The Underground City (2 page)

“I tell you, he can see us,” Mary King snapped in exasperation. “His eyes have been following us around ever since he came into the Close.”

The ghosts eyed one another uncertainly. “But, Mistress King, how can he see us? He's just a boy and he's human. How can
he
see us when the others can't?”

“How should I know?” Mary King replied. “I only know that he can.”

“Could he help us sort out the
other
lot, do you think?” muttered a ghost, known to all and sundry as “the old Codger.”

“You mean Murdo and Wullie?” Mary King looked serious as she turned her mind to this other, more pressing, problem.

“Well,” the old Codger pointed out reasonably. “We've tried everything in our power to get rid of them, haven't we? Pushing them around, freezing them solid, the lot … and nothing's made any difference. They still come back every night.”

A pretty, young ghost twirled a lock of hair around her long fingers. “At least this boy might be able to talk to them,” she pointed out.

“Clarinda's right,” agreed Mr Rafferty, a tall ghost who sported a curly white wig and a suit of elegant gold brocade. “I think we should ask him if he can do anything. Murdo and Wullie are
getting
just a wee bit too close to the Plague People for my liking!”

This produced a fearful silence as they looked at one another in horror, for the Plague People were something else. Each and every ghost knew that should the drifting, boil-encrusted horrors escape from their sealed prisons in the Underground
City, they would not only infect the people of Edinburgh with the Black Death but they themselves would be affected and fade away completely. The ghosts, shuddering at the thought of losing what was left of their substance, turned questioningly to Mary King.

“As you say, Mr. Rafferty, they
are
getting too close,” she said, pondering the matter. “I suppose we could talk to this boy. At least it's worth a try!”

And with that, all the ghosts turned and looked at Neil
speculatively
.

Neil looked back at them and shivered. He had seen their lips moving and although he was too far away to hear what they were saying, he could guess that they were talking about him. They must have realized that he could see them. He swallowed hard. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea after all to wear his firestone, for from the moment he'd stepped into Mary King's Close, he had been able to see the ghosts perfectly and they scared the living daylights out of him. He hadn't really given much thought to what it would be like to see a ghost, nor had he had any concrete idea of what a ghost might actually look like. He'd supposed, again vaguely, that perhaps they'd be the sort of drifting white shapes he'd seen in films but the reality took his breath away. They were awful.

“Boooo!” Neil's heart pounded and he gave the most
enormous
start.

“Scared of ghosties, Neil!” crowed Graham Flint as his mates burst out laughing.

Miss Mackenzie turned and at the sight of Neil's white face, beckoned to Graham who sauntered idly up to her.

“Do you wish to stay here and take the tour with the rest of the class, Graham?” she asked.

“Yes, please, Miss.”

“Then we'll have no more … silly behaviour,” she said
sternly. “Honestly,” she said to the tour guide, who had
introduced
himself as Stan, “I sometimes despair of this class!”

Stan, dressed for the part in a black velvet coat, knee breeches, a ruffled shirt and buckled shoes, had already raised covert giggles and sly nudges from Graham Flint's little gang and was on the alert for trouble. On the plump side, he had an engaging grin and looked kindly at Neil. “They all try it on,” he said, comfortingly. “Don't let it worry you, laddie. If there are any ghosts here I'll eat my hat, I promise you!”

Two or three ghosts, who had been hovering angrily around Graham Flint, creased up at this remark and Neil gave a sickly smile. It was just as well, he reckoned, that Stan wasn't wearing a hat.

“You're not looking very well, Neil,” Miss Mackenzie frowned, looking at him searchingly. “You can wait upstairs if you want. It's really quite airless down here,” she added with a shiver. “To tell you the truth I feel a bit strange myself.”

As two perfectly horrible ghosts were standing at her elbow, Neil wasn't at all surprised that she felt a bit strange. They looked reasonably solid for ghosts but as they had just drifted through a brick wall he knew they were, as Kitor had said, spirits of the dead. The two men were dressed like Stan, in old-fashioned coats and breeches, but many of the others that were drifting in and out wore rags fit only for scarecrows. There were women, too, he noticed. Some were quite
respectably
dressed but many were thin hags that hugged tattered shawls round their skinny frames, their faces drawn and grey. It was their eyes that frightened Neil the most, however, for they weren't proper eyes but black holes that had no depth.

