The Nightmare Game (9 page)

“What's the matter?” she whispered.

He waved his hand impatiently and listened again, but there was nothing now except the rumble of traffic on the road outside. He covered the wood stack with leaves and stood up. His feet were numb and the knees of his trousers were damp.

“Let's go,” he muttered. “You're right about the wood. I'll put it in my bag.”

Slowly he stepped across the ditch. Then he turned and looked back at the entrance to the cavern.
I was in there with them,
he thought.
I was there.
But it was already becoming distant. Less real.

Emma came past him, pulling at his arm. “We're going to be late,” she said. “Get a move on, Rob. Or do you
want
to stand there until you freeze to death?”

Robert stared after her as she went back along the ditch. How could she say something like that, so casually? Did she think it was all a game?

EVEN WITH EMMA HARASSING HIM, HE WAS STILL LATE FOR school. She grabbed a piece of toast and went off straightaway, but he needed to wash and change his clothes. The school bell was already ringing when he finally turned in at the gates, and by the time he made it to the classroom, roll call was over.

Mrs. Pearson looked at him sharply over the top of her glasses. “Late?” she said, with a question in her voice. Robert wasn't one of those people who made a habit of missing roll call.

“I'm sorry,” he mumbled, not offering any excuse.

Mrs. Pearson frowned and looked back at the attendance sheet. “You were late on Tuesday, too. What's the matter, Robert? Have you started oversleeping?” She raised her eyebrows, and someone tittered at the back of the class.

“Sorry,” Robert muttered again, ducking into his seat next to Tom. As Mrs. Pearson moved to mark him late, Tom leaned sideways to ask him something. But Mrs. Pearson's head snapped up before he could get the words out.

“There's no time for chattering. You all need to listen hard. Even you, Thomas Hastings. There are dozens of notices today.”

Tom lurched back into his seat as she started firing information at them. He began scribbling on a piece of paper, as if he was taking notes, but a second or two later the paper came slithering across the table.

Robert reached out for it but, before he could take a look at it, Mrs. Pearson was glaring at him again. Just waiting to catch him reading it.

“I hope you're remembering all this information,” she said sharply. “Where have I told you to be in period four, Robert Doherty?”

She was in the worst kind of mood, just looking for an excuse to hand out punishments, but she wasn't going to catch him like that. Robert returned her look with wide, innocent eyes.

“We have to go to the auditorium for a talk,” he said.

She nodded, grudgingly. “And what will you need?”

He'd missed that bit while he was reaching out for Tom's note, but it didn't sound too hard to guess. “Pens and paper,” he said, as confidently as he could.

“Pens and
notebooks
,” Mrs. Pearson said, pursing her lips.

It wasn't enough of a mistake to lose him his break, but he suspected that he couldn't afford another one. It was another two or three minutes before he risked looking at Tom's note, and when he did, it didn't make any sense.

What kept you?
it said.
Did you meet him again?

Did you meet who? He didn't know what Tom meant—but it wasn't sensible to ask him at that moment. If they upset Mrs. Pearson again, they'd be in real trouble. So he crumpled up Tom's note and pushed it into his pocket.

By the time Mrs. Pearson reached the end of the notices, he'd forgotten all about it.

ALL DAY, AT SCHOOL, HE THOUGHT ABOUT FREEZING TO DEATH. About blood growing solid and sharp ice crystals piercing the lungs. It was the kind of day when everyone made a rush for the seats at the back, near the radiator. People kept their jackets on in the classroom and skulked in the cloakrooms at break time, trying to avoid being sent outside.

Robert couldn't concentrate on anything except the cold. He wanted to invent a way of making a second brazier and getting it into the cavern without enlarging the tunnel. But his mind couldn't make that work. It kept bringing him back to the same depressing conclusion. The only thing that would really help the people in the cavern was to get them out of there, and back to normal. He'd done it for himself and there had to be a way of doing it for them, too.

But what
was
it?

By the end of the day, he was feeling stupid and frustrated. He'd completely forgotten that he was supposed to stay behind for a basketball practice and he was already heading out of the gate when Tom came running after him.

“Hey, Robbo! What are you doing? Dazzer'll go nuclear if you miss this practice, too. Have you forgotten there's a match next week?”

Robert stopped and turned around, frowning. Yes, he had forgotten. And even now he'd been reminded, it all seemed impossibly trivial. He could hardly believe that basketball had once been the center of his universe. He'd missed the last two practices without even noticing.

“I don't have my gear,” he muttered.

“It's in your locker,” Tom said. “Been there for weeks.”

Robert looked back at the school. “Don't you think it's a bit of a waste of time? With all we've got to do?”

Tom shook his head. “You'd be dumb to miss it. Unless you
want
Dazzer asking lots of awkward questions.”

There was no arguing with that. Mr. Dawson wasn't a man who gave up on things. Reluctantly, Robert started back toward the gym.

Tom was absolutely right about his gym clothes. They were there in the locker, still clean, because he'd forgotten the last practice, too. He pulled them out and followed Tom into the gym.

“You're late!” Mr. Dawson yelled. “Get yourselves changed and get out here! And remember you're not the only varsity player in the squad, Doherty. Don't think you can drift in and take your place for granted.”

That was an empty threat, and everyone knew it. Robert was the best player in the school. Not just because he was tall, but because he was fast and intelligent and knew the game inside out. If he was available, he'd get picked. No competition.

