Troubletwisters (12 page)

UNLIKE HER BROTHER, JAIDE DID
scream as she tried to stop herself from being swallowed up by the hole as well. She was already sliding in the mud, slipping inexorably toward the patch of turbulent earth, which was moving as if in answer to strong currents below the surface. But at the last second she managed to grab a tree trunk, forcing her fingernails into the bark so hard they broke. She came to rest with her feet in loose earth up to her ankles.

‘Jack!’

There was no answer.

‘Jack!’

Again Jack did not answer, but something else did. There was a flicker of movement in the hole. Jaide pulled herself back with a shriek as thousands of red ants boiled up out of the earth.

But the ants didn’t attack. They were busy filling in the hole, burying her brother. Jaide scrambled upright and put her back to the tree, just as a dozen milky-eyed rats poked their heads out of the roiling mix of dirt and ants. The rats turned as one and opened their mouths, speaking together.

‘Come! Come to us, troubletwister!’

Jaide screamed again and went up the tree faster than she had ever climbed before. The rats watched her, their horrible eyes moving in unison, and then a great column of white-eyed red ants swarmed out of the dirt and came straight to the tree, climbing in an incredibly fast swathe of red and black and white.

Twenty feet up, Jaide looked down, just for a moment. The tide of ants was almost upon her, and the rats had disappeared back under the loose earth. There was no sign of Jack at all.

The vanguard of the ants reached her foot. Jaide shut her eyes and jumped toward the river, her arms outstretched in the approved safety-jump style.

The wind shrieked across her face. Light spun around her. River, sky and sun dazzled her as she braced herself for the sudden impact of the water.

But there was no impact. Jaide felt something cold under her hands and she instinctively gripped an iron rail. She opened her eyes, utterly disoriented as, far too close, a car honked its horn.

She wasn’t in the river. For a moment Jaide feared that she might faint, but she couldn’t do that. Jack needed her, and the rats and ants might be coming for her at that very moment. She needed to do something!

Jaide’s vision cleared, and she looked in wonderment around her. She was on the bridge.

Below her, the trees whipped and swayed. She was high above the bank, at least momentarily safe from what she knew lay in the shadows.

I flew
, Jaide thought.
The wind took me here!

‘Are you all right?’

Jaide felt a hand on her shoulder and gasped with fright. She pushed herself away, but it was only a portly man in a baseball cap, who had just got out of the car that was stopped close by in the middle of the bridge.

‘I didn’t see you at first,’ said the man. He held up his hands to show that he meant no harm. ‘I didn’t . . . I didn’t hit you, did I?’

‘My brother,’ said Jaide, pointing frantically over the safety rail. ‘My brother!’

‘It’s all right, Alf,’ said a familiar voice. ‘She’s with me.’

All the blood drained to Jaide’s toes. She didn’t need to turn to know that Grandma X was on the bridge, too – with her hair wild and her slippers showing from under her hastily donned coat. Her expression was furious and her eyes bored into Jaide’s.

‘I’ll take care of her.’

Jack’s chest was burning and he was desperate to breathe, but he didn’t dare open his mouth. Then he felt himself fall again, the earth giving way completely, and he landed heavily on his backside.

He instinctively took a breath, a breath that turned into a series of sobs and coughs. But at least he
could
breathe. More dirt rained down on him and he quickly scrabbled backward to avoid being buried under a miniature landslide.

The shower of earth stopped. Jack brushed himself off and looked around, his eyes slowly adapting to the darkness. He was relieved to find that he could see as well as breathe, even though there was no visible source of illumination. He guessed there must be daylight leaking in somewhere.

He was in a dimly lit tunnel that might once have been some kind of sewer. It was circular, wide enough to stand up in, and made out of concrete. A jagged hole had been smashed in the ceiling, through which he and a small mountain of dirt had just fallen. Dozens of tiny red ants crawled across the ground, waving their angry feelers at him.

Thin, white tree roots stretched like harp strings across one end of the tunnel, to his right. He couldn’t see what was at the other end, but for the moment his thoughts were directed above the ground.

What was happening to Jaide?

Jack picked himself up and started to dig at the ceiling with his bare hands, but as fast as he tried, more earth fell down on him. Ants followed, scrambling into his clothes and biting him. Then a big lump of concrete missed him by an inch, forcing him to stop.

He told himself to stay calm. He was scared, he was covered in matted earth, there were ants crawling all over him, but at least he was alive. And he could see, too, which was a great relief – although he still couldn’t work out where the light was coming from.

Then he heard the voice. A soft, slurring voice that did not sound at all human.

‘Troubletwister . . . Troubletwister . . .’

