Thirteen (22 page)

Adam frowned. He lunged forward, screaming, pummeling with his fists, until he was restrained and punched repeatedly: after the fifth strike to the head he briefly passed out. It was only then that he was still.

The door swung open and an unsteady figure spoke. “Well, well, well. Adam Grant—it's been a long time,” said Mr. Sterling.

Adam stood in the doorway and raised his hands, as if in surrender. “Please don't call the police. You're the only person who can help me. Can I come in?” He sniffed and ran his hand through his matted hair.

Mr. Sterling glanced behind Adam. “As long as you don't kill me.” He chuckled slightly and stepped to one side. “If I live, I'll probably get the sack. Never mind.”

Like a cat, Adam slipped past him. Dark smears hung from Adam's eyes, and cuts and blotches gave him the appearance of a neglected Victorian orphan. He was pale from exhaustion and a month spent inside. But his manner was confident. Adam used to be terrified if Mr. Sterling even shuffled past him in a corridor; now he took control. “How's your shoulder?” he asked, looking at the bandage.

“Fine,” Mr. Sterling replied. “It's good of you to come out of hiding to visit the sick.” He smiled slightly. “I presume this isn't just a courtesy call. Do tell me why you're here.” He gestured for Adam to sit.

The house had been smart once, but divorce and drink had made it messy and neglected, without exactly being dirty. A bottle of whisky and a glass sat on a table next to cigarette debris and newspapers. Adam was grateful to get straight to the point. “I need your help.”

Mr. Sterling gave Adam a look somewhere between astonishment and amusement. “I'm not going to do anything without understanding what's been going on.”

Adam took a deep breath. He had considered telling the whole story, but it sounded completely unbelievable, so he whittled it down. “There's a gang after me. They are
very
dangerous. Murderers. So many terrible things have happened.” Tears started to appear in Adam's eyes; he immediately wiped them away. “I can't go to the police. Megan—my friend—she'll die if I do.”

For Mr. Sterling, the need for alcohol was a thin but persistent and embracing sensation, like a second skin. He took a sip of whisky, outwardly unfazed by Adam's revelation. “It sounds to me as if you do need help. But I find it hard to believe I can do something the police can't.”

Adam was buoyed by hope. “I want you to be in your car, in Trafalgar Square, in front of Nelson's Column, at
exactly
two minutes past five this afternoon.
Exactly
—not a second later. Or earlier.”

“Hmmm. And?”

“And if you see Megan, tell her to look where I did.”

“Sorry?”

“She'll understand,” said Adam. He repeated the words very deliberately: “Look where I did.”

Mr. Sterling knew that he had to try. “I think you should hand yourself over to the police right now.”

Adam stood up and walked toward the door. “No. And if you try to make me, I will do whatever is necessary to escape.” It was an idle threat, though he did have a penknife. “Will you do it?”

“Two minutes past five. Okay.”

The whole exchange took only four minutes.

Megan suddenly appeared in the passenger seat of a waiting car.

Adam had whispered to her that Mr. Sterling would be there, but it was not the deputy head who grabbed her with his left hand and pulled her in. It was Chief Inspector Hatfield. Sterling had agonized longer than any adult should, but eventually he had gone to the police.

“What?” gasped Megan.

The chief inspector drove immediately and quickly away from Trafalgar Square, weaving erratically through the traffic.

“Where are we going?” Megan asked.

“Keep quiet. If you try to get out, I will arrest you immediately.”

For Megan, forced down in the front seat, everything was a blur of dark sky and the top floors of buildings. They twisted left and right. Before long the car stopped at Gospel Oak Police Station.

The evening that followed was a dreadful haze to Megan. She should have been triumphant with freedom, but she became tangled in her story, confused by the questions.

For a start, she couldn't explain where she had been. No, she hadn't seen the building properly. No, she hadn't been harmed. Yes, she had helped Adam when the police wanted him.

And that was an
offense
. Adam was a criminal, and helping a criminal was
serious
.

