Voices in Stone (18 page)

They hurtled downhill, running towards the quarry, Merlin waving and shouting as they left him behind.

“Come back! What are you doing?”

Isis didn’t stop, nor did Gray. They left the cut-off remains of the woodland, slip-scrambling down a bank of soil and debris. Gray was ahead of Isis a little as they ran across the flattish stretch of hillside that sat directly above the quarry. All the soil and vegetation cover had been removed, but it was still hard-going because of the regular pattern of mounds, like oversized molehills, which they had to weave around. Yellow wires criss-crossed between the humps, catching at their feet.

And then Isis was standing next to Gray at the top of
a perilously steep slope, where the soft clay-rock had been gouged away by the diggers. At the bottom of it was the quarry floor.

“That’s where the alien wants us to go,” said Gray, looking down.

Isis knew she and Gray saw the alien very differently, but she could feel its desperate call:
Down, down, down.

She felt a little dizzy looking at the slope. There was no way to scramble or climb down, all you could do was fall.

Gray cocked his head, listening, then he sat down on the edge, his feet dangling over. He looked at her.

“Come on.”

“No. I can’t—” Before she’d even finished he’d pushed himself off, slithering down the almost vertical drop, his feet digging in, his arms out wide, hands catching at anything he could. Dust flew up around him, the dirt and pebbles falling in tiny avalanches.

“Ooph!” He stumbled forwards as he hit the bottom, nearly falling over. Then he turned around, staring up at Isis in triumph.

“Come on. It’s easy!”

She looked for another way, but there wasn’t one. Trembling, she sat on the edge of the bare slope. It looked even steeper now.

“Come
on
!” shouted Gray.

Don’t think, just do it
, she told herself.

She only needed a small push with her hands, and gravity took her; she slid down through the rocks and pebbles, her feet and hands scrabbling for purchase, dust coating her hair and face, and entering her open mouth as she screamed. Isis was falling properly now, then… “Ow!”

A shuddering slam smacked through her body as her feet hit the bottom. She fell forwards, landing hard on her knees and palms.

“You all right?” Gray asked, coming over.

“Ow… I think so.” She stood up, her legs and hands stinging with pain. She glanced down at her uniform, now streaked with pale clay and mud. Gray’s was just as bad, his back smeared almost white, his hair looking as if it had been dipped in flour.

Looking around, Isis could see there was no one else here. The diggers and trucks had been driven away, leaving only their criss-crossing tyre marks on the wide track
that led out of the quarry. The Portacabin offices and car park were hidden behind the high mounds of earth and rubble. No one could see them here.

In the distance, Isis could hear chanting and whistles.

“That must be the protest going on,” said Gray. It sounded like a wild party, except the voices were angry instead of having fun. “All the workers must be guarding the gates or whatever.”

Isis looked around the stony slopes of the quarry. The dust in her eyes was making her sight teary and smeared, but at the same time it made the alien almost fully visible. Flickering in different colours, covered in something between the scales of a fish and the crystals of a snowflake. But the texture was neither of those.

“It’s like my mind tries to find what she looks like,” Isis said quietly, “but she isn’t a whale, or a spaceship, or ice, or any of those things.”

Gray’s eyes were darting around, constantly looking about them. “You know, I’m getting kind of used to this. I quite like having a crowd of myself.”

Glancing at him, Isis realised what it must’ve been like for Jess and the others. When
I talk to Mandeville and the
spirits, it’s just me talking to the air.
No wonder they’d turned on her in Mr Gerard’s office. If she didn’t know, she’d think Gray was mad right now. And yet here they were, in the rubble and dust of a living being. She shook her head, wanting to run, to get away. This was too big, too impossible; too frightening and inexplicable…

“Escape,” she whispered, suddenly understanding the alien’s message, the one speaking into the back of her mind and giving her those feelings.

Gray was listening to his invisible crowd, reacting to things she couldn’t see or hear. “Can’t you just… fly away or whatever?” he asked the air.

The answer came in patterns, in colours slipping across the rocks. Incomprehensible, and yet Isis understood some of it.

“She was hurt when she fell,” she said.

Gray nodded. “But he’s almost healed. He can… limp?”

Isis smiled. ‘Limp’ was Gray’s word, nothing like the movements of a wounded alien.

“Even limping, you should go!” Gray said to the air.

A shift and spiral of the colours beneath Isis’s feet. Deep reds and blues, a flash of fluorescent green.

“There’s something she has to do first?” she said, not quite certain. “It takes time.”

