Troubletwisters

by Garth Nix

  JAIDE AND JACK RACED ACROSS the car park and around the lighthouse. Jack relished the feel of the pavement under his sneakers and of holding back as he always did at the end, to let his sister catch up a little, but not too much. When he reached the first of the headstones, he slowed to an amble in order to read what they said.

  ‘Look,’ said Jaide, pointing. ‘This guy died when he was ninety-eight!’

  ‘Well, this whole family died in the same year.’

  ‘Was there a plague?’

  ‘Maybe an accident.’

  Jack hoped their father was okay, wherever he was. ‘Look for Shields. Dad’s dad came from here, remember?’

  They separated in search of their family history. Quite a few of the gravestones had become illegible with the passage of time, the carved letters eroded beyond any possibility of puzzling them out. Despite this, several Shields stood out, notably a Giles Chesterton Shield, who had died thirty-three years ago and lay buried alone in one corner of the cemetery. There were no words on his headstone, apart from his name and the date, but there was a compass-shaped insignia carved into the marble, which looked markedly less weathered than the stone around it.

  ‘I guess this must be our grandfather . . .’ said Jack. He felt like he should take his hat off, but he wasn’t wearing one. Instead he bowed his head a little bit and felt solemn.

  Jaide looked behind them to see if Grandma X was watching them from the car with her opera glasses. But the old car was gone.

  Jaide felt free, as if relieved of some constraint or leash. Though she was curious about this whole new branch of her family tree, the prospect of endless pots of plastic flowers, worn granite and dead, dusty things faded in comparison to the much more interesting places to explore nearby.

  Especially the great hill of stone that loomed up so very close to them.

  ‘Race you to the top,’ she said, pointing at the Rock. ‘There’s a path, look!’

  ‘I already saw the path,’ said Jack, but he hesitated. ‘Do you think Grandma X would let us?’

  ‘It’s in sight of the lighthouse,’ replied Jaide. ‘Well, the top is, anyway – and she didn’t say we couldn’t.’

  ‘Or shouldn’t,’ said Jack with a grin.

  They ran to where the sign advertised the start of a walking trail, by the rear of the old church. The trail wasn’t paved; instead, numerous feet had cleared the way of weeds and pounded the dirt to something like concrete. The way was easy at first, but it grew steadily steeper, winding back and forth around sudden rocks and promontories, with the occasional bench for people to catch their breath. The twins were the only two on the track. They quickly climbed to a height where the path narrowed and hurrying seemed unwise, so they settled into a more cautious, steady plod upward.

  The higher they got, the stronger the wind became. Jack hugged himself tightly against its bite. It was so strong, he had to brace himself when they reached the top. From the summit, as they stood next to a small stone memorial with a metal plaque, Portland was entirely revealed to them, as though they were looking at a model.

  The bay swept in an almost complete circle from Lighthouse Park to Mermaid Point. There was a breakwater on the south lip, protecting the angular marina from the open sea, though today the swell was massive, and the spray from the breaking waves was carrying well over the huge stones. A smattering of shops served the marina on that side of the bay, mostly old buildings but all sporting some form of renovation or extension. On the northern side of the bay there were sand flats and a dredger bobbing wildly, even in the partially sheltered waters.

  The red roofs of newer houses stretched inland, roughly following the river, which had swampland bordering it, particularly on the northern side. To the west there was a smaller version of the Rock, which a railway tunnel ran through like thread through the eye of needle.

  Along the coast to the south there was another beach, less hospitable than the one they had visited the previous day, with forests of seaweed crowding close to the shore. Jaide’s eyes were drawn to it. She wished the weather would clear up so they could go for a swim. A bit of seaweed didn’t worry her.

  A particularly strong gust of wind pushed both of them back, and Jaide suddenly felt herself becoming weightless for an instant, as though she might be lifted up and off the Rock – and then she was rising up into the sky, and Jack only just managed to grab her by the ankles. For a second, Jaide thought they were both going to be blown away, and then the lightness inside her vanished and they tumbled back down.

  ‘Wow,’ she said.