Neil gulped and shook his head. “I'll be all right, Miss Mackenzie,” he assured her.

Stan gathered them together and led them through a passage into the next house. As they followed him, Neil was glad that
Miss Mackenzie had stayed beside him for there seemed to be more ghosts than ever drifting round the rooms and just as he was quite sure that they had come to see what he looked like, he also knew that he was the only one who could see them.

The first indication Neil had that the ghosts were on his side was when a hefty ghost gave Graham Flint an equally hefty push that knocked him into a wall.

“Who did that?” he yelled. “Miss Mackenzie! Somebody pushed me!”

Miss Mackenzie looked round. “But Graham,” she said, “the only people near you are your … er … best friends …”

This was very obviously true, even to Graham. He glowered at them accusingly. “Which one of you was it?” he demanded furiously.

“It wasn't me!” they all chorused together.

Miss Mackenzie's lips twisted as she hid a smile. “The standard response!” she said to Stan, who was standing beside her, looking puzzled. Now, Stan, who had in his time, taken many school groups round the Close, had immediately written Graham down as a troublemaker and had been keeping a wary eye on him in case he tried to nick any of the exhibits. It so
happened
that he had been looking in Graham's direction when he had thumped against the wall and was quite ready to swear that nobody
had
pushed him.

Nerves tingling and senses suddenly alert, Stan continued taking them round but it wasn't long before he realized that this tour was definitely something else. There was nothing he could put his finger on, for the kids looked perfectly normal and attentive; he just knew within himself that something weird was going on. He looked round apprehensively, visited by the oddest notion that somehow they'd travelled back in time; even the set displays seemed to owe more to the seventeenth century
than the present day.

By this time, Neil had discovered that the ghosts were cold. He'd noticed it when he'd walked through one by mistake and then felt a fool as he'd muttered “sorry.” Although he was quite sure that no one else could see them, there was no doubt, he thought, that they were affecting the atmosphere of the place. Stan was no longer as bright and cheery as he had been when they'd started and without being consciously aware of it, the class had drawn together in a tight-knit group as though they could sense the spirits drifting around them.

Neil saw to his amusement that six burly ghosts were
standing
firmly round Graham Flint who looked as though he was about to freeze solid. His face was white with cold, the tip of his nose shone red and his eyes were desperate. Then the unthinkable happened. Graham Flint — the tough guy, the bully of the school for as long as Neil could remember — Graham Flint began to cry.

Miss Mackenzie looked flabbergasted, as well she might. Neil hid a grin and the rest of the class looked alarmed and excited at the same time. We'll be texting one another about this all evening, thought Neil.

“It
is
cold, isn't it!” Stan tried to make light of the wrenching sobs that emanated from Graham in heaving, hiccupping snorts. “No central heating in those days, I'm afraid,” he announced, rubbing his hands together and deciding there and then to cut the tour short. “Now, we'll just go through this door here and you'll be in Mary King's Close itself.”

Neil gasped as he stepped into the gloomy, lamp-lit close that curved steeply downhill. A vague mist curled eerily round the houses and the atmosphere was strange, heavy and oppressive. The ghosts were there, too; some clustered in the doorways of the narrow, cobbled alley while others peered at him through the barred windows on either side of the close. He
shivered as the grim reality of the seventeenth century curled about him; for although picturesque, it was an old, old street that spoke of grinding poverty and deprivation. It petered off into distant darkness and, looking up between the high walls, Neil saw that there was no strip of sky to lighten the gloom; just the dark outline of beams and stones.

“Those are the foundations of the City Chambers,” Stan said quietly, thankful that the tour was over at last. “They didn't bother to demolish the old city in these days. They just built right over it.”

It was time to go. Miss Mackenzie fussed around counting them all. Never, she thought, had a class formed a neater, straighter line faster than this one. They all looked cold, pinched and, like herself, desperately anxious to leave. Neil stood beside Stan at the end of the line and was just about to move off when he saw the writing on the wall and froze as he read what it said.

