Creeping Terror

by Justin Richards

  ‘I’ll get a cloth,’ Mrs Bailey said.

  ‘Sorry. But it’s moved,’ Rupam said.

  They could all hear the urgency in his voice. Even Webby turned to look.

  ‘What’s moved?’ Ben asked.

  Rupam pointed to a hedge that crossed the road at one side of the screen. ‘Here – it’s moved slightly, I’m sure. And it’s bigger than it was.’

  ‘I haven’t changed the zoom,’ Webby said.

  As he stood up, he seemed to notice the spilt coffee for the first time, brushing it off his jeans with irritation. Ben stepped back as Webby pushed past him. It wasn’t just the cellar that smelt – Ben had caught a whiff of Webby himself. He stank. Not the usual pungent smell of sweat, but a sweet, almost sickly odour.

  ‘I’m sure it’s different,’ Rupam was saying as Webby examined the picture.

  ‘Can you rewind or something?’ Ben wondered. ‘Then we can see if there’s a difference.’

  ‘Better than that, I can play back a sequence of all the images since it came online.’ Webby returned to his computer.

  ‘Like time-lapse photography?’ Mrs Bailey asked. ‘Speeding up flowers opening, that sort of thing?’

  The images started to play through, like a jerky video.

  ‘Not just flowers,’ Ben said.

  Rupam was right. The hedge had moved and grown thicker. But it was not just that hedge. As they watched, the vegetation round the edge of the village thickened and moved, pressing inwards. Slowly but surely, the greenery was advancing on the centre of the village, blocking the roads and fields, cutting it off from the outside world. A mass of trees, shrubs, hedges, ivy – all types of vegetation – moving inexorably inwards.

  ‘I think we should get going,’ Ben said.

  ‘What was it in Knight’s letter – the warning from the old woman they met?’ Sam said quietly. She was standing right beside him and Ben hadn’t noticed.

  Rupam hadn’t heard Sam, but he was making the same connection. ‘That’s what it means,’ he said. ‘Beware the green.’

  8

  BEN WONDERED IF MADAM SOSOSTRAM COULD drive. Mrs Bailey had said simply that the old woman would take them to Templeton village, but had given no indication of how she was going to do it. He couldn’t imagine the frail old lady with her walking stick driving a car. If she did, it was likely to be as battered and ancient a wreck as the one Reverend Growl drove. In which case it would be a long, tedious and uncomfortable journey.

  ‘Can she drive?’ Rupam echoed incredulously when Ben asked. He burst out laughing. ‘I think you have a lot to learn about Madam Sosostram. You see her as an elderly lady, that’s all. But there is a lot more to her than that. There are other ways to see her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that you are in for a surprise.’ Rupam

  wouldn’t say any more than that.

  Ben’s first surprise came as they waited outside the front door of Gibbet Manor, each with a rucksack stuffed with books and papers from Mrs Bailey, plus printouts from Webby. Rupam was holding a long, thin silver sword with an ornate handle and wrist-guard. Ben didn’t know how – or if – the metal had been treated, but he knew from watching Maria use it that the sword could cut through invisible demons and Grotesques …

  A bright red sports car roared round the side of the house and crunched to a halt. It had an open top and a bonnet that dipped so low it almost touched the ground. The engine throbbed and growled, but it was barely audible as rock music was blasting out from the car’s hi-fi system. Two huge black speakers were mounted in the back of the car. They vibrated with the noise pumping through them.

  ‘Put your bags in the front, boys,’ Madam Sosostram said, turning down the music. ‘You can both sit in the back. I’m sure neither of you wants to have to make conversation with an old fossil like me.’

  It was odd to see the old lady driving a sports car. She had her woolly cardigan tightly buttoned and her grey hair had been blown back. She watched Ben and Rupam through horn-rimmed spectacles as they dumped their rucksacks on the front seat. Rupam leaned the silver sword against the seat, angled away from the gear stick. Then they had to climb over the back of the car to get in, moving Madam Sosostram’s walking stick out of the way before they could sit down.

