Shadow Breakers Read online

  “Nah, it’s all fine now. I’ve got a purpose in life. Just like the others, you see.”

  “And then there’s me.”

  “Yeah,” she says softly. “It’s like we’ve been waiting for you. All this time.”

  There’s something a bit odd about the way she says that to me, almost menacing. It puts me on my guard. I wouldn’t confide in her, the way I would in Josh.

  “Anyway.” She quickly finishes her tea. “Thank your mother for me. Don’t forget the team meeting tomorrow morning. And don’t be late. Miss B’s got something good to show us.”

  “I’m supposed to be —”

  Cal interrupts me, her voice hard. “You’re supposed to be with us. Make something up.”

  There’s a moment’s tense silence as we look at each other across the table.

  “See you tomorrow, then,” I mutter.

  Cal hoists her bag on her shoulder. “I’ll see myself out,” she says, and turns away from me with a casual toss of her head.

  In the living room, I slump on the sofa, flicking through TV channels, seeing the images but taking nothing in.

  It’s odd. I get the feeling that conversation with Cal was always on the verge of being about something else.

  Something far more important.

  Something she wanted to say, but couldn’t.

  MILLENNIUM ESTATE: SATURDAY 09:42

  Even after I was off school for the afternoon, they assume I’m going to be straight back in the swing of things. Before the meeting with Miss Bellini, I get a text telling me to meet Josh by the war memorial on the Millennium Estate.

  Groaning, I haul myself out of bed, splashing my face. I just about feel human. In the bathroom mirror, I look pale, but not terrible. Downstairs, I grab my jacket, shout to Mum that I’m going out to meet friends, and don’t even hear what she says as I hurry down the steps and head for the Millennium Estate at a brisk pace. I check my watch, guessing it will take about ten minutes. I’m right.

  He barely looks at me as I arrive, but strides off down the middle of the street. “It’s on the run,” he says. “That thing. It knows we’re onto it, and yet it never strays far. I wonder why?”

  My heartbeat quickens at the way he says it. So, we’re hunting it now. Tracking it down. This is a change of approach.

  I feel like a cowboy in a Western, walking into town for a showdown. Josh’s long, dark coat flutters in the breeze. He’s got something different with him this time — a piece of Miss Bellini’s gear. It’s like a flashlight, but with a wider end shaped like a big bagel, and with a small digital screen built into it.

  We’re not far from Craghollow Park and the school. Just a few streets away, in fact, from the Copper Beeches Children’s Home where Jade lives. The houses all look the same — smart little semis with neat gardens and short drives. I’m reminded of a song Dad used to play to me on the CD player: “Little boxes, on the hillside . . .”

  Panting, we stop, and I rest my hands on my knees and look up at Josh.

  “This is the point where you say something daft like, ‘I think we should split up,’ right?”

  He grins. “You and I watch the same films. Listen, if you want to hunt, even chasing shadows, you have to hunt efficiently. Same reason we never get the police involved. Dogs, guns, radios . . . all those things cause more problems than they solve.”

  I take a few deep breaths. “So what is that?” I ask, nodding at the device.

  “It’s an ultrasonic motion resonator,” he says.

  “You just made that up.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to call it a magic spook-detector.”

  “So what is it?”

  Josh grins at me. “A magic spook-detector,” he says.

  “You’re kidding me. Again.”

  “No, no. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

  “Your mother’s not dead,” I point out. “As far as I know.”

  “She’s got a grave, though.” Josh winces and shakes his head. “Well, a headstone. She’s had it made and left the year of death blank. Trust me, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you one day.”

  I stare at him. It’s hard to know sometimes when he is being serious.

  “This,” he says, tapping the ultra-whatsit rezza-thingy, “records all unusual signals in the paranormal range. Including pyroelectric energy, like we detected at the Abbey.”