“Come on, laddie. It's time to go,” Stan gestured encouragingly as the rest of the class moved off.

Neil didn't hear him. He stood rooted to the ground for, written in huge letters in a blood-red, glowing script that
covered
the walls of the houses, was a message. A message for him.

Neil. Come again. We need your help.

Mary King.

Lewis Grant bumped over the sand track in the 4x4 feeling excited and, if the truth be told, more than a little scared. Despite his boasts, he wasn’t nearly as confident about driving on his own as he’d let on to Peter and the gang. So far, however, all had gone well. He’d often been to Al Antara in the past and he more or less knew the route — anyhow, there was no way he was going to get lost.

Nevertheless, as the track wound its way steadily across stretches of open desert, he started to worry for it was turning out to be a much longer journey than he’d remembered. But then, he supposed, when they’d been on desert picnics, he’d always been with friends; talking all the way without really looking at the scenery.

He drove on, clutching the steering wheel tightly and wishing that he’d never agreed to the ridiculous dare but when he topped a rise and saw before him the long, low, black tents of a bedouin encampment, he triumphantly punched the air with both hands; for beyond it he glimpsed the palm trees that marked the oasis of Al Antara.

He’d forgotten about the Arabs but wasn’t particularly
bothered
about them as he knew they never went near the village at night. Most of them worked for the oil company anyway. Nevertheless, he took care to bypass the tents at a distance so that no one would see that it wasn’t a man in the driving seat. The bedouin, however, are noted for their razor-sharp eyesight and as the sheikh of the tribe watched the vehicle bump its way towards Al Antara, he looked thoughtful. The driver was a
boy — in itself disturbing — and he was heading for the oasis.

“Ya, Hassan,” he beckoned to one of his sons. “Take the pick-up and go to the office of Mr Williams. Tell him that this vehicle …” he wrote the number on a piece of paper and handed it to him, “this vehicle, driven by a boy, is heading for Al Antara. He is on his own and I am worried for him. It’ll start to get dark soon …”

Hassan’s face suddenly changed to one of alarm. “Father, look! A
shimaal!
” He pointed a quivering finger in the direction of the distant township.

Sheikh Rashid swung round and let out a yell that echoed round the tents.

“
Shimaal! Shimaal!
” His words rang round the camp. Sand was hastily thrown over the fires and children, animals and anything moveable was grabbed and thrust into the relative safety of the tents as the sandstorm swept down on them, the billowing clouds of dust and grit shutting out the sunlight as it rolled in a furious, swirling mass across the desert, carrying everything before it.

Lewis drove on towards Al Antara and so anxious was he to get there before darkness fell that he forgot to look in his
rear-view
mirror, thus missing the dreadful sight of the approaching storm billowing in behind him. The first hint that something was wrong was when the palm trees at Al Antara disappeared. He blinked. It was impossible. They had been there, just a few hundred yards away, as clear as crystal, and now they had gone. Then a burst of wind hit the car and within seconds the vehicle was surrounded by whirling clouds of sand that quite
successfully
blotted out both desert and sky and reduced his world to the inside of the 4x4. Driving was impossible. He put on the brakes hastily and switched off the engine. Now what was he going to do?

The
shimaal
hit the oil-company township just as Brian was preparing to take the boys to Al Antara. He grinned at them as they loaded their gear into the jeep and hid a smile at the stuff they’d brought. He actually had no intention of letting Lewis stay in Al Antara all night and once the boys had had their joke, he’d get Lewis to follow him back to the township. But if they really thought they were going to scare him with their collection of Halloween masks and ghost costumes, they were, he reckoned, doomed to disappointment. Stuff like that wouldn’t faze Lewis for a minute.

At that moment, a strong gust of wind swept through the garden, bending the palm trees and blasting them with a wave of choking, dusty grit.

Colin grabbed at Peter in an effort to stay on his feet. “What’s happening?” he gasped, hardly able to see as the sand got into his eyes and up his nose.

“It’s a sandstorm,” gasped Peter. “A
shimaal
.”

“Quick, everyone,” Brian snapped. “Back into the house. There’s no way we can travel in this!”

