The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue (43 page)

Leo shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. We all had ‘The Knowing’ before we got here, right? But for you lot it’s faded since we arrived. I know it has. For me it’s done the opposite. I’ve been feeling things much more clearly since we got here. I’ve known stuff. But I had no warning about Mr Kemp’s death. I was too busy thinking about that actor bloke, Hart. Can you believe that? I slept through the whole fire. I didn’t even dream.’

Ralf tried for a joke. ‘You’re letting all those voodoo jokes go to your head,’ he said, but, even to him, his voice sounded hollow.

Leo shook his head and Ralf gave him a friendly punch on the arm. Then they returned to their tasks.

Though Ralf half expected it not to, the sun rose as normal. Within an hour it was a burning gold circle in a vast expanse of blue and he found himself sweating. He finished packing the spare mainsail away and stretched his aching back. ‘I don’t think we can do anymore here,’ he said. He nodded in satisfaction at the scrubbed deck and coiled ropes and realised he and Leo had completed a complete sea-worthy check on the vessel. They’d prepared
The Sara Luz
for a major expedition. ‘We should go.’

‘Sure,’ Leo agreed quietly. ‘But where?’

‘Well, not school that’s for sure!’ He told Leo about Burrowes’ visit and the arson. ‘We’ve got three days until Dunkirk, one of our Natus is dead and I haven’t a clue what we should be doing next. We’ll meet the others at the station and then over to Springfield. We need to talk.’

They set off along the jetty. The village
they noticed, as they trudged towards it, had a sad, neglected look. Paint on doorways was faded and peeling. Windows were grimed. The cobbles were strewn with filth from bins ransacked by foxes. Piles of rubbish rotted in the heat and rats ran freely in the gutters. As they walked past front gardens towards the High Street, Ralf noticed how unkempt they were. In some, plants floundered in puddles of mud whilst others, oddly, looked limp and parched through want of water.

Normally, in heat like this, cottage doors would be open and villagers would be chatting on doorsteps or in chairs outside, reading or gossiping in the sunshine. Today, doors were closed. Many cottages still had their blacks up. And everywhere they looked gulls, in large numbers, perched on rooftops and fences, staring with glinting, gold eyes.

Outside The Crown, Frank Duke was talking to Ned Beechy and Jem Curtis from Hoad's Farm. The boys didn’t stop, none of the men even noticed them passing, but as they did, they caught snatches of the conversation.

‘I’ve had three dead lambs in the last week,’ Jem said. ‘Ewe’s are sickly and the lambs I have got aren’t takin’.’

‘Catches are the same,’ said Ned. ‘Half catches, more like, or fish with no fins and two tails. Had three man o’ war’s last catch. Water’s far too cold for them up here this early!’

‘I don’t like it. Flies in the face o’ nature -’

Ralf and Leo exchanged looks. It was all happening just as Ambrose had said.

It was busier on the High Street proper. People were outside, at least. They should have been at their boats or about their business but they seemed in a kind of dream. Some hunched in taciturn groups, whispering the latest war news
and falling silent when the boys walked by. Others stood in their shop doorways, gazing up at the sky or staring vacantly at the crater that was all that was left of Kemp’s Bakery.

Women hurried down the street with full shopping baskets. Mostly they kept their eyes on the ground but one or two looked up, guilty at their panic buying, before scuttling into their homes. The boys stepped back to allow Mrs Tomkins to pass. In dirty clothes, and trailing a heelless shoe, she stumbled aimlessly across
the Green swinging an empty basket and talking to herself.

‘Should we go after her?’ Ralf wondered aloud.

Leo shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t do any good.’

Further up the hill, a small crowd had gathered at the Village Hall. The Vicar had kept the wireless on almost constantly for the last week so villagers could keep up to date on news from Europe. Relieved at this apparent display of normality, the boys hurried over but were taken aback by what they saw. The crowd around the wireless craned their necks forward, as if this would help them hear better, their faces drawn, brows furrowed. Next to the wireless Reverend Denning held his head tilted heavenwards on the end of his long neck, his eyes closed in concentration. His face was the same colour as his prim white dog collar and on the hand that clutched his bible to his chest the knuckles were white.

