Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) (5 page)

“There’s got to be some
sort of mix up,” I said.

Bede shrugged
apologetically. “’Fraid not. I found it when I was digging around in the safe
at home, looking for some old stuff of Mum’s.”

“So?” I said. “It doesn’t
mean it’s real.”

I knew I was clutching at
straws but none of it made sense. If anything, it felt as if our family had
become better off over the last few years, which didn’t exactly fit with Dad losing
his job. In fact, he’d recently bought Arlene a new car and last year he’d
taken the whole family skiing. I’d also noticed that he seemed to be a lot more
chilled lately about Bede not having a regular job.

“Where’s all the money
come from then?” I said.

Bede took a deep breath
and exhaled slowly. “Reptiles,” he said. “Dad’s been importing them.”

“What?” I said,
flabbergasted.

Bede shrugged. “It’s the
poisonous ones, snakes mainly. There’s supposed to be big money in them, if you
can get them into the country.”

I stared at Bede, my
mouth literally gaping in shock.

“You’ve got to be kidding
me?” It was a rhetorical question, but I could see by Bede’s face that he was
being deadly serious.

“Dad’s been smuggling
snakes?” I said slowly, each word a bullet cased in disbelief.

Bede nodded, as I felt my
eyes prickle and the first hot, fat tears start to roll down my cheeks. I
couldn’t believe it. Not only did it seem that my father wasn’t the person I’d
always believed him to be, but an animal smuggler? It was all too much. I’d
learnt about smuggling at school and how cruel it was. I couldn’t believe that
Dad would ever choose to get mixed up in something like that.

 “I know, it’s a lot to
take in,” said Bede.

“No kidding,” I said.
“How long have you known about this?”

“A while,” said Bede
quietly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I demanded.

“Arlene told me not to.”

“So she knows about
this?” I said, wiping my face with the back of my sleeve.

“Yeah,” said Bede. His
face stiffened and he stared at the river, deliberately avoiding my eyes. I
could tell that he was enjoying this as much as drinking a cold cup of sick.
“Arlene’s the one who told me about it. She walked in on me when I was reading
the letter and confirmed it was true. Then she made me promise not to mention
it to you or Dad – she didn’t want to ruin your view of Dad, and she didn’t
want Dad to feel ashamed or embarrassed with me.”

“So are you saying she
was fine with it?” I said.

“Not exactly. But she
said she could live with it for the sake of the family.”

“So the stuff that’s
happened to our house, you think it’s linked to all the stuff Dad’s been
doing?” I said.

Bede nodded. “Something
must have gone wrong – maybe a deal went bad or Dad fell out with one of them,
who knows? Smashing up the house and writing scary stuff on the bedroom mirror
is a pretty good way of sending a message, don’t you think?”

“So you think it’s also
one of Dad’s associates who’s tipped-off the police and told all those lies
about you?”

“Yeah, it makes sense,”
said Bede. “I mean, think about it, what’s a great way of getting back at
someone? Target their kids. It’s pretty screwed up, but it’s effective.”

“This whole situation’s
screwed up,” I said.

Bede put his arm around
my shoulders and drew me close. That’s when I really lost it. Before I knew it,
my face was resting on his chest and I was sobbing in that loud, embarrassing
way that you can only really do with your family.

“I know, it sucks,” he
said, trying to comfort me.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to
blubber. “I’m being a complete wuss. He’s your dad too.”

Bede rubbed my shoulder
reassuringly. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him. In the meantime, we’ll be okay here
for the night.” He pointed to a pile of old cardboard boxes that had been
discarded at the roadside. “We can pull those apart and lay them over the top
of the sludge so we can lie down.”

I glanced sceptically
from the manky cardboard to the sludge, then back to the cardboard. As plans
go, it wasn’t great. Still, it was better than the alternative, which was no
plan at all.

“Maybe we can build a
small fire to keep warm?” I said. Bede nodded.

