Pandora (2 page)

“Safe?” screeched Mrs Laskaris, thoroughly enjoying herself as she became the centre of attention, though she would never admit such a thing, even to herself. “You call this safe? Living in this place, with crimes and drugs all around, and Pandora sneaking out and the twins in mortal fear? How long will we be safe in Lowell? How long before we’re murdered in our beds!”

“That is not going to help the girls settle, is it?” pointed out Mr Laskaris.

His wife looked taken aback but rallied by snatching a rumpled letter from out of her dressing gown pocket. “No, but this will!” she exclaimed. “It’s another letter from Aunt Mabel in Willowcombe Clatford, a lovely, peaceful village. She rents out a house there and her tenant has left, and she says that we can have first refusal on the house!”

“We’ve already discussed this,” sighed Mr Laskaris. “My work is here, it would mean uprooting the girls—”

“Pooh!” exclaimed Mrs Laskaris. “It will be a new start for all of us in a lovely countryside village. I remember the place from my summer holidays. It’s beautiful! So quiet, with a real village school and a cricket team and a post office and tea rooms and nothing but fields and woods all around.” She paused, panting for breath.

“My work—” began Mr Laskaris, before being cut off with another explosive “Pooh!”

“There’s a new retail and industrial park not more than ten miles away which is crying out for new people. Aunt Mabel says so. There are jobs there and new people are moving to the village because they’ve got work at the park. You could get a job there easily!”

“It’s not that simple,” muttered Mr Laskaris, aware of the problems of a hundred applications for every vacancy, plus he was well on the wrong side of forty to be looking for a new job. Employers wanted young blood.

“Think of the girls,” said Mrs Laskaris, playing her trump card. “How much better life will be for them. We need to move for their sake.”

Pandora looked at the indecision on her father’s face, and despite his lingering objections, she guessed that soon the family would be moving. She found herself wondering about Willowcombe Clatford.
Could it really offer a better life, as her mother believed?

Martin Tooke lay on his bed, his arms folded across his chest, staring at the model spaceship that hung down from the ceiling. It was very late, and normally he would be asleep, but he was too upset.

That day, at school, the unthinkable had happened. He had answered back. It had happened at lunch. Someone–he had no idea who–had left their plate overhanging the side of one of the dinner tables. As Martin had walked toward the door, the plate had wobbled and fallen, smashing on the floor, and he’d been blamed for it by one of the teachers. Just because he was closest, it was assumed he was the guilty person, despite the fact he was a good two feet away at the time. What made him really angry was the fact that this was the third time he’d been blamed for something he hadn’t done.

The door to his room opened, and his father looked in on him. “Why is your light still on?” Martin didn’t answer, and Mr Tooke sighed. “Are you still brooding about that plate?”

“You don’t know what it’s like there,” snapped Martin. “We get blamed for everything.”

“We?”

“The new people, those who weren’t born in the village. They all look down on us and blame us for everything. Just because we’re not local. I hate it at St Hilda’s. I want to go back home.”

“You know we can’t do that,” replied his father. “We moved here for a better life.”

“My life isn’t better,” said Martin angrily. “They’ve got it in for me.”

“Who have?”

“The teachers. Especially that headmistress, Miss Hill. She made out it was all my fault. She believed Mrs Talbot when she said I’d broken that plate. She never gave me a chance.”

“And that was when you called Mrs Talbot a liar and got detention?” Mr Tooke already knew what had happened, but he realised Martin was still upset and needed to release his frustration.

“She
is
a liar!” said Martin emphatically. “I hadn’t even reached the plate! How could I have knocked it off? It must have been the vibrations from everyone else walking around. But Talbot said it was me, because I was the closest and I’m not one of the locals!”

“I know, I know,” soothed Mr Tooke. “Look, forget about it for now. Try and get some sleep. It’s senseless getting yourself worked up. In the morning, I’ll phone Miss Hill and ask for a meeting and we can get this sorted. All right?”

Martin shrugged but looked happier.

Mr Tooke smiled slightly. He and his wife, Rita, had moved mostly for Martin’s sake. They had lived in a declining area of Bristol, which was rapidly becoming a no-go area. The job advert had seemed a blessing at the time. If only Martin could settle, they could all be happy out here in the country.

