Quietly Ryan flicked to the competition results. Twenty finalists had reached the ‘shortlist’, and won free tickets to the Golden Oak Rally, where one of them would be declared the overall winner and receive the prize motorbike.
Near the end of the list Ryan found Will Wruthers’ name.
Ryan’s family drove up to the gates of the Lattimer-Stone house as the late light was fading over the grounds. Ryan’s glasses had been firmly confiscated, leaving him to blink painfully through his contacts.
Mrs Lattimer-Stone met them at the door. She wore a brown silk dress, up and down which little snakes of shimmer appeared and disappeared as she walked. Her dark hair was tied back in a thick plait, and her mouth was neatly painted in the shape and colour of a plum.
‘How lovely that you were able to come at such short notice. I’m so glad that you were free.’ Mrs Lattimer-Stone did not sound particularly glad, or particularly anything. Her voice was pleasant and husky yet without any rises or falls. She never smiled. Sometimes she drew her mouth in and narrowed her eyes to show that she was thinking a smile.
The Lattimer-Stone house seemed to Ryan to be a lot of living rooms stuck together, full of glass and shiny chrome. Instead of pictures, some walls had huge sticking-out bits of board with two splotches of colour and nothing else on them.
Just for a moment Ryan wondered what the Lattimer-Stone household would look like upside down. He half smiled as he imagined inverting the whole vast room like a snow globe and watching all the guests shriek ceilingwards to the music of smashed decanters.
‘Oh look,’ said his mother in a faint, flat voice. ‘The Coopers are here.’
Chelle’s mother noticed Ryan’s mother at the same time, and bore down on her. Listening quietly by her side was an elderly woman whom Ryan recognized as Miss Gossamer.
Miss Gossamer always reminded Ryan of a mummified cat he had once seen in a museum. It had originally been left among the rafters of an old house to keep out evil spirits. The cat had looked half starved, but with a shocked, sleepy, supercilious look.
Ryan caught Chelle’s eye and his smile faded. She looked sick with worry. He slipped over to her side.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Ryan . . . I pretended to be ill but they didn’t hear me, so I had to come . . . and Donna’s coming, she’s coming here . . .’
It took a few moments before her meaning hit him, and then he gaped, astonished that he had failed to spot such an obvious problem amid the dizziness of events.
‘It’s all right, we’ll . . . we’ll go over here and sit down next to the peanuts.’ He sank into one squashy chair, and Chelle dropped into another. ‘And if Donna comes in and you start leaking her thoughts, you just stuff as many peanuts in your mouth as you can, and if that doesn’t work I’ll say it’s your asthma and I’ll help you outside.’
Chelle nodded.
‘And . . . Josh will be here soon, and he’ll think of something,’ added Ryan. He saw a faint glimmer of hope in Chelle’s eye as she nodded again. Just for a moment Ryan felt a pang that his own reassurances had not been enough. He cast a glance over his shoulder to scan the room for his friend.
He quickly spotted him, over by one of the fireplaces. He was without his sunglasses and wore a black shirt and beige trousers very different from his usual clothes. Something peculiar had happened to his hair. It was darkened, but its spikes curled and clung oddly. It looked rather as if it had been slicked flat by one hand, and then furiously ruffled by another. Ryan suspected that this was exactly what had occurred.
There was something peculiar about Josh’s expression too. He was biting both his lips together and staring out through the crowd with a look of focused rage and dislike. Ryan followed the line of his gaze, expecting to catch sight of Mr Punzell’s piratical shirt or Donna Leas’ green-painted eyes. With a lurch of his stomach he realized that Josh was glaring at Ryan’s own mum.
He had completely forgotten that Josh disliked her. In fact, he always tried not to think about it, because it made him feel as if something inside him was being slowly ripped in two like a piece of card. He had first become aware of it a year before when Josh had led Ryan out bat-spotting one dusk-time. They had been missed, and when they returned muddily to Ryan’s house they found two sets of parents waiting outside. Josh’s parents had said nothing and shown no sign of anger, but had simply held the car door open for him. Ryan’s mother had swept forward to grab Ryan by the shoulders, turned him this way and that as if to check he had all his limbs, then shaken him hard and yelled at him. While he was letting the waves of angry relief break over him Ryan had looked past her to see Josh fixing her with a look very much like hatred.
