Hollow Earth

by John Barrowman

  Three minutes left.

  ‘Em, get your backpack. Please.’ Sandie stood in front of Matt, imploring. ‘I know you’re angry with me for all sorts of things these days, but this isn’t the time, Matt. There are very dangerous people coming here, and I don’t have time to explain why, but we have to go.’

  Matt had hardly ever seen his mum cry except maybe when watching a really sad movie or looking at a painting she was working on, but he didn’t think he’d ever done anything to actually make her cry. He was mad at her – she was right about that – but he didn’t want to make her sad. Not really. Plus, as he watched her eyes fill with tears, he suddenly had a feeling, like a deep kind of drumming in his head, that she was telling them the truth. They were in danger.

  ‘Does it have something to do with our drawing?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, brushing her sleeve across her eyes, ‘and I promise that once we’re safe, I’ll tell you more. But please, please, be a good boy and just this once, do what I’m asking without an argument.’

  One minute left.

  The downstairs doorbell rang.

  SEVEN

  Arthur slammed down the phone and rushed out from behind his desk. He leaned against the door, listening. The lab was strangely quiet, but Arthur was under no illusion that this was anything but a momentary respite from the horror to come.

  Quickly, he unlocked a cabinet behind his desk and lifted out a flat, wooden box, the size of a notebook. He shivered as he opened the lid. Inside was a page torn from a sketchbook, the paper scored and bruised with age. The drawing spilled off the edges in overlapping swirls of yellows, blacks and greens, with an angry gaping hole like the mouth of a cave in the centre.

  The scratching at his office door had started again. It sounded like tiny talons tearing into the metal frame. Mopping his brow with his handkerchief, Arthur thought about Sandie. In his own way, he had come to love her like a daughter, and betraying the Society so she might escape was the least he could do. He took the drawing from the box and turned it over, running his fingers across the inscription inked on the back.

  To our sons and daughters,

  May you never forget imagination is the real and the eternal.

  This is Hollow Earth.

  Duncan Fox, Edinburgh 1848

  Arthur returned the drawing to the box and closed the lid. Without thinking too long about his decision, he tore a sheet of paper from his desk pad and began to write:

  A high-pitched shriek erupted from the still-deserted lab. Terrified, Arthur watched the edges of his office door begin to melt into light. With no time to waste, he finished the note, grabbed a large padded envelope from his desk drawer and put the note and the box containing the drawing inside.

  The perimeter of his door was now a halo of white heat. Through the gaps between the door and the jamb, Arthur glimpsed the hooded monk-like figure he’d seen in the hallway. He snatched a postage label, filled it out and forced the package into a vacuum tube that ran across the ceiling and disappeared into the bowels of the building to the post room.

  Arthur’s office door had now liquified into a silver puddle on the floor. The tall figure slid a drawing pad into the wide sleeve of its robes and stepped into Arthur’s office.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be alone,’ said Arthur.

  ‘I’m not alone.’

  Something sprinted through the doorway, darted past the hooded figure’s legs and shot under Arthur’s desk. Arthur looked down just in time to see the grinning demon from the painting tearing through his trouser leg with its needle-like teeth.

  The changeling child worked on Arthur for a very long time, finally reaching the desktop, where it knocked over the dregs of Arthur’s morning coffee. The liquid splashed across the desk like dark tears.

  EIGHT

  Pacing outside the Kitten house, the leader of the group rang the doorbell once again. No need to hurry. Not yet. He could sense the children were still on the top floor. Although Sandie was more difficult to track, he knew she’d be near the twins.

  Upstairs, Matt and Em, backpacks on, were taking one last look around the flat.

  ‘We can’t carry anything else,’ insisted Sandie, unlocking a dusty door on the landing and beckoning to the children. ‘We must go!’

  The three of them dashed down the old servants’ stairs at the rear of the house. With the twins close at her heels, Sandie pushed open the terrace doors to the garden – and crashed directly into the man in the sunglasses, sent to guard the rear of the house.

