Raggy Maggie

by Barry Hutchison

  ‘There’s another way,’ I announced, remembering the other corridor. I started to backtrack towards it. ‘We can go right round this floor and get past that way.’

  ‘Now that sounds more like a plan,’ Ameena replied. ‘Much better than “run”.’

  It was a good plan. Or it would have been, at least.

  I stopped at the entrance to the other corridor, unable to believe what I was seeing. Two minutes ago it had been clear, but now…

  I stepped closer and let my fingers brush against the rough brickwork. It covered the entire opening to the English corridor. It felt solid. Real. But how?

  ‘She built a wall,’ I mumbled, hoping saying it out loud would somehow make it easier to accept. It didn’t. I thumped my fist against the red stone in frustration. ‘How could she build a wall?’

  A low whistle escaped through Ameena’s teeth. ‘So…I guess we’re skipping after all.’

  I turned away from the barricade. The clock tocked over to 2.47. Another minute wasted. I was running out of time.

  And so was Billy.

  ‘Can you skip?’ Ameena asked.

  I watched the row of ropes whipping around and around through the air, too fast for my eyes to follow. ‘Don’t think so. You?’

  ‘No idea. Never tried.’

  ‘What? You’ve never tried skipping?’ I frowned. ‘But you’re a girl.’

  ‘I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.’

  We took a few steps closer, until we could feel the wind from the first rope on our faces. The teddy bears were motionless, the ropes swinging freely from the nails in their guts.

  Whum-whum-whum.

  ‘Ready then?’ Ameena sounded confident enough, but her eyes betrayed her.

  ‘If we get hit…’ I began, but I didn’t need to finish. We’d both seen the cut on my hand. We both knew what would happen if we didn’t manage to dodge the ropes.

  Ameena bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. Her breath hissed rapidly in and out, as she psyched herself up.

  ‘See you on the other side.’

  She moved forward twice, hesitated both times, and then went on the third. I watched her duck her head and leap sideways into the blur. Her feet danced furiously on the lino for a moment, before she arched her back and jumped free of the first rope.

  There was a thin film of sweat on her face, but she was smiling. Smiling.

  ‘That was cool,’ she grinned.

  ‘Yeah, well, five more to go,’ I reminded her, a little annoyed she’d made it look quite so easy.

  ‘Hurry up then,’ she urged.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I said. ‘Give me a second.’

  My eyes rolled like the reels of a fruit machine, trying to follow the blur of speed, looking for a gap; a way in.

  ‘Tick, tock, tick, tock.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I hissed. ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘Well, try harder. Come on, it’s easy.’

  I ignored her, stepping back and focusing on the whirring of the rope. Whum-whum-whum it went, faster and faster and faster.

  And then I saw it – the space I needed. I lurched forward in a heartbeat, making my move.

  ‘Wait!’ Ameena’s voice was shrill and panicked. My legs heard it before the rest of me. They tried to stop, but my top half carried on regardless. I stumbled forward a few more steps, before finally managing to pull myself up just a centimetre from the rope.

  ‘What? ‘ I gasped. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You were going to get your head cut off, that’s what was wrong. You were miles off.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I protested. ‘I would have made it.’

  ‘Want a tip?’ she asked. ‘Blink.’

  ‘Blink?’ I echoed. ‘What are you on about?’

  She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Blink,’ she repeated. ‘Quickly. Makes the rope easier to see.’

  I didn’t see how it could help, but I did as she suggested, opening and closing my eyes rapidly for a few seconds. Sure enough, the whirring rope slowed into a series of freeze-frames with every blink. It definitely made it easier to see the gap. Not easy, but easier.

  ‘OK,’ I muttered, rocking back and forth on the spot, ‘here goes.’

  I gulped down my nerves.

  I blinked a little faster.

  And then I jumped.

  Chapter Eleven

  CREAMING IT

  I could hear screaming as I threw myself into the spinning tangle of rope, head down, arms pulled into my chest. The screams bounced around in the corridor, girly and annoyingly high-pitched.

