Soul Seekers (2 page)

4

‘Get out of the way, wimp.’

Siren shouldered her way roughly past him, her sunglasses pushed up onto her head. She turned the handle and slammed her shoulder into the door with a deep thud. The door shuddered but it did not open.

‘It’s jammed by something on the outside,’ Siren uttered. ‘We can’t push it open.’

Cas looked at Principal Brownstone, whose eyes flew wide with barely restrained panic. She pushed away from the wall behind her where blue smoke coiled like snakes into the room.

‘Children, get down on the floor. The smoke rises.’

Cas looked up and almost immediately he saw broad vents high on the walls. Ventilation shafts. They would travel from room to room, circulating the air around the underground facility.

‘We can get out through those!’ Cas shouted and pointed up to the vents.

‘They’re too small,’ Principal Brownstone groaned. ‘I’ll never get inside them.’

‘Too small for you,’ Cas replied. ‘Not too small for me. I can work my way into the next room and then open our door from the outside.’

Cas stepped over the other students as he crossed the room and looked up at the vent.

‘No Cas’,’ Principal Brownstone insisted. ‘You’re not to go up there.’

The room was already filling with a blue haze and Cas’s eyes started to water as other students began coughing.

‘You got any better ideas, ma’am?’

Principal Brownstone opened her mouth to answer but nothing came forth.

Cas quickly slipped out of his school sweater and wrapped it over his nose and mouth. He was about to ask the principle for a lift up to the vent when Siren loomed over him. Her dark eyes bore down into his.

‘How are you going to get up there, shorty? Levitate?’

Cas stared at Siren and then realised she was holding her hands cupped at her waist, ready for him to use as a step.

Cas lifted his foot onto her hands and with a heave of effort Siren boosted him up to the height of the vent. Cas grabbed the vent’s grill and pulled hard, the frame unclipping easily. He tossed it to one side of the room with a clatter of metal and hauled himself into the shaft. As soon as he was inside he called back down to Siren.

‘Start sending more of the class up here – that room will fill up with smoke real fast!’

Siren grunted a reluctant response and within moments Jude and Emily were up in the shaft with him, Emily’s features creased with worry.

‘This is dangerous Cas, we shouldn’t be doing this.’

‘You’d rather stay down there and choke to death?’ Jude challenged from behind her. ‘Go ahead, but I’m outta here.’ Jude squeezed past her and looked at Cas. ‘So what’s your plan then?’

Cas didn’t reply, mainly because he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Instead he crawled along the interior of the shaft, the thin aluminium skin buckling and thumping as it warped beneath his weight. Ahead, he could see faint beams of light from vents in other rooms that filtered into the darkness. He shuffled along as Siren boosted more children into the shaft. Suddenly he realised that he was now responsible for them. The entire class were relying on him and the thought scared him a little.

He turned and saw ahead in the distance a flickering blue light. Voices shouted in alarm and desperation that tried to be heard over what sounded like a huge waterfall. Between Cas and the blue light was a series of faintly glowing vents in the base of the shaft. Cas moved over one of the vents and peered down inside. There was no light on in the room below, but he could see a shaft of light beaming through an open door. There was no smoke. He glanced back at Jude.

‘Tell the others to get down out of the shaft here. There’s an office where they can get out. Tell them to get help for Principal Brownstone.’

Cas shuffled over the grill and kept going.

‘Where the hell are you going?’ Jude protested.

‘Something’s happened to what our parents were working on,’ Cas replied without looking back. ‘I want to see what’s going on. You coming or not?’

‘There’s nothing in that direction but the elevator shafts,’ Emily said. ‘Your father said so.’

‘Yeah, and like
everybody
believed him,’ Jude chuckled.

‘I’m leaving,’ Emily snapped. ‘This could get us into big trouble.’

The grill behind them clattered down onto the floor of the office below and several children eased their way down and dropped from sight. Behind them, Siren shuffled over the open vent and blocked Emily’s way.

‘You’re in big trouble already, you don’t keep moving forward,’ Siren growled.

‘Siren, you might intimidate everybody else but I refuse to be cowed by you.’

Siren’s features twisted with fury. ‘Do you refuse to be pushed too?’

Emily squealed as Siren shoved her along the shaft. Cas turned and crawled quickly forward toward the shimmering blue light ahead. It flickered and flared in the tunnel, bright and fierce through the grill at the end of the shaft like a crazy lighthouse beam flickering through stormy weather.

