Voices in Stone (14 page)

At least thirty kids were crammed into the welfare office, using every chair and sitting all over the floor.

Jayden and Gav had insisted on going there; they were both freaking out that they were going to die. Gav had his sleeve rolled up and was pointing at what he claimed was a rash, although it looked like normal skin to me.

It seemed like half our geography class was there already, plus a load of Year Sevens who were busy crying. The staff were looking really hassled, and one of them was doing nothing but ringing parents.

I’d gone with Jayden and Gav, not because I thought we’d been covered in slow-acting poison, but because there
was no way I could find out what was going on if I stayed in school. I needed to access Dad’s Network of super-freaks by hacking into his email account, like I had before. But he’s so paranoid about security, I could only do that from his computer. If anyone had information about this kind of weird stuff, it was the Network.

The trouble was, the staff weren’t actually sending that many people home, not compared to how many there were. It was only the really bad ones. Everyone else was given, “Why don’t you sit quietly until you feel better?” or, “Have a glass of water.”

I needed something better than Gav’s rash to get out of school. I needed the old standby. I walked over to Mrs Bhatnagar.

“Yes?”

“I feel sick.”

“Well go and sit over…”

“No, really—” And I clapped my hands over my mouth, bent over a bit and made this retching noise, then I looked up all panicky, like the only thing I cared about was not spewing down myself.

“Get to the toilet!”

I ran there, making loads of sick noises, and dabbed a bit of water on my forehead so I’d look clammy. When I got back, Mrs Bhatnagar was too busy to check me over properly.

“I’m going to ring your mother,” she said crossly. “The last thing we need is a sickness outbreak as well.”

“No!” I said panicking, “Mum’s… interviewing people for a job all day, her phone’ll be switched off. Call my dad.”

It had to be Dad; Mum doesn’t have any of Dad’s geeky-freak mates in her email address book, plus she’d know straight off that I was pulling one.

So Mrs Bhatnagar rang Dad, and told me to wait at reception.

I should’ve known of course. We’re talking about my dad here.

“I
told
you, Gil asked me to come here and pick up his son because he’s working.” Stu had his anorak pulled right up around his face, even when he was talking to the school secretary.

“Could you lower your hood please, so I can get a clear look at you,” she said suspiciously.

“You’ve got CCTV,” he said, pointing at the camera above reception. “So no, I couldn’t, because I can’t afford to get on the system.”

The secretary muttered something I couldn’t hear and carried on double and triple checking everything about Stu. I’m not surprised, because he looked like the last person you’d want to send a kid off with. While she was checking him out, Gav arrived in reception and sat down next to me.

“You going home too?” I asked him.

He nodded. “With the rash, and feeling sick, and… the rest.” He watched Stu for a minute. “Who’s that nutter?”

I didn’t answer, pretending Stu was nothing to do with me.

“Hey,” said Gav. “Have you heard about Isis and her seance mates?”

I shook my head.

“They’re all in massive trouble, and Isis has been chucked out of school! The head said this is all their fault.” He inspected the invisible rash on his arm.

I tried to get more out of him, but that was all he knew. And by then the secretary had finished checking Stu.

“All right,” she said, “Gray’s father
did
ring to confirm you could collect his son.”

Stu nodded inside his coat, making this crinkly noise. “I’ll look after him, don’t you worry. Had kids of my own.”

The secretary looked like she didn’t quite believe him.

“Come on,” Stu called at me.

I got up from my chair, wishing Gav wasn’t there.

“Why couldn’t Dad come?” I asked Stu as we headed for the doors.

“He’s halfway through chopping a dead tree down. Said he couldn’t leave until it was safe.” Stu glanced at me. “You should have rung your mum.”

“She’s busy too,” I lied.

Stu pushed open the door and I stood in the doorway, my heartbeat suddenly drumming in my ears.

“Come on,” said Stu. “I haven’t got all day.”

“Where’s your car?” I asked, trying to spot his manky old Volvo in the car park.

“Up on the road – I couldn’t get any nearer,” said Stu. “Do you know how many cars there are at this school, and half of them are double-parked! How can one school need so many teachers?”

