Xinder Rises
Page 22
Sap shone his torch around the chamber and noticed a circular pit, like an empty, buried paddling-pool. It seemed a good place as any to rest. More importantly, as he stepped inside to inspect it, a soft, sandy, talc-like substance carpeted the bottom. To the touch, it was as smooth as tissue and as soft as thick fur.
He lowered Anika in, making sure her head was propped up. Venturing outside again, he rushed to Olivia’s side and placed the Resplendix Mix to her lips. In no time, he’d picked up Olivia, and moved her sleeping body next to her sister into the dugout pit.
Two down, he thought, one to go.
At least the girls would be warm and out of danger, while he set about searching for Danny.
Danny
Danny’s mind was a blur, his head whirling. Before long, he found that his body was turning and heading into a spin too.
He steadied and, as he levelled out, he realised he was flying. He soared like a bird, swooping first one way then another before shooting high into the air, twisting as he went, enjoying the sensation of weightlessness. Each gust of wind caressed his body and he cried out at the freedom and the thrill of speed.
Now he was diving, and flying as fast as an arrow. He screwed left and found himself heading, at breakneck speed, towards a rock face as if he himself was a bolt of lightning.
Maybe he was a bolt of lightning.
He couldn’t stop, he couldn’t turn fast enough and there wasn’t enough room for him to manoeuvre. But he wasn’t afraid. He would wallop it with his head.
It wouldn’t hurt, it couldn’t hurt him.
BANG!
The rock shattered into several pieces.
In place of the boulder was the entrance to a cave. He looked inside. Olivia and Anika were there with Sap. They were beckoning, teasing him to come in and join them. Laughing and smiling, they wanted to tell him something.
He raised his foot and carried on through the entrance. But as he did he felt the anger of Xinder smash into him and he fell to the ground. Xinder started kicking him. First in the ribs, then his chest, and finally, his face.
He gasped, struggling for air.
Why would Xinder want to hurt him? They were on the same side, right?
He felt air leaking out of him like a balloon with a small hole, shrivelling quickly.
He gulped, realising he needed to breathe so badly; so badly that it hurt...
Danny surfaced and thrashed the water, desperate to find a hand-hold. His fingers touched on a rock. He pulled himself up and vomited, expelling water from his lungs and gut, retching and hacking until his internal organs threatened to come out as well.
He lay on a flat stone and shivered.
Anika? Olivia? He couldn’t see anyone close by. In fact, he couldn’t see anything at all.
He crawled further on and curled up like a baby, shaking uncontrollably.
Cold, so cold.
‘Help,’ he called out, his voice squeaking like a shrew. ‘Help me.’
But with Olivia gone, and Anika gone, who was left?
He wanted to yell for his parents, for Sap, for Mrs Puddy. In this cold, inhospitable, broken place, however, he knew there was only one person who could help him.
Xinder.
‘Xinder!’ he yelled. ‘XINDER, HELP ME!’
Through the cracks in his eyes, he swore he could see a figure appearing.
‘Xinder,’ he cried. ‘Save me.’
Sas
The rowing boat continued to float freely, bumping into driftwood and other debris being washed out of the river into the North Sea. Occasionally, ‘The Joan of’ spun and pitched from side to side, but not with the same force as earlier.
Ryan wondered what they were going to eat for supper, before resisting the temptation to demolish a chocolate bar. He headed to the front of the boat where, through the drizzle, he imagined he could see a spark of light in the distance.
When Sas woke, they tucked into a cold pork pie and shared a few pieces of chocolate. Ryan stated, without compromise, that until they had some idea where they were, they needed to conserve every single morsel. Sas complained bitterly, but Ryan made it quite clear that his position was non-negotiable.
By the time they had given each other a few more brain teasers, and told stories about their childhoods, it was midnight. Ryan reluctantly lay down on the planks while Sas kept look-out.
For a long while she hummed little ditties, her thoughts turning to Danny, Anika and Olivia. What were they doing now, she wondered, had they made it? Had anyone survived?
Once again, Sas wondered why she’d had the premonition of the storm, in addition to the Delauxs. Ryan’s comment about her being a twin with Olivia gave her earlier observations about the baby photograph of her and Olivia a firmer foundation than she’d realised, perhaps.
She told Ryan that she’d already decided to investigate further and that she was going to check with the Registrars at the Town Hall. To her joy, he’d agreed to accompany her.
But wouldn’t one of the parents have said something?
As she thought it through, she did think how inseparable and similar they were, in so many ways. But friends do that, she thought, don’t they?
At one o’clock, her jaw trembled of its own accord and her fingers reminded her of popsicles. Staring out into the dark night, spat on by the rain as ‘The Joan of’ bobbed along, her eyelids drooped shut.
Sometime later, her chattering teeth waking her up, she realised that staying awake was a hopeless task.
She climbed under the canopy and instinctively lay down next to Ryan; nestling up to his warm body, rearranging the dust covers, and inhaling the boyish smell of his clothes.
In no time, the gentle rocking of the boat sent her fast asleep.