Shouts echoed and chased in the darkness ahead and Cas’s stomach tightened as he heard his father’s voice. Tense. Angry. Afraid. He had never heard his father sound like that before. The noise of the waterfall became louder and the shaft trembled and rattled the closer they got to it.

‘Can you see anything yet?’ Siren asked from somewhere back in the tunnel.

Cas reached the grill at the end of the shaft and peered through the gaps, squinting into the fearsome light below them. It flared so brightly that he could not see, as though a blazing star was caught in the room and was desperately seeking a way out.

‘It’s too bright,’ he shouted back above the noise. ‘I can’t see. Give me your shades.’

Siren passed her sunglasses forward. Cas slipped them on and then looked back at the light. For a moment or two his brain did not understand what he was seeing, and then a terrible fear ripped through him. He was about to shout out when the shaft around him suddenly began shaking wildly. He reached out to the walls to try to steady himself as he was slammed from side to side.

And then the shaft collapsed as the grill fell away and tipped Cas out toward the terrible blue light.

* * *

5

Cas screamed as the entire shaft tilted down toward a vast, seething sphere of white light that filled a huge laboratory. As the ventilation shaft collapsed away from its mountings under their combined weight, Cas lost his grip and tumbled out into mid-air.

For a brief moment of time he saw himself falling toward the furious vortex of light, like the yawning mouth of a ghost rising up to swallow him whole. Cas reached out desperately for something to hold on to and almost instantly a hand grabbed his. He looked up to see Jude gripping him.

Cas jerked to a halt and saw that Jude was hanging on to him while his other hand held Emily’s. Holding on to Emily was Siren, and she was hanging grimly on to the edge of the collapsed ventilation shaft. The shaft hung by its torn mounts, ripped from the ceiling by the weight of the four children hiding inside it.

‘Cas’!’

Joshua’s voice thundered out above the roaring ball of energy. Cas twisted his head around as he dangled in the air and saw his father standing beside ranks of computer consoles accompanied by two scientists.

Behind them was Siren’s father, a tall and broad shouldered army general who stood in front of two rows of armed soldiers, all of whom were pointing their rifles at Joshua.

‘Dad!’

Cas shouted back, but his voice was lost against the deafening roar of the sphere of light hovering barely ten feet below them.

Joshua Ryan’s shouted out at the general. ‘Shut it off! Cut the power!’

The booming voice of the soldier thundered back at them all, his face devoid of emotion.

‘It’s too valuable. Continue the experiment.’

‘They’re in danger!’ Joshua protested.

The soldiers advanced toward Joshua, their rifles raised.

‘Continue the experiment,’ the general insisted, ‘or I’ll continue it for you.’

Joshua turned and looked up at Cas.

Cas’s arm ached and he glanced up past Jude and Emily to where Siren was hanging on to the edge of the shaft with one hand. Her face was strained, her neat white teeth clenched and the muscles in her arms bulging with effort. He knew that she couldn’t hold on much longer, and he looked back down at his father.

Joshua Ryan stared at him for a long moment then turned to his companions either side of him. Cas saw the resolve on their faces, and though they did not speak a single word it was as though they already knew what he was going to do.

‘Dad!’

Joshua and his two companions leapt from behind their computer consoles and dashed toward the ball of energy. Joshua jumped up onto a desk and reached out for Cas’s hand.

Cas stretched out, his fingers brushing the tips of his father’s hand.

‘I can’t reach!’ he cried.

Joshua was grabbed from behind by one of the scientists, who held onto his uniform so that Joshua could lean closer to Cas. Their fingers almost touched.

‘Keep trying!’ Joshua shouted above the roaring, seething noise filling the laboratory.

And then the sphere pulsed violently. Joshua tipped off balance as Joshua’s companion stumbled and lost his grip.

‘No!’

Cas felt tears scald his eyes as Joshua plunged headfirst into the ball of light, vanishing with a splash of energy that looked strangely like molten metal, globules of the stuff spraying out and landing on the metal plates of the floor.

Cas shouted out in terror as the sphere expanded toward him. He glimpsed the soldiers rush forward to man the computer consoles and struggle desperately to prevent whatever was happening. Then they all panicked and ducked down out of sight behind the consoles. Even the general hurled himself down to the floor as the ball suddenly doubled in brightness.