  It took me a few seconds to realise they were coming from me.

  I was in the middle of the blur now, frantically jumping over and over as the length of cord clacked off the linoleum beneath me. My feet were dancing and my eyes were streaming and all around me was the whum-whum-whum of the rope.

  Blinking didn’t help. I was too close for the trick to work. Too close to freeze-frame the spinning streak of speed that guillotined the air above and below me.

  My legs were tiring already. Any second now I’d misjudge a leap. Even the slightest mistake would cost me a foot, if not my life. I had to move.

  Clack. I hopped over the rope and began to count.

  Clack. A second. That was all I had. One sec—

  Clack. I braced myself. This time.

  Clack. I ducked sharply as I touched down on the floor, and fell, twisting my body to the right.

  The edge of the rope brushed the back of my leg as I tumbled sideways, beyond its reach. I felt the ripple it made in the air even through my trousers.

  ‘I did it!’ I cried, springing upright next to Ameena. It was a huge relief, and I bounced up and down excitedly for a few moments, punching the air with joy.

  ‘You did one,’ she reminded me. ‘Five left.’

  My bouncing slowed to a gradual, slightly embarrassed stop. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s just, you know? I did the first one.’

  ‘Yay for you,’ she said, clicking her tongue against the back of her teeth. ‘Ready to go on?’

  I glanced back at the clock and groaned. There were only ten minutes left until three o’clock. Ten minutes, five ropes and possibly another set of stairs to go. Even if Billy was right at the top of the steps, we’d be cutting it close.

  ‘We’re not going to make it,’ I announced. ‘There’s not enough time.’

  Ameena followed my gaze to the clock, then looked at the ropes spinning all along the length of the corridor. The next one was less than three metres away.

  ‘Can’t you do something?’ she asked.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Blow them up or something, I don’t know. Use your super—’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ I snapped.

  ‘We both know what you can do, Kyle,’ Ameena said. The sentence stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t remember her ever using my name before. It sounded strange coming out of her mouth. ‘You turned a water pistol into a gun. You made lightning.’

  ‘It was a thunderstorm,’ I protested weakly. ‘There was lightning anyway.’

  ‘Not like that,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘You made it happen. You.’

  Stark images of Mr Mumbles leering at me from the darkness flashed before my eyes, and I felt my legs go weak. ‘Can we not talk about that?’ I murmured. ‘I can’t do anything. I told you, it’s the rules.’

  ‘Screw the rules!’

  Whumwhumwhumwhum. The ropes seemed to be spinning faster. The six sounds combined to form a low whine that was steadily increasing in pitch, like a car engine accelerating. It made a knot of pain form just above my eyes.

  ‘Caddie said something bad would happen if I used them.’

  ‘Something worse than this?’

  I hesitated. ‘I…I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t want to use them unless there’s no other choice. Only if it’s, like, life or death.’

  She thought for a moment, then gave a slight, barely noticeable nod of her head. ‘Life
or death, eh?’ She glanced along the corridor to where the next rope was dicing the air. I saw her straighten up. I saw her fists clench.

  I saw the next five seconds unfold before they’d even happened.

  ‘No!’ I cried, lunging, grabbing for her, my fingers finding only air. She was off and running, charging straight for the next rope. It accelerated further, as if somehow sensing her coming.

  The clacks on the floor were just fractions of a second apart, and she was still running. The rope was going to slice her to ribbons and she was still running.

  I couldn’t have stopped the sparks flashing through my brain if I’d tried. They rushed upwards from the base of my skull, flooding my senses, more powerful than I’d ever felt them before.

  I threw up a hand, focusing all my concentration on the closest rope, willing it to slow down. It whipped on, faster and faster. Ameena was almost on it. Whip. Whip. Whip. Another few steps and—

  ‘STOP.’ The word rolled from my mouth all by itself. I felt a surge of electricity crackle through me, and then the corridor was plunged suddenly into silence.

  The ropes disintegrated into a soggy white mush. They sprayed outwards as they spun, showering the floor, ceiling and walls in thick blobs of goo.

