Shadow Breakers Read online

  We’re the only customers in the café. It’s silent apart from the boy serving behind the counter, drumming his fingers on the till.

  “Of course, I tried to tell my mum and dad, and the police,” Ollie says, “but it’s not the kind of story you can easily get people to believe. Nine-year-old boy, plays a lot of video games, reads a lot of books, overactive imagination . . . You can see what they thought. Typical grown-ups. So literal.” He looks me in the eye. “She wasn’t abducted, Miranda. Not like they said. On a November evening, in the middle of a crowded field, the whole village there? Kids on bikes all over the place, teenagers hanging round at the gates? Someone would have seen. No way could anyone have taken an eleven-year-old kid out of that place.”

  I nod. “We all know the Stranger Danger drill.”

  “Yes, and I know Bex. She’d have been spitting, swearing, kicking. She’d have been screaming, ‘That’s not my dad,’ the way you’re told.” He finishes his Coke. “Nah. Something happened that night. Something that ordinary science can’t explain.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “And then we came here. New start. All that. But I got a sense there was something special about this place the moment we arrived. And then I started at the school, and everything was just normal, until Miss Bellini started last term. One lunchtime, when I was helping her fix a disk error, it all came out. Bex, the bonfire, all of it. And you know what, Miranda? She believed me.” Ollie leans back, shaking his head, blowing his cheeks out. “It makes me . . . when I think about it . . . I just wanted to . . . you know? She was the first adult ever to believe me. To listen and to actually think I wasn’t making it up.”

  “Could she do anything?”

  “Not directly. But she said she knew of things like that happening. So that’s when it all started to snowball. And I met Cal and Josh. And Lyssa came along later. The stuff we do, Miranda, the things we investigate, I’m kind of hoping that, somewhere buried inside it all, there’s an answer about Bex.”

  “I hope so, too,” I say softly.

  “And you?” he says. “Who did you lose?”

  Startled, I feel my heart skip a beat. I’m about to say something, when he glances at his phone and his face turns to shock. He leaps to his feet and grabs his coat. “Come on!”

  I don’t have time to see what he has seen, but I rush out of the café, following him along the pier, our feet thudding on the wood, until we are there at the very end, as far out as you can go in Firecroft Bay without hitting the water. Jade’s climbed up onto the lowest rung of the barrier. We skid to a halt, and she turns around and sees us.

  Ollie whispers, “She looked like she was about to —”

  “What?” snaps Jade, jumping down. “Chuck myself over the edge? Is that what you thought? Hello, Miranda. Nice of you to let me know you were coming to the pier. I might have come with you.”

  I look down, blushing. “It’s . . . I mean . . . It’s not . . .”

  “No, I bet.” Her voice is cold and steely. “Hello, Weirdo Boy,” she says to Ollie.

  “It’s Ollie.”

  “Sure. Mind if I still just call you Weirdo Boy? It helps my concentration. What you got, then, Weirdos? Spit it out. What you got?”

  “Got?” I ask.

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s obviously Let’s Investigate Gypsy Girl Day, so what’ve you found out?” She comes right up to us, arms folded, chewing ostentatiously, her earrings glinting in the sun. “Yeah, my gran was a Romany, a Gypsy. Yeah, my dad’s an unemployed layabout who can’t be bothered to leave his new girlfriend in Italy an’ come an’ see his own daughter. And yeah, my mum’s best mate’s named Gordon’s Gin, and some days she can barely remember her own name. And nobody wants to foster me because I’m too ‘difficult,’ apparently. You got enough now?”

  “Come on, let’s go,” I say to Ollie.

  She glares at me. “What do you want? So much for being friends.”

  “She’s perfectly normal,” Ollie says, disappointed, monitoring readouts on his phone. “A boring Mundane. There’s not even a trace of any unusual activity around her. And yet she was the one using PC Terminal Thirteen.”

  I look her in the eye.

  “I’m really sorry, Jade,” I say. “Please, Ollie, let’s leave her alone.”

