Tregarthur’s Crystal
-25-
‘Time to talk,’ I said as we stopped to find a crossing over a stream.
Jenna looked at me and at Demelza, who was as sullen as ever. We found a place to sit next to a small stream with the heather and gorse of Hangingstone Hill rising above us.
‘How does Miss Tregarthur work this thing, this tunnel?’ I faced Demelza, who just looked away.
‘Demelza,’ Jenna said in a quiet voice. ‘Alvin said it was time to talk. If you don’t talk I’m going to put you in that stream and throw rocks at you.’
Demelza sneered and turned away again.
I’d never seen Jenna move so fast. All these months of pain and torment boiled over, she grabbed Demelza and hurled her into the water.
It wasn’t deep, but Demelza cowered in the stream. ‘No, no,’ she screamed, covering her head as Jenna picked up a rock. ‘I’ll tell you. Let me out of here.’
Jenna leant forward, grabbed her arm and yanked her onto the bank.
Demelza shivered, soaked through. There were no towels. I thought shivering was the least she could do considering what we had been through.
‘She’s got this stone, a crystal or something, all colours, something she took from the tunnel.’ Demelza stopped.
That at least sounded true, Hugh had said the same thing.
‘Go on, unless you want to go back in,’ Jenna growled.
‘Ok, ok. It gives her control over the tunnel. She makes it take her where she wants.’
‘Why does it do that?’
‘The tunnel is sort of alive … I don’t know,’ Demelza whinged. ‘You’ll have to ask her.’
‘We will,’ I said that although I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to see that snarling face of Miss Tregarthur ever again. ‘What do you mean it’s alive?’
‘This stone thing she’s got, it’s part of the tunnel, something important to it,’ Demelza sounded frightened. ‘She threatens to smash it if the tunnel doesn’t open or do what she wants.’
That sounded weird but explained a lot.
‘She controls everything,’ Demelza’s whispered voice could hardly be heard. ‘You have to do what she wants.’
It was clear that she was looking for sympathy and Jenna broke in: ‘I think you just enjoyed sentencing us to death. It was all you.’
Demelza tried to hide the smile that crept onto her face. It was too much for Jen and minutes later we had to drag Demelza back out of the stream. Jenna had jumped on her and was pretty wet herself.
‘I’ll tell you anything,’ Demelza shook the water from her hair. ‘Just don’t hurt me again.’
‘I haven’t hurt you at all – yet.’ Jenna stood over her.
‘What’s Hugh got to do with Alice Tregarthur?’ I asked.
‘Hugh? He’s some relative. Not too bright.’ Demelza gave me a scared look. ‘Don’t let her do it again.’ She pointed at Jenna.
‘Just tell us everything you know and I’m sure Jenna will be so very kind,’ I said unconvincingly.
Demelza told us some of what she knew, that Alice Tregarthur had this wild crazy hatred for me, determined to destroy my life because she blamed me for her brother’s death.
‘But there’s something more that she didn’t tell us,’ Demelza trailed off.
‘Something about my family?’ I wanted answers and pointed at the stream.
Demelza cringed. ‘I don’t know, maybe.’
I could see Demelza might make up anything to stop being dunked in the stream again.
‘She orders Hugh around like he was a slave,’ Demelza explained how Hugh had been sent back to make a fortune with the gas discovery, but we knew that already.
‘What about my mother?’ I said when I couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t listen to Demelza droning on.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I thought you said she had died.’ Demelza sounded really scared that I might attack her if she didn’t know anymore. I thought she was telling the truth.
‘Can I go through the tunnel - back to save her?’ I couldn’t see how anyone would know the answer to that but I had to ask.
‘I don’t think so,’ Demelza said, searching for something to say. ‘I don’t think you can go back beyond the last time you travel back in time, that’s why Miss Tregarthur couldn’t save her brother, I don’t really know.’
That fitted with what I’d thought and meant there would be nothing I could do to save Mum. I could see that we weren’t going to get any more useful information. Demelza would make up anything to save herself. Only Miss Alice Tregarthur knew what was really happening, and maybe even she didn’t. This tunnel was more complicated than anything I could understand. What was it? Where had it come from?