17
Mrs Puddy, Thursday
When she’d seen Sap slipping out of the door, his hard hat on his head and ropes wrapped around his torso, she’d been topped-up with confidence about seeing her children again. After all, Sap had rescued her, so why couldn’t he rescue them?
Energised, Mrs Puddy set about keeping busy. She waddled round as fast as her legs would carry her, placing buckets in every grate and under every chimney flue. She mopped water out of each fireplace, rolling up the hearthrugs and adjacent carpets and then emptying buckets of water down the sink.
Round and round the house she went, from the children’s bedroom in the attic, to Sap’s room, to the parents’ room. Downstairs to the kitchen, sitting room and study, then across the courtyard through sheets of rain to her apartment. She repeated this circuit many times, drenched to the bone.
In Sap’s room, she noticed five filthy rectangular rugs that sat on the wet floor, each the size of a hearthrug. She folded them up and took them to the back door, giving them a bit of shake under the wide roof trusses. As she did so, flecks of mud and dust flew in every direction.
How revolting, she thought. Have they ever been cleaned?
She’d give the old man a good talking to when he returned. If he returned.
As the rain belted down upon them, a black sludge dribbled out, like slurry. Mrs Puddy decided to bring the rugs in, draping them over a wooden clothes-horse under the old porch.
Covering herself in a blanket, quite overwhelmed with tiredness and worry, she nodded off in the rocking chair in the kitchen, next to the warm metal range beneath the thick oak beams.
* * *
Later, she woke suddenly and wondered where she was. She yawned and, for a second, thought she could hear tiny, shrill voices. She got up and looked around. No, there was nothing. Just imaginary sounds, like the noises of children playing in the courtyard.
Mrs Puddy shivered.
She struck a match. The bright light extended its reach into the large kitchen before dying back. She added a handful of kindling and two dry logs to the range, hoping she could keep a hot fire going.
Satisfied, she stood up and stretched, feeling the familiar stabbing pain in her shoulder.
W
here were they?
Maybe they were safe at school, playing with their friends.
She’d get Danny a whole new uniform when their parents returned. She’d insist on it. No more patched up clothes for Dan.
Then she thought of Olivia and Anika. Funny, pretty Anika with her wavy hair and red cheeks, her keen eyes and her warm smile.
Why, they all had warm smiles, she thought, as a tear rolled down her cheek.
Where were her little ones? Stuck out in that tempest all alone.
She shivered and pulled her woollen blanket tight as she noticed the flames dying again.
How long would they have? What would happen to her if no one returned?
Sap
Sap spied a body at the far end of the ledge.
At first glance, as he hurried towards it, he could have sworn it was Danny’s friend. The one who was always so deeply unpleasant to the girls, the boy Danny liked to go fishing with, Fitz-nasty-something-or-other.
As he approached, Sap wondered whether he should check if Danny’s friend was alive. But his attention was taken away by a strange groaning noise coming from the flooding. Sap gazed over the water, squinting, searching for Danny.
When his focus returned to the form in front of him, there lay the curled up, shivering figure of Danny. Sap wondered if he was seeing things.
His heart sunk. Danny’s mouth foamed, and his eyes flickered in different directions. His body was battered and torn.
Danny called out a name, ‘Xinder, Xinder,’ over and over.
Who on earth was this ‘Xinder’, and why did that name strike a chord deep within him that made his hairs prickle?
Sap searched his memory. That name, Xinder, dredged up a confusing mix of love and anger, hope and despair.
Sap sat on the edge of the pit and studied the children who lay sleeping in the strange soft substance in the base. The sound of their gentle breathing was the sweetest music he had ever heard.
He reflected on his fortune; the curious bed panels and the timely rediscovery of his Resplendix Mix potion.
He whistled.
They had survived the torrential rain, the lightning, the mud-slides and the cold. Sap shook his head. How, in all the apples in the world, were they alive?
He lowered himself into the pit and studied them in more detail. The sheer volume of bruises and cuts on their bodies was remarkable. Anika’s legs were black and blue, criss-crossed with cuts. Some of these were deep and sharp, like punctures. Other lacerations were longer, where she had been raked by rocks and thorns. Her fingernails were black, and on her fingers entire nails had become detached leaving red, raw skin. Her shoes had gone and her feet looked as though they had been ‘worked on’ by a garden strimmer. Her tracksuit bottoms were tattered, and one of her football socks was attached by threads that flapped against her raw shin.
Sap wondered if he should give her some more Resplendix Mix. But this was powerful stuff; and powerful potions, he suspected, needed careful portioning.
His attention moved to Danny. Like Anika, the boy had been battered, beaten, and pulped to within a millimetre of death. But there was one significant alteration to his appearance; Danny’s hair, though softer than before, was hard and spiky. It was like brushed strands of metal, exactly as he’d seen in the panels, when he’d presumed Danny was wearing a hat.
He ran his hand across Danny’s head and was amazed to feel that his follicles had fused together, as if his hair had been glued.
