by Tom Becker
Jonathan allowed himself to be pulled up out of his seat and led out of the reading room. Marianne was holding his hand tightly, and walking briskly towards the steps leading down the main entrance.
“Where we going?” he slurred.
“Sssh. . . We’re going to meet my friends Humble and Skeet, and then we’re going for a little drive. You see?”
There were two men standing at the foyer at the front of the hall, one much taller and more still than the other. Marianne gave them both an enthusiastic wave. The smaller man jumped about in response.
The last remaining spark of Jonathan’s consciousness was urging him to run, but his legs were betraying him, and he felt powerless to move away from Marianne. They took slow, deliberate steps down the staircase, and Jonathan realized that the woman was worried he was going to fall over. He tried to concentrate on keeping his footing. After all, he didn’t want to let her down. . .
A man walking in the opposite direction stumbled on the step, knocking into Marianne. She cursed, losing her grip on Jonathan’s arm. Suddenly the link between them had been broken, and he could feel his head clearing a little. He was in danger – he had to move. Jonathan pelted away up the staircase, beyond Marianne’s despairing lunge, skidded round a corner and disappeared from view.
He had no idea where he was going. All he knew was that he had to get as much distance between himself and that strange woman as possible. Jonathan flew past the coffee shop on the first floor, ignoring the stares of the people sitting there. He headed up another staircase, taking two steps at a time. From somewhere there was a shout, whether from a librarian or Marianne he wasn’t sure. He didn’t look behind him to check.
His head felt better now. It felt like Marianne had put some sort of spell on him, but Jonathan knew that wasn’t possible. One thing was clear, though: she had mentioned a place called Darkside. His dad had been on to something, and now Jonathan could pick up the trail.
He carried on up the staircase until it came out on to the top floor. Though the bustle and chatter from the main hall carried up here, there was no one to be seen. Slowing down to a walk, Jonathan went over to the front edge of the walkway and looked down. From up here, everything in the main hall seemed normal. Knots of schoolchildren and students talked and laughed together, while others sat down in the comfy seats scribbling into notepads or typing on laptops. Jonathan strained to catch a glimpse of Marianne. She was standing casually by the entrance, playing absent-mindedly with a strand of her hair. The two men were nowhere to be seen. Suddenly she looked up in Jonathan’s direction, and he pulled away from the ledge.
There was no guarantee that he was still safe. For all he knew, the two goons could be heading up towards him. And there was only one exit from the library that he knew about, and currently Marianne was standing right in front of it. Jonathan supposed that he could ask one of the librarians for help, but he didn’t fancy his chances of explaining his problem. Adults tended not to trust him, and he doubted that the kidnapping story would be swallowed that easily: “You see, there’s this woman who puts some kind of spell on you. . .” No, that wasn’t going to work. There didn’t even seem to be a fire alarm he could press.
On the far corner of the walkway, Jonathan caught sight of the smaller henchman reaching the top floor. He sniffed the air eagerly with his long nose, his jittery movements turning in Jonathan’s direction. Well, that settled it. He was going to have to do something. Moving quickly again, he rushed past the toilets and towards the bright shelter of a reading room, with the inscription “Maps” lit up above the doorway. As he moved towards it, the other henchman reached the top of the staircase on Jonathan’s side in a calm, regular stride.
By the side of the entrance, a sign informed readers that neither pencils nor bags were allowed in the Map Room. A hint of a smile appeared on Jonathan’s lips.
In the foyer, Marianne anxiously scanned the top floor for any sight of a commotion. It had looked like things were going as smoothly as they had in Trafalgar Square . . . and then that fool had knocked into her. She swore under her breath. Now she had to trust that Humble and Skeet could flush the boy out without alerting the authorities. It was a miracle that they hadn’t been noticed yet. Marianne knew that her special perfume could deflect attention for a certain amount of time, but not with all this running around. Even now, she noticed a frown on the face of one of the library staff, as if he was trying to remember something he had forgotten.
