Certain Danger

by F. R. Jameson

  As certainly as she knew that Mummy was dead.

  Her memory of that moment was such a fresh wound that she gasped. But that gasp wasn’t muffled at all by the fog. Instead that intake of breath seemed to echo around her, to boom through the forest like a thunderclap.

  Giving away exactly her whereabouts.

  Hastily she clamped her hand over her mouth, suppressing the rising panic.

  Someone was there to do her harm, she had to remember that. She had to be careful, had to be stealthy. More than anything, she had to be better than him.

  Eyes wide, she stood still with her hand over her mouth and stared into the fog for a good ten seconds. Nothing was charging at her through the mist. The moment had gone. Whatever advantage he might have had, was already gone. The fog was too thick, it swirled too much. Maybe if he’d been near enough to act the very moment she made the noise, he could have done something. As it was, she was lost again in the fog.

  She was lost to him, just as he was to her.

  Her hand lowered slowly from her lips and she let her shoulders relax, and then she shut her eyes.

  It was a quirk she had, that sometimes she believed she could see better with her eyes closed than with them open. It was hard to explain and she had never really tried it with any adult (it was important to her, with how much attention the grown-ups – the doctors – gave her every hour of the day, that she kept something of herself secret), but it was like – if she knew her surroundings – then she could make her way through them easier with her eyes shut. Like she was a bat or something.

  Alice had played in these woods so many times now, in both rain and shine. She knew them. In the last few months she’d climbed so many of the trees, danced over the brambles, tripped in the divots and found new hiding places each and every time. It didn’t matter if this strange fog enveloped her, she could still find her way. In fact, she thought that this fog would help her get through.

  So she stood in the middle of the wood with her eyes closed and then started humming to herself. The tune, which was a gentle barely audible murmur on her lips, was something Mummy had taught her. A strident piece of music – posh and classical, she guessed. Certainly not the kind of thing you got on Top of the Pops. As far as she knew, she’d never heard the proper version, only Mummy’s humming of it – but it helped her in moments like this when she was worried and scared. The song soothed her. When she needed some sense in the world, it offered clarity.

  For now, the fog muffled the sound of her music. It could pick and choose what it wanted people to hear apparently. Seemingly it liked her tune and wanted it all to itself.

  She turned in a circle and felt little bursts of energy coming off the ground, rebounding from the fog as it let her sense what was around her. Gave her sight even with her eyes closed.

  The tune became louder on her lips, maybe too loud (it was music which needed to be hummed with force), but right then she didn’t care. It was helping her. Mummy had never told her its name, but she said it came from a place called Germany. That’s the same place Mr Hitler was from, but it was nothing to do with him. (Mummy had told Alice that old Hitler would have loved to know that tune, but Alice didn’t know what that meant.) And so – like mother, like daughter – she would hum that tune every time she needed to keep safe; when she had to work to concentrate her mind.

  Slowly her tune seemed to penetrate the fog. It was letting the sound out now. She wasn’t going to stay hidden for long.

  Silly Paul had never learned the tune. He yelled at them that he didn’t bloomin’ like music. So it became her and Mummy’s secret tune. Not that Mummy gave up trying to teach it to Paul. She told the boy that one of the reasons he was so angry all the time was that he didn’t know it. But still he didn’t care. He’d rather spend his time hitting things (hitting Alice) than do “bloody humming”.

  She had that tune though – Mummy’s German tune – and it helped her. Slowly she turned in those circles and hummed it louder and louder. Defiantly, so it was not just a gentle murmur on her lips, but actually sung out loud.

  Even with her eyes shut, she knew that the wood was hers. She understood that the fog would help her, that it was her friend.

  Let him find her.

  She wished she knew some words to the tune, but Mummy had never taught her any. So instead, Alice la-la-la’d the tune as loud as she could. Giving herself away, absolutely; bringing him to her, undoubtedly. Risking everything, but feeling supremely confident in herself.

  And then, midway through one long, high note, she stopped. Suddenly she fell silent, then her eyes opened and she gave an enormous grin.

  Taking one stride forward, she reached down and picked up a heavy, pointed stick. The sharpest stick she could spot. She sensed – knew, almost – that it was the sharpest stick anywhere in the forest. It was like someone had gone to work on the end of it with a pen-knife and left it there just for her.

  Her fingers clutched around it, holding it up as a weapon.

  They’d been together when they entered the woods. Sister and brother, they’d held hands as the fog swirled around them. But they’d lost each other, become separated in the shadowy darkness. She’d fallen asleep and she could sense through the fog that he had too. When she awoke, she knew suddenly what she had to do. This was the game they were here to play. And the thing was, Paul would know that just as well as she did. If anything, he would enjoy the game more.

  All their arguing and bickering was disturbing the experiment apparently. It was taking away the focus. And because they couldn’t work together, the grown-ups (all the doctors) had to work out which of the two of them was strongest. Then that one would be in charge, apparently. Or maybe they’d only need one child, not both.

