The air felt strange and prickly, a bit like it sometimes felt before a storm. Joe found himself reminded of the storm when they were back at the cottage, and shuddered. I should turn back, he thought, but at the same time he felt sure that down was the way to go, for now at least.
It began to get lighter up ahead, but this wasn’t the bright, intense white brilliance of the Light Cavern. The glow was softer and yellowy-orange in colour, a little like the light given out by flames.
Eventually the tunnel opened out into a huge cave lit by all sorts of different lights. At the far side of this area Joe saw what looked like the entrance to another tunnel. But as he stared at it, the air felt even warmer and electric. All the hairs on his arms stood up and his skin crawled and itched.
It wasn’t a tunnel at all, he realised.
In that moment, as Joe stared at the dark hole in the cave wall, he suddenly knew why he was here and why he and Amber had been pulled through into the Emptiness. It was partly his doing, but this world had somehow helped him, and Stephen had hurried them along to this place for reasons of his own.
The hole in the cave wall was much more than it appeared. It was something that the Lost were in the middle of creating. They were trying to make a way back to the other world. His world.
And I’m here because I’m supposed to stop them, he thought, feeling the strange energy coming from the gateway surging and whirling around him even more now.
But then a terrible thought occurred to him. If he somehow destroyed this gateway, might that also mean that he and Amber would be trapped here forever?
Joe stared at the gaping hole for what seemed ages. Even if I knew how, I don’t think I could destroy it, he thought. Not if it’s the only way for us to get back.
It wasn’t working yet, he knew. The Lost had probably been trying to get it to work using whatever magic it was that powered so many things in this world, for many years.
“Well, well. Here he is,” said a voice from behind him.
Joe jumped and turned round to see a man and woman at the entrance to the tunnel he had stepped out of. The man had close-cut grey hair and the coldest blue eyes that Joe had ever seen. The woman was younger, and so skinny that he could see her bones jutting out under her yellowy skin. Her eyes were so dark they looked almost entirely black.
As he stepped fearfully back, Joe couldn’t decide which of them looked more evil.
“You’re a little late,” the man continued in a matter of fact way, as if they had arranged a meeting. “But never mind- you found your way here, and that’s the main thing. My name is Andrew. This is Helen.”
Joe didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In a way it made sense that the Lost should have normal names- they were from the same world as him after all, or at least most of them probably were- but he couldn’t help but feel that they ought to have the sort of names that creatures from a nightmare would have.
“You know what this is, of course,” Andrew said, gesturing to the gateway.
“I... I think so,” Joe said.
“Oh, you definitely know. I could sense how it reacted to you, and how you reacted to it. Now, you probably thought you had been brought here to destroy it. You’re a Guardian, or the next best thing to one, and you’re used to doing whatever the Order tells you to do.”
“I’m not really used to any of this,” Joe said faintly. “I’ve never been told anything by the Order.”
“He’s not much of a Guardian, is he?” Helen remarked with a nasty little smile on her face.
Andrew walked slowly, almost casually over to him, and Joe found his legs shaking almost as if they had turned to jelly. He couldn’t have run even if he had somewhere to run to.
“You need to know a couple of things, Joe,” Andrew said. “I can assure you that your purpose here is to open the gateway. I expect the Emptiness wishes to be rid of us. We’d be doing this peaceful little backwater of a world a favour by leaving.”
Joe said nothing.
“Oh dear,” Andrew said sadly. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Joe shook his head, wishing more than ever that he could at least pretend to be brave in front of this man, but he couldn’t even look him in the eyes. Instead he looked down at the floor of the cave, ashamed of how frightened he felt and feeling as if he was five years old instead of eleven.
“Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I’ll leave the decision to you, but as I said there are a couple of things you need to know. Firstly, your friend Amber has been found.”
Joe was so shocked that for a moment he managed to look up. “What’s happened to her?” he half-sobbed.
“Nothing, as far as I’m aware. But if you want to see her again, you need to do exactly as we say. You need to open the gateway, Joe. Oh, and that brings me to the other thing you need to consider. If you don’t open the gateway, you’ll be trapped here forever. You’ll never get back home. I expect you’ve already thought about that, haven’t you?”
Andrew folded his arms and stared at him for a moment. Then he added, “I know what you want most, Joe. You want Amber and yourself to be safe and back home with your families and friends. You want this whole nightmare to be over. Well, that can be easily arranged. Your way home is our way home, for many of us. You can even go first, if that’s what you want.”
Joe wiped tears of tiredness from his eyes. He could barely think. For one mad moment he thought about lying down on the floor and making himself fall asleep. Maybe then he would finally wake up from all of this. But he knew deep down that they would just laugh at him.
“Let me see Amber,” he said finally. “Take me to see her. I need to know she’s okay.”
“I think that can be arranged,” Andrew said.
Joe lost track of all the corridors and stairways along which they walked. He had already given up trying to keep any sense of direction, and knew there was no point in trying to familiarise himself with the layout of this vast place. Soon enough they would take him back to the cavern where the gateway stood.