Up on the road. That meant all the way along the drive, through the gates, up the steps, and then however far Stu was parked after that.

I took a breath, and made myself step outside. Made myself start walking.

“Can we go a bit quicker?” I asked Stu, who was walking down the pavement at a snail’s pace.

I scanned around as we walked. I got about fifteen metres from the school entrance, then:
Listen, listen.

I spun about. Behind me was a boy looking exactly like I had when I was in Year Seven, even down to the too-big blazer Mum had bought so it would last longer.

It hurts
, said the boy.

I picked up my pace.
Don’t let them know you’re scared,
I told myself.
Walk fast but calm.
There’s only one so far, and he’s keeping his distance.

“I thought you were ill,” said Stu, shuffling a little bit faster. “You don’t seem very ill to me.”

“I am though, that’s why I need to get to Dad’s.”

“You’re not going there,” said Stu.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not just dropping you off and leaving you by yourself.”

Another, older, voice from behind me.
HELP
.

Help
. The voice of a tiny child.

My legs overruled my brain. I sprinted down the school drive, yanking open the gate. Voices called out behind me, jumbling together into the same repeated word:
He… Hel… Helppp… Helpppp… Help… elllppp!
And from the corner of my eye I could see they were keeping up with me.

I ran along the pavement, faster than ever, and threw myself at the door of Stu’s car.

It was locked, of course. He was still dawdling his way up the steps, like he had all the time in the world, but they were right behind me. All different ages, from babies to old men. At least twenty of them, matching each other step by step. Their mouths opened in unison.
Heeellllpppp meeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I pressed against the car, rattling the door handle.
Clickclickclickclickclick
. It stayed locked.

They took another step closer, all those figures wearing different faces of me. Plump-cheeked little me as a toddler, lanky adult me, old man me with my wrinkled face half-covered by a grey beard. But my eyes are nothing like theirs were.
No one
has eyes like that.

“Stu!”
I screamed.

Old-man me raised his hand, reaching, and all the others did the same.

“STU! Unlock the CAR!”

The figure’s hand was centimetres from my face, its eyes empty and filled with nothing. I wanted to look away, but it was like being pulled in. I was going to fall into the darkness in its eyes and carry on falling forever.

Blebeep.

The lights on the Volvo winked, the locks all clicked up. I yanked the door open and flung myself inside.

Clunk
. Door shut. Solid Volvo between me and the…

Only Stu, walking up the street. Nothing else.

I sat in the car, trying not to choke on my own heartbeats, until Stu opened the driver’s door and peered in, frowning.

“What was all that about?”

I told Stu. I had to.

There are things you can keep secret, but running screaming down the street from people only you can see, well that’s one of the harder ones. Isis would’ve thought
up a convincing lie, but she’s used to making up excuses for behaving weirdly.

Luckily, Stu was more likely to believe me than anyone else I know. Than anyone in the world, probably. Stu thinks about more crazy stuff by breakfast than most people do in their whole lives. So he sat in the car and listened. Didn’t roll his eyes, or tell me to stop making stuff up. And as we drove away he started on his theories.

“Sounds like narcissistic projected imagery.”

“A what?”

“A hallucination of yourself. Sometimes people see them naturally, as a result of serious mental illness, but there are reports of them having been induced. Military experiments and stuff, you know? And some people say the images can be projected into your brain as a disguise by some of the less ethical alien species.”

“Aliens, again?”

“Less ethical ones, obviously. But it can’t be that, because I didn’t see anything at all in the street…” He scratched his stubbly chin, so the car wandered around the road a bit. “Where have you experienced these NPIs?”

He always shortens things to their initials. I suppose it makes them sound more science and less nuts.

I took a breath to calm myself. “At the quarry. In my back garden. At the standing stone. In school earlier. Just then.”

“Can you see them now?”

I shook my head. “As soon as I got in the car, they went. And vanish if I go inside a building.”

“Interesting. Any other patterns you’ve noticed?”