Cas glimpsed the surface of the sphere swallow his feet as it rushed up toward him, and then suddenly the facility around him vanished to be replaced with a warm, ethereal glow of soft light that folded around him like a blanket. The roaring noise fell silent and instead he heard a gentle humming sound as though the light was vibrating.

He tried to turn his head but he could not, yet he could still feel Jude’s hand grasping his. The blue glow pulsed around him as though alive, and for one moment he wondered if the big ball of energy was some kind of bizarre creature from another world, one of the rumoured aliens, and that he had been eaten by it.

The light pulsed and throbbed, swirling around him in graceful eddies like the oil he’d seen in puddles of rainwater by the side of the road. The warmth was so comforting that he realised he was no longer afraid, the light seeming to touch his skin and yet the glow around him as big as the entire universe, a hall of light stretching away to infinity in every direction.

If I’m dead
, he thought,
dying has been badly misrepresented.

Then the light started to fade and Cas felt the snug blanket of safety receding faster and faster. He felt a breath of cold touch his skin and the fear returned as his mind began racing. Was
this
death, the cold and the loneliness?

The cold suddenly became vivid, an icy breath that chilled him to the bone and then he landed on something damp. Cas blinked at the impact and when his eyes opened the glowing light had vanished.

He was sitting on a cold, foggy hillside.

* * *

6

Cas stared down the hillside toward a dense copse of trees that lined an old track. Trees dotted the hillside, their tops lost in the thick fog cloaking them. The air was cold but fresh with the dawn and a pale sun glowed between trees to his left.

‘What happened?’

The voice came from behind him and he turned to see Jude, Emily and Siren sitting dazed on the grass behind him.

‘I have no idea,’ he replied. ‘Last thing I remember is the big ball of light. It swelled up and swallowed me.’

Siren shook her head. ‘It didn’t swell up. I couldn’t hold on any longer. We fell toward it.’

‘Right after your pa’ fell inside,’ Jude recalled. ‘Shouldn’t he be here too?’

Cas looked about them at the hillside. ‘I’m more worried right now about where
here
is, exactly. It was the middle of the morning, sunny and hot when we were last outside.’

‘And how did we get these clothes?’ Jude asked.

Cas looked at them all and then down at himself. Their T-Shirts and jeans were gone, as were their jeans, to be replaced with dull, tattered shirts and trousers that were made of a coarse, itchy fabric. Even their sneakers were now strange, stiff shoes with buckles.

Emily stood up off the damp grass and brushed the dew from her dress as she looked around.

‘Somebody must have drugged us or something. Cas, this is your fault. You led us into that awful place. The soldiers must have taken us here to prevent us from telling anybody about what we saw.’

Siren stood up.

‘My dad leads those soldiers,’ she rumbled. ‘He wouldn’t have just left me here.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Jude challenged her. ‘He sure had no problem carrying on with that
experiment
, or whatever it was he called it, even when we were dangling right above the ball of light.’

Siren’s eyes quivered. ‘He has a job to do.’

‘And he’s done a right job on us,’ Jude shot back.

Siren took a pace toward him with her fists clenched but Cas raised a hand to stop her.

‘Listen.’

They froze on the hillside, and in the distance from out of the fog came a rhythmic thumping: a
crunch
,
crunch
,
crunch
that got louder with every passing moment.

‘Somebody’s coming,’ Emily said.

They listened as the sounds grew closer.

‘Maybe they can tell us where we are,’ Jude wondered out loud.

Cas turned toward the winding track below them and watched as from out of the thick fog appeared ranks of men in bright red uniforms. He blinked in surprise as he saw white sashes across their chests, tall black hats on their heads and long rifles in their hands, all tipped with steel bayonets that glittered in the weak sunlight.

‘Looks like some kind of carnival procession,’ Jude said.

Siren took a pace to join Cas and shook her head. ‘That ain’t no carnival. That’s an army.’

‘How do you know?’ Emily demanded.

Cas saw huge cannons emerge from the fog being pulled by horses, the heavy wheels rumbling along the gravel track. Other men in red uniforms were riding horses that blew thick clouds of breath onto the cold air. Wagons followed behind, soldiers and civilians walking alongside them in the gloom.

‘My dad,’ Siren replied. ‘He’s got pictures of this stuff hanging from the walls in his study. That’s an English army.’

Cas squinted at the men and their uniforms.

‘The English don’t wear uniforms like that anymore, they’re like our soldiers.’

