Troubletwisters (3 page)

But there, emerging from the dust, was the twins’ father. He had blood streaming from a cut above his left eye and his corduroy jacket was ripped to shreds, but he was alive. In his right hand, he held the iron rod.

Jack and Jaide felt an incredible surge of relief. They smiled up at their father, but their eyes were dazed, and their exhausted minds stunned with shock and incomprehension.

‘What have you done?’ asked Susan.

‘Susan, it’s not —’

‘Not your fault?’ She pointed angrily at the metal rod in his hand. ‘I knew you didn’t go by plane. I looked up the arrivals, but I thought maybe – just maybe – I missed one and you had kept your promise.’

‘I was going to say
it’s not that simple.
’ Hector knelt by the children and laid the rod down on the road.

Jack blinked up at his father, slowly regaining his senses. Next to him, he felt Jaide shift, and Jack knew that he should say something, but he didn’t have the strength to speak.

‘Dad,’ Jaide whispered. It took a great deal of effort to get the words out, so much that she hardly knew if she was saying them right or getting them in order. ‘We touched the . . . we saw the . . .’

‘I know, sweetie,’ said Hector. ‘It’ll be okay, I swear.’

‘How will it be okay?’ asked Susan. ‘How will it be okay, Hector? Our house has just been
destroyed
. You and the kids almost died.’

‘We knew this might happen one day,’ Hector said quietly. ‘The potential is there, and one way or another, it will be realised.’

‘
She
made it happen!’ Susan tugged the letter out of her back pocket and flung it at him. ‘
She
did this.’

Hector scanned the five short lines and sagged back on his heels.

Jack didn’t know what was stranger – what had happened, or the fact that his parents didn’t seem to be as surprised as he was. Jaide, meanwhile, wondered what on earth the card from the mysterious Grandma X had to do with it all.

‘There must be a way to make it stop,’ Susan said, clutching the twins tightly. ‘There
has
to be.’

‘She didn’t make it happen,’ said Hector. ‘The children have to go to her now.’

Go to her?
Jaide thought. This was all happening too fast.

Susan could barely put her fears into words. ‘No! She’ll want to take them . . . she’ll want to use them . . . I won’t let them go!’

Jack had so many questions. But he was so tired and shocked, he couldn’t even begin to ask them. For now, he just listened. Questions would come later. Plenty of questions.

‘She won’t use them,’ said Hector firmly. ‘The choice will be their own. As it was for me, when I chose you.’

‘But you didn’t stick with that choice,’ said Susan, her words as sharp as a knife. ‘Did you?’

In the distance, they heard the sound of sirens cutting through the howling of dogs and the shrill repetition of car alarms.

Hector looked behind him, and both Jaide and Jack followed his glance. Smoke was beginning to curl and twine out of the shattered walls and rooftop, and little flames were jumping in the shadows.

‘They have to go,’ said Hector. ‘The twins . . . we might not be so lucky next time. I need you to take them to Mother before their Gifts fully awaken.’

‘What gifts?’ Jaide finally found the strength to speak up. ‘What’s happening?’

Hector looked at both of the twins. ‘I can’t tell you now. But you’ll find out soon. All you need to know is that it’s very important that you go with your mother. Now.’

‘You’re not giving us any choice?’ Jack asked.

‘There is no choice.’

Jaide still didn’t understand. ‘What about you? Aren’t you going to come with us?’

‘Yes, Hector,’ Susan said. ‘Aren’t you going to come with us?’

A flicker of intense pain passed across Hector’s features. ‘You know I can’t go with you, Susan. Me being there would . . . interfere . . . as I interfered today.’

Susan looked away, back toward the burning house.

‘You might as well go now, then,’ she said.

Hector nodded sadly. He bent down and kissed both the twins on their foreheads, picked up the iron rod, and stood, his glasses askew and misted over.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘One day, troubletwisters, I hope you’ll understand.’

Hector turned to Susan, but she would not look at him, not even as his footsteps slowly receded down the lane. Jack couldn’t watch him, either – he felt like something inalterable was happening, and their family was never going to be the same again. Only Jaide managed a small wave as their father left. She had no idea whether or not he saw it.

A minute later, a clap of thunder echoed across the ordinary suburb and a single black cloud slunk off toward the horizon, marking the end of the ordinary life of Jaide and Jack Shield.

EVERYONE KEPT TELLING JACK, JAIDE
and Susan how lucky they’d been to survive the explosion that destroyed their home.

‘I’d buy a lottery ticket, if I were you,’ the insurance assessor had said. The fire department investigator had agreed, adding, ‘A gas main normally goes up all at once, not in stages. You’re the luckiest family alive.’

But the twins didn’t feel lucky. As far as they were concerned, they just got unluckier and unluckier. First their home was blown up, and then they were told they had to move to their unknown grandmother’s house, miles and miles and miles away. And yet, every time someone heard their story – like that morning in the latest and hopefully last slimy motel off the freeway – out came that annoying sentence: ‘You were lucky!’

