Hidden Among Us (11 page)

Rafe looked up, facing me. “No. Don’t do that. Oh, God, you’re just a kid. You shouldn’t be mixed up in this.”

We both went for our phones at once, scrabbling in pockets. I still had no signal, no way of knowing if Dad and Miriam had tried to get in touch from the hospital.

Connie. Was she even still alive? She could be dead and we wouldn’t know. But there was nothing: no text, no voicemail message. If the house phone had rung, we’d not heard it. We’d been out half the morning. I pictured Dad or Miriam trying again and again, it ringing out.

“I’m going to try the landline.” Rafe struggled to his feet; I passed him the broom and followed him downstairs, both of us trying not to make a sound, not really knowing what else to do.

She was gone; Lissy had gone. I glanced at the kitchen clock. It was only quarter past eleven. I felt like ten years had passed since we’d walked into Hopesay Edge but it was only two hours.

Rafe leaned against the kitchen worktop, breathing harshly as he stared at the phone. “It’s not working.”

“Let me see.”

He handed it over and I listened to the dead silence. Not even a dialling tone. The handset shook like mad as he passed it to me. “Look,” I said, “we’ve got to get you to a doctor. You need a tetanus jab—”

That was when I noticed a severed cable sticking out the back of the phone. Someone had cut the line. Maybe whoever was in the house right at that moment.

“Oh, Christ,” Rafe said.

We had no way of calling for help.

We both heard it at the same time: a floorboard creaking above our heads.

For a second, we just stared at each other. It was almost like in the panic over Lissy, we’d forgotten there were other people in the house. People looking for Rafe.

Rafe grabbed my arm. “Shut up and come with me. They might have people waiting outside by now. There’s another way back upstairs.” He was scared. I could hear it in his voice. Whoever was looking for him, they were here in the house right now. His little sister was in hospital, the other one had been snatched from her bed, he’d had his leg smashed up by a trap. He’d been cool as ice the whole time. Not any more.

I didn’t argue. He limped out of the kitchen, down the corridor to the lean-to. He went to the door by the gun cabinet and pulled it open. A bare, uncarpeted staircase led away, and I remembered Dad telling me Rafe had lived here as a little kid. He instinctively knew the layout of this rambling house, and that was our only advantage. I followed Rafe, half shoving him from behind – every time he put weight on the bad leg he swore ferociously. We didn’t stop at the first floor, either. The rank smell of his sweat filled my nose. His body was struggling to cope; he was probably going into shock.

Don’t pass out,
I remember thinking.
Just don’t bloody well pass out. I can’t do this on my own
. Still swearing and hobbling, he led me up the narrow twisting staircase. You could feel the age of the house here – worn stone steps, lathe and plaster walls like Grandad’s cottage. I couldn’t help remembering what that woman in the church had said:
the Reach began as standing stones
. It was so, so old. He was clutching at the handrail, breathing heavily, going as fast as he could. The bloodstain on his jeans was spreading. Far below us, I heard voices, the distant click of a closing door.

Whoever it was, they were still looking.

“In here.” Rafe pulled me into a vaulted attic lit by a pair of dormer windows I’d never even noticed from outside. I stepped over the carcass of a dead bird – a knot of dusty feathers and blackish slime. Apart from that, the place was empty except for a huge old oil painting leaning against the wall: a portrait of some little kid in a white dress. She was holding a silver bell on a stick with a glossy pink ribbon tied around it. There was something freaky about the look in her pale grey eyes.
Help me,
she seemed to be saying.
Get me out of here
. It was like she was trapped in the painting. Her name and a date were embossed into a plaque in the heavy gold frame: Philippa de Conway, 1707.

“It’s her.” Rafe was staring at the picture like he’d seen a dead man walking.

“What do you mean?”

“Shut up, there’s no time to explain now.” Rafe staggered to the nearest window, standing slightly to one side so that anyone waiting outside wouldn’t catch sight of him. I crouched by the attic door, thinking,
Oh, shit
.

We heard quiet voices. Two people walking up and down, nosing about. Floorboards creaking.

They’d been up here in the attics already. Now it sounded like they were coming back – obviously suspicious, wondering if they’d missed something. I really, really didn’t want to be found. Rafe turned to me with this weird smile on his face, like he’d just reached the same conclusion.