Eventually they arrived in a large room with sturdy cells fitted into it at one end. In one of them Joe saw Amber, curled up and staring at nothing. After a moment she saw him and sat up. “Joe!” she exclaimed, as he went quickly over to her. Then she looked at Andrew and Helen. “So they got you too.”
“They want me to open a gateway,” Joe said.
“I know. One of the others told me. He said that you were brought here to make it work.”
“That’s what I have to do,” he said quietly. “I have to open it up and make a path through to our world. I don’t even know if I can do it.”
“Of course you can!” Helen called out from behind him, sounding amused.
“The power of positive thinking shouldn’t be underestimated,” Andrew added, and they both laughed.
“You can’t do that, Joe.” Amber stared at him in horror. “The Lost will flood back into our world- hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.”
“Thousands, definitely,” Andrew said. “Although I couldn’t say exactly how many. We haven’t held a census for a long time.”
“They said we can go home if I make it work,” Joe continued. “If I don’t, we’ll be trapped here forever. It’s the only way, Amber.”
“You don’t know that,” she pleaded.
Joe turned to Andrew and Helen. “Can I rest first?” he said. “I’m tired.”
“You can even rest in the cell with your friend if you like,” Andrew said, and took a key from his pocket with which he opened the door to Amber’s cell. “There. Get in. And get some sleep. You’ve some work to do soon.”
Amber turned to Joe as soon as they were alone. “Some of them died in our world, Joe. And yet they’re alive here. How can that be?”
“I don’t know,” he said, leaning against the back of the cell. “I don’t even want to know.”
“If they’re allowed back...”
“It’s the only way,” he said. “Don’t you w
ant to get out of here? Don’t you want to see your dad again?”
“Of course I do!” she exclaimed.
“Well, you won’t, and I won’t see my aunt again, if I don’t do what they say. I have to try.”
“How do you know they’ll even let us through?”
“Because they said once it’s open, we could go first. You and I.”
Amber shook her head in frustration. “You’re not even answering the question. You don’t know that they’ll keep their promise. Why would they?”
“If they went first, I could try and destroy it as they go through,” Joe said. “Or maybe they’d think I’d changed it so it led somewhere else. Maybe that’s why they said we could go first. They don’t trust me any more than I trust them.”
“And what happens when they follow?” Amber demanded. “What then?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and he turned away from her and lay down. Within a short while he was asleep, or maybe he was just pretending to be because he didn’t want to talk. Amber didn’t know, and decided after a while that it no longer mattered anyway.
She nodded off a short while later, and woke to the sound of someone scraping something against the bars of their cell. She opened her eyes to see Arik looking at her. He scratched at the bars again with his long nails. The sound made her cringe. “Shame,” he said with a smile. “You looked so peaceful when you were sleeping.”
Amber sat up, and as she did so, Joe also stirred and looked up. “You must be Joe,” Arik grinned. “Joe, the opener of gateways.”
Others appeared out of the shadows, as if they had been there all along. They were of all ages- the youngest was a girl who didn’t look much older than Amber herself, and the oldest could have been almost a hundred, although he still moved well enough for an old person.
But they’re not people, Amber reminded herself. Maybe most of them were people once, but the things they’ve done and the powers that they’ve given in to have turned them into monsters.
And when she looked a little more closely at them, she caught glimpses of things that belonged only in nightmares- a flash of teeth that looked too sharp and long, eyes that changed colour from blue or brown to a deep crimson and back again, veins in hands or arms that not only jutted out as they were about to burst but also seemed to move under the skin. Amber tried not to look, but it was impossible not to; she found herself drawn to the sheer horror of it all.
I have to stop Joe from opening the gateway, she thought, but as soon as she decided that, all she could think about was getting home and being with her dad, if he was still all right. And I won’t be able to if Joe doesn’t make it work and make a way through, she reminded herself.
But what if there’s another way for us to get back?
What sort of world would we come back to if the Lost have flooded back to it?
The man with the intense blue eyes who had brought Joe to her prison opened the cell door and motioned for them to get out. “Don’t worry if it takes you a while,” he said as the two of them were taken back through the maze of passageways to the cavern with the gateway. There were Lost in front of them and behind them, and even a few on either side, but they remained mostly silent. Amber thought that maybe they were all thinking about their journey, about the possibility of stepping back into the world that the Order had banished them from.
When they finally reached the cavern another half dozen of the Lost were already there. Stephen was with them. His hands had been bound behind his back and his mouth stuffed with a rag. Amber’s heart leapt with the realisation that he was at least still alive, but she had an idea that the Lost had a reason for holding him here where they knew that she and Joe were going to be led.
“Look, we found your friend,” Andrew said in Joe’s ear, making him jump. “If he’s still your friend after he deceived you, that is. We managed to overcome him eventually. Bit of a messy business. How are you, Stephen?”
