The Power of Five Oblivion (7 page)

We watched her go in. She opened and shut the heavy door behind her. Some of the little square panes of glass were broken but we were too far away to hear what she said. She dialled a number and began to talk. The conversation couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of minutes and then she hung up and came out again, retracing her steps and passing so close to us that I was certain she would see us. But her thoughts must have been on what she had just done. She was inches away from us but she didn’t look down or stop.

We waited until we were sure she had gone.

“I knew it,” Jamie said. “She’s told them I’m here.”

“Told who?”

“The police. The Old Ones. It doesn’t matter. They could be the same.”

“What now?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

“They’ll come for me. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. I can’t stay in the village.” He looked at me and I was shaken to see how scared he was. “They’ll punish you for taking me in, Holly. You, Rita, John and George. They’ll punish the whole village.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You don’t know them.” Jamie closed his eyes, suddenly tired. He opened them again. “I should go now.”

“You can’t!” I said. “You’ll never find your way through the forest. Even in the day it’s hard enough.” I looked up. The sun was already dipping. Why did the days have to be so short? Already the treetops seemed to be closing in on us and if we didn’t go back to the village soon, we’d be stuck out here ourselves.

“I don’t want to bring trouble to you,” Jamie said.

He sounded so sad that I made up my mind. “Wait here,” I said.

“Where are you going?”

“We don’t know that the telephone is connected. And if it is, how do we know she called the police? I’m not even sure there are any police any more.”

“No, Holly!”

But he was too late. I had already got to my feet and was making my way over to the telephone box. I could feel my heart pounding. It was such an ordinary thing … or at least, it had been. But at the same time there was something strange and horrible about it – the thick, mottled glass, the bright crimson paint. As I approached, it could have been a spaceship that had landed here and was waiting to swallow me up and carry me away.

I opened the door. It was even heavier than I had imagined. The floor was a slab of concrete. There was a black telephone clinging to a panel above a box with a narrow slot to take a credit card, the little pieces of plastic that people had once used instead of money. A thick wire curled down from the handset. I didn’t want to touch any of it. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had made a telephone call – if I ever had. All I wanted to do was see if the phone was working.

I picked up the receiver, solid and strange in my hand. One end for the ear, the other for the mouth. I held it against my head but there was no sound. What now? There were buttons marked one to nine with a zero beneath. Once there might have been instructions but someone had taken them away. I looked through the window and saw Jamie waiting for me anxiously. The glass twisted him out of focus. It was as if he were bleeding into the forest around him.

What number was I meant to dial? The receiver was still pressed against my ear. Of course … it was 999. Everyone knew that. But before I had a chance to do anything, a voice spoke to me … a woman’s voice, not old, not young. She sounded almost bored.

“Hello?” There was a pause. “Who is this?”

I didn’t know what to say. Already I was wishing that I had listened to Jamie and hadn’t gone into the kiosk. I wanted to put the phone down and leave but I couldn’t. I was rooted to the ground, no longer in control of my own movements. I could feel my hand trying to crush the plastic receiver beside my ear.

“We’re on our way,” the woman said. “We’ll be with you very shortly.”

But it wasn’t just the woman’s voice that I heard right then. I became aware of something else … the sound of breathing. There was nothing human about it. At first I couldn’t even tell if it was coming from the phone. It was as if it was underneath me, far below the ground, the rumble of an earthquake about to happen. And then, a second later, it was all around me, inside the kiosk, suffocating me. I tried to put the phone down but I couldn’t.

I looked out through the windows but the forest had gone. It had simply been whipped away. Everything was white and, impossibly, it was snowing. Jamie had disappeared. Ahead of me, about a hundred metres away, I saw some sort of castle, built into the side of a mountain, enclosed by huge towers and walls. The clouds were racing past as if they had been speeded up. Everything was white and grey.

“Who is this?” the woman asked.

