The Secret Prophecy

by Herbie Brennan

  There were so many. Had his dad really been murdered? And if so, why? Who’d arranged to have his mother locked up? When would she get out again? Who broke into their home—twice? But he suspected the oracle wouldn’t give him answers about stuff like that. Victor was watching him impatiently, so he said, “Could I ask something like ‘Is my present situation going to work out okay?’”

  “You can ask anything you like,” Victor told him grumpily. “But you might be better off asking what sort of action you should take to ensure your present situation works out for the best.”

  “All right,” Em said. “What action should I take to make sure my present situation works out for the best?”

  Victor tapped his bunch of yarrow stalks sharply on the table, and Em wondered if that was the way the ancient Chinese called up spirits. He liked Victor, and they were surrounded by people and noise; but Victor’s face had taken on a set, determined expression that somehow made the whole thing feel decidedly spooky.

  It took Victor a long time to consult the oracle. When he had finished, he wrote something in his jotter with the stub of pencil. Em leaned across to see what it was and discovered a single, broken line. He grinned at Victor. “Well, what’s it mean?”

  “Nothing yet,” Victor told him. “That’s just the first line. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”

  Em sat back and shut up, watching Victor with fascination. The process of counting—it was repeated five more times—took almost twenty minutes. When it was finished, Victor had drawn a peculiar diagram on the page of his jotter. “You’ve got moving lines,” he muttered, half to himself. Then he reached for the book and flicked quickly through its pages.

  There was a stir behind Em as the doorbell rang, and he glanced over his shoulder to see what was going on. Jeff was walking toward the front door. “That’ll be breakfast,” Victor said absently without looking up. “Might want to do this later.”

  “No, do it now,” Em urged him. He was hungry, but just at that moment he was even more curious. “What are moving lines?”

  “The first hexagram”—Victor pointed at the diagram he’d drawn—“that’s this thing, represents the situation you find yourself in. Where you are now, so to speak. Sometimes that’s all there is with the I Ching: just the situation you’re in and some advice on how to handle it. But sometimes, like now, the situation you’re in isn’t stable. It can’t hold for very long.”

  “What do you mean, ‘can’t hold’?”

  “It’s on the point of changing,” Victor said. “When you’re in that sort of situation, it shows up as moving lines.”

  “All right,” Em said, “what’s my current situation?”

  “Conflict,” Victor told him promptly.

  From the corner of his eye, Em could see two men and a woman standing in the doorway deep in conversation with Jeff. All three were wearing conservative gray suits, and if they’d brought breakfast, there was no sign of it. “What sort of conflict?”

  “Well, you’d best be the judge of that,” Victor said. “According to the book, somebody is out to get you at the moment. Somebody powerful, I’d say. And if you push them too far, you’re going to be in real trouble. A cautious halt halfway brings good fortune, according to this.”

  Em stared at him openmouthed. He was already in real trouble, but apart from that, everything Victor said was spot on. And he’d figured it out by fiddling with a pile of dried sticks!

  As Victor turned to a later page in his book, Em heard his own name emerge from the buzz of conversation behind him. Not just his friendly nickname either, but his full name, spoken formally: Edward Michael Goverton. Em felt himself go cold. He’d given a false name to Jeff and told nobody else who he was. Even Victor didn’t have a name for him other than “boy.”

  “Your development is hexagram thirty-three, which is called ‘Retreat,’” Victor told him. “That says it all. The only way to deal with the dangerous situation is to get out of it. The good news is, you can get out of it. But only if you move quickly.”

  Em was already moving quickly. He was on his feet and headed for the back door of the shelter. Attracted by the sudden movement, the two men from Social Services—they had to be from Social Services—turned in his direction. “Hey,” one of them called, “are you Edward Goverton?” Except he wasn’t from Social Services, he was the man from the train, the man who’d followed him to Paris.

  Em burst into a run. The back door was through the dormitory and down a passageway past the lavatories. Behind him, Jeff started to protest as the two men sprinted across the common room without another word. The woman stepped in front of him, grabbed his arm, and said something sharply into his face.

  As Em reached the open doorway of the dormitory, the men in suits were already halfway across the common room. He glanced behind in time to see Victor casually trip one up as he raced past the table where Em had been sitting just seconds before. The man careered against another table, fought briefly for his balance, then crashed heavily to the floor. His companion leaped over the body and redoubled his speed.

  The dormitory was a jumble of temporary beds that slowed Em down as he zigzagged between them. But it slowed his pursuer even more, so he was only a third of the way through as Em reached the far side of the room. Em jerked open a door and raced down the dingy passageway, praying that the back door at the end was not locked. He reached it as the man following entered the passage, then experienced everything dissolve into slow motion as he turned the handle, tugged experimentally, felt the first hint of a catch before the door pulled open.

  Em was outside now, in a narrow back street, and time was running frantically again. He could hear the heavy footfalls behind him, fancied he could hear the man’s labored breathing as he slammed the door. His whole instinct screamed at him to keep running, to run like the wind; but for some reason Victor’s voice was echoing inside his head with a sentence he’d quoted from I Ching: “A cautious halt halfway brings good fortune.”