  With a wizened smile of approval, Madam Sosotram turned up the volume again, put the car into gear and sprayed gravel across the driveway as she floored the accelerator.

  The car roared down the drive, Bon Jovi blasting out.

  It was difficult to speak in the car with all the noise from the music and the powerful engine. Rupam seemed to spend most of the journey grinning at Ben.

  ‘What?’ Ben yelled at last.

  Rupam’s grin broadened.

  ‘What?’

  Ben found himself grinning too. He knew what Rupam found so funny. It wasn’t just his surprise, it was the fact that they were being driven through the countryside in a red convertible sports car by a little old lady who played rock music far too loud and had no worries about breaking the speed limit.

  They shot through a town, the buildings blurring past. Two young men in hoodies watched them. One gave a thumbs-up and the other waved. Madam Sosostram gave a cheery wave back.

  ‘If only they knew,’ Rupam shouted in Ben’s ear.

  ‘Yeah, right.’ But Ben wasn’t sure what Rupam meant. ‘They probably think she’s our granny,’ he yelled.

  Rupam was grinning again and shaking his head. It wasn’t until they reached the army checkpoint that Ben found out why.

  *

  An olive-green army Land Rover was parked across the road. Two soldiers stood beside it. One of them stepped forward, hand up to signal the car to stop.

  Madam Sosostram cut the music. ‘Duck down, boys. Don’t let them see you.’

  ‘What are we going to do – crash through the roadblock?’ Ben could believe that anything was possible.

  ‘I’ll distract the soldiers. As soon as you get a chance, see if you can get past.’

  ‘What about you?’ Rupam hissed.

  Madam Sosostram opened the door and heaved her ample form awkwardly out of the car. ‘I think I shall probably be stuck here on this side of the cordon.’

  Ben peered out carefully through the gap between the driver’s seat and its headrest. The soldier was approaching and Madam Sosostram hobbled towards him.

  ‘How’s she going to distract them?’ Ben whispered to Rupam.

  ‘Don’t look too closely. Try not to focus.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know those pictures that look like a mess of jumbled colours?’ Rupam asked quietly. ‘And if you focus beyond them, let your eyes sort of relax, then a three-dimensional shape appears?’

  ‘I can never do that,’ Ben admitted.

  ‘Well, try again. Try now. And you’ll see what the soldiers can see – what Madam Sosostram wants them to see.’

  Ben tried it. Madam Sosostram had met the soldier halfway between the car and the Land Rover. The other soldier was walking over slowly to join them, grinning. Madam Sosostram laughed at something the first soldier said. She tilted her head back, pushing a curl of white hair behind her ear. It was a strange movement for the old woman.

  ‘Can you see it yet?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Madam Sosostram was walking towards the Land Rover, the soldiers walking with her. She placed one hand on the bonnet of the vehicle, leaning over it. There was something odd about the way she had walked, Ben thought – her limp was gone. There was a confidence to her movements that he hadn’t noticed before. And the way she leaned towards the soldier, hand still on the bonnet …

  As if she was a young woman, not an old lady.

  A young woman.

  Ben gasped. He rose up out of the seat to get a better view, but Rupam pulled him down out of sight.

  ‘You see it now, don’t you?’ He was grinning again.

  Be
n did see it. As he let his eyes relax, the ungainly figure of Madam Sosostram faded, shimmered and changed. She grew slimmer, her tweedy skirt and jacket somehow becoming an elegant, low-cut dress. Her flat shoes were knee-length boots with chunky heels. Her white curls extended into long, straight, gold-blonde hair. She glanced back over her shoulder and Ben saw that she had eyes like a cat’s, the deepest green. Her skin was no longer old and wrinkled. She was a stunningly beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties.

  ‘She lets us see her how she really is. But that – that’s how everyone else sees her. The soldiers, those hoodies in the town, everyone. Well, if she wants them to.’

  Ben just stared. ‘I saw her,’ he remembered. ‘Soon after I came to the School of Night – I saw her like that and I never even realised it was her.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t know you were watching. I guess it’s a habit, keeping up the appearance. Hey – come on,’ Rupam said, climbing quickly and quietly out of the back of the car.

