Necropolis (3 page)

Scarlett Adams always seemed to know what the weather was going to do. Nobody could remember when it had first started but everyone agreed — you could tell how the day was going to be simply by the way Scarlett dressed. If she forgot her scarf, it would be warm. If she brought in an umbrella, it would rain. After a bit, people began to ask her opinion. If there was an important tennis match or a picnic planned by the river, have a word with Scarlett. If there was any chance of a cross-country run being called off, she would know.

Of course, she wasn't always right. But it seemed she could be relied upon about ninety percent of the time.

Now she looked out of the window. It was horrible outside. The clouds, gray and unbroken, were smothering the sky. She could see raindrops chasing each other across the glass. "It'll be fine," she said.

"It'll clear up after the weekend."

Miss Chaplin nodded. "I do hope you're right."

She was. It rained all day Sunday and was still drizzling on Sunday night. But Monday morning, when Scarlett woke up, the sky was blue. Even Mrs. Murdoch was whistling as she put together the packed lunch requested by the school. It was as if a last burst of summer had decided to put in a surprise appearance.

The bus came to the school at midday. The lesson — combining art and history — was actually going to take place over two periods plus lunch and, allowing for the traffic, the girls wouldn't be back until the end of school. As they pulled out of St. Genevieve's, Miss Chaplin talked over the intercom, explaining what they were going to do.

"We'll be stopping for lunch at St. Paul's Cathedral," she said. "It was very much part of the spirit of the Blitz because, despite all the bombing, it was not destroyed. The coach will then take us to Shoreditch, and we're going to walk around the area. It's still a bit wet underfoot, so I want us to go indoors. The place I've chosen is St. Meredith's, on Moore Street. It's one of the oldest churches in London. In fact, there was a chapel there as long ago as the thirteenth century."

"Why are we visiting another church?" one of the girls asked.

"Because it also played an important part in the war. A lot of local people used to hide there during the bombing. They actually believed it had the power to protect them…that they'd be safe there."

She paused. The coach had reached the River Thames, crossing over Blackfriars Bridge. Scarlett looked out of the window. The water was flowing very quickly after all the rain. In the distance, she could just make out part of the London Eye, the silver framework glinting in the sunlight. The sight of it made her sad. She had ridden on it with her parents, at the end of the summer. It had been one of the last things the three of them had done while they were still a family.

"…actually took a direct hit on October 2, 1940." Miss Chaplin was still talking about St. Meredith's.

Scarlett had allowed her thoughts to wander, and she'd missed half of what the teacher had said. "It wasn't destroyed, but it was badly damaged. Bring your sketchbooks with you and we can work in there.

We have permission and you can go anywhere you like. See if you can feel the atmosphere. Imagine what it was like, being there with the bombs going off all around."

Miss Chaplin flicked off the microphone and sat down again, next to the driver.

Scarlett was a few rows behind her, sitting next to a girl named Amanda, who was one of her closest friends and lived on the same road as her. She noticed that Amanda was frowning.

"What is it?" she asked.

"St. Meredith's," Amanda said.

"What about it?"

It took Amanda a few moments to remember. "There was a murder there. About six months ago."

"You're not being serious."

"I am."

If it had been anyone else, Scarlett might not have believed her. But she knew that Amanda had a special interest in murder. She loved reading Agatha Christie and she was always watching whodunnits on TV.

"So who got murdered?" she asked.

"I can't remember," Amanda said. "It was some guy. A librarian, I think. He was stabbed."

Scarlett wasn't sure it sounded very likely, and when the coach stopped off at St. Paul's, she went over to Miss Chaplin. To her surprise, the teacher didn't even hesitate. "Oh yes," she said cheerfully. "There was an incident there this summer. A man was attacked by a homeless person. I'm not sure the police ever caught anyone, but it all happened a long time ago. It doesn't bother you, does it, Scarlett?"

"No," Scarlett said. "Of course not."

