“Eat up,” Tabatha insisted, setting a glass of orange juice down in front of him. “You’ll need the energy.”
Grudgingly, Nicholas forced the food down and spent the next hour packing. By eight a.m. a large suitcase and a backpack were sitting in the front entrance ready for the journey. The latter contained The Sentinel Chronicles, the raven pendant, and the small locked box, which Nicholas had managed to slip in when Tabatha had been occupied cleaning the kitchen.
As promised, Sam arrived at nine o’clock, drenched through.
“All ready, are we?” the old man asked, rainwater pooling at his feet in the hallway.
“Ready,” Nicholas confirmed. He eyed the older man – though Sam appeared as buoyant as ever, there was a tightness to his smile. “Are you okay?” the boy asked.
“Hmm? Top of the world, lad,” Sam replied, but he turned away to pick up the suitcase as he said it. When he moved to take the backpack, Nicholas seized it quickly.
“I’ll get that,” he said, shouldering the bag.
The sound of hurried footsteps echoed into the hallway, and Tabatha came rushing down the stairs clutching something in her hands.
“Here,” she said breathlessly, “you’ll be wanting this.” She thrust a battered old teddy bear in front of her. Nicholas eyed it, then Tabatha. The woman was more flustered than he had ever seen her.
“Thanks, don’t know how I missed that,” he said, stuffing it into his backpack.
Tabatha bit her lip. “You’re so brave,” she said. “My brave little soldier.” As if unable to contain herself anymore, she grabbed Nicholas and squeezed him to her in a claustrophobic embrace. Nicholas’s eyes almost popped out of his head. He patted the woman on the back and eased himself out of her clutching hands.
“So this is it,” Tabatha gulped.
“Seems that way,” Nicholas agreed. He felt an unexpected lump in his throat as he realised that he wouldn’t be seeing Tabatha again for some time – he’d grown accustomed to her eccentric ways. He swallowed the lump down. “Thanks for… you know, everything,” he mumbled.
“I wouldn’t have had it any other way,” the woman gushed, wiping her tears on a handful of her blonde hair. “Now just you be careful. Don’t go talking to any strangers or anything.” She fussed with the scarf about Nicholas’s neck, puffing it up under his chin.
“I won’t, don’t worry.”
Tabatha nodded, her cheeks glowing red. It seemed she was fit to burst. Nicholas looked pleadingly at Sam, but found that the old man – who would normally have found Tabatha’s fanatical behaviour chuckle-worthy – appeared to be lost in his own thoughts.
“Shall we be off then?” Sam said, opening the front door. Nicholas eyed the dismal day that sat on the doorstep and wished more than ever that he didn’t have to leave.
“Seeya,” he said to Tabatha.
“’Bye Nicholas, safe journey,” the woman returned, dabbing at her tears once more.
“Farewell Miss Blittmore,” Sam put in, tipping his hat to her. “I’ll be back to discuss the house another day. Just pop the keys through the letterbox.”
Tabatha nodded mid-sniffle.
“I’m just going to tidy a few more things then I’ll lock the place up,” she told him.
Sam directed Nicholas to the black Morris Minor waiting at the kerb.
“There’s a slight change of plan,” he told him, setting Nicholas’s suitcase down on the pavement as he searched for his keys.
“Change?”
“As you know, originally my good friend Richard was to travel with you,” Sam explained. “However, this I’m afraid has become an impossibility.” Nicholas noticed the strange tone in which the elderly man said this, and wondered if that was the reason he seemed drained today. “In his stead, I shall be accompanying you.”
Nicholas’s face lit up immediately, and without thinking he flung his arms about the old man. Sam appeared taken aback and coughed deep in his throat until the boy let go.
“Yes, well,” he murmured, clearing his throat again and finally pulling the keys from his pocket. “We had best make haste if we are to reach the bus in time.”
Grinning, Nicholas got into the car. All his worries seemed to have suddenly evaporated – if Sam was with him, he had nothing to be anxious about. In fact, he couldn’t have asked for better company.
