The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue (25 page)

‘
The Lot's Lady
?’ Seth asked. ‘The Munton’s boat. Was it set adrift too? Were Gadd and Oyler part of the rescue?’

Ralf racked his brain. ‘No – no. At least, I didn’t see them. No, I’m sure I would have noticed if they’d been there.’ He cast his mind back to the previous night, pictured the harbour mouth and mentally counted the vessels back in. ‘No. No, Seth! I didn’t see them or their boat!’

‘Hmm,’ said Seth, ‘Interesting...’ He took off his glasses and examined their lenses.

Ralf nodded, his heart hardening. ‘Michael was nearly killed last night! We don’t even know if he’ll ever be able to walk again!’ he cried. ‘If I find out it was them, I’ll – I’ll...’

‘Yes, well, I’m sure there are lots of things you’d like to do to them,’ said Seth. ‘But we’d have to prove it first…’

‘They know more about what’s going on in King’s Hadow than they’re letting on,’ said Ralf with conviction. ‘Alfie said they were up to no good on the first day.’

‘Something else we need to keep an eye on…’ Seth chewed on a fingernail, thoughtfully. ‘Can I borrow that map you had?’

‘The map?’ Ralf asked. ‘Er, okay.’ He’d taken to carrying it round with him and pulled it from his pocket. ‘For all the good it’ll do you,’ he said, handing it over.

Seth took it and added it to the bundle of papers he was carrying. ‘It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, you see? Everything’s starting to fit together.’

‘Sorry to break it to you, but it isn’t,’ said Ralf. ‘I’ve just seen Gloria and she blew your theory out of the water. Her Spirit Guide isn’t Ambrose, it’s some Indian bloke.’

‘WHAT? You need to get over there!’ said Seth. ‘If it’s not Ambrose, he must have sent someone else in his place!’

‘I’ve just spent over an hour with her. What am I supposed to say?’ Ralf hissed. ‘Hi Gloria, I need to come over straight away because I’m actually not the Ralf you know at all. I’m really from the future and me and my friends want to leg it through a Time Fall in your
garden back to the twenty-first century!’

Seth sighed and sat down on the low wall in front of the shop. ‘You need to get her to let you meet him.’

Ralf bit back the angry retort he was thinking of. ‘I know. Why are you off school, anyway?’

‘Headache,’ Seth frowned ‘Sorry. Need to go home. Shouldn’t have come out. Feel sick.’

Ralf’s anger subsided. Seth really didn’t look well at all. There were black circles under his eyes and his skin had a bluish tinge to it.

‘I’ll walk back with you.’

But Seth shrugged off his arm. ‘No, you get on. I’ll be fine.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Method in the Madness

Evidently, though, Seth was not fine.

‘You figured out a plan yet, or what?’ Valen said that night as they huddled in a group on the edge of
the Green, without him.

‘Kind of,’ said Ralf. ‘I can’t meet with Gloria again until later. In the meantime we’re going to follow her advice and figure this out.’ He pulled
off his gloves, drew Gloria’s crumpled note from his pocket and read it aloud.

‘We gotta find these Righteous dudes?’ Alfie asked, his breath misting the chill air.

Ralf nodded.

‘And ‘righteous’ means good, right?’ asked Valen.

‘Er, more than that, I think.’ said Ralf. ‘A righteous person would be decent, yes, but also honourable. They’d be noble – saintly, even. A very special kind of person.’

‘Not Brindle, then,’ said Alfie.

They laughed. ‘No.’

‘And there are five Righteous people in the village?’ Leo asked. ‘But why are they so important?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Ralf. ‘I’m not sure. I think it means that they’re important to the future somehow. But,’ he admitted, ‘that is just a guess. Anyway, they need to ‘weather a storm’. Not a real one – bad stuff that’s going to happen.’

‘So what’s the ‘two in one’ bit about then?’ asked Valen.

‘I dunno about that part,’ Ralf admitted. ‘But I think the rest means that one of these ‘Righteous Echoes’ is more important than the others so he –’

‘Or she,’ Valen interjected.

‘Or she, needs to be kept safe until the hawthorn’s gone but I don’t know whether that means when it’s flowered or when the fruit’s dropped,’

‘I didn’t even know it was a bush!’ Alfie joked.

‘More of a tree, I’d say,’ said Ralf, thoughtfully. ‘Of course it depends on the variety, but most of them flower in the spring and the fruit can stay on the trees all winter. You can make soup from them if you want, but the jam tastes better...’

‘Calm down, Delia,’ Alfie snorted. ‘I wanted a definition not a recipe.’

Ralf was jolted back from his memories by the laughter that followed. ‘I have absolutely no clue how I know all that,’ he said eventually.

‘I’ve got weird memories coming back all the time too,’ said Valen. ‘I’ve never been on a horse before in my life – this life, I mean. But Kat let me have a go on Midnight yesterday. I had an urge to do it, you know? Anyway, turns out I can ride as well as she can. Maybe I was a cowboy in one of my previous lives!’

