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Authors: Gillian Cross

The Nightmare Game (18 page)

BOOK: The Nightmare Game
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“I don't know what
any
of this stuff is about,” he said, in a low, secret voice. “But you've got to get over here, Tosh, as fast as you can. When I heard Magee speak, I was—he sounds just like Zak. We've
got
to persuade him to talk.”
Tom glanced quickly at his mother. She was standing farther down the aisle, in exactly the same place as before. Staring at exactly the same loaf of bread.
He did a quick calculation. “I can be there in an hour and a half.” It would take that long to get the shopping home. “Tell Magee I'm coming.”
“An hour and a half?” Robert said. “What use is that? I need you here now.”
Tom heard Magee's voice in the background, muttering something. And then Robert spoke into the phone again.
“OK, Tosh, Magee's going to stay around until you come. I'm going off for a walk and I'll probably have some coffee and give Emma a ring. Just call me as soon as you get here. And make sure it's not more than an hour and a half.”
“Don't worry. I'll be there.” Tom hung up and went back down the aisle to his mother. She was still staring at the bread. “Let's have them both,” he said, putting his head over her shoulder. “The bloomer for breakfast and the multigrain for tea.”
She turned around, with such a wide grin that he knew she'd been afraid he was going to abandon her. “Boys!” she said. “You're all the same. Hollow legs and no sense of economy.”
 