The Morris Minor pulled away from the kerb and Nicholas waved out of the window until he couldn’t see Tabatha anymore.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sabotage
SOMETHING STRANGE HAPPENED WHEN NICHOLAS AND Sam went to catch the bus. Instead of clambering aboard a coach at Drummer Street, Cambridge’s bustling bus station, Sam drove them to a poky side street just off the green known as Parker’s Piece.
He pulled the car up behind an old-fashioned, pillar-box red coach, which Nicholas eyed with interest. It looked like something from the seventies; a squat vehicle with curved edges and a large grille at the front, under which was stamped ‘ECW’. The panel above the windshield that usually displayed the bus’s destination was conspicuously blank.
“Here we are,” Sam said, easing himself out of the car.
Nicholas got out onto the pavement.
“This?” he said, gesturing sceptically at the decrepit motor. “This is our ride?”
“Lovely, isn’t she?” Sam beamed, popping open the Morris Minor’s boot and retrieving their suitcases.
“It looks even older than, well, you,” Nicholas said. Though it was cleaner than any bus he’d ever seen, the vehicle looked like it had been off the road for decades. Less a working means of transport than a tourist attraction, it probably spent most of its time being trundled out at those motor fairs that middle-aged men flocked to with cameras.
“Easy there, lad, you’ll hurt her feelings,” Sam winked. He locked the car and went to the coach door, then rapped on the glass. A man who was already sitting in the driver’s seat pulled a lever by the gearshift. The door folded inward to reveal the driver. He was in his fifties, wearing a faded cap. His top lip was almost completely lost under a bristly grey slug of a moustache.
“Morning,” Sam greeted him. “Come on then, Nicholas.”
Still regarding the bus cynically, Nicholas followed Sam. The driver, a somewhat dishevelled fellow Nicholas noted when he got a better look at him, squinted curiously up at the boy with pink-rimmed eyes. When the boy returned his stare, the driver quickly went back to scrutinising a map that he’d unfurled on top of the steering wheel.
Nicholas traipsed after Sam down the aisle. They stopped by four bright-coloured and clearly seventies-era seats set around a faux-wood table.
“This’ll do,” Sam said, slotting his box-like suitcase into the overhead storage space. “Pop your things away and I’ll have a word with the driver.”
“Why do you–” Nicholas began, but the old man had already marched off to the front of the bus. Warily, the boy stowed his luggage next to Sam’s, seating himself by the window. He peered over the tops of the seats, watching Sam converse with the man in the cap. What was he doing? They seemed to be getting on like old friends.
Nicholas squinted, attempting to read Sam’s lips, but it wasn’t easy. He thought he saw the old man mutter “no stopping no matter what”, but that didn’t seem right.
Why would Sam be telling the driver what to do?
Patting the other man on the shoulder, Sam loped back to Nicholas and sat down.
“What were you talking to him for?” Nicholas asked.
“Hmm?” Sam murmured, as if he hadn’t heard properly. “Oh, just this and that. Old person stuff, boring, you know.”
“Do you know him?”
“Oh yes, we go way back. He’s doing this as a favour.”
“That’s a pretty big favour.”
Sam didn’t say anything and Nicholas regarded the older man doubtfully. He decided to let it lie – for now anyway. He had plenty of other, more important questions to grill Sam with during the jo
urney. It was probably best he didn’t rile him before they’d even set off, no matter how odd this all was.
The bus was soon grumbling through the traffic-clogged streets of Cambridge. The day was grim and wet, but that hadn’t dissuaded people from leaving their homes – in truth, Cambridge was busier than ever. The fact that the roads had succumbed to the weather didn’t help; no end of roadblocks forced the driver to manoeuvre through numerous maddening diversions. It took them almost an hour to reach the city’s outskirts, and when they finally left behind the crammed streets, the clear country roads offered a welcome reprieve.