  Jade tosses her empty cotton candy stick into the sea and glares at us. “Do they let you lot out for the day?” she snarls. “I mean, seriously, are you all mental or what . . . ? ‘Boring Mundane’ . . . I mean, for real?”

  “We’re wasting time, here, Miranda,” Ollie says. He nods at Jade. “Sorry to have got in your way,” he says. “We won’t bother you again.”

  “No,” says Jade coldly. “You won’t.” And she stalks off toward the amusement arcades without even looking at me.

  I notice Ollie has taken control here. It isn’t till he is ready to leave that we do.

  We set off back down the pier, through the noise and the crowds and the sugary smells. We pass a tattooed couple having a furious row. A woman drags a screaming toddler along, the kid’s ice cream dripping onto the wooden boards.

  I am quiet, hating myself.

  “Well, it’s not her,” Ollie says. “Maybe, whoever’s doing all this, they’re managing to mask themselves somehow. Hide it from us. But no, not her, not Terminal Thirteen. Too obvious.” He stops, shrugs. “Sorry to have wasted your afternoon. And sorry about . . .” He nods back along the pier. “. . . you know.”

  Despite it all, I manage to smile. “It wasn’t a waste. It was pretty informative for me, Ollie.”

  “I think we all need to meet up on Saturday,” he says. “Miss Bellini’s talking about some book she wants to show us. She’s got to get it from London, apparently. The British Library.”

  We’ve reached the beach end of the pier now. I push my hair out of my eyes. “You can’t just take stuff out of the British Library. Can you?”

  Ollie grins. “Miss Bellini can do anything.” He gives me a salute. “See you later,” he says. “And thanks for the chat. It was . . . well, you know.”

  I nod and wave back as he heads off. I watch him disappear down the seafront, waiting until his bright blond hair has vanished into the crowd, and then I head home.

  THE OLD VICARAGE: THURSDAY 23:39

  I’ve looked up the word nightmare.

  It’s nothing to do with a mare, not the horsey kind. It’s from the Old English maere, meaning an evil goblin or spirit, and it’s linked to a verb that means “to destroy, bruise, or crush.” In some versions I’ve read, the spirit is specifically female. The maere would sit on your chest and make you feel as if you were being suffocated. Not cool.

  Then the other day I found this picture in an art book in the library, by a bloke called Fuseli. It shows a woman in white, sort of damsel-in-distress type, spread out on her bed in some long nightdress. Her head’s hanging down over the edge. Looks pretty uncomfortable. And the squat little goblin-troll-thing is sitting on her stomach with this horrible expression on its face. It gave me the creeps.

  I had to slam the book shut. Everybody in the library looked up, and Miss Challis peered at me over her glasses.

  But I’m awake now, when my phone rings.

  Luckily, I have it on silent, but I can see it flashing, the vibrations almost moving it off my bedside table. I check the caller ID. It’s Josh. Why’s he calling me this late? Doesn’t make sense.

  “What?”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound very nice, Miranda,” he says. “Aren’t you pleased to hear from me?”

  “Josh, it’s nearly midnight. Most normal people are in bed. What do you want?”

  “What I want is for you to put some warm clothes on and hop out of your window.”

  “Sorry?”

  I am pretending to be annoyed with him, but my h
eart is racing in anticipation. Things like this never used to happen to me. Bedtime was bedtime. The thrill of a midnight adventure is too great to resist.

  “Well, it should be pretty easy. That porch roof under your window has a pretty gentle incline to the driveway.”

  I scramble to the curtains and peek through the gap. I can see him out there beyond the gates, under the streetlight. He does a mock salute.

  “What are you doing outside my house?”

  “Bring a flashlight.”

  “I’m not coming.”

  But I don’t even convince myself, let alone him, and anyway I’m smiling as I say it.

  Two minutes later, I’m scrambling down the roof in black jeans, boots, sweater, and a knit cap, feeling like a cat burglar.

