Vengeance Child (25 page)

‘Why?'

‘You look as if you need some help.'

‘No, sir.'

‘Aren't you worried about something?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Why aren't you back in the hostel?'

‘I-I don't want to,' Archer stammered.

‘It's going to get all stormy out here. You won't like that, will you?'

Archer was so preoccupied with his worries that he failed to notice how edgy the man seemed. He constantly checked the street as if he expected someone to appear at any minute. The boy strove to clear his mind of all those jangling thoughts that had no right to be there.

Mayor Wilkes sidled up. ‘You don't look well, little fellow. You've not had this stomach bug, have you?'

Archer shook his head.

‘That's a relief. You know this is a bad sickness. Really bad. People are dying.'

‘Uh?' The word ‘die' penetrated the fog of disordered thoughts.

‘Oh, yes. Dr Nazra told me so. Victor Brodman's got the disease. In a few hours he might be dead.' The mayor loomed closer. ‘Archer . . . it is Archer, isn't it? You smiled when I said that Victor is going to die. Why's that?'

‘He said he'd marry Laura.'

‘Oh? Well, there'll be none of that now. Victor will be going to his own funeral rather than a wedding.' The mayor stepped even closer. ‘I told you about people dying because I can trust you. You're very grown up, you know. I bet you're more intelligent,
brainier
, than the rest. You know I'm right, don't you?'

Archer hadn't experienced anything like this before. A grown-up who talked to him like another grown-up. Even though Archer had an old face, his diminutive stature along with curly, little boy blue hair made people talk down to him like he was a baby. This he liked. A big important man that
trusted
Archer. The boy straightened to make himself taller.

When he spoke he fancied his voice had become deeper, almost manlike. ‘I've got something really important to do.'

‘Oh? What?' Mayor Wilkes asked.

‘I've got to find Jay. It's important. Most important thing in the world.'

‘I'm sure he'll turn up soon. Look, my house is round the corner. Why don't we get out of the cold?'

In the window of the post office Archer saw reflections of himself and the mayor. So that's how people see us, he thought. A big grown-up man and a tiny boy with curly hair? Archer shook his head, determined to be grown-up. ‘I've got to find Jay.'

The man put his hand on the boy's shoulder. ‘I understand. But first—'

A pair of figures hurried down the street. Mayor Wilkes quickly stepped back from the boy. The men went to a cottage where a window shutter had broken loose. It swung back and forth on its hinges with a metallic screeching.

A woman with long silver hair rushed from a nearby house. ‘Mayor Wilkes, have you seen Dr Nazra? I can't wake my Frank up. He's had this bug . . .'

‘Try the surgery,' Wilkes told her. As if the wind whisked her away she rushed up the lane. The mayor smiled falsely at Archer. ‘I know, we can find Jay together. Now we're friends we can help each other.'

‘I dunno,' Archer began doubtfully.

‘This Jay, is he the one that the other children don't like?'

‘I've got to find him
now
! It's really important. He's said Laura's name and my name, and—'

‘Yes, yes, I'm sure the child can be vexing.'

‘Now he's gone . . . I don't know where to look for him.'

‘You know, Archer, I saw him not five minutes ago.'

‘Oh?' Hope surged in Archer's chest.

‘Absolutely. He was going that way.' Wilkes pointed into the teeth of the gale. ‘He headed up that pathway there, toward the forest. Come on, we'll track him down together.'

Thirty-Two

Mayor Wilkes didn't envisage any obstacles of note. He'd told this odd little child, with the old face surrounded by blond curls, that Jay headed in the direction of the woods. Of course, Wilkes hadn't a clue where the Jay creature had vanished. He didn't care. All that mattered was to lure Archer out of sight of nosey villagers, then he could simply force him to hand over the bracelet. Simple. Then get himself out of this awful weather. The mayor glanced back. The village had almost vanished in the murk. If the boy complained to anyone about Wilkes, he'd merely say he saw the boy find the bracelet on the ground. Seeing as the boy pocketed a possibly valuable item, Wilkes had done the socially responsible thing and confiscated it in order to hand it over to the police on the mainland. And if anyone was damn well persistent enough to enquire about the whereabouts of this piece of jewellery, Wilkes would airily dismiss the question with, ‘Oh, it turned out to be a plastic novelty. Utterly worthless. I just dropped it in a bin.' Would anyone accept a child's allegation seriously, especially a strange little child with behavioural problems? Wilkes had absolute confidence that he, an elected mayor and successful businessman, would be believed. The boy would be dumped back wherever he came from.