On the far side of the reception room, oblivious to the hostile gaze, Ryan’s mum was detaining his dad’s sleeve and tugging at the handkerchief in his pocket to set it straight. Ryan’s father was enduring this with an expression that hovered between amusement and impatience.
Ryan risked a wave, and the motion caught Josh’s eye. For an instant or two Josh’s gaze fixed on Ryan’s face with the same look of blind enmity, but then he seemed to recognize Ryan and the expression faded. Beside him, Josh’s father, a tall man with grey, immaculate hair and yellowish, fuzzy sideburns was explaining one of the big board pictures to a thin woman in a clingy wasp-striped dress. Neither of them noticed Josh slipping over to Ryan and Chelle.
‘What are we going to do, Josh, do you have a plan?’ Chelle’s voice was pitiably hopeful.
‘Course,’ Josh answered, a little too firmly. ‘Look – we’ve got to sort this wish out tonight or we’ll never get another chance with all of us and both of them in the same place. So . . . we need to get each of them away from the party and . . . lock them up somewhere together. The east conservatory. So they have to talk and get to know each other.
‘Chelle,’ he continued, ‘you can do Mr Punzell, he likes you. Ryan, you’d better lead Donna. Down that corridor, third left, other side of the book room, key’s on the hook by the door.’
‘But—’
‘Just call her to the phone or something.’ Josh had a fierce glitter about him that Ryan did not quite understand.
They paused to nibble peanuts with dry mouths. Amid their silence, Ryan became aware that his parents’ tones were quite clearly audible above the hushed museum voices that all the other adults seemed to be using. Ryan winced and did not dare meet Josh’s eye.
Ryan’s mother and father, it seemed, wished to discuss something, and saw no obstacle in the fact that they were standing at opposite ends of the lounge. The other adults were so startled to hear them casually shouting across the room that it completely spoilt Jeremiah Punzell’s entrance. The Soul Repair man walked with careful nonchalance in through the main door, only to find that nobody was looking in that direction at all. Ryan thought for a moment that he was going to slip out and enter again when more people were watching.
Mrs Lattimer-Stone slid her chocolate way towards Mr Punzell, narrowing her eyes in a cat-smile, and let him hold her fingertips for a moment. She then led him around, introducing him to people, while Josh’s Aunts trailed after them, completing the parade. As Chelle struggled out of her chair Ryan could not help thinking that she would have little chance of reaching the ‘psychic’ through the wall of politely interested adults. But remembering his promise to rescue her if she lost control of her mouth, he nodded to Josh and followed.
‘. . . I am also interested in curing the ills of the mind and mystical soul,’ Mr Punzell was explaining to the wasp-striped woman as Ryan and Chelle approached, ‘so I make use of hypnosis and, on rare occasions, a psychic projection of will.’
‘So . . . you can project the power of your mind into somebody else’s?’ The wasp-striped woman sounded happily scared and completely fascinated.
Punzell nodded slowly and solemnly, as if admitting to a secret pain.
‘Of course, I always take the greatest care not to harm the other person’s mind. I take a simple thought, and whil
e talking someone into a slight trance I transmit that thought into their head . . .’
‘Excuse me . . .’ squeaked Chelle, as she tried to find a gap in the wall of backs. ‘Excuse me, but Mr Punzell said that he’d do a star chart for me . . . excuse me . . .’
Her voice had faded to a thin, whispery chirrup, and yet somehow Mr Punzell heard it. He gave her an indulgent smile and moved aside so that she could enter the group.
‘Excuse me, Mr Punzell, you said that you could do me a star-chart thing, and I think I probably need one, because, um, my life is full of surprises . . . and isn’t he handsome standing there with his Isis amulet, I wish he’d wear the suede waistcoat more often . . .’ Chelle’s eyes crossed slightly, then she gave a half-witted look around her, before fleeing towards the nearest door. A ripple of indulgent laughter followed her.
‘You have an admirer, Jeremiah.’
Mr Punzell gave a small bow in acknowledgement. ‘I should probably follow her and make sure she is all right,’ he murmured.