‘Everyone keeps saying we were so lucky,’ said Jaide as they got back into the car. ‘So how come we’ve had to drive for three whole days to some hick town we’ve never heard of, to see a woman you
clearly
don’t like? Dad is who-knows-where —’

‘That’s enough,’ snapped Susan. ‘It’s been a long drive, and I need you both to be cooperative. We’re almost there. Don’t ruin it now.’

They drove in silence for a while, Susan fuming to herself and the twins in no better mood. Then Susan quietly added, ‘Your father will come when he can. He has urgent business. And we
are
very lucky that we’re alive and that your grandmother is so keen to have us come to live with her.’

Grandma X lived by the sea in a town called Portland – but not one of the Portlands that anyone had heard of. In fact, as Jaide quickly learned on the internet, this Portland didn’t even make the top ten of cities or towns with the name. It was small and old and sounded generally unexciting. There was only one small school, two parks, one part-time cinema (without a 3-D screen), and a main street with a half-dozen shops. The nearest shopping centre was a minimum of forty minutes’ drive away. To the twins, it might as well have been on the moon, but without the fun of riding in a spaceship to get there.

‘Are we going to be stuck here for good?’ Jack asked as their mother drove slowly down the main street of Portland, peering at the street signs. Some of them were so faded, they were completely illegible. ‘I mean, like, for always?’

‘No,’ said their mother. ‘It’s only till the insurance money comes in and our old house is rebuilt.’

‘Why couldn’t we stay in the hotel until then? Or with Aunt Marie?’

‘I told you. Aunt Marie has her hands full with Mamma Jane. It’s going to take months to rebuild and . . . and I thought we needed a change of scene anyway.’

Jaide knew it was pointless to try to pin her mother down any further than this. Clearly, something strange had happened the hour their house had been destroyed. And there was a link between the freaky things the twins had seen, their father’s quick disappearance, and the relocation to Grandma X’s house. But Susan wouldn’t talk about it. Once Hector had gone, it was like the words they’d exchanged had never happened.

There was one question Jaide figured was safe. ‘Do we have to call her Grandma X?’ she asked.

‘Just call her Grandma.’

‘What does the X stand for?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know Dad’s mother’s name?’

‘No,’ their mother answered with a distracted sigh. She was looking back and forth between the hand-drawn map Grandma X had sent and the GPS screen. With an irritated snort, she pulled over to the side of the road. ‘I don’t understand this. We’ve just passed Crescent Street and Dock Road. There’s no Watchward Lane between them, and it isn’t in the navigator database.’

‘She said to come in from the east.’ Jaide held up the map, which had some carefully lettered instructions on the side.

‘It can’t make any difference which way we come from,’ said Susan. But her voice trailed off, and she made a U-turn. ‘I must have missed it. We’ll have to go back around.’

‘Why does she call us troubletwisters?’ Jaide asked.

‘She’s old,’ said Susan. ‘It’s probably some saying from long ago, like a pet name.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Jaide. ‘We’re not trouble.’

‘Yes, you are,’ said Susan. ‘Sometimes, anyway.’

‘And what do her cats have to do with anything?’

Jack glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of a narrow lane between a bookshop and a hardware shop. He blinked and lost sight of it, then spotted it again through the rear window.

‘There!’ he called out. ‘We’ve gone past it! Next to the shop with all the different stepladders out the front.’

‘Well done, Jack!’ Susan said. She spun the wheel and executed another U-turn. ‘There’s the wretched lane at last.’

The car turned into the narrow, cobbled lane that zigzagged between two blocks and then up a slight hill, ending in a cul-de-sac opposite a high, whitewashed stone wall topped with gargoyle cats and roosters. There was an arched entrance just wide enough for the car, its gate propped open behind it.

Susan drove through the entrance and followed the long circular drive and its companionable line of poplar trees around to the front of the house. When she turned the engine off, they all sat in silence for a moment, looking out.

The house was old and built of once-rosy bricks that had mostly faded to a dull pink. It was three storeys high, and in place of a fourth storey it had a widow’s walk, a kind of veranda that embraced the very steep roof, which was made of pale timber shingles. Several chimneys projected up much higher than the roof peak, and on the tallest, a weathervane in the shape of a crescent moon with attendant stars pointed firmly southwest despite the wind quite obviously bending the tops of the poplar trees from the east.

‘I bet it’s mouldy inside,’ said Jaide.

‘And there’s no hot water,’ said Jack.

‘We’ll just have to make do,’ said Susan. ‘It’s not as if we have any choice, thanks to your fa —’

She bit her lip. Jack waited expectantly for her to finish.

Neither Jack nor Jaide bought the official story of a slow gas leak that rapidly got worse and ended in the explosive destruction of their house. The only problem was, they couldn’t explain what had happened, either. Jack and Jaide had talked about it between themselves, but all they could recall was taking their father’s suitcase upstairs, touching some kind of metal pipe, and then suddenly everything was twisted and staring and exploding. But the only other person who’d seen it was their father, who was gone. It made them think that maybe it hadn’t been like that at all. Because it was so unbelievable. Even thinking about the weird white eyes made Jaide shiver.

