The Gathering Read online

  She smiled grimly. ‘You might say it found me. I was doing a modelling project of the library and the measurements showed the building was a lot higher outside than inside. I guessed there was a lot of space up here so when the old lady died, I decided to take a look. I stole the keys and got them copied. It was close to the school, the rent was right and I can get as many books out as I want.’

  I wondered what had happened to her mother and father. Maybe they were dead. I had a sudden vision of my father in his coffin and shivered.

  ‘What are you thinking? You look like someone died.’

  I was startled into telling her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, taken aback.

  ‘It’s okay. I thought you might have known… like Lallie knows things.’

  She was no fool. She knew straight away that I was probing and a guarded look came over her face. ‘No, I’m not like Lallie. I don’t think anyone is. She’s… special.’

  People often use the word special to describe people who have something wrong with them. There was something wrong with Lallie all right. But there was more to it than that. There was some mystery here.

  ‘What happened to your father?’ Nissa asked, changing the subject.

  Usually I hated to talk about it, but being up there in the attic felt like time out of the real world.

  ‘He was killed in a car crash but we were already divorced. I mean, he and my mother were, so I didn’t see much of him anyway.’

  ‘Did you like him?’ Nissa asked, which was a strange question.

  ‘I was pretty young when he went and he never came to see me after. We moved around a fair bit too.’

  ‘Why did they split up?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. My mother never talks about it.’

  ‘My father left when my mother got pregnant,’ Nissa said. ‘When I was born, she was living with the old woman who died. Mrs Kennett was mad as a meat axe.’ She grinned and I was startled because it made her look completely different, softened the edges.

  ‘The old bat always thought men were out to get her,’ she went on, half laughing. ‘You’d get on a bus with her and she’d start screeching at some poor guy who just happened to look at her a minute too long.’

  ‘What happened to her? Your mum, I mean?’

  The smile faded and I was sorry I asked. ‘Sometimes I think the whole parent thing is a con job, you know. I read that kids from a single-parent family are better adjusted. I figure I’m better off again with none.’

  ‘How did you get mixed up with someone like Lallie?’

  A shutter fell over her face then and I knew I had blown it. I expected her to go quiet and cold, but she leaned forward angrily. ‘Listen, Buster. I don’t know why Lallie thinks we need you but that’s the only reason I didn’t let Danny punch your head in.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, but these things she said about symbols …’

  She glared at me and sipped at her tea in jerky controlled movements. Then she seemed to calm down. ‘Okay. Look, Lallie is not like ordinary kids. She sees things no one else does. I know she’s strange but …’

  ‘Car!’ Danny hissed urgently from the window.

  ‘The lights!’ Nissa rapped. She pinched the flame out in one lamp and Indian extinguished the other, plunging the attic into a blue-tinged darkness that lightened as our eyes grew accustomed to it.

  Indian, Danny and Nissa were huddled at the window.

  ‘Who is it?’ I whispered.

  Nissa stepped back. ‘The head of the Community Committee, who else? Take a look,’ she invited.

  Apprehensively, I peered out into the night. At first I could see nothing. Then I spotted a man walking across the asphalt from the car park. Loping along beside him were two huge hairy dogs. Just before he went out of my sight, he passed under a security light. I couldn’t see his face, but the top of his head gleamed and I knew at once who it was.

  Mr Karle.

  ‘That’s who’s looking for us,’ Nissa whispered. She looked at me, her eyes full of shadows.

  A trickle of icy premonition ran down my spine.

  It was well after six in the morning before Nissa would let us leave the attic, though everyone who had come to the meeting had long gone.

  I was amazed they let Lallie go first and alone but no one else found it odd. The rest of us left together, detouring to collect Danny’s bike from a clump of bushes.

  He coasted along beside us trying to do wheelstands and bumping up and down off the kerb. I asked Indian outright about Lallie.

  ‘I guess you better ask Lallie those kind of questions,’ he said, giving me Nissa’s warning look. Then he began telling me how his mother thought he and Danny were out rabbiting. If spotted he said we could say we had all been rabbiting.