Oh yes, yes, thought Ryan. Go! He had already glimpsed the figure of Donna Leas at the other door. She was wearing a shiny, silvery-green, mermaidy dress, which she kept tugging down at the hips to stop it creasing across her stomach. She looked quite despairing as she saw Mr Punzell leaving the room. Ryan turned his step towards her, remembering his allotted mission with dread.
‘Donna Leas . . . oh, you don’t mean that dreadful girl, do you?’ With a shock, Ryan recognized his mother’s voice. ‘Good heavens, is that her? I nearly lodged an official complaint about her a couple of years ago. I would have done if Ryan hadn’t asked me not to.’
With horror, Ryan saw his mum detach herself from her conversation with Mrs Cooper and bear down on Donna Leas.
On the other side of the room, Mrs Lattimer-Stone laid a gentle hand on the sleeve of Mr Punzell to stop her guest of honour escaping. Ryan heard the words ‘palm reading for Joshua’. Next to her, Josh stood, totally, dangerously motionless.
‘What nonsense! Ryan doesn’t chase people round libraries!’ Hearing his mother’s exclamation, Ryan guessed that his father had not mentioned Donna’s phone call to her. Despite her terrible timing, at that moment the sight of his mother, brandishing a vol au vent with one hand and firmly grasping the wrong end of the stick with the other, filled Ryan with a painful surge of love and pride.
There was something wrong with the air in the room, however. Ryan felt a tingle across his knuckles, and glanced down to find that his second eyes were back, clearly visible on his unbandaged hand, and aflutter with motion. In panic, he looked across the room at Josh. Josh’s face was mask-like as he raised his head to look directly back at Ryan.
Their eyes met, and then something in the light fittings above them tutted softly and glassily to itself. There was a brilliant flash and a tinkling rush of sound, then blackness swamped the room.
13
Enchantment
Darkness was the first shock, but close on its heels followed another greater jolt to Ryan’s mind. The darkness was not absolute, Ryan saw, as the now-feverish tingling of his knuckles intensified.
A soft rain was falling from above, a dim, insistent trickle of light. Ryan stared, upwards, flexing his fingers without thinking so that the eyes on his hands blinked and focused. Every bulb in the ceiling was silently spitting gobs of faint luminescence, which fell slowly and silently as snow and winked out as they hit the floor. The slender watch on Mrs Lattimer-Stone’s wrist was bleeding light like molten butter. At the same time, Ryan was occasionally aware of a faint, sinuous undulation in the fabric of the shadow, like the wavering of underwater weed.
The radiance seemed to ooze and drip and puddle. In particular, it oozed and dripped and puddled over Josh. He remained motionless, staring down at his own hand, which was still extended with the fingers spread. Ryan thought he was grinning, thought he could see the strange liquid light sliding over his teeth.
‘Christ!’ someone exclaimed.
Everybody’s seen Josh glowing like a Christmas tree, thought Ryan.
‘Joshua?’ Mrs Lattimer-Stone was looking around her, paying no attention to her leaking watch. Ryan saw Josh turn his head a little at the sound of her voice, then deliberately drop into a squat and back away from her. ‘Joshua – we need the matches . . .’
A dull blob of light fell on to Mrs Cooper’s eyebrow, and she did not even blink.
Nobody’s noticed, Ryan realized. Nobody but me can see the light. Nobody but me can see anything at all.
Something like a bomb of fizzy sherbet detonated in his stomach, and then he felt a grin spread helplessly across his face. He could see everybody, with the help of his secret hand-eyes, and nobody could see him. It was a strange and powerful knowledge.
A number of guests were clumsily trying to comfort Miss Gossamer. She was on her knees drawing deep, hoarse breaths – her nerves must have been devastated by the sudden darkness. Ryan slipped past the huddle of figures and stooped next to Josh to whisper in his ear.
‘I’m going to get Donna to the east conservatory. You’ll have to do Mr Punzell.’ He saw Josh’s eyes fix on nothingness as he cocked his head to listen. Even Josh could not see him in the blackness. The fact gave Ryan a twisted, excited feeling in his stomach.
Donna was twirling the stem of her wine glass anxiously, and she jumped when Ryan spoke right next to her.