“Calculations,” said Gray, nodding in agreement, but not at Isis. “He can’t lift off like a rocket or something; he has to work out a trajectory and his route…”

Isis shook her head. It felt more instinctive than the way Gray was describing it. Like judging how to catch a ball, or run through a narrow gap.

“She can’t react fast enough,” she said, realising. By the time the alien could work out
how
to leave, it would be too late.

Gray stared at nothing. “How long do you need?”

The answer took Isis a couple of seconds to disentangle – thoughts from feelings, words from sensations.

“Years?” she said. She couldn’t tell the number exactly, but she had a vision of herself as an old woman. This alien was as large as the landscape, and moved as slowly as the rocks it was part of. It struggled to grasp the speed with which humans passed through time. Gray half leaned against a pile of rubble, his body sagging. “But there’ll be nothing left of him by then,” he whispered.

A rattle and slide of pebbles came from above them.
They both jumped, getting ready to run, but it wasn’t anyone from the quarry, only Merlin on the level above.

“Oh, man,” he said, panting and catching his breath. “You gotta get out of there. It isn’t safe!”

Gray shook his head.

“We can’t just leave,” said Isis.

“But there’s charges set!” cried Merlin. “Didn’t you notice all the yellow wires?”

They both looked at him blankly.

“The mounds you ran through like crazy people? It’s where they’ve drilled down and dropped in the explosives – I’ve been watching them do it these last couple of weeks. They’re sealed and ready; all the wires are in place, set for detonation. Anytime now someone’s going to press a button and all this rock around you…” He mimed an explosion with his hands. “Boom!” He looked frightened and sweaty.

Jagged lines of purple and blue pulsed through the rocks, answering Merlin’s fear. In Isis’s mind, they sounded like a loud and frightened wail.

Gray was glancing about frantically, his hands up. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”

“Oh
man
,” said Merlin, and he slide-slipped his way down the rubble slope, landing easily on his long legs and jogging over to them. “Look, I get it that you care, and I’m glad you feel the energy. But it ain’t worth
dying
for!” He waved his hands. “It’s gonna go off like bombs in here!”

“We’re not like
you
!” Gray snapped. “We won’t just stand by and watch!”

Merlin frowned, like Gray was being stupid, childish.

“You don’t know!” shouted Gray. “It’s not ley lines or energy, it’s an alien! Its ship crashed here thousands of years ago – actually it
is
the ship – but that’s why people see stuff and feel things around here. That’s what they’re mining, and they’ll kill him, because he can’t get away in time. So you see, we’ve got to stop them!”

Merlin pulled his dreadlocks back from his face with both hands.
“What?”

“We can’t just leave her to die,” cried Isis. “She’s all alone.” A pale yellow began to dominate the colours moving in patterns over the quarry. Isis wanted Cally suddenly, and her dad, wherever he was. She desperately needed them to swoop down here and save her, somehow…

“She’s only a baby…” Isis said, realising those weren’t her thoughts, but the alien’s. “She’s waiting for her parents—” She halted, unsure if she was understanding it right. The word ‘budded’ sprung into her mind, instead of ‘born’, and she had a sense of many parents or maybe none at all. However the alien had emerged, by its own lifespan it was only an infant. “She’s waiting for her… family to come back,” she said.

Merlin stood still, holding his hair. Then he nodded. “Makes sense.”

He let his dreadlocks fall again.

“You… believe us?” asked Isis, astonished. She hadn’t expected him to, even as she’d explained.

Merlin shrugged. “I’ve heard a lot of theories about this place, but I never choose one as being the truth. Some people say there’s an ancient goddess in the woods, or it’s the earth’s Energy… others say aliens. All I know is there’s something in this valley, because I’ve felt it.”

Isis watched the rainbow colours dancing through the stones. “She’s all around us here.”

“But they’ve cut him open,” said Gray. “We’re standing in a wound!”

Merlin’s expression was full of pity. He folded his lanky body and knelt, putting his hands flat on the ground.

“You know me, don’t you?” he said quietly, talking to the rock beneath his fingers. “I’ve been here in your valley, walking with you every day.” He shook his head. “I wish I could help you, and I know you’re scared and this blast is gonna hurt you bad, but…” He glanced up at Isis and Gray, “If they stay, they’ll die when it happens. Is that what you want?”

A shimmer in Isis’s eyes, as if the world blinked. And then…

“They’ve gone!” gasped Gray, spinning around, staring wildly. “All the mes – they’ve all gone!”

