Alice Parker & the Curse of Fate (11 page)

‘
It’s
quite stormy out here,’ replied Thomas calmly. ‘Nature
lent us a hand and moved one of your sheds.’

‘
But ... my
truck is here too! How? I do not see ...’

‘
I moved it.
You left the keys in the ignition.’

Grandma realised
what Thomas had done and changed the subject immediately.

‘
Youngsters
out first!’ she insisted. ‘I’ll help you.’
She stood a small table beneath the window so that Alice could reach
it more easily, and held her arm until she landed on the roof below.

‘
You next,
Ingrid,’ said Brigitte. ‘I have lived longest.’

‘
No. I stay
with my dogs.’

‘
The dogs are
coming too,’ called Thomas from outside. ‘I promise!
Alice you need to get down from the shed. I don’t know how
many people this roof can hold.’

Alice climbed down
from the shed to the roof of Ingrid’s truck. From there, she
slid down to the bonnet and then waved triumphantly from the ground.
Reluctantly, Ingrid climbed out of the window assisted by Grandma and
Brigitte, then Grandma followed. Finally Thomas climbed back in to
the living room to help Brigitte. Then he lifted Maxi in to his
arms.

‘
Take him!’
he ordered Brigitte, cradling the dog and passing him out of the
window to her.

‘
No way!’
she refused, flinching as Maxi tried to lick her.

‘
Meine Hunde!’
screamed Ingrid. ‘Please!’

Scowling, Brigitte
took Maxi from Thomas and staggered to the edge of the shed roof.
Petrified, the dog did not attempt to struggle in her arms. Ingrid
reached up from the roof of her truck and grabbed him in relief when
Brigitte knelt down.

‘
Next!’
yelled Thomas, waiting at the window with Morritz.

‘
Wunderbar!’
whinged Brigitte. ‘This one is bigger!’ She needn’t
have worried. Morritz refused to keep still and wriggled until he
was free from Thomas’s grasp. He bounded to the edge of the
roof and took a flying leap towards Ingrid’s voice. Brigitte
screamed.

‘
Alles in
Ordnung!’ called Ingrid. ‘He is OK!’

Brigitte was still
trembling when she joined the others on the ground. Grandma squeezed
her hand.

‘
Ingrid will
never forget that you helped her dogs.’

‘
Neither will
I!’ spluttered Brigitte. ‘What is wrong with you people?
Disaster follows you! My life was normal and calm before you
arrived!’

‘
A house fire
is hardly our fault,’ said Grandma firmly.

‘
No, fault is
mine,’ sniffed Ingrid, watching the flames engulf the living
room, tears running down her face. ‘No smoke alarms.’

‘
And now
everything is destroyed,’ said Brigitte harshly.

‘
Not quite
everything,’ said Thomas. He threw the bags and clothing down
to Alice and proceeded to drag a large object across the shed roof.
‘I couldn’t leave this behind, could I, Ingrid? You only
bought it today!’

Ingrid managed a
smile at the sight of her new television.

‘
You fool!’
scolded Grandma. ‘Fancy going back in for that!’

‘
Actually I
lifted it out first. You lot didn’t even notice!’ He
patted it proudly but his smile quickly disappeared. ‘What’s
that over there?’

From his vantage
point on the shed roof he squinted in to the distance. Bobbing in
the darkness were two small lights; torches carried by two figures
who were running across the field away from the farmhouse.

‘
I bet that’s
them!’ he growled, jumping down and leaping in to the driver’s
seat of Ingrid’s truck. Within seconds he started the engine.
Alice scrambled in to the passenger seat beside him and they tore off
after the intruders.

‘
Who?’
asked Ingrid and Brigitte in unison.

‘
Er, I’ve
no idea,’ said Grandma quietly. ‘Can you hear the
sirens? Sounds like the fire engines are nearly here.’

Chapter 9

Captives
in the Cold

Alice gripped her
seat until her knuckles were white as the truck bounced over the
frozen furrows in the fields.

‘
What are you
doing?’ she yelled. ‘What happens if we catch them?’

‘
I don’t
know. But we can’t let them get away with this, can we?
They’ve destroyed Ingrid’s home, for goodness sake!’

‘
Hmm. And our
accommodation.’

‘
That’s
not important. We couldn’t have stayed tonight, even if
Isabella hadn’t destroyed it. She would have done something
else, knowing we were there.’

‘
But HOW did
she know?’

‘
I intend to
find out. Ha, there she is! Like a startled rabbit in the
headlights!’ Thomas revved the engine and roared towards
Isabella and her familiar companion.

‘
Except I’d
try to avoid a rabbit,’ muttered Alice.

‘
Ooh, this is
fun!’ howled Thomas, delighting in Isabella’s fear as she
stumbled through the field in her designer boots, running away from
their vehicle.

‘
You won’t
say that when she melts this car.’

‘
She won’t.
She can’t stop long enough to focus because I’ll mow her
down.’

‘
You wouldn’t
really do that.’

‘
Wouldn’t
I?’

Alice cast a nervous
glance at Thomas at the precise moment the moon appeared from behind
a cloud. Judging by the wild, furious glint in his eyes, he might.
It seemed he’d been pushed over the edge this time.

Isabella and her
partner in crime were heading towards a public footpath which led to
the main road. If they reached it, Thomas couldn’t follow them
in the vehicle, since it cut through an area of woodland on Ingrid’s
land. Alice looked around in desperation. A huge elm caught her
eye, filtering the moonlight through its bare branches.