“Rafe,” I whispered. “We can’t stay here. They’re going to find us.”

At the exact same moment, we both turned to look at the nearest window. We’d got to climb out of it. Up on to the roof. Hope they didn’t follow us there.

I heard heavy footsteps on the landing below, in our bedrooms. I wondered what they’d make of the dried leaves on Lissy’s bed.

“You go first.” Rafe pushed the window open.

“If I go first, you’ll never make it, not on that leg.”

“For Christ’s sake.” Rafe heaved himself up onto the window ledge, gasping in pain. Blood dripped from his trouser leg and I scrubbed away as much as I could with the toe of my boot. The last thing we wanted to do was leave evidence. With a suppressed groan, Rafe stood on the ledge, swearing quietly as he pulled himself up onto the roof. I grabbed the good leg and shoved. He nearly kicked me in the face. I could hear footsteps on the stairs now and scrambled up. I made the mistake of looking down. The weed-choked front lawn spun below me. The lake by the yew tree looked dark and shadowy, evil almost. It was a long way down. Very. I turned and nearly fell, grabbed hold of the guttering, and Rafe hauled me up onto the roof, cursing under his breath.

The window was still open. If they saw it—

I reached down, feeling blindly with one hand, and just managed to push the window shut.

Me and Rafe edged backwards and crouched behind a chimney stack. We’d have to time it right: get inside before whoever was in the house went back to their car. It was windy up on the roof and freezing cold. I looked down at the wet leaves stuck to the tiles, trying to forget how high up we were.

I heard the faint click of the attic door opening, more footsteps. Rafe crouched at my side, sweat running down his face. If he passed out up here that’d be it.

We heard the door go again, then no more footsteps. Time dragged and I stared out across the trees. Rafe followed my gaze but neither of us spoke. Now it was a waiting game. We sat there for what felt like hours and probably was. At last, the grey car pulled away down the drive, tyres crunching in the wet gravel.

“Bloody Christ,” Rafe said, very, very quietly. “Who the hell are they?”

And I didn’t answer, because I’d been hoping he’d tell me.

20

It will be fourteen years tomorrow since Lissy was returned.

Tomorrow, they will come for Lissy. If I try to shut the Gateway, Rafe and Connie will both die.

All this time I’ve been expecting to find a way out of the covenant, hoping to cheat the curse. I even sent Lissy away to school. The truth is I hoped the Hidden would simply forget about all this if she wasn’t with me all the time. They can be so capricious. I was wrong.

Time’s up. Nothing worked. The Hidden didn’t forget.
He
didn’t forget.

So now I’m here with Connie in hospital, and Lissy’s at Hopesay without me. The Hidden are close. So close. I hear them whispering, faint traces of their music. I shouldn’t be here – I should be with Lissy doing something to protect her though God knows what – but Connie is so so helpless. It was an impossible choice. There was no way I couldn’t come to hospital with her, but Lissy is at their mercy now. I’m outmanoeuvred at every turn: I can’t be in two places at once. Connie looks very small under the hospital-issue blankets. I’ve been holding her hand but I don’t think she even knows I’m here. There’s a purple bruise already spreading beneath the plaster on the back of her hand where they’ve inserted the drip. I can’t fix this; I can’t make it all better for her. I’ve only ever felt helplessness like this once before and that was fourteen years ago when the Hidden took Lissy.

The Hidden are showing me what they’re capable of: Connie is a warning, in case I try to close the Gateway before the time’s up. Larkspur told me what would happen. I know all my children are cursed to die tomorrow unless I give Lissy back. But I thought I had one day left.

Why didn’t I shake Lissy awake this morning? Why didn’t I force her into the car with Nick? There was no time to think about anyone except Connie. I thought she was going to die in the ambulance, my little girl. I was in a blind panic, not thinking straight. They say her condition has stabilized but she’s not improving. What does that really mean?

I know what it means. Connie is cursed to die at midnight tonight unless the Hidden have Lissy. They have made her sick now to warn me, to make sure I don’t forget. The poison in her blood, this septicaemia – it’s no ordinary disease, I’m sure of it.