  It’s a bright and sunny day, and everything seems picked out in unnatural, cartoon colors. We can hear birds singing. There’s pink and white blossoms in the trees, some of it carpeting the ground like confetti. At the end of the road, there’s an old man washing his car with a soapy sponge. I can hear someone bouncing a soccer ball against a garage door. It’s suburban peace.

  “Too quiet,” Josh says.

  “Then why is that thing flashing?” I ask.

  “Huh?” Josh holds up the resonator and turns slightly, trying to see where the signal gets weaker and stronger.

  I blink.

  And then I have one of those moments.

  Just like when I was going to be hit by the truck. When I knew it was coming even though I hadn’t seen it or heard it. And just like when I was in the Pod with Miss Bellini, and I was able to say just by thinking, just by imagining, which of the hemispheres the white ball was under. And like in the Abbey. At the edge of my perception. A sense that hasn’t been invented or given a name yet.

  It’s a flash of darkness, like a smudge on reality, but also a coldness and a screech inside my head. My eyes aren’t open or closed, but I feel as if I am awake-dreaming, there in the middle of the road. I’m breathless and hot.

  I am standing on the edge of a field, and behind me is a blazing forest, a huge dark finger of black smoke pointing up into the sky. A girl with dark hair is running in slow motion across a scarred, burned field. Running, running. I can hear horses, but cannot see them. There is soot and smoke around her, but she doesn’t appear to be burned herself.

  I gasp, and my eyes are back in Firecroft Bay.

  I blink. For a second, I still feel unbearably hot, and my eyes are stinging as if from bonfire smoke.

  Then I’m staring down the road toward the park.

  There are pockets of shadow gathering around the play equipment. Dark, deep shadows like you expect to get at midday in the middle of summer.

  “Josh,” I say cautiously.

  He’s still turning in a 360-degree circle, surveying the estate. “Again . . . not straying far . . .”

  “Jossssh!” I hiss.

  He’s angling the resonator toward Craghollow Park. The trace is fluctuating, but there is a wavering blue light when he points it in a direct line down the middle of the road, through the gate and toward —

  The swings.

  Beside me, Josh is still blathering on. “I was checking archive records earlier. This whole area has strong links to the past. First of all, I looked up the Abbey.”

  “Uh-huh. Big gray stone place. You can’t miss it.” My eyes are still fixed on the shadows by the swings.

  “Very funny. You know that land was a burial ground for victims of the Black Death? Before they built the Abbey over the site, the bishop came to sprinkle the whole place with holy water first. And then here — the Crag Hollows, it was called — was a place where they used to burn witches in the time of the Plague. The area was untouched for centuries, until the park and the estate were built on top of it in the nineteen fifties.”

  I glance at the resonator readout, then stare hard into the shadows of the park.

  There is someone standing beside the swings.

  No, there isn’t —

  I narrow my eyes. Yes, there is.

  A long, dark shadow, not defined properly, as if not quite tuned in.

  “Joshua!”


  Finally, he stops prattling on and whirls around. I hear him catch his breath.

  “Aha. All right.” He edges toward the park fence. “You chase it across. I’ll head it off round the far side.” He chucks me the resonator and, surprised, I catch it.

  “Okay.” I look down at it. “What the heck do I do with this?”

  “Just follow the display. It’s easy. And — Miranda?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t take any unnecessary risks. That thing is dangerous.”

  So this is it. We’re hunting our enemy, tracking it down to its lair.

  Breaking through shadows.

  I’m keeping my eyes fixed on the space behind the swing, fixed on that long, dark Shape, and I’ve launched myself over the gate into Craghollow Park.

  It’s here, in the real world. In my room, in the Abbey, now here in the park. I haven’t told Josh it’s the same figure that haunts my dreams.

  I’m aware of Josh, circling the edge of the park in the distance.

  I step across the springy surface of the play area, duck under the jungle gym, and hover inside it, as if the domed steel cage is somehow going to give me protection. I have never felt more exposed in my life.

