Night on Terror Island (11 page)

‘Oh no,’ he gasped. ‘Oh no, not Rose!’

Beth stood there staring at him.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked anxiously. ‘That kid in the film … she looks exactly like Rose.’

‘It
is
Rose,’ groaned Kip. ‘Oh God … what am I going to say to Mum and Dad when they get back?’

Beth’s face was a picture of astonishment.

‘What do you mean?’ she muttered. ‘How
can
it be Rose? She’s in here.’ She looked around the darkened room. ‘Isn’t she?’

The door behind them swung open and Mr Lazarus stepped into the room. He stood there a moment, staring at Kip and Beth in surprise.

‘What are you two doing up here?’ he cried. ‘You’re missing the film.’

He noted the angry glare in Kip’s eyes and then his own gaze moved sideways to look at the wooden platform, bathed in the light of the projector. The smile on his face faded in an instant.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked blearily. ‘Where’s Rose?’

At that moment, Kip could have cheerfully strangled the old man.

‘What have you done?’ he whispered. ‘For God’s sake, she’s only six years old.’

Mr Lazarus arranged his face into a look of total innocence.

‘I haven’t done anything,’ he said. ‘I was down in the ticket booth, taking care of a few stragglers.’ He took a couple of steps closer to the projector and stared down at the wooden platform. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘How very unfortunate.’

ROSE WAS FEELING
bewildered and rather scared. She gazed down over the rail of the sinking ship as the other members of the crew lowered a lifeboat into the churning waters. In the fading light, the sea appeared to be almost black. Captain Holder stared down at her for a moment and then strode away, shouting orders to the others.

Now the blonde-haired woman, who Rose recognised from the bit of film she’d watched earlier, came over to stand beside her. She was looking at Rose as though she didn’t quite understand what she was doing here, but Rose felt exactly the same way about it. She understood she had somehow gone into the film but she didn’t have the first idea how she was going to get out again.

‘Where’ve you been hiding all this time?’ asked the woman. She had an American accent. ‘Are you a stowaway?’

Rose looked up at her.

‘What’s a stow …?’

‘A stowaway,’ said the woman, ‘is somebody who hides aboard a ship.’

Rose shook her head. ‘Haven’t been hiding,’ she protested. ‘One moment I was at the Paramount, the next there was this light in my eyes and I was here.’

‘You … were at the … Paramount?’ The woman looked baffled. ‘What does that mean exactly?’

‘My dad has a cinema.’

‘That must be very nice for you,’ murmured the woman. ‘But what does it have to do with anything?’

‘I don’t know. I was up in the room where they show the films and there was this black cloth and I took it off and …’ Rose shook her head. ‘I want to go home,’ she said.

‘We all want to go home, honey,’ said the woman and slipped an arm round Rose’s shoulders. ‘But we can’t right now.’ She pointed to the horizon. ‘First of all, we need to get to that island.’

Rose looked where the woman was pointing and sure enough, there on the blood-red horizon was a smudge of land, and what looked like a stretch of palm trees.

‘Is this like a dream?’ she asked.

‘More of a nightmare,’ said the woman grimly. As she said this, the deck of the ship seemed to lurch to one side and they had to grab hold of the rail to stop themselves from falling.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Rose.

‘You and me both, honey. What’s your name?’

‘Rose.’

‘OK, Rose. I’m Doctor Tamara Flyte. Don’t worry, I’m going to take real good care of you.’

Rose studied the woman for a moment.

‘I’ve seen you before,’ she said. ‘You were in the trailer.’

Tamara looked confused.

‘I don’t live in a trailer, I have a very nice apartment.’

‘No, the trailer for that horrible film!’

‘You must be mixed up,’ said Tamara. ‘I’m not in films. I’m an anthropologist.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Rose.

Tamara thought for a moment and then looked even more puzzled.

‘I’m … I’m not really sure,’ she said. ‘But I know I
am
one.’

Just at that moment, the lifeboat dropped from its harness into the water with an almighty splash. Captain Holder came running along the deck towards them.

‘Everybody into the boat!’ he yelled. ‘There’s not much time. We’re going down like a lead balloon. ‘As if to confirm this, the yacht gave a grinding roar and seemed to settle even lower in the water. ‘She’s slipping off the reef,’ bellowed Captain Holder.

‘Come on,’ urged Tamara. She climbed over the rail and then turned back to hoist Rose up beside her. She was a lot stronger than she looked.
She
pointed to a series of metal rungs on the ship’s hull. ‘Now we have to climb down,’ she said. ‘Think you can do that?’

Rose nodded. She hooked a leg over the metal rail and climbed down into the boat. When Rose was safely aboard, Tamara started coming down the rungs herself. She dropped the last few feet, making the boat wallow in the water.

‘Be careful!’ Rose chided her. ‘You’ll turn us over.’

‘Sorry.’ Tamara put her arm protectively around Rose and the two of them sank onto a padded bench on one side of the boat. Now another person was coming down the rungs, while Captain Holder shouted at him to hurry. He seemed to be doing an awful lot of shouting. A young man with long hair and horn-rimmed glasses dropped into the boat and settled himself down opposite Rose and Tamara.

‘Where did the kid come from?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, Tad, ‘Tamara told him. ‘She was …’

‘There was a bright light and then I was here,’ said Rose, trying to be helpful.

‘Interesting,’ said Tad. ‘Sounds like some kind of teleportation.’ He smiled at Rose. ‘I’m Tad Baxter,’ he said. ‘Were you sent here from the island?’