Sam barely spoke at all during that first hour. His tired gaze lingered on the dreary morning sky, his expression as troubled as the heavens. Sighing, Nicholas propped his elbows up on the table. He sensed this was not a good time to bring up the hidden study in his parents’ bedroom.
“I am sorry lad,” Sam said, scratching the back of his head. “I’ve not been the best of company, have I? Got things preying on my mind.”
“It’s okay.” Nicholas played with the table edge for a minute.
“Maybe you should get some shut eye, lad. You look tired.”
Nicholas nodded, understanding that Sam wasn’t in the mood for idle chatter. He shuffled down in his seat and buried his nose in his scarf.
Closing his eyes, he attempted to shut out the sound of the creaking, empty bus seats, but he couldn’t help wondering what was bothering Sam. He was usually so animated; a busy person who loved nothing more than being busy. Nicholas had never seen him so withdrawn. Perhaps his parents’ deaths had affected Sam more than Nicholas realised. He’d been friends with them ever since Nicholas was a baby. Fifteen years. It was a long time. Fifteen years ago Sam Wilkins would have been in his mid-fifties. Nicholas wondered what had brought the spirited middle-ager into the lives of his young parents. The subject had rarely been touched upon, and on the exceptional occasions that it had, the conversation had always been discreetly steered in a different direction. Nicholas knew that Sam had lost his wife around the same time that he’d met his parents, but that was all.
Nicholas snapped out of his reverie. What was that? At first he thought he’d heard somebody speaking, but as he scrutinised the interior of the bus, he found that Sam was immersed in window watching, while the bus driver was concentrating on the road. Even the world outside seemed quiet, cushioned by lethargic clouds.
Yet Nicholas felt restless. A dull prickling sensation stirred in his belly, and he shuddered.
Then, just like the day he’d found himself drawn to his parents’ bedroom door, Nicholas’s legs wanted him to move. They positively ached, and he was powerless to deny them. Standing, he swayed towards the back of the bus, as if a piece of string had unravelled from his chest and was pulling him there.
The boy stared out of the rear window. The road was bathed in the eerie scarlet glow of the vehicle’s taillights.
Nicholas pressed his forehead against the glass, lightheaded, his breath steaming up the window. He couldn’t blink. His eyelids were pinned back and he gawped dumbly out at the road without knowing why.
There’s something out there.
He pulled abruptly away from the window, blinking out of the daze.
What had just happened? A wave of nausea cramped his stomach. His emotions were all tangled and he couldn’t think straight. Whatever had pulled him to the back of the bus had been the same thing that helped him uncover the hidden study. But what was it?
There was only one thing that Nicholas was sure of, though he couldn’t explain how he knew it – there was something out there in the countryside, and it was following them.
Following me.
“What’s happening?” Nicholas muttered.
“Nicholas? You alright, lad?”
Sam was craning over his seat.
“Fine,” Nicholas managed to say. “I’m fine.” He staggered back.
“You look pale, are you feeling alright?” Sam asked, scrutinising the boy’s face.
“I’m fine, maybe a bit travel sick,” Nicholas said. “These lights are giving me a headache.”
The feeble flush of the overhead lights was depressing, and Sam didn’t seem to have any trouble believing him.
“I know how you feel, lad.” He called to the bus driver. “I say, I don’t suppose you could dim the lights?”
The driver said nothing, but blinked at Sam in his rear-view mirror before nodding. He turned a dial and the lights softened.
“Ah, that seems to have done the trick,” Sam said. He smiled at Nicholas and seemed to notice that the boy was giving him a particularly intense look. “What’s on your mind, lad?”
Nicholas lowered his gaze, then looked back at the old man. “If I ask you something, will you promise to give me an honest answer?”
Sam stiffened ever so slightly at the request, and he didn’t blink for a very long time. Then he said: “I’ll see what I can do. What do you want to ask me?”
“I was in Mum and Dad’s room the other day and I found something, a hidden room behind the wall. It was full of books like this...”
