Gerald looked up at the horizontal line above them. If that was where the tide was going to stop, they were in big trouble unless they got there first. His mind shot back to his sketch with the waves crashing against the base of the cliff. He glanced over his shoulder—rows of breakers were rolling across the bay.
The first one struck seconds later. A curl of water flattened them to the rock shelf and drenched them through.
‘We’re going to get smashed,’ Ruby cried over the roar of the waves. ‘We’ve got to get higher.’
But the cliff face ahead of them was sheer—there was no way up.
Another wave crashed on top of them. Sam slipped and fell hard. Ruby grabbed him by the wrist to stop him being pulled back into the bay.
Gerald pointed to a tangle of vines growing up one side of the cliff. He was almost too exhausted to speak. ‘Over there,’ he said. ‘There might be a way up.’
He stumbled to his left and tried to make his way onto the thick matting of greenery, inching higher and higher. He reached back and hauled Ruby up next to him. Sam was only metres behind.
Like sailors in the rigging, the three of them started scaling the net of vines, desperate to escape the pounding surf.
But before they could get clear, a wave rose from the bay, far bigger than any that had come before. It crested over them, blocking the sun.
Then it crashed down, swallowing them whole.
Chapter 8
All was a blur. Gerald blinked to clear his vision, but he could make no sense of what he saw. Light beams shone through a dull greyness that seemed to surround him. He ran a hand over his eyes and wiped away a smear of moss and bits of leaves.
Was that someone calling his name?
He was looking up at something that looked like his foot. And he was lying in water? Of course there was water. They’d been smashed by a huge wave.
They.
Where were Sam and Ruby?
Gerald let his head flop to the right. Ruby was on her side, facing him, coughing up water. Gerald realised he was lying on a steep slope, his feet above his head. He struggled across to Ruby on his hands and knees.
‘You all right?’
Ruby responded with another round of liquid hacks. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
Gerald took in their surroundings. They appeared to be on a narrow bank at the bottom of a deep cavern. Behind them, a large pool of black water lay like a hibernating bear. Steep walls, covered in moss, soared up on all sides. High above, to one side, there was a small opening surrounded by greenery. That was where the light was coming in.
‘The wave must have washed us through that hole,’ Gerald said. ‘That green stuff must be the vines we were climbing on.’
Ruby jolted upright.
‘Where’s Sam?’
Gerald shook his head. ‘He must still be up there.’
‘Or washed away,’ Ruby said. ‘Oh, Sam…’
Gerald didn’t know what to think. ‘He’s a good swimmer,’ he heard himself say. ‘He’ll be right.’
Ruby yelled out for her brother. The only reply was a torrent of water gushing through the opening high above.
‘The tide must still be coming in,’ Gerald said. ‘And judging by the state of these walls, it looks like this cave will fill up.’
Ruby scrambled as far up the slope as she could, then slipped on the moss and slid back to the bottom.
‘This is hopeless,’ she said. ‘If the water fills this place it’ll be like a washing machine. How can we swim against that?’ Ruby looked to Gerald. ‘I want to find Sam,’ she said.
There was a rumbling overhead and more water surged into the cave, sweeping the legs from under Gerald and Ruby and washing them into the pool at the back of the cavern.
Gerald stumbled to his feet, waist deep in black water. Ruby rose up next to him.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.
Then there was a noise behind them: something breaking the surface of the water. Something was rising out of the dark centre of the pool.
Ruby grabbed Gerald’s arm and spun around.
A body burst out of the water with a roar. Ruby’s scream cut the air like the back of an axe.
It was Sam.
‘Hey you two,’ he said as he bobbed in the water. ‘You’ll never guess where I’ve just been.’
Ruby shoved Gerald aside and waded deeper into the pool towards her brother.
‘You pea brain!’ she yelled. ‘You utter dolt.’ She then threw her arms around his neck and held him tight.
Sam grinned at Gerald over Ruby’s shoulder. ‘Sisters, eh!’
Ruby unpeeled her arms. Then she smacked Sam across the back of the head. ‘Where have you been? I thought you’d drowned.’
