Voices in Stone (8 page)

Jess nodded, then turned to the crowd with a threatening posture. “We’re nearly done, so you better not tell about any of this. If you do, then the ghosts…” she glared at a boy in the front who looked too young for secondary school, “will come to GET YOU!”

He jumped, white-faced.

Jess’s glare turned back into a smile. “Any last questions?”

“No!” said Mandeville. “No more questions!”

Isis began to shake her head, knowing what was coming next, but he leaned in close and chilly.

“You promised,” he hissed, “and I have kept my side of the bargain.”

He was right, and she was trapped.

Isis put her hand on Jess’s arm, catching her attention and everyone else’s.

“Um, I’m going to do something a bit different now,” Isis said. She tried to sound as firm as Jess, but it came out thin and trembling.

Jess frowned at her.

“I’m going to let my… spirit guide speak. He’s…” Isis looked at Mandeville, unsure how to describe him. Victorian? Decomposing? “He’s very wise.”

Mandeville looked pleased, while Jess’s frown deepened. Isis felt guilty, not having told her about this, but there hadn’t been a chance.

Isis nodded at Mandeville. “Only what you promised,” she mouthed silently.

“Of course, my dear.”

Mandeville swirl-stepped in front of her, half obscuring the curious faces of the crowd. A few children coughed and someone sneezed. Mandeville lifted his arms, and his body began to dissolve and lift, spreading out into a dusty, invisible cloud above everyone in the dim alleyway. The air became noticeably chillier, and it seemed as if the moss was growing higher up the dank walls, fat drops of dirty moisture oozing out of the bricks.

“A little effect,” whispered Mandeville, dipping his disembodied
head close to hers. At the edge of her vision she saw Jess shiver, and she could hear people asking what was going on, their voices nervous. In front of Isis, Mandeville’s face was getting more solid, even as his body thinned. Denser, more real than she’d ever seen it, his eyes jolts of blue. He pressed closer and Isis wanted to back away, gasping at his rotten-meat stench.

“Don’t worry, my dear.”

With a snap of his head, his lips moved towards hers in a grotesque mockery of a kiss. Her hands flew up, but there was nothing to push at. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.

Mandeville backed off, smiling, and she could see the crowd again. Everyone’s eyes were on her, their faces caught between laughter and puzzlement.

“What are you doing?” hissed Jess.

Isis began to answer, but what she actually said was, “Ah, yes. Now let me see.”

A girl at the front squeaked.

Isis touched disbelieving hands to her mouth, her eyes on Mandeville. He nodded at her, and she said, “As I promised, just your voice, my dear.”

An old man’s rasping tone, an old man’s rattling words. She felt caught, frozen by shock.

“Isis?” whispered Jess.

Mandeville moved his mouth, and Isis spoke.

“I am Isis’s spirit guide. I am the one who guides this child, and allows all of you to make contact with the otherworldly realms.”

It was Mandeville’s voice exactly. Not Isis’s vocal chords mimicking an old man. His words were too deep in tone, and echoed strangely as if being spoken in two places at once. Which of course, they were.

“How’s she doing that?” an older girl asked.

“It’s got to be special effects,” said a boy, too loud. “She’s got speakers hidden somewhere.”

But Jess shook her head, eyes wide. “She hasn’t.” And there was something about the way she said it: afraid instead of bossy. Everyone was tense now, even the oldest boys.

Mandeville moved his mouth, and again Isis spoke in his old man’s rasp.

“I have things to tell, preparing you for what is to come. And the first is this: you are all going to die…”

The girl who’d squeaked began to scream, and a moment later everyone was running, scattering out into the daylight beyond the alley.

“Where are they going?” Isis wailed in his dusty, croaky voice. “I’ve only just got started.”

Hayley, Chloe and Nafira squawked and ran at that, joining the panic to get out of the alleyway. Only Jess stayed, white-faced and trembling.

Isis raised her hand, pointing to her mouth.

“No!” Mandeville croaked through her. “You promised!”

Isis jabbed her finger at her mouth, glaring at Mandeville’s drifting form.