Jack looked up. Directly above him, a great mass of white-eyed ants was hanging down like a swarm of bees migrating from a hive. The ants moved as one, tens of thousands of them working together. As Jack watched, a large and very dead rat was pushed to the front of the mass, and then the ants pulled and pushed the mouth and inflated the dead rat’s chest.

The voice came out of this dead rat’s mouth.

‘So good you have come at last, troubletwister!’

‘Oh, I didn’t see you there . . . Good morning.’

‘Not to worry, Alf. I appreciate your stopping. There’s some traffic building up now. Best you be moving on.’

‘Right you are.’

Alf nodded to Grandma X, almost bowing, and hurried back to his car. A truck and two other cars were queued up behind him, as close to a traffic jam as Portland ever saw. Their drivers watched curiously, wondering what an old lady and a young girl were doing in the middle of the iron bridge.

Jaide opened her mouth to call for help, but at that moment Grandma X’s ringed hand came down on her shoulder and the girl could neither move nor speak. Jaide was locked into her body as though it were a coffin.

Grandma X waved with her other hand as Alf drove away and the backed-up traffic began to flow again. Jaide found that she could move her eyes, but looking at Grandma X didn’t help. The old woman had the air of someone dragged backward out of bed, and she wasn’t happy about it at all.

‘When I take my hand off you, I want you to tell me where Jackaran is,’ said Grandma X calmly. ‘It’s vital you do so without delay.’

Jaide couldn’t nod or shake her head. All she could do was stare in frustrated silence and wait for her chance.

‘Don’t run, Jaidith,’ said Grandma X, as though she could read her mind. ‘I don’t know what on earth you think is going on, but I am not your enemy. Your brother needs help, and only we can give it to him.’

The spell came off. Jaide pushed herself away and immediately tripped over Kleo, who yowled and retreated behind Grandma X. Jaide landed on her elbow. The pain was sharp and startling. Tears sprang to her eyes.

Grandma X showed little sympathy as she hauled Jaide to her feet.

‘Every second counts, Jaide. Tell me what happened to Jackaran.’

Jaide clambered to her feet, very confused. She’d thought the rats and ants and everything else worked for Grandma X. Surely the woman already knew what had happened to Jack?

‘We were going to school, but the rats were there . . . your rats . . . then someone called to us from the trees and it was . . . it was like we couldn’t resist . . . or Jack couldn’t. He went first and . . . he fell into a hole that swallowed him up and there were ants and I climbed a tree and jumped and . . . then I was here, I don’t know how.’

‘Show me where it happened,’ said Grandma X urgently. She pushed Jaide into movement and followed closely behind. ‘There were rats, you say? White-eyed rats?’

‘Yes, at the school and then . . . the person, the one calling, he . . . it . . . was just all rats as well,’ Jaide said. ‘Look, under that willow with the two branches in an F, the clear patch of dirt. That was a hole and Jack went in it! Your rats and ants have probably got him right now!’

‘They’re not my rats and ants,’ said Grandma X. She was peering at the bare patch of ground and fumbling with something in her bag.

‘Who do they belong to, then?’ Jaide asked weakly. She recognised the feeling that was starting to spread through her, underneath her fear for Jack. She didn’t want to acknowledge it, but she recognised that Grandma X was speaking the honest truth – and that was accompanied by the dawning, awful realisation that she had made a bad mistake.

‘I will explain everything as soon as I can. Right now we need to rescue Jack.’

Grandma X strode down the slope to the bare patch where Jack had disappeared. The live ants were gone, but when Jaide got closer she could see quite a number of dead ones sprinkled around.

‘Be careful,’ said Grandma X, waving her back. ‘That’s how he was taken, through unsound soil.’

‘Taken where?’ Jaide still wasn’t sure about Grandma X, but she didn’t know who else she could turn to, to get help for Jack. The police or the fire department certainly wouldn’t listen if she showed them apparently solid ground and said that Jack had been taken down into the earth.

‘Probably into an old drain. The town is crisscrossed with them. We had a very energetic engineer for several decades back in the nineteen hundreds.’ Grandma X looked up from her examination of the soil. ‘Did you see any other creatures apart from the rats and the ants?’

Jaide shook her head. ‘No. Does that matter?’

‘It gives us . . . and Jack . . . a little more time. Let’s go!’

Grandma X started up the hill.

‘But shouldn’t we stay here . . . and dig or something?’

‘No. Jack won’t be directly underneath anymore. Come on!’

Grandma X was already halfway back up to the bridge. Jaide hesitated, then hurried after her grandmother.

‘Where are we going?’ she gasped. ‘What are you going to do?’