  “Who are you?” I ask, my voice trembling. “What do you want?”

  Cautiously I hold up the resonator. It’s flashing, going wild. Scrambled numbers.

  Then the digital readout goes blank.

  I frown, stare at it. Something appears on the display.

  Not numbers. Letters.

  — ashes —

  — ashes —

  I’m recognizing what this is.

  I duck out under the other side of the jungle gym.

  Now, there is only open ground between me and the swings, and the shadows beyond them. I feel prickling on my forehead and under my arms. I can hear and feel my heart thudding through my body, and my mouth is sandpaper-dry.

  — we —

  — all —

  I’m shaking so hard I can hardly hold the resonator. I’m trying to hold out for as long as I can. Get some readings. So that back at the Seaview we can plug this into the computer, and analyze it.

  — fall —

  For a second, a cloud passes across the sun, and the shadows around the playground change position.

  I blink.

  — down —

  I feel something brush past my face. Searingly cold. Like a block of ice pressed to my flesh. I yelp and drop the resonator. I flip over on the muddy ground. I’m rolling over and over as if I’m falling down a hill, but the ground is flat.

  The sky spins, fringed by trees — then I feel my hand being yanked and I am hauled to my feet to find Josh looking at me, concerned.

  My breath is cold and ragged. My hair falls in front of my eyes and I shake my head. “Sorry,” I say.

  I rest my hands on my knees, and I scan the whole park.

  There’s a man walking his dog against the far fence, and two mums with toddlers wheeling strollers up to the play equipment. They’re looking at me and Josh warily. Big kids, they’re probably thinking. Look a bit weird and rough. Steer clear of them. I try to smile, but they look away.

  Josh scoops up the resonator from where it has fallen beside the slide, slips it into his pocket, and smiles briefly at the two mums. “It’s okay,” he says to them, with his usual easy charm. “All yours.”

  “It just went,” I say, hurrying after him as he strides off. “I didn’t see where. And Josh . . .”

  He stops, turns around. “What?”

  “The rhyme — it was on the resonator.”

  He nods grimly. “It’s trying to tell us something. Come on. Let’s make ourselves scarce.”

  THE POD: SATURDAY 10:35

  Slam!

  Miss Bellini drops the heavy, leather-bound book open on the table, and we all stare down at it.

  We’re gathered around the wooden table in the Pod. My head still aches. I’m dosed up with the strongest over-the-counter medicine, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.

  Although my head is swimming, I try to focus on the book. The pages are mustard yellow, crinkly like autumn leaves, and thin as tracing paper. I remember Ollie saying Miss Bellini was going to get a book out of the British Library, but that seems ages ago.

  Miss Bellini spreads her hands, smiles.

  “I just wondered,” she says, “if any of you, while glued to the Internet and your mobile phones, ever considered that the answers might lie somewhere more obvious?”

  “So what is this?” asks Josh languidly, pointing at the book.

  Miss Bellini peers over her silver glasses, sighs. “It’s a book. A collection of sheets of paper or parchment, printed with ink, bound together in a durable material such as leather or cloth. They were very popular from the Middle Ages until, ooh, at least about five years ago. Commonly found in libraries. Remember those?”

  “Ooh, miss, miss!” says Josh, raising his hand mockingly. “I know, miss. The things the government wants to close in case we start reading books and asking useful questions.”

  Miss Bellini smiles indulgently.

  “Sarcasm’s the lowest form of wit, Joshua,” Cal points out.

  “But the most fun,” offers Josh with a grin.

  “Hmm. Maybe,” purrs Cal.

  I glower at her, still smarting a little from our uncomfortable conversation yesterday afternoon. It kept me awake. Does Cal know more about me than she is letting on? I wonder what it was she wanted to say to me but couldn’t.

  Miss Bellini sighs. “To answer your question more fully, Josh, this is one of the existing copies of what’s known as the Constantinople Rubric.”