And then again, the breathing, and a single word – my name: “Holly”. Spoken by something inside the mountain. Mocking me. Colder and crueller than any voice I had ever heard. I was holding the telephone so tightly that I was actually hurting myself, pressing it into the side of my head. But I couldn’t let go.

I don’t know what would have happened next but then the door was jerked open and Jamie grabbed hold of me, dragging me out. I shouted and dropped the telephone, watching it fall and dangle at the end of the wire. And then I was lying on the forest floor, almost in tears, more frightened than I had ever been in my life.

“What is it, Holly?” Jamie cried. “What happened?”

He was cradling me and now I really was sobbing. I couldn’t stop myself. “I don’t know,” I said. “There was a woman. But then there was something else. I heard it. And I saw…”

“What did you see, Holly?”

“I can’t tell you. A castle. Something…” I shook my head, trying to get the vision out of my thoughts. “But they’re coming, Jamie. She told me. They’re on their way.”

He held me, waiting for me to recover. Finally, when I was strong enough, he helped me to my feet and together we went home.

For the last time.

SIX

We ran back to the house. We didn’t know where else to start. My first thought was to get Jamie out of the village and on his way to … it didn’t matter where, he just had to go. But at the same time I knew that it was too late, that it would do no good. The voice on the phone had not been human. No person in this world would have been able to talk like that. And they had spoken my name, known it was me on the other end before I had said a word.

The Old Ones.

It had to be.

When Jamie had told me his story, that evening after the fight with George, I had believed every word he had said, even though common sense, everything I knew about the world, had told me not to. I hadn’t doubted him for a second. Why was that? Perhaps it was because I had been the one who had found him, and from the moment the door had opened we had been inextricably linked. It was as if it was all meant to happen. But now I saw that he had unwittingly brought danger to the village, to the only people I cared about.

“We’ll be with you very shortly.”

It wasn’t his fault, I had to remind myself. It was Miss Keyland. She had gone against what the Council had decided and in doing so she had sacrificed us all.

We got back just as Rita was preparing supper, already wondering where we were. John was standing by the table, laying out plates as if there was anything to put on them other than the usual bread and vegetable stew. Rita knew at once that something was wrong. I had torn my clothes stumbling out of the forest. My hair was wild. My eyes must have been shining with fear. Jamie was deathly pale, already blaming himself. I understood how he felt. Despite what I knew, part of me wanted to blame him too and wished that he had never arrived.

“What is it?” Rita asked.

“It was Miss Keyland,” I gasped. “We followed her. There was a telephone in the forest. Why did you never tell me about it? She called the police. They’re coming.”

It had all come out in a breathless rush. Rita stared at me.

“Coming to the village?” George had appeared on the staircase, dressed in a crumpled white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had heard what I was saying and I thought he would be pleased. If the police came, they would take Jamie away. That was surely what he wanted. But I was wrong. He stood there and his face was aghast.

“Did you hear what Miss Keyland said?” Rita asked.

“No. But I picked up the phone and I heard them…” I felt tears stealing out of the corners of my eyes. I couldn’t stop them. “They were horrible,” I said. “They knew my name. They knew everything.”

John glanced at Rita and I saw her shoulders slump, not in a gesture of defeat but of acceptance. It was as if she had been waiting for something like this to happen, and now that it had she was almost relieved. But when she spoke it was with quiet authority, the steel will that I had always known.

“George,” she said. “Go to the church and sound the alarm. Three rings, three times – you know the code. We have to alert the village.” George didn’t move so she turned her head and snapped at him. “Go now.”

George went. As he left the room our eyes met and I saw that he was worried about me and that he was apologizing, in his own way, for all the tension that there had been between us in the last few days. I tried to smile at him but I’m not sure what expression he saw on my face. Then he was gone.