‘Excuse me,’ he whispered, ‘you’re needed . . . by Mr Punzell. He wants your help with something . . . something feng shui.’
Her large hands smoothed her dress again, and she looked a bit shy and frightened. Just for a moment Ryan almost felt sorry for her. But we are trying to give her her heart’s desire, he told himself.
Down the corridor, third left, other side of the book room, Josh had said. Ryan reached out for Donna’s hand, and she took a firm hold of his sleeve.
‘Slow down!’ she hissed as he led her across the room. ‘You’re pulling me into furniture!’ He stopped feeling sorry for her. They left the main reception room, and Ryan led her down the corridor and through the third doorway.
‘It’s just along here.’ The door to the conservatory was open. There were blinds hanging at all the great windows, letting in ribbons of faint blue light. Donna stepped into the conservatory, and the blind-light tiger-striped her. She hadn’t let go of his sleeve.
‘So where’s Mr Punzell?’ For the first time there was a touch of suspicion in her voice. He halted just outside the room, out of the light from the blinds, so that she could not read his expression.
‘He said to wait here. He definitely said here.’ Next to the door, Ryan could see a metal ornament in the shape of a dragon’s head, with a hook jutting from the lower jaw. He stealthily extended his left hand towards it, but it was just out of reach. ‘I think it’s because you can see the garden from here and the lines of energy running up and down it . . .’ Ryan took all his courage into his hands and snatched his sleeve free from Donna’s grasp.
He slammed the door, leaned all his weight against it and scrabbled at the hook for the key. It was not there.
He put all his energy into holding the door handle straight against Donna’s efforts to turn it. As he did so he became aware of some strange, muffled snorts and murmurs coming from behind him. Half turning, across the room he saw a bulge in the floor-length curtain, as if somebody was hiding behind it.
The draperies flurried aside, and Ryan glimpsed Chelle’s face with its mouth full of handkerchief. The next moment the handle turned under his grip and the door wrenched open. Large hands found and gripped his shoulders, dragging him into the conservatory.
Ryan wriggled out of Donna’s grip and dropped to a crouch, then shrank back into a darkened corner. Donna was breathing loudly, and he tried to match his breath to hers so that she wouldn’t hear where he was.
The fall of silence made the slam of the door and the key turning in the lock all the louder. Of course, thought Ryan with a strange sort of calm, Chelle mus
t have been hiding with the key, waiting to lock Mr Punzell in if he followed her. She doesn’t know I got pulled in here as well as Donna.
In the safety of darkness, Donna’s face crumpled. Even though she was so much larger than he was, suddenly Ryan could not quite remember how to be frightened of her.
She was just feeling for the strings of the blinds when approaching voices became audible.
‘Donna?’ There was candlelight quivering beneath the door. It was Mr Punzell, sounding rather harassed and not in too good a mood.
‘I’ve been locked in.’ Donna’s tone was childish and petulant.
‘The door sticks sometimes.’ Josh’s voice.
‘No, I’ve been locked in! With a key!’
‘So you have . . . look, Joshua, it’s in the lock.’
The key was turned back again, and Donna pushed her way out. Ryan remained crouched in the shadows. Donna stared around her at the candlelit book room, then marched over to the long velvet curtains, from which a subdued whimpering sound was audible.
Oh Chelle, thought Ryan, you didn’t run back and hide there, tell me you didn’t . . .
The curtain was tweaked back by Donna’s angry hand.
Oh Chelle, you did.
Donna reached out and snatched the handkerchief from Chelle’s mouth.
‘. . . it’s that same girl, I’m sure of it,’ babbled Chelle as soon as the plug was removed, ‘the one I saw with the others in the street, and up in the reception room, she must have turned the key on me . . . and what’s wrong with her, why is she talking like that, it sounds like she’s saying . . . it sounds like she’s saying everything in my, my . . .’
Donna had gone completely white and was staring at Chelle open-mouthed.
‘. . . it must be a trick, some kind of joke they’ve put together but how would they be able to . . . oh no, and Mr Punzell’s right there, I’ve got to think about . . . mustn’t think about . . .’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Mr Punzell dropped on to his haunches and stared at Chelle, his ill temper forgotten.
Verdigris Deep Page 9
