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Jaide thought of the silhouette they had spotted just before the moths had attacked them. She hadn’t got a look at its face at all.
‘We saw someone . . .’
‘I’m sure . . . at least I think I saw his van out the front,’ Tara said, still looking a little dazed. ‘He must be here somewhere.’
She headed off to the gate, confidently avoiding the perils of the unlit building site. Jack and Jaide exchanged a look, then followed. While they didn’t want to bump into Martin McAndrew in the dark, they didn’t want to leave Tara alone either, not when The Evil was about.
They came around the sawmill and saw Tara’s father getting out of the MMM Holdings van – the same van that had almost run them over two nights ago.
‘There he is,’ Tara said, hurrying to meet him.
Pretending to arrive, Jack thought as they trailed her.
‘Sorry, darling,’ Mr McAndrew said as he and his daughter embraced. ‘The council meeting is running much later than I expected. You’ll have to come back with me and –’ He spotted the twins and smiled broadly. ‘Oh, hello . . . Jack and Jaide, isn’t it? This is a surprise. Is Tara giving you a tour of the site?’
‘Not exactly,’ Jaide said, trying to get a good look at his eyes. By the streetlights, they looked normal, with no sign of luminous white. ‘We were just riding past and saw Tara here.’
‘There were these moths!’ exclaimed Tara. ‘Thousands of them! They swarmed all over us from out of nowhere, and then they disappeared. It was amazing! Actually it was more creepy than amazing, but –’
‘Moths did you say?’
Grandma X’s voice came out of the gloom behind them and the twins turned to face her with relief.
‘Finally!’ Jack cried out.
‘Where have you been ?’ Jaide asked.
‘I have been out looking for you two of course.’ She took in Tara and her father in a glance, shooting the latter a particularly sharp glance. ‘This is an odd place for an evening rendezvous.’
Jaide stood on tiptoes in order to whisper into her ear, ‘We’ve got so much to tell you.’
Grandma X shook her head imperceptibly. Not now.
‘Yes, it is a bit extraordinary,’ said Mr McAndrew, looking uneasy. ‘But I’m learning fast that nothing in Portland is ever merely ordinary. Well, come on, Tara. The meeting is waiting for me, and I’d better not keep them waiting if I expect to get this approval through.’
‘Do I have to go?’ she asked in tortured tones. ‘It’s so boring . . . just a bunch of old people sitting around arguing in circles all night.’
‘Now, now, dear. I’m afraid we don’t have any choice.’ Mr McAndrew patted his daughter on the head, or tried to. She squirmed out of his way and folded her arms. ‘Believe me, I’ll be just as happy as you when it’s over.’
‘But Dad –’
‘She could come with us,’ Grandma X unexpectedly volunteered. ‘Until your meeting is over. We’re about to have dinner, and she would be very welcome.’
The twins stared at her in surprise. What was she thinking? With Tara around, there was no way they could talk about the monster or the excision.
Tara practically bounced in delight. ‘Please, Dad, can I?’
‘Well, if you’re sure it’s no trouble.’
‘No trouble at all, Martin. I find these two a handful at the quietest of times. It’ll be good for them to have someone to play with before bed.’
‘Well, great!’ He clapped his hands together. ‘That’s settled then. I’d best be off. As soon as the meeting is over, I’ll come by and pick Tara up. I know where the house is of course.’
His eagerness to get away was obvious to the twins as he hurried across the site, through the open gate and into the van. It started with a roar and accelerated off into the night.
‘You’ve got a moth caught in your hair,’ Tara told Jaide.
‘Yuck. Where?’
‘Here.’ Tara plucked the insect from her and held it up between thumb and forefinger. It looked quite dead. ‘Hey, let’s see if we can find out what species it is!’
‘How?’
‘On the Web. Do you have the Internet?’ Tara asked Grandma X.
‘I can let you use my computer,’ she said, ‘so long as you only download information on moths, not viruses.’
‘Excellent! Maybe we’ll find out what made them swarm like that.’
Her excitement was contagious, but neither twin had forgotten the real reason for the swarming. Jack peered closely at the dead bug, looking for any sign of whiteness in its eyes.