But that wasn't quite true. It did secretly worry her, even if she wasn't sure why. She had a sense of foreboding that only grew worse as they got closer to the church.

The art teacher had chosen this part of London for a reason. It was a patchwork of old and new, with great gaps where whole buildings and perhaps even streets had been taken out by the Germans. Most of the shops were shabby and depressing, with plastic signs and dirty windows full of products that people might need but which they couldn't possibly want: vacuum cleaners, dog food, one hundred items at less than a pound. There was an ugly parking garage towering high over the buildings, but it was hard to imagine anyone stopping here. The traffic rumbled past in four lanes, anxious to be on its way.

But even so, there were a few clues as to what the area might once have been like. A cobbled alleyway, a gas lamp, a red telephone box, a house with pillars and iron railings. The London of seventy years ago.

That was what Miss Chaplin had brought them all to find.

They turned onto Moore Street. It was a dead end, narrow and full of puddles and potholes. A pub stood on one side, opposite a launderette that had shut down. St. Meredith's was at the bottom, a solid, redbrick church that looked far too big to have been built in this part of town. The war damage was obvious at once. The steeple had been added quite recently. It wasn't even the same color as the rest of the building and didn't quite match the huge oak doors or the windows with their heavy stone frames.

Scarlett felt even more uneasy once they were inside. She jumped as the door boomed shut behind her, cutting out the London traffic, much of the light — indeed, any sense that they were in a modern city at all. The interior of the church stretched into the distance to the silver cross high up on the altar, caught in a single shaft of dusty light. Otherwise, the stained-glass windows held the sun back, the different colors blurring together. Hundreds of candles flickered uselessly in iron holders. She could make out little side-chapels, built into the walls. Even without her remembering the murder that had happened there, St. Meredith's didn't strike her as a particularly holy place. It was simply creepy.

But nobody else seemed to share her feelings. The other girls had taken out their sketchbooks and were sitting in the pews, chatting to each other and drawing what they had seen outside. Miss Chaplin was examining the pulpit — a carving of an eagle. Presumably, most Londoners chose not to pray at two o'clock in the afternoon. They had the place to themselves.

Scarlett looked for Amanda, but her friend was talking to another girl on the other side of the transept, so she sat down on her own and opened her pad. She needed to put the murder out of her mind. Instead, she thought about the men and women who had sheltered here during the Blitz. Had they really believed that St. Meredith's had some sort of magical power to avoid being hit, that they would be safer here than in a cellar or a Tube station? She thought about them sitting there with their fingers crossed while the Luftwaffe roared overhead. Maybe that was what she would draw.

She shivered. She was wearing a coat, but it was very cold inside the church. In fact, it felt colder inside than out. A movement caught her eye. A line of candles had flickered, all the flames bending together, caught in a sudden breeze. Had someone just come in? No. The door was still shut. Nobody could have opened or closed it without being heard.

A boy walked past. At first, Scarlett barely registered him. He was in the shadows at the side of the church, between the columns and the side-chapels, moving toward the altar. He made absolutely no sound. Even his feet against the marble floor were silent. He could have been floating. She turned to follow him as he went, and just for a second, his face was illuminated by a naked bulb hanging on a wire.

She knew him.

For a moment, she was confused as she tried to think where she had seen him before. And then suddenly she remembered. It was crazy. It couldn't be possible. But at the same time, there could be no doubt.

It was one of the boys from her dreams, one of the four she had seen walking together in that gray desert. She even knew his name.

It was Matt.

In a normal dream, Scarlett wouldn't see people's faces — or if she did, she would forget them when she woke up. But she had experienced this dream again and again over a period of two years. She'd learned to recognize Matt and the others almost as soon as she was asleep and that was why she knew him now.

Short, dark hair. Broad shoulders. Pale skin and eyes that were an intense blue. He was about her age although there was something about him that seemed older. Maybe it was just the way he walked, the sense of purpose. He walked like someone in trouble.

What was he doing here? How had he even got in? Scarlett turned to a girl who was sitting close to her, drawing a major explosion from the look of the scribble on her pad.