As Mr Tooke looked at his son, a strange rattling sound caught his attention. They both looked in puzzlement at the glass of water on the bedside cabinet. It was trembling; the water was spilling over the top, yet the rest of the room was motionless. The rattling got worse, until the glass was violently swept aside as though struck by an invisible hand.

A hot wind blew around Martin’s bed, whipping at the covers and tugging at his hair. Martin tried to leap up but a pale blue light appeared around his body, enveloping him completely. “Dad!” he screamed in shock and fear. He stared in horror at his arms, which were glowing blue, as was the rest of his body.

His father tried to reach out and grab his son, but he too was enveloped in the pulsing blue light. He couldn’t move or even shout for help. All he could do was watch helplessly as the light around his son intensified and lifted the hysterical boy from the bed.

There was an explosion and a tornado appeared, swirling over the trembling boy and obscuring the ceiling and walls of the bedroom. Blue lightning shot out of the tornado, arcing themselves into the furniture without leaving a mark. One struck Martin on the leg and stayed, almost as though it had grabbed hold of the boy. More lightning bolts leapt down and took hold of Martin, grasping his defenceless body.

With a roar of thunder, the bolts retracted, dragging Martin upward into the swirling tornado, his body reducing in size as though he were being pulled at unbelievable speed to a distant place. His bed followed, then his wardrobe, all his books and toys and even the posters on his walls, as though the tornado was removing every last bit of Martin’s existence from the world. The tornado slammed shut, leaving the room dark and cold.

Mr Tooke blinked and looked around the spare room, wondering why he had walked in. There was nothing in the room except some old furniture and the suitcases he and Rita used on their holidays. He surprised himself by feeling a few tears in his eyes. He had hoped one day to have a child, and this would have been the room his son or daughter would have had, but it had never happened. He had thought he had got over the disappointment years ago, but maybe he hadn’t.

Wiping his hand over his face, Mr Tooke walked out of the room, turning off the light. The moonlight shining through the window illuminated a single thread hanging from the ceiling–the sort of thread a small boy would hang a model spaceship from. But there was no ship and no boy and never had been. Just the thread, slightly warm to the touch and burnt at the end.

Seven weeks later, Pandora and her family were on their way to Willowcombe Clatford.

After the argument in the twins’ bedroom, Mr Laskaris had started applying in and around the village for various posts and, by pure luck, had found a similar job to what he was already doing–administrative manager of a medium-sized company. The money was reasonable and the job respectable.

The impending move had put Mrs Laskaris in her element. She started packing clothes, abandoned this to sort the ornaments, left the ornaments to concentrate on kitchen utensils and finally ignored the kitchen to whine continually that she was the only one doing any real work, thus making life hell for everyone.

Mr Laskaris called it
Mother’s Martyrdom.
Pandora called it being a drama queen and a royal pain in the neck.

Eventually, however, the packing was done and moving day arrived. The removal men loaded their van, the family climbed into their elderly, battered car and they left the urban decay of Lowell for the greener, safer pastures of Willowcombe Clatford. No one came to see them off. Lowell didn’t encourage neighbourly concern.

They drove for the last time through the grimy town centre. Even before midday, the drunks were clustered around the shopping precinct, men and women, grubby, unkempt, with tawdry gold chains hanging over stained football shirts, glowering in hatred at anyone who was different or who still had hope in their eyes.

Not that many in Lowell had any hope, except the hope of oblivion through drink or drugs. Teenage girls pushed neglected babies through the streets, texting, smoking, drinking and only occasionally glancing at their children. Pandora saw one mother who was still technically at school, given that she was fifteen. She was already showing the swelling of her second pregnancy.

“Goodbye, Charlie’s Fish and Chip Shop, no greasy, burnt chips where we’re going!” cried Mrs Laskaris ecstatically, despite the fact she had often sent Pandora to Charlie’s to buy the family meal rather than cook herself.

Pandora looked at the bins at the side of the shop where, two years ago, a tramp had been discovered frozen to death in the mean winter.