The pair of them followed a path along the spine of the island. Ahead, the castle tower emerged from shifting rags of mist. Behind them, the village had vanished. Trees creaked as gales wrenched at their limbs.

Here will do just nicely.
‘Stop right there.'

The boy turned that old face toward him. God, such a creepy, old man's face. Wilkes opened his mouth to speak again. Just then, he noticed a shape emerge from the fog. The figure hurried toward them. Inwardly, he groaned. This would be tricky.

‘Hello, Mrs Knowles,' he said in a friendly way as he searched for some excuse why he should be out in the fields with one of the Lodge children. For this was no other than Victor Brodman's sister.
Damn the family
.
They must have been put on earth to try my patience
. ‘Terrible weather,' he purred. ‘I saw this child by himself. It—'

‘Can't stop,' she sounded oddly drowsy. ‘I'm . . . I've . . . the doctor . . . Nnn . . . I've forgotten his name. It's my husband, Graham. I'm worried. He's so confused. Now he can't even remember my name.' She swayed. ‘Don't feel so bright myself. Uh . . . Can't stop.' She lurched away.

‘So another one will soon bite the dust. Deary me. Now, Archer . . .'

But it was Archer who turned the tables. ‘I don't need Jay,' he announced loudly. ‘You're my friend. I trust you.'

‘Naturally.' Wilkes got ready to turn out the boy's pockets.

‘So I've decided to show you something that's secret . . . top secret.'

This surprised Wilkes enough to make him pause.

‘I found something this week. It's been hidden. Jay took me there. I hate Jay, so he can go stink.'

‘What did you find, exactly?'

‘You won't believe your eyes.' The kid's face shone. ‘Promise not to be scared. It doesn't look nice. In fact, it's really horrible. But when you see it you'll know what to do to make everything all right.'

‘Just what have you found, Archer?'

‘Come on, I'll show you.' With that the boy dashed along the path to the woods. Wilkes followed. His instinct for self-preservation told him to find out what the boy had found. Wilkes knew there were secrets on the island. If they were his secrets he wanted them to stay that way.

Thirty-Three

This is the longest thirty minutes of my life, Victor thought as he waited. He could hear sheer bloody bedlam coming from the hostel. On no account could he help. Laura forbade it. After all, Victor was to blame for this episode. To distract Jay from willing those planes to collide he'd told the boy that he planned to marry Laura. Yes, a lie. Anything to stop those twin contrails meeting in a fireball five miles above the island. So he waited. In a yard nearby an iron gate banged with nerve-jangling ferocity. Leaves torn from trees formed green torrents around his head. A head full of thoughts that were as turbulent as the river. He recalled the near miss with the tanker that had sent a tidal wave crashing on to the shore. Laura would have died if he hadn't reached her in time. Who was to blame? An irresponsible captain with a deadline to meet? No, it had to be Jay. Victor had watched the aircraft turn to fly at one another. Then this epidemic. Islanders had died. Now Victor, himself, faced the second stage of the mystery illness – forgetfulness, lethargy, coma, then . . . he avoided thinking that grim, dark word. As soon as possible he should warn his sister and brother-in-law. So . . . this epidemic . . . this plague.
Who's to blame? Jay. He's the monstrous spider spinning a web of disaster. Each strand a promise of death
. Victor rubbed his face. For a moment he'd forgotten he'd been standing there in the street. Was this the start of the next phalanx of symptoms? How long until second stage really kicked in? How long had he got before he stopped functioning? A day? A few hours? Jay? Where is Jay?

‘Victor . . . Victor?'

