Troubletwisters (16 page)

But on three sides – north, south and west – those minds were being held back, and not by Grandma X. It was as if there were physical barriers there, preventing The Evil from attacking from those directions. All that great weight of malignant thought was coming in only from the east.

But it was enough. Grandma X was being slowly overwhelmed.

‘Grandma! I’ll help!’ cried Jaide. She looked up at the clouds scudding past above her, blinked as a raindrop fell straight into her eye, and concentrated her thoughts, trying to imitate what she felt Grandma X was doing.

‘Jaide! No!’

Jaide had made a very bad mistake. She felt the storm swirl wildly at her command, as wily and slippery as ice. It didn’t want to be controlled by anyone, much less her.

Grandma X reeled, struggling to contain the storm, The Evil and Jaide’s Gift all at once. Both of them staggered back across the widow’s walk, lightning playing all around the house as the wind screamed even louder and thunderclaps rattled every window and shook the timbers.

Grandma X did something with her mind. Jaide felt a great outpouring of energy from the old woman, and instinctively pushed away and shut her eyes, just before a figure of searing white light burst out of the old lady and ran up into the clouds, the afterimage of its passage burning through Jaide’s eyelids, accompanied by the loudest, most shattering thunderclap of all.

The next thing Jaide knew, she was lying facedown, stunned and deafened – but separate. Her mind was no longer mixed up with her grandmother’s, although she could still feel strange echoes of it reverberating inside her skull, and she could not feel the terrible, inexorable pressure of The Evil aimed directly at her.

Slowly, Jaide pushed herself up and looked around. Rain was lashing down everywhere, but there was no more lightning, and the wind had dropped.

Grandma X was slumped against the railing. Her moonstone ring was dull, she wasn’t moving, and it looked like she might very well be dead.

THE BOOMING OF SURF PURSUED
Jack as he ran through the subterranean tunnels. Occasional gleams of light came from drains and vents far above, but they were too small to crawl through or the grilles at their tops were too heavy to lift. He kept his spirits up by reminding himself that there simply had to be an exit. It was only a matter of finding it. He would worry about what happened next when he got there.

Hurrying under another high drain, he felt fresh, clean rain spattering on his head. He stopped and stood face-up underneath it for as long as he dared, trying in vain to get some water into his mouth. Not for the first time, he regretted leaving his pack behind, with his water bottle inside. He was parched. If Grandma X had appeared at that moment and offered him one of her hot chocolate potions, he would have drunk it without hesitation.

The next intersection was a T junction. He studied the options available to him. The left branch angled upward; the right way was flat. The air to the left smelled fresher, too, so that was the way he went.

When the tunnel suddenly dropped and opened onto a wide reservoir of rippling water, he was sure for a moment that he had chosen incorrectly. A waterfall roared out of a pipe above the centre of the pool. There was another pipe in the water, through which the water was clearly designed to escape, but the flood was coming much faster than it was going. In the seconds he stopped to consider, the water level rose by nearly an inch.

He had almost turned back when he saw another tunnel on the far side, one accessible by a narrow ledge that skirted the reservoir. He could press himself flat and make his way around on the ledge, then pull himself up into the pipe. If he did that, he would be that much closer to ground level.

Everything said that he should take the higher pipe, but he instinctively felt he should go into the water, toward the submerged tunnel, even though he had no idea where it went. It could lead to a grille he couldn’t swim past or to another reservoir that was full to the ceiling, where he would drown.

He looked at the water again, watching the winding current. If the water was flowing, it had to be flowing
somewhere
, and that somewhere might well be the sea, or the river.

But what if there was a grille or a full reservoir?

A slight wave came in and rippled across the water toward him, and as it did, it flickered ever so slightly with an image of Jaide’s face, as though she was standing over the reservoir and being reflected in the water.

That was enough for Jack. He chose to go downward and jumped in. The chill of the water hit him like an all-over punch, even though he had already been sodden. It felt as though he was swimming at the South Pole. He gasped and splashed and tried hopelessly to get his breathing under control. How could he dive if he couldn’t even hold his breath?

++
Jackaran Kresimir Shield! We have found you!
++

The voice spoke directly inside his head, but it was followed a second later by a stream of rats and cockroaches that poured out of the higher pipe and threw themselves into the water after him. If Jack had chosen that way, he would have walked right into that horrid mass.

++
Wait!
++ cried the voice as he gulped a double lungful of air and prepared to dive completely underwater. ++
Do not go back to her! She means you ill. She sends storm and tide to flush you out – or drown you.
++

‘What?’ Jack’s held breath rushed out of him. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

++
If she cannot have you, she will kill you.
++

The stab of ice in Jack’s heart seemed colder than the water around him. He didn’t believe it. His parents would never leave him and his sister in the hands of someone so monstrous . . . But at the same time, he somehow felt that the voice was telling the truth. Grandma X had sent the tide in . . . but why?

Surely she didn’t want him to drown, but there was also a ring of truth to the statement that if she couldn’t have him, she’d kill him . . .

But she’s my grandmother
, Jack thought weakly.

He was confused. He didn’t know what to think. But either way, he was sure of one thing: getting out of the tunnels was his first priority. If he didn’t, he
would
drown, either way.

Rats splashed around him as he refilled his lungs and let himself fall into the water. With two quick kicks he was in the grip of the current. The pipe gulped him down whole, along with several wriggling rats, and sucked him violently through its depths. He tumbled and turned, bouncing heavily off several obstacles in the first dozen yards. He tried to guide himself with the odd kick or outthrust arm, but he was entirely at the mercy of the current. He could only protect his head and hope his breath lasted.

