Three Strikes

by Lucy Christopher

  ‘He’d help you out if he…’

  ‘I know,’ Jared cut in. ‘I’m sure he’d offer me a place to stay if he found out I’m roughing it in the van, but Gui’s got enough on his plate at the moment, hasn’t he?’ Bo couldn’t very well argue with that. ‘I’ll work something out soon.’

  ‘You know, if you want somewhere to park where nobody’ll bother you, I know the perfect place. Somewhere nobody in town ever goes.’

  ‘You do? Where?’

  Bo nodded toward a pair of bolt-cutters hanging on the wall. ‘Grab those, and a padlock if you have one, and I’ll show you.’

  Chapter Four

  Bo left Jared at the gate to Blackfin Woods. She had never ventured into the woods; neither had anyone else in town, as far as she was aware. It was off-limits, an enormous padlocked chain wound through the iron gates by Old Moley, Blackfin’s resident handyman. Beyond the fence railings, the trees crowded together like some sinister clique, popping a hip and hissing at her to stay away. Bo didn’t need the warning. She wasn’t foolish enough to give in to curiosity.

  But wasn’t that what Bo was doing in trying to figure out what was going on every night in the town? Growing up in Blackfin, Bo had learned it was always best not to question the strange ways of the town, and now she was on some self-imposed mission to unearth one of its mysteries.

  But I need the distraction, she admitted to herself. And wasn’t this better than going to the cemetery every night like some music-loving ghoul?

  She wasn’t sure she was getting any closer to solving the mystery. Jared hadn’t exactly been helpful, though Bo did feel a little pleased to have been able to help him out with his undesirable living situation. At least in the woods Jared wouldn’t have some busybody knocking on his van windows at daybreak.

  On her way home, Bo was walking past the library when it occurred to her she might have another thread she could follow up. The voice – what little Bo had heard it say – had mentioned something about an east door. Bo had never heard that phrase used in Blackfin, and certainly didn’t know of anywhere in town with an ‘east door’.

  She walked past the ancient public computer, noting Ms Stacks’ new sign to patrons: YOU CAN TRY THE INTERNET IF YOU LIKE, BUT REMEMBER THIS IS BLACKFIN. Bo understood exactly what that meant; internet searches here were more likely to send a person off on a total wild goose chase rather than divulging anything useful. But books were different. Even the weirdness of Blackfin couldn’t touch books. At least, Bo hoped not.

  She approached the librarian’s desk. Ms Stacks looked up, smiling warmly when she saw it was Bo.

  ‘Margaret! How are you? And how are your mother and those adorable brothers of yours?’

  Bo hated it when people used her real name rather than her nickname (even though the nickname referred to the Little Bo Peep nursery rhyme, which Bo found ridiculous), but the librarian was so damned cheerful Bo had never quite managed to correct her.

  ‘Mum’s put the twins up for adoption,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘Fingers crossed they’ll go to a family that breeds man-eating tigers.’

  The librarian let loose a cackle which seemed far too sinister for someone wearing an angora cardigan with pearl snaps.

  ‘Oh, you had me going there! Tigers, honestly.’ She laughed again, then put on a more business-like face. ‘But you aren’t carrying your usual stack of books, so I wonder what I can help you with? Please don’t tell me you’ve gone through our entire catalogue?’

  ‘Actually, I’m not quite sure where to start,’ Bo said, picking at the hem of her coat. ‘I heard someone talking about an east door somewhere in Blackfin, but I didn’t catch where exactly it was, and now I need to find it. Do you know anything about an east door?’

  Ms Stacks pursed her lips thoughtfully, but eventually shook her head. ‘Not that I can recall. East door … It sounds like the kind of thing you’d find in an old building. A church, or town hall or something; buildings that were built more with the compass in mind, you know? Hmm … there’s no church here, of course, but maybe the school? It has a couple of centuries under its belt, and that ugly old weathervane on the roof.’

  Bo consulted a mental map of the school. ‘I don’t think there’s an east-facing door at Blackfin High.’

