The Black Room (10 page)

He rang again, holding his thumb on the bell. After a few seconds, the door flew open again, and Mr. Armstrong reappeared.

“There's no reward,” he said coldly. “Now go away. If I see you again, I shall have to call the police. Good night.”

The door shut again, and Robert trailed back down the path looking angry and frustrated. Tom came out from behind the hedge to meet him.

“I told you he was a horrible man,” he said.

Robert nodded thoughtfully. “Why did he react like that? Was it because I asked him about his daughter?”

“Maybe he did have a daughter,” Tom said. “And she died. Maybe his marriage split up, and he doesn't get to see her anymore. Or maybe he's never had one, and he just didn't want to talk to you—because he's a horrible man. You're not going to find out, Robbo. He'll never tell you anything.”

“Then I'll have to find out another way.” Robert looked back at the house, over his shoulder. Then he began to walk back down the road, toward the bus stop. “I'm sure there's something weird going on in that house.”

“You can't do anything about it,” Tom said. “He's not exactly going to let you in, is he?”

“I'll go around the back,” Robert said doggedly.

“You can't. Didn't you see the fence at the side? I bet he keeps that gate bolted.”

“I'm not going to use the gate.”

“But there isn't another entrance.”

“Yes, there is.” Robert sounded almost as scornful as Emma. “I'll go in along the highway embankment.”

12

“YOU'RE GOING
along the highway embankment?
EMMA said. ”What good will that do?“

Robert ignored her. He had the street map spread out on the floor, and he was bent over it, studying the pattern of the streets.

“This is the way to get in,” he said suddenly. “From this business park on the other side of the development. It looks as if there's a piece of open ground between the offices and the houses.”

For a second, Tom thought Emma was going to explode. “That's
how,”
she said. “Not why. I want to know the point of all this scrambling about. You don't really imagine you're going to find Lorn, do you? And even if you do find her, she won't know anything about you, or the cavern, or the other people in it. Not if she's anything like you were.”

“You don't get it, do you?” Robert said without looking up. “You really don't get it.”

“Of course she doesn‘t!” Tom said stoutly. “Because there isn't a reason. Except that you don't know when to give up.” There was something surreal about agreeing with Emma, but he had to. Because she was right. “You're being ridiculous.”

“Look.” Robert sat back on his heels and took a long breath. “I saw one of my friends die. Then I lost the rest of them—after we'd been through all kinds of danger together. After they'd saved me from dying. If there's anything that can help me understand why I went through all that, of course I want to find it. Wouldn't you?”

He said it fiercely, with such intensity that Tom didn't know how to reply. What he had said suddenly sounded very stupid to him.

“I guess I would,” he mumbled.

Emma was watching Robert. “It's Lorn, too, isn't it?” she said. “You want to find her.”

“Yes,” Robert said. He looked down quickly at the map, and there was an awkward little silence.

“So how does it help if you climb along the highway embankment?” Emma said at last.

Robert shook his head. “I don't know. But I've got to do something—and I can't think of anything else. If you don't like it, leave me to do it on my own. No one's asking you to get involved.” He went on scanning the street map.

Tom waited for Emma to argue. That was what she usually did. If she didn't get her own way the first time, she kept nagging away until Robert finally gave in. Not this time, though. She looked at Robert's bent head for a moment and gave a grudging nod. Then she glanced at Tom.

“Don't let him go on his own,” she muttered.

Go with him yourself,
Tom would have said a week ago.
If
you're that bothered. I'm not taking
orders from you.
But she wasn't giving orders now. She was ... asking him for something. He met her eyes and found himself smiling at her.

“Don't worry. I'll make sure he's OK.”

IT WAS TOTALLY DARK BY THE TIME THEY LEFT THE HOUSE. Tom had borrowed Emma's bike, and he and Robert cycled across the city to the north side. But they didn't follow the bus route. Instead, they took a narrow road that ran up the back of the housing development and stopped dead when it reached the highway.

Robert had been right about the open ground. It was a bit of wasteland at the back of the business park. They pad-locked their bikes together and hid them under some bushes.

The highway embankment ran in a straight line behind the business park, across the end of the waste ground and past the back of the housing development. There was a fence along the bottom, but it looked battered and overgrown.

“No one's going to notice us unless we crash about,” Robert said. “Let's go.”

He began to move quickly and quietly over the scrubby ground, keeping to the shadows. Tracking games had always been a nightmare when Robert was involved. Tom could think of dozens of times when he'd given their team away by stumbling around in the bushes. But now he moved like a commando, silent and almost invisible. As if it mattered.

Nightbirds,
Tom thought before he could stop himself.
Hungry monsters out hunting.
Watching Robert, he could suddenly imagine what it must be like to be in real physical danger. To look up and see a dark, predatory shape looming over you, blotting out the sky.

“Are you coming?” Robert called softly from somewhere ahead.

Tom set out after him, horribly aware of the sound of his own movements. He didn't catch up until he reached the embankment. Robert was on the other side of the fence, looking up at the steep, dark slope, and he gave Tom a hand to help him scramble over. High above them, the traffic was thundering by, but the steady
swoosh-smoosh-swoosh
seemed remote and unreal, like a noise from another planet. Reality was the dark slope where they stood, thick with brambles and small bushes.

Tom peered into the undergrowth. “We'll never get through that.”