Light flared ahead of him, and suddenly he was flying through the air into muddy water, where he landed with a splash. He coughed and spluttered and went under twice before he was clear of the torrent pouring out of the storm-water outlet. Only then did he manage to right himself and get a decent lungful of air.

When he had got his wind back, he wiped his eyes and looked around. He was outside! There was the river walk and, further along, a squat building that looked like a groundskeeper’s hut. The pipe had brought him out not far from where he had gone in.

Although the sky was grey and the rain growing heavier by the second, daylight and fresh air made him whoop for joy.

On the far bank, near River Road, an orange cat ran backward and forward, yowling and waving his tail in a question mark to attract the boy’s attention. Jack looked at Ari wearily and considered his options. The police station was in the opposite direction. He could go that way and try to get help – but he suspected that the only way to get answers would be to talk to the cat, who had at least tried to warn him. And, as Ari himself had admitted, cats didn’t take sides.

Jack wasn’t a great swimmer, but he could make the short crossing. As he neared the shore, Ari ran up to him with his tail upright and quivering. The waterlogged rats that had accompanied Jack through the pipe went the opposite direction, squeaking piteously, their eyes returned to normal. There was not even a whisper of the voice.

‘Come on. We have to hurry,’ said the cat.

‘Wait a second,’ said Jack, hauling himself onto the shore. There was no chance of drying out, not with so much rain hammering down on him. ‘Hurry
where
?’

‘The house, of course! Where it’s safe! Come
on
, will you? This rain is going to get even heavier soon.’

‘Right. Cats don’t like getting wet. But who says it’s going to get worse?’

‘Your grandmother,’ said Ari through his dripping whiskers. ‘She sent the storm in, after all —’

‘What?! She really
did
try to kill me?’

‘No! She sent it to flush you out . . . and to stop The Evil.’

‘The what?’

‘The Evil! The thing inside those rats is coming to join us. Do you think we could get a move on now?’

Jack glanced behind him and saw the waters of the river darken as hundreds of rats and insects burst out of the pipe and began to swim toward him.

++
Jackaran! Come back to us!
++

Their glowing white eyes made Jack shudder. He understood instinctively that those eyes belonged to the voice, not to the creatures. It had taken them over and made them into one thing, the thing that Ari called The Evil.

Ari hadn’t waited for an answer. Jack ran after him and, when he had caught up to the cat, grabbed him by the sodden scruff of his neck and turned his head around.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Ari, wriggling.

‘Just checking you’re not possessed.’

‘Of course I’m not!’ spat Ari, his eyes perfectly clear. ‘I’m a
cat
.’

Jack let him go, reassured on that point, at least. Ari shook his shoulders to straighten himself out, and together they raced up the hill.

Kleo ran onto the widow’s walk and came straight over to where Jaide crouched next to Grandma X. The rain didn’t seem to bother her. She moved like a cat on a mission, straight to Grandma X’s side, where she bent her head and spoke into the old lady’s ear.

‘Jack’s safe,’ Kleo said in a distinct, cultured voice. ‘And he’s on his way. Why are you lying down?’

Jaide jumped up from her squat with all the grace of a startled frog. ‘What did you say?’

‘I wasn’t talking to— wait. You can hear me?’

‘Uh, I guess so,’ said Jaide. ‘Unless I’ve gone crazy. More crazy, that is.’

‘More like you’ve woken up,’ said Kleo. She craned her head over Grandma X’s face and wrinkled her nose. ‘What happened to her? She’s a lot deeper down than normal after a weather-working.’

Jaide stared at the cat for almost a full minute. Was this another side effect of having shared powers with Grandma X? Or had she indeed gone crazy? Jaide didn’t think so. And, besides, she figured she needed all the help she could get. A talking cat was really nothing compared to everything else that had happened.

‘Um, Kleo . . . I tried to help her with the storm and everything, but it went wrong, and then I was in her head, and we got all mixed up, and now I can’t wake her up, and suddenly you can talk to me and —’

The words came out in a wild rush that only stopped when Kleo put out a paw and touched her gently on the arm.

‘Don’t panic,’ said the cat. ‘You’re a troubletwister. Things never happen in the proper order. Hearing a Warden Companion is a skill that Jack learned faster than you, that’s all. A skill is a kind of knowledge, after all, and sometimes the seeds of knowledge can be passed along.’

Kleo looked down at Grandma X. Her furred eyebrows bunched together in a close approximation of a human frown. ‘But we have a big problem now, if even her granddaughter’s touch cannot awaken the old madam.’

Jaide’s concern for Grandma X was broken into by the sudden recollection of what Kleo had said to her.

‘Jack! You said Jack’s safe!’

Kleo backed away from her, looking slightly nervous, as though Jaide was a bomb that might go off at any moment.

‘Yes, Ari found him. I saw them coming – they’re almost here.’

Jaide ran down the stairs in one thunderous rush. By the time she reached the front door, she could hear its heavy handle turning. Without thinking, she swept it open, and Jack stumbled inside, practically falling on her. She hugged him tightly, not caring that he stank of mud and worse. She didn’t care. He was alive. That was all that mattered.

‘Jack! Thank heavens you’re here. I need you to —’

‘I need a shower,’ interrupted Jack wearily. ‘A really, really hot, long shower. And I’ll even drink some of that hot chocolate.’

‘Jack, we were wrong about Grandma – and there’s no time for a shower.’

‘What?’ asked Jack. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through – I
have
to have a shower —’

‘There really isn’t a moment to waste,’ said Ari, just as Kleo appeared on the first-floor landing and called out, ‘Jaide? The rain is easing, but your grandmother’s not getting any drier.’