“All right then, but I don’t see why…” His grumbling continued as it disappeared from her mouth, leaving her with a feeling that was something like being unzipped.

“Why did you do that?” Isis cried, now she had her own voice back. She turned on Mandeville, furious and not even caring that Jess was staring, her eyes wide with fear.

“Why did
I
do that?” Mandeville asked. “Why did they all run away like
ninnies
?”

“You said they were all going to die!”

“
Everyone
dies,” said Mandeville. “It is the one truth of existence, the inevitable finish to every life. I was going to share my experience of passing through the veil, words to assuage their fear of death. Words of comfort. That’s my mission!”

“Is he still here?” Jess whispered, her voice little more than a quaver. “Your… guide?”

Isis nodded. “He is.”

She could see how scared the other girl was, and yet Jess managed a trembling breath before saying, “What is it that’s going to kill us all? Is it a bomb?”

Mandeville turned to look at Jess, and Isis watched the realisation dawning on him.

“Ah,” he said, “I see how my words could be misinterpreted.”

It was because of Isis that I kept quiet about seeing that little boy. I mean, I knew what people were calling her, all that dead girl stuff. And then she started her seances, and even when everyone was desperately trying to get in on one, at the same time they were still saying things, you know? More and more people were calling her ‘dead girl’, just not to her face. And they went on about how creepy she was, that she could make you ill by looking at you the wrong way. All that.

If I’d mentioned anything about seeing little boys who weren’t there, I’d have been sucked right into the craze, and all of the stuff being said about Isis would’ve turned on to me as well, especially after what Mrs Dewson had told everyone in assembly.

But people didn’t know the half of what I did about her, and I kept quiet about all of it, didn’t I? And I still wasn’t sure she was even really her. Maybe she was still the Devourer? It would explain why she was behaving so differently to before. I mean, when she told me about being able to see ghosts in the summer, she said no one else knew. But there she was, giving seances to all the giggly girls in our year and any boys they fancied. She’d changed, for definite.

I just kept out of it, that’s all. And there wasn’t anyone else I could talk to about the little boy in my garden. My mum would’ve flipped out, Dad would’ve… really enjoyed it, probably. Come up with loads of theories, written a blog about it for his UFO-freak friends. I did try to talk
to other people who’d been on the school trip, but it was like they didn’t know what I was on about.

“Did you see anything… odd that day?”

“No. I don’t know what you’re on about.”

Even Jayden, who’d been screaming at the quarry, just said, “I never screamed.” Like that, a flat-out lie.

I didn’t know if they were playing it down, so they wouldn’t seem weird like Isis, or if I was only one who’d seen the ghostly stuff.

I kept thinking about what had happened the night in August – the Devourer surrounding me, seeing all those ghosts. Had it changed my brain, warped it or something? I was really worried, but I kept my mouth shut.

So I… was… back at school and after a while the stuff about the school trip quietened down. I started to feel normal again. Every now and then I’d catch something out of the corner of my eye, like a figure of someone, but when I turned around, there was never anything there. I decided I was probably just jumpy. All in my head.

A good thing was that Mum patched things up with Dad, because she had to admit he obviously was concerned about my welfare, seeing as he turned up to the school trip only a few minutes after she did. That was the best thing to happen in weeks, because it’d been horrible not seeing him for so long. They agreed Dad could take me
out for the day the next Saturday, and I got focused on that, counting down the days actually, I was looking forward to it so much.

He picked me up after breakfast.

“Look after him, won’t you?” Mum said.

“I always do,” he answered, which got him one of Mum’s sarcastic, folded-arms looks. But she let me go with him.

We got into his camper van, and he took a left out of our road, which isn’t the way to his house.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Dad smiled. “It’s an adventure.”

I got my hopes up then, even though I should’ve known better.

“Is it the dry ski slope?” I asked. Dad shook his head. “Go-karting?” Another shake. I tried to think of things we’d never done, special things. I mean, if you tell someone they’re going on an adventure, especially after they’ve nearly been in hospital twice, you’d think it’d be something good. “One of those places where you climb through trees on ropes?”

Dad snorted. “Can you imagine your mum’s face?” He looked at me, eyes narrowed a bit. “How are you feeling, by the way?”

