The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue (29 page)

‘The wave?’ said Ralf.

Urk’s laugh was a dark, wet rattle. ‘One diddy wave is nothin’ to Him! He could do it like that!’ Urk snapped his fingers, his clawed nails clicking.

‘Who, Mr Fitch? Who are you talking about?’ Ralf pressed.

‘He’s talking about the monster behind the Black Door,’ said Leo. ‘The Shadow King. That’s right, isn’t it Mr Fitch? You think the monster is coming back?’

But Urk flinched suddenly and cocked his head to one side. He blundered away, still muttering.

‘Mr Fitch!’ Leo shouted after him. They could hear his shuffling footsteps and the occasional grunt as he stumbled. Seth started to say something but Urk’s voice echoed back through the trees.

‘Look to your dreams!’ The warning was a strangled cry. ‘He’s there waiting!’

‘OMG! You do not want to get down wind of that!’ Valen choked after Urk had gone. ‘The man is all over the place and he reeks. When was the last time he had a bath?’

‘Poor bloke,’ Leo said. ‘I feel really sorry for him.’

‘You gotta wonder how he manages the farm on his own,’ said Alfie. ‘And it must be doin’ his head in if there are people poppin’ up from other times all over the place.’

‘I think it’s more than that. It’s like I said before, like we were saying with the animals. I think that he’s somehow closer to this… whatever it is than we are. I think he’s trying to help,’ said Leo. ‘Warn people, you know.’

‘Well, he’s not doing us any favours,’ said Seth. ‘He and Kat’s Granny have got the whole village worked up about this Shadow King business.’

‘And we still haven’t figured out what Gloria’s Elk Cub Rat Rah message is all about,’ said Ralf disconsolately.

‘
Or the numbers,’ said Seth.

‘I think it’s all connected,’ said Leo. ‘Somehow, us doing what we’re supposed to do is going to put a stop to all this.’

‘But what are we supposed to do?’ asked Alfie.

‘Well, the first thing we’ve got to do is get warm,’ said Valen. ‘We need food and a hot drink. The temperature’s dropping again.’

‘Ah,’ said Leo, giving her a cheeky grin. ‘She’s so sweet – always looking out for us!’

‘Watch it, you!’

‘Yo, bluds!’ said Alfie, pointing. ‘Where’s that path go?’ A break in the snow draped hedge and a slight dip in the white carpet that covered the ground was the only clue that there was a path there at all.

Seth drew the map from his pocket and studied it for a second. ‘Springfield,’ he said. ‘It’s about two hundred yards down there.’

‘Hart’s Cottage?’

Curiosity, and the inviting look of untouched snow, crisp and white as an uncut wedding cake, lured them down the narrow path. At the end they discovered a stone, one storey cottage.

‘It must be shut up,’ said Ralf.

It wasn’t. Alfie jiggled the handle and found the door unlocked.

‘Now that’s just inviting thieves!’ he chuckled and walked inside.

Laughing, the others followed. It should have been creepy, walking into the home of the missing man but somehow it wasn’t. The door opened in to a comfortable sitting room, which if the temperature inside had been about thirty degrees warmer, would have been quite cosy. The furniture was plain but there were shelves of books, which Ralf immediately started browsing, photographs, and paintings on the walls. Everything was under a thick layer of dust. There was a small kitchen, bedroom and:

‘There’s an indoor loo!’ Leo called from the back of the house.

‘Dibs on me first,’ said Alfie. ‘I’m about to fill me boots!’

They all went rushing to see and laughed some more to realise that it was one modern invention they all agreed equally they missed. They took turns using it– just for the heck of it – and then busied themselves in the kitchen.

‘It’s a life and death thing,’ said Alfie. ‘We need hot drinks or we’ll get hypochondria!’

‘That’s hypothermia, you plank!’ said Valen, but she rooted round in the cupboard until she found a tin of Ovaltine. They lit the kitchen stove, peeled off their damp coats and dried off while drinking, letting the welcome sweetness slide down their throats.