Sam rubbed his skull, fixing his head torch back into place.
‘You two seemed okay after we got washed down here, so I went exploring,’ Sam said. He tapped the torch with a finger. ‘Good thing you got the waterproof ones, Gerald.’
The camping gear. Gerald had forgotten about his backpack. He slapped at his shoulders and was stunned to find the pack was still there. He scrabbled around inside it, pulled out a torch and strapped it to his head. Ruby was already shining her head torch beam into the gloom.
‘Exploring?’ Ruby said. ‘This pool is all there is down here.’
Sam adjusted the lamp and trained the light onto his sister’s face. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, genius.’
A rumble sounded from above and another surge of water shot though the cave opening. It hit them like a bomb, pushing them beneath the surface.
‘Right,’ said Sam when they came up for air. ‘We’re going to have to do a little more swimming.’
‘Swimming?’ Ruby said. ‘Where?’
‘It’s not far,’ Sam said. ‘Trust me.’
The look on Ruby’s face made it clear trusting Sam was the last thing she was going to do.
Sam led Ruby to the middle of the pool, up to her armpits. ‘Just take a big breath and follow me, okay?’
‘What if I run out of air?’ Ruby said, staring horrified at the surface.
Sam thought for a second. ‘That would be a bad thing.’
Before she could give it any more thought, Sam grabbed her hand and they both disappeared beneath the water.
Gerald glanced up at the sound of another wave approaching. An avalanche of water was rushing down at him. He took a breath, and dived.
Gerald was vaguely aware of the surface above him being bombarded by the pounding waters flowing in from the bay. But his senses were focused on the shaft of torchlight that probed the darkness ahead of him. He kicked down. He could just make out the two fingers of light coming from Sam and Ruby’s torches below. They were tracing the edge of a sheer rock shelf, deeper and deeper into the pool. Gerald’s ears howled in protest as the pressure ground into them, squeezing like a clamp on his head.
Then he lost sight of the others.
His torch sliced into the gloom but all he could see was rock wall plunging ever deeper. There was no sign of Sam or Ruby. They’d gone.
Gerald kicked on, driving himself deeper. And then the rock shelf disappeared. All he could see was bottomless space. His lungs tightened; he was running out of air. Panic rose in his gut. What was going on? His friends had vanished. He had a head-spinning sense of disorientation. Which way was up?
Then Gerald thought to blow out a bubble. His eyes followed its smooth ascent. And his sense of place was restored. He had swum under the rock shelf. He turned his head for the surface and kicked hard. Just when he thought his lungs would collapse, he burst into the sweet salt air.
Sam and Ruby were sitting on a sandy bank at the edge of the pool. Gerald crawled out of the water and flopped beside them. They were in a vast grotto. The ceiling soared high above, lost in the stalactites and shadows.
‘We should be safe from any high tide in here,’ Sam said, his voice echoing into the space around them.
‘Won’t
this just fill up like the other cave?’ Ruby asked.
‘I reckon that rock shelf we swam under is a bit like an S-bend in a toilet,’ Sam said. ‘The water level will get as high as the other cave, but this one goes higher up into the island, so we can climb above the tide.’
Gerald let out an empty laugh. ‘We’re in a toilet? Seems about right for how I feel at the moment.’
He adjusted his headlamp. Their little beach opened up to an enormous cavern. A rocky platform rose gently behind them.
‘Let’s see where this goes,’ Gerald said, and he clambered up onto the platform.
Ruby swept her torch in a broad arc, catching details of crags and fissures in the walls of the stone cathedral around them. ‘I wonder if anyone has ever been down here,’ she said. She glanced across at her brother. ‘Hope there aren’t any rats.’
Sam’s jaw tightened. ‘There’s no need for that,’ he said.
‘You’re being very brave,’ Ruby said. She skipped ahead to catch up with Gerald. ‘I’m very proud of—’ This time, Ruby’s scream almost ruptured Gerald’s right eardrum.
‘What is it?’ Sam raced to join them. Ruby was clamped onto Gerald’s back like a petrified koala. Three beams of light converged on a point on the ground. They lit a human skeleton.