I shrugged. “Fine. So what is it then?” By now I was getting my hopes under control. This was Dad, after all.

“How about a walk?”

“That’s it? A walk doesn’t count as an adventure!”

Dad squinted at the road, or maybe he was frowning. “It could be one. Like a spy story.”

“How could a walk be that?”

“Well, I was thinking of heading up near to the mining site, so we can see what they’re really up to…”

“No!” I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe him! “It made me really ill, Dad. I don’t want to go back there.”

Dad shook his head. “No, of course, and I don’t want to take you anywhere unsafe, but I want to find out what they’re hiding. We won’t get close, okay? Give ourselves a safe perimeter distance, say half a kilometre. I’ve got some portable EM field monitors and…”

“I don’t want to!”

“Look, I posted what happened to your class and the Network went wild about it. They’re pestering for more data. Stu’s cross-checking into the Database…”

I groaned. If Dad had got Stu and the Network involved I had no hope. The Network’s like this club
for UFO and conspiracy freaks, and Stu is chief-freak.

“Cally thinks it’s all about ley lines, of course,” said Dad chuckling.

“Cally?” I asked, and there was a look on his face, one I knew from all the times we’ve ‘bumped into’ one of his girlfriends on my visiting days. “Is
she
coming?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

I pulled back in my seat, folding my arms tight. “Can you turn the van around? I want to go home.”

“I’m not taking you home!” said Dad. “I’ve hardly seen you for a month.”

“You’ve hardly seen me for two months actually, but you still invited your girlfriend along!” I was so angry I was shouting. “I nearly
died
in the summer, but all you care about is Cally! I want to go home, because if you’ve invited
her
I might as well not be there.”

I expected him to go mental and for us to get into a full-on shouting match, but he didn’t, he just pulled the camper van to the side of the road and stopped. There was only the sound of the indicator and the other cars rushing by.

“Is that really what you think of me?” he asked.

“Yes!”

Dad turned to stare at the road. He sat there for a minute, then twisted back to look at me.

“Maybe I haven’t always been perfect, Gray.” He put his hand out, touched my arm. “But what happened out in that field this summer… sitting with you in Accident and Emergency…” His voice went all croaky. “You’re my son, Gray, that’s what I really care about.”

“Then why have you been fighting with Mum for
months
?” I said. “Why couldn’t you sort it out?”

“It hasn’t been months,” said Dad. “It’s only been six weeks or so.”

“Nine weeks.” I thought I might cry, like some little kid. “This is the first Saturday we’ve had together since the beginning of August.”

Dad sat still as a stone for a minute, then he leaned across and put his arms around me. Gave me a hug, if you can believe it.

“I’m sorry, Gray,” he whispered. “I should have thought.”

And Dad never apologises about
anything
.

“I promise I’ll make it up to you,” he said, letting go of me. “But the thing is…”

“I know,” I sighed. “Cally’s different. Cally’s the one.”

Dad laughed. “Actually, I was going to say it’s already arranged, and they’ve probably left by now so I can’t cancel. But you’re right as well, Cally is special.”

I thought of asking, why her? I mean, he’s had millions of girlfriends. Maybe because I was studying him I noticed the way his frown lines really carved into his forehead. And the tiny wrinkles all over his face, and his leathery skin from being outside so much. That’s when I got it – he was old. He was going to be forty next year, and Mum says men always go a bit strange when they hit forty. “Especially men like your dad.”

A thought popped in my head.

“Are you going to marry Cally?” I asked.

Dad snorted another laugh. “Get
married?
” Then he stopped laughing. “Well, I don’t know.”

We both thought about that for a minute, listening to the
tick-tick
of the indicator and the
whoosh
of traffic. Until I realised.

“You said, ‘
they
’ve left’.”

Dad gave a bit of a shrug. “Invite Cally, invite Isis. You know the score. I thought it’d be nice for you, to have a friend along.”

“You could have asked me,” I muttered.

Dad narrowed his eyes at me. “Have you two fallen out? You were as thick as thieves in the summer.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to go into it.

Dad checked the rear-view mirror.