  ‘You were about to take off, like Rodeo Dave!’ exclaimed Jack. ‘Don’t do it again!’

  ‘It wasn’t on purpose,’ said Jaide. ‘I just . . . got really light.’

  She laughed uneasily. She had felt as light as a feather, light enough to be blown away, to go flying across the sky in the grip of the wind. But why her and not Jack? They weighed exactly the same, despite their slight differences in height and build.

  ‘I think we should head down now,’ said Jack firmly. ‘The path keeps going down the other side, and then we can cut straight across toward Grandma’s house.’

  Jaide looked along the zigzag way on the other side, up to where the path disappeared from sight. She figured Jack was probably right. If they followed the path, they would come out on the southern side of Watchward Lane, near where the decrepit house abutted Grandma X’s property. Though it was hidden by the fir tree, she could see part of her grandmother’s house itself, with its widow’s walk, pointed roof, and spinning moon-and-star weathervane.

  Jaide peered closer and frowned. The wind was strong and mainly coming from the east. It was difficult to see, but she was fairly sure the weathervane was pointing directly at the Rock, which wasn’t east at all.

  As she stared, eyes blinking against the breeze, a lost memory suddenly returned. Jaide remembered that this wasn’t the first time she’d seen the weathervane behaving oddly. When they’d arrived, it had displayed a life independent of the elements, as though it was pointing to something other than the source of the wind. But what could that be? What use was a weathervane that didn’t pay attention to the weather?

  Her frown deepened. There were other things she knew she’d forgotten and couldn’t quite retrieve. But they were coming back now, becoming less dreamlike and more concrete, as if the wind was clearing cobwebs from her mind.

  ‘The door!’ she cried.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The blue door!’

  Jack stared at her blankly, a puzzled look flickering across his face. Then he knuckled himself in the side of the head.

  ‘Of course! How could we have forgotten?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Jaide thought back to that morning, but everything was still a little blurry. They had been looking for a cellar, hadn’t they? She was sure of it. Grandma X had said something about it, then they had had some hot chocolate, and after that it had just been playing around with golden cards and other odd things, and Grandma X’s fingers clicking loudly . . .

  She was suddenly afraid, although she didn’t know exactly what she feared. It wasn’t only the wind almost taking her up, or the weirdness of everything to do with their grandmother, or even the uncertainty surrounding their move from their old home. There was something else, a chill that came not from the wind alone.

  ‘Let’s go down now,’ she said, suppressing a shiver. ‘She’ll be looking for us if we’re not back soon.’

  The downhill path was rougher and steeper, and they had to proceed much more slowly than either of them would have liked. Both of them felt an urgent need to get off the Rock, to get out of the wind, especially as the sky grew darker and spots of rain dotted the grey boulders around them.

  Jack concentrated carefully on putting his feet down safely, and as a result didn’t notice when the path turned, putting the bulk of the Rock between them and the lighthouse.

  The moment the lighthouse was out of sight, a swarm o
f tiny flying insects – midges or sandflies – fell upon them. Buzzing almost inaudibly, they numbered in the thousands, it seemed, and Jack waved a hand in front of his face to keep them out of his eyes and nose, but they were impossible to deter. The air was full of little specks with wings. He could feel them wriggling into his hair and tickling into his ears. He waved more furiously and was conscious of Jaide doing the same beside him.

  ‘Yuck!’ she cried, then spat and spluttered as a dozen midges shot straight into her mouth.

  The swarm followed the twins as they inched down the side of the Rock, slowing them down even more than the difficulty of the path. Blinking, gasping, flailing, it was all they could do to keep moving.

  Then, as quickly as it had come, the swarm disappeared, leaving Jack feeling as though he had stepped out of a cloud of smoke.

  ‘What was that?!’ he asked, wiping his eyes clear with the back of his hand.

  ‘At least they weren’t the biting kind,’ Jaide said as she combed midges out of her hair with her fingers.

  She’d barely said those words when a big, fat, green-backed fly flew onto the back of her hand and stung her. It wasn’t a bad bite, just annoying, but the shock of it made her cry out.

  ‘Ow!’