When they’d finished they put things away, determined to leave all as they’d found it in case the missing actor should one day return. Having put their outer layers back on, Ralf went to check the doors before they left. The latch on the top section of the kitchen door was not quite closed and, as he touched it, it swung open to reveal a secluded, walled garden. Safe from the wind, protected by high walls the garden had become a gigantic snow trap, a deep billowy looking eiderdown of untouched white powder that beckoned invitingly.

Alfie whooped and threw himself into the snow. He burrowed his way down the garden and they lost sight of him altogether until his head popped up by the wall.

The four on the threshold of the kitchen looked at each other.

‘What the hell,’ said Valen.

Free from care for the first time in months, they threw themselves into the drift in the manner of three year olds diving into a ball pool.

Three months of tension fell away as they played Shift ‘Hide and Seek’ and tried to guess each other’s routes from their footprints in the snow. Alfie burst into a warbling rendition of ‘We’re Walking in the Air’ as he Shifted around the garden and appeared inches from the others’ faces giggling maniacally. They made snow angels in drifts by the walls and constructed an Urk Fitch shaped snowman with black pebbles for eyes and twigs for hair. As they stood admiring their handiwork, Leo dusted the snow from his gloves.

‘It feels all Christmassy,’ he said happily.

‘Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day, you know,’ Seth announced.

‘Yeah?’ said Leo, scooping up a handful of snow. ‘Well, check out the gravity on this!’ The snowball hit Seth squarely in the chest and was followed by four more. Seth’s serious demeanour crumbled and he launched a roaring counter attack. They pelted each other with snowballs then, laughing so their stomach’s hurt until a reverberating crash stopped them all in their tracks. The front door of the cottage had been thrown open.

‘H-Hello?’ The voice from inside was tentative.

‘It’s Sergeant Minter!’ Valen whispered, her face stricken.

Ralf looked round frantically. They were thigh deep in snow and surrounded by a wall. They were trapped. There was movement in the kitchen. Ralf straightened and looked toward the open door. He would take responsibility say it had been his idea. He was wading forward as Minter appeared in the doorway and if Ralf hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it.

Minter reached the threshold then his face clouded. He performed a jerky about turn. The next thing Ralf knew, all he could see of the ageing Sergeant was the black block of his retreating back. There were footsteps in the hall. The front door slammed. Inexplicably, Minter had gone.

‘What the –?’ Ralf whirled round. Had the others seen that too? But the others were not looking at the cottage. They were staring in shock at Valen who stood with her arm outstretched, her hand raised in a gesture of denial. She seemed to wake up then and realise they were staring at her. She lowered her hand and looked at it with an expression of mixed wonder and disbelief.

‘I – I – Sh-Shunned him,’ she said.

‘You what?’ said Seth. ‘You –
what
did you do?’

A slow smile spread over Valen’s face. ‘I think I just discovered another skill!’

Shunning – the ability to repel things, to force them away using the power of thought – seemed to come naturally to Valen. When Sergeant Minter had appeared in the kitchen Valen hadn’t thought about it, she just knew that she didn’t want him there. So she Shunned him.

It was simply a matter of putting up a kind of wall in your head and then giving it a little push. After Valen had explained the principles Ralf had a go and found, to his intense delight and relief that it was easy. He was able to roll snowballs across the garden and make pebbles fly through the air. Even Alfie stopped walking and lurched off to one side when Ralf pushed his mind against him. It was great.

‘I think it may be to do with electro-magnetic fields,’ said Seth contemplatively, as he knocked Alfie off his feet with a flick of his wrist. ‘There are some animal species who do something similar. Or perhaps it’s pheromones. Like the ones insects use. They release a kind of chemical that repels living things.’

‘Who cares?’ Valen cried. ‘It’s brilliant!’

It was. All of them could do it to some extent, though Alfie was the least proficient. Valen appeared to do it effortlessly and was particularly good at Shunning over distances. She made a whole flock of gulls change course in mid-flight. A wave of her hand caused the birds to turn sharply and with harsh ‘caws!’ bank away towards the coastline.