‘That’s what bothers me,’ Siren rumbled in response. ‘What did your dad tell you about the experiments at the base?’

Cas was about to reply when a piercing screech shattered the morning silence. He saw a man on horseback blowing hard on a whistle and pointing up the hillside at the four of them. His cry echoed through the fog.

‘Enemy seen!’

The ranks of soldiers turned as the army came to an abrupt halt, and all at once their rifles were pointing up the hill.

‘Do they mean us?’ Emily asked.

‘Get down!’ Cas yelled.

A deafening crackle of gunfire like a hundred fireworks exploding at once thundered across the hillside and a hail of bullets whistled and thumped into the ground around them as Cas hurled himself into Emily and sent them both tumbling to the ground.

The deafening gunshots rolled away in echoes that rumbled into the distance.

When Cas lifted his head, his ears were ringing and he felt dizzy. He staggered to his feet and tried to help Emily up as he saw ranks of soldiers charge up the hillside at them.

‘We need to run!’ Siren yelled at him.

‘Run where?’ Cas asked her. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere.’

‘Stay where you are!’ bellowed a man with sergeant’s stripes and a massive moustache that seemed even longer than his bayonet. His voice sounded foreign, a bit like German.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Jude wailed in disbelief.

Already the mounted soldiers were riding up toward them and could chase them down easily even if they did attempt to flee. Cas raised his hands as they were surrounded by the soldiers, their long barrelled muskets aimed down at them. The sergeant, his chest heaving from the exertion of his run, pointed at Cas.

‘On your knees, all of you!’

‘Drop dead,’ Siren snapped at him. ‘You touch any one of us you’ll be in a military jail by sundown.’

The sergeant’s eyes widened into bright grey discs of fury and one calloused old hand whipped around and cracked across Siren’s cheek. Siren staggered to one side as her hand flew to her face in shock.

‘You’ll be the one in jail, little missy,’ the sergeant hissed.

‘Siren,’ Cas hissed, ‘do as he says.’

Cas slowly got onto his knees with his hands behind his head, not wanting to upset the man. Siren reluctantly did the same.

A thunder of hooves rumbled across the earth as a giant grey stallion skittered to a halt alongside them. A fat man clambered from his saddle to stand directly in front of Cas. His boots were so highly polished that Cas could see his face in them, and his colourful shoulder lapels were clearly those of an officer.

‘Lieutenant Silas Du Pont, Lieberegiment,’ he announced imperiously in a voice that again sounded European, maybe Dutch. ‘Who are they?’ he demanded in clipped tones, looking down at his sergeant.

‘Spies, I’d wager,’ the sergeant replied. ‘They’re not of our number and they talk strange. I caught ’em watching us from up here in the fog. No doubt they thought they couldn’t be seen.’

Silas Du Pont removed his hat and revealed a bald head almost as shiny as his boots as he knelt down in front of Cas. His podgy face creased into a smile that revealed several missing teeth and a large purple boil on his cheek.

‘The colonials are using children as spies, eh? Will their cruelty know no bounds? Well, whatever the reason, a spy is a spy.’ His squinting eyes settled on Cas’s. ‘And spies are always hanged at dawn. Although we could make a pretty penny if we ship them off down to the port at Boston.’

Cas felt a flutter of fear deep in his belly.

‘We’re not spies, sir. We don’t even know where we are.’

‘Is that so?’ Du Pont asked theatrically. ‘Then how did you get here?’

Cas was about to explain when he realised that it was futile. Whatever had happened to them, these people were never going to understand. This was no mistake, no conspiracy by the soldiers at the facility to silence them. The ball of light had done something and now they were a long way from home.

‘I don’t know how we got here,’ Cas replied.

‘How convenient,’ Du Pont uttered, and then laughed like a drain.

‘Where are we?’ Siren growled at the officer.

The man stood and replaced his hat. He tilted his head at her as though considering his response.

‘For a southerner stuck here, I can understand why you might feel a little lost. You’re in Boston, and about to witness the saviour of the city. General Washington intends to attack the British, but he doesn’t know about us: two thousand mercenaries hired to support the British forces.’ Du Pont smiled again. ‘Believe me, the year 1776 is about to become a great year for loyalists! Sergeant, lock them in the prison wagon!’

Cas’s heart sank as he realised what the officer had said.

They were in the year 1776.

And about to go to prison.

* * *