The world had lost its colour, it was back to being grey rocks and dust. Isis’s mind felt empty where it had been full. The alien under them, all around them, had disappeared.

“Where are they?” cried Gray. He turned on Merlin. “What have you done?”

“She wants us to leave,” said Isis quietly. “She wants to save us.”

An alien whose skeleton was made of rare and precious metals. A vast creature born in the belly of some distant
planet, that had swum or tumbled or flown across space, only to become trapped here like a fledgling bird caught in a net. Lost and frightened, reaching out to the tiny pinpricks crawling on her surface, whose lives must have seemed to pass in an instant, while her own stretched far into the future. This enormous creature was showing its kindness, and giving them permission to leave.

Isis knelt on the ground, like Merlin had.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Sorry for the pain to come, and their own helplessness.

Gray took it differently. “Come back,” he shouted, spinning at the blank rock faces. “Please, come back!”

But the ground was just the ground again. The colours of the alien’s thoughts had vanished.

“Why can’t you get the alien back?” I shouted at Isis. I wanted to grab her and shake her!

“Because it’s not like a ghost!” she shouted back. “I don’t know how to do this – you’re supposed to be the expert on this stuff!”

We hadn’t left. Merlin was jiggling on the spot, looking anxious. “We need to get outta here.”

“But you
saw
the alien!” I said to Isis. “So can’t you—”

“I don’t see her,” she snapped. “It’s more like she talks in colours, or maybe that’s her thoughts? They map out where she is.”

“But me, Jayden and Gav, we were all in the quarry on the school trip. We got covered in dust, got bits of the
alien in us or whatever. You weren’t even there, and you can still sense the alien, so that’s got to be your…” I waved my hands, “you know, seeing ghosts and stuff.”

“She can see ghosts?” said Merlin. “Nice one.”

But Isis shook her head. “I don’t know how to call it back.”

Merlin put his hand out, touching my arm. “Look, man, we need to leave.”

I shook his hand off. “You go! I’m not!” It was the first alien humanity had ever come in contact with; I couldn’t just let it be killed before anyone even knew.

“Look up there,” said Merlin, pointing to above where we were standing. “When the explosive charges go off, we’ll be underneath an avalanche of rocks!”

“But the protest…”

Merlin yanked his dreads up, like he wanted to pull them off. “Listen, man! There’s hundreds of police and security up there, all doing whatever they can to get the protestors rounded up and away. As soon as the protest is over it’ll be back to business. Press the button, boom go the rocks!”

“Isis?” I said.

“What can we even do?” she asked, and it sounded like she’d already decided the answer.

“Call your ghosts!”

“How would that help?”

“I don’t know, maybe one of them can speak alien? We can’t just do
nothing
!”

“Oh this is bad,” said Merlin, jittering. “It could go off any second. Look, I’m sorry.” And he ran off along the track, his dreads bouncing, his feet sending up puffs of dust.

“Where are you going?” Isis shouted after him, sounding really frightened. She made to follow, but I grabbed her arm.

“Please?” I asked.

“Angel won’t come,” Isis said, shaking her head. “She wouldn’t even get out of Stu’s car.” I could see that Isis wanted to run after Merlin. “I think we should get out of here. What if—”

“What if they blow the place and the alien is killed?”

A pebble fell away from the quarry face, clinking and clattering down to the ground. We both froze for a moment, but nothing happened; the world didn’t explode around us.

Isis glanced back at me, looking caught between guilt and anger. “I can’t make Angel do anything she doesn’t want to. She’s scared.
I’m
scared!”

“The alien just needs a bit more time!” I shouted.

“A hundred
years
!” Isis shouted back.

I punched at the rock face, then sat down, clutching my stinging hand. I wanted to never move again. I’d blow up with the alien, if that was my only option.

“She wants us to go,” said Isis, squatting down next to me. “So maybe she’s worked out some way to get herself safe?”

“No!” I didn’t want to look at Isis. At her fear, at the dust coating her clothes and smeared across her face. Alien dust. “We’re like the flies, moving too fast for him to catch. Except we’re flies with explosives.”

“What?”

“You can’t catch a fly because a second for you is like an hour for them. You need to think as fast as a fly to catch one.” A tear splashed on my hand, washing off a circle of dirt. “It’s like that for the alien, except we’re the ones moving too fast.”

