Hidden Among Us (5 page)

Elven? So this was just more stupid fantasy. Elves and fairies and aliens. I felt like hurling the manuscript out of the window, letting it blow across the motorway. I’d risked everything for this and it was pointless. But somehow I couldn’t quite stop reading; the story so exactly mirrored my own. Lissy’s own.

And de Conway, Philippa de Conway. She must be related to Miles. Dad hated him so much he had to be involved in this one way or another. That wasn’t the only disturbing thing.
Iron
. Mentioned on almost every website about the paranormal, definitely in every book I’d ever read about witches, fairies, elves, all of that bull.

Which was why last summer in a remote French village, I escaped Dad and Elena for the afternoon and I went to the blacksmith.

I asked him to forge me an iron knife.

The blacksmith’s southern accent was so strong I couldn’t understand what he said when I came to take my knife away. Probably for the best. I’ve carried it in my pocket ever since, a sharp blade held safe in a leather case, a smooth wooden hilt.

Yes, it’s paranoid and bizarre to keep an iron knife in my pocket, but whenever I think of just throwing the stupid thing away, I remember the empty bed, that spider jerking across the still-warm sheet. I was so young, but I can still see it all so clearly.

You can’t be too careful.

It’s also paranoid and completely crazy to steal a manuscript from the British Library,
I reminded myself.
But that hasn’t stopped you
.

I knew all this was becoming an obsession, unhealthy and peculiar. I knew that, this time, I had in all likelihood gone too far. Sometimes overstepping the mark is the only viable option.

I looked down again, found my place in the cramped columns of text.

I shut my eyes, pushing away the memory. Not just of looking down at the empty basket, the brown decaying leaves, that spider, but of the fear. Feeling more scared than I’d ever known. Because even then I
knew
they were so powerful—

This was it. I shut my eyes, weak with relief. Relief that I hadn’t somehow imagined everything because that would mean I was crazy. Wouldn’t it?

The memory rose up again like something dead and rotting floating on water.

Walking step by step across Mum and Dad’s room. The silence, that thick, relentless silence after all the screaming. Reaching the baby basket. Looking inside, and…

Just keep on reading
. I turned back to the journal, forcing myself to focus.

An uprising. I tried and failed to imagine the newspaper headlines if everyone knew. Because they
are
here: this Gateway or whatever it is has already been opened, God knows how or when. They’re Hidden, but here among us all the time. I know because I’ve seen them. My eyes travelled to the bottom margin of the page, to those words scrawled in brown ink.

Even though it was hot in the car at nine in the evening, I felt cold when I read that.

When I drove back onto the motorway, I saw the grey Alfa Romeo again. Two cars back. Waiting, like a buzzard hanging in the air, waiting to fall through the sky, claws open and ready to drop.

9

The boy smiled at me, waiting by the rain-swept bus stop. I could see the moon in his eyes, reflected.

“I – I’m sorry—” I started to tell him he’d got the wrong person, made a mistake, but it was as if my head had been sucked clean as a cracked egg. All I could do was look at his face, not asking myself any of the questions I should have done. He’d mistaken me. He must have done. He was acting like we knew each other: that he really had been waiting for me.

“When you got off the train, I knew you must be coming too.” What was he talking about now? Coming where? The boy reached out and I found myself taking his hand. His skin felt oddly cool yet so familiar.
It’s cold out here
, I told myself.
Cold and wet
. Now we were walking together, side by side. He was taller than me. Much. Well, I knew how that felt. I tower above all the girls in my year. His face looked so young.

What are you doing, you idiot?
I thought.
You don’t know who he is
.

“I’ve got to get back,” I said; “they’ll be wondering where I am.” That was an understatement.

The boy didn’t seem to hear. He stopped a moment, staring at the hedge, then pulled me towards it. “Through here,” he said. “There’s a gap.”

It’s not as if he’s some creepy old man. He’s just a boy. He can’t be much older than me. Maybe sixteen at most
. The thought blew through my head faster than a leaf in a gale, and disappeared. He stepped lightly over a nettle-filled ditch, still holding my hand, and he didn’t even have to ask me to follow. Hoping like mad I wasn’t going to make an idiot of myself and fall into the nettles, I leapt after him, thinking,
Why not? Just why not?
He took my other arm, steadying me, smiling into my face as I landed, crouching against the hedge.

“That was well done. You’re getting wet. Wear this.” The boy shrugged out of his cloak and hung it around my shoulders with a flash of gold as he fastened the leaf-brooch. The cloak was heavy. The smell of it caught at the back of my throat and for a minute I couldn’t think about anything else. It was disgusting and delicious at the same time, just like a fairground – a mixture of hot salty sweat, wet dog and something deep and sweet, like burnt candyfloss. It was an animal smell, burning and alive. I’d thought the soaked wool would be wet on the inside too, damp and cold, but it wasn’t. Instead I felt a lot warmer.

“But—” I looked at the boy, unable to hide my shock. His hair was now free from the cloak’s hood, a great sweep of bright red hair, snaking down past his shoulders, redder than mine, redder than the sun as it sinks away behind the hills. “Won’t you get wet?” I finished, stupidly.

He smiled. “It doesn’t matter. We’re late. We must hurry. The dark time is already here.” He was walking on now; I scurried along, trying to keep up. The cloak flapped around my ankles, dragging in the long grass. I’d changed out of my school uniform on the train and had my biker boots on, luckily. The ground really was getting muddy, though; it was much harder to move.

I tried one last time to make the boy understand. “I’m not who you think I am.” But he didn’t seem to hear. He’d let go of my hand now; I was half running to keep up. He seemed to be heading for a clump of trees at the far end of the field. It sounds ridiculous but I knew all the time that this was crazy. Mum would be going mad, calling the police, probably.
I
was mad for just going off with this boy. All the same, I followed him.