We gathered together as
much driftwood as we could find and Bede lit some of the cardboard with his
cigarette lighter. We huddled together in front of the flames, hugging each other
for warmth and speaking very little. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, as
Bede continued to stoke the fire, oblivious to the horror that awaited us.

It was still dark when I
woke up and I was freezing. The fire had long since burned out, leaving a mass
of dark embers which only made me feel colder. In the distance, I could see a
lone car moving slowly along
Murphy
Bridge
, the thick
fog distorting the tiny yellow pinpricks of its headlights, making them look
like frayed pieces of lint stranded on a grey carpet.

Bede was still asleep.
His head was resting awkwardly on his shoulder, in an obviously failed attempt
to get comfortable, and his dark, curly hair was flopping down over his eyes.
He looked like a sleeping scarecrow. A loud, snoring one.

I pulled my coat tightly
around me and hunched my shoulders, trying to bury my neck in the warmth of my
collar, before nestling into Bede’s shoulder again. I was just starting to fall
asleep again when I noticed that there was something lying across my left leg. Something
heavy. In my half-awakeness it vaguely occurred to me that I might want to see
what it was, but I was comfortable and I didn’t really want to have to shift
again. I shook my leg but the thing didn’t budge. In fact, it only seemed to
get heavier. Then it tightened its grip.

My eyes snapped open and
I peered through the fog to see what had latched on to me.

“Bede!” I said in a loud
whisper, digging my elbow into his side. I could hear the panic in my voice and
it scared me even more. Bede made a snuffling, sleepy noise and promptly rolled
away from me.

“Bede!” I said. This time
I didn’t whisper.

“Wh…what?” his blurry
voice replied.

“Something’s got hold of
me. I don’t know what it is but it won’t let go.”

Bede frowned at me as if
I’d gone mad. “Just shake it off then,” he said.

“I’ve been trying to, but
it’s not that easy!” I said.

I lifted my knee and
dragged it across the sludge, trying to scrape the thing off, but it still
wouldn’t budge. Then, all of a sudden I felt something coil itself around my
other leg and start to squeeze. It gave me such a fright that I screamed and
grabbed Bede’s coat. Just like the first thing, the second began pressing
tightly on my calf muscle, and both of them were now wrapping themselves up
over my knee, locking my legs eel’s together so I could barely move. Then, to
my horror, I felt myself being dragged towards the water.

I dug my fingers into the
sleeve of Bede’s coat, gripping the solid girth of his arm as hard as I could.
But no matter how tightly I tried to hang on, or how white my knuckles were
turning, the force pulling down on my legs was at least three times stronger
and faster than me. As my hands slipped from the coat, Bede tried to snatch my
arm and pull me back. But it was too late. My fingernails filled with sludge as
they clawed desperately at the river bank, trying to find something, anything,
to cling to. The loose rocks and twigs tore at my hands, doing nothing to stop
me from being dragged towards the waves lapping greedily at the sand. I could
now feel the cold, dampness of the sludge leeching through my jeans and into my
skin.

The closer I got to the
water, the thinner the fog became and I could now clearly see my attackers. My
blood ran cold. Coiled around my legs were two massive black eels. At least,
that’s what they looked like, although I’d never seen anything quite like them
before. The girth of each one was at least the width of my fully outstretched
palms, touching thumbnail to thumbnail, and they were covered in thick,
greenish-black, treacly slime that glistened like polished marble. Their eyes
freaked me out the most – creamy white, like blind opals.

“Clare!”

Bede’s disembodied voice
seemed to find its way through the fog and follow me to the water’s edge.

“I’m down here!” I
screamed back.

I craned my neck to see a
small flame weaving haphazardly through the mist. A few seconds later, Bede
burst into sight, barrelling down the river bank with a flaming cardboard torch
in his fist. My brother had well and truly metamorphosised from ‘sleeping
scarecrow’ into ‘wide-awake wildman’.