  Despite his every impulse, Em stopped to look around. Beside the back door was an empty trash can. He threw the lid away with a clatter, then forced the rim of the can under the knob of the door. He kicked it savagely into place so that it jammed tight. Seconds later his pursuer was rattling the door furiously, shrieking with frustration.

  But by then Em was disappearing down the side street on his way to freedom.

  Chapter 18

  Em blew the whole day in a mixture of worry and fear. How had they found him? No one knew he was staying in the shelter. He’d only decided to go there when he found himself standing outside it . . . and even that had been an accident. He’d lied to Jeff about who he was and told no one else. He should have been absolutely safe, absolutely anonymous, yet the man who’d followed him to France had found him in a single night and turned up with his friends to get him first thing in the morning. Who the hell were they? Until he figured that out and how they’d found him, there was every chance they would find him again. Not to mention the fact that the real Social Services must still be after him. His life was turning into a chase movie.

  He slid into a coffee shop and bought coffee and a ham roll to go, then caught a bus to carry him out of the district. He disembarked at random and headed into a nearby park, trying desperately to shake off the sensation of invisible pursuers.

  Eventually, late in the afternoon, he walked out of town altogether and climbed a grassy hillside to a spot where he could see anyone approaching half a mile away. He knew it was an overreaction, but he felt safer here, more able to think.

  He tried a trick his father had taught him: laying out his problems in his mind one by one in the hope he might get some idea what to do next. The overall sequence was simple enough. Someone had killed his father. There had been strangers at the funeral, one in a car with diplomatic plates, one who carried a handgun. Someone had rifled his father’s study. The man with the handgun had followed Em to France. While Em was away, someone had persuaded two doctors to c
ommit his mother to a mental clinic, and someone had rifled their entire home. This was obviously tied up with the fact that he was being followed, but where was the pattern that made sense of it all?

  It had started to rain again by the time he got back into town. Not the downpour of the night before, but a steady drizzle that somehow managed to be just as wetting. It focused his mind on where he was going to spend the night.

  There was no question of returning to the Salvation Army shelter. Or any other local shelter, come to that. If he wanted to sleep in a warm bed tonight, he needed to leave town and find a shelter somewhere he wasn’t known, somewhere that had too many shelters for his pursuers to check them all. London was the obvious choice.

  Em hesitated. He thought he probably had enough money to cover his fare to London; but once he paid it, he’d have very little cash left over. In fact, now that he came to think of it, what with wandering and worrying, he’d forgotten to change his euros in a bank that day, so he might not have enough for the fare after all. More to the point, just staying free was hardly enough. He had to find out what was going on, and he wasn’t going to do that in London. In fact, traveling to London just to get shelter had to be really stupid since he’d just have to travel back again, and he wasn’t sure he had the funds for that. He pulled out his phone and dialed Charlotte’s number.

  By the time he reached the central depot, the last bus was gone (at 11 p.m., according to the timetable posted outside). But by now he’d more or less decided against London anyway. There was no sign of Charlotte yet; and after ten minutes waiting in the shadow of an archway, he was beginning to wonder if she was coming at all. Then a taxi drew up and she stepped out of it.

  “Over here!” Em whispered urgently as she stood frowning at the closed gates of the station.

  “Are you all right?” Charlotte asked anxiously as she joined him in the archway. “You sounded weird on the phone.”

  “I’m fine. Did you bring the money?”

  Charlotte nodded. “Yes.”

  “How much could you get?”

  “A hundred pounds.”

  Em almost choked. He needed money badly, but this was way more than he’d expected from her. “A hundred pounds?!”

  “It’s all I had,” she snapped angrily, obviously mistaking his tone. Her own tone softened into an anxious “You will give it back when all this is over? I’m saving for an iPad.”

  “Every penny. I promise.” He impulsively kissed her on the cheek, and she blushed.

  After she’d gone, he walked around the corner to the train station, which was still ablaze with light although not exactly packed with people, and discovered his luck had changed. There were several late-night shops still open, plus an all-night fast-food bar. To his delight, one of the shops was Camping World; and a huge sign in the window was advertising a sale.

  He spent £9.99 on the cheapest sleeping bag in the store: SALE, screamed the sign, LESS THAN HALF PRICE FOR THIS ITEM. He had money now, thanks to Charlotte, but he still had to watch his spending or the extra hundred wouldn’t last very long. He went around to the fast-food bar and spent fifty pence to buy a bag of chips, which he ate on a bench on one of the platforms. He dropped the greasy bag into a litter bin, then headed down a broad flight of steps to the underground passageways.

  There were seven passages in all, each one leading to a different platform. Four of them were fully lit to show their platforms were still operational. In the remaining three, the lights were dimmed: the platforms they led to were closed for the night. Em picked one of the dimmed passageways at random.

  He walked until he was out of sight of the entrance, then unfolded his new sleeping bag and began to climb inside it. He wasn’t the only one sleeping here. He’d already passed a large cardboard carton with a huddled shape inside, and a little farther on from him there was a sleeping figure under a tattered blanket. Em settled himself against a wall, cradled his head in his arm, and closed his eyes.

