Troubletwisters (11 page)

THE SUN WOKE JAIDE EARLY.
She opened her eyes very slowly, fighting a mental fog that threatened to drag her back down into sleep. Cats, rats and cockroaches? Her thoughts wouldn’t line up straight, and neither would her memories. There had been a ferocious wind, and darkness, just like when their house exploded . . .

Jaide’s heart suddenly hammered fast and she sat up, her eyes wide open as she looked around in panic. But it was daylight, and there was no whirlwind, and the bedroom was perfectly tidy. Everything was neatly packed away in the wardrobe, and their empty bags were zipped up tightly in the corner. The curtains hung straight and even their bedclothes were orderly, as though she and Jack had hardly stirred all night – as though everything hadn’t been upended by a tornado.

And Grandma X had been standing there, Jaide remembered.
She
must have sent the wind and caused the darkness, for reasons Jaide still didn’t understand.

Understanding wasn’t important. Jaide
knew
. She knew that things weren’t right in Portland, and hadn’t been from the start. And if tidying everything up was Grandma X’s attempt to make her think it had all been a dream, she wasn’t going to fall for it.

Jaide swung her legs off the bed. An unexpected crinkling of paper stopped her from going any further. There was a note attached to the front of her pyjamas by a hat pin shaped like a peacock’s feather. The note had been composed on an old typewriter and the letters had drifted up and down from the horizontal as Grandma X typed them.

Jaide snorted and stuck the pin deep into her pillow. She felt much more clearheaded now. Whatever had woken her, she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity that being up so early gave her.

She crossed to Jack, who was drooling onto his pillow. There was an identical note fixed with an old sapphire and gold tiepin to his T-shirt. She unpinned it and rocked his shoulder back and forth.

‘Jack, Jack, wake up,’ she hissed in his ear.

Jack didn’t respond. He was breathing all right, but no matter how she shook him, he didn’t stir out of his unnaturally deep sleep.

‘You better stay here, then, I guess,’ said Jaide hesitantly. ‘I’ll get help.’

On bare feet, she crept to the bedroom door and tried the handle. Her fear that it would be locked was unfounded: it opened smoothly and with barely a squeak. She peered out into the hallway, and neither saw nor heard a living soul. In sharp contrast to all the creaks and groans of the night before, the house was so quiet now that it, too, seemed to be under a spell.

As lightly as a cat – the stairs hardly complained beneath her at all – Jaide went downstairs and checked out the situation. The kettle was cold; the front door was locked. Grandma X was almost certainly asleep, two floors above, and couldn’t possibly hear her use the phone. At least Jaide hoped she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure of anything about Grandma X anymore.

The phone was on its cradle in the hallway, on a small wooden table with animal feet. Under the table, Ari was curled up in a tight ginger ball. On tiptoes, Jaide approached close enough to reach out and gently lift up the phone. Ari’s whiskers twitched, and his tail lashed out once, but his eyes stayed closed. Jaide retreated, hardly daring to breathe.

Susan had long ago made the twins commit her phone number to memory. Jaide took the handset into the cupboard under the stairs, shut the door, and tapped out the familiar digits in the dark. Only the voicemail picked up. Her mother had to be out on an emergency call.

But Jaide felt there was an emergency going on here as well. Only it wasn’t something she could put in a message.

She hung up, then sat in the cupboard for a while, thinking furiously, full of hurt and anger and indecision. She was absolutely sure of one thing: there was no way she was going to wait for whatever Grandma X came up with next. She and Jack had to get away.

If she could wake her brother up . . .

Very carefully, she slid out of the cupboard and walked on tiptoe back down the hall. She was about to replace the phone when she noticed Ari was no longer under the table. Jaide’s head whipped from side to side, trying to locate the cat. She couldn’t see him, but that only made her more fearful. Dropping the phone back on the cradle, she ran for the stairs. Halfway up, she saw Ari waiting at the top, and froze.

The cat looked at her and yawned, showing all his very sharp teeth. Jaide stood absolutely still, wondering what she should do. Part of her was thinking,
He’s only a cat
, but another part of her was thinking,
He’s a witch’s cat.

Ari yawned again, then turned away and slowly padded up the next flight of stairs.

Gone to tell on me to Grandma X
, thought Jaide. She jumped up the next three steps and ran.

In the twins’ bedroom, Jack rolled over and his hand touched the glass of the window. A moment after he did so, a moth with long, feathery feelers flew up and landed on the other side of the window. There was a faint crackle, a flash of silvery light, and the moth fell to the ground. It was immediately followed by another, which suffered the same fate. But a third moth did not touch the glass. Instead it hovered in place, and only its feelers ever so gently brushed the window.