  The librarian’s eyes travelled over the shelves. ‘Well, I would suggest looking at the local history section, if we had one. But Blackfin has never really caught someone’s attention long enough for them to write about our history.’ It was Ms Stacks’ turn to sigh. ‘A shame, really. Is there anything else I can help you with?’

  Bo was about to say no when she remembered one tiny sliver from the dream she had had of the peculiar siblings: the girl had called her brother by his name. ‘Would you happen to know someone named Bruno, Ms Stacks? I’m not sure how old he’d be now, but he was in Blackfin at some point when he was around my age … probably a long time ago.’ She was thinking aloud, but it made sense. Bo would surely remember the two black-haired siblings if they’d been in town recently. ‘He had black hair, and a sister. She might’ve been his twin. Does that ring any bells?’

  Ms Stacks shook her head slowly. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you.’

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ Bo said, and for the first time in her life, she left the library not carrying a single new book to read.

  That night, Bo was determined to follow her brothers and whoever else she found wandering the streets. She would figure out what was going on once and for all – and ignore the part of her that just wanted to pretend that nothing was happening, just as she pretended every other day in this town.

  But turning a blind eye had caught her out once before. Bo hadn’t thought anything really bad would happen in Blackfin. Then Sky had died, and she couldn’t pretend that hadn’t happened. It hit her every day, as though Sky were dying over and over. Each time, the feeling of missing her best friend wrapped around Bo’s ribs like a boa constrictor, squeezing the air out of her.

  Bo turned up the music so it blasted through her earbuds. The random selector had chosen a classical piano piece (honestly, what had Sky been thinking with her playlist?) but Bo had changed it to a dubstep compilation that was just aggravating enough to keep her awake. When midnight rolled around, she was dressed and ready for action.

  On cue, the twins crossed the hallway outside her room, padding along in their little slippers without a glance in her direction. Bo followed.

  Their mother was at work again, so Mrs Brady had assumed her position on the lounger, an empty packet of bourbon creams in her lap. Her mouth hung open, bottom lip quivering on every outward snore like a leaf caught in a breeze. Bo gently closed the woman’s mouth and continued her pursuit of the twins.

  They headed for the coast road. It wound downhill toward the school, past the pier where Sky had fallen to her death in the icy water below. Bo watched Levi and Scout trot along, peering into nooks and crevices, prodding loose stones in the sea wall as though testing it. But they didn’t pause for more than a few seconds in any one spot.

  As they passed the school, the old swing hanging from the oak tree just inside the gate swung back in the breeze, letting out a loud creak. It was loud enough that Bo heard it even over her music, and she jumped.

  When she turned to follow the twins, they were standing near the Penny Well. Standing, and staring right back at her. She waved, but neither boy moved. There was something strange about the way they looked at her – looked through her.

  A hiss of static stabbed at her eardrums. She fumbled for the iPod controls, trying to forward the track or turn down the volume, but nothing worked. The hissing grew agonisingly loud. Left with no other choice, Bo clawed back her scarf and yanked the earbuds out. She immediately realised her mistake.

  ‘Find me, Bruno … I’m alone in the dark, and I can’t stand it … can’t rest… How could he do this to us? Twins should never be kept apart… Never… Never … the east door … find it, Bruno…’

  The voice whispe
red beneath the echo of static still humming in her ears, so dreamlike and compelling it was almost a lullaby. Cold sweat prickled down Bo’s spine.

  ‘Who are you?’ she muttered, her head starting to swim.

  ‘…never be kept apart … find me, Bruno…’

  Bo shook her head, fighting – fighting – not to succumb to the voice’s pull. It felt like hours that she struggled against it, but in fact she held out merely seconds before the words snared her, and Bo fell deep into darkness.