  “Try saying that with a mouthful of bubble gum,” says Ollie. I smile weakly at his joke. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Didn’t know I said that out loud.”

  Lyssa giggles, but Miss Bellini frowns sternly.

  “A very old book,” Miss Bellini goes on, “and a very rare book. I’ve had to have a special pass issued to remove it for seventy-two hours from the British Library’s Dangerous Book Archives.”

  “That . . . doesn’t really exist,” I say.

  “Oh, and you know that, do you, Miranda? Of course it exists. It’s in a fortified titanium vault underneath St. Pancras station. Your Shadow-card grants you access, but for on-site research only. With protective gear on. Remember that. You may need it one day.”

  “I’ve been there,” says Ollie. “It’s cool. They’ve got the missing five Shakespeare plays, the unexpurgated King James Bible, and the scripts for the unmade Star Wars movies.”

  “And the first version of Wuthering Heights,” says Lyssa, shaking her head. “Very odd. You should see all the stuff she took out.”

  “So,” says Miss Bellini, “the question is, what do we have here? What is this force? What’s our evidence?”

  “Extreme temperatures,” says Lyssa, her hand in the air as if she’s at school. “Exchange of heat and cold. Toasty to frosty.”

  “It likes energy,” I say, anxious to make a contribution. “Plus this thing’s got a weird obsession with the ‘Ring Around the Rosie’ rhyme from the time of the Plague.”

  “It looks like . . .” Josh pauses, gnawing his fingernail, and everyone turns toward him. “Okay. We stood there and faced . . . something in the Abbey. And in the park. And yet . . .”

  “And yet,” I say, picking up on what he’s getting at, “we can’t picture exactly what it looks like.”

  I close my eyes.

  I see a darkness, a shimmering column of blackness like something trying to tune itself into reality . . . I see a shape with many faces, with pale, smooth skin and with gnarled, yellow pustules, too . . . with frightened child-eyes but the brittle teeth
of an ancient crone.

  And I see the child with long, dark hair, running across the field, the trees burning in the distance . . .

  “A master of disguise?” says Ollie.

  “Or mistress,” Cal counters frostily.

  “Miranda?” says Miss Bellini’s voice, and it sounds deep and resonant, echoing both in my head and in some dreamlike cavern. “Can you see it now?”

  Without even looking, I can sense the shadows gathering around me in the Pod. I can feel them. I close my eyes so tightly they hurt. I can feel my temples throbbing. I’m remembering the trick with the hemispheres and the ball, and how I thought, how I felt, my way to the right answer. It’s all about not doing things the way you feel you should, not thinking in a straight line the way your mind screams at you to, but stopping thinking, letting your mind wander, feeling in tune with your body and allowing your instincts to flow. . . .

  “Yes,” I say.

  My eyes snap open.

  “It’s a shadow,” I say. “A dark, long shadow. Hooded, maybe, like a . . . like a monk. No, not a monk . . . it’s female, definitely female. It’s . . . a woman. A girl. Outlined in bright fire. Sometimes there’s burning . . . a forest, on fire. The sound of horses. Maybe soldiers? And there’s a strong smell, like . . . like . . . death.”

  “My uncle did a barbecue like that once,” says Josh.

  Miss Bellini holds up a hand, shakes her head at him with a frown. It’s obvious that his flippancy is tolerated only up to a point.

  And it haunts my dreams. Like it wants something.

  I look into Miss Bellini’s eyes. For a second, they scare me.

  “A girl, then?” says Miss Bellini.

  I nod. “A girl, a woman . . . all these images merging into one. Lots of different women. A young girl, a pale-looking woman, a wrinkled old granny, all at the same time.” I shudder. “And she . . . her skin . . . she looks like a Plague victim.”

  “Do they all seem like the same face?” asks Lyssa curiously.

  “That’s just it. They are . . . and yet they’re not. It’s so hard to explain.”