Nicholas reached into his rucksack and pulled out the Sentinel Chronicles, handing it to Sam. The older man flicked through the book, his eyebrows arching in what could have been surprise or merely feigned interest – Nicholas wasn’t sure which. “Do you know what it is?”
Sam rested the book on the tabletop. “I couldn’t say,” he said. “It looks like some sort of journal.”
Nicholas tried to read the elderly man’s expression, but it was like scrutinising a painting.
“I also found these,” he continued, retrieving the raven pendant and the mystery box from his bag. “They were supposed to be for my sixteenth birthday – that’s what it said on the wrapping, anyway. I remember Mum used to wear a necklace just like this.”
“That she did,” Sam nodded. He took the pendant and stared down at it in silence. He held it almost reverently, Nicholas noticed.
“Do you know what they’re about?” Nicholas asked. “You probably knew them better than me, and I think they were hiding something.”
Sam sat very still for what felt to Nicholas like an eternity, his downturned gaze fixed on the pendant. Finally, the man heaved a great sigh and murmured: “I really couldn’t say, lad.”
His tone was measured and kind.
“Please, Mr Wilkins… Sam,” Nicholas pleaded. “If they were going to give me these things when I turned sixteen they were obviously going to tell me what they had been hiding. If you know anything, I want to know. I need to. They were my parents.”
He could hear the desperation in his voice and it sounded childish, but he didn’t care. Things were happening that he couldn’t understand and Sam was his last hope. If Sam couldn’t help, nobody could.
The old man peered down at the necklace for a moment longer, then passed it back to Nicholas. “It’s a mystery,” he said. “If I could help you, Nicholas, I would. You know that.”
Nicholas’s eyes were suddenly bright with tears. If he could just see what Sam was thinking – he obviously knew something, and he was keeping it from him just as his parents had.
“You know something, I know you do,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I know lots of things, that is true.” Sam inclined a nod. “But alas, nothing that might shed light on those trinkets of yours.”
“I remember you telling me stories when I was younger,” Nicholas continued, though despair was quickly flooding through him. “About monsters and heroes, and how the world used to be before–”
“Fiction, lad. Stories,” Sam said gently. “Fascinating, yes. Joyous escapes from the drudgery of the real world, certainly. But not real, my boy. You can’t put faith in such things.”
“No, they were real.”
“You’re tired, lad. Try to get some sleep,” Sam said. He was resigned now – the energy seemed to have left him once more. “We’ll be there soon.”
Nicholas
thrust the objects back into his bag. He wiped hastily at his cheeks and sank down in his seat. Anger and annoyance hammered in his chest. He knew Sam was keeping something from him, and he didn’t understand why. It was too much. His parents had lived a whole life separate from him; that much he understood. It hurt that they’d kept it from him. It hurt that they’d never had the chance to talk to him about it, and now even Sam was refusing to tell him anything. Nicholas hated them all.
Outside, the sky hurled snow to the ground.
Nicholas closed his eyes, but he could still feel Sam’s presence across the table. For the first time, he wondered why Sam was accompanying him on the trip at all. Why had anybody assumed Nicholas required a chaperone to begin with? Surely a fifteen-year-old boy could manage a coach trip alone. Nicholas’s mind probed for an answer, and like the realisation that somebody was following them, an answer suddenly rang through as clear as a bell.
They’re protecting me.
Like so many other recent discoveries, the realisation felt heavy with truth. His parents had been protecting him from whatever other life they were leading; his mother had looked sad and scared when she had left him that final morning; Sam knew his godmother, but wouldn’t reveal anything about her, just as he knew what the raven pendant meant. All of them – all of them – were keeping things from him, and it was all to protect him. But why? And from what?
With these thoughts occupying his mind, Nicholas slithered into a fitful slumber.
*
There were three of them and they were whispering.
About him.
He strained to hear, but the whispers were like the wind. They rose and fell. He couldn’t grasp their meaning. He didn’t know them. But they were murmuring about him. And they knew everything about him. They knew where he was going. What he meant. What he was.
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