  Before Jack could say anything, a second green-backed fly got him on the back of the neck. He swatted it, but there were more of them on the way, dozens of them, barrelling in with the wind, aiming for the twins’ hands and faces. Where they landed, they bit.

  ‘Get off!’ shouted Jack, wildly batting at the air with his open palms, like a kung fu maniac. The midges had been insubstantial, but these flies were solid lumps . . . with a bite.

  To Jaide they felt like fuzzy little hailstones dropping out of the cloudy sky. Each individual impact was barely noticeable, but added together the swarm was like a barrage of tiny missiles. And then there was the biting. The flies were voracious and seemed intent on stinging every exposed part of her.

  Together the twins raced down another ten yards or so, constantly slapping their own faces and necks and clapping their hands, leaving a trail of dead flies behind them.

  Then there were no more green-backed flies. Like the sudden onset of the midges, the assault of the flies was over as abruptly as it had begun.

  ‘We must smell good . . . or something,’ said Jaide. Both of them were thinking not very happy thoughts about what the ‘or something’ might be, given all the other strange stuff that had been happening.

  The twins warily descended another ten steps before they heard the deep chorus of thousands of bugs suddenly start up, and saw the next onslaught of insects gathering just below.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Jack as a dense, dark cloud of crickets boiled up the Rock toward them in a tide of tiny legs and antennae. He looked back the way they’d come, as if hoping for some secret line of retreat to suddenly reveal itself. But the fog of flies was standing firm. ‘This can’t be happening!’

  ‘It is,’ said Jaide. The swarm of crickets would be on them in a moment, hopping, scratching, staring at them with their wild insect eyes. ‘We’ve got to run through them! Go!’

  They broke into a sprint down the treacherous path. Even though the slope was starting to flatten out, the path still doglegged back and forth as it descended, and there were many dangerously steep spots. Jack went first, windmilling his arms in front of him, running headlong into the mass of crickets.

  The hard-shelled insects pummelled the twins only from the front at first, but soon from all sides. The swarm followed them as they ran, swooping back to make multiple attacks, chirruping and clicking all the way. The noise was deafening, drowning out all attempts by the twins to talk to each other. Even Jaide felt her confidence weaken at that. There was definitely something sinister in the insects’ united determination. First midges, then flies, then crickets —

  All of a sudden, they burst out of the swarm. The cloud hung behind them, but the crickets did not pursue.

  ‘Yee-ha!’ shouted Jack in victory. He slowed down and glanced back. Crickets started to fly off in all directions, the horde suddenly disbanded.

  But even as he shouted, he heard Jaide gasp, and he whipped back around to look ahead.

  A living, moving, three-inch-thick carpet of cockroaches was coming up the path, a great roiling mass of big brown bugs that extended for a dozen yards or more.

  Jack didn’t waste any more time shouting, and neither did Jaide. They ran quickly down the hill, lifting their feet high and half-running, half-jumping, crunching up hundreds of cockroaches as they went. But for every hundred they squashed, there were hundreds more, and with every step, cockroaches latched on to their shoes and ankles and started to climb up their legs.

  The twins jumped higher and ran faster. Both of them instinctively knew that the cockroaches were trying to drag them down. If enough of them got a hold, they might even be able to do it . . .

  It was the strangest, grossest thing Jack had ever experienced – the squish, the splat, the oozing guts and the terrifying attack of legs, legs and more legs. Cockroaches on his skin. Cockroaches in his hair. Cockroaches climbing into his sleeves. All he could do was run faster. Harder. He had to breathe through his nose so the cockroaches wouldn’t get in his mouth. But his ears – they were attacking his ears. He swatted at them. Stepped on them. Pushed himself, with Jaide right next to him. Then they broke through – once again, the cloud had passed, but this time there were still bugs all over them. The twins slowed a little and bent over to smash cockroaches off each other’s legs, while continuing to stumble forward like crazy clowns.

  ‘Let’s stop and get them . . . get them all off!’ shouted Jack.

  ‘No! No time!’ yelled Jaide. ‘That’ll do! Run!’

  She started off straight ahead, but Jack pulled her back.