‘Are you sure it’s dead?’ he asked.
‘I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as a zombie moth, Jackaran,’ said Grandma X. ‘This way, children. I’m parked at the back, where I saw your bikes.’
She led the way back round the sawmill while Jaide explained to Tara that Jackaran was Jack’s full name, and Jaidith was Jaide’s. Jack took the opportunity to walk close to Grandma X.
‘There’s something you have to see,’ he whispered.
‘What kind of something?’
‘I don’t know. It’s over here.’
He guided her past the trench where they’d seen the giant snake skin, but when he shone the torch beam down into the trench, it was gone.
‘Where did it go?’ he asked, sweeping the light from one end of the trench to the other. There was definitely nothing there.
‘Where did what go?’ asked Tara, coming to look too.
‘Uh, I thought I saw a frog,’ said Jack, the first thing that came into his mind. ‘But it must have hopped out.’
‘I suppose it must have,’ said Grandma X, heading on to the fence and ushering the two puzzled troubletwisters and one oblivious Tara through the hole. ‘Now, Jackaran and Jaidith, you ride your bikes straight home. Tara, you come with me.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Hey, cool car! How old is it?’
‘Old enough to have a personality,’ Grandma X said, getting inside, ‘and an intense dislike of waking up on cold mornings.’
‘Sounds like my mum.’
The car doors slammed, and Jack and Jaide rode off through the beam of its headlights.
‘How did he do that?’ asked Jaide, pedalling harder to take out her frustration.
‘Who? Do what?’
‘Tara’s dad of course. He must have hidden the skin while we were distracted.’
‘Could the moths have carried it away?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Or maybe it was more than empty skin after all?’
‘I don’t know, Jack. If it was the monster, what was it doing pretending to be dead? Or deflated? Why didn’t it just eat us there and then?’
Jack had no good answer for that, and he doubted they were going to get any closer to an answer that night.
When they got home, the weathervane was pointing out the wind direction, and Ari was waiting impatiently on the verandah. He glared at them, then ran off into the garden, so the twins could tell that he was both relieved and annoyed. They wondered if he was going to get into trouble from both Kleo and Grandma X for letting them out of his sight.
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They researched moths and other Lepidoptera while Grandma X prepared dinner. They could tell she was distracted by something because that night they had one of her busy meals, where she rummaged through the fridge and the pantry and put together whatever she could find in odd combinations. So they had baked beans, rice and steamed vegetables, followed by raspberry jelly with chocolate on the side. Tara didn’t seem to mind, not even when Grandma X got out the mysterious soup pot again and began cooking up a particularly noxious brew.
‘My mother only cooks healthy stuff,’ she said, ‘and the same things, over and over again. Dad only ever gets takeaways, from the same place, which I don’t like. We never have anything different. Sometimes my grandpa comes and stays with us, and we have fantastic stir-frys, but he only visits when my grandmother is mad at him and kicks him out for a while.’
The moth was proving tough to identify, and even the twins were distracted by the search. They’d never realised just how many moths and butterflies existed in the world, or how hideous they were when magnified. Weirdly, butterflies, which looked so pretty from afar, were much uglier up close than moths. Moths looked practically beautiful in comparison.
In the end, they decided that it was probably an Imperial Silk Moth, and found a jar to seal its remains in, so Tara could take it home. Jack wanted to sticky-tape it shut, but even Jaide thought that was going too far. They had been alone with it for an hour and it hadn’t even twitched.
They’d only just got out a board game when a horn’s sharp tooting came from outside the house.
‘That’ll be Dad,’ said Tara, jumping up. ‘He’ll be in a hurry. He always is.’
They rushed to the door, and sure enough, there was the MMM Holdings van parked on the driveway, with Martin McAndrew tapping his fingers at the wheel.
‘Come along, Tara!’ he called. ‘Did you have a good time?’
‘Excellent, Dad,’ she said, only reluctantly walking out to meet him. ‘Do I have to go home now?’
‘Well, it’s been a long day, and you have to feed Fi-Fi . . .’
‘I’m sure the kids would love to see each other another time,’ said Grandma X, appearing suddenly behind them with a pink-tinged wooden spoon in one hand.
