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‘That’s not what I meant!’
++We know what you mean better than you do, troubletwister.++
‘You don’t know anything about me!’
++I know what happened to your father in the place you call the Pacific. I know what he lost. Don’t you want to know too? Don’t you want to know all the secrets the Wardens are keeping from you?++
Jack stared into the cat’s horrible white eyes and suddenly didn’t know what he wanted. He stood frozen as Amadeus slowly began to come down the coal pile, as sure-footed as ever despite the jerking and rattling of the still speeding train.
‘That voice?’ said Tara, clutching at Jack’s arm. ‘That voice in my head – stop it, Jack! Please make it go away!’
Her cry cut through Jack’s paralysis. He turned to her and spoke urgently.
‘Don’t listen to it, Tara! Think of something else, something happy. Think of doughnuts!’
‘Doughnuts,’ murmured Tara. ‘Really great doughnuts, hot, with cinnamon, just cooked . . .’
Thinking of doughnuts made Jack feel better too.
++Such small thoughts, so soon to be lost to the world.++
Amadeus blinked and shook his head. His eyes had returned to their normal bright blue. His voice was normal too, notwithstanding that he was a cat.
‘What? Why are you leaving me?’ the cat cried.
Jack had no idea why The Evil had left Amadeus, but he tried to take advantage of the cat’s temporary befuddlement. Running up the slope, he swung his shovel, only to lose his footing as the train suddenly lurched, the sound of the wheels changing from a shriek to a sickeningly loud thump-thump-thump. Amadeus jumped out of the way, and Jack rolled back down, losing his weapon.
Tara dragged him out from under a layer of coal, just as Jaide and Kleo ran in from the locomotive.
‘Grab hold of something!’ Jaide yelled. ‘We’re going to crash!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
What Lies Under Little Rock
Everything went into slow motion. Jack and Tara dived for the front-left corner of the tender as Jaide, Kleo and Ari went for the front-right. Amadeus jumped back over the coal pile, shouting to his followers.
Jack wedged his legs against the side of the tender and looked across at Jaide. The train was shaking violently, the tender bumping up and down, the brakes still letting out occasional shrieks.
‘How long?’ yelled Jack, meaning how long until they hit whatever it was they were clearly going to hit.
Any answer Jaide might have given him was lost as they went into the tunnel. Everything went dark, and the sound around them was both muffled and magnified at the same time. But there was no impact, and for a moment Jack thought there wasn’t going to be.
He had little more than a second of feeling relieved. Then the train hit the buffers blocking off the Little Rock tunnel, smashed straight through them and left the track.
A second later, the locomotive collided with the rock wall of the tunnel, screeching along it like a giant metal finger running down a blackboard before it finally tipped over and came to a stop, a hundred yards inside the tunnel.
The tender did not tip over, but it too scraped along the tunnel wall, one entire side getting peeled off like the lid of a sardine tin, Jack pulling his feet back just in time. One of Ari’s Portland cats was not so lucky.
The passenger carriage did not follow, the safety chain finally breaking as the front part of the train careered off the rails.
Finally everything stopped.
In the darkness, steam vented with a melancholy howl. The survivors in the coal tender slowly dragged themselves upright, coughing out coal dust and pushing away the drifts of coal that had almost buried them.
‘Jaide? Tara?’ whispered Jack. ‘Ari? Kleo?’
There was a terrible silence for a few seconds, then three voices answered. But Kleo did not.
‘Jack,’ said Jaide, coughing. ‘Can you see?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jack. He could see. There were Tara and Jaide, and Ari trying to lick coal dust off his own eyes . . .
‘Can you make us a light?’ Jaide continued. ‘Be careful.’
‘Make a light?’ whispered Tara. ‘How?’
Jack didn’t respond. Despite everything, despite the situation they were in, his heart was swelling with hope and relief.
His Gift was back!
He thought about a soft, gentle light. Like the light cast by the big lamp in their old living room, the one with the gold-patterned paper shade that his father had brought back from a trip to Japan.
A steady, golden light grew above his head and slowly spread, illuminating Jaide’s relieved expression and Tara’s gobsmacked one.
‘How are you doing that?’ she asked. ‘Are you . . . are you guys some sort of superheroes?’
‘I wish,’ said Jack. ‘Oh . . . Kleo!’
Jaide looked where he was pointing. A familiar, sleek, blue-grey tail was poking out from under a pile of coal. It wasn’t moving.
‘No!’
The cry came from human and cat mouths, and the next second there was a frantic, mixed-up melee as everyone tried to dig Kleo out at the same time. Jaide got to her first, picking her up and cradling her to her chest.
‘Kleo! Kleo, don’t die!’
Ari sniffed at Kleo, then sat back on his haunches with a sigh of relief.
‘She’s not dead,’ he pronounced. ‘Just stunned.’
‘That’s a relief,’ said Jack. ‘I mean, obviously for her, but also since she’s the Living Ward as well . . .’
‘No she isn’t,’ said Jaide and Ari together.
Jack stared at them.
‘Well, who is then?’
Somewhere outside the wrecked train, a horribly familiar groan sounded over the hiss of escaping steam.
&
nbsp; ‘Uuuuuurrrrrghhhhhhhhhhblblllellaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.’
Everyone rushed to the front of the tender to look out, and there they all stopped.
They were in a cave. The train had opened up a great gash in the side of the Little Rock tunnel, and the coal tender had run into a vast hollow chamber that lay behind it.
Slowly, led by Jack, they climbed down. He expanded his light without even thinking about it as they left the tender behind and looked around. High above, long stalactites sent back flickering reflections. Black shapes wheeled and turned in a panic between them, hundreds or even thousands of bats, rudely woken from their daytime slumber. Fifty yards away, a wide pool of dark water lapped at the white limestone of the cave floor.
‘Uuuuuurrrrrghhhhhhhhhhblblllellaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.’
The sound filled the cave, making everyone’s hair stand on end.
Jack looked at Jaide. ‘That’s whatever was next door,’ he whispered.
‘What is it?’ asked Tara. She stayed close to Jack, apparently convinced that he was indeed a superhero, no matter what he said.
‘That . . .’ said Jaide, pointing to the underground lake.
There was something in the shallows, near the shore of the lake. A huge creature, half-fish, half-worm, that was pulling itself feebly along with the flipper-like appendages that sprouted near its front. It had two small-looking black eyes and fan-like fronds where its ears should have been, and there were numerous scars and stitches in its pallid, glistening flesh. There was a new bleeding wound in its side, with a piece of train embedded in it.
Its mouth opened, and the gurgling groan came again.
‘That has to be the monster,’ whispered Tara.
As she spoke, there were footsteps behind them. Everyone whirled around.
A woman walked across, between the wreckage of the locomotive and the tender. She wore overalls that were so ripped and stained they were little more than rags, but no one noticed that because her eyes were shining white, without pupil or iris, and her mouth was set in an unnatural smile.
