Mind Blind (18 page)

“Lucy? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have a song or anything. For at the doors.”

“Just do a joke.”

“I don’t know any jokes!”

“You were full of poisonous jokes when we first met. Ok, here’s one: Why couldn’t the skeleton pay his bus fare?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because he was skint!”

“I don’t get it.”

“Don’t worry. Everyone else will.”

So we all stood there, in black cloaks, orange fur, silver foil and pink lace, facing a woman with a toddler on her hip.

The fairy skipped forward. “I’ve got a joke from my gran. What do you call two burglars together?”

The mum smiled. “I don’t know, petal, what do you call two burglars together?”

“A pair of knickers!”

The mum laughed and the fairy ran back to the tiger, who asked a riddle about a towel. What gets wetter the more it dries? I wished I’d thought of that.

The two little witches sang a song about a black bat and the robot made his eyes flash, which made the toddler giggle. Then it was our turn.

I stood at the back and asked the skeleton joke as quietly as I could. I was surprised when everyone laughed. “Good one,” said the robot. I still didn’t get it.

Then Bain sang in a clear voice about a goose getting fat and an old man’s hat.

The mum said, “We’ve all heard that one before,” and brought out a big box of sweets. We each took a couple. Bain dropped his into my cauldron. The robot put the sweets straight into his belly, posting them through a hole in the box round his middle.

We knocked at six more doors, doing our party pieces in the same order each time. Then we walked up to the next terrace, past another dark car with adults in both front seats, and I stopped at the corner. We’d done enough to be identified as guisers, so I said, “I’m taking a break, because my witch’s shoe is coming off. You go on, but can you do me a favour, fairy princess? For some of my magic sweets?”

She looked up at the tiger, who nodded his stripy head. I held up a folded note, carefully drafted earlier in the hostel.

“When you get to the blue door with the snake knocker, please give this note to the man. Don’t say anything, just give it to him, when you do your joke. You can have all my jelly worms.”

She gave her wand to the tiger, then grabbed the note with one hand and the tangle of sticky worms with the other. I bent down to re-tie my laces while the robot and his gang moved away.

“Well done,” whispered Bain. “We’ll visit another couple of doors on the way to your uncle’s, to give him time to find the urn.”

We stood and watched as the fairy’s group climbed up my uncle’s stairs.

I saw the door open, saw the fairy step forward and my uncle crouch down to listen to her joke. I saw her pass the note to him. He put it in his pocket, rather than read it while the tiger did his riddle.

Once my uncle had closed his door, Bain and I did our usual party pieces at three more houses, collecting sweets at each one. Then we did the last door before my uncle’s, singing the fat goose song together this time, to make the whole thing quicker, and we
took an apple each.

“Quite right,” the man at the door said to me, “you want to avoid sweeties with skin like yours!” Bain laughed at that, but I couldn’t.

I was
so
nervous. It was my plan, so it was my fault if it all went wrong.

“Don’t worry,” said Bain as we approached the bottom of the steps. “It’s a great plan. We’ll be fine.”

We walked up to my uncle’s. Hearing laughter and songs all along the terrace, I grasped the snake knocker and banged three times.

She was so nervous. So was her uncle behind the door. I’d sensed his shock when he read the note. I knew Malcolm could sense our emotions all the way down the road, but nervous and shocked were fine. Anyway, I wasn’t concerned about what my family thought right now, so long as the spooks didn’t pick up anything suspicious.

I was finding it hard to stay calm around so many kids I didn’t know, but at least their emotions were all positive, nothing grating or draining. As we stood at the door I sensed a couple of cheerful guisers behind us. I turned as Lucy knocked for the last time. A short pirate and a tiny grey bat were trotting up the stairs.

“Come and join us,” I said, and let them get in front of me.

Then her uncle opened the door.

I knew he was grieving and confused, but he smiled at the children on his doorstep anyway. A nice man. From a nice family, I suppose.

Lucy sang a song. Not one she’d sung at any other door, a couples of verses, with a Caribbean rhythm. I could sense his nostalgia, and his desire to grab her and keep her safe.

But he nodded, then said in a croaky deep voice, “What do the rest of you have for me?”