At that very instant, Jack’s sleep was disturbed by a feeling that someone was trying to get through to him, to tell him something. The voice was far away, and its words unintelligible, but the speaker was insistent, and he found himself straining to hear. Very slowly, a couple of words became clear, as they were repeated over and over again.

++
We want . . . we want . . . we want . . .
++

‘
We want . . .
’ whispered Jack, still asleep, just as Jaide came rushing into the room. ‘
We want . . . we want . . .
’

‘What?’ snapped Jaide. She took him by the shoulders and shook him much harder than she had before. His face was very pale, and his lips were moving very strangely, almost as if someone else was trying to speak through his mouth. ‘Jack, who are you talking to?’

‘
We want . . . we want . . .
’

‘Jack!’ shouted Jaide, and she slapped him across the face.

‘
You,
’ said Jack’s mouth, and then his eyes flashed open and in his normal voice he said, ‘Hey! What’d you hit me for?’

‘Are you all right?’

Jaide looked worried and annoyed, both of which surprised Jack. He was the one who should be annoyed. His cheek was burning – it felt like she’d left her fingerprints there.

‘I was asleep! What are you playing at, waking me up like that?’

‘No time for that now,’ said Jaide. She was somewhat reassured by his perfectly ordinary irritation, and certain that if only they could get away, all the strange happenings would stop. ‘Get up and get dressed. We’re running away.’

‘We’re what?’

‘You heard me,’ she said, flinging back the covers. ‘Come on, before Grandma wakes up and stops us.’

‘Hang on,’ said Jack. ‘I mean, I know there’s weird stuff going on, but do we have to run away? Besides, we don’t have anywhere to go.’

Jaide thrust a note into his face. He blearily focused on the words his grandma had typed.

‘So?’

‘If she doesn’t want us to go to school, that’s the first place we
should
go. And Mr Carver will help us, I’m sure of it. He seemed nice, didn’t he?’

Jack was having trouble keeping up.

‘No, he didn’t. He seemed like an idiot! Besides, you want to run away to
school
? Shouldn’t we try to get the bus over to Mum’s work instead?’

‘We don’t even know if there is a bus,’ said Jaide. ‘Besides, I called Mum and couldn’t reach her. It’s up to us now.’ She gripped her brother by the shoulders and turned him so he faced his wardrobe. ‘Just get dressed. I’ve decided we have to go.’

‘Oh, well, if you’ve decided!’ said Jack sarcastically as he forced his sluggish limbs to obey him. ‘Hang on! In the night . . . there was a wind, and it got dark, just like . . . just like at home —’

‘Yes!’ exclaimed Jaide.

Jack stared at the tidiness of their room. Nothing was broken and everything was in its place.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes! Grandma X did it, and now Ari’s probably waking her up and reporting me, so get a move on!’

Jack’s forehead wrinkled. Unlike Jaide, he wasn’t completely sure Grandma X was behind all the bad stuff, or whether she was working with the rats or against them. But either way, she was a witch . . . so the sooner they got away from her, the better. He agreed with his sister on that point.

But when it came to actually going out the bedroom door, Jack hesitated.

‘We should leave Mum a note,’ he whispered.

‘Why? We’ll call her from the school. And what if Grandma X reads it? She’s the last person we want to know.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I guess.’

Impatience had made Jaide cross. ‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. Stay here alone if you like.’

Jack vigorously shook his head.
Alone
was something the twins rarely were, and Jack didn’t like the thought of it at all. Besides, he wouldn’t truly be alone: he would have Grandma X to answer to when she woke up.

‘All right, then,’ Jaide said with her hand on the doorknob. ‘Let’s go.’

JAIDE LED THE WAY DOWN
the stairwell, shushing Jack as they reached the last wind of steps. She peered over the banister to see if Ari was around, but she couldn’t see him.

‘What?’ Jack whispered into her ear.

She shook her head. Maybe Ari was still waking up Grandma X, or she was giving him instructions. Moving quickly now, fearing that something or someone might catch them on the brink of freedom, she ran to the door and turned the big, old key. It clicked, but not too loudly, and the door was open.

They hurried out into the yard and froze at the sudden sound of voices. But it wasn’t Grandma X. It was some people in the yard next door. Even though it was still early, not much past six o’clock, there were workers there and one of them was complaining about a bulldozer that was running late.