It lay on a stone tablet where the rock ceiling dipped low, its feet closest to them.
‘It’s all right,’ Sam said to Ruby, placing a hand on her shaking arm. ‘I think he’s dead.’
Ruby unwound herself from Gerald’s shoulders. ‘Hardly anyone likes you,’ she said to her brother, doing her best to still the quaver in her voice. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
Gerald inched closer to the skeleton for a closer look at the nest of bones. The body was lying on its back, with its right arm stretched behind its head, as if pointing to something deeper into the cavern. The dull grey of the bones suggested it had been there a very long time. Then the lamp caught a glint on the extended hand.
‘There’s something on one of the fingers,’ Gerald said. He dropped to his knees and crawled closer.
‘It’s a ring,’ he said. ‘A gold ring.’
Then Gerald gasped.
‘What’s the matter?’ Ruby asked, poking her head out from behind Sam.
‘The ring,’ Gerald said. ‘I think it has my family seal on it.’
‘No!’ Ruby said. ‘How can that be?’
Sam squeezed in beside Gerald, shining his light onto the hand. ‘Three arms locked in a triangle around a sun,’ he said. ‘Looks like it to me.’
Gerald reached out to take the band of gold but it was stuck on the curled finger, clenched and locked in place by a thumb. And it wouldn’t budge.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘This isn’t bone. It’s more like stone.’
‘Fossilised,’ Sam said. ‘All that silt from the bay. All those high tides. A thousand years ago the water must have reached in here and covered him up.’ Sam rapped his knuckles on the skull, which emitted a hollow clonk. ‘Looks like Ruby’s not the only petrified thing down here. This guy’s made of stone.’
Gerald tugged hard on the finger and with a final grunt of effort it snapped off, releasing the ring into his hand. He buffed it against his shirt and held it next to the one on his left hand. Under the yellow beam of the headlamp, the rings gleamed in the surrounding dark.
‘Identical,’ Gerald said. He slipped the ring onto the little finger of his right hand; it almost clung to his skin. ‘A perfect fit,’ he said.
‘I guess this must be Lucius,’ Sam said. ‘Maybe the ruby casket is buried nearby.’
‘It’s all rock,’ Ruby said. ‘Not much hope of burying anything here.’ They hunted around the stone platform but there was no sign of any place where a casket could be hidden.
‘Unless he snuck in a jack hammer, I don’t think we’ll find any buried treasure in this place,’ Sam said.
Ruby looked doubtfully back at the pool they’d swum through. ‘Maybe it’s at the bottom of that thing,’ she said. ‘And I’m not volunteering to go have a look.’
Gerald sat next to his fossilised ancestor and rubbed the cold stone skull. ‘Come on, Lucius,’ he said. ‘Give it up. Where did you put the casket?’
‘How do you think he died?’ Ruby asked. She had edged a little closer to the skeleton, but was still keeping a careful distance.
‘High cholesterol?’ Sam said. ‘What do you think? He was trapped down here, stupid.’
‘Well, if he was trapped here, what makes you think we can get out?’ Ruby said. ‘Or hadn’t you thought of that?’
Sam’s face went blank. ‘We can swim back to the other cave,’ he said.
‘And what? Get pounded by the tide twice a day until someone on a relaxing stroll through the quicksand hears our cries for help? Brilliant suggestion.’
Gerald looked at the broken stone finger in his palm. Then at Lucius’s outstretched arm. A wrinkle of a thought unfurled in Gerald’s brain.
‘What are we going to do, Gerald?’ Ruby said.
Gerald didn’t respond. Instead, he tried to fix the broken finger back into place.
‘Gerald?’
The fractured knuckle wouldn’t stick. Gerald clambered closer, his shoulders up against the low rock ceiling as he tried to wedge the fragment back on.
‘What are you doing?’ Ruby asked.
‘Strange way to lie if you’re about to cark it, don’t you think?’ Gerald said, concentrating on repairing the skeleton’s hand. ‘If I was starving to death, I’d probably curl up in a ball. There. That’s got it.’ Gerald nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good as new.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Gerald looked down at his handiwork. ‘It’s almost like he’s pointing at something.’ He then banged the back of his head on the low rock ceiling.