  The passageway was a good choice. It was dry and reasonably warm despite a constant draft. There would be no one wandering past to disturb him before the platform reopened in the morning. It was possible, he supposed, that some railway official might turn up to move him on, but he doubted it.

  But sleep didn’t come easily, even though he was tired out from his day of walking. He kept thinking he’d wasted a day, a day he could ill afford to waste, when he should be making plans. He’d started out with the bold idea of discovering the truth about his father’s death, finding out who caused it and all the other hassles. But since then all he’d really done was run. Worse, he still couldn’t think what else to do.

  Everywhere he might think of going would certainly be thought of by the people after him, so it was really only a matter of luck whether he’d be undisturbed wherever he picked. The yawn stretched his jaw without warning, all his niggling thoughts turned fuzzy, and he sank into a comfortable darkness.

  A woman screamed.

  Em sat bolt upright. There was no sense of time passing, and for an instant he had absolutely no idea where he was. Then he remembered and looked around frantically. Something was terribly wrong. The scream came again, followed by a stream of swearing that echoed from wall to wall. He started to scramble from his sleeping bag, fumbling with the zipper in his haste to get it open. A man’s voice tried to cut across the woman’s shrieks, but Em could not make out the words. He shook free of the bag eventually, moved quickly to the corner of the passage, and peered cautiously around it.

  The men who’d chased him from the Salvation Army shelter were engaged in a ferocious altercation with a tiny, white-haired woman—the sleeping shape in the cardboard carton Em had seen earlier. The carton itself was tipped over on its side now, and the woman’s belongings—they looked like old rags and shoes—were scattered. One of the men had hold of her arm, but only in an attempt to stave off her furious attack. Even so, she managed to pummel him with her free hand while trying desperately to kick his legs and keep up a stream of abuse. Em could have kicked himself for not listening to his fear and moving on. It was only dumb luck that they’d disturbed this feisty little woman before they found him.

  Em turned and ran. The shouts of the woman would cover any sound of his footfalls, so he had a real chance of getting away. He reached the steps with no sign of pursuit and took them two at a time. He emerged onto a darkened platform, slick with rain—this part of the station had no roof. A single, self-illuminated sign promised the next train at 6 a.m. Em ran to the end of the platform, breathing in waterlogged air, then dropped down onto the track and followed it all the way out of the station before climbing a fence into somebody’s backyard and then opening a gate that took him into an alley. Minutes later, he was back on the main streets.

  He felt elated. He knew where his pursuers were tonight. If they were checking the station, it meant he would be safe somewhere else—anywhere else. Except possibly the shelters where his description might be circulated. His mind went back to the first thoughts he’d had when he went on the run. He could head for the canal and shelter under one of the bridges. His sleeping bag was waterproof and zipped up all around his head so that only his face would be exposed. That made a big difference. Although the weather was wet, it was still mild, so he’d be just as cozy as he’d been . . .

  The thought remained unfinished as Em realized he’d left his sleeping bag in the passage at the railway station.

  Chapter 19

  The canal proved a mistake. He found a bridge quickly enough, but the wind blew rain right under it, so he might as well have lain down in the open. Worse still, somebody had been using this tiny stretch of canal bank as a toilet, and the smell was awful.

  All the same he trudged along the bank in search of another bridge until the streetlamps ran out and darkness forced him to retrace his steps. It was well into the early hours of the morning now, and since he’d slept a little in the station passageway, he was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t forget about s
helter altogether and start a new day early. But it was just a passing thought. He knew he needed more sleep.

  He found what he was looking for by accident. A stretch of canal bank ran parallel to a railway line . . . just where the railway entered a tunnel. Em climbed up the embankment, made a slippery descent down the other side, and headed straight for the tunnel.

  He discovered there was a concrete apron on one side of the track broad enough for him to sleep on. He placed the palm of his hand against one wall of the tunnel and used it as a guide until all light faded and he was standing in pitch darkness. Then he slid down, curled up in a fetal position, and tried to settle himself for sleep.

  He awoke with a light shining in his face.

  Em scrambled to his feet, his mind racing. He was blinded and confused, but his instinct was to make a run for it. He could worry later about how they’d found him. He hit out blindly, somehow managed to slap the flashlight aside, and headed off like a rabbit. He caught his foot on the railway line and fell heavily. His pursuer—there only seemed to be one of them—was on him at once. Em tried desperately to struggle, but a knee in the small of his back pressed him down effectively. “Stop wriggling!” a voice hissed in his ear. “Look at me!”

  Em turned his head as the man turned the flashlight to shine on his own face. “Victor?” Em gasped.

  The pressure on his back eased abruptly as Victor climbed off him. “You never stop to think, do you? Same thing in the shelter: first hint of trouble and you’re off.”

  Em brushed himself down. He’d grazed the palm of one hand but was otherwise unhurt. “What are you doing here, Victor?”

  “Looking for you,” Victor said.

  “How did you find me?”