‘What I mean is,’ Susan said, ‘we’ll have to make do as best we can. And this,’ she added, looking gloomily at the big old house, ‘is what’s best.’

‘I didn’t know Grandma ran an antique shop,’ said Jaide, pointing out the window.

‘What?’ asked Susan. ‘What are you pointing at?’

‘The sign, about the antiques,’ Jaide replied. ‘Over the blue door, there.’

The house had two front entrances. There was one with four broad stone steps leading up to a big door, right where they were parked, but there was also another one further along, consisting of three small steps that led down to a sunken door that was painted a lovely cornflower blue. An old, hand-painted wooden sign above the door read: Antiques and Choice Articles for the Discerning.

‘Where?’ asked Susan. ‘Honestly, I don’t have time for this, and I doubt Grandma X will appreciate you making jokes about her being an antique or whatever it is you’re thinking.’

Susan got out of the car and slammed the door behind her.

‘You can see it, can’t you?’ Jaide asked Jack.

Jack narrowed his eyes. He was looking straight at it as far as Jaide could tell, but his face screwed up uncertainly.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘At least, I don’t think so . . . ’

For a moment everything that had happened in their old home crashed back into Jaide’s mind: the darkness, the wind, the glowing eyes, their father fighting to save them from forces she didn’t understand. It felt like a dream, a nightmare, and she didn’t like the feeling that the nightmare might be more real than the reality before her.

‘Are you coming or not?’ called their mother from the front steps.

‘Like we have a choice,’ Jaide murmured. She threw open the door. Her feet crunched down onto gravel, and Jack’s followed a second later.

He was glad to stretch his legs. It had been a long and boring drive. The house loomed over them, no doubt full of their grandmother’s rules and regulations. He couldn’t bear the thought of staying still a moment longer.

‘Race you around,’ he said.

‘On three,’ Jaide told him, then started running immediately, heading anticlockwise along the front of the house.

Jack concentrated on catching up, barely hearing their mother’s
tsk
of exasperation behind them. The earth was loose underfoot, even when he crossed the edge of the gravel and hit the garden proper. There was no lawn, just lots of wood chips and twigs and dead-looking weeds. He turned left, hot on Jaide’s heels, and saw that there
was
a proper garden behind the house, including a broad lawn that was dominated by a Douglas fir tree that had to be three times the height of the house. Jack wondered why it hadn’t been visible as they’d driven in.

Jack had almost caught up with Jaide, as he usually did unless she had a really huge headstart, and was about to grab her hoodie and pull her back when a sudden, stern voice above their heads made him stumble.

‘You’ll be on your very best behaviour. I expect nothing less!’

The voice came from a half-open window midway along the side of the house. Jaide skidded to a halt, assuming the telling-off was directed at them. Jack crashed into her back and they both fell over.

‘Are you arguing with me?’ the voice continued.

The twins disentangled themselves from each other and looked nervously up at the window. But there was no one leaning out, and they realised that whoever the woman above was telling off, it wasn’t them.

‘Do you think that’s —?’ whispered Jack.

Jaide shushed her brother even as she jumped up and tried to see inside, hoping for a glimpse of whoever was talking, presumably Grandma X. Jaide was a great jumper and climber, better than Jack. He had the edge in a straight sprint on level ground, but if there was any climbing or scrambling up something involved, Jaide always left him behind.

‘I’ll keep my side of the compact if you’ll keep yours,’ said the unseen woman.

A deep-toned bell chime resonated through the house. Something clattered inside the kitchen.

‘Shhh, they’re here.’

Jaide managed to pull herself up enough to see over the sill just in time to catch a glimpse of a tall, elderly woman with silvery hair disappearing through a doorway. She wore a long-sleeved black shirt tucked into the top of blue jeans, a belt that sparkled as though it had metal threaded through it, and cowboy boots with silver heels and tips. The sound of those boots on the polished floorboards ricocheted after her, brisk and no-nonsense.

There was no one else there. Grandma X might as well have been talking to the air, or to herself.

Jack pulled himself up next to Jaide just as something leaped onto the windowsill from inside. The twins both fell back in surprise, ending up in a tangle on the ground again.

‘Meow?’ asked a sturdy ginger tomcat, looking down at them with a quizzical expression.

Jack felt his elbow, which hurt, and laughed in relief. ‘You gave me a fright.’

The cat turned its head to one side, sniffed, and began to lick its paws, totally ignoring the twins.

‘Kids? Where are you?’

Susan’s voice travelled through the house and around it, ambushing them from all sides.

‘On three,’ said Jack, but he was already moving.

He was well in the lead by the time he reached the next corner. The trunk of the mighty fir flashed by, and he almost stumbled on its roots, which rose like the coils of a serpent out of the earth all around the tree. Those roots were making short work of the yard’s stone walls, which stood cracked and tumbled on all three sides. Over the fallen walls, Jaide caught a quick glimpse of the neighbouring house. Its windows were smashed and doors boarded up, and there were black marks all up one wall that looked like they were from a fire. It had clearly not been lived in for a long time.