Once inside, they watched from the window as the
shimaal
howled and screamed round the house like a banshee with whooping cough. Brian looked worried and reached for the phone. His mother and father were visiting friends but he knew he had to tell them what had happened so that the company could send out rescue teams. His heart sank. What they were going to say when he told them that Lewis Grant, of all people, was stuck out in the desert in the middle of a
shimaal
, he didn’t know — but he could guess.

“Do you think Lewis got to the oasis?” queried Peter half an hour later, as Brian looked at his watch yet again.

“He should have,” was the answer. “If he didn’t, then I only hope he’ll have had the sense to obey the first rule of the desert.”

“What’s that?”

“Never get out of your car in a sandstorm.”

To be fair, it actually wasn’t Lewis’s fault that he left the car. As he’d brought a bottle of water and a six-pack of soft drinks with him plus a powerful torch and a good supply of comics to while away the hours until daylight, he’d settled down in the car quite happily at first, although it was definitely eerie with the wind and sand howling round outside. Without air conditioning, however, the inside of the car gradually became more and more uncomfortable. A fine dust laced the air and he shifted restlessly as it got hotter and hotter and as his throat dried up, gulped down more and more of the soft drinks until he saw, with a prickle of worry, that there were very few cans left. Not being able to see anything was scary as well. He tried hard to concentrate on the adventures of his hero, Superman, but every so often he lifted his eyes and frowned worriedly as gusts of wind rocked the car until he really thought that it might topple over.

A normal sandstorm might, indeed, have rocked the car a little but Lewis didn’t know that this was no ordinary
sandstorm
. The bedouin didn’t go to Al Antara after dark because they knew there was a djinn there and that it came out at night. It was not just superstition. They knew! From time to time, Mr Williams from the oil company tried to persuade them to return, rebuild the houses and make the oasis their home but they were always steadfast in their refusal. Mr Williams could say what he liked, but a djinn was, after all, a djinn.

As the 4x4 gave a particularly violent lurch, Lewis grabbed at the door for support. His hand hit the door handle and in a triumphant roar of wind and sand, he tumbled out into the storm. The door then slammed shut as the vehicle righted itself. Crying with frustration he tried to open it, and couldn’t. It must have stuck! Pulling his T-shirt over his mouth to keep
out the sand, he felt his way round to the passenger door,
tripping
over his torch as he did so. He sighed with relief as he picked it up and stuffed it into his pocket. It would be getting dark soon and he’d need the light. Again he struggled to open the doors. He knew perfectly well that he hadn’t locked either of them but despite his frantic efforts, neither would budge. There was only one thing for it. He’d have to take shelter in one of the houses at the oasis for no one could survive for long in the suffocating air of such a storm.

Although Lewis didn’t have far to walk, the heat, the wind and the stinging sand scoured him like sandpaper. Desperately he stumbled on, quite unable to believe that this was actually happening to him. He managed to stiffen his resolve for a while by pretending that he was one of the heroes in his comic books but fear overtook him when he realized he was nearly exhausted and wouldn’t be able to go much further.

It was then that the old, worn stones of the huge well at Al Antara loomed before him and he sobbed with relief as his hands clutched thankfully at its rim. Water! He could smell it and was so thirsty that he could think of nothing else.

The water in the well was sweet, he knew, for the Arabs had offered him some to drink when he’d visited the oasis with his parents, a while back. It had been cold and delicious, and his mouth was so dry that he could hardly wait to taste it again. Confidently, he looked up through the gloom to the rickety, pulley-like affair that held the bucket and bit his lip in
dismay
as, amid the swirling sand of the storm, he saw a tangle of wreckage that sprawled crazily over one side of the well. It had been blown down by the force of the wind and although he grasped one of the wooden supports and tried to lift it, he found it surprisingly heavy. Even if I could manage to pull it up, he thought despairingly, the storm would probably just blow it over again.