The twins didn’t stop to listen further. They hurried along the fence line, bent almost double, and ran out the gate into Watchward Lane. Jaide didn’t dare look back. She felt the presence of the house like a physical weight, with its windows like piercing eyes tracking her every move- ment. She wanted to get as far as possible from that terrible gaze.

As the twins ran, they saw evidence of the previous night’s rodent assembly. The ground was scuffed by thousands of tiny feet and dotted with droppings. The air had a musty smell. Some of the trees had been gnawed at ankle height, and here and there were spots of dried, dark blood. Jaide shuddered, remembering the heaving mass of rats. She hoped they were all well away from Watchward Lane now . . .

As she thought of the rats, she noticed a tiny movement out of the corner of one eye. She whirled around, but there was nothing there.

‘What?’ asked Jack. He was spooked as well. A moth was fluttering around his head, determinedly batting at his face and eyes, and he feared that at any moment a whole swarm of them might descend upon them, like the midges and crickets. ‘What is it? What did you see?’

‘Nothing . . .’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Let’s keep going.’

They reached Parkhill Street and turned right, cutting quickly past Rodeo Dave’s bookshop. It was shut, of course, like all the other shops at this time of the morning; there were few cars on the road, and no pedestrians at all. Portland wasn’t like the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep. Their father had often told them how much he wished the city would just stop for a while and give everyone a moment to think.

Both twins at that same moment felt a pang of longing for their absent father. If he had been there, he would’ve known what to do. Grandma X was his mother, after all.

The smell of the fish co-op grew stronger as they approached Dock Road. Jack’s head was cold and he wished he’d thought to pack his cap. Jaide’s red hair kept being blown into her eyes by irritating gusts of chill wind. But at least they weren’t trapped in the house anymore.

Jaide had just started to think they had made it when all of a sudden Jack stopped and grabbed her arm. An orange shape jumped out of a hedge, landed in front of them with a yowl, and raised one white-mittened paw very like a policeman directing traffic.

‘You’re making a big mistake,’ Ari said.

Jack couldn’t help but reply. ‘Be quiet! You’re on
her
side.’

‘You speak like you’ve never met a cat before. There’s only one side – my own.’

Jaide looked at Jack in alarm. Ari was sitting in front of them yowling and meowing, and Jack was talking back?

‘Jack?’ Jaide was tugging his arm. ‘Jack, what are you doing?’

‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t look out for friends,’ continued Ari.

‘By spying on us, you mean?’ said Jack, shrugging off Jaide’s attempt to drag him past.

‘I’m just trying to help. You’re protected in the house. You should go back.’

‘At least no one’s going to shove us in an oversize oven out here.’

‘Shove you in . . . an oven?!’ Ari’s tail twitched for an instant, either in amusement or surprise. ‘I think you are somewhat confused.’

‘Can you really understand what he’s saying?’ asked Jaide.

‘Yes!’ snapped Jack. ‘Obviously!’

‘Well, don’t listen!’ Jaide snapped back. ‘It . . . it isn’t right. You shouldn’t be able to talk to cats, or think you are! It’s part of everything that’s wrong here! Come on!’

She pushed him again, and this time Jack didn’t resist. Stepping around Ari, he followed his sister. But Ari followed, too, and began to weave in and out of Jack’s legs, slowing him down.

‘I don’t know what’s so wrong about talking to me,’ said Ari. ‘Like I said, we’re friends, and as a friend, let me repeat: You should go back home now.’

‘Are you sure you can’t hear him?’ Jack asked anxiously as they rounded the corner.

‘Of course I can’t,’ said Jaide. ‘Ari’s just a cat. He can’t talk.’

Ari looked heavenward and sighed.

‘The words
just
and
cat
were never meant to go together,’ said the ginger tom to Jack. ‘Tell your sister she could hear me if she listened properly. Maybe I could talk some sense into
her
.’

‘He says —’

‘I don’t want to know!’ Jaide put her hands over her ears. ‘Whatever he’s saying to you, it has to be a trick. Ignore him before he talks you out of escaping!’

‘Ah, the foolishness of the troubletwister,’ sighed the cat. ‘Remember that I tried to warn you.’

The cat angled away from them, slinked between the shops on Dock Road, and swarmed up and over a fence.

‘He’s going to tell Grandma X where we are,’ said Jack.

‘Was that what he said to you?’ asked Jaide. She might have protested otherwise, but she did believe Jack had talked to Ari, and she didn’t like it. She was worried, too, that Jack was beginning to doubt her plan. She couldn’t see it through without him.