Then she saw Jonathan moving down the escalator, with a librarian holding him firmly by the arm. He was grinning triumphantly. Humble and Skeet followed several paces behind him, helpless onlookers. At the sight of this procession a security guard moved towards them, but the librarian shook her head.
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she said wearily.
“All this because of a pencil?” Jonathan protested. “I can’t believe you’re throwing me out just because I was carrying a stupid pencil!”
“You were threatening to colour in the maps,” the librarian replied. “Priceless antique maps. That’s why we’re throwing you out. We’ll have to confiscate your reader’s card as well.”
Jonathan gave an exaggerated sigh, then handed over the card. He nodded briskly at Marianne, and then headed out through the doors, upon which he broke into a breakneck run. The librarian turned to Marianne. “Kids. I don’t know what parents these days are thinking of, bringing them up to be like that.”
Marianne nodded sympathetically. The librarian sighed again, and then began trudging back to the map room. As soon as she was out of sight, the shorter man came buzzing up to her.
“You want Skeet to follow the puppy?”
“No need.” Marianne looked out at the glowering sky. “We know where he’s going already.”
6
Jonathan didn’t stop running until he had made it back to King’s Cross. This time he dived gratefully into the hordes of people queuing on the platform; trying to find him now would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. He only had to wait for a minute or so until a train stuttered into the station and he squeezed aboard, all the while keeping an eye out for any pursuers. As the doors beeped closed, Jonathan felt a sigh of relief. He had escaped.
After a couple of stops the carriage started to empty. Jonathan took a seat, and thought furiously. He knew that he was going to hunt for the crossing point described in Stevenson’s journal, but he couldn’t just disappear without telling anyone. However, if the kidnappers at the library were related to the intruder at the house, then it wasn’t safe to go home. They could be there already. He could go to Mrs Elwood’s, but Jonathan doubted she would be home until later, and he didn’t fancy hiding out in her garden until she returned. The perfect solution would have been to go over to a friend’s place, but he didn’t have any friends.
No, there was only one place he could go. Jonathan hopped off the tube two stops before the one nearest his house and walked briskly to the bus stop on the main road. From here he knew he could catch a ride up to the hospital.
When it eventually appeared, the bus followed a long, winding route that seemed to take in every backstreet in London. The street lights were flickering on in the residential areas, and as he gazed out of the window Jonathan saw parents returning home from work, carefully pulling their cars into driveways and shutting the front door on the outside world. Beside him an old woman was jabbering away to herself, and smelling as though she hadn’t washed for a long time. The panic and the elation Jonathan had experienced in the library was ebbing away, only to be replaced by a simmering resentment. In the space of a day he had uncovered more about his family than his dad had told him during his entire lifetime. Why had Alain not told him about Darkside? What was so important that he couldn’t tell his own son? What else was he hiding?
St Christopher’s Hospital was wreathed in darkness by the time he arrived. The wind lashed acr
oss Alain’s wing, rattling the grimy windows and making the rotten door frames creak in agony. It seemed to Jonathan that, at any moment, the entire building could be torn from its foundations and carried away on the gale, taking its occupants with it. A sense of urgency descended upon him.
Inside, the reception was deserted, except for a man in a dressing gown who was staring intently at the ground, muttering something under his breath. Eventually the nurse appeared from one of the side rooms. She recognized Jonathan, and sent him crisply up to the first floor.
“The patients are a bit on edge tonight,” she warned. “Keep your eyes down and don’t hang about in the wards.”
Jonathan moved quickly up the steps and into the first ward. The panicky racket of yesterday was gone, and an atmosphere of subdued agitation hung heavy in the air. Patients huddled in their beds, mewling softly with fear. He could even hear the occasional choked sob. A host of orderlies prowled watchfully around the room. Jonathan kept moving, following the nurse’s instruction. Something was terribly wrong in this place.