‘
Bring that
elm down!’ she blurted out. ‘It’ll block their
path. But don’t crush them!’

‘
As if I
care.’

‘
I
care. I don’t want to visit you in prison.’

‘
You won’t.
It’s the perfect murder!’

‘
Get a grip!’
yelled Alice. ‘Can you hear yourself?’

‘
Loud and
clear!’ Thomas sped towards the elm, focussing on the base of
it as they approached.

Alice could hear the
tree creaking over the sound of the engine as Thomas attempted to
topple it with the power of his mind.

‘
CAREFUL!’
she screamed. ‘You could kill us too!’

The fugitives
stopped dead, perturbed by the groans emanating from the mighty tree
nearby. Pleased with his work, Thomas spun the truck around to drive
back to the farmhouse. But instead of tearing away the truck stopped
abruptly. He glared at the ignition, pleading with the vehicle to
start, but there wasn’t even a splutter. The dashboard
remained in darkness.

‘
I bet he’s
done this!’ squealed Alice. ‘That horrible man can
control anything electrical!’

‘
Aaaaargh!’
growled Thomas, thumping the steering wheel.

The creaking became
louder as the elm’s roots began to loosen in the ground.

‘
Stop it!
Stop it falling!’ yelled Alice, leaping out of the truck and
running away as fast as she could in the darkness.

‘
Too late!’

Thomas was running
after her – the tree was on the move. Just seconds later they
were both knocked off their feet by the vibration of the poor old elm
hitting the ground. Alice picked herself up and grabbed the torch
from Thomas’s hand. When she shone it in the direction of
their enemies, she could see nothing but branches. The tree seemed
much bigger now it was lying on the ground, almost as long as the
field. She shivered as she relived the moment when Isabella sent the
ash tree crashing through their house a few months earlier. Perhaps
this was fitting revenge after all. Where
was
Isabella? Underneath the tree or safe on the other side of it?

‘
Give me
that!’ barked Thomas, snatching the torch from her hand.
‘There they are, trying to get away! Not on my watch.’
He gripped the torch between his teeth and scrambled over the trunk.

‘
For pity’s
sake, leave it!’ pleaded Alice. ‘Haven’t we done
enough damage here?’

‘
The truck’s
fine. It just needs a new battery,’ called Thomas.

When Alice climbed
on to the fallen trunk to get a better view, she saw Thomas standing
perfectly still, gazing after his targets.

‘
LUKAS!’
Isabella screamed her friend’s name in terror. Then they
disappeared from view.

‘
What have you
done?’ screeched Alice, racing to join Thomas. He stretched
out his arm to hold her back before she ran too far. Teetering on
the edge of a twelve foot deep hole, they looked down at Isabella and
her vile friend, Lukas
.

Isabella squinted in
to the torchlight. ‘You’ll pay for this!’ she
squealed. ‘You’ll see!’ She craned her neck
trying to peer out of the hole.

‘
If you’re
looking for something else to burn, you’ll only see me and
Alice from down there. And it would look very suspicious if we
spontaneously combusted in the middle of a field, wouldn’t it?’

Isabella stamped her
foot in frustration.

‘
How did you
know we were here?’ Thomas demanded.

A sly smirk crept
over Isabella’s face. ‘We were watching you.’

‘
No.
I
was
watching you,’ corrected Lukas in a stern voice. He looked up
momentarily from his mobile phone, which he had been cursing in
German.

‘
It seems
there’s no mobile signal down there,’ said Alice.

Thomas took his own
phone from his pocket. ‘No signal on this part of the farm,’
he confirmed. ‘What a shame! It looks as if you two will be
spending the night here. I’ll drop off the bill in the
morning.’

Isabella let out a
whine and stamped on her phone in frustration. ‘I’ll
freeze to death out here! I can’t heat
myself
up!
That’s not how my ability works.’

‘
Well, I’m
certainly warming to the irony of someone with your ability freezing
to death!’ replied Thomas.

‘
Stop it!
Just shut up, will you?’ hissed Alice. ‘You really scare
me, talking like this.’

‘
Oh, come on!
If we don’t get them first, they’ll ... ’

His reasoning was
interrupted by a loud diesel engine. Alice turned to see a digger
roaring towards them, its lights piercing the darkness like enraged
eyes. It stopped just short of the hole. Ingrid must have spotted
the light from the torch and hurried over to see what was going on.
She had not even paused to empty the digger’s bucket, which was
loaded with earth. The engine still running, she jumped down from
the cab and joined Alice and Thomas. In the glare of the headlights
she walked around the perimeter of the hole and surveyed the captives
with contempt.

‘
They have
done this?’ She turned to look at her burning home. Two fire
engines had arrived but so far their jets were having little effect
on the flames. Her eyes full of hatred, she scrutinized the furious
Lukas and snivelling Isabella.

Alice elbowed Thomas
to delay his reply. What should they say? If they said yes and
Ingrid turned them over to the police, what would happen? They would
find no fingerprints or proof. She or he had started it with mind
control.

‘
I ... um ...
I’m not sure,’ mumbled Thomas, as if thinking the same as
Alice.

‘
OK. You all
think about it before morning,’ said Ingrid curtly. She
climbed back in to the cab of the digger and without warning, tipped
the contents of the bucket in to the hole.

Alice held her
breath at the stench. That wasn’t topsoil – it was half
a tonne of steaming manure! Thomas clapped in approval.