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Almost, but not quite.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Pride of Cats and Humans
Jaide was woken two hours later by the most awful noise she had ever heard.
It sounded like a choir of ghouls wailing right outside her bedroom window, holding long, wavering notes in tortured harmonies, then sliding up and down the scales in something like unison. It was chilling and horrible and utterly alien. She didn’t know what was making such a sound, but she knew it couldn’t possibly be coming from a human throat.
‘Jack!’
The moon was up, and she could just make him out, unconscious with a book lying limp over his face.
‘Jack, wake up!’
He snorted and jerked upright. The book fell to the floor with a thud.
‘Where? Who?’
‘Shhhh!’
‘Yow. Are you making that terrible noise?’
‘Of course not. But I’m glad you can hear it too. I thought I was dreaming!’
‘I wish you were. What on earth is making it?’
‘What do you think? It must be the monster!’
A stab of ice went through Jack’s stomach. It was one thing to speculate about a hideous figure from Portland’s folklore, quite another to have it rampaging about the house.
‘It can’t get in, right?’
‘Of course not,’ she said. But Jack knew the look on her face really meant I hope not.
‘But we can’t just sit here,’ Jaide continued. ‘This might be our one and only chance to find out what it is – and when we know that, hopefully we can convince Grandma to do something about it.’
That was true. Nerving himself to see something horrible beyond belief, Jack knelt on his bed and peered out of the window.
The front garden was empty.
‘See anything?’ Jaide asked.
‘No. We’ll have to go up on the widow’s walk.’
‘All right.’
The hideous wailing got even louder and more penetrating. Jaide wanted nothing more than to dive under the rug and cover her ears, but instead she forced herself to swing her legs out of bed and hunt across the shadowy floor for her father’s old dressing gown. She tied it firmly round her waist and slipped on a pair of woolly slippers. When she was ready, Jack was waiting for her by the door with trainers on and an anorak pulled untidily over his head.
The door opened without a sound, and they slipped out into the hallway. Tiptoeing across the creaky floor, they crossed the stairwell, but before they could begin to ascend, Jack tapped Jaide’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Wait a sec.’
Jaide heard him move off, but couldn’t see him. At night he was almost invisible to her more ordinary eyes. Something squeaked to her left, and she saw their mother’s door inch open for a second, then click closed again.
A second later, Jack whispered, ‘Mum’s asleep,’ into her ear, and Jaide stifled a soft scream. ‘How is that even possible?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, barely hearing the words over the hammering of her heart. ‘But let’s go before she does wake up.’
They hurried up the stairs as quickly as they dared. The empty eye sockets of the masks on the next floor watched them blankly as they reached that level. For the first time, Jaide wondered why anyone would make masks of real people, not owls or devils or the like. Perhaps, she thought, they were based on real people. That would explain why none was exactly the same . . .
‘Grandma’s not here,’ Jack said, ‘and she’s not in the Blue Room.’
Again Jaide started with fright. She hadn’t even noticed him leave to check out the Blue Room, or come back. ‘Where could she be?’
‘I don’t know. Up on the roof already, perhaps?’
Jack took the lead, guiding Jaide along the narrowing staircase to the very top of the house. The wailing was muffled, but still piercing through the closed door ahead of them. Jack could feel it growing, building up to some incomprehensible crescendo. Whatever was making it was getting ready for something big.
His sure fingers opened the latch. Jack stepped out into the cool night air. There was no sign of Grandma X on the widow’s walk. They were alone.
Jaide rushed to the rail and looked down.
‘I can’t see anything big,’ she said. ‘Not as big as an elephant anyway. Can you?’
Jack joined her and searched the shadows for signs of anything – human, animal or Evil.
‘I can’t see a monster,’ he said, frowning. ‘Uh . . .’
‘What?’ asked Jaide urgently.
‘All I see are a bunch of cats.’
‘Cats!?’
Jaide strained her eyes until she could just make out a dozen or so feline forms prowling back and forth across the back garden. ‘Oh, cats! That’s what the noise is. I’ve never heard so many yowling all at once though.’
A sudden thought struck her.
‘They’re not . . . they’re not part of The Evil?’
‘They don’t have white eyes,’ said Jack. ‘Just normal cats, I think.’
Jaide felt a mixture of relief and embarrassment at waking Jack for no reason. Nothing was attacking the house.
‘Come on,’ she said, tugging him away from the rail. ‘Let’s get back to bed.’
‘Wait,’ he said, pointing. ‘I think that’s Kleo down there, with Ari. And it looks like a fight is about to start.’
Jaide strained again. There was a ginger blob in the centre of the lawn that could indeed be Ari, and a grey blob that could be Kleo. But it could equally be a cat-sized rock, for all she could tell.
Jack suffered from no such ambiguity. He could see the animals below with perfect clarity. The other cats were a mixture of tortoiseshells and Siamese, with one perfectly white fluffball standing out like a patch of snow among them. The white one and Kleo were the ones making most of the noise, with Ari and the others providing dissonant back-up vocals.
‘I don’t recognise any of the others,’ he said, watching how Ari and Kleo stood firm while the rest slowly circled them. ‘But it’s twelve to two, with Ari and Kleo against everyone else.’
The wailing reached an entirely new pitch. Now Kleo and the white cat stood nose to nose, their backs arched and all their hair standing on end. Ari spat at a fat tortoiseshell that had dared come too close, and it backed away with tail upright and wide. Two more joined it, and they prowled around Ari, yowling menacingly. Jack could sense that the fight was about start any second.
‘Jaide, they’re outnumbered, and Grandma’s not here – we have to help them!’
Jaide couldn’t tell what, exactly, was going on, but the sound was so piercing now it felt like the night was going to split in two. If Jack said that Kleo and Ari needed their help, she was ready to believe him.
‘How?’ she asked. ‘I mean . . . twelve enemy cats . . . that’s a lot.’
‘We’ll have to use our Gifts,’ said Jack.
‘Let’s do what we did before,’ she said. ‘I’ll create a tornado and you can kill the light. That’s bound to stop the fight.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘Are you sure we can control it?’
‘Pretty sure, unless . . . have you got anything belonging to Dad on you?’
‘No,’ Jack said, ‘but you have.’
Jaide had forgotten the dressing gown. ‘Thank goodness you reminded me. Anything could have happened.’
She tugged off the dressing gown and dropped it and was about to lean back over the railing when Jack pulled her back.
‘We’d better get closer,’ Jack said. ‘Your aim’s not the best, particularly when you can’t see.’
‘OK. But come on! I don’t want Kleo and Ari to get hurt.’
They ran down the stairs, slowing only to tread quietly as they went past their mother’s room. She slumbered on, utterly oblivious to the drama unfolding around her.
Grandma X never locked her front door, as far as the twins had ever noticed. They rushed outside and ran round the house, too w