Stephen didn’t even look at him. He did look at Joe, who felt sure that he was trying to communicate something to him. “Does he really have to have that rag in his mouth?” he managed to ask eventually.
“I’m afraid he does,” Andrew said. “You’d be surprised at the things Stephen can do simply by speaking. Did you know in some ways he’s a lot like the rest of us?”
“He’s nothing like you,” Amber said.
“Really?” Andrew turned his icy stare to her. “Why do you think he really brought you here? I’m sure you’ve figured out a part of this already, haven’t you?”
Amber and Joe stared at each other. When neither of them said anything, Andrew continued, “Shall I tell them, Stephen? Shall I tell them the truth?”
When the children looked towards Stephen he looked down at the ground, and Amber felt almost as if something had broken inside her. He’s too ashamed to even look at us, she thought.
“Everyone here has one thing that unites them,” Andrew continued. “We all want to go back. Stephen is desperate to go back and to find his family again. He knows the same thing that we all know, Joe- that you’re here to open the gateway. But look on the bright side! He believes in you, Joe. We all do.”
So Stephen deceived us, Amber thought numbly. He brought us here knowing what the Lost have been planning and trying to do for all these years. He’s so desperate to get back that he’ll do anything. He’ll risk the whole world just for a chance to find his family again and be with them.
But isn’t that exactly what you would do? a voice in her head answered back. Even if you know you shouldn’t, wouldn’t you risk everything just to get back to everything you know, to be back at home with your dad?
“You said we could step through first if I can make it work,” Joe said, turning to Andrew.
“Of course.” Andrew gave him a sinister-looking smile. “We want you to be certain that you have it working and that it’s safe. You wouldn’t step through it otherwise. And you certainly wouldn’t take Amber with you if you weren’t sure about it, would you?”
“I want Stephen to come with us at the same time,” Joe said.
“After everything he’s done?”
“He just wants what we all want. You said so yourself.”
Andrew shrugged. “If you want him to go with you, fine.” He pointed to the hole in the far wall of the cavern. “Make it work, Joe, and we can all go home. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Hours, days- you can rest whenever you need to. We’ll give you water and food, and even let you sleep for a little while. But you will carry on until the gateway is open. That’s what you’re here to do. So you may as well do it sooner rather than later.”
As Joe stared at the gateway, it seemed for a moment that it became larger, as if he was suddenly closer to it or the void that it contained had eaten up part of the surrounding wall. He could feel the strange energy of the portal swirling around him again, and as it became more powerful he saw from the edges of his vision some of the Lost stepping back from him, muttering amongst themselves as if they might even be afraid.
At the same time, Joe could somehow sense hundreds more of the Lost making their way towards the cavern- some of them from other places inside these mountains, but others from far away, some distance across the Emptiness. It occurred to him not just how large the Emptiness might be, but that it might just carry on without ending. He imagined it not as a round world but as a flat one that extended forever in each direction. The idea didn’t seem at all ridiculous after the things he had seen. As he closed his eyes for a moment, the Lost appeared in his mind like tiny dark stains moving across the landscape.
Joe had some idea of what might happen if he managed to open the gateway and the Lost poured through it. But at the same time he knew that if he couldn’t, or didn’t, or just pretended that he had done it, they would still demand that he and Amber- and probably Stephen- step through it, almost certainly to their deaths. And if he refused, the result would be the same.
He kept telling himself, if we go through
first, maybe there’ll be time for us to escape somewhere before they follow.
But first I have to see if I can open it, he thought, or else we’ll never get back.
He concentrated on the wild energy that poured from the gateway and shut his eyes. Immediately he could picture it as swirls of colours and complicated shapes in the darkness behind his eyes. At first the patterns made no sense, but the more he concentrated on them the more they began to slow and order themselves. Joe had no idea what any of them actually meant or even if they meant anything at all, but some vague sense told him that if he could somehow put them together, he could maybe open the gateway.
Every time he tried to concentrate on creating order out of chaos, pain would grip him somewhere. He would cry out, and the colours and patterns would shatter and spread everywhere. He could hear some of the Lost muttering impatiently to one another, a few of them even saying that he couldn’t do it, until Andrew demanded that they be quiet.
After a while, Joe’s thoughts wandered despite his efforts to concentrate on the gateway. Amongst the swirling shapes and colours, images came sharply into focus, each one of them a memory of something and each memory an important one. He saw himself on the day he had gone to live with his Aunt Emma four years ago after his parents had died in the car crash. He hadn’t known her that well, and she had no children of her own so it had taken them a while to get on and used to each other, but they had become close.
He remembered other times, in particular small and awkward acts of kindness that she had carried out for him. They flooded into his mind, sharp and almost too much to bear. Joe was suddenly filled with such an intense feeling of love and loss at the same time that tears came to his eyes and found their way out. I love her so much, he thought desperately. I couldn’t bear it if I never saw her again. I have to get myself and Amber out of here. I have to open the Gateway.
Summer's Dark Waters Page 11