‘What was that stuff about having to take everyone? Mum said we had to take everyone or it will never stop,’ I tried to keep my voice steady but it cracked when I talked about Mum.
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Demelza shivered. ‘Miss Tregarthur probably made it up to confuse you.’
Was that right? Leaving people behind can’t be good, don’t they interfere with time? I felt there was a bigger mystery going on, maybe something even the crazy teacher didn’t know. Hugh had said something about this being in the Tregarthur family for generations. And why did my name mean anything? More mystery.
There wasn’t much daylight and we needed to get on to the Hanging Stones. Getting there would be a lot easier than having any idea what might happen when we arrived. Would anything happen at all? If we used Demelza’s whistle, would Miss Tregarthur appear? That thought wound me up so tightly I could hardly breathe. I felt Jenna’s hand on my shoulder, she could see my anger. I had to be in control if we were to find out anything, could I do that?
We set off up the hill. There was something else bothering me. Demelza had never asked about Zach since we rescued her from the prison ship. Hadn’t mentioned him. I didn’t care what had happened to Zach, but Demelza had been with him pretty much from the beginning of this whole mess, along with the cavemen, in the time of the Black Death and again here in the courts where we had been sentenced. Why had she not asked anything about him or even suggested we saved him as well?
Before we started off again, Jenna chucked the shivering Demelza a dry tunic from the bag of clothes Aaron had given us.
Jenna looked at my surprised face and said, ‘What?’ quite loudly which made me smile. The Jenna I had once known, back at school, would have kept Demelza in the stream and probably piled rocks on her. Now she was different, more gentle, well a little more gentle, mostly.
‘You need to look at this,’ Jenna passed me the bag.
At the bottom, wrapped in a piece of cloth, was the gold belt. Aaron hadn’t kept it. Perhaps all my cynical thoughts about him were wrong, difficult to believe that. Perhaps he’d been more worried about selling the gold. He’d said how difficult that would be without attracting the wrong sort of attention. At least that thought allowed me to feel I wasn’t entirely wrong about him.
Jenna led the way. As we climbed that final slope, the black mud grew thicker, stickier and the path ran with water. By the time we neared the top we were all covered in the dark slime and sludged along miserably.
Finally we stopped. In front of us were the Hanging Stones at last. The rain held off and an almost translucent light shone across the moor, the last rays of the sun picking out flecks in the granite rocks. A wild empty place. Cloud shadows chased across the landscape as the wind picked up blowing in a mist from the valley below.
I turned, was this the time to blow the whistle that Demelza carried around her neck? A whistle to call Miss Tregarthur? I didn’t like Demelza’s expression, too confident, a sign of danger. Thoughts and worries had filled my mind as we climbed the hill, too many thought
s to notice the signs. On the moor every pile of stones can be a hiding place, had been a hiding place.
A hideous laugh crackled in the air, a sound I’d heard before and one that made me shiver. I whipped round to see a shrouded figure emerge, stride forward and pull back her cloak to reveal the blazing eyes, the snarling mouth – that terrible face of Miss Tregarthur.
She was not alone. Hugh’s hunched frame followed her and behind him … oh yes, it was the rat face of Zach. Demelza ran to him, slipping through my hands as I tried to stop her.
‘How …?’ Jenna edged nearer to me. ‘How did they know we were here?’
‘The whistle,’ I groaned.
A dog whistle with a sound too high pitched for human ears, not too high for Alice Tregarthur apparently. Demelza must have used the whistle before we arrived, maybe days before. ‘Stupid. Why didn’t we take it from her,’ I said clenching my fists as I saw the sneer on Demelza’s face.
Miss Tregarthur’s voice rang out, ‘So you thought you could do it? No one wrecks my plans, no one gets the better of me.’ The pitch of her words rose into a screech, ‘No one, no one, no one,’ echoing against the rocks and fading out on the wind.