  ‘Without a gun?’ Danny asked sceptically.

  Indian grinned. ‘Sure. We were spying out the land. Seeing if it was worth coming back with guns.’

  ‘What was that business about symbols and Lallie?’ I persisted.

  Indian chewed on his top lip. ‘Lallie told you. You have to get a symbol.’

  ‘But why? She said it would hide me. Hide me from Mr K …’

  ‘Don’t say his name!’ Indian cried.

  I was shaken by the fear in his eyes. They really believed what Lallie had told them.

  ‘He can feel it if you say his name. We can’t talk about him until the symbols are forged.’

  ‘I don’t understand. How could he possibly hear us say his name?’

  Indian looked uneasy. ‘We’re not supposed to talk about this until we all have the symbols.’

  He plodded on, a closed, stubborn look on his face.

  I took a deep breath, recognising a good silence when I saw one.

  A dog barked and Danny barked back. Then The Tod barked.

  ‘Shut up,’ Danny snapped.

  ‘You started it,’ I said indignantly.

  ‘Someone will ring the cops if you two keep on bellowing,’ Indian interrupted.

  ‘Not the cops!’ Danny hooted in a cartoon voice and rode ahead.

  ‘It’s after curfew,’ Indian explained.

  ‘What happens if we get caught? Do you get arrested?’

  ‘You can’t be charged because it’s not an actual law. You’d be sent to Velcro – Mrs Vellan. She’s the school counsellor. She makes like a headshrinker but the common opinion is that she’s the one whose head needs shrinking. She believes there are no bad children.’

  ‘Dere are only des-turbed children.’ Danny finished the sentence in a weird accent I presumed must be Mrs Vellan’s. You’d know, I thought, watching Danny slalom along the broken white line.

  ‘Why is there a curfew anyway?’

  ‘It’s supposed to keep the street free of delinquents.’

  ‘If that’s all that happens, why was Nissa so worried about us being caught?’

  Indian gave me a slanting sideways look. ‘It would draw attention to us and he might wonder about us.’

  Mr Karle again. ‘Wonder what?’

  Indian ran his big hands over his head. ‘Lallie said not to talk about this yet.’

  I gave up. ‘All right, then who else was supposed to come tonight?’

  Indian hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Seth Paul.’

  ‘Seth Paul. You’ve got to be kidding!’

  ‘He ain’t so perfect,’ Danny sneered, pedalling backwards.

  I stared blindly ahead. If Seth Paul wasn’t perfect, he was pretty damn close. ‘His father is a policeman,’ I added.

  Indian nodded bleakly. ‘Yeah, and not just any policeman. He’s a good friend of the Kraken. Most likely he came tonight too. They set up the Community Committee together.’

  ‘The police,’ I muttered, shaking my head.

  ‘Yeah. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Everyone knows teachers and cops are the good guys,’ Danny sneered, appearing suddenly on the footpath ahead, riding straight at us. At the last second he veered, clipping The Tod who y
elped in pain.

  ‘You idiot!’ I yelled, enraged.

  The Tod whimpered as I fingered his paw. I felt like killing Danny.

  ‘He won’t be back,’ Indian said. ‘He lives down that way. Is the dog all right?’

  I put him on the ground and he trotted off favouring his front paw.

  ‘Bloody idiot,’ I fumed. I looked at Indian. ‘How come you hang around with such a jerk?’

  Indian stuffed his hands in his pockets with a sigh. ‘This is as far as I go. You said you lived past the park?’

  I nodded, still mad.

  ‘See you in school then.’ He turned to go, then he said over his shoulder, ‘Listen. We’ve made it a rule not to be too friendly at school, so if the Kraken does suspect one of us, he won’t immediately guess who the rest of us are.’

  ‘And who are we?’ I asked, frustrated.

  ‘All I’m saying is when I said see you, I meant that was about all I’d do. Okay? And you’d better keep a low profile too.’