“They’re getting worse. I mean, the first time was just this one little boy, but today…”

I hadn’t been able to outrun them, no matter how fast I ran.

Stu nodded at the rear-view mirror. “And you say your friends have had similar experiences?”

“Yeah. And Jayden and Gav both saw something weeks ago, like me, but they didn’t say.”

“So this started some time ago, and has been slowly getting worse?”

“No, actually it was getting better until this weekend, when me and Isis went to the standing stone. Since then it’s gone crazy.”

“Everyone’s seeing images of themselves?” asked Stu.

“Yeah. No. I mean, Gav and Jayden did, but Isis didn’t and the Year Sevens in the welfare office were all crying about ghosts, but they didn’t say anything about them looking like themselves.”

Stu grunted. “Forget them. Ghosts don’t exist. But these friends seeing the same as you, were they on the school trip to the quarry?”

I nodded.

“Ha!” Stu slapped the steering wheel with his hand, and the car wobbled again. “I knew there was something going on up there. Now we’re getting closer!”

After that, Stu drove so fast and dangerously I thought he’d kill us both. He couldn’t wait to get home and start investigating. But at the same time, being a freak himself, he took it seriously. When we arrived he got out of the car first, opening his garden gate and front door so I could make a run for it from the safety of his car to the safety of his bungalow.

And then we were in the hallway, and I was meeting his wife.

How can Stu have a wife? I still don’t get it. She had a
soft, smiley sort of face and short, curly grey hair. She looked like anyone you’d see in a shop, like someone’s nice granny. I mean, she was wearing a fluffy yellow jumper.

“… and now he’s getting hyper-real mobile hallucinatory experiences!” Stu was talking really fast at her. “I’m theorising it’s the result of low-dose exposure to psychoactive compounds with a delayed onset, possibly triggered by some environmental factor…”

The hallway was painted magnolia, with a pale blue carpet. Every bit of furniture and every ornament was dusted and sparkly, and it smelled of furniture polish and lavender, instead of the fags and BO that Stu emitted.

Stu’s wife didn’t seem to be listening to him. “They sent you home?” she asked me. “You don’t look so well – do you want some cake? I made lemon drizzle yesterday, and there’s a good chunk of it left.”

Stu stopped ranting to tut. “The school said he was feeling sick. You can’t give him cake!”

“I don’t feel so bad now,” I said. “I’m sure I could eat some, thank you.”

“And so polite.” She smiled at me.

“We’re going into the study,” said Stu.

His wife rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t want to do that, surely? It’s very stuffy in there. Why doesn’t Gray just watch telly and wait for his dad…”

“Because this is an emergency!” shouted Stu. “We can’t just sit around…”

“Stu,” his wife said sternly.

He lowered his voice and muttered, “Sorry.”

“He gets excited, that’s all,” she said to me. “Now, do you want cake and telly?”

“No thank you,” I said, even though it sounded good, because Stu was right, it did feel like an emergency. If I didn’t sort out what was happening to me, my head was going to explode.

“Well cake at least,” she said, going to get some.

Stu’s study was more what I’d expected of him, and totally different to the rest of the bungalow. The curtains were drawn, the walls were covered in shelves, and the shelves were filled with books and stacked-up paper. Broken-looking electronics equipment, old magazines and newspapers were lying about everywhere. Dead computers sat in various corners, including this prehistoric one that must have been made in the 90s. There was a narrow gap
through to Stu’s desk, and on that was a really flash-looking laptop, a printer, a monitor, the tower of a desktop, a shredder and more papers stacked in a leaning pile.

Stu noticed me looking at the broken computers. “I can’t throw the old ones away, not once they’ve had the Database on them. Even wiped, there’s ways of getting the info out again. Can’t risk it falling into the wrong hands.” He switched on the laptop and sat down. “Right, let’s start with UK-Earths. What was the name of the woman you mentioned, who showed you round the quarry?”

“Dr Harcourt,” I said, through a mouthful of cake.

Stu tapped into the computer.

“Aren’t you going to look in the Database?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Google, then darknet, then Database.” He glanced at me. “Hasn’t your dad taught you the basics?”