BY THE TIME TOM REACHED STEPNEY SQUARE, ROBERT WAS back there, hovering outside 17A.
He'd obviously been thinking while he had his cup of coffee. “What's all this with you and Magee?” he said as he opened the door.
“I wish I knew,” Tom said. “Maybe we'll find out now.”
“But what did he mean about the bruises?”
“Nothing,” Tom said quickly. “That's not important.”
“Oh, come
on
.” Robert pulled him inside and shut the door behind them. “If we're going to talk to him, I have to know what's going on. Tell me about the bruises.”
He was obviously not going to be put off. Reluctantly, Tom loosened his sweater and T-shirt and lifted them up, to show the bare skin of his chest.
Robert gasped.
It was a much stronger reaction than Tom was expecting. He knew there were a lot of bruises, and they were very sore, but they'd appeared one at a time and he'd grown used to them. It was only now, looking at Robert's face, that he realized how shocking they were. His whole chest was patched with dull red shading into purple.
“Is that all of them?” Robert said faintly.
Tom shrugged and stripped off the Tshirt and sweater altogether, so that Robert could see the bruises running up his left side. They went all the way from his hip to his armpit. His right shoulder was bruised, too. And he could feel a tender patch in the middle of his back.
“Who did it?” Robert said faintly. “Was it Magee?”
Tom shook his head.
“Not your mother—?”
Tom laughed out loud, even though his ribs were sore. “Come on, Robbo. You
know
my mom. Do you really think she'd hit anyone?”
“So why are you keeping it a secret?” Robert said. “If someone's beating you up, you've got to tell the police—”
“It's not like that,” Tom said slowly. “No one's hit me. The bruises just—come. When I see someone like that boy we met here yesterday, it just
hurts
me. And afterward there's a new bruise.”
Robert stared at him. “You mean they just come? On their own?”
Tom looked down at his feet. “I think so. There doesn't seem to be any other reason.”
He could see Robert didn't want to believe him. If he hadn't been standing there shivering, with his bruises actually showing, Robert would have brushed the whole thing away as “imagination.” But there was nothing imaginary about those savage red blotches.
“There's the headaches, too,” Tom said. “And my eyes go blurred and I see strange colors. I can't help it.”
Robert was still staring at the bruises. “You really got those like that? Just from looking at people?”
“It's more like—feeling,” Tom said awkwardly. “As if I can see inside their heads.”
For a moment, Robert just looked at him, bewildered and speechless. Then he waved a hand at the clothes Tom was holding. “Put those on again and let's get upstairs. We've got to talk to Magee.”
15
TOM HADN'T REALIZED HOW FRIGHTENED HE WAS UNTIL ROBERT lifted his hand to knock on the door. Then he found he was trembling.
Before he met Magee, his life had been simple. When he looked at people, he'd seen what everyone else saw—ordinary faces that didn't give much away. Now everything had changed. Wherever he went, he was battered by feelings and fears and pain, and he didn't like it. He wanted his old life back.
But that wasn't what they'd come for. They'd come to try and rescue the people in the cavern.
Robert gave him a quick glance. “You OK, Tosh?”
Tom shrugged. “Let's get it over with.”
Robert knocked and immediately they heard someone moving inside. A second later, Magee opened the door.
He was smaller than Tom remembered. And older. A thin, wiry man, with graying hair and fine, tired wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. But there was nothing tired about the eyes themselves. They were bright blue, as clear and cool as still water. And they went straight to Tom's face.
“You're here,” he said. “Good.”
Tom hunted for the right words to answer him, but Robert interrupted before he found them, bursting in eagerly.
“You said you'd talk if Tom came. You said you'd
explain
. Are you going to tell us—?”
Magee was still staring at Tom and his eyes were very sharp now. Probing. “What do you want to know?” he said, without looking around.
“I want to know how I landed in the cavern,” Robert said. “And I want to know about all the others, too. What made us shrink? And
why
?”
Magee glanced sideways at him. “You call
that
shrinking? That was when you started to
grow
. Beforehand—when I passed you on the plane—your body may have been big, but you were shriveling inside.”
“
What?
” Robert gaped at him.
Tom understood a bit better, but he thought Magee was exaggerating. “Surely it wasn't that bad? I mean—he wasn't in a prison, like Hope.”
Magee gave a small, wry smile. “No? You've never lived with a rival who's always better than you are. You haven't got a sister, have you? Or a brother?”
Tom shook his head, not understanding, and Magee's smile twisted bitterly. “Believe me, it's just another kind of trap. If you met Robert
now
—as he was then—you'd be able to feel it choking him. It nearly knocked me over when I passed him on the plane.”
It sounded wildly exaggerated. Melodramatic. “Just because Emma kept putting him down?” Tom said, unconvinced.
“Oh, she wasn't the only one.” Magee's eyes swiveled suddenly, fixing on Robert's face. “Was she?”
Robert went bright red. “I just didn't know what I could do,” he muttered. “That's all. I thought—”
“You thought you were pathetic and incompetent,” Magee said evenly. “And you didn't find out you were wrong until you were put in a place where you had to survive. Where only real things mattered. That's what saved you.”
“But—I could have
died
,” Robert said.
“And would that have been so bad?” said Magee. “Everyone dies in the end. Isn't it better to have some real life before that happens—even if has to be short?”
“That's nonsense!” Robert said angrily.
But it made a horrible kind of sense to Tom. He knew what Magee meant. But he couldn't agree with him. He couldn't let himself.
“Robert
escaped
,” he said hotly. “He did this real-life thing of yours and then he came back
.
That's what we want to do for the others. How can we get them out of the cavern?”
“You haven't even told us how they got in,” Robert said. “You promised to explain—and you haven't explained anything.”
Magee spread his hands, rejecting the accusation. “I can only explain what you're ready to understand. I've told you I rescued them—for their own good. What more do you want me to say?”
“You know what we want,” Robert said furiously. “We want to know
how
.”
He was shouting now and his voice must have carried farther than he meant it to. A chain rattled behind them and when Tom looked around he saw the old man peering out of 17B. Magee raised a hand and waved, telling him not to worry.
“It's time you went,” he said. “I can't tell you any more until you've found out for yourself.”
“That's not fair,” Tom said. “It doesn't make sense.”
“Oh yes it does,” said Magee. “You'll discover the game for yourself when you really need it. Just as I did. When I couldn't take any more.”
“What game?” Robert said wildly. “None of this is a
game.
”
Magee was looking at Tom. “You'll find it out for yourself,” he murmured. “When the pressure's strong enough. All you have to do then is visualize the place—and the power will come.”
Tom scrabbled to grasp what he meant. “What place? What are you talking about?”
But it was too late. Magee took a step back and shut the door in their faces.
Robert knocked on the door angrily, with his fist, but there was no answer. It was obvious that Magee wasn't going to come back.
“What do we do now?” he said. “We can't just leave it like that.”
Tom felt the same. Magee's final words were swirling around sickeningly in his head. He knew they were important, but he couldn't make any sense of them.
“Let's go and find Emma,” he said. “Maybe she'll understand better than we do. She's good at sorting things out.”
Robert scowled. “That's great—if we can ever get in touch with her again.”
There was a sudden stillness inside Tom's head. “What do you mean?”
Robert pulled a face. “Well, she's had her phone off for twenty-four hours now. She just doesn't
care
what happens to us. ”
Could he really be talking about Emma? “I thought you were going to phone her last night,” Tom said slowly.
“Couldn't get through, could I?” Robert was still complaining. “It must have been a really wild party. Either that, or she's still annoyed with us. But she needn't expect—” He finally noticed Tom's expression. “What's the matter? Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Think what Emma's like,” said Tom. “
Why
was Emma annoyed with us? Why did she go to Shelley's party in the first place?”
“She did it to get back at us. Because she didn't think we ought to go looking for Magee.”
“And that was because she was
worried
,” Tom said. “So why has she waited twenty four hours to find out what happened? You know what she's like. Wouldn't you have expected her to keep calling us? Every couple of hours?”
Robert hesitated. “Maybe her phone's dead.”
“Oh, come on. Won't every single girl at that party have a phone?” Tom shook his head fiercely. “There's something wrong, Robbo. We've got to go around to Shelley's and see what's happening.”
Robert looked horrified. “But it's a girlie weekend. They're probably all in their underwear, waxing each other's legs.”
“So?” Tom was heading for the stairs. “I'm not afraid of a bit of wax, even if you are.” He knew already, in his bones, that Emma's silence had nothing to do with wax. But, for the first time in his life, he really wanted to be wrong. He wanted to turn up on Shelley's doorstep and find Emma inside, making fun of him.
Couldn't you manage without me for twenty-four hours?
BUT IT WASN'T EMMA WHO OPENED THE DOOR. DISCONCERTINGLY, it was Fipper.
Robert stared at him. “I thought this was a girls' party.”
“How could they have a party without me?” Fipper said smugly. “Anyway, aren't Shelley's friends a bit old for you?”
Robert didn't smile. “I want to see my sister.”
“Wo-
ho!”
Fipper backed away, shaking his head in mock horror. “Don't let Shelley hear you mention that name. Emma's not Miss Popularity in this house.”
“We only want to talk to her,” Tom said. “Can't you ask Shelley—”
BOOK: The Nightmare Game
11.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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