  I stood watching him stride away down an overgrown side lane until he was swallowed up by the shadows, my mind in turmoil. Walking the rest of the way home, The Tod trotted along at my heels contentedly, no longer limping.

  I sucked in deep faintly salty breaths of air, glad the wind was blowing in from the sea instead of from the abattoir. The Tod glanced at me, then raced on ahead to the park.

  It was dark and deserted at that hour, and the wind hissed through the trees making them sway, dim silhouettes in the grey pre-dawn. Again, in the dark, it seemed as if the park was much bigger and deeper, just the edge of a great wilderness. I squinted across the road, thinking it really did look like there were a lot more trees. The Tod looked over too, and growled. I shivered, then thought about Nissa living in the attic on her own. I tried to imagine myself living like she did and knew I would never have stuck it out. No wonder she was so different from the other girls. And they knew it too.

  Normally girls would torment a girl who was different, but they took no notice of Nissa. It was as if she was some other sex altogether and therefore none of their business.

  I found myself picturing the way her eyes lost their tough wariness when she looked at Lallie. Nissa had said Lallie saw things other people didn’t. That didn’t surprise me. There was something wrong with her and they all knew it. But still they went along with all the things she had told them. What had she seen in Mr Karle that made her so afraid of him? And how did the police fit in?

  Did it have something to do with the things they had stolen?

  I came round the elbow in my street. The grey sky was transformed gradually into a fiery red as the sun began to rise. I blinked, murmuring, ‘Red sky at night, Shepherd’s delight, Red sky in the morning, Shepherd’s warning.’

  I looked down the street at my house.

  Parked outside was a police car.

  My heart began to gallop. I bolted along the street and up the front path, almost squashing The Tod as I slammed the gate closed behind me and unlocked the door. All I could think of was how Nissa had come home one night to find the old woman she lived with had died.

  I ran into the lounge-room. Stopped.

  My mother was sitting on the edge of the couch between two policemen. They all looked up.

  Her face crumpled. ‘Nathanial. How could you do this to me?’

  10

  ‘Where have you been all night? I was worried sick.’

  Even white to the lips, my mother kept her voice calm and that made me mad. If she had been genuinely frightened, she wouldn’t worry about how loudly she talked. She wouldn’t be so controlled.

  A policeman, with a face like a bull terrier, said, ‘I presume this is the missing lad?’

  The other policeman closed his notepad with a snap. He was very fat and reminded me of one of those big blubbery elephant seals, a dugong. Or maybe a rhino with mean squinty eyes. ‘Where have you been since last night, boy?’

  ‘I… went for a walk,’ I mumbled, trying to figure out how come my mother was home. Her shift must have got out early.

  ‘Are you aware the community here has set a curfew?’ the first policeman asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Do you have a good reason for breaking that curfew?’

  ‘I forgot about it,’ I said, startled at how aggressive I sounded. It was just the way the police were talking to me as if I were a criminal. They were interrogating me and my mother was just sitting there with her white face and her knees pressed together, letting them.

  ‘I wouldn’t take that tone of voice, son. We don’t get much call to deal with delinquents in Cheshunt. But we’ll be happy to make an exception if you force it,’ Dugong said in a tough voice. ‘Young people need to be kept in order.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ I muttered. From what Indian had said, I was pretty sure they couldn’t arrest me for breaking a community curfew, but I didn’t have the guts to say that to them because maybe they would arrest me for something else.

  Dugong gave me a disbelieving stare. ‘I suppose you know about the break-in at the Maritime Museum? We have been warned by the school that there may be a gang of young people operating in this area. I don’t suppose you know anything about that?’

  My heart was thudding so loudly, it was a miracle he couldn’t hear it.

  ‘I told you, I went for a walk. I forgot the time.’

  Dugong turned to give my mother a pointed look and the other cop poked me hard in the chest with a stiff finger. ‘This is a good neighbourhood. Not so long ago, it was rough and it was unstable. It was as bad as Willington and Ercildoune, but with the help of the school and the Community Committee, we cleaned it up. We don’t want it backsliding because of a couple of bad apple kids.’