Isis didn’t say anything for a minute, squatting there on
her heels. Then she said, “Mandeville spoke through my mouth. He made my lips move for me.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“He made a woman in the theatre fall asleep so he could watch Philip Syndal’s show from inside her body. He calls it possession, but he must take control of nerves, or a bit of the brain or something.” Isis paused, looking at the dirt and rocks. “The alien’s thoughts run through the ground. Maybe Mandeville can take control of those and…” She trailed off. “I don’t know. It’s a stupid idea.”

But it clicked, you know?

“How long would it take
us
to get out of here?” I asked her.

“A few minutes?”

“Get Mandeville!” I shouted, jumping up.

Isis twisted her fingers together. “I had a fight with him. I don’t know if he will.”

“Try! Please?”

She stood up. “Mandeville?” She looked around blankly.

“Mandeville?” Her eyes widened a bit and she took a step back, then
another, grabbing hold of my hand and shoving it with hers into a patch of cold, slimy air.

“Ergh!” Isis’s warm fingers were with mine, but I was also holding a set of bony fingers, the skin peeling off them in mouldy flaps. They belonged to that ghost I’d seen before, a half-man, half-skeleton.

“And now this!” Mandeville was shouting. “Do you think I have nothing else to fill my time than responding to your every call?”

His damp mouldy smell made me retch.

“My feelings exactly!” Mandeville snapped, glaring at me. “You abuse me, then demand my attendance, just as your whims dictate. I am a nothing, yet now you cannot do without me? Perhaps you wish to impress some friends, is that it?”

Isis held my hand tighter. “You talk to him,” she said. “He’s really angry with me.”

I took a breath and gabbled it all out. “There’s this alien from another planet, you know? He’s made out of stone and metals, and he’s trapped under where they’re mining—”

“Yes, yes,” said Mandeville, “I know about the star-beast. I’ve been haunting these environs for many years, did you think I hadn’t noticed it?”

Isis stared at him. “You never said!”

“Why would I? It was hardly relevant to our business, nor likely to come up in general conversation.” Mandeville shrugged. “In fact, I twice tried to inform you that it had extended its appendages – or whatever its limbs should be called – directly beneath the town of Wycombe and into your school. But on the first occasion you would not even countenance my request of a return to seances, and the next time you were too busy unfairly rebuking me to listen.”

“We want you to possess him!” I shouted.

The skeleton turned his scary blue eyes on me. “You want me to
what
?”

“Possess the alien…” It didn’t sound such a good idea now. “Isis said you can take control of people’s brains, make them do things.”

“Utterly repulsive, when you describe it that way. And what would be the purpose of my efforts?”

“He needs our help – we have to help him get away.”

“Him?
Well, by all means let us all risk everything for some wretched monster. Except there is one small problem. I notice it is hiding. Subterranean.” Mandeville
tapped his nose. “Possession requires contact, and I have no intention of poking my head into the ground like an ostrich.” The skeleton looked at Isis. “I refuse to degrade myself. Not after the way I have been treated.”

“He’s going to die if we do nothing!” I said.

“I’m dead,” said the skeleton. “It’s not so terrible.”

I turned to Isis. “What can we do? Can you change its mind?”

“I’m not an
it
, and no she can’t!” snapped Mandeville.

“Angel,” Isis said. “She’s helped me see through solid objects. We did it all the time when I was younger. Maybe together we could search for the alien?” She didn’t sound very sure though. “She might not agree. She kept saying it was too big, and I think she meant the alien. I think she’s scared of it.”

“Please?” I said. “Can you try?”

“Of course,” groaned Mandeville, “bring the child into this.”

Isis ignored him and closed her eyes. “Angel.” And then it was like hearing someone on the phone, half a conversation. “No, it’ll be all right… me and Gray are right here… okay, you can watch
Peppa Pig
whenever you want…”

She went on in that way, promising and persuading, until at last a see-through little girl appeared in the quarry with us. I could see her because I was already holding Isis’s hand, linked by Mandeville. Angel was grabbing hold of Isis’s leg.

“What he doing here?” she asked, pointing at Mandeville. “He horrid. And stinky.”

“You place your faith in this brat?” he sneered.

“Well
you
won’t help us!” I said.

“And I notice that the child gets every carrot possible, while I receive only the stick.”

Isis spoke to Angel. “Will you help us find the alien?” She put my left hand gently on Angel’s, and I could let go of Mandeville’s creepy fingers, which was a relief. “She’s hiding down there.” Isis pointed at the ground.

But Angel shook her head, her eyes wide. “It too big!”