  Sandie’s momentum gave her the advantage when they collided. They both went flying against the garden wall. The man’s head bounced off the bricks as he landed with Sandie on top of him, winded but unhurt.

  ‘Get back up to the flat,’ Sandie screamed at the twins.

  This time the twins didn’t hesitate. They scrambled as fast as they could, back up the servants’ stairs. In an adrenaline-fuelled panic, Sandie followed her children. They could hear Violet and Anthea in the hall downstairs, yelling that they were not opening the front door and the police were on the way.

  Sandie locked the flat’s front door behind them, ran into the kitchen and swept everything off one of her worktables, sending paint supplies and tools crashing to the floor. Climbing on top of the table and standing on tiptoe, she stretched up to unlock one of the skylights.

  She couldn’t reach the latch.

  ‘Matt, Em – bring me a chair.’

  From downstairs they could hear glass breaking, wood snapping, and more yelling from Anthea and Violet.

  ‘Mum, I think Auntie Violet and Auntie Anthea are getting hurt,’ sobbed Em.

  ‘They’ll be fine, sweetie,’ Sandie assured her, trying to stop her voice from shaking. ‘Vi and Anthea are tough.’

  The twins each took an end of a sturdy wooden kitchen chair and passed it up to their mum. Sandie climbed on top and unlocked the skylight, scattering a family of doves roosting near the window. She pulled herself up and looked across the roof. The pitch was steeper than she’d hoped, but if they were careful they could crawl across to the roof next door, then from there head on to the roof of the mews apartments that were once the Kitten stables. From the stable roof, the jump down to Violet and Anthea’s car parked in the courtyard in front of the mews would be difficult, but not impossible.

  She dropped back down into the kitchen. The twins were gone.

  Frantic, Sandie scrambled off the table. ‘Matt! Em!’

  ‘Under here!’

  For a second, Sandie was so relieved to see the twins safely huddled under the table that it took her an extra beat to observe that they’d spread their pens on the floor and were drawing on a sketchpad between them. She hauled Em out from under the table and scrambled on to the table with her.

  ‘No,’ screamed Em, stiffening her body and digging her heels in. ‘I need to help!’

  Em’s backpack and flailing limbs were making it impossible for Sandie to make any progress.

  Stop fighting, Em. I think I can finish it myself.

  But what if you can’t?

  I can climb faster than you anyway.

  In an instant, Em stopped resisting and climbed willingly on to the chair. No sooner had Sandie joined her than their would-be captors were at the door to the flat.

  ‘It’ll be much easier on everyone, Sandie, if you open this door,’ came a voice.

  ‘Use my hands as a step, Em,’ Sandie ordered.

  When Em’s foot was in place, Sandie hoisted her up and out through the skylight on to the roof.

  ‘Don’t move!’

  Em sat on the roof and stared in through the skylight as Sandie backed down on to the table again.

  A bloodcurdling scream exploded from the door. The noise was so full of pain and horror, Em screamed in response: ‘Oh God, Mum, they’ve got Matt!’

  But Matt was climbing up on the table next to Sandie. Shocked and relieved, Sandie hauled him up on to the kitchen chair, preparing to hoist him outs
ide with his sister. The entire flat was shaking with each terrible thump from the men at the door. Then Sandie noticed.

  The wall was trembling. Not the door.

  She tore the sketchbook from Matt’s hand. When she looked at it, she couldn’t help herself. She burst into laughter. Matt grinned at her.

  The twins had sketched the apartment’s front wall without a door, trapping the visitors out in the hall with no access to the flat. The intruders were pounding furiously on a wall where the door should have been.

  ‘Mum, we should go,’ urged Matt.

  Sandie cupped her hands and hefted Matt out on to the roof to join Em.

  Another searing howl of pain filled the house. Before climbing after her children, Sandie stared at the wall more closely. Her laughter died in her throat. Sticking through the middle of the plaster where the door should have been was a man’s left hand and forearm. The fingers were limp, and the hand was already turning a mottled blue-grey.