He inspected Danny’s hands, which bore terrible lacerations and bruises. He suspected a broken finger or two by the way his digits were angled. His head and body was marked with blows, as if he’d been sprayed by a rock gun. Some of his cuts seeped, others had already congealed.
Most extraordinary of all, and perhaps even odder than Danny’s hair, were Olivia’s hands. The markings on her palms looked symmetrical, as if they had been painted on using a circular template and black paint.
Now that he looked carefully, the flesh inside had been burnt through, as though punctured by a red-hot poker. He could see right through them like small peep holes.
Sap sucked in a deep breath and, shaking his head, wondered how he would ever get them home.
They’d be safe enough where they were for a while. He wouldn’t attempt to try now, not while they needed to sleep. In the fresh light of morning, he’d address their wounds and give them another drop, but sleep was the best method of recovery as the potion blazed away inside them.
Looking about, he noticed higher ledges; berths he could pop the children on if the waters continued to rise even further.
He climbed out of the pit and headed towards the cave entrance, grateful for the moonlight reflecting off the water just below the stone ledge in front of him.
He pulled himself up onto a higher rock, stretched his arms out, and lay back, trying to envisage how far the water must extend. Two hundred, three hundred metres, or perhaps even a mile towards the Dales? It could be further.
And everything in its path destroyed in the space of a few hours.
18
Sas, Friday
‘The Joan of’ felt, to Ryan, as if it were climbing up a small hill before skidding down the other side. And the process repeated the rising and falling sensations. Up and down. Up and down.
For a second, Ryan dreamt he might be at a funfair. He yawned, opened his eyes, and found himself looking into Sas’s sleeping face.
What a beautiful way to wake up.
He wondered what his breath must be like. Probably gross. Heck.
Trying not to disturb her, he shuffled to the end of the boat.
He yawned, closed his eyes, and stretched his arms out wide, inhaling a huge lungful of fresh air.
He opened one eye, swiftly followed by the other.
After a few seconds, he whistled.
OK, interesting.
He could hear Sas stirring.
‘Good morning, first mate,’ he quipped, dipping his head under the canopy.
‘Oh! Morning, Ryan,’ she said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes while working out what he meant. ‘Still floating, still alive?’
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘How was lookout?’
She cringed. ‘Thought you needed company. And bodily warmth is very important,’ she said, a flicker of naughtiness in the corner of her lips. ‘Everything alright?’
He ducked inside and sat down. ‘Fine and dandy-ish.’
‘I take it that means you have no idea where we are?’
‘Ab-so-lute-ly none. Take a look for yourself.’
Sas crept down to the other end. ‘Is there anything for breakfast?’ she yawned, ‘I’m starving.’
She pushed her head out.
Ryan waited, his expectation of a verbal explosion reasonably high.
‘Oh, my!’ she said, her eyes wide open.
‘Oh, my?’ Ryan said. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, curtly. ‘Oh, my!’
Ryan smiled his biggest smile to date. ‘We’ve drifted miles out to sea with no way of knowing where on earth we are and all you have to say is “Oh, my”.’
‘Yes,’ Sas began. ‘Oh, my.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Right, Ryan. I’ve never sworn at anything or anyone before in my life. But, I’ve heard my mum do it quite a bit, and I think that now is possibly the perfect time to finally give it a proper go.’
Ryan looked confused. ‘Oh?’ he said.
‘You see, every time she properly swears, it begins with, “Oh, my”.’
Ryan raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘Really?’ he said.
And with that, Sas slipped out from under the canopy. Standing on the back step she took a deep breath and screamed over the wide expanse of sea at the top of her voice:
‘OH my $*%@!’ &^%*W$!’
Fitzpatrick
Fitzpatrick groaned in agony. Xinder couldn’t die. He was nothing more than a spirit who could leave him at any time. But he’d had a chance to say no, and he blew it.
In front of him had been Danny.
There he lay, battered and broken, his body marked by cuts and bruises and his head bloodied. His body was motionless, pale, and deathly.
Danny was too far gone to make the choice willingly, however, and Xinder knew it.
He thought of Danny’s strange hair and managed a wry smile. A classic bad hair moment only Danny could pull-off. Thinking of hair, he wasn’t sure that he had any left. All singed. Burnt up.
Fitzpatrick had given himself freely back to Xinder.
Now, he regretted it. He should have refused. If he had the chance again, he’d subject himself to the violence of the tempest rather than the hell he was now trapped in.
Xinder burned him badly after he went back.
And now, here he was, living in the darkness of a body with no food, no water, and no sleep. Where burns fried his flesh like hot oil.
It was like being trapped in space, he thought, with no one there to hear his cries.
Sap
Sap slept, but fitfully. His mind raced from Danny’s shouts about Xinder, to the Fitz-boy with the matted hair, to the terrible injuries of the children. Then his dream flashed to the strange bed panels, and his old cellar, and the pictures on the cave walls, and scoring goals.
A fizzing, gurgling noise woke him. He cursed.
Had he been asleep for hours?
The moon had slipped behind a high cloud and rain was falling as a light spray. He jumped down, his feet splashing into water.