There was, however, another way to get to the water; a more dangerous way. He looked over the edge of the well and there it was — a flight of stone steps that curved down its inner wall into the gloom. His parents, of course, had not allowed him to climb down the well but he’d often watched the Arabs clambering up and down if the bucket had stuck or the ropes got tangled. He didn’t give himself time to think. He knew he had to get down to the water, for never before had he had such a raging thirst. Swiftly, he swung his leg over the top and balanced himself shakily on the first of the steps that curved down in a gentle spiral towards the water. He knew he had to be quick. Daylight was starting to fade and in the desert, darkness falls swiftly.

He took the torch from his pocket and flicked the light on the worn steps that jutted out from the wall. Fortunately, the well was wide and the steps broad enough to give him a
welcome
sense of security. Thank goodness his mother couldn’t see him now, he thought, as he started downwards. She’d totally freak!

Despite the desert heat, the air in the well was cool and moist. He breathed it in gratefully as he followed the staircase down, but as he went further and further into the depths, the walls seemed to close in on him and at one stage he wondered if he’d ever reach the bottom. The torchlight, however, gave him confidence and eventually he reached the last step where a wide ledge gave onto a pool of dark water that lapped softly against the steep walls that encircled it. The well, he thought, must be fed by a spring of some sort, for the pool looked deep.

It was a strange feeling, being at the bottom of the well and he shivered slightly as he looked up at the far-away circle of dim light above his head. The distant noise of the storm echoed eerily down the shaft and as he flashed his torch over the water, he knew instinctively that this was an ancient place … perhaps
as old as time itself.

Although he hadn’t consciously thought about it, Lewis had meant to kneel at the edge of the water and drink from his cupped hands. Instead, he found himself sliding forward so that he lay stretched out over the worn, old stones at the water’s edge. However, even as he leant forward and plunged his face into the pool, he thought he saw a movement below the
surface
, the glimpse of a face that wasn’t his and a swirl of water that bubbled and surged triumphantly around him. There was something in the pool!

He scrambled to his feet in panic, backing away from the edge, his breath coming in fearful, heaving gasps. He pushed a lock of wet hair from his face and stared at the rippling water in horror, wondering what nameless monster lurked in its depths.

Nothing, however, happened and as the pool returned to normal, his heart gradually stopped thumping. Nevertheless, he looked around fearfully, wondering what to do next. The trouble was that he was still thirsty for he hadn’t had time to drink more than a mouthful. Dare he risk it? He moved
forward
and, kneeling down, slapped the surface of the water with the flat of his hand.

Nothing stirred and he relaxed as common sense told him that it could just have been his own reflection that he’d seen — and if the well was, indeed, fed by an underground spring then there was probably nothing strange in the upward surge of bubbles. Warily, he leant forward again, ready to throw himself backwards should he see anything. But there was nothing and he dipped his cupped hands into the water time after time until he could drink no more.

The pool remained calm as he got to his feet and it was only when he looked up that he realized that darkness was indeed falling. With a final glance at the pool, he turned to the
rising
circle of steps that wound its way upwards. Suddenly, he
wanted more than anything else to be out of the confines of the well and with the torchlight cutting a bright swathe out of the darkness, he half ran and half scrambled upwards towards the fading circle of light that spelt safety.

The Arabs and the oil company rescue team arrived at Al Antara at much the same time. The storm was still raging when the camels padded up to the oasis, the sand-laden wind shrieking in fury around them as the bedouin, wrapped to the eyes in their red-checked head-gear, couched their camels among the palm trees and looked around fearfully.

“The well, Hassan,” said the sheikh, his voice muffled by the tearing wind. “We’ll find him by the well.”

Lewis saw them through the storm and relief flooded through him for he hadn’t much relished the thought of spending the entire night in the choking heat. He pulled his T-shirt from his face and stood up but even as he got to his feet, the headlights of a fleet of rescue vehicles pierced the driving, swirling sand. The sheikh lifted a warning hand and the bedouin waited by their camels as the Englishmen piled out of their vehicles and ran towards Lewis.

“Water,” one of them shouted, “bring some water!”

“It’s okay, Mr Williams,” Lewis said. “I found the well. I’m all right!”

He sounded so cocky that Gareth Williams was sorely tempted to give him a good telling off there and then. Driving his father’s car at his age! Of all the stupid idiots!