By the time he'd changed, Tom was already out in the gym, dribbling along the back line. As soon as he saw Robert he fed him the ball.

Robert shot out a hand to trap it, without really thinking. He and Tom had been passing balls to each other since they were five and it was completely automatic, like breathing. Tom never got it wrong.

But he did this time.

The ball went sailing past and cannoned off the changing room door with an embarrassing thud. Bret Leavenholme scooped it up, looking smug, and lobbed it back to Robert. Insultingly slowly.

“You need to play a bit of patball, Robbo. You're losing your touch.”

“That's what happens when you start skipping practices,” Mr. Dawson said sourly. “Get your stretching done, Doherty. And then I want you and Hastings passing up and down the court for five minutes.”

Robert pulled a face and went into his warm-up stretch routine. Basketball might not be the most important thing in the world, but he was determined not to give Dazzer another excuse to bawl him out. From now on, he was going to get everything a hundred percent right.

It was much harder than he thought it would be.

As soon as he and Tom started passing, he knew there was something badly wrong. Tom's first mistake hadn't been just a stray fumble. All his passes were like that. Just slightly skew. And it was the same when he sent the ball back. Tom was reaching for it in the wrong place. If Robert hadn't fed it to him carefully he would have missed three passes out of four.

“What's up?” Robert hissed, the second time they turned at the end of the court. “Why are you fooling around?”

“I'm not fooling,” Tom muttered. “It's just—”

He didn't get to finish the sentence. Mr. Dawson spotted them talking and bellowed across the gym. “OK, ladies! If you're good enough to stop for tea and a chat we'll have you dribbling now. And shooting from the dribble. Ten each.
Go!
”

Tom groaned and started down the court, but it was a disaster from the beginning. He missed every shot.

He wasn't a natural, like Robert, but he was a moderately competent player—and he didn't usually miss
like that.
Steadying himself too long and frowning up at the basket, then pitching the ball over his head at the completely wrong angle.

Mr. Dawson thought he was doing it on purpose, of course. By the end of the practice, he was so angry that he had Tom running laps around the court while the others played one short. And Tom ran around perfectly happily, as though he would rather have been doing that than actually playing.

“What's the matter with you?” Robert muttered again as they went off to the changing rooms. “I could play better with my eyes shut. What were you
doing
?”

Tom hesitated. For a second, Robert thought he was going to say something. Then Peter Wimborne came up behind and jeered at him.

“What did you do, Hastings? Disconnect your brain before you started? You were seriously lame.” And he dug Tom in the ribs, in an amiable way.

Hitting the precise place where Robert had seen the bruise.

Tom drew in his breath sharply—and then tried to disguise it by slipping into his Dazzer imitation. “That's no way to behave in the changing room! Where's your team spirit, boy? This team's never going to top the league until you learn to support each other
on and off the court
!”

Wimborne laughed and disappeared into the toilet. Tom sat down on the bench and quickly pulled on his sweatshirt over his basketball uniform.

“There
is
something wrong, isn't there?” Robert said.

Tom hesitated. “This isn't the place—” He ducked sideways, peering back into the gym. “They'll all be in here in a couple of seconds.”

Robert nodded. “Come back to our house and have some soup then. Before you take Helga out.”

“If you want,” Tom said. He shrugged and started to undo his shoes.

They were out of the changing room while the others were still hunting for their socks and they cycled away from the bike sheds down an empty drive. Most people had gone home an hour earlier and the street was almost deserted, but there were the usual loiterers around the corner shop.

As Tom and Robert cycled away from school, one of them peeled off from the crowd. “Hey, Robbo!” he shouted. “Someone's looking for you.”

It was a boy from Emma's class. What was his name? Phipps? Phipson? Robert couldn't remember exactly, but he recognized him all right. A real joker.

“Don't stop,” Tom muttered. “It'll be some kind of nonsense. We'll get stuck for hours if we start talking to Fipper.”

Robert had no intention of stopping. He cycled on, pretending not to hear. All he wanted was to go home as fast as he could, so that he could ask Tom some serious questions.

But he didn't get to ask anything. When they came around the corner by the park gates, there was a bus just leaving the stop outside his house. As it drew away, Emma came charging out of the front garden, onto the pavement. She stared left and then right, turning her head wildly from one side to the other as if she was searching for something. Robert had never seen her like that before.

She looked hysterical.

 

“HE WAS RIGHT BY THE WINDOW,” EMMA SAID. SHE WAS STILL shaking so hard that her coffee slopped out of the mug and onto the kitchen table. “I opened the curtains and he was
there
. Staring straight at me.”

Robert and Tom had taken her into the house and made her sit down. She could speak coherently now, but she couldn't stop talking about the intruder.

“He was crouching down, and his face was so close it was like—like—” She moved her hands and the coffee slopped again.

“Who was it?” Robert said. “Did you recognize him?”

“I couldn't really see his face. He was wearing some kind of mask. Like a balaclava. But his eyes looked horrible. And I was so
feeble
.”

“It wasn't feeble to chase after him,” Tom said very quietly. “Not when you were frightened.”

That hadn't struck Robert before. He put a hand on Emma's shoulder. “Pretty brave of you,” he said.

“Pretty
stupid
,” Emma said. She was starting to sound more like herself. “Suppose he'd had a knife?”

“Did he look violent?” Tom murmured.