"Did you see him?" she asked.

"Who?"

"That boy who just went past."

The other girl looked around her. "What boy?"

Scarlett turned back. The boy had disappeared from sight. For a moment, she was thrown. Had she imagined him? But then she saw him again, some distance away. He had stopped in front of a door. He seemed to hesitate, then turned the handle and went through. The door closed behind him.

She followed him. She had made the decision without even thinking about it. She just put down her sketchbook, got up, and went after him. It was only when she reached the door that she asked herself what she was doing, chasing after someone she had never met, someone who might not even exist.

Suppose she ran into him? What was she going to say? "Hi, I'm Scarlett and I've been dreaming about you. Fancy a Big Mac?" He'd think she was mad.

The door he had passed through was in the outer wall, underneath a stained-glass window that was so dark and grimy that the picture was lost. Scarlett guessed it must lead out into the street, perhaps into the cemetery, if the church had one. There was something strange about it. The door was very small, out of proportion with the rest of St. Meredith's. There was a symbol carved into the wooden surface — a five-pointed star.

She hesitated. The girls weren't supposed to leave the church. On the other hand, she wouldn't exactly be going far. If there was no sign of the boy on the other side, she could simply come back in again. The door had an iron ring for a handle. She turned it and went through.

To her surprise, she didn't find herself outside in the street. Instead, she was standing in a wide, brightly lit corridor. There were flaming torches slanting out of iron brackets set in the walls, the fire leaping up toward the ceiling, which was high and vaulted. The corridor had no decoration of any kind, and it seemed both old and new at the same time, the plasterwork crumbling to reveal the brickwork underneath. It had to be some sort of cloister — somewhere the priests went to be on their own. But the corridor was nothing like the rest of St. Meredith's. It was a different color. It was the wrong size and shape.

It was also very cold. The temperature seemed to have fallen dramatically. As she breathed out, Scarlett saw white mist in front of her face. It was as if she were standing inside a fridge. She had to remind herself that this was the first week of November. It felt like the middle of winter. She rubbed her arms, fighting off the biting cold.

There was a man sitting in a wooden chair opposite her, facing the door. She hadn't noticed him at first because he was in shadow, between two of the torches. He was dressed like a monk with a long, dirty brown habit that went all the way down to his bare feet. He was wearing sandals, and a hood over his head. He was slumped forward with his face toward the floor. Scarlett had already decided to turn round and go back the way she had come, but before she could move, he suddenly looked up. The hood fell back. She gasped.

He was one of the ugliest men she had ever seen. He was completely bald, the skin stretched over a skull that was utterly white and dead. His head was the wrong shape — narrow, with part of it caved in on one side, like an egg that had been hit with a spoon. His eyes were black and sunken, and he had horrible teeth that revealed themselves as he smiled at her, his thin lips sliding back like a knife wound. What had he been doing, sitting there? She looked left and right, but they were on their own. The boy named Matt — if it had even been him — was gone.

The man spoke. The words cracked in his throat, and Scarlett didn't understand any of them. He could have been speaking Russian or Polish…whatever it was, it wasn't English. She backed away toward the door.

"I'm very sorry," she said. "I think I've come the wrong way."

She turned round and scrambled for the handle. But she never made it. The monk had moved very quickly. She felt his hands grab hold of her shoulders and drag her backward, away from the door. He was very strong. His fingers dug into her like steel pincers.

"Let go!" she shouted.

His arm sneaked over her shoulder and around her throat. He was holding her with incredible force. She could feel the bone cutting into her windpipe, blocking the air supply. And he was screaming out more words that she couldn't understand, his voice high-pitched and animal. Another monk appeared at the end of the corridor. Scarlett didn't really see him. She was just aware of him rushing toward them, the long robes flapping.

Still she fought back. She reached with both hands, clawing for the monk's eyes. She kicked back with one foot, then tried to elbow him in his stomach. But she couldn't reach him. And then the second monk threw himself onto her.