She turned directly to the rocks. ‘DO YOU HEAR?’ And then back to us. ‘They’re mine,’ she howled. ‘The rocks are mine. My crystal holds the power.’
In her hand she held a shimmering stone, shining blues and reds in the gathering misty gloom. A faint haze of blue mist crept out from the Hanging Stones, a sign that the tunnel might open, as it had done before.
‘You will do what I say,’ she stamped and the ground shuddered. Was there going to be another earthquake? I looked round, wondering which way to run.
‘NO,’ she commanded. ‘You know what happens if you defy me.’ Her command directed to the Hanging Stones.
The ground shook again, it wasn’t what she wanted.
‘Do not defy me, never defy me again,’ Miss Tregarthur’s voice boomed out as she pulled an iron bar from under her cloak.
I recognised it, a crowbar. The sort of thing Dad used to get into places when he didn’t have a key. Why would Miss Tregarthur have a crowbar with her?
Raising the crystal in one hand she roared: ‘NEVER, NEVER,’ as she struck time and time again. The metal rang with each blow on the crystal and the light coming from it flickered and dimmed.
Miss Tregarthur waited in silence. No wind, no movement, before a moan rose as though from every stone and rock across the moor, louder and louder, a tortured cry broke the air around us. I clutched my hands to my ears, there was no escape from the sound of death.
She struck again, the cry grew even louder.
The stones would have to do what Miss Tregarthur wanted, driven by such awful pain. This wasn’t just a rock tunnel as we’d once thought. Not just a part of the rocks, something much more complicated. Did it have feelings other than pain and more thoughts? Was that how Sam and Ivy had arrived to save us last time? Had it defied her then? Would it save us now? The hideous sorrowful noise surely meant it had no choice.
‘Stop,’ Hugh cried out and tried to grab hold of her. ‘Alice, stop.’
Alice Tregarthur laughed and stopped smashing the crystal. A hush returned to the moor, broken only by the wind. It wasn’t quiet for long.
‘You pathetic lump of trash.’ She pushed Hugh away. ‘All my relatives are useless and you’re a most useless stepbrother. You should have let them hang.’ She looked up at me. ‘And your mother, she was useless. At least she’s dead and useless. I’ll see all your family dead before long, all wiped out.’
I felt Jenna grab my arm, holding me back.
‘Good job your girlfriend has more sense than you,’ Alice gave a snorted laugh. ‘She’s a good girl, isn’t she?’ Another laugh. ‘Ask her what she did on that convict ship.’
Now Jenna needed stopping as tears in my Jenna’s eyes rolled down her face. We had never talked about her troubles on the boat, only about Ivy. I didn’t want to know. She was my Jenna, life had to be lived, I’d rather she was alive – whatever had to be done on the convict boat. I gave her a hug.
‘Sweet,’ Alice gloated.
She was taunting us. Why? Too many hiding places behind rocks, more danger I hadn’t spotted. Four men slipped into sight, armed with pistols. They might be ancient weapons but they looked dangerous. Was that why she had goaded us, wanting us to attack and give these men an excuse to shoot us? Maybe even her paid murderers would not kill in cold blood.
My head filled with strange random thoughts, I had no plan, no idea what to do. We were all in the hands of this crazy woman and she was loving it.
‘Well it has been nice having this little chat. I need to go now. I’m taking my two little helpers,’ Miss Tregarthur gloated while Demelza smiled nastily from her place beside Zach. ‘They’re so useful.’ Alice patted Zach on the head as though he was a pet. ‘Seem not to have any morals at all, do you?’
Zach and Demelza almost glowed.
‘They’d be happy to see you dead. Not like Hugh here who can’t make up his mind. They wouldn’t need any excuse, not like that lot.’ Alice pointed at the armed men who looked uncomfortable. ‘But never mind, they can take you back to be hanged after we’ve gone.’ She snorted a laugh before turning back to the Hanging Stones. ‘Now. Let me through. You know where I must go next.’