  Feeling sick, Sandie heaved herself outside. Ushering the children forward on their hands and knees, she leaned back in, pushed the chair off the table and dropped the skylight closed behind them.

  The howls of the man trapped in the wall followed them across the roof.

  NINE

  When Matt and Em were safely on the cobbled courtyard in front of the mews, with only minor scrapes on their hands and knees to show for their escape, Sandie shredded the drawing from Matt’s sketchpad into little pieces, tossing them into a neighbour’s rubbish bin.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Matt, trying to stop her. ‘Ripping it up will make the wall go back to normal!’

  ‘We can’t leave Violet and Anthea’s wall like that, Mattie, it wouldn’t be right.’ To say nothing of freeing the man whose arm was trapped, Sandie added to herself. She trusted his injury would slow the hunt down.

  ‘When we’re far enough away, our drawings stop working anyway,’ added Em without thinking.

  ‘Shut up, Em!’ hissed Matt.

  ‘Exactly how many times have you done something like this?’ Sandie demanded.

  Em looked sheepish; Matt was still scowling. Sandie collapsed on the neighbour’s garden wall. Oh, she really didn’t want to know the answer to that question. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by how much Matt and Em needed to learn about who they were. She was paralysed by how truly unprepared she was to teach them.

  In her head, she’d rehearsed over and over again what she’d say when the time came. She’d even started to explain to them about their special abilities – their supernatural powers – when they were only toddlers and their dad was still a part of their lives. The lesson hadn’t gone as planned. Sandie hadn’t been able to bring herself to use the word Animare: the ancient and more accurate term that defined them.

  ‘When you’re older,’ she had started, as the twins had scribbled at the Abbey’s long kitchen table, ‘your imaginations, your drawings, will be able to alter reality. You’ll have the power to change things in the real world.’

  ‘Can you hear yourself?’ Malcolm had chided. ‘They’re just babies. They don’t have a clue what you’re saying to them.’

  He had then reached across to the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter and grabbed an orange.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sandie had asked.

  ‘An experiment. Something harmless.’

  Malcolm had placed the orange on the roll of paper in front of the twins. ‘Em, Mattie, can you draw Daddy a picture of this orange?’

  ‘They’re too young, Malcolm,’ Sandie had said. ‘Most of us can’t animate until we’re close to nine or ten.’

  At first nothing had happened. The children hadn’t moved, and the orange had remained an orange. Then Em had begun to draw. She had drawn an orange that looked like a square with legs, and Matt’s orange, although mostly round, had a pointy top and a tail.

  The real orange had remained a real orange.

  Until, that is, Em had grabbed her chewed pink crayon and begun to colour Matt’s pointy orange thing, and Matt, not liking what Em was doing to his creation, had snatched the pink crayon from her and begun to scribble across all the parts that Em had coloured.

  Within seconds, the orange had exploded, showering wet slivers of pulp all over the twins.

  Sandie stared in exhaustion at her two children standing anxiously in the mews courtyard in front of her. Matt was wearing a frayed concert T-shirt – the only thing of Malcolm’s that she’d kept. He’d been wearing it for most of the year. His black hair was too long and curled loosely at his neck, and his blue eyes challenged her at every opportunity. Em was a softer version of her brother, with the same colouring. The twins were both of average height for their age, although Matt was a little taller than his sister after a spring growth spurt.

  Sandie pulled out her phone and made another call. The news on the other end made her gasp.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, whirling back to the twins. ‘We need to leave London, but I have something I must do before we go. Can you please promise me some co-operation?’ She eyed them both. ‘And no more drawing?’

  ‘We promise,’ answered Em.

  Matt grabbed his sketchbook and shoved it deep into his backpack.

  That’ll have to do for now, thought Sandie.