I did the skeleton joke and he laughed, clearly having lived in Scotland long enough to understand the language. After the pirate and bat sang a nursery rhyme, he said, “Sweets for you all, and the young lady can have this.” He handed me a bowl of sweeties to pass round, while he placed a black and gold urn carefully into the witch’s cauldron.

“Thanks,” she whispered behind her mask.

“Go home safely, all of you. And don’t leave it a year before you come back.”

“Do you want us to come back soon, Professor Shaw?” asked the pirate.

“Is that little Liam from downstairs? Yes, Liam, you and your mum can come and knock on my door whenever you like.”

“He has a snakeskin in a drawer he can show you and he does really nice hot chocolate,” muttered Lucy through tears that must have been audible to everyone. “Bye.” She almost ran down the stairs, the cauldron banging against her leg.

Vincent Shaw gave me a very hard stare, before I turned away and chased after Lucy.

We jogged towards the narrow road linking all the terraces, then stopped on the corner.

“It’s ok, Lucy. You did brilliantly. You’ll see him again soon. Now we have to get out of here.”

She took a deep breath. “Tell me your plan.”

“I can’t tell you in case Malcolm senses us plotting. Just follow my lead, and don’t ask questions. Can you manage that?”

If she did ask questions, I wasn’t sure I could justify my plan, because it relied on guesswork, variables out of my control and chaos.

First, I had to draw attention to myself. Not something I enjoyed doing. Then I had to draw attention to my family.
Which was something I was hardwired to avoid. Then I had to escape using a route that I’d only been able to recce at a distance and therefore wasn’t even sure was viable.

But it was the only plan that offered a slim chance of protecting my family permanently, and an even slimmer chance of keeping Lucy alive.

Lucy sighed. She wanted to ask questions, she wanted to be involved in the decision-making, she didn’t want to be a follower. I knew all that from the emotions I was sensing. But I was fairly sure I would have known it anyway, because I’d spent two nights and two days with her. Not by reading her mind, but by knowing her as a person. Presumably this was how the mindblind always had to work out what was going on.

As I pulled an empty rucksack from under my cloak and put the urn in it, Lucy said, “Just get us safely out of here. I won’t argue with that.”

So I shouted at the top of my voice, “Sweetie thief!” Everyone swung round to look at me.

“Sweetie thief!” I pointed at Malcolm, down by the recycling bins. “He stole my little sister’s sweeties!”

All the guisers in sight swung round to look at Malcolm. Most of the spooks’ heads turned too. The group we’d been knocking doors with appeared from a nearby garden.

“He’s hidden the sweeties in that box,” I shouted even louder. “He’s been taking them from all the little kids.”

The robot and the plump tiger walked towards us, and I almost staggered backwards as their anger and aggression crashed into me. Tigger asked, “Really? Has he been nicking sweeties from the wee kids?”

I nodded. “Aye. I’m not sure if he’s a mad dentist trying to protect their teeth or if he’s going to eat them all himself, but they’re hidden under those newspapers.”

I could sense concern from Malcolm, who didn’t like being the centre of attention, but who didn’t want to move
away because he was trying to keep me in range.

The pink fairy was poking inside a glittery bag. “Did the sweetie thief take my sweeties?”

I could sense Lucy’s doubts about this tactic, but she crouched down beside the fairy. “Yes, my love. He took lots of chocolate. You hardly have anything left.”

The little girl burst into tears, prompting a wave of guilt from Lucy that I’d never sensed when she made me cry.

I shouted, “Look, this wee girl’s crying. Let’s get her chocolate back from the sweetie thief…”

And three streets worth of guisers started to march towards Malcolm. The robot and tiger had been joined by more tall boys in onesies, including a kangaroo and a white rabbit.

I sensed my uncle’s struggle to control his fury.

The fat tiger and tall kangaroo barged right up to Malcolm. “Is that true? Are you nicking the kids’ sweeties? Are you a mad dentist? Show us what’s in your box!”

As Malcolm tipped the box of newspapers on the ground, saying reassuringly, “I’m not a dentist and I don’t have any sweeties,” the whole army of guisers blocked the narrow entrance to the colonies. I could sense increasing confusion from the spooks.