Mr. Sterling had tried to help, but had only made it worse: Adam was involved in some sort of gang trouble. The boy had said
gang
.

The questions continued.

“Yes, it was a girl who led me to the van. . . . Yes, she was about my age. . . .”

The truth was slipping away.

“But there was a cult, and they were going to sacrifice me, and other people.”

Megan persisted, but her story was sounding silly, even to her.

“That man is involved in the whole thing!” she said at one point, thrusting her finger in the direction of Chief Inspector Hatfield.

A woman police officer intervened. “Did you see the chief inspector at this house?”

Megan shook her head. “No.”

“And where were you held in London?”

“I don't know; I was blindfolded! You're all being stupid!”

At about ten o'clock a very senior officer came in. He announced himself as Assistant Commissioner Cook. Megan could tell by the way everyone sat up that he was important.

“I can
personally
vouch for Chief Inspector Hatfield,” he said. “I have worked closely with him for many years and trust him
completely
.” Megan's parents nodded. “And I know how easily young boys get caught up in these gang problems. The stabbing and shooting that Adam has committed are only too common, I am afraid.”

Megan shouted, “So why was I dragged off the street?”

The assistant commissioner turned to Megan's parents. “I am so sorry that your daughter has become involved in this. I hope that you will all be able to move on now that she has chosen to come back.”

“Chosen?” This was all going wrong. Megan put her head in her hands and cried. Just before midnight, she was driven home.

And her life lumbered on, slowly, fractured.

Adam lay with headphones in his ears, his arms tied to the metal frame of a bed. His face was cut and bruised. Viper entered and
yanked at the wires. Ugly noises leaked into the room until she pressed a button on an iPod under the bed.

Adam looked away as Viper whispered, “You will regret what you've done and what you are.” She grabbed Adam's hair and a fist-shaped area of pain formed on Adam's skull. “That's just a little tugging. Prickly, isn't it? Do you notice how you can't concentrate on anything else? Now, it pleases me to make the pain worse.” Viper pulled until her fingers were tightly together. “Understand?”

The pain was much sharper now. Adam held his breath and let out a small groan that turned into “Okay.”

Viper let go. “Doesn't that feel good? You must learn to appreciate the absence of pain.” She patted his hair down as if he was an animal.

She thrust the headphones out, heard distant cymbal-like sounds, put them back on him and left. Minutes passed to hours: the screams and grotesque descriptions in Adam's ears went on and on. Dorm Thirteen sounds.

Sometime in the early hours of Wednesday, December 4, Viper entered Adam's room with two men. She stopped the noise. However hard Adam tried to think of something else, a jumble of horrible images fought to remain in his mind. He pictured a sunny field containing his family and friends.

“You smell of piss. It's time for you to get tidied up,” said Viper. “Don't think about trying to escape. You're underground here.”

Without warning, Viper hit Adam. Blood dribbled from his lower lip. “That,” she said, “is for thinking about escaping. Yes, thoughts are punished here as well.” She left the room, laughing. “If you try to escape, or I think you're trying, or even considering it, then worse things will happen.”

“Okay.”

The two men untied Adam and pushed him into a room opposite. There was no lock on the door, and the toilet was stained. The shower was filthy and the water cold, but there was a thin curtain; being behind two barriers, however slight, gave him a few moments of independence. There was no soap and no towel, so Adam dried himself with his T-shirt. He looked at the wristband that Megan had given him. He thought of his parents. Despair sat heavy in his stomach and his body sagged.
He felt as if he were on a boat surrounded by thousands of miles of empty ocean.

The men stood, arms folded, outside the door.

When he returned to his room there was a black cloak on the bare mattress, which he was told to put on. It stretched down to Adam's feet. He wanted it to be ill-fitting and itchy, but the fabric was warm and comfortable.