Drowsily, he searched for the source of the voice.

‘Victor, up here.'

He lifted his eyes. Laura, beautiful Laura, leaned out of the hostel's office window on the upper storey. ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair.' He clenched his fist, feeling betrayed by himself. He was letting go . . . his mind was slipping . . . 

‘Victor. Hurry. I haven't got long.'

You're not the only one.
He bit his lip hard. The pain sharpened his wits again. But for how long? The church clock ticked the seconds down to his own personal zero hour. He crossed the street to the hostel.

‘No, not that way, Victor. The children will see you. Use the side entrance.'

Seeing Laura focused his mind.
Now's the time to sort this out once and for all. Today we act on Jay.

Moments later Laura greeted him at the top of the stairs. Holding her finger to his lips, she led him into the office where they'd be alone.

The shouts of the children downstairs were falling; anger yielded to more subdued, gloomier emotions.

‘Close the door behind you, Victor.' Laura's face was the epitome of anxiety. ‘The children mustn't know you're here. Especially not alone with me. I've had to come away for a while, too. They get upset when they see me.'

‘I had to tell Jay something to stop him. I figured a surprise would distract him.'

‘It worked, thank God. It's just the effect on the other children. Hearing the news from Archer that we were getting married has knocked them off kilter.' She gave an expressive shrug. ‘These aren't ordinary children, Victor. An innocuous comment can traumatize them. Lou's talking to them now. She's pretending you told Jay that we were getting married for a joke. If she can convince them you were joking, then . . .' She shrugged again. ‘We may have averted one disaster.'

He sat on the corner of the desk. ‘Now we only have to avert the other disasters then we're home and dry.' He gave a grim smile. ‘Nearly being swept away by the wash from that ship this morning might not be the worst thing that happens to us today.'

‘You've heard about the epidemic?' Her expression was grave. ‘That there's a second stage?'

He nodded. ‘And people are dying. I'm sitting here but I know I should be running like hell to warn Mary and my brother-in-law. They've both had first stage.'

‘And so have you.'

‘So far, I'm fine.'

‘But we do have to act quickly.'

‘Jay?'

‘Jay,' she confirmed. Then she turned an open laptop toward Victor so he could see the screen. ‘Remember what Solomon told us about changelings and curses? Well, I already knew about that. When bizarre events started happening around Jay at Badsworth Lodge I did my own research.'

‘So you did know more than you were letting on?'

‘Absolutely. But how do you go public on something like this? That a boy rescued from a refugee ship has the power to curse people? Look at this.' She pointed at the screen. ‘A curse is the opposite side of the coin to a blessing. Just as most religions have rites that bless newborn children, or homes, or harvests then you get the dark side. There are rites to wish harm on others, or actively invoke evil to befall people, whether it's to cause accidents, sickness or blight crops. In voodoo ritual an object, such as a skull or a shoe, can be implanted with the curse. Then the person inflicting the curse would hide the object in their victim's house or even on a path that they know the victim uses.'

‘So, like a landmine? Only it detonates bad luck rather than explosive.'

Laura scrolled downward. ‘See, thousands of web pages about curses.' She clicked a link. A page appeared showing photographs of strips of metal on which words had been scratched. ‘These pieces of lead were found in springs that supplied a Roman bath house.' She read aloud from the page. ‘“Roman citizens would bathe in the hot mineral springs, which they believed healed skin complaints, arthritis and leprosy. They also believed that the goddess of the thermal spring could drive away the evil eye. Also, if someone had harmed you, you could write the person's name and the damage you wanted to inflict on a lead tablet, then throw it into the water.” Here's one that says, “Lucius Praedox took four gold coins from my purse. I beg of Minerva to extract the blood from his heart.” And another less specific one, but potentially more destructive. “I wish that Neptune sink all the ships of the Egyptians for men of that race broke my husband's bones in Alexandria.”'

Victor scanned the screen. ‘So a curse can be as accurately targeted as a bullet or, like a nuclear bomb, cause indiscriminate destruction.' He caught Laura's eye. ‘If you believe such a thing.'