  The young woman who was Madam Sosostram had walked slowly round behind the Land Rover and the two soldiers were following her. Ben heard laughter again – the laughter of the soldiers and of a young woman.

  He grabbed his rucksack from the front of the car and ran after Rupam to take cover behind the Land Rover, hidden on the opposite side to the soldiers.

  Madam Sosostram appeared at the back of the vehicle. She glanced quickly at Ben and Rupam, then gave a curt nod. The boys edged round as Madam Sosostram led the two soldiers back towards her car.

  ‘Restricted area?’ Ben heard her saying – her voice was strong and light at the same time, almost musical. ‘That sounds very exciting. I am sorry to have distracted you, but thank you so much for the directions to Dorchester. If I get lost, I’ll just have to come back here and try again, won’t I?’

  On the other side of the roadblock, Ben gripped his rucksack tight and ran. He sank down beside Rupam at the edge of the road. The soldiers were watching as an old lady in a red sports car executed a rapid three-point turn in the narrow lane, then roared off into the distance, the music of the Prodigy echoing in her wake.

  *

  With the soldiers back the other side of the roadblock, Ben and Rupam were able to get out of sight beyond the bend in the road.

  ‘How far is it to Templeton, do you think?’ Ben wondered.

  The sword was now strapped to the back of Rupam’s rucksack, sticking out either side. It almost hit Ben as Rupam turned. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Hey! Careful with that.’

  ‘Sorry. I think that was a sort of outer checkpoint. We’re further out than the satellite image showed.’

  ‘And those soldiers didn’t seem to think they were fighting the Second World War,’ Ben added.

  They slowed to a walking pace as soon as they were out of sight of the roadblock.

  ‘How do you do it?’ Ben asked after a while.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Remember things.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  They went on in silence. They seemed to be walking forever. It was difficult to get any idea of where they were because high hedges now rose on either side of the narrow road. Ben wondered if Rupam was going to answer his question or not. Maybe he’d offended his friend in some way.

  ‘I just wondered,’ Ben said after a while. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, that’s OK. I was trying to think of how to answer. You can train yourself to have a good memory. But I just sort of do it. There’s …’ He paused, frowning. ‘There’s a place I go,’ Rupam said at last.

  ‘A place? To remember?’

  ‘Not a real place. It’s inside my mind. In my imagination. It’s always been there. Maybe it was somewhere I used to know. I …’ He laughed suddenly. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘You remember everything,’ Ben joked. Except, of course, it was true.

  ‘Yes. But I mean I can’t remember a time when I didn’t remember everything, when the place wasn’t in my head.’

  ‘This place – how does it work?’

  ‘It’s like a big house. Bigger than that – enormous. A palace. There are so many rooms, and there’s a garden too, with lots of areas. And there are things in the palace. All the things I want to remember. It’s not like a movie I can replay – some people remember that way. There’s no set sequence to it. I put things in the rooms of the palace.’

  ‘What, like lists of things? Stuff we have to learn? Whole books?’

  ‘Yes. Or things that jog my memory rather than the actual things to remember. I say I put them there, and some of them I do, but others just are. If I read something, then afterwards it’s there – whether I choose to put it in or not.’

  Ben nodded. It sort of made sense. People kept notes, or tied knots in their handkerchiefs to remind them of things. That was sort of what Rupam did, only in his mind and on a grander – and more successful – scale.

  ‘But don’t you have to remember which room it’s in?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I just know. I go to the right room in my head and what I need is in there. So, if I need to remember the look on your face when you saw Madam Sosostram change, I go to the third room on the left down the corridor from the stairs on the third floor.’

  ‘And the look on my face is in there?’

  ‘There’s a photo album,’ Rupam said. He was staring into space as they walked. ‘It’s on a small table beside a bookcase. I turn the page and there’s your expression. Like a photograph. Looking back at me.’ He laughed. ‘You should see it!’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ Ben told him. ‘Maybe one day I’ll come to your memory palace and you can show me round.’