This is part of the curse.

I’m growing more and more afraid that they’ve done something to Lissy too. I know we’re not in Oxford now and mobile phone reception can be terrible in the countryside, but I don’t believe that explains why she’s not answering. I can’t get through to Rafe, either, and Nick can’t contact Joe. We tried the landline earlier. It rang and rang. Now it’s not even working. Where are they? I don’t like this. I really don’t.

Have they taken her already? Have they cheated?

Nick knows I’m worried; he’s driven back to Hopesay to make sure they’re all OK, promised to bring Lissy to the hospital for visiting hours. I’m not looking forward to that argument with the hospital staff: there’s no way I’m letting her go back to the Reach without me. I’m not making that mistake again.

I can’t just give Lissy to the Hidden without a fight. Miles will help. He’s got to. He’s the one who started all this, and he knows what we’re up against.

Adam blames him for everything but it’s my fault too. Of course it is. I had choices. After the car crash, Miles and I had no one to tell us to stop. I don’t mean just the endless parties we had at the Reach once both our parents were dead. Nineteen felt very old at the time, but it’s not really. I should have made sure Miles spent less time with Virgie Creed. She was completely unsuitable for him, and they were obsessed with her stupid old books about folklore: they talked about nothing but standing stones and portals. Instead, what did I do? I fell in love with Miles’s best friend. I fell in love with Adam, and I left Miles and Virgie to their meddling.

What bloody fools we all were.

It was Miles’s twenty-first birthday at the Reach that really changed everything, not even having Rafe so young or getting married to Adam while we were still at uni, like everyone said. My tutors had even agreed I could come back to college and do my final year again. Adam and Rafe weren’t the reason I never did. It’s easy enough to see all this with hindsight. I like to think my life would be so different now if we’d just never turned up to that party.

He would have found me anyway.

The party didn’t take long to get completely out of control. I remember someone kicked a football through one of the bedroom windows – there was broken glass everywhere. Miles laughed, but I could tell he was upset. Adam and I were furious and terrified because Rafe was asleep upstairs – we nearly left there and then, but Miles persuaded us to stay. I remember how desperate he looked, so strangely lonely. In the garden, a girl no one knew fell down a flight of stone steps wearing a pair of glittery angel wings, and twisted her ankle. I went to the kitchen to get candles and jam jars, hoping we could at least light up the more perilous hazards outside: the lake, the steps, the ha-ha that dropped straight down into the paddock.

“You forgot the matches.” I knew the voice, faint and girlish. Virgie. She offered me a box of Swan Vestas. I was careful to thank her – she already thought I was a snob because she was from the village, and I didn’t want her to think I was being even more unfriendly than usual because Miles had finished things between them. Or that I’d heard those horrible stories about her family. Something about Miles’s great-grandfather paying for one of the Creeds to go to Eton, but all he did afterwards was get shot for desertion in the First World War. Poor boy. He probably had shell-shock.

All the same. She shouldn’t have been there. Miles had broken things off with her, so why was she still hanging around? Virgie Creed was a creep, and seeing her only made me feel more flat about the party. By then, I was really starting to wish we hadn’t come to the Reach at all. I had the oddest feeling of foreboding and gloom. I should have run and found Adam. He would have come with me. We could have got in the car with Rafe and driven back to Oxford. But we didn’t.

Instead of leaving the kitchen, Virgie just stood and stared at me. Miles must have invited her to the party out of kindness, or maybe she was just gatecrashing.

“Tell him,” Virgie said. “Tell Miles he wants to be careful. He doesn’t know what he’s fooling with.” Her forehead glistened, and I wondered how on earth anyone could be sweating. It was freezing in the kitchen, even with the range lit.

Virgie was sweating with fear.

I didn’t know what to say, just stood holding the matches. Was that a
threat?
I could hear more voices now, footsteps out in the old stone-flagged corridor, and Virgie scurried off to escape into the garden through the lean-to. I was alone again.

I dropped the box of matches into my basket, unable to stop myself wiping my fingers on my jeans.

I turned as the kitchen door opened, heard Miles call my name. He sounded like he’d had too much to drink already. “I’ve brought someone to meet you, Mirry,” he said.