‘There’s the
remembering
,’ said Leo, thoughtfully, ‘but I’ve also got this really annoying
not remembering
thing going on. It’s like I know I know stuff but it’s behind a kind of curtain in my brain and I can’t always get to it.’

‘That’s it, exactly,’ said Ralf. ‘It’s like I feel I ought to know who these Echo people are already.’

‘We do know some of them,’ said Alfie. ‘King, Tank, Winters, Burrowes...’

‘The message says ‘village born’,’ Valen interrupted. Was Burrowes born here?’

‘Yep, born here, moved away, came back. Old Bill remembers him as a kid,’ said Leo. ‘I don’t like him much but, well – ’ he gave Alfie an apologetic look, ‘ – he is a policeman.’

‘A solid reason to cross him off!’ said Alfie.

Leo sympathised but shook his head. ‘You’re biased, Alf.’

‘But it’s sheer chance we met them in our future lives otherwise we might not know they’re Echoes at all,’ said Ralf.

‘And are they the only ones? And how do we know if they’re the right ones? The Righteous Ones?’ Valen asked.

‘I wish Seth were here!’ said Ralf suddenly. ‘He’d have some kind of theory. Tell us exactly who we’re looking for.’

‘Yeah,’ Leo grinned. ‘And probably build us a ‘Righteous-O-Meter’ to help us identify them!’

They laughed at that but it felt odd, like there was a space between them where Seth should be.

Seth’s illness must have been worse than he’d let on. He wasn’t in school for the next two days, during which time Ralf failed miserably to find an opportunity to speak to King. He’d promised Gloria that he’d try and, even though she was only eighteen, she was still his Great Aunt. Irritatingly, the compulsion to do as she asked seemed to be hard wired into his brain.

Eventually, he did the next best thing and, trying not to look nervous, approached Aston.

‘Tell him I want to talk, will you?’

‘Tell him yourself, scum,’ said Aston nastily. ‘I don’t run errands for plebs.’

‘Just tell him, alright? I want a conversation with him, not a fight with you.’

By the end of the day he was feeling extremely grumpy. He was annoyed with Aston for being Aston, with Seth for still being off sick and with himself for not taking the initiative. Despite what he’d said to Seth earlier, he decided to go and try to find Gloria’s Indian Spirit Guide for himself. 

The drive to Hawkes Manor was long, straight and lined with elm trees. Their leaves, which had been a bright purple-tinged yellow, had fallen long since and now their branches were stark against the winter sky. He heard a shout on the wind.

He looked to his right to see Gloria, in tweeds and a heavy overcoat, standing in bushes on the edge of the copse, beckoning to him. He scaled a two bar fence, next to the drive, and ran across the field to join her.

‘What’s happened?’ he gasped when he was close enough to see the anguished look on her face.

‘Oh, Ralf!’ she said, grabbing his arm. ‘It’s terrible! He’s gone!’

‘What? Who?’

‘My Spirit Guide!’ she said tugging at his arm. She led him through the trees at a half-jog as she talked. ‘I went straight down to the lake after breakfast just to see if I could see him. Anyway, he was there all right. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for me. He was in a fearful hurry and I was scribbling in my notebook like mad. I could barely get it down on paper he was talking so fast. Then he got this terrible look on his face. He turned to look over his shoulder and then – then he was gone. In an instant!’

‘Couldn’t you call him back?’ Ralf asked hurrying to keep level with her.

‘No!’ she cried, desperately. She hauled him by the collar the last few feet until they stood on the edge of the Kingston-Hawke’s lake. ‘You don’t understand. There! Look there! There’s been an odd little patch of haze right on the shore since the first time he appeared. But the second after he’d gone there was no sign of it!’

Ralf rushed to the area she’d pointed to and began examining the bushes. ‘You looked carefully? You couldn’t have missed it?’

‘I’ve spent hours here, Ralf,’ she said, throwing herself down on a stump. ‘I called until I was hoarse!’ Her voice cracked. ‘I think I’ve lost the connection!’

Ralf scrabbled around in the brambles until his hands were bleeding but he found nothing. No discolouration. No burnt patch, nothing to suggest t
here’d been a Fall there – ever.

He picked up a stone, hurled it into the lake and swore, loudly. It didn’t matter though; Gloria was too wrapped up in her own grief to notice. He slumped down beside her.

‘There was so much I wanted to know,’ he said quietly.

‘I know,’ said Gloria. Her voice was desolate and there was a tremble in it when she next spoke. ‘I didn’t even get chance to ask him about Niall!’

Ralf put his arm around her and, feeling incredibly young, awkwardly patted her shoulder.

Gloria gave him a wan smile. ‘I suppose I’d better let you know what he said,’ she said, pulling out her notebook. ‘Right, let me see.’ She flipped through pages of dots and s
quiggled short hand. There were scribbles and crossings out but eventually she seemed to make sense of things and read from her notes. ‘He said to tell you that History is in your hands.’

Ralf snorted. ‘Oh, well that’s okay then!’