Alfie and Valen were at the station when they got there, off to one side, away from the bustle of kids waiting for the school train, their faces stark with concern. They were discussing the general state of unease in the village when Seth turned up. Ralf did a double take.

‘Blimey, mate!’ Alfie cried. ‘Image change or what!’

‘Give it a rest, Alf,’ Seth snapped. ‘It’s a haircut not a face transplant!’

Seth was determined to make light of it, Ralf could tell, but it was a radical change in appearance. His new style was incredibly short, even by 1940s standards. He looked as if he’d been shorn. Alfie wouldn’t let it go.

‘Seriously man, what was it? Fight with a lawn mower?’ Alfie was in full flow and the insults would have gone on for ages had Leo not cut in.

‘That is not on!’ he cried.

They turned in surprise but Leo wasn’t looking at Alfie. He was staring down the platform where two groups of kids were squaring up to each other on either side of the picket fence.

‘Don’t!’ Leo shouted, but it was too late.

None of them saw who threw the first blow but the Crispin’s boys on the platform surged forward en masse. The village kids rushed to meet them. It was as if a dam had burst. The fence buckled then gave way, trampled beneath the feet of at least fifty youngsters who punched and tore at each other like dogs fighting over a scrap of meat. Girls from the High School rushed in with hockey sticks to help their schoolmates and the Crispin’s boys broke and ran to regroup on the lane outside the station.

Forgetting th
emselves completely, a pack of Convent School girls rushed after the largest group screaming and throwing stones at anyone unlucky enough to fall behind. Ralf and the others stood helpless as the fight between school and village raged out of the station and down the hill towards the High Street. It was as if all the children within a five-mile radius had suddenly been touched by a collective case of insanity.

‘What shall we do?’ Seth yelled as they followed the riot down the hill.

‘We’ve got to try and break it up!’ Leo cried.

‘What are they playing at with those sticks?’ Valen shouted. ‘Idiots! They’ll break bones with those things’

Ralf was afraid she might be right. And the hockey sticks were not the only weapons on show. Frank Duke’s boy was aiming quick hard shots from his sling shot at anyone in a Crispin’s uniform. Ross Childs was sporting knuckle-dusters and laughed madly as he ran in to the thick of the fighting. There was a sharp ‘crack’ in the air and Ralf looked up in horror to see Mallison’s face, a thin grin among pimples, poking from behind the leaves of the old oak on the Green. He cackled, whooped and shouted insults as he fired an air rifle at the village kids below.

‘He’ll have someone’s eye out!’ gasped Alfie
, not caring how much like his Nan he sounded.

Ralf nodded. This was not so much a fight as a full-scale battle. They ran forward to try to break things up but it was no use. Every time they dragged someone out of the melee their captive broke free a few seconds later and threw themselves back into the bundle of bodies. The Turnarounders were puffing on the sidelines wondering what to do next when Glen Watson rounded the corner at a sprint. A split second later Tank Tatchell barrelled after him. It wasn’t the maniacal expression of Tank’s face that caused
the Turnarounders to shout and run forward in unison, so much as the blade in his hand.

‘It’s the knife from the Barrow
!’ yelled Ralf. He recognised it immediately – an evil looking dagger with a dull black handle and vicious, curving, six-inch blade. ‘He must have nicked it from Winters’ cupboard. I thought he was up to something –’

‘Look at his eyes!’ Leo shouted over the noise. ‘I don’t think even King could control him now. Has he gone mad?’

‘What should we do, Wolf? Valen cried desperately. ‘He’ll kill someone!’

She was right, Ralf thought. If they didn’t act quickly this was going to end really badly. Apart from the kids, though, there was no one on the High Street. ‘Where the hell are all the adults?’ he screamed. He ran forward, dodging pockets of fighting to snatch the slingshot from Charlie Duke’s hands. A quick scan of the street offered numerous targets. He scooped up a sizeable stone from the cobbles, squinted to get his aim and let fly. The window of Picken’s Hardware Store smashed spectacularly in a waterfall of glass.