  Bull Terrier grunted. ‘You’d better straighten yourself out, kid, or we’ll do it for you.’ He patted my mother’s arm. ‘You give us a call if you have any more trouble with him.’

  I stared at the ground as they left.

  ‘Nathanial, you were very rude to those policemen,’ my mother said when she came back. ‘They were just doing their jobs and they were very kind.’

  I looked at her, shaking with rage. ‘They acted like Nazis! How could you call the police on me like I was some kind of criminal!’

  She gave me a shocked look. ‘Nathanial, don’t talk like that. When I came home early and you weren’t here, I was worried so I called the police. You think I liked doing that? I did it for you.’

  I shook my head and the words just burst out of me. ‘You did it for yourself, the same way you do everything.’

  She stared at me incredulously. ‘I don’t know what has happened to you, Nathanial. You used to be caring, thoughtful. Now… I don’t know what you are. Where were you last night?’

  She sounded really upset, and that got to me because she was always so controlled. ‘I went for a walk …’ I began. I don’t know how much I would have told her, but she drew herself up and gave me a disbelieving look.

  ‘A walk?’ Her voice was sarcastic, as if I had said I went to visit the fairies at the bottom of the garden.

  I felt like smashing her in the face. ‘Yeah. A walk.’ I turned and went out of the lounge and into my bedroom. She didn’t want to listen to me any more than she ever had.

  She followed me. ‘You weren’t with that gang the policemen were talking about, were you?’

  I ignored her. Gave her some of her own silence back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked sharply, as I threw my bag on the bed and started rummaging in my cupboards. She probably thought I was running away from home.

  ‘I’m getting ready for school,’ I said flatly, without looking around. ‘Is that all right?’

  There was no answer. I heard the car start up and realised she had been wearing her uniform. That meant she was doing a morning shift. It explained how she had been home to notice my absence. Just my luck.

  It was too late to sleep but too early to go to school, so I had
a bath instead. Lying in the tub, I felt the strange tensions of the long night melt out of my bones. I floated drowsily with my eyes closed, then rolled onto my stomach and let myself go limp, holding my breath for as long as I could. I practised being a fish lying on the bottom of a stream. A salmon resting in the shadows.

  I was drowsing on the edge of sleep, when I thought of what Lallie had said about getting my symbol. I had no intention of going back to the attic, but I wondered what my symbol would be.

  Nissa’s had been a sword and Indian’s a bowl, Danny’s a torch.

  I thought over what she had said about figuring it out and closed my eyes. I tried to clear my mind so that an image would come. Irrelevant thoughts kept drifting in. I thought of Seth Paul’s father and the things I had said to my mother. I thought of writing a letter to my grandmother and I thought about my maths homework.

  I opened my eyes, exasperated. It was hopeless.

  Try harder.

  I sat bolt upright. Lallie’s voice had been so vivid that for a second I thought she had really spoken. I lay back again, determined not to think of anything. Gradually, the thoughts stopped intruding. My mind felt dark and warm, as if the bath water had leaked into my head. I had a peculiar sensation of floating downward.

  Then a picture of Mr Karle came into my mind. He was smiling his happy murderer smile, but his eyes were dead and lifeless. His lips were moving but though not a sound came from them, I knew what he was saying. He was telling me not to be a salmon.

  Then he slapped his hand down on his desk. The magnetised sculpture flew apart but in slow motion, pieces flying out in all directions.

  One piece floated towards me, spiralling round and round until it seemed to hang right in front of my eyes.

  It was the flat metal disc I had seen in Mr Karle’s office.

  You must get your symbol, Lallie’s voice urged.

  I opened my eyes.

  The bath water was freezing cold. I had fallen asleep. I leapt up and checked my watch.

  It was quarter to nine!

  At recess, I saw Nissa. She behaved exactly as she always had – as if I didn’t exist. The whole night seemed more like a dream than ever.