Inside Room Seven, Mrs Elwood was sitting next to the prostrate body of his dad, reading a glossy celebrity magazine. She whirled round at Jonathan’s entrance, but Alain didn’t move a muscle.
“Jonathan! What are you doing here? If you wanted to come you should have phoned me, dear. I would have picked you up.”
He ignored her and strode up to Alain’s bed. “What’s Darkside, Dad?”
Behind him Mrs Elwood whispered a quick prayer. He might have been imagining it, but Jonathan thought that one of his dad’s eyes had twitched in recognition at the name.
“I’ve been in your study, Dad. Can you hear me? I’ve been in your precious study.” He said it forcefully, like a challenge. Alain’s lips trembled. He could hear what Jonathan was saying, all right. “I’ve been reading your stupid books.”
Mrs Elwood laid a restraining hand on his arm, but he shook her off. He was filled with a sudden anger that was clawing at his insides. A low moan escaped from Alain’s lips, like the sound of some ancient Egyptian tomb opening.
“I saw the photograph, Dad. I saw the photograph of you and Mum.”
Another moan, louder this time.
“All these years, and you never showed me. You told me there weren’t any pictures!”
Nearly weeping with frustration, Jonathan turned away and sat on the end of his dad’s bed. He wanted to hurt him, to pay him back for all those years of silence, to make him angry, to make him get up off his bed and fight back, anything. He needed Alain to be alive here with him. Shaking with rage, Jonathan felt like screaming at the top of his lungs to block everything else out, but then suddenly the anger was melting away and his dad was hugging him for the first time in years.
“I’m . . . so . . . sorry,” he breathed in Jonathan’s ear.
“It’s all right,” Jonathan managed to say back, his eyes tightly closed. “It’s all right, Dad.”
It was incredibly frustrating. Thinking that he might get some real answers this time, Jonathan asked his dad question after question. But Alain drifted in and out of consciousness, only catching snatches of what his son was saying. Sometimes he tried to reply, but his mouth struggled to form the words. Jonathan hung his head disconsolately.
“Don’t worry, dear.” Mrs Elwood smiled sympathetically. “He’s woken up. That’s the main thing. When he’s better you can ask him all the questions you want.”
“It’s just that there’s so much I don’t know. So much he hasn’t told me.” A thought occurred to him. “What do you know about Darkside?”
Mrs Elwood sighed. As she turned her head away slightly, the lamplight cast a shadow on her cheek. “Enough to know it’s an evil place and that both you and your father would do well to stay away from it.”
From the corridor outside there came the sound of measured footsteps. For a second Jonathan thought it was a nurse coming to tell them that they had to leave, but the footsteps passed by the door and went into Room Eight instead.
“But I know how to get there! I went to the British Library and read this book and it told me everything I need to know! I can go to Darkside!”
Roused, she pointed at Alain. “Do you really think it’s that simple? Going to Darkside isn’t like walking down a street, Jonathan. You can’t just hop on a bus. It tears pieces of your soul away. Look at your dad! He hasn’t been back there for twelve years, and that place still claws at his insides.” She grabbed Jonathan’s shoulders, her eyes wide and imploring. “It’s like an addiction. Do you want to end up like that?”
“I don’t understand. If he wants to go back so much, why doesn’t he?”
Mrs Elwood sighed. “There was an accident. A building collapsed on top of the only crossing point that Alain knew. He couldn’t use it again. Ever since then, he’s been obsessed with trying to find another way to get to Darkside. Lord knows he’s got reason to go there, but . . . I mean, what is it about your family – why are you so willing to hurt yourselves?”
A scrabbling noise and a high-pitched whine carried through the wall from the room next door, distracting Jonathan. He forced himself to focus on Mrs Elwood. “Look, someone’s going to have to start telling me the truth. What is Darkside? What’s my dad got to do with it? And why are some people trying to kidnap me?”
She blinked. “What?”