  Ameena skidded to a stop, sliding on the suddenly slippery floor. She turned, and I could see that she hadn’t escaped the explosion of…stuff, either. Large dollops of it stuck to her face and hair. Without a word she scooped some off her cheek, sniffed it, then touched it with her tongue.

  ‘It’s cream,’ she told me. ‘Whipped cream.’

  I dipped a finger into a blob on the wall and gave it an experimental taste. She was right. It was cream.

  ‘This might sound ungrateful, what with you just saving my life,’ she frowned. ‘But whipped cream?’

  ‘I…um…I don’t know,’ I shrugged, wiping the end of my finger clean on my jumper. ‘I was trying to make the ropes stop, but…’ I looked around at the mess. Even the teddy bears had been covered, although none of them were showing any reaction. ‘…I turned them to cream.’

  She scooped a fat blob of white from her hair. ‘That’s just stupid.’

  ‘Not as stupid as running at them head first,’ I scolded. ‘You could have been killed.’

  ‘That was kind of the point,’ she smirked. ‘Life or death, you said. I knew you wouldn’t let me die.’

  ‘And what if I couldn’t do anything?’ I demanded. ‘Did you think of that?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Suppose I must have more faith in you than you do.’ She glanced around at the streaks of white. They had begun to drip down from the ceiling and walls. ‘Or I did have, anyway.’

  I hurried past her along the corridor. ‘Well, don’t do anything like that again. I shouldn’t be using this…this…whatever it is. I’ve broken the rules now. Something bad could happen.’

  Ameena was at my heels, hurrying to catch up. I didn’t look back, and instead kept my eyes locked on the stairs up ahead, trying to make it obvious how annoyed I was.

  ‘But it hasn’t, though,’ she chirped. ‘You used your magic mojo and nothing bad has happened.’

  Something cut me off before I could reply.

  Something bad.

  A thunderous boom ripped through the school, shaking the building beneath us. The floor shuddered and lurched. I staggered, fighting to keep my balance, but a sudden onrushing wind smashed into me like an invisible battering ram, sending me sprawling backwards through the air.

  With a grunt, I landed on my back between two of the teddy bears. They wailed and screeched, clawing furiously at the nails in their bellies, desperate to be free. From the way they moved I could tell it wasn’t anger driving their frenzy, though.

  It was fear.

  Ameena was on the floor just in front of me. Her face was dirty and grey. She was screaming something, but my ears were still ringing from the blast and I couldn’t make out a word.

  And then she was on me, pushing me to the ground, shielding me. For a split second before she blocked my view I saw a billowing grey shape rushing up fast behind her.

  Her hands felt warm on my face. She covered my eyes and blocked my mouth, protecting me from the cloud of choking grey dust that swept swiftly along the corridor.

  When it found us, the swirling dust was hot and dry and rough as sandpaper. It lashed against me, stinging my skin as it howled over us, rushing to consume anything that stood in its way.

  In a few seconds it had passed. Ameena lifted her hands away and I forced open my eyes. For a moment I thought an old woman was lying on top of me, until I realised it was the dust that had turned Ameena’s hair grey.

  ‘Um…thanks,’ I said. My voice sounded faint and distant – drowned out by the tinny echo in my ears.

  She nodded, but didn’t speak. Her usual grin was gone from her face, and I could feel her whole body trembling.

  We blinked wildly again as we stood up, this time in an attempt to keep the dust from our eyes. It hung in the air like a thick fog. It covered the floor and windowsills like dirty snow. Wherever I looked there was nothing but grey.

  ‘Does that count as bad?’ I coughed, swallowing the dryness at the back of my throat.

  Ameena didn’t seem to be listening. She was wringing her hands together, more frightened than I’d ever seen her before. ‘She could have killed me,’ she muttered, her voice a shocked whisper. ‘That little psycho could have killed me.’

  ‘Both of us,’ I pointed out.