The men took Adam into the corridor and turned left, away from the main entrance. They went through a door and down, the light fading with each step. At the bottom a patch of stone floor in front of Adam was dimly lit; he was placed at the very edge, a wall of darkness in front of him. There was a hollow rumbling sound. Then he heard steps recede behind him and light ebbed away as the door slowly shut. There was complete darkness and silence.

Adam didn't move except to raise his hands in front of his face, palms out, instinctively shielding himself in case something flew at him. About two minutes later the rumbling started again. They must be near to the tube line; Adam had heard a similar sort of sound once at Leo's birthday party in the basement of a restaurant. They were eight and had joked about it being a dragon.

After the rumbling Adam heard a slight rustling and a tiny sniff. There was someone or something else down here.

Then a flicker of light: a match had been lit. Faintly, Adam saw a robed figure about eight paces away. It was Viper. She held a match to a candle, then another, and another. After the fourth candle, a second robed figure was vaguely apparent, kneeling at an altar. Adam couldn't see who it was, but the voice was unmistakable. Coron. “Come and join us,” he said.

Adam stepped forward. Viper had moved to the stone altar to light two candles, one at either side of a large leather-bound book. She moved on to light other candles, thirteen in total.

Coron gestured for Adam to kneel. Adam resisted for a few seconds, then eased himself down on Coron's left. He saw Viper smile as she returned to Coron's right.

“Adam,” Coron started, “we are a special trinity. I will be Lord; Viper is the best of my disciples; you are the sacrifice, appearing again after two thousand years. In the world, there are no others like us. The universe is a play: we are the main characters. The Master has spoken. Go ahead and read.” Coron indicated for Adam to look at the book.

Adam stood up and approached the altar as another rumbling passed underneath them. The book contained small handwritten lines, hundreds of words on each page—hundreds of thousands of words in total. Adam glanced at one line in the middle: “The blood from his hands will flow like merciless streams. . . .” Then, a few pages on, another line: “She will serve Lord Coron with a love that is ocean deep. . . .”

The same words appeared over and over:
blood, sacrifice, death, pain, service, love
 . . . A lot of the phrases were similar; it was an obsessive outpouring of insanity. Page after page after page.

“Turn to the beginning,” said Coron.

Adam flicked back, and several times, near the bottom of the first page, he saw a name in the margin. His name. He turned to the very last page: “Adam.” At the top of the last page: “Adam, a willing sacrifice . . .” Sometimes his name was in capitals. He flicked back. “ADAM is a sack of filth that will burst open if he becomes fourteen.” It was rambling, inconsistent, bizarre. The words seemed to spill from the pages and float in front of his eyes.

Adam was thinking about tearing the book up, or tipping a candle onto it, when Coron called him back: “Come and kneel before the Master.”

Adam returned, his mind needled by the phrase
willing sacrifice
. He knelt.

There was silence, and then Coron boomed, as if in triumph, “The Master is here. Let us listen.”

Adam glanced across. Coron and Viper had both closed their eyes.

Coron saw burning pebble eyes, a wrinkled face and a thin, cloaked body. He heard the Master speak: “Well done, Coron. You have served me well by bringing the boy here.”

“Thank you, Master,” said Coron.

“I hear him,” said Adam.

Sound again welled up in Coron's ears. “The boy must serve me. He must be a willing sacrifice. He must become one of us.”

“Yes, he will,” said Coron.

“Yes,” added Adam.

Coron turned to Adam, eyes half open. “Can you see the Master?”

“No,” said Adam confidently, “but I heard him.” He thought frantically for something he had read on the last page of Coron's book, hoping to deceive him. “He says that I must be a willing sacrifice.”

Viper frowned. “Lord Coron, he mocks us.”

“No,” said Coron, excited. “He has repeated the words of the Master. He did hear.”

In Adam's room
The Great Book
was laid out on a table. Some sentences had been written out tens of times in pen, like lines set as a punishment at school. Others had been copied and decorated, and about ten were taped to the wall. Soon the room was papered with quotations from Coron's book.