Ralf yanked Alfie’s tam o' shanter from his head and chucked it into the middle of the churned up garden.

‘Whoever gets there first wins!’ he yelled.

They had a fine time stumbling forward and lurching from side to side as they felt the force of each other’s Shuns. There was a slight tingle as the Shun hit but it was only noticeable if you were expecting it – an invisible wall that couldn’t be penetrated and a feeling of ‘wrongness’ if you attempted to push back against the Shun. Ralf tried to work out exactly what was happening but found it impossible. After a while he stopped thinking about it and simply did it. It was just too unbelievably, mind-bendingly cool.

Later, flushed with cold and the sheer thrill of their newfound powers, they alternately Shifted, Shunned and laughed, back to the village. When they reached the High Street they heard the low rumble of voices and the unmistakable chink of glasses. Despite the cold, the front door of The Crown stood wide open and, through it, Ralf could see the bar was packed with sombre faced men steadily downing tankards of ale.

Was this some kind of celebration about
The Graf Spee
Ralf wondered? The German Battle Cruiser had been sinking ships in the South Atlantic for weeks. But that morning he’d heard on the wireless she’d been trapped by British Destroyers and scuttled by her own crew. Ralf wouldn’t have been surprised if her watery end had caused an impromptu drinking session in a village which made its living from the sea, but he felt oddly uncomfortable.

‘Now that’s something you don’t see every day,’ said Kemp, appearing from his shop. ‘The last time I saw Old Bill at the pub was for the Coronation.’ He stared over at The Crown’s open door, frowning. ‘Looks like something’s up. Let’s go and see, shall we?’

Old Bill Arbuckle was at the centre of the huddle of drinkers inside the pub. His voice, quiet but clear, carried easily to the spot where Ralf and the others stopped, just inside the door.

‘I been sailing fifty years and I’ve never seen the like.’

Old Bill looked round at the assembled men and when he was certain he had everyone’s full attention he continued with his tale.

‘It was just after dawn and I was heading home past the second marker.’

The circle became smaller as men shuffled their chairs and leaned forward to hear.

‘I was comin’ in on a good wind when I noticed somethin’ was amiss. It got all swallacky dark, like just before a storm, and everythin’ went quiet.’ The men stopped sipping their beer. ‘Then I saw it. A great ship was coming towards me, flyin’ ower the waves.’ There was a collective intake of breath and one or two of the men murmured agreement or nodded for him to go on with the tale. This was what they’d come to hear. ‘A grand three master, it was, a galleon. I’m old and creaky in the joints and my ears aren’t what they used to be but there’s nuthin’ wrong with my eyes. She were racin’ with the wind in her sails and her cannon gleamin’.

Ralf and the others exchanged glances. Another Fall!

There was a bark of derisive laughter. ‘You’re jokes, Bill!’ cried Gadd Munton and slammed his tankard down on the
table.

‘Jokes!’ echoed Oyler.

‘He’s had one too many of Frank’s Special!’ snorted Gadd.

‘One too many!’

‘Let him talk, Munton!’ said the landlord.

All eyes flicked from Oyler to Old Bill.

‘I was all of amaze and I tried to tack and that’s when the boom got me.’ Old Bill went on, removing a bloody cloth from his head. A large gash and ugly bruise marred one side of his lined face. ‘Then, next thing I knows, the ship was on top of me. I was sure I would be killed dead and so I did the only thing I could.’

‘What did you do, Bill?’ asked Frank Duke.

‘I prayed, boys. I closed my eyes and prayed for all I was worth and when I opened my eyes again she was gone.’

There was a hum of approval and some soft whistling at Bill’s story

‘Ghost ship?’ Gadd shouted. ‘My arse!’

‘Mine too!’ Oyler murmured into his beer.

Ralf wanted to laugh but then he saw the shocked faces around him. No one spoke to Old Bill like that. Tom Arbuckle jumped up. Leo stepped forward and half a dozen others were also on their feet. Suddenly, though, a voice, calm, clear but immensely powerful cut across the noise.

‘That’s enough!’