‘No, I was in the pictures,’ said Rose.

‘Pictures?’ asked Tad. ‘You mean like … paintings?’

Rose glared at him.

‘No, I mean like a cinema.’

‘A cinema?’ Tad looked around at the raging sea all around them, then glared at Tamara. ‘There’s a cinema on the boat? How come nobody told me?’

‘You’re stupid,’ said Rose, and Tad looked offended.

A slim, dark-haired woman who was wearing a halterneck and a pair of skimpy denim shorts climbed down into the boat too. She had a rucksack over one shoulder, from which several rolls of paper stuck out.

‘I managed to grab some of your charts before the cabin flooded,’ she told Tamara. ‘And I sent out a distress call on the radio. Somebody might hear it and come looking for us.’

‘Good work, Jade. Er … this is Rose.’

Jade dropped into a seat beside Rose. She looked at Tamara in surprise.

‘Well, you sure kept
her
quiet,’ she said.

‘Oh, she’s not mine,’ protested Tamara. ‘She just kind of … turned up.’

‘Then I guess she’s a stowaway,’ said Jade.

‘I’m
not
a stowaway,’ said Rose, irritably. ‘Why does everyone keep saying that? I don’t know how I got here; I just know I want to go home.’

‘Where
is
home?’ asked Tamara, trying to be helpful.

‘Forty-two, Napier Road,’ said Rose and thought for a moment. ‘I can’t remember the postcode.’ Tamara and Jade gave each other baffled looks.

‘You mean the zip code?’ asked Jade.

‘I think postcodes are from the UK,’ said Tamara. ‘And her accent sounds kind of English to me.’

Captain Holder was the last to descend the ladder. He jumped into the boat and glared at a grizzled old man in a yellow raincoat, who was slumped in the prow. ‘Nice job, Sam,’ he growled.

‘Captain, I had no chance, so I didn’t,’ shouted Sam. He sounded Irish or Scottish, Rose thought. Or perhaps even an American who was
trying
to sound Irish or Scottish. ‘That blasted reef just came out of nowhere, so it did.’

‘I’d be more convinced if I couldn’t smell the whiskey fumes on your breath,’ snarled Captain Holder. ‘When we’ve got more time, you and me are gonna have a little talk about this.’ He moved to the outboard motor and pulled a length of cord. It took a couple of attempts to get going but then the engine fired up and they started moving forward. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for more reefs!’ he yelled to the people in the prow. The boat had only moved off a short distance when the yacht gave a last convulsive shudder and began to slip beneath the waves. Captain Holder stood there, watching in silence as his ship sank to the bottom of the ocean. For a few moments, the masts still stuck up from the swaying surface of the water, but then they too were gone.

‘I’m sorry, Captain,’ blubbered Sam. ‘She was a fine ship, so she was.’

‘She was my dad’s ship,’ said Captain Holder. ‘He managed to sail her for thirty years without a serious incident. Now she’s gone.’ He lowered his head for a moment and Rose thought that he might be about to burst into tears – but then he seemed to make a huge effort and snapped round to look at Tamara. ‘Well, Doctor Flyte, looks like we found your mysterious island, after all. Let’s just hope it’s worth the price we paid to get here.’

Rose gazed ahead at the gradually approaching outline of the island, silhouetted against a blood-red sunset. Once again, she was reminded of the horrible trailer she had seen, last week. Hadn’t there been a view of the same island in that? Wasn’t this the island where the monsters lived?

‘We can’t go there,’ she told Tamara, pointing.

‘What do you mean, honey? We have to.’

‘It’s a bad place,’ said Rose. ‘There are horrible things there. Monsters.’

Tamara looked intrigued.

‘But how could you know that?’ she asked. ‘Have you been there before?’

‘No, but I’ve
seen
it.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Tad. ‘Sounds like some kind of clairvoyance.’

Everyone ignored him.

‘Well, whatever you think of the place, we have to go there,’ said Tamara. ‘We just don’t have any other choice.’

The boat continued on its way towards the distant island.

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Beth. ‘You’re saying that Mr Lazarus can put people into films?’

‘Yes,’ said Kip. He was gazing through the hatch at the screen, where he could see Rose crammed into a lifeboat with the rest of the yacht’s passengers. She looked pretty scared, which was understandable.

‘You mean, like,
really
put them in?’

‘Yeah. I went into one myself.
Public Enemy Number One
. It wasn’t for long, but I was in it, all right.’

Beth stared at him enviously.

‘Wow!’ she said. ‘That must have been brilliant.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Kip told her. ‘It was scary. I was nearly killed.’

‘But, how? It’s just a film, right?’

‘It’s complicated,’ said Kip, tearing himself away from the hatch. He glared at Mr Lazarus. ‘I’m going to have to go in and get her, aren’t I?’ he said.

Mr Lazarus frowned. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of any other way of doing it. Still, at least it will give us a chance to try out the modifications I made to the Retriever.’

‘Oh, that’s fine then,’ said Kip. ‘So long as it’s not all bad news.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said. ‘Rose hates films like
Terror Island
. She’ll be scared out of her wits.’
He
looked apprehensively at the wooden platform. ‘Should I go in now?’

Mr Lazarus frowned.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ he said. ‘Time
is
rather pressing.’

Beth frowned.

‘But won’t people in the audience recognise you?’ she asked. ‘Maybe you should wait until the audience have gone home and then run the film again.’

‘We can’t do that,’ said Mr Lazarus. ‘If she’s still there when the closing credits roll, she’s there for ever.’