He flicked the indicator the other way, and we wove back into the lanes of traffic.

“We’ll do something else, I promise. Just us,” he said. “But be nice to Cally today, and Isis.” He flicked a grin at me. “Think of it this way: she could end up being your sister.”

We clattered along the road. I thought we’d go the way the coaches had, but Dad took a completely different route out of town.

“We aren’t going to the quarry entrance, are we?” I asked.

Dad shook his head. “We can’t just walk up to their front door and ask to see their dirty secrets, can we? Anyway, there’s a lot of security up there since your school trip. They’re obviously hiding something, and we’ll get to the bottom of whatever it is, don’t worry.”

I sighed. Sometimes with Dad you just have to let him get on with it. As long as we didn’t get too close.

Beyond the camper van the sky was super-blue, the day was bright and every turning leaf on the trees stood out, oranges and golds dotting the green. Dad turned up a steep lane, revving the camper van to keep us going, then pulled into a small car park.

There was a car already there. Cally’s.

They were standing by it. Isis was wearing leggings and this babyish T-shirt with a sparkly pink cat on it; Cally was in one of her floaty-witch dresses. It was warm and the ground was bone dry, but both of them had wellies on. Cally’s were black with skulls.

Cally had started waving as soon as we pulled up. Her face was lit by a smile and her eyes were on Dad. He was the same, and it was like there was a piece of elastic pulling them together.

Me and Isis were the opposite. I had to force myself to go near her, trying to tell from her eyes or by the way she was standing if it was really her or not. She looked a bit shocked to see me, arms crossed tight to her chest.

“Hi,” I said to her.

“Mum made me come on this walk,” she said. “I didn’t know you would be here too.”

And that was it, for the whole time Cally and Dad were holding hands and being in love with each other. Which was quite a while.

Eventually, Dad remembered us.

“Come on, you two. Let’s get investigating.” Like we were in
Scooby Doo
or something. He headed for a stile, with a footpath leading away on the other side. There was a council sign telling us to keep dogs under control. Beneath it someone had scrawled

NO OPENCAST! UK-EARTHS OUT!

Me and Isis got ourselves over the stile, but Dad made a show of helping Cally because her stupid dress was getting in the way.

“Why thank you, kind sir,” she said.

Isis made this sound, really quietly, like someone being sick.

The path headed off across the fields and we let Dad and Cally take the lead. It was narrow, and Isis was in front of me. I guess I was watching her, the way I’d done every day since school started: keeping my distance, trying to work out if it was really her. There’d been no way of telling at school, and the way she’d changed, getting in
with those girls and doing seances and stuff, it had made me really suspicious. But on that track, with her walking right in front of me, and so close, I noticed that her right arm was swinging normally, but her left stayed steady like she was holding someone’s hand.

Someone you couldn’t see.

And I just knew. The monster inside Philip Syndal had only been interested in eating ghosts, swallowing them down and growing bigger with every meal. If it had still been inside Isis, there was no way any ghosts would be near her. But one was.

I walked in silence for a bit. I mean, I was really happy she wasn’t possessed, but that meant all the time I’d been avoiding her at school and stuff… it seemed, well, pretty rubbish really.

It took me a while to get my nerve up to saying something.

“Is Angel with you?” I asked her quietly.

Isis spun around, her face turning red as a beetroot.

“Shut up!” she hissed. “Mum’s here!”

Actually, Dad and Cally had gone way ahead, and they were clearly too lost in each other to care anything about us.

“Can I see her?” Suddenly I wanted to see Angel more than anything. But Isis glared at me, arms folded.

“You know,” I said, “Angel brought me to you in the hospital.”

“You’ve hardly spoken to me since school started. And
now
you want to see Angel?”

I probably blushed a bit. “I just thought…”

“Yes. I know,” Isis said coldly.

Sometimes you just have to come out with it: “I’m sorry.”

Isis looked surprised.

“I shouldn’t have avoided you,” I said, and her face closed up again. “It’s just I didn’t know if you were still… you.”

Isis frowned. “What? Why wouldn’t I be me?”

“Because you died,” I whispered. “Properly died. Didn’t you?”