Sparks filled his eyes at the pain stabbing into his brain. Gerald’s cursing filled the chamber. But it stopped abruptly when his torch lit the spot where he’d struck his head.
‘Will you look at that,’ he said in wonder.
Carved into the surface of the rock, just above Lucius’s outstretched hand, was a string of symbols:
‘The number ten, a circle with a line through it, a Y, an arrow and a triangle,’ Gerald said. ‘That’s what was written on the envelope that Great Aunt Geraldine left for me. Remember? The one that the thin man stole from the house in Chelsea. This is definitely Lucius. And he’s left us a note.’
‘But what does it mean?’ Ruby said.
Gerald had no idea. But his great aunt had thought it was important enough to write down. He rubbed his hand across the lump that was now bulging out from the back of his skull. The smack against the ceiling wasn’t the only thing giving him a headache.
‘Uh, Gerald,’ Sam said, his voice floating up from below the stone platform. ‘We have a problem.’
Gerald turned to face Sam. There was something different about him, but Gerald couldn’t quite place it.
‘My torch has just gone out,’ Sam said.
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Did we pack batteries?’ Ruby asked, tearing her pack from her shoulders and rifling inside.
‘I don’t remember buying any,’ Gerald said. He cast the beam from his torch onto his outstretched hand. It was dimming before his eyes.
‘Mine’s fading now!’ Ruby said. She looked at Gerald, lighting his face in the dying beam. ‘What are we going to do?’
Gerald fished around inside his pack and pulled out a small box on the end of a knotted lace. ‘A flint,’ he said. ‘I knew we’d bought one.’ He pulled out a metal pin the length of a match and struck it along the side of the box. A spark burst into the air.
‘We can light a fire,’ Gerald said. Relief flooded through him. It would be impossible to find a way out without any light.
‘Gerald,’ Ruby said. ‘We’re in a cave. There’s nothing to burn in here.’
In an instant, the relief that had lifted Gerald
was gone. Ruby was right. They were in a dank cave that hadn’t seen the sun in a million years. He watched as his headlamp faded to nothing.
And the cave was lost to an all-consuming darkness.
Chapter 9
Gerald tried to control his breathing. But in the black cloak of nothingness that had wrapped itself around him, it was almost impossible.
‘Sit down,’ he called out to Sam and Ruby. ‘Try not to move around.’
Gerald couldn’t see a thing. He pressed his hand to the end of his nose but his eyes couldn’t register any movement. The darkness was complete.
He tried the flint but the spark just hurt their eyes, and revealed nothing. Gerald blinked, trying to clear the arcing burn from his retinas.
‘I guess this is how Lucius sat it out.’ Sam’s voice sounded from somewhere to Gerald’s left. ‘In the dark. Like this.’
‘Shut up, Sam.’ Ruby was somewhere to Gerald’s right. It was probably just as well she wasn’t any closer to her brother.
Gerald closed his eyes. He had no idea what to do. Should they risk trying to swim out through the pool? But with no light they’d never find their way under that rock shelf. It was hopeless.
He opened his eyes.
And took a sharp breath. Was his mind playing tricks?
Or was the skull of Lucius Antonius glowing?
‘Can you see that?’ Gerald whispered.
‘What?’ Ruby asked.
Gerald crawled to the skeleton. He reached out to touch the skull and the back of his hand lit up in a faint blue glow. Gerald stared in wonder, then tilted his head upwards.
‘There’s a hole up here,’ he said. ‘In the ceiling.’ He carefully stood up, keeping his hands above his head to feel for the rocks above him. He tapped his fingers around a square opening that must have been hidden in shadows when they were first examining the cave. ‘I reckon I can climb this. Sam, give me a leg up.’
After a flurry of hand slapping in the dark that almost cost Sam an eye, Gerald was boosted into the tight shaft carved into the stone. ‘There’s hand notches cut into the sides,’ Gerald said. ‘Someone’s made this easy for us.’ He stretched out a hand and curled his fingers into a notch.
The Mask of Destiny Page 8
