Hollow Earth (4 page)

The twins’ voices carried up to her from downstairs. She couldn’t let them overhear how she’d protected them all these years. ‘Matt and Em didn’t know what they were doing, Arthur,’ she whispered instead. ‘Truly, they didn’t. How much time do we have?’

‘Not enough. Not enough. I’m so sorry, Sandie. For everything.’

Sandie flipped her phone closed and stood paralysed. Tears welled up in her eyes. She loved this flat and she didn’t want to leave. But for several months she’d been trying to ignore signs that this day was coming – and now it was here.

If the Council reached the twins first, they were sure to vote to bind their powers. Terrifying as this was, it was not the worst threat that faced her children. She’d heard rumours that the Hollow Earth Society had once again crawled from its catacombs.

There was only one thing she could think to do. But first she needed to get the twins to safety.

She made a swift phone call, then glanced at her watch. They could get out in ten minutes. She had rehearsed. She hoped it would be enough.

Darting into her bedroom, she pulled a suitcase from under her bed. Quickly, she unzipped it to check it held everything she needed. Tossing a couple of extra books into the suitcase, she grabbed her toiletries from the bathroom. Her sketchbook sat on her bedside table, so she shoved that into her bag, too. Then she wheeled the suitcase out to the main room at the same time as the twins, sandwiches in hands, came into the flat with Violet trailing behind them.

Seven minutes left.

From the door, Matt stared in shock at his mum. ‘You can’t leave us, too!’

Em dashed across the room, throwing herself around Sandie’s waist and bursting into tears. ‘Mum, we won’t draw again, I promise. We promise. Don’t we, Matt?’

Sandie let go of the suitcase and scooped up both children. ‘I’m not leaving you. Ever.’ After a couple of beats, she pulled away from the embrace and checked her watch.

Six minutes.

‘But we do have to go. Right now. I’ll explain everything soon, but I need each of you to get your travel backpacks.’

‘But where are we going?’ sniffled Em.

Sandie glanced at Violet, whose dishevelled air made her look her sixty-plus years. ‘They’re coming, Violet.’

On the street outside the flat, tyres squealed and car doors slammed. The twins ran to the window.

Violet squeezed Sandie’s hand. ‘When you’re safe, let us know. Anthea and I will have everything sent to you. Take our car. Go out through the garden.’ She fished some keys out of her cardigan pocket and handed them to Sandie.

‘Wait,’ Sandie said, dashing back to her bedroom. She returned with an aluminium cylinder, the kind artists use to protect unframed canvases, and handed the tube to Violet.

Violet’s hand instinctively went to her mouth in a gasp. ‘Is this …’

Em and Matt turned from the window and watched Violet take hold of the cylinder as if she were accepting explosives.

‘Of course it’s not,’ answered Sandie. ‘But I want them to think that it is. Use it to stall them, but if they take it from you, don’t let them think you’re giving it up easily.’

Violet tucked the tube under her arm. ‘I can do that, my dear. Now be safe. We’ll keep them occupied for as long as we can.’

‘Thank you.’ The two women embraced. ‘For everything, Vi. We couldn’t have survived here without you and Anthea.’ Sandie glanced at the kitchen clock. Five minutes left.

At the window, Matt and Em watched as a man dressed in dark jeans, a white collared shirt and dark glasses halted traffic on the street, while a woman, about their mum’s age, with short blond hair and in a bright-red dress, opened the rear car door for another man. He was older, and from his demeanour it was clear that he was the one in charge. As he climbed out of the car, apparently arguing with the woman, he turned and stared up at the flat’s windows. Matt and Em ducked instinctively, both letting out a yelp.

Did you feel that
?

Matt rubbed his temple.
Like someone nipped my brain.

Who are they
?

Dunno.

Sandie set their backpacks against the flat’s front door.

‘Why do we have to go?’ Matt demanded.

‘Who are these people?’ asked Em, still watching outside.

Why was nothing ever easy? Sandie sighed and pulled her bag over her shoulder. The truthful answers to their questions were frightening ones. But, for Matt especially, having a mum with secrets was perhaps worse than knowing what was really going on. Sandie was exhausted and she really needed their co-operation. She hoped fear would motivate them both.

‘We have to go because those people aren’t coming to see us. They’re coming to hurt you.’

Em looked horrified. Matt glared at his mum. One more thing she was making up, to get him to do something he didn’t want to do.

‘Em, Matt –
now
. We have to reach Vi and Anthea’s car before they get inside the building.’

The twins turned back to the window and watched the two men and the woman climb the front steps. Grabbing their arms, Sandy pulled the twins away. Matt shook himself loose and ran back.

Three minutes left.

‘Em, get your backpack. Please.’ Sandie stood in front of Matt, imploring. ‘I know you’re angry with me for all sorts of things these days, but this isn’t the time, Matt. There are very dangerous people coming here, and I don’t have time to explain why, but
we have to go
.’