  Paul and she had been separated on purpose, it seemed, and then left in different parts of the wood. The fog had swept in to both shroud them and aid them. Whoever had the most natural ability was the one who would walk out of the woods to whatever reward awaited.

  Those were the rules of this game.

  They were there for one to kill the other.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He could only have been about ten foot from her.

  The fog cleared with unnatural swiftness and there he was.

  Paul.

  The two of them had shared the womb together. They’d played and fought together right through childhood. Their bond had been the only thing they had after Mummy drew that thick line of blood across her throat. But at that moment, he was a monster to her.

  She was eight years old and had led the kind of life which meant she wasn’t easily scared by the monsters in fairy stories. But then, as she stared at her brother, it was like he was every storybook ogre made flesh. She didn’t feel any love for him, nor compassion. All she thought – the only idea in her mind – was that he had to be killed.

  The grown-ups wanted her to do that, and it was all she wanted too.

  However, despite her need to kill him, she recognised him. This was her brother. Paul. Even as she raised that stick higher and grinned at its pointed tip, she still knew who he was.

  What surprised her was that he didn’t seem to recognise her. He had his own stick, that little bit less sharp than hers (she was pleased to see), and his eyes were dead. He stared at her as if she were nothing more than a task to be got out of the way. A task he would enjoy, but still, it was a duty.

  When he glared at her with utterly remorseless eyes, he snarled. Like a barely tamed animal would snarl.

  A brief whisper of doubt flickered through her mind. Mummy had always told her that when Paul got into one of his moods, the only way she was going to reach him was through her words. Fighting back was just going to make him angrier.

  And as he snarled at her – as she noticed the flat, heavy rock in his other hand – the desire came to maybe say something. Try the impossible and calm him down. Make him see again that they were brother and sister and they were all the other had.

  Ther
e was even a moment’s temptation to drop the stick.

  But it was clutched too tight in her hand. The desire to hurt him was too high in her, and it blocked out whatever fine words she might have said to ease his rage.

  She was there to kill him just as he was there to kill her. There was no point in thinking of anything else.

  Carefully – knowing exactly where she was placing her feet, to the point where she could have identified any and all bugs she trod on – she took a step back. The stick raised, she inviting him to come to her.

  With a roar in his lungs, he leapt, swinging wildly at her skull.

  Alice may have been ten minutes older than Paul, but he was still a boy and he was bigger. And in the sheer swiftness of his attack, she dropped her stick and it slapped back onto the wet dirt.

  Now he was on her. Both weapons tight in his fists, prepared to use everything he had to destroy her. His teeth gnashing and his arms flailing.

  She was strong though. Deep inside she had hidden strength, which made her as formidable as him – even if she was just a girl.

  There was no way she was going to lie back and let him deliver the final blow.

  Her hands gripped his wrists tight, stymying his attacks. Forcing those weapons upwards and forcing him back.

  He screamed at her in frustration and she matched his volume with her own determination. Both emitted angry, guttural roars. They weren’t brother and sister anymore, they barely even sounded human.

  His knees dug into her sides and he trapped her. But she kept a firm grip on him and stopped him destroying her. She could hold him back, but she didn’t have the leverage to throw him off.

  Just as he didn’t have the power to get through her defences.

  Sooner rather than later though, one of them was going to wear the other down.

  It had to be her.

  She needed to win.

  But to do that, she had to call on something else.

  A sharper edge than any he could throw at her.

  Desperately Alice reached out for it.

  Sang out in fact, not really knowing what she was summoning.

  Yet certain it would come.

  In a few seconds, the blackness consumed them both. Deadening all of her senses as it tore him away.

  She cried out with every molecule in her lungs, yet couldn’t hear herself. It was like an echoing void in the dark. Silence booming back at her.

  There was nothing and she was nothing. She couldn’t feel anything or taste anything or see anything.

  That is until it – the fog all around her – let her hear her brother’s agonising screams.

  There in the darkness, something gruesome was happening to him.

  And suddenly, once again, she was swamped with all the feelings one should feel for a brother. She recalled all they’d been through. He was all she had. They relied on each other.

  She remembered all of this, felt all of it, as she listened to the thing she’d roused to destroy him.

  Weapons were left for them in the woods, but what really mattered was which of them could wield the biggest, nastiest, deadliest weapon of all

  It was her.

  And her little brother was dead now.

  Sometime later, she could recall kneeling in the dirt and sinking her head in her hands.

  It was clearer now, the fog was lifting, and next to her was Paul’s battered and mangled corpse.

  Still in his shorts, still showing off his scarred knobbly knees.

  His neck had been broken so badly, his head was the wrong way around.

  Blood ran from his lips down his chubby cheeks.

  In death, he no longer resembled an animal. His eyes had become human again. They seemed more alive, even with all life faded from them.

  Alice knelt and cried. Feeling grief like she’d never had before, even when Mummy killed herself. She thought she’d always have Paul. Surely she was always going to have Paul.

  Alone in the woods, her sobs racked her tiny body.

  And right then, she didn’t care if anyone ever came to find her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “It wasn’t me!” she screamed.