“Yes, we will,” Robert said easily. “There'll be animal tracks through the bushes. And I've brought some clippers in case we get stuck. Come on.” He went down on to all fours and began to crawl forward.

The ground was even wetter than Tom had expected, and he made a small, disgusted noise.

“Shhh,” Robert hissed. “Once we're past that lane, we'll be beside people's gardens all the way. Keep your mouth shut and follow me.”

Then he was off, without giving Tom time to reply.

 

IF THEY'D WALKED ALONG THE ROADS, THEY COULD HAVE reached the house in ten or fifteen minutes. But the journey along the embankment took well over an hour.

They might as well have been a million miles away from the houses they were passing. Tom found himself totally focused on the faint scuffling, scuttling noises in the bushes around them. Or the rustle of dry leaves suddenly disturbed. Once there was the gleam of a pair of yellow eyes, startlingly close.

“Cat,” Robert said. With an edge of distaste that Tom didn't quite understand.

They stayed close to the cold ground, wriggling under thorny branches and huddling behind bushes, always stopping and starting. It took so much concentration that it was a shock when Robert suddenly pointed ahead. Tom looked up—and saw a line of gardens running at right angles to the highway. It took him a moment to understand that they were looking at the back of the houses on one side of the Armstrongs' street.

The Armstrongs' house was almost completely hidden behind one of the cypress hedges. The sharp point of its roof was just visible, sideways on, rising above the feathery tops of the trees. Tom hadn't realized that the hedge went all the way around the house.

Why? The embankment would have cut out enough light on its own. Why would anyone decide to plant a tall, thick cypress hedge as well?

There was no chance to ask Robert. He was off again, working his way higher up the embankment, toward the fence at the top. Reluctantly, Tom followed him, digging his fingers into the loose earth. When they reached the top, they huddled against the barrier. It was cold and noisy and uncomfortable up there, and they had to hang on to the bushes to stop themselves from sliding down again.

“Why are we up here?” Tom whispered. “I thought you wanted—”

“Quiet!” Robert said sharply. “Look down there.”

Tom turned around and understood. They had climbed above the level of the cypress hedge, and now they could see down into the garden. It was very small, but it wasn't the dark space that Tom expected to see. It was full of a cold, eerie light that showed up the tiny patch of grass. And the single tree. And the big, ugly rock garden.

There was nothing else. Most of the space was taken up by a hexagonal conservatory that jutted out from the back of the house. That was full of the same bleak, thin light as the garden. From where he was crouching, Tom could see straight down through the glass roof to a television, which was the source of the light.

It was facing out into the garden, and it was switched on, even though there was no one there to watch it. The lighted screen dominated the conservatory. The television was in the middle of the floor, on a bright red mat with a pattern of white tulips around the edge.

There was no other furniture, except a small table and a wooden kitchen chair. Both of them stood behind the television, next to the French windows that led into the house.

So where did you sit if you wanted to watch TV? Tom was trying to figure that out when Mr. Armstrong walked through the French windows and into the conservatory. Without even glancing at the television, he began to move heavily around the conservatory, pulling down blinds.

Every pane had its own separate blind, and he pulled them methodically, in a steady, regular rhythm, as though he did the same thing every day. As he covered the windows, one by one, the garden grew gradually darker. Looking down through the glass roof, Tom saw Mr. Armstrong switch on a light and then clamber onto the chair, reaching for the cords that operated the overhead blinds.

His head was turned up toward Tom, but he was talking over his shoulder to someone inside the house. As he pulled at the last blind, a thin, slight woman walked through the French windows into the conservatory. She stepped carefully over the threshold, concentrating on the loaded tray that she was carrying. Tom had a vague impression of dishes of food and bright primary colors.

The woman put the tray down on the table. She looked up to speak to Mr. Armstrong—and the final blind snapped down.

Tom let out his breath in a long, slow sigh.

“What did you make of all that?” he said.

There was no answer. Robert was right beside him, crouched under the same bush, but he didn't reply.

“Robbo?” Tom put out a hand and touched his arm. “What's up? Are you OK?”

“That woman—” Robert said. He sounded as though he could hardly get the words out.

“What about her?” Tom leaned closer, trying to make out his expression in the darkness. “What's the matter?”

“Her face—” Robert shook his head from side to side. “She—that's how Lorn looks. Not nearly as old as that but—it's the same face.”

He's imagining
it, Tom thought before he could stop himself. But he didn't say it out loud. He said, “Do you think it's her mother?”

“I don't know!” Robert said wildly. “How do I know it's not Lorn? Herself.”

“Isn't she too old—?”

“I don't
know.”
Robert's voice was savage. Desperate. “I don't know how any of it works. But I've got to go down there and talk to her.”

“No!”

Tom grabbed at his arm, trying to hold him back. But he wasn't strong enough. Robert wrenched himself free and plunged down the embankment, toward the cypress hedge.

13

THE WALL WENT UP MUCH FASTER THAN LORN COULD ever have imagined. She'd been expecting to spend a lot of time on her own with Bando, waiting about for stones, but she found herself struggling to keep up.

The others were desperate to get the hole sealed. They toiled back and forth collecting stones all day and all night, not taking any rest until they were too cold to move or too exhausted to carry anything. And whenever anyone appeared at the top of the ramp, Lorn heard the same anxious questions.