Rita was already burrowing in a cupboard under the sink, pulling out a bundle wrapped in an old sack. “This is for you, Jamie,” she said. “I know you’ve been saving your own supplies but I’m sure this will suit you better. There’s water, bread, dried fruit and nuts. Enough to keep you going for a few days. Also a compass and a map. You have to leave the village at once – do you understand that? And I want you to take Holly with you.”

“But, Rita—”

“Don’t argue!” she said and I suddenly knew that she had been preparing for this, that the food and the compass had been there all along. How could she have known it was going to happen? She placed the bundle in my hands and just for one last moment we were close. “I always knew about the door,” she said. “Do you think I could live in a village like this and not hear all the stories? My grandmother told me about it before I was your age. One day a boy would appear through the door and that would be the end of the village. That was what she said. But it wasn’t all bad news. She also told me that it would be the start of a better future, a new life. Let’s hope so.” She kissed me very briefly. “Go back through the forest. The telephone box used to be on a road and if you continue north, you’ll find it. If you can’t see it, feel it under your feet. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Don’t come back.”

“But what about you?”

“There’s nothing you can do for us.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said, miserably. They were the only two words he’d spoken.

“Don’t be sorry. Be strong. And take care of Holly. That’s all we ask.”

Jamie nodded. We hurried out of the room and the last I saw of Rita and John was the two of them standing together. John had gone over to her and she had laid her head on his shoulder. It was more affection than she had ever shown in the whole time I had been with them.

As we left the house, the church bell began to ring – three peals, then a pause, then three more, then three again. About a minute later, something extraordinary happened. The village lit up. Of course there had always been lighting – street lights and arc lamps and bulbs hanging in porches – but I had never seen them all working at the same time and had assumed they were simply left overs that no one could be bothered to take away. But someone had started up the generator and thrown a switch and they had immediately flickered into life, casting a harsh white glow that made the church, the town hall and all the other buildings seem to leap out of the ground, and scattering the pathways with the deepest black shadows.

“What’s happening?” I whispered or maybe I just thought it, but either way there was no time to stop and find out, no time to take in the marvel of what the world had once been like. We ran the other way, leaving the village square behind us, retracing the steps we had taken just a few minutes ago. Even the houses at the edge of the village were partly illuminated and I was aware of people hurrying out, pulling jerseys over their heads as they went. Perhaps if I had been allowed to attend meetings of the Council, I would have known about these emergency plans. Everyone was coming together. The guards at the perimeter would have heard the church bells too. Perhaps they would have been told to defend themselves to the last bullet. Maybe they would fall back and help the village. I just hoped somebody would know what to do.

We passed the broken-down bus, with the forest very black, a seemingly impassable barrier, ahead of us. We ran into the trees, Jamie still not speaking. And me…? I wanted to get away. But even more, I wanted to see George. Perhaps I could have persuaded him to come with us. At the same time, I wished I could find Miss Keyland and confront her with what she had done. I wondered if we might not find somewhere to hide after all and come back in an hour or so when everything had quietened down. I looked over my shoulder and saw the church steeple silhouetted against a white glow that spread out like a fan in the sky. This was the village. This was my whole life. I couldn’t just abandon it, could I?

“Holly…”

“What?”

Jamie had grabbed my arm, stumbling to a halt. He had heard something. What was it? It was a thudding sound, in the sky above us. I looked up and saw what I thought were three stars – two green ones and a red one – moving across the darkness, incredibly fast. Then I felt a gust of wind across my cheek and knew that I was looking at some sort of flying machine. That was incredible. It was impossible. A helicopter or something had come out of nowhere. It was very low and it was heading for the village.

It made my skin crawl. I had seen planes before – maybe four or five times. I knew there were people who still flew. But the planes had always been tiny specks above the horizon, barely more than a glint of silver in the otherwise empty sky, soundless, belonging to that other world. This … helicopter … was landing right here. It was invading us.

It also reminded me, if I needed reminding, that time was running out. The police had already arrived. We had to get away. With a new sense of urgency we plunged into the forest, letting it devour us, separating us from the village.