Matt had hardly ever seen his mum cry except maybe when watching a really sad movie or looking at a painting she was working on, but he didn’t think he’d ever done anything to actually
make
her cry. He was mad at her – she was right about that – but he didn’t want to make her sad. Not really. Plus, as he watched her eyes fill with tears, he suddenly had a feeling, like a deep kind of drumming in his head, that she was telling them the truth. They were in danger.

‘Does it have something to do with our drawing?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, brushing her sleeve across her eyes, ‘and I promise that once we’re safe, I’ll tell you more. But please, please, be a good boy and just this once, do what I’m asking without an argument.’

One minute left.

The downstairs doorbell rang.

SEVEN

A
rthur slammed down the phone and rushed out from behind his desk. He leaned against the door, listening. The lab was strangely quiet, but Arthur was under no illusion that this was anything but a momentary respite from the horror to come.

Quickly, he unlocked a cabinet behind his desk and lifted out a flat, wooden box, the size of a notebook. He shivered as he opened the lid. Inside was a page torn from a sketchbook, the paper scored and bruised with age. The drawing spilled off the edges in overlapping swirls of yellows, blacks and greens, with an angry gaping hole like the mouth of a cave in the centre.

The scratching at his office door had started again. It sounded like tiny talons tearing into the metal frame. Mopping his brow with his handkerchief, Arthur thought about Sandie. In his own way, he had come to love her like a daughter, and betraying the Society so she might escape was the least he could do. He took the drawing from the box and turned it over, running his fingers across the inscription inked on the back.

Arthur returned the drawing to the box and closed the lid. Without thinking too long about his decision, he tore a sheet of paper from his desk pad and began to write:

A high-pitched shriek erupted from the still-deserted lab. Terrified, Arthur watched the edges of his office door begin to melt into light. With no time to waste, he finished the note, grabbed a large padded envelope from his desk drawer and put the note and the box containing the drawing inside.

The perimeter of his door was now a halo of white heat. Through the gaps between the door and the jamb, Arthur glimpsed the hooded monk-like figure he’d seen in the hallway. He snatched a postage label, filled it out and forced the package into a vacuum tube that ran across the ceiling and disappeared into the bowels of the building to the post room.

Arthur’s office door had now liquified into a silver puddle on the floor. The tall figure slid a drawing pad into the wide sleeve of its robes and stepped into Arthur’s office.

‘I didn’t think you’d be alone,’ said Arthur.

‘I’m not alone.’

Something sprinted through the doorway, darted past the hooded figure’s legs and shot under Arthur’s desk. Arthur looked down just in time to see the grinning demon from the painting tearing through his trouser leg with its needle-like teeth.

The changeling child worked on Arthur for a very long time, finally reaching the desktop, where it knocked over the dregs of Arthur’s morning coffee. The liquid splashed across the desk like dark tears.

EIGHT

P
acing outside the Kitten house, the leader of the group rang the doorbell once again. No need to hurry. Not yet. He could sense the children were still on the top floor. Although Sandie was more difficult to track, he knew she’d be near the twins.

Upstairs, Matt and Em, backpacks on, were taking one last look around the flat.

‘We can’t carry anything else,’ insisted Sandie, unlocking a dusty door on the landing and beckoning to the children. ‘We must go!’

The three of them dashed down the old servants’ stairs at the rear of the house. With the twins close at her heels, Sandie pushed open the terrace doors to the garden – and crashed directly into the man in the sunglasses, sent to guard the rear of the house.

Sandie’s momentum gave her the advantage when they collided. They both went flying against the garden wall. The man’s head bounced off the bricks as he landed with Sandie on top of him, winded but unhurt.

‘Get back up to the flat,’ Sandie screamed at the twins.

This time the twins didn’t hesitate. They scrambled as fast as they could, back up the servants’ stairs. In an adrenaline-fuelled panic, Sandie followed her children. They could hear Violet and Anthea in the hall downstairs, yelling that they were not opening the front door and the police were on the way.

Sandie locked the flat’s front door behind them, ran into the kitchen and swept everything off one of her worktables, sending paint supplies and tools crashing to the floor. Climbing on top of the table and standing on tiptoe, she stretched up to unlock one of the skylights.

She couldn’t reach the latch.

‘Matt, Em – bring me a chair.’

From downstairs they could hear glass breaking, wood snapping, and more yelling from Anthea and Violet.

‘Mum, I think Auntie Violet and Auntie Anthea are getting hurt,’ sobbed Em.

‘They’ll be fine, sweetie,’ Sandie assured her, trying to stop her voice from shaking. ‘Vi and Anthea are tough.’

The twins each took an end of a sturdy wooden kitchen chair and passed it up to their mum. Sandie climbed on top and unlocked the skylight, scattering a family of doves roosting near the window. She pulled herself up and looked across the roof. The pitch was steeper than she’d hoped, but if they were careful they could crawl across to the roof next door, then from there head on to the roof of the mews apartments that were once the Kitten stables. From the stable roof, the jump down to Violet and Anthea’s car parked in the courtyard in front of the mews would be difficult, but not impossible.