  ‘Not that way!’ he yelled.

  There were dozens of horrible, jar-size things sliding down invisible webs from the branches of the trees uphill from Grandma X’s house. As they hit the ground, their eight legs uncurled, and they began to scuttle toward the twins, moving with alarming speed.

  Spiders. Jaide couldn’t stand spiders.

  The twins ran from the spiders to dive frantically through a hole in the fence of the derelict house, sprint across the empty garden, and duck down the long-abandoned drive. At the front of the house there was a van with Repairs & All Maintenance painted on the side, and the odd-job woman they had met at the school that morning was sitting in the front eating a sandwich. She didn’t look up as the twins dashed past and onto the cobbled street.

  Ahead of them, at last, Jaide saw the arched entrance to Grandma X’s yard and slowed down. But from behind them came the throaty snarl and scrabbling paw-steps of a large, angry dog.

  Jack didn’t bother to turn around. He grabbed his sister’s arm and put on a last desperate burst of speed. Together they rocketed through the gates, skidded on the gravel, and fell over in a tangled heap. Behind them, with a yelp, the dog also skidded to a halt. Further down the lane, a few remnant spiders were seeking the shadows of the drain. They didn’t look as big as they had only a few moments before.

  Hearts pumping, Jaide and Jack rolled over, hands raised to fend off a dog attack.

  But the heavy-set pit bull terrier was still on the cobbled street, not quite under the arch of the gate, staring at them with its piggish eyes – eyes that were entirely white and shiny, without any trace of a pupil. Its flanks were heaving and its chops dripped spittle, but it wasn’t following them anymore, or growling. It paced back and forth just outside the gate, shaking its head and snapping at the air.

  ‘Hello, puppy,’ Jaide said. She tried to sound the way her father had taught her to talk to dogs, without fear or submission. Like a friend. An out-of-breath friend. ‘You don’t want to eat us, do you?’

  The dog turned its head toward her, and all of a sudden the milky cloud left its eyes, like a mist being blown away by a sudden breeze. It yawned and licked its chop
s with a great lolling tongue and then, with one all-over shake, it turned and trotted off.

  ‘How did you do that?’ asked Jack. ‘I mean, with its eyes and everything?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Jaide. ‘As far as I know —’

  Something dropped to the ground behind them, and Jack whirled around in fright, thinking of the spiders.

  ‘Ari!’ he exclaimed in relief as the ginger tom slid up to him and did a quick back-scratching circle of his leg. ‘Was it you who scared the dog away?’

  Ari looked up the lane and performed a very humanlike shrug. ‘Me? Scare that great beast away? I was hiding up the tree, like anyone sensible should have been.’

  Jack stared at him, unable to believe what his ears told him. Cats didn’t talk. It simply wasn’t possible.

  ‘Did you . . . did you hear that?’ he asked Jaide.

  ‘Hear what?’

  Jaide hadn’t reacted to the cat at all. Perhaps he had imagined it.

  ‘Uh, nothing, I guess,’ he said.

  Ari stared at him, and gave one slow, deliberate wink.

  ‘If you can hear me, that ugly mutt is the least of your problems.’

  With that, the cat sniffed and began to lick his paw.

  Jack opened his mouth to ask Ari another question, but before he could talk, Jaide grabbed his arm.

  ‘The blue door,’ she said, pointing excitedly. ‘It’s still there – and the sign, too! Let’s check it out!’

  Jack wasn’t so keen. He looked around again, but there was no sign of any further attentions from the insect or animal world. Even the wind had dropped away.

  ‘I guess we’re safe here,’ he said tentatively.

  ‘To a certain degree,’ said Ari quietly. He stopped licking his paw and stalked off toward the front entrance.

  Jack stared after the cat and wondered if he was going mad.

  ‘I’m sure we’re safe,’ said Jaide. She was sure, though she couldn’t have said why she felt so confident. There was something about the house itself, looming over them, that gave her a sense of protection. ‘Come on!’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ said Jack. He just wanted to go inside and stick his head under a pillow until all the rampaging insects and talking cats went away.