  I teeter on the edge by the gutter for a second or two. The night air is bitingly cold. Clouds pass across the moon, so the light seems to move in the yard like a living thing. I jump.

  I remember to flex my legs, and the landing is surprisingly painless. I’m more worried about the crunching noise my Doc Martens make on the gravel as I land.

  I glance up at Mum’s study window. There’s a soft orange light on. She’s still up, working.

  I just have to hope she doesn’t decide go in and check on me.

  THE ABBEY: FRIDAY 00:01

  “Just gone midnight,” I say, glancing down at Josh. He’s crouching by the great oak doors of the Abbey, doing something with a screwdriver. “It’s officially Friday.”

  “Need your beauty sleep, Miranda?” he says. “You can always go home. You look a bit tired.”

  “Yeah, so everyone keeps saying. I’m fine. Look, why didn’t we get the others out? Cal could have that door open in a second with that phone . . . doodah-thing.”

  “No, she couldn’t. Ollie hacked the school security system, and this lock is Victorian. It’s simple but effective.” He looks up. “And I was asked to come and take a look here on my own. But I thought I’d bring you along.”

  “Why? What’s this about?”

  “Tell you in a minute,” he says, concentrating on the door.

  “Well, hurry up! It’s cold! And if a police car comes along . . .” I’ve pulled my black knit cap down as low as I dare, trying to hide my face.

  Josh grins. “You worry too much, Miranda. There isn’t a curfew in this town, you know.”

  “I should be in bed, dreaming sweet dreams.” I wince. “Ollie and I followed Jade down to the pier after school, did he say? He worked out she’s nothing to do with all this.”

  “Yeah, I know. Quiet, I’m working.”

  I make a face at him. The lock makes a click. He pushes the Abbey door, and it opens with a slight creak.

  “The doors of the Lord are open to all,” he says with quiet satisfaction, spreading his hands. “Even if you sometimes need to break and enter.”

  “This is against the law, you know.”

  “Oh, give it a rest.” He does a yakking mouth sign with his hand, but thankfully doesn’t see the gesture I give him in return. “You’ve got one mouth and two ears for a reason, Miranda.”

  “Yeah, well, my mouth isn’t as big as yours. And it doesn’t usually talk rubbish.”

  Inside, we shut the wooden door behind us. The Abbey is not welcoming. It’s vast, cavernous, and chilly. There’s something about it that makes me feel a curling, twisting coldness inside, like I’ve swallowed an ice cube.

  A few candles flicker in alcoves, not giving out much light but throwing wobbly shadows across the nave. There’s a smell of polished wood and centuries of use.

  “Go on, then,” I say. “Why are we here?”

  “Signals,” he says. “Odd . . . fluctuations in the Convergence. Ollie and Lyssa have been getting some energy blips triangulated on the Abbey. I’ve been saying for a couple of days that I’d check them out.”

  “What kind of blips?”

  “Pyroelectric ones. Electricity discharged as a result of rapid rises and drops in temperature.”

  I feel myself turning even colder as he says it. There’s definitely some stuff linking up, clicking together in my mind here. Heat and cold. Electricity and exchange of energy. I ought to listen better in Science.

  He wanders up the nave and shines his flashlight about randomly. “You know,” he says, “a few years back some scientists in America did this really cool thing. An experiment. They played twelve subjects a YouTube clip of a basketball game, asking them to watch carefully and count the number of passes made by each team.”

  “Is this actually going to be interesting and relevant?” I ask, hurrying after him.

  “Yes. Shut up. Now, the interesting thing was this: At one point during the action, a man in a gorilla costume comes onto the basketball court.”

  “A man in a what?”

  “Gorilla costume,” repeats Josh firmly.

  We walk on up the nave, picking out the darkest corners with our flashlights.

  “He moved quite slowly among the players, right? Staying in full view of the camera for at least thirty seconds. None of the viewers commented on the gorilla at all.” He takes a deep breath. “When the researchers played the clip back to them in slow motion and showed them what they had missed seeing, they couldn’t believe it. Lots of them even refused to believe that it was the same clip.”