Only then did Mr Picken wake up to the open warfare raging outside his store. He, and the other adults who’d been inexplicably deaf to the noise, charged on to the High Street. It was as if a hypnotist had clicked his fingers. The kids, dazed, grazed and bleeding woke up, broke up and fled. Up and down the High Street, villagers emerged from shops and houses their faces a mixture of anger and puzzlement. None of them seemed to have heard the fight, only the breaking window, which had shattered the spell that held them.

Ralf pocketed the slingshot and stood with the others open mouthed.

‘The grown-ups. They just don’t see it do they?’ said Alfie

‘No,’ said Ralf. ‘It’s almost like they don’t want to see it.’

They watched as Mr Picken swept up the broken glass in silence. Slowly the other people on the street seemed to come to their senses and remember what it was they’d been doing a few moments before. They drifted back to their homes, tut-tutting as if the whole incident had been a harmless example of schoolboy horseplay that had got out of hand.

‘Something stopped them,’ said Leo. ‘Something didn’t want them to see. Can you feel it? There was a power here. A darkness. Those kids could have killed each other and no one would have turned a hair.’

‘And what was
he
doing, eh?’ said Alfie. He nodded down the street to where Burrowes’ Wolsely was parked outside Hatcher’s Catch. In the doorway was the Inspector himself, talking to a grave looking Mr Hatcher.

‘There’s a riot going on and he’s having a nice little chat!’

Burrowes might not have heard what Alfie said but he was certainly attracted by his tone. He looked up.

‘Alfredo Lightfoot!’ he called beckoning to him. ‘Mr Goldberg and Mr Antwi. Just the people I wanted to see!’ He smiled with evident satisfaction and gestured to Hatcher’s open door. ‘A word if you please!’

Reluctantly, they trudged over and stood facing the portly policeman who looked at Ralf with a steely eye.

‘Excuse us won’t you,
Osborne.’

The children exchanged confused glances. Ralf shrugged and started backing away as Seth walked forward to meet the Inspector. Leo and Alfie followed.

Valen hesitated for a second. ‘Tomorrow. Early. The place where we learnt that skill that time!’

It was a good idea. They could meet at Springfield and explain what Burrowes wanted with them all. Ralf gave a curt nod.

Mr Hatcher blanched at this. Then, for reasons known only to himself, grabbed Valen by both shoulders and shoved her roughly in to the shop. He flung an appalled look in Ralf’s direction and then followed her inside.

Standing there, on the quiet street, Ralf suddenly felt very alone. There were few people left outside and those that were hurried to unknown destinations, their faces, pinched, eyes on the ground. None of them looked at him. He walked back up the High Street, heading towards Springfield.

Ralf kept off the lane as much as possible and moved in short Shifts through the hanging branches, bushes and fallen logs at the border of Tarzy Wood. It was tricky but he was glad he’d taken the precaution of staying off the road when he rounded the bend and saw Old Mr Sedley leaning on a gate at the edge of a field, shaking his head in dismay. Ralf jogged over to him but stopped short when he saw what the old man was staring at.

The field, which had been hazy green with new growth, was now black. As Ralf walked tentatively forward he became uncomfortably aware of the sensation of being watched. His neck prickled with electricity and he glanced upwards to where he sensed the feeling was coming from. At first he couldn’t make out what he was looking at – the trees at the edge of the wood appeared strangely misshapen, their branches dripping with blackness. Then he saw a slight movement amidst the darkened boughs and he understood what he was looking at. Birds.

The trees around were infected with crows. Each tree seemed bent under the weight of the multitude of birds that perched there. There were hundreds of them, slick blue-black feathers with beady
, golden eyes that winked in the sunlight. They were unnaturally still and unnaturally silent.

Ralf realised suddenly why the fields were black. There had been no fire. The ground was
a blanket of crows.

He walked slowly forward to stand with Mr Sedley. The old man nodded a greeting then turned his attention back to the field. In the centre was a writhing dark shape – a black lump, teeming with birds.