  There was a whirr and the small echo of a new slide dropping into place. That photo of her mother disappeared, replaced by the even more horrible photo of her dead brother.

  Paul looked exactly the way she remembered him that last time. Lying broken and lifeless in the dirt. His head pulled to one side, his body twisted around at the spine, his arms thrown out in defeat. They awakened all the phantoms in her mind: everything she’d felt in that second of seeing him returning with a brutal jerk to her insides.

  Desperately she closed her eyes and tried to grab hold of a happier memory of her twin brother. Yet everything came back to that image. The memories were there, but they were all of the day he died.

  He always insisted on wearing shorts, every single day – even when it was cold – just to be contrary. For some stupid reason, he thought that it made him tough, more of a man. That morning hadn’t been any different. They’d woken in their rooms at The Butterfly Clinic, they’d had breakfast together (porridge for her, corn flakes for him) and then they’d been taken to different parts of the house. (Was it Doctor Penhaligan himself who took her hand? She had no idea: all the grown-ups in white coats had looked the same to her.) Then they were out in the woods. Together again, but abruptly they were separated. Their hands pulled apart without either saying a proper goodbye. Without knowing that they should say a proper goodbye.

  Then they’d met again and she killed him. Or something she didn’t really understand had killed him.

  “It wasn’t me!” she screamed again, on the precipice of hysterics. “I know it wasn’t me! What else was out there with us? Tell me what it was!”

  She leapt as the wall in front of the desk gave a resounding crack, like some giant was tearing it apart. The photo of Paul – that final photograph – disappeared and the room filled with a horrible crunching and grinding. With a cry of shock, her hands clamped over her ears. Incredibly, the wall actually did start to wrench apart, retreating back on rollers – pulling away to reveal another dark room beyond.

  As emotionally wrecked as she was, Alice was still on her feet as fast as she could. She wasn’t so stupid to believe this was a way out, but it was somewhere else and she was sick of being trapped in Doctor Penhaligan’s office.

  Knife in hand, she dashed into the blackness only to find another photo projected there. This time though, it wasn’t of her mother or her brother. It was a blown up shot of Richie Clement. Him dressed in black leather trousers and torn t-shirt; mini-dress wearing girlfriend on his arm. It was the photo which had been all over the press the last week or so, the one they’d used on the front page of The Daily Mirror.

  Penhaligan’s voice purred gently at her, as if he imagined he was being soothing.

  “If I’d had my way, Alice, you would never have left here. You would have stayed with us and we’d have worked as one to develop your talent. But after what happened in the woods, you seemed to lose your ability. You were catatonic for a while – do you remember that? No word passed your lips. We had to feed you with a drip. Six months passed and nothing of what we’d promised you could do was demonstrated. It was like a switch within you had flicked off. There were budget restraints, the nature of war had become much colder and the cynics had taken control. Narrow minded men in polyester suits who thought all that our work – all my work – was so much mumbo-jumbo.

  “But I believed, Alice! Even as they stripped us to a skeleton operation and took you away, I still believed. I’ve kept tabs on you all this time, Alice. Thought of you every single day. I made sure I received detailed reports from all your foster homes, from everywhere you lived. I kept them all, lovingly. Every day I wanted you to do what you could do. That’s why I sometimes arranged for you to be placed with families where the father was thought to be a dubious presence around young girls. Where mothers were known
for cruelty. I did it because I cared about you. I did it to awaken that part of you that you were keeping hidden. You are so special, Alice, and I wanted to demonstrate just how special.

  “Please understand, all of this I did because I cared, Alice. I care about you and I care about this world of ours. And I knew I was right. Despite so many voices telling me that I was a charlatan, that I misled those in charge to get my funding, I knew I was right. That one day it would all awaken in you again and you would find your way back to me. All it took was an accident.”

  He chuckled without humour. “Mr Clement was a man completely unknown to me before last week, but I have had him investigated thoroughly since. And do you know what? It’s a fascinating fact that he was a believer too. Not in you, as such – I’m sure he’d never heard of you or our work – but in the force that you are able to control. Whether his interests were quite as benign as mine, I don’t know. In fact, I doubt it very much. But it was his belief that sent him out that day. His belief that led him to you. His belief that saw him feed his lady friend mind-altering substances and then slice off his own face before he even got in that motorcar. He did this because he believed. He called his group, Certain Danger, and it was certain danger that he courted.

  “I suppose, in a way, he was special too. He was a useful tool. His purpose was to reawaken that part of you which is truly so special, Alice. It was special in your mother and it was special in your brother, but it is most special in you.”

  The hidden projector whirred and another photo dropped into place. It was a black and white picture of the young Penhaligan; he had jet black hair and a pipe in his hand. His suit, she noticed, wasn’t so beautifully tailored back then. It obviously wasn’t made to measure. His other arm was around the shoulders of a young girl. She realised with a gasp that it was her. The young Alice’s hair was pulled into pigtails and she was wearing a pale dress which appeared grey. Her skin was as smooth and unblemished as any eight-year-old’s.