Serves her right
, I told myself.
I’ve only been a few minutes. I’ll go back soon
.

Then the boy started running, really running, reaching back to take my hand, and I stopped thinking at all, his hand in mine. His skin still felt too cold, and for a tiny second I shuddered as if I’d just touched a frog. One last sensible thought came and went:
He really could be a murderer
. Yet I was running, too, legs burning, lungs tearing.

The boy let me slow down when we reached the trees. Dark branches brushed my face, touched the back of my neck. I could hear music now. Now it all made sense: he was heading to one of those illegal outdoor parties. Old people moaning in the local newspaper afterwards. The police. A jolt of excitement shot through me. But as we got closer, still hand in hand, I realized the music wasn’t right. It was live, for a start: scratchy wild violin-type music – folky, the kind of stuff Nick listens to – a sort of flute or pipe, all mixed with something watery and silverish that might have been a harp. A
harp
? And the drums. A crashing, exciting roar of sound.

It can’t have been much later than nine o’clock, but everyone was dancing, lithe figures moving among the trees. Fires blazed, fire was everywhere, hanging in lanterns from branches, flickering piles of flame dotted about, casting long shadows.

He turned and spoke to me again but I couldn’t hear, just saw his lips moving, eyes like smudges of coal. So pale. And I danced with him. The music got inside me, the drumming. I had no time to worry about tripping over or looking stupid. He was holding me, leading the dance as the heavy cloak flew out around my legs. All the time I just kept thinking,
I can’t believe this is happening
. Everyone was gorgeous: laughing, smiling.

I don’t know how long it was before I realized what was wrong with the rest of the dancers. There were so many of us, moving and swaying between the trees, whirling, stamping, heads thrown back, teeth shining in the firelight. The others were so tall and slender. It wasn’t right, like seeing a whole load of catwalk models all together. There’s a girl at school whose older sister is a model, Rebecca Dawlish. Rebecca stands out because she looks so different: pale and very thin, but here they were in the woods, these people,
all
looking like that. They had so much hair, and the smell: sugary-smokey, stale. I was noticing it more and more. As if none of them had washed in years. Years and years. Everything that had felt so exciting and wonderful now looked ragged and dirty.

It wasn’t just that, either. No one spoke to us or even looked in our direction. It was like we weren’t really there, nothing but a pair of shadows dancing among the dancers.

I had the strangest feeling of being cut off and deliberately ignored, just like at school with Tasha Bennett and her plastic friends. No matter how many times Alice tries to persuade me it’s because they’re jealous –
You’re
stunning,
Lissy
– being given the cold shoulder still makes me cringe. I’m used to it.

Now it was like that here in the woods with a load of people I’d never even met.
Great
, I thought.
Clearly my natural charm at work once again. Why does this always happen to me?

“What’s wrong?” The boy smiled at me, lightly holding both my hands, leaning back a little as if to see me properly. “Come, have a drink.” There was something strangely old-fashioned about the way he spoke. I couldn’t help looking at his hard, sharp teeth, bright in the flickering glow of a lantern hanging from a tree, a metal cup of fire.

“I – I can’t—” I pulled my hands out of the boy’s grip, trying to ignore the coolness of his skin.
Not right
, something deep in my brain screamed at me.
Not right, not right. Run
.

“Oh, stay,” the boy whispered, leaning closer. There was something ragged and desperate in his voice. “Please. It’s only just begun.” I felt his breath on my face: a warm, sweet smell that made me feel dizzy and terrified at the same time. “Please,” he whispered again; his eyes were so dark but I saw fear in them: real dread.

It’s all right
, I wanted to say.
Don’t be afraid. I’ll help you—

Suddenly I thought of Mum. She would be frantic. What was I doing here with these people I’d never met before in my life? Wasn’t I in enough trouble already?

And in that second I knew that if I wanted to leave, I would have to run.

Shrugging out of his cloak, I turned and scrambled away. Suddenly, I was visible. They were all looking at me. I ran, bumping into dancers, tangled in the woolly, smokey folds of their clothes, touched by their cold pale hands, ignoring the whispering music of their voices beneath the pounding drums, the bright high pipes.

As I reached the clearing’s edge and started running through the trees, I sensed another shift in the mood, felt the heat of their eyes on me, all of them at once. A pack of beasts turning to look as one. I don’t know how to explain it but somehow a deep ancient part of me knew that if they chose, these tall strange people, then I would be hunted.

Some part of me that remembered how it felt to be prey.

10

“Nick!” Miriam came into the sitting room with red eyes like she’d been crying. I wished I wasn’t there. “Lissy’s run off— I’ve got to find a torch, I’ll have to go after her and it’s dark now—”

“I’ll help you find her, I’ve got a torch in the car. She can’t have gone far.” Dad turned to me, looking really worried. “Joe, you stay here in case she comes back. Listen out for Connie, too.”

We were in the middle of the countryside, not a war zone. Fair enough to mind Connie but Miriam was acting like Lissy was four, not fourteen.

I watched Miriam follow Dad into the kitchen. She’d better not try treating me like a bloody four year old. I’d already decided the only way to survive this holiday would be to keep my head down and hope Dad didn’t decide to marry Miriam or anything stupid like that. I could do without a stepmother who thought that taking a train on your own was potentially lethal. I sighed. I’m not the world’s most intuitive person but that was blatantly the real reason we were all at Hopesay Reach. Dad and Miriam were serious.
The next thing I know
, I thought,
they’ll be telling everyone they’re moving in together
.