Now there was a bottleneck at the junction. The rest of the family couldn’t get in past the guisers, and the spooks were temporarily watching dozens of other kids.

So I ran. Away from the only way in and out. Lucy, stifling guilty laughter, ran with me.

Malclom was backing off, retreating from a fight he didn’t need, trying to work out what I was doing. It wouldn’t take him long. We had to be fast.

We sprinted up the narrow road towards the last terrace, turned right, ran to the end and through the gate of the last house.

A couple with a baby stood in the doorway, being entertained by zombies singing the fat goose song. I waved
as we ran past and in the surprised silence I used a trellis to clamber onto their garden shed.

I sensed a shift in everyone’s emotions. The guisers, who presumably hadn’t found stolen sweeties, were losing confidence in their crusade. Malcolm was focussed on giving new orders. The spooks were regrouping too. I heard car doors slam and sensed the start of a search. Perhaps they’d finally worked out that the teenagers running away might be the teenagers they were looking for.

“Keep going!” I yelled at Lucy as I scrambled from the roof of the shed onto the high wall separating these terraces from newer houses on the other side.

I leant down for Lucy, but she climbed up without help, though her gloves were off by now and her mask was squint.

“Keep your mask on. MI5 will be checking any CCTV camera signals they can access.”

The kids on the doorstep started singing again, as we balanced along the wall. We turned a corner to walk along the back of the terrace, looking for a safe place to jump down.

In the light from house windows I couldn’t see any sheds on the other side. Not even any soft compost heaps. Just hard winter ground or decking.

And I knew all the hunters were coming for us now. The spooks through the colonies, the family round the outside. We only had minutes to get clear of these narrow streets before they became a trap.

The wall was no longer above gardens on both sides. We were balancing along above a road on our right, and there was a blue van parked up on the pavement. I jumped off the wall onto its roof and Lucy followed me, rocking the van on its wheels.

We slid down the windscreen to the bonnet, then onto the road, and we kept running. “As fast as you can!” I called. “If we can get clear of these streets, then the spooks will never find us again.”

“What about your family?” she gasped, her first question in five minutes.

“They will track us down eventually, but if I’m right about what’s in that urn, we have something to bargain with.”

As we ran through the maze of small streets, Lucy felt safe enough to ask more questions. “Where are we going?”

I didn’t answer. We were still moving at top speed.

The chaos behind us was dying away. The family were calmer. Malcolm must have escaped the guiser army, because he was concentrating entirely on hunting us down. The spooks were still confused but starting to follow familiar routines.

We had to keep ahead of any attempt, from either side, to find us again. Before I wanted them to, anyway.

As we ran across the park, Lucy asked again, “Where are we going?”

“The docks.”

“The docks? Why? Why not the city centre, where we can get lost in the crowds?”

“Because I need witnesses for what we do next, witnesses who can’t stop us or attack us. And I can find that in the docks.” I didn’t explain any more. She kept pace with me, as we ran past warehouses, building sites, scrapyards, then into Leith docks.

I slowed down, at last.

Lucy was nearly out of breath, but she wasn’t going to follow me unquestioningly any longer. “Don’t shut me out, Bain! Why do you need witnesses, what are you planning to do now?”

I was about to answer, when suddenly it was too late. There was no time to explain the whole plan.

Because we were no longer alone.

I’d sensed what I’d been hoping for, but what I’d also been dreading. The approach of a hunter.

I started running again. I had to find the right location,
before they found us. “Now,” I called behind me, “now I’m going to destroy the flash drive.”

She ran after me. “But I thought we were going to use the flash drive to bargain for my life. Why do you want to destroy it?”

“The spooks are still too close. If they find us again and grab the flash drive, my whole family is in danger.”

“Hold on, Bain. You can’t change plans like that.”

I kept running. I could argue with her later.

She chased after me, but I stretched out into a burst of serious speed and she couldn’t keep up. She stopped to catch her breath, which was the opportunity I needed. I stopped, took off the rucksack, crouched in the tangled shadow of a crane and pulled out the urn.