  There were lights ahead of her, beyond the trees. They moved like they were dancing to the discordant music that drifted to and fro with the breeze. But it wasn’t the lights or the music drawing Bo forward. It was the sound of a girl’s voice, singing. The song had no words, no rhythm or fixed melody, but Bo thought it might be the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. It made her want to move, to dance and to weep all at once. Very un-Bo-like.

  The sound shifted with the scene, and now the girl was talking to her brother, giggling and whispering as he shook his head in mock sternness. There was a building in front of them, unlit except for the flickering of candles making the stained-glass windows glow.

  The girl sang, a little trilling sequence of notes, and a big black bird – a raven, possibly? – flew down and landed at her feet for a moment before it turned and fluttered up to one of the windowsills. The building looked like a church, Bo thought, taking in the shepherd’s image on the window.

  As the black-haired girl continued her song, the raven began to peck at the glass. And peck. A crack appeared in it. As the raven continued to jab, the crack grew and spread, webbing out across the window. Then a door flew open, banging against the side of the building, and a tall man stood outlined in the doorway. He looked haggard, his greasy hair stuck down to his head and neck.

  ‘Demons!’ he bellowed, eyes searching the shadows where the twins now hid behind a large tree trunk. ‘Devil children sent to plague this town! Well, I will not stand for it, do you hear me? Do you hear me?’

  And the girl stepped from the shadows, calling out one final note to the bird still chipping away at the stained-glass window. It cocked its head at the sound, then dropped from the windowsill and flew straight at the man in the doorway.

  The image faded, sight and sound falling away as Bo felt herself drift out of the dream, but not before she heard the echo of the man screaming.

  ‘My eye! My God, it’s taken my eye!’

  Chapter Five

  Bo woke lying somewhere dark and … rumbling? The ground beneath her seemed to shift and vibrate, and it took Bo a few seconds to shake off the eeriness of the dream and work out that she was in some kind of vehicle. A large vehicle, judging by the fact that she was lying at full stretch with her cheek pressed against a roughly carpeted floor. There was a peculiar smell, too, like dirty socks and burnt paper.

  She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Her legs and arms wouldn’t cooperate. Something held her ankles together and her wrists behind her, leaving Bo convulsing like a grounded fish. With an odd mix of weariness and panic, Bo came to the conclusion that she was currently being kidnapped.

  Ignore the panic. Just think it through, one problem at a time.

  Craning her neck, Bo could make out the back of a mussed head in the driver’s seat. It was Jared.

  Wait – Jared was kidnapping her? Though now that Bo thought about it, she should have worked that out from the fact that she was lying in a camper van. Such vehicles were not exactly common in Blackfin.

  She still seemed to be wearing all her clothes, and couldn’t feel any particular injury other than a mild cramp in her right calf, so maybe Jared would come out of this with his testicles intact.

  Maybe.

  Bo wiggled her fingers, testing the ropes. Doable, she decided. Something Bo had never been particularly keen to share, even with her closest friends, was that she and her siblings had inherited a rather unusual trait from their mother. They could all dislocate their joints at will, and bend their bones to degrees where others’ would snap. This was something her mother found useful in her work as an exotic dancer, and which Bo had always thought was rather gross. Now, though, she saw the upside to it as she painlessly and silently slid her hands out of the bonds holding her. That done, she made short work of the ties at her ankles. Being unbound still left her with another problem, however.

  Bo recognised the scenery whizzing past the van’s windows; they were driving over the highest point of the Lychgate Mountains, and had just passed the town limits. The problem was how fast they were travelling. She couldn’t simply jump out of the van’s rear door – not without causing herself serious injury. No, road rash was not a good look.

  She needed to stop the van somehow. Then she could make a run for it.

  Ugh. Running.

  But at least she would be running downhill, she consoled herself. First, though, she needed to make Jared stop the van.