“They came for me in the library! There was this strange woman called Marianne, and she had this perfume that made me feel drowsy, and I was walking out with her until I managed to get away and I had to get thrown out to escape them.”
There was a shocked pause.
“You were thrown out of the British Library?”
“I didn’t have any choice! These guys were after me. I had to get out somehow!”
His explanation didn’t appear to make things any better. “And I’m pretty sure that they were the same people who broke into the house last night.”
Alain stirred, gazing inquiringly at Mrs Elwood. All of a sudden she looked flustered. “I was going to tell you, Alain – but I wasn’t sure how to put it. . . Anyway, you’ve only just woken up and . . . look, there was a disturbance at your house last night. I got there in time and everything was fine but . . . I think something might have been after Jonathan. Obviously there’s been some strange things going on, Alain, but we’ll be just fine until you’re well again. I can take care of Jonathan, ladies with strange perfume or not.”
With a superhuman effort Alain stretched out a thin hand and rubbed Mrs Elwood’s arm comfortingly. Then, very slowly, he shook his head. “’Arn ’Eegi,” he mumbled at his two visitors.
“What, Dad?”
“’Arn ’Eegi,” he tried again, visibly frustrated with his mouth’s inability to form words.
“I don’t get it. What?”
Alain raised his head from the pillow and shouted. “’Arn ’EEGI!”
Mrs Elwood gasped. “Surely not, Alain. We can take of things here ourselves. We don’t need to involve him . . . and you know what it means, don’t you? You know where Jonathan will have to go!”
“What’s he talking about?”
Alain’s head slumped back on to the pillow. “S’only way,” he slurred. “He knows . . . he can crossh.” A faint smile flickered across his face.
“What’s he saying? I don’t get it. Please tell me.”
Mrs Elwood turned her head away again. “He’s saying ‘Carnegie’. He wants Carnegie to look after you.”
“And who’s Carnegie?”
“A friend of your father’s. He lives in Darkside.” She was interrupted by a series of crashes from Room Eight, followed by a high-pitched scream that was drenched with fear. “What in God’s name was that?”
There was another scream, and the sound of breaking glass.
“I dunno. Doesn’t sound good though.”
They
heard the door in the next room being thrown open, and the sound of quick footsteps echoing down the corridor. Jonathan got up and cautiously peered round the door. In the gloom he could just about make out a figure hurrying away to the staircase.
“Jonathan, I’m sure the doctors know what they’re doing.”
“I don’t think that was a doctor.”
“Well, don’t go out there. Jonathan!”
It was too late. He slipped out into the corridor. There was a frosty breeze coming from somewhere and the door to Room Eight was banging frantically against the wall. Jonathan inched towards it and, taking a deep breath, looked into the room.
There had been an almighty struggle. The bed had been overturned, and the sheets were strewn all over the floor. The lamp had been smashed, and there were splatters of blood on the walls. Something had been thrown out of the window with tremendous force, smashing through the glass and the security bars beyond them. There was no one in the room. Both the visitor and the patient had gone. But Jonathan had only seen one person walking away down the corridor. He walked slowly over to the window and peered through. Far down below there was a body lying spread-eagled out on the tarmac, resting on a bed of glass fragments. As he watched, another figure came out of the ward’s main door, moved quickly past the body without a glance, and disappeared into the night.
Jonathan made to return to his room, but as he was leaving something caught his eye on the floor. He bent down and picked it up. It was a slender silver knife with a handle that looked as if it had been carved from bone. The blood-smeared blade glinted with intent. With strange certainty, Jonathan knew that this wasn’t the first time it had bit into human flesh.
He could hear people on the stairs, probably coming to see what all the noise was about. Jonathan was aware he should drop the dagger, but for some reason he didn’t move. There was something reassuring about the weight of the weapon in his hand; it seemed to fit snugly in his grasp. It felt almost as if the knife had been made for him. Deadly as it was, it also had an eerie beauty and, suddenly, he couldn’t bear to let go.