  They jogged out of the courtyard to the far end of Raphael Terrace. Looking behind them as they ran, Matt and Em noted the big black car still blocking one side of the street in front of the Kitten house, and a police car with flashing lights blocking the other side. A small crowd of curious neighbours mingled on the pavement.

  When the three of them were away from Raphael Terrace and far enough along Kensington High Street, they slowed to a smart walk, trying not to call attention to themselves as they headed to the Underground.

  ‘Why didn’t we just take Violet and Anthea’s car?’ asked Matt.

  ‘They’d have expected that. We’ll be safer on the Tube. If there are lots of people, they won’t try to hurt us.’

  ‘But why do they want to hurt us?’ asked Em.

  ‘Because you two are very special children—’

  ‘Every mum says her children are special,’ Matt interrupted, stubbornly ignoring the extraordinary differences between them and other children.

  The high street was a cacophony of city noises – angry car horns, screaming brakes from buses, a construction crew drilling the pavement, music blaring from a bustling boutique, a troubled musician on a saxophone, and the all-encompassing din of afternoon shoppers and curious tourists. Sandie let the sounds of the city mask her mumbled and inadequate response to her son. Explanations, rehearsed or not, would have to wait a little longer.

  She manoeuvred the twins through the traffic to the entrance of the station.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ growled Matt.

  ‘We’re going to Scotland to stay with your grandfather.’

  Matt stopped dead in the middle of the rush of people charging up and down the stairs to the Tube. Em looked at her mum in shock.

  ‘Grandfather?’ said Matt furiously. ‘What grandfather?’

  TEN

  The man with the tattered brown doctor’s satchel sat under a canopy at a café in the heart of Covent Garden. The surrounding tables teemed with office workers toasting Friday, while the surrounding cobbled square and narrow lanes swarmed with tourists and teenagers enjoying the pleasures of the West End. A bedraggled busker in a porkpie hat, carrying a small instrument resembling a violin, passed near the man’s table, pausing at the one next to it to offer his services to a couple having lunch.

  Doffing his hat and bowing slightly when the couple turned down his musical talents, the busker shuffled across the stones with a barely perceptible glance back at the man with the brown satchel.

  Vaughn Grant had noticed the hurdy-gurdy player’s surreptitious glance. He kept his eye on the musician as he shuffled across the bustling square. Working for Sir Charles Wren meant Vaughn’s ever-present paranoia had ratcheted up a few not
ches since the events at the National Gallery that morning. The Council of Guardians had learned quickly of the incident with the twins and now Arthur Summers’ brutal murder was all over the news. Vaughn knew this meant Sandie and the twins were fleeing once again.

  Vaughn wanted to be sure they could get away from the city safely. When the hurdy-gurdy man accepted a request from a family eating at the restaurant across the way, Vaughn let himself relax a little. The old busker was pretty good, the playful circus sounds of his instrument drawing a crowd of enthusiastic revellers.

  Vaughn nudged the satchel further under the table, making sure it was hidden, clamping it firmly between his feet. If something were to happen to the satchel after all these years, he thought, the results would be unimaginable. He smiled ironically to himself. Given who he was waiting for, perhaps not so unimaginable.

  Vaughn signalled to his waitress for a refill of his cider. When she brought it, he smiled and flirted with her for a while, trying to inject a little normality into his situation. He’d prepared himself for this day for years, ever since Sandie and Malcolm had announced Sandie was expecting twins.

  Vaughn sipped his drink and allowed himself to wallow in a moment of regret and recollection. It seemed so long ago, that summer after university when he and his best friends Malcolm and Simon had gone to Scotland to live at the Abbey. Sandie and her friend Mara had already been there. Vaughn sipped his cider, remembering how close they all had been, and how quickly all that had changed with the birth of the twins. If only he’d dealt with Malcolm back then when he’d had the chance. Sandie might have been able to make different choices in her life.

  If only.

  The sounds of the hurdy-gurdy drifted across the square. Vaughn let its childish melody fill his head. He reminded himself how lucky he was to be in a position to help Sandie and her children, and he intended to do just that.