‘No. He said that we should go back to her house, that we’re not safe out here. I’m sure he’ll tell her, though.’

‘Then we’d better hope Mr Carver gets to work early,’ said Jaide. Her eyes flickered as she spoke. There was something in the corner of her vision again, something that was moving with them, that she just couldn’t get a good look at.

Please, please make all this weird stuff stop
, she thought.
If we can just get to school, I’m sure we’ll be okay
.

The school was on the elbow formed by Main Street and Dock Road, but the entrance was from River Road, which defined its northern edge. The river was sluggish and wide where Main Street crossed it via the old iron bridge. A steep bank sheltered by willows led down to the water opposite the school. Birds squawked and argued in the hanging branches as the twins turned left off Main Street and hurried toward the front gate of the school.

‘We’re going to make it!’ said Jaide happily, a microsecond before she saw the first rat.

It shot out of a roadside drain and came crawling directly toward them with its nose upraised. Its eyes were the same horrible, shiny, milky white as the eyes they had seen in their old home.

Instinctively Jaide stopped. The rat looked at them with those hideous white eyes for two very long seconds, then it turned and fled, its pink tail whipping behind its fat, black-furred body. It ran up the path and ducked through a hole in the school wall.

A moment later, it reappeared atop the wall, and it wasn’t alone. Dozens of rats slowly spread out along the wall, every one of them looking at the twins, every one of them with those same milky, staring eyes.

‘They’re all around the school,’ said Jaide grimly. ‘That cat must have told Grandma X already.’

Jack’s face was pinched and pale. ‘What do we do now? We’ve got nowhere else to go!’

‘Troubletwisters!’

The call came from behind them, but it wasn’t Grandma X’s voice. This was a softer, straining kind of whisper.

‘Young troubletwisters, come closer.’

‘Who’s there?’ Jaide called out. She and Jack edged nearer to each other, both of them peering around in all directions.

‘Look under the trees. Come to us and we will help you. We are your friends.’

Jaide and Jack took a step back, paused, and looked across at the school. The rats’ heads tracked their every movement.

‘Let’s look,’ Jaide whispered. ‘But be ready to run.’

The twins warily crossed the road and looked down the slope, through the gnarled branches and misshapen trunks to the river. But they couldn’t see anyone – or any rats – which was a relief.

‘Where are you?’ called Jaide. ‘I can’t see you.’

‘There,’ said Jack, pointing.

As if he had made the person appear, Jaide now saw a solitary human figure standing under one of the twisted trees, wrapped in shadow.

‘We are your friends,’ the whispering voice repeated. ‘Only we can save you from the witch. Come.’

There was something fascinating about the voice. The twins took a step closer without even thinking, and would have taken another step, but the voice was interrupted by a car that drove across the bridge to their right. The iron bridge hummed with its passage, and strange, rhythmic echoes spread across the water.

‘Who . . . who are you?’ Jaide called.

‘You do not know us yet, but you will. It is time. We will tell you
everything
,’ the figure said. It thrust out an arm in a jerky, peculiar wave. ‘Come with us. Hurry.’

Jack started to head down the slope, moving like a sleepwalker. Jaide made a grab for him but missed.

‘Jack, wait!’

‘We will tell you the truth,’ said the voice. The figure stepped partly out of the shadow of the tree, legs jerking like a puppet’s. Jaide hesitated, then jumped down the slope after Jack.

‘Jack! Come back!’ she shouted. ‘Something’s wrong!’

‘We want only to help,’ said the figure soothingly. ‘Come to us, troubletwisters. Quickly!’

Jack moved faster. Jaide slipped in the mud and fell on one knee.

‘Jack! Stop!’

The figure under the tree reached out, as if in welcome, but its arms were too long. A cat yowled somewhere in the distance behind them.

Jack started to run toward that strange embrace.

‘Yessss,’ said the voice. ‘Welcome!’

With that last word, the figure fell apart, white-eyed rats cascading off a decaying, scarecrow framework of sticks and black cloth, the illusion of a person completely gone.

In that same moment, the ground in front of Jack collapsed. His balance went, and he fell backward, twisting around as the earth carried him down into a sudden sinkhole.

Jack slid down, down, down, the loose soil carrying him deep underground. Desperately he tried to scrabble and claw his way to the surface, but there was nothing to hold on to, and nothing solid under his feet.

He sank deeper, gulping one desperate breath before the earth closed over above his head.