  “And it was?”

  “It was.”

  “Why a gorilla costume?” I ask, whispering.

  “It doesn’t have to be a gorilla costume!” he hisses. “The point is that it was something weird, incongruous. And nobody noticed, because they were looking for the wrong thing. It’s called inattentional blindness. That’s Mundanes for you. They just don’t notice stuff. But we notice, because we know.”

  He holds up a hand, and we stop.

  “What?”

  “Thought I heard something.” He shrugs. “Maybe not.”

  “So what are we looking for?”

  “This place has been here nearly six hundred years, Miranda, and it’s hardly changed. Firecroft Bay was a little harbor village when it was built. Which makes it the perfect place.”

  “For what?”

  “Echoes,” says Josh. “Of the past, the present. Places like this are key points on the Convergence.” He looks up toward an ornate screen between two small side altars and points at a small lantern hanging there. It appears to have a candle inside burning with a blue flame. “Now, what’s that doing there?”

  I frown. “I don’t know. You don’t normally see anything like that in a church. How is it blue?”

  “Some sort of copper compound, I expect.”

  “Oh, chemistry. Good old Miss Bellini,” I say with a grin.

  He stands beneath the lantern. “A ghost light,” he says softly.

  “Ghost light?”

  “Yeah. They put them in theaters when all the other lights are off. People thought they’d ward off the evil spirits. Of course, some say they were just to stop the last person out from tripping up and going head-first into the orchestra pit.”

  “That sounds more likely,” I say.

  He frowns. “Never seen one on hallowed ground before, though. That’s really odd.”

  “You’re showing off your knowledge now.”

  “Not really.” He walks around the ghost light, ducks under it, peers up at it. “It’s good in patches. I’ve often been told I’ve got a photographic memory. But it’s not like Lyssa’s. Mine’s, well, amateur photographic. Lots of blurred birthday parties, all out of focus, people with heads and feet cropped off. Six months totally missing from when I was eight, because I kept the lens cap on.”

  “Very funny.”

  While Josh is examining the ghost light, I walk over to a small array of flickering candles. I light one, put
ting a coin into the box.

  “Special time of year?” he asks, surprisingly softly.

  “My dad. It’s . . . coming up to the first anniversary.” I sit down in the nearest pew.

  “Ah.”

  “I used to go to church when I was a little girl, when I didn’t know I had a choice. I’d swing my legs, and fidget, and just think about the roast potatoes and the chicken and the thick brown gravy that were always waiting when we got home. Dad cooked it. He didn’t come to church. He said he liked God to be personal.”

  Josh is listening.

  “Just after it happened, Reverend Watson, our vicar, told me not to be angry at God, you know? I’d never have thought of that, if she’d not said it.”

  I pull my jacket closely around me, aware that I’m shivering a little. The Abbey seems to have become colder, and the shadows between the pillars and pews are growing darker and longer. I feel lost and lonely in this great, dark stone building. It seems like an awfully long time since I was a little girl.

  Josh comes over and squats beside me, at the edge of the pew. For a moment there is silence. We hear what might be a pigeon fluttering high up in the roof. Then he asks something that would seem odd from anyone else.

  “Do you ever see him?”

  I think long and hard before I answer.

  “Okay,” I say carefully. “I’m, like, crazy telling you, but . . . there was once, just before Christmas, in London. I was looking in the shop windows on Oxford Street. It was just getting dark. I thought I saw . . . a reflection.”

  Josh nods. There is no trace of disbelief or mockery in his eyes. “Go on,” he says.

  “Well, there was a gap in the crowd for a second. I was sure I’d seen . . .” I shake my head. “It wasn’t him.” I frown, look up suddenly. “Is it me, or is it getting . . . ?”

  The Abbey seems to have grown not only colder but also dimmer. I gaze up at the carved pulpit, the painted Virgin Mary, wondering why it all makes me feel so uneasy.

  Josh goes back to the ghost light, and stares down the nave.

  “Miranda!”