  ‘No,’ Rupam said sharply. ‘No – never go there. There are some rooms that you don’t want to see. Some rooms even I don’t want to go into.’ He quickened his pace. ‘Some rooms I wish did not exist. Rooms you might never leave.’

  From his tone, Ben could tell the conversation was over. He wasn’t sure if he should have asked or not. He looked round, half expecting to see Sam, half expecting her to tell him it was OK. But she wasn’t there. Ben hurried to catch up as his friend rounded another corner.

  Rupam had stopped. He was standing in front of a high, dense hedge that was growing across the road. Ben stood beside him as they stared at it. He could see brambles and bindweed threading through the branches. The sun was low in the sky behind the hedge, but there was no sign of light shining through.

  ‘Well, we know there’s no way round it,’ Ben said. ‘I wonder if it’s growing as quickly as it seems to be on the satellite pictures.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay here long enough to find out,’ Rupam said. ‘I guess this is why we brought the sword. Help me get it out, will you?’

  Ben unstrapped the sword and handed it to Rupam.

  ‘Are you going to hack a way through?’

  Rupam raised the sword. ‘Unless you think we can just push our way to the other side? It could be several metres thick by now. Stand back.’

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Ben muttered, keeping well out of the way.

  Rupam swung the sword down and it sliced through the branches and leaves easily. Soon he had cut deep into the hedge. He stepped in among the greenery, still hacking away. His blows were not so effective now as he had less room to swing the blade. But he was working his way deeper and deeper into the mass of vegetation.

  Ben followed at a safe distance. It was almost dark inside the tunnel that was being created and soon he could hardly see Rupam. The blade glinted as it caught what little light there was. He could hear it thwacking into the branches as Rupam forced his way through.

  Ben glanced back, wondering how far they had come. Behind him, the opening had dwindled to almost nothing. Surely it wasn’t that far? As he watched, the gap closed up completely.

  ‘Rupam!’ Ben called, suddenly afraid. ‘We need to hurry.’

  ‘I’m going as quickly as I can.’

  ‘But – it’s growing back!’ Ben shouted. ‘Th
e hedge is growing back and we’ll be trapped inside if we don’t get through soon.’

  The sword slashed with renewed vigour. Ben hurried to catch up with Rupam, but his foot caught in the loop of a branch and he went sprawling to the ground. Brambles scratched at his face and hands as he struggled up again. Leaves battered his eyes and he tried to brush them away, but they seemed to catch in his fingers, curling, entwining. A branch lashed out and smacked into his legs. A long creeper shot up from among the greenery, wrapping itself round his thigh and squeezing painfully tight.

  ‘Ben!’ Rupam’s voice was muffled. ‘Ben, it’s moving. It’s alive!’

  A mass of grass and nettles seemed to rear up in front of Ben, hurtling towards him like a wild animal – clawing, scratching, stinging and tearing at his skin as he tried to fight it off. Pressing into his mouth. His eyes. He was dragged down into the soft leaves. The last of the light disappeared and everything went dark green.

  9

  SILVER IN THE DARKNESS. A FLASH OF LIGHT CUT across Ben’s vision. There was a tightness about his throat – strands gripping and squeezing. Was that why he was seeing a flashing light?

  But the tightness was loosening. He managed to work his fingers under the bindweed that was strangling him, ripping it away. Someone else was pulling brambles and roots and branches away from him. A hand reached out of the darkness – barely visible – dragging him to his feet.

  ‘Rupam?’ Ben managed to gasp.

  ‘Who were you expecting?’ Rupam was out of breath. His sword flashed again in the near-darkness, carving out a path before him. ‘Thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

  Ben tried to keep close as his friend hacked a way through. Leaves still whipped at his face, while roots continued to thrust out from the ground and stab at his feet. Branches twisted round his legs and arms. But Ben managed to fight them all off and stumble after Rupam.

  Several times they fell. Several times Ben had to drag vegetation off Rupam as it threatened to overwhelm him and drown him in a mass of green. Several times Rupam did the same for him.