“Grab my leg!” he
shouted.

He was now standing
directly beside me. I snatched for his ankle, looping my arms around it. The
torch was poised high above Bede’s head, the flame pointing downwards like a
spear. Suddenly, the stick became a blur as Bede plunged it into the eel’s head,
right between its eyes. The thing let go with a blood-curdling scream. As it
opened its mouth I could see the rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth reaching
all the way back down its throat, its tongue curling out of its head like a
long red carpet to hell. I felt a shiver wiggle down my back as I watched its
grotesque body slither into the tide and disappear.

I now tried kicking at
the second eel with my free leg, but I was lying at the wrong angle and my heel
just kept sliding off its slippery skin. I could feel it hanging off me like a
dead weight, pulling me down the bank.

“Hold on!” Bede shouted.

The stick was still
smouldering as he blew the remaining sparks into new flames. He thrust it into
the side of the eel and the rancid smell of cooked, rotten fish filled the air.
I clenched my stomach muscles and swallowed hard, trying to calm my gag
reflexes. The eel screamed even louder than the first one, and slid backwards into
the water.

Bede grabbed my arm and
hauled me to my feet.

“Thanks,” I said. My legs
were wobbling like crazy and for a second I thought my knees were about to give
way.

“You all right?” said
Bede.

I nodded. “Yeah. Sort of.
I think I’m more freaked out than anything.”

“C’mon, let’s get out of
here,” said Bede.

I turned to follow him
when something caught my eye. The river was starting to gently bubble.

“Something really weird’s
going on,” I said.

Bede turned to see what I
was looking at. The entire river had begun to simmer, then boil. I could now
make out the shapes of hundreds of lithe bodies, writhing, thrashing and
swarming their way towards the bank.

“Run!” screamed Bede,
grabbing my hand and yanking me up the river bank. There was no time to go back
for our packs, the eels were moving far too quickly. As we reached the top of
the bank, I glanced back to see the hideous head of one of the eels rising up
beneath my foot.

“Hurry!” I screamed at
Bede, even though he was already at the top of the bank, waiting for me to
catch up.

I snatched a fistful of
tough, reedy-looking plants and began to pull myself up. I had just about made
it when I suddenly felt something snag the strap at the back of my boot. It
felt leaden-heavy and horribly familiar. I screamed in horror.

“It’s got me!”

The terror in my
brother’s face, stoked my own panic. Bede half stepped, half slid, down the
bank towards me.

“Grab hold!” he said.

We locked arms and I was
suddenly caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between my brother and an eel
that looked big enough to eat the pair of us. As my shoulders threatened to pop
from their sockets, I realised we were losing the fight. Bede’s feet were now skidding
down the bank towards me.

“No!” I screamed.

Bede stamped his heel into
the puggy clay just in time and leaned back into the bank as far as he could.
Glancing down, the eel was hanging by its teeth from the thin strap on the back
of my boot. I could see the leather straining under its weight.
Break, damn
you, break
, I thought, willing the leather to give way.

“On a count of three!” said Bede.

We shouted out the numbers, rapid-fire. Summoning up the last of his
strength, Bede wrenched me towards him. Suddenly, the leather strap snapped and
I could hear the eel slump down wetly on the sludge. My foot was now feather
light and I lurched forwards like a tipsy rag doll. I didn’t stop to look at my
boot, much less, glance back at the eels. The only thing I could think of was
running for my life.

“Over there,” Bede pointed to a narrow alley just ahead. To either
side of it was a decrepit boat shed, one of them covered in peeling red paint
and the other in peeling blue.

“Where’s it lead?” I
called back.

“The
Old
Town
, I hope,” said Bede. “I never normally come down this way.”

