering together. It was vital to get out of the wind and there was no suitable shelter above the ground. The only logical thing to do was dig down into the earth.

If he managed to dig some kind of trench, he could drag a few of the giant leaves across the top. That would expose the damp under layer and give it a chance to dry in the wind.

Then he could use it as insulation inside the trench.

His brain was stirring now, getting a grip on the situation. He still had no way of explaining it, but that could come later, when his shelter was made. Now was the time for action.

He glanced around, making sure there was no one watching. Then he stood up, bracing himself against the icy wind. The clods of earth were heavier than he expected and he struggled to clear the surface of the ground in front of him.

Things went faster when he found a dead branch to use as a tool. It doubled as a lever, for moving boulders, and a primitive spade, for scraping at the earth. If he'd had a proper spade, he would have dug down deep and lined the excavation with the boulders. As it was, all he could do was loosen the earth with his stick and then scoop it out with his bare hands.

His sense of power grew as he bent and lifted, bent and lifted. The work was warming and the trench was soon deep enough to shelter him from the worst of the wind.

As he wielded the spade, he could feel himself making sense out of chaos. Taking charge of the situation. Down and down and down—

And then everything gave way under his feet.

 

IT HAPPENED WITHOUT WARNING. ONE SECOND HE WAS PUSHing his stick into the soft, damp earth, trying to dislodge an embedded rock. The next second, he'd lost his footing. He was tumbling through empty space, with loose earth showering down all around him.

For the first instant, he could see it all—the flying clods, the crashing boulders, and the terrifying hole gaping underneath him. Then he hit the ground, hard, and a bigger fall of earth began, blocking out the light.

Instinctively, while he could still move, he rolled sideways, away from the collapsing ground. He seemed to be caught in some kind of air pocket, but it was impossible to see anything in the dark. All he could do was lie and listen to the slithering earth over his head as it settled into place. Knowing that he'd fallen too far to have any chance of digging himself out again.

Was this how he was going to die? Alone in the dark, with no family to take care of his food and clothes, nobody to lift him up and wash his body clean. After all he'd done to look after other people—all the care he'd taken—he was doomed to die on his own, suffering agonies of hunger and thirst. He lowered his forehead onto the cold ground.

 

AND THEN A VOICE SAID, “WHO'S THERE? ARE YOU HURT?”

A second earlier—before he'd let himself think about death—he would have answered briskly, giving directions to the person who had spoken. But he'd allowed himself a fatal moment of self-pity—and the voice had asked a question that caught his weak spot. A question that no one had ever asked him before.
Are you hurt?

The only manly answer was a quick denial.
No, I'm fine. Only a scratch.
But he couldn't make himself say it. He was bruised and battered and he'd given in to morbid thoughts of death. He had to clamp his lips shut to stop himself saying,
I hurt all over.

“Please answer me,” the voice said earnestly. “I can tell that you're alive. Are you injured?”

How did she know he was alive? He couldn't even work out which direction she was speaking from. Tightening his lips, he opened his mouth just enough to let out one unsteady word.

It fell into a sudden, terrible stillness. He felt as though the sound of his voice had obliterated the only small part of the world that still remained. He was desperate to hear her speak again, but she didn't reply.