The tunnel didn’t respond. She raised her hand. ‘You cannot defy me. I know this crystal is everything you want and you won’t have it unless you obey me.’ She lifted her hand to strike again.
Did we all have that hollow feeling of dread? Anything was better than hearing that noise again, anything. The four armed men glanced at each other, dropped their guns and took off, running quickly. Miss Tregarthur shouted after them but they ran on. She screamed curses and threats, they didn’t stop.
Hugh saw his stepsister had been distracted. Lurching forward he wrenched the crystal from her grasp and in the same movement hurled it to me. I dived to catch it, not wanting to let it hit the ground.
Alice Tregarthur’s face twisted back into the hideous snarl that had haunted my nightmares for so long. Almost in slow motion she rushed towards me. I felt the crystal in my hand, small and quite warm. It gave off a feeling of need, of wanting and I could only guess it wanted to go home. We all wanted to go home. Miss Tregarthur was nearly on me, somehow larger and more terrifying as though something much worse had emerged from her body. Her eyes flamed and in her hand the crowbar raised to strike me this time.
Jenna stepped into her path and floored her with a perfectly timed left hook, much harder than anything she had used on Demelza. Miss Tregarthur’s face changed from wild anger and hate to one of complete bewilderment before she slid unconscious to the ground.
‘Sorted.’ Jenna clapped her hands together as though it was nothing much she had done. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Time to go home.’
We left Miss Tregarthur on the ground. Hugh crouched over her, anxious and probably terrified, his unconscious relative starting to move and moan.
As we stepped towards the Hanging Stones the blue haze formed into the tunnel shape we had known before. The crystal in my hand quivered slightly as though desperate to enter. The feeling was so strong. Then something moved quickly behind me, I turned. Zach smashed into me and I stumbled as he and Demelza sprinted on and disappeared into the tunnel. They’d done that before, I didn’t care, I would sort them out when we got home, even if I had to use some of Dad’s methods.
Jenna and I held hands. The blue haze swirled around us, drawing us in and we stepped forward waiting for the mist to take us as it had done before. It wasn’t the same. After a few steps there was no way forward. The air grew colder, darker, more solid, moving in on us. I shuddered as cold strands of something brushed across my face. In darkness the air changed at my side, swir
ling round and round. A cavernous space opened before us, lit by so many points of shimmering light. We stepped forward. In the centre of this space stood a vast flat slab of stone, perfectly smooth except for a ragged hole in the middle.
‘It wants the crystal,’ Jenna said quietly and I was sure she was right.
The hard shimmering stone I held turned to something softer as I lifted it into the waiting gap. It seemed an almost perfect fit. There were no terrifying noises only a gentle warming hum that swept over us. Jenna and I stood together and watched as the crystal began to merge into the stone slab giving off warmth and a rainbow of light.
A sudden noise made me turn, was it Zach again? No, with a sudden rush Miss Tregarthur was on us. In her hand one of the pistols, pointing at my head.
‘No one defeats my plans,’ she screamed again. ‘Back,’ she cried waving the pistol to make us step back towards the moor.
I didn’t move.
‘I will shoot,’ she said with triumph in her voice.
‘Only one shot,’ I said knowing that if she did shoot me, nothing would stop Jenna.
Jenna wasn’t ready to let that happen. She took my arm and pulled me back. Miss Tregarthur rushed to the huge stone, still waving the pistol in one hand but with her crowbar in the other.
Jamming the end under the crystal she levered it away from the stone slab. Had she done this before? Was that why she carried the crowbar? The terrible howl returned, coming from the space left behind, louder and more awful than before, shaking everything. I fell to the ground, Jenna beside me.
Miss Tregarthur, immune to it all, perhaps protected by the crystal she held, gave a wild scream of victory and shouted into the haze, ‘Let me pass, or I will do it again,’ and raised the iron bar ready to bring it down on the crystal once more. The mist parted, she ran forward disappearing from sight and starting a new shout of: ‘Kill them, kill them.’
Tregarthur's Prisoners: Book 3 (The Tregarthur's Series) Page 19