The alley smelt bad – a
combination of dust and fishy death. I pinched my nose, trying not to breathe
in unless I absolutely had to. The lighting was bad and the cobblestones
uneven, forcing me to concentrate on not tripping over as I followed Bede’s giant
running strides. The passageway was much longer than I’d first thought and it
wasn’t long before I realised I had no idea where I was. My lungs were burning
and I had a stabbing pain in my side. I tried to ignore it, but eventually the
pain got the better of me.

“I’ve got a stitch,” I
yelled to Bede. He slowed to a stop and turned around, leaning over with his
hands on the tops of his knees.

“Yeah, me too,” he said.

I leaned against the wall
of one of the old houses and let my exhausted body slide down until my butt hit
the ground. A stone gargoyle looked down at me from the top of an arched
doorway, its stone tongue poking out garishly in the moonlight. The night was
so still that it felt as if we’d stumbled into an old photograph. Bede slunk
over and collapsed next to me.

“What on earth’s
happening to us?” I said. “Those things in the river, what
were
they?”

Bede shrugged and shook
his head. “Beats me. I’ve never seen anything like them. If they were eels,
they weren’t normal ones.”

“No one’s ever going to
believe what just happened,” I said. “Imagine, trying to explain how we got attacked
by some huge, mutant eels that just happen to live in the local river.” I paused,
as another thought suddenly struck me. “What I don’t get is why they were they trying
so hard to get me into the water. It was almost as if they were possessed or
something.”

“Maybe it’s easier to eat
you there, you know, like crocodiles,” said Bede.

“Nice thought,” I said,
grimacing. “I wonder how they even knew we were there in the first place? And
why would eels, of all things, come onto the land like that to attack us? I’ve
never heard of eels doing that before. In fact, I didn’t even know they could
breathe out of water.”

Bede shook his head
thoughtfully. “I know, none of it makes any sense. Maybe we should just try to find
somewhere else to sleep tonight, and see if we can work it out tomorrow. Things
might make more sense in the morning.”

I looked at him
sceptically – sleep or no sleep, mutant eels were inexplicable. Still, Bede had
a point, we did need to get some rest. I began scrambling to my feet when I
noticed a dark, olive-green mist had begun to swarm around us, turning the glow
of the street lights fuzzy. Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw what I
thought was the beam of a torch. It was hard to be sure though, it was so
fleeting.

“Bede,” I whispered, “I
think there’s someone else here. I think I saw a light.”

We exchanged glances,
each of us barely daring to blink. All of a sudden an unmistakeable ball of
yellow light appeared on the corner of the building, just up from where we were
standing. I gulped down a breath and held it, waiting for the light to move
away. It hovered for a moment, then rippled sideways. I was about to breathe a
sigh of relief when, to my horror, the beam suddenly flickered back again,
falling directly on us.

“You two, stay right where
you are!” a voice shouted.

Although he was thirty
paces or more away, I could clearly see that the figure was wearing a uniform.

“It’s the cops,” Bede
hissed. “We’re going to have to run for it.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me
along the cobblestones, my feet stumbling over themselves as I struggled to
keep up.

“Hey, you two, come back
here,” the voice shouted behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to see that the
officer was gaining ground rapidly.

“Bede, he doesn’t look
that far away,” I said.

“C’mon!” Bede pulled my
hand even harder than before.

We continued sprinting
down the street until we reached the corner. There were now three separate
alleys to choose from, each as dark and narrow and dingy-looking as the other.

“Where to now?” I
muttered, partly to myself and partly to Bede. Somewhere in the background I
could hear the policeman call to his partner.

“
Warren
, get the dogs out!”

“Dogs?” said Bede. “Shit!”

“Maybe we can confuse our
scent somehow?” I said.

Bede shook his head.
“There’s no time. We’ve just got to pick a street and go for it.”

“That one?” I pointed to
the road veering farthest to the left.

“Yeah it’ll do,” he said.

I could hear the dogs now
in the distance, their barks reverberating off the walls of the narrow alleys
as they closed in around us. Every so often, human voices would rise above the
yapping, like small off cuts from a big sheet of noise.