“Ha!” said Mandeville. “This is why
I
am your spirit guide.”

“Please, Angel?”

The little ghost didn’t speak, but held herself really still, the way toddlers do when they’re frightened. I knelt down, face to face with Angel, the rubble and rocks visible through her.

“I know it’s big,” I said, “but you don’t need to be scared. He’s only a baby. Like a baby… elephant.”

Angel looked down at the ground, then at me. “It a effelant?”

“
Like
one,” said Isis.

Angel stood for a moment, thinking, then she said, “Effelants is nice.” She pressed her lips together, then leaned down like she was going to do a handstand, and put her head right into the ground. She did look a bit like an ostrich.

Me and Isis sat on the ground, still holding Angel’s hand.

“Shut your eyes,” Isis said. “This will be a bit… different.”

I closed my eyes. At first all I could see were a jumbly whoosh of blurs that instantly made me feel sick. Then Angel’s vision settled, focused onto a deep yellowy-grey. I was seeing underground.

“Is she there?” Isis asked Angel.

“Nuffink,” came Angel’s voice in the ground. “Effelant’s hiding.”

“It’s not an elephant, you stupid child!” That was Mandeville.

“Try looking down,” Isis said.

The view tilted through the rock. I know that sounds impossible, but with Angel’s eyes it didn’t seem so solid. I mean, everything is really made of whizzing electrons and nucleuses and stuff, with loads of space in between. Maybe ghosts can see how things really are, instead of them seeming solid, like they do for us? Anyway, I had this feeling that I could’ve put my hand right through the gaps if only I knew how to do it.

Somewhere into the murk I saw a flash of green.

“There it is!” cried Isis.

“Effelant!” called Angel. “Come here, baby effelant.”

The patch of green got bigger, but I don’t know if it grew in size or moved closer to us.

“Please!” called Isis. “We want to help you.”

“And how exactly will you do that?”

Angel’s vision turned sideways, and I nearly screamed! A skeletal face was staring from inside the rock. It was Mandeville, his eyes glowing blue even through solid matter.

I flicked my own eyes open. Now Mandeville had his head stuck into the ground as well, his bony body bent completely over. I guess he couldn’t bear to be left out.

“You goway!” Angel’s voice came out of the earth.

I shut my eyes, and could see through Angel’s eyes again. Mandeville was scowling.

“Don’t stick your tongue out at me!” he snapped.

“You stinky!”

“And you are a precocious little urchin!”

“Please!” That was Isis. “Can you stop arguing?”

Mandeville’s underground face took on a superior, patronising expression.

“Of course, Isis my dear. Though I am not the one being difficult.”

“I not neither!” Angel’s little voice.

“They could blow up this quarry any second!” I shouted, trying to get everyone back to the point.

“Angel, can you reach the alien?” said Isis.

My vision blurred, which must’ve been Angel nodding. Then her view turned downwards and I saw her small hand reaching, stretching towards the smear of green. It might’ve been a thousand metres down, or only centimetres, I couldn’t tell. Angel’s little arm pushed through the rock, her fingers spread out like a starfish.

“I get you!” she cried. “Naughty effelant!”

The green smudge narrowed into a thin line, swaying
and moving in the darkness, trying to get away from Angel’s grabbing hand.

“It got a trunk!” she cried happily.

“Oh for goodness’ sake,” muttered Mandeville.

The green snapped back and forth, while Angel giggled and flapped her hand about. My stomach was tied in knots from the weird perspectives.

“Got you!” Angel cried. Her fingers gripped tight round the alien, and she pulled. Colours flashed into every part of the rock, psychedelic rainbows, everything spinning, as Angel twisted her head about to look at them.

I opened my eyes so I wouldn’t be sick, but it didn’t make any difference. Every rock, every pebble, every grain of dust in the quarry was suddenly dappled with eye-bending colours, swirling in ripples and jaggedy-crossing patterns.

It was beautiful.

And then the noise began. Starting low, getting louder, echoing through the quarry so everything seemed to vibrate.

Isis snapped her eyes open.

“What’s that? What’s happening?”

A siren, sounding like a foghorn.

“Is it the police?”

A cold prickle swept all over my body, fear setting in as I remembered the safety talk from our school trip. The quarry sides seemed taller, more looming than earlier. All that stone and rock towering above us. “It’s the warning siren. Before they start blasting.”

Isis’s eyes grew huge, her face white.

We’d run through the explosive charges, not even paying attention, and now we were right underneath them.