  ‘What?’ Ameena shook her head, as if clearing dust from her brain. I saw something flash across her face, as if she was remembering something she’d forgotten to do. ‘Oh, yeah, that’s what I meant.’ She looked in the direction the cloud had come from, but the air was still too thick to see much. ‘A bomb, you think?’

  ‘I’m not…maybe,’ was the only answer I could give. We made our way through the fog, still blinking away tiny particles of plaster and stone.

  It was a good job the caretaker wasn’t there to see the mess. He went mental if a window got broken, so there was no saying how he’d react to the English corridor being blown to bits. Probably not well.

  ‘We need to move,’ I said, painfully aware that Billy had virtually no time left. ‘Can you see another arrow anywhere?’

  ‘I can hardly see you.’

  She had a point. The dust was so bad I was forced to feel my way along the wall. Lumps of stone and twisted fragments of metal were littering the floor. I kicked through the smaller chunks of debris, picked my way over the larger bits. All the while a steady tick-tick-tick in my head kept reminding me that if we didn’t hurry, Billy would be putting the dead into deadline.

  If he hadn’t already.

  My fingers brushed through a patch of wet on the wall. I took my hand away and found my fingertips stained with a thick red paste that crumbled and broke apart at my touch. It had a vaguely familiar coppery scent to it, as I held it to my nose and sniffed.

  Ameena bumped into my back, jolting my hand into my face. The red sludge smeared across the bottom of my nose and on to my top lip. I tried spitting it out, but the dust had made my mouth dry.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ameena winced, realising what she’d done. ‘What is that, anyway?’

  Still spitting, I put my fingers back to the wall. The paste was smeared in a long, thin line. It went diagonally up at a forty-five degree angle. I couldn’t reach the top, but I didn’t have to. I knew what I’d find there. Two more lines sticking out from this one, forming the head of an arrow.

  I looked at the wound on the back of my hand. The little red zigzags had turned into the same thick gunge.

  ‘It’s blood,’ I said. ‘It’s blood mixed with dust.’

  ‘Another arrow?’

  ‘Pointing up,’ I frowned. ‘But I don’t understand why it’s here. The stairs don’t start for another six or seven metres.’

  I stepped away, wiping the crud off my face with the back of my sleeve. There was no time to
worry about that now. We had to keep moving; had to reach Billy before it was too late.

  I took a pace forward. Suddenly, a cool rush of air hit me from below. It fluttered up my trouser leg and I realised too late that there was no floor beneath me.

  I had just stepped off into empty space.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE CLIMB

  Iyanked my leg back. My arms flailed and flapped like some demented bird, but it wasn’t enough. I was falling.

  The fog of dust was thinner down below, and as I toppled forward I could see all the way to the ground floor. How long would it take me to hit it? Three seconds? Five? Would I feel my bones break as I landed, or would I be dead before then? I’d find out soon enough.

  Ameena casually caught me by the back of the jumper, steadying me. As the panic subsided, I realised I’d barely moved at all. I was standing at the edge of the drop, leaning over it only slightly. One step backwards and I’d have been safe. I took three steps, just to be sure.

  ‘The stairs,’ I gasped. ‘She’s demolished the stairs.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Ameena nodded. She shook her head, almost smiling. ‘Give her credit – for a five-year-old she’s pretty resourceful.’

  ‘She’s also crazy,’ I reminded her. ‘And if we don’t get to the next floor soon then Billy’s going to find out just how crazy she is.’

  The dust was slowly settling now, and I could see Ameena more clearly. She was coated from head to toe in the same powdery greyish-white as I was. Her dark eyes stood out, like two tiny lumps of coal on a snowman.

  ‘Well then, we’d better get going,’ she suggested.

  ‘How? She blew up the stairs.’

  ‘We climb.’

  ‘Climb?’ I gasped. ‘What, up the walls?’

  Ameena stepped closer to the edge. ‘If you want,’ she shrugged. ‘But I’ll take the ladder.’

  My eyes followed her as she reached into the fog and caught hold of a rope ladder that dangled down from somewhere out of sight above us.

  ‘It’s a trap,’ I said suspiciously. ‘It’s got to be.’