Gloria blinked back her tears and her mouth turned up at the corners.

‘It’s not funny!’ said Ralf tetchily. ‘Why does he have to speak in riddles? It’s so frustrating! Why couldn’t he just give you some concrete information?’

‘Like what?’ Gloria asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know!’ exclaimed Ralf. ‘He said these Righteous Echoes are important. Names would’ve been good!’

‘Oh, but I asked him that very thing!’ said Gloria.

‘No joy, eh?’

‘Elk Cub Rat Rah.’

‘S’cuse me?’

‘I know!’ She giggled helplessly and dabbed at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. ‘It might be a name somewhere, though certainly not in King’s Hadow! He spelt it out twice and from the way he was jabbing his finger at it he obviously felt it was important, but I just couldn’t see it. He kept looking behind him and this ruddy bird was flapping round me and it was all a terrible muddle. I thought I should go mad!’ She ran her hands through her hair making it stick up on end and then she began to laugh, really laugh. ‘And – and his Latin was – was all Greek to me!’ She laughed till tears rolled down her cheeks.

Ralf couldn’t see what was so funny, though. He picked up another stone and skimmed it across the lake’s still water.

Gloria sobered immediately. ‘Is it hopeless, do you think?’

He shook his head. ‘History is in our hands?’

‘Yes. And he repeated that phrase about the stream re-joining the river and he also gave me a list of numbers:
467260414000
. Here, I’ve got to get back. Mother will be sending out search parties,’ she said, tearing the page from her notebook and handing it to him. ‘Honestly, this is completely crackers, isn’t it?’

She winked then, just as she would do all those years in the future. The expression was so familiar that, for a moment, Ralf felt like someone had pressed the pause button on his heart. A hug and a brief kiss on the cheek followed and then Gloria hurried towards the house as Ralf, unaccountably pink, walked back down the drive.

Head down and disconsolate, he trudged back to the village. The temperature had dropped still further and Ralf felt the cold seeping into his bones, even as he headed down the High Street towards the harbour cottages.

A sharp cry drew him up short. What now? He honestly didn’t think he could cope with any more drama. He just wanted a hot drink and some quiet. There was a clattering sound and another shout. This time he recognised the voice as Valen’s and he raced to the yard at the rear of the fish shop. There he found Mr and Mrs Hatcher staring at an enormous puddle of haddock just beneath their back step. At its centre was Valen using a word not usual for girls in 1939.

‘Valentine!’ boomed Mr Hatcher. ‘Watch your tongue!’

‘She’s scared,’ Mrs Hatcher murmured.

Val turned, eyes blazing. ‘I am not scared!’

‘What’s going on?’ Captain Keen appeared by the gate, his usual cheery demeanour clouded in concern. ‘I say, Val. Are you alright? You look positively green.’

‘You’d look green too if you’d tipped out a load of haddock and found that!’ she retorted. She nodded to something slick black on the courtyard floor. It took Ralf a second to work out that he was looking at a dead cat.

‘Maybe it fell in when it was trying to get at the fish?’ said Leo who, hearing the commotion from the harbour had also come running.

‘I’ve told you to keep that lid tight!’ Mrs Hatcher snapped at her husband.

Captain Keen stepped forward and, with no thought for his pristine uniform, knelt in the puddle beside the dead animal. He gave a derisive snort.

‘Fell in?’ he said as he tugged at someth
ing with his good hand. ‘Hardly! Unless it was planning on a last meal before it hanged itself!’ He held up a knotted length of string with which the animal had been strangled.

Gently, and surprisingly deftly for someone with a bad arm, Keen picked up the cat, wrapped it in sacking and excused himself to tell Frank Duke that his rat catcher was no more.

‘What do you think?’ Ralf asked when the adults had gone in.

‘I reckon King’s Hadow’s in real trouble.’

Ralf couldn’t disagree.

‘Everyone was just cheering up because Niall and Michael had come home and then the boat lines were cut,’ said Leo. ‘Michael’s half dead and now this business with the cat. We’re back to square one. Everyone’s afraid again. Did you see their faces?’

Ralf had. That second when Keen had shown them all the string had seemed to last a lifetime.

‘It’s more than just the animals, though,’ Leo went on. ‘I mean, the animals are part of it, but it’s much bigger than that. I keep thinking about that actor bloke that’s missing and – I dunno – it’s like it’s all part of a plan to ratchet up the Fear. To work the village up into a fever pitch of terror.’

It was dark now and Leo’s words hung in the air. Mrs Hatcher called Valen in and it was with a feeling of relief that the boys scuttled off to the light and warmth of their own homes.

‘None of this makes any sense!’ Valen exclaimed, after Ralf had filled them in on what Gloria had told him. ‘Elk Cub Rat Rah? Are you sure she isn’t having a laugh?’ She’d been surly since the dead cat experience and sitting through an hour-long Sunday church service had done nothing to improve her mood. ‘The letters don’t stand for anything,’ said Valen. ‘It’s not someone’s name, that’s for sure.’