“No more overpriced milk and bread from Pajel’s newsagent,” hooted Mrs Laskaris, who seemed almost hysterical with happiness.

“No, I suppose not,” said Mr Laskaris sadly. He had enjoyed his chats with Mr Pajel. They shared a bond, both being foreigners in England, albeit long established in the country.

Pandora looked at the shop front and recalled the time she had seen Chas Walters and Steven Fielding huddled in the doorway, beating up a twelve-year-old boy who just happened to be passing.

“Goodbye, Dell Sports Field,” continued Mrs Laskaris, waving at the neglected field and cracked athletics track. It was there that Timothy Bradbourne had forced himself on Tina Wilkes. A week later, it had been Donna Smith. Both girls had been too scared to tell their families or the police, and as a result, Bradbourne’s reputation had soared in the area.

Almost as if reading Pandora’s mind, her mother turned in the front passenger seat and squinted at her eldest daughter. “You’ll see,” she said. “At Willowcombe Clatford, there’ll be much nicer people. Much nicer
boys
.” She peered in suspicion at Pandora. Mrs Laskaris was increasingly disturbed by the fact that Pandora, at fourteen, had never had a boyfriend, or even mentioned liking any boys. She feared there was something wrong with her eldest daughter.
What girl didn’t want to wear makeup, high heels and a short skirt, and go out on dates with boys?

Pandora sighed quietly. She knew exactly what her mother was thinking. They had been through it all before. She couldn’t be bothered with makeup, she much preferred trainers, jeans and a T-shirt for everyday wear, and she just wasn’t interested in boys. Hardly surprising when examples included Phil Welding, who thought he was god’s gift to women despite being under five feet tall, or Daryl Hipkins, who thought it acceptable to pick his nose in front of you before trying to grope under your school skirt.

They continued in the spitting rain along grey, greasy roads, on which school children clustered to throw stones, abuse pedestrians and scavenge for cigarettes. One threw a lager can at the car as it passed. The family continued, past the many derelict houses and shops, past the ineffectual police station, past the pensioners shuffling in fear as they quickly did their shopping and fled back to the relative safety of their homes, praying they hadn’t been burgled in the meantime. Finally, the car nosed its way into the near-permanent traffic jam on the filthy ring road which strangled the town. Forty minutes later, they were free of Lowell and on the motorway.

Pandora dozed. A vision rose in her slumbering mind of a beautiful open field, containing an incongruous white temple. Children played outside, chasing each other, having races, wrestling or fighting with wooden swords. They all wore togas and were all barefoot.

Pandora watched, feeling a warm summer breeze blow over the scene. It seemed an idyllic world. Then the screaming started.

Something was in the middle of the children, something large and snakelike, but the top half of the gigantic snake was that of a woman. The creature laughed as it snatched up a child and clamped its distorted mouth to the hysterical girl, draining the child of her blood.

Pandora screamed and the creature looked round.

Its face froze in anger. Casting the dead child aside, it slithered at unbelievable speed toward Pandora, who tried to run but found she was unable to move. The serpent woman reached out and clamped her hands around Pandora’s face, crushing her, and screeched in fury, “Release us! Open the box!”

Lights flashed in front of Pandora’s vision, blue and white, surrounding the snake woman, entwining around her figure until, with a blinding explosion, the snake woman, the field and the screaming children were all gone.

Pandora’s head jerked up and she stared, disorientated, out of the car window. They had arrived at Willowcombe Clatford. Pandora looked at the village of solid, prosperous houses, thatched cottages and other rustic dwellings. It looked like something out of an old film, one where everybody spoke with a precise upper-class accent.

There was a huge expanse of grass in the middle of the village where a few men, dressed in dazzling white clothing, were playing cricket. Several shops, including a newsagent, fishmonger, butcher, greengrocer and ironmonger, ran down the one side of the village. At the near side of the green was a duck pond, while at the far end, on a slight rise to dominate the area, was the village church, looking down through stained-glass windows which seemed to peer closely at the scenes going on below. It hardly seemed real to Pandora, yet it was realer than her dream which was quickly fading from her mind.