  She surveyed the junk scattered on the camper’s floor. Clothes lay tangled at her feet, and amongst them all kinds of debris, including a plastic tub of hair gel (not heavy enough to whack someone over the head with), a tin of beans (better), and a small, near-empty bottle of tabasco sauce. She weighed the merits of spraying the hot sauce in his eyes, or perhaps breaking off the neck of the bottle and stabbing him with it. It only took her a moment to decide both options were ridiculous. She toyed with the discarded rope at her feet; perhaps she could use it to throttle him a bit? Bo let the rope drop, and was just reaching for the tin of beans when she spotted another item nestled in the litter of Jared’s existence. It was a book bound in thick, cracked leather which was charred and browned over half its surface. Bo picked it up, testing its heft. It was heavy enough to deliver a decent blow, she gauged, but would probably be less effective than the tin of beans. She was about to toss it back among the debris when it creaked open in her hand.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Bo would have been taken aback by a book autonomously exposing its innards in this way; however, she had come to expect the unexpected, so did no more than raise an eyebrow.

  The book’s pages were not printed. In fact, the book was not quite a book at all. At the head of each page was a date, though most of them were illegible thanks to the discolouration of the paper. It was a diary, written by someone some sixteen years earlier. Each page was lined with a scrawling cursive script, and though Bo could only read snatches of what was written between the grime, it seemed to have been written by someone with quite a temper. The pages were peppered with angry dashes and stops so full they practically punctured the paper. Parts had faded, as though damaged by water, which made it read as though the writer’s thoughts had drifted in and out as they wrote. Bo was about to flip to the front to see whether the owner had left their name, but a line of text caught her eye.

  Those wretched twins have returned to plague me.

  Naturally, any mention of wretched twins brought to mind Bo’s own brothers, though it only took her a second to work out that irritating though they were, it was unlikely someone had been complaining about them a decade before they’d been born. But the howlers weren’t the only twins on Bo’s radar. A finger of ice slid down her spine as she remembered the dream she had just woken from, with the giggling girl and her twin brother, and the raven sent to peck out a man’s eye. Because Bo had no doubt that the girl’s voice had made the bird attack him; its sound was so tantalising and insidious, she’d been half tempted to peck the man’s eye out herself.

  Bo closed the journal. Did it belong to the man from the dream? The one with the eye?

  It seemed like a huge coincidence … although perhaps not, given that the voice seemed to be drawing her and the other kids of Blackfin toward something. But what?

  Scanning the pages, she saw Blackfin mentioned several times. That was a definite connection, wasn’t it? And it probably meant the author was someone local. Who, though? And how had Jared come to have the journal?

  Those questions would
have to wait. She wanted very much to keep reading, but there had to be a better time to focus on the old journal than when she was still very much mid-kidnapping, and getting further and further from Blackfin. Bo stuffed the book inside her coat and reached for the tin of beans. She probably wouldn’t use it, she reasoned; knocking Jared out while he was driving might be a tad dangerous. Bo pictured the overturned van, glass flying everywhere, mushrooming flames and so on. But Jared didn’t look like much of a fighter, so perhaps the threat of violence would be enough? She moved so she was right behind Jared’s seat and tapped him on the shoulder with the beans.

  ‘Oi, dickhead. Stop the van, yeah? Otherwise I’ll have to brain you with this tin of beans.’

  Jared jumped rather comically, and the van swerved while he looked from Bo back to the road.

  ‘Oh, good, you’re … well, you again,’ he said. ‘I hoped that would work.’

  Bo was about to reiterate her threat when Jared clicked on the indicator (signalling to whom on this empty stretch of mountain road, she couldn’t guess) and pulled over. The van idled there, waiting. Bo maintained her grip on the bean tin.

  ‘What do you mean, I’m me again? And what the hell were you playing at, tying me up like that?’

  Jared turned around, glancing only briefly at the makeshift weapon in her hand before meeting Bo’s eyes.

  ‘I saw you wandering near the woods, but when I tried to talk to you, you completely blanked me. I remembered what you said about kids sleepwalking, and I know it can be dangerous to wake someone when they’re in that state, so I just started following you to make sure you didn’t fall into a ditch and hurt yourself. But then you seemed to notice me following you, and you … well, you went for me.’