CHAPTER 18

FOUND

Before he had time to remember that he wasn’t brave or stupid enough to go down, Brian found himself at the bottom of the steps. The walls either side were made of packed earth. Roots stuck out like electric wires. You couldn’t call it a cellar or even a basement; it was too crude, as if a hole had simply been dug in the ground and the wooden steps plonked down. About a metre ahead stood a wooden door. Light escaped round the frame.

Brian stared at the door, his heart a crazy cricket in his chest. A sensible person would turn round. A sensible person would climb the stairs, leave this madhouse and mega-mad garden and go back home, not listen to the fossil in his ear that was telling him to ‘Go on, try the handle.’

He licked his lips. A sensible person wouldn’t have a fossil in his ear.

It’s bound to be locked, he told himself. So when the door opened and he practically fell through, it took a moment to steady himself, and a moment more to recognise the faces staring at him, pale and puffy and not entirely unexpected. Because of course, deep down, he’d known they’d be here. It wasn’t the usual sort of know that happens beforehand (‘I know when I open the door they’ll be here’) but the slightly cheating sort that comes afterwards (‘I knew they would be’). Like the time Sid the Reptile Man visited your school and, the minute he chose someone at random to hold the python, you turned to your best friend and said, ‘I just knew he’d pick Jamie Doyle.’ That was Brian’s kind of know. The unsurprising surprise.

What was surprising was their unsurprise.

‘Oh.’ Alec was sitting at a desk. ‘It’s you.’ He went back to writing.

Pete was kneeling by the far wall beneath the only two windows in the room. Small and high, they must be at ground level Brian realised. ‘Hey, Braino.’ Then he went back to drawing on the floor with a piece of chalk.

‘What are you staring at?’ said Tracy from another desk.

It seemed obvious, and perhaps a little rude, to say, ‘You.’ So instead Brian looked round the room and tried to make sense of what he saw. But the room made the least sense of all. On the left, desks were arranged in rows of three. Alec and Tracy sat in the front row. The other twenty or so desks were empty. All the desks faced to the right. Opposite them, near the right-hand wall, stood another, bigger desk. Above it hung a whiteboard.

It was a classroom. But not just any old classroom – theirs. The desks and chairs were the same as those at school. Along the back wall to the left stood a bookshelf, just the same, and next to it a nature table. Identical posters hung on the walls: rules of the class, geometrical shapes and all the charts comparing pupils. There was a waste-paper bin by the door. There was even a cactus on the front desk.

‘What is this place?’ He gasped.

Silence. He tried again. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Writing,’ said Alec.

‘Drawing,’ said Pete from the floor.

‘Colouring.’ Tracy scowled at him. ‘What are you doing here?’ She wrinkled her nose with such scorn that it took him a moment to remember.

‘I’m, uh, here to rescue you.’

Tracy snorted and went back to colouring.

‘Rescue?’ Pete sat back on his heels. ‘From what? We can leave whenever we want.’

Brian was feeling sillier by the second. ‘So, ah … why don’t you?’

‘Duh.’ Alec’s eyes went wide. ‘Because we don’t want to.’ He put down his pen and leaned back in his chair.

Brian blinked round the room. What was he missing? ‘Why not?’

It seemed a fair question. But the way the others rolled their eyes, you’d think he’d asked why chickens don’t eat eggs.

‘Because.’ Alec spoke loudly and slowly, as if talking to someone with very little English. ‘We … like it … here. Don’t we … guys?’ The other two nodded theatrically. Pete put down his chalk and lay on his back, tucking his hands behind his head.

‘But your parents, the school, the whole village – everyone’s mad with worry!’

Alec stared into space. Tracy coloured in. Pete gazed at the ceiling.

‘I said,’ Brian shouted, ‘they’re mad with worry! Don’t you care?’

Alec’s grey eyes settled on him lazily. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘Hey, guys, it’s nearly tea time.’

‘What?’ Brian scrunched a handful of hair. Missing for days, holed up in this madhouse, families in uproar – and Alec was talking tea time? Had he gone bonkers? Brian ran across the room and grabbed his arm. Talking was clearly pointless. He tried to pull Alec up.

‘Get off.’ Alec shook him away. He went back to his writing.

Brian turned to Tracy. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’ He jiggled the back of her chair.

‘Hey.’ She glared at him. ‘You ruined my colouring.’

Over her shoulder, Brian saw a smudge on an otherwise neat invitation. YOU’RE INVITED TO MY PARTY.

‘What is this?’ He circled his forehead with his fingertips. ‘Why don’t you want to leave?’

Pete sat up. ‘We told you. We’re waiting for tea.’ He hugged his knees. ‘Well, not so much tea,’ he ran his tongue along his top lip, ‘as scones.’

Scones. Why did the word catch in Brian’s brain? Why did it burrow and itch like a tick?

He looked at his classmates, lounging in a chair, colouring at a desk and sitting on the floor. They had no intention of leaving; he’d never move them by force, and direct questions were getting him nowhere.

‘Wow,’ he said carefully. ‘I love scones. What sort?’

Tracy’s crayon went still. ‘Plain, fruit – any sort.’ She smiled dreamily. Her eyelids drooped.

Too dreamily. Too droopingly. You’d think she was drunk. Or drugged.

On scones? Since when were they addictive? And who on earth would want to dope the children?

A terrible picture popped into Brian’s mind. An old man standing in a doorway with flour on his face. No. Surely not Alf Sandwich, with his gentle ways and thousand kindnesses. Could he really be sneaking into the woods with poisoned teacakes? Brian gripped the back of Tracy’s chair. Never! Of course it couldn’t be Alf. But who, or what, was it?

He returned to the door. Rubbing his ear with his sleeve, he whispered, ‘Help me, Dulcie.’ Her tiny brain was worth two of his; she’d know what to do. There was no answer. For once she must be completely stumped.

He tried again. ‘What now?’

More silence.

‘Thanks a million,’ he hissed.

Alec looked up. ‘What for? It’s not like we invited you for tea.’ He yawned. ‘But I guess you can stay if you want.’

‘No.’ Brian held up his hand. ‘Thanks, but I have to go.’

And quickly. Outnumbered by these numb-brains, he could never drag them out by force. His only hope was to leg it back to Tullybun and fetch the gardaí before whoever was behind all this came back.

All of which he was just about to do … when whoever was behind all this came back. Hearing a thump, Brian wheeled round to face the door. Something barrelled into him and he was pushed backwards. Losing his balance, he fell onto his bottom. Pain shot up his spine.

But it was nothing compared to the shriek that shot out of his mouth. ‘Mrs FLORRIS?!’