October was a cold, dark month and Hallowe’en was the coldest, darkest day of all – one of those very cruel autumn days that feel like a dress rehearsal for winter. All day long, the weather crouched over the lighthouse like a giant spider. Grandpa Joe went to Dover – to the magistrate’s court. Mrs Baron called by in the morning and asked him to meet her there in the afternoon. She said there were some forms to do with legal guardianship that he had to complete, so he caught the bus just after lunch. I thought how kind it was of her to be sorting things out for us when she must have been grieving terribly for Michael.
Mags baked bread. I sat up in the lantern room and listened to her moving around in the kitchen below, the dough thudding rhythmically into the flour on the kitchen table. Yesterday, she said there was something important she needed to talk to me about, but she wasn’t sure if she was quite ready yet, and today it seemed that she could hardly look me in the eye. She had been spending more and more of her time out of the house. I watched her walking over the cliffs – through the rain or fog. I wondered if she went up to the south cliff to feel close to Michael, in the same way that I felt close to Pa when I was looking out to sea.
At last I heard her footsteps coming up towards the lantern room.
‘Can I get you anything, Pet? A cup of tea or anything?’
She could have asked me that through the speaking tube.
‘I’m fine, thanks, Mags. Is Grandpa Joe still not home?’ I knew that he wasn’t.
‘Not yet.’
She sat down next to me. She was wearing a pale yellow scarf that might once have belonged to Mutti. Her hands were folded in her lap, and that made me think of Mutti too – at the tribunal, her white hands twisted together.
‘I need to ask you something, Pet,’ she said. ‘The day the bomb fell – you said some things about Michael . . .’
We had not discussed it since. I had never told her that he attacked me, that he was chasing me across the clifftop when the bomb fell. Her heart had been broken enough.
‘Were those things true, Pet? Was he really the saboteur?’
What could I say? There are times when the truth can be so much more cruel than a lie. Mags was staring right into my eyes, and I was so close to saying, Yes, everything I said about Michael was true – and much worse besides, but then I said, ‘It must have been the fall – I can’t remember much about that last day. I can’t remember what I saw, Mags.’
She looked at me for a moment longer – looked deep into me – then she nodded and turned to stare out of the window. The afternoon sun was a band of rose-gold light beneath the clouds. It shone warmly on her brow, her nose, the strong bones of her cheeks and chin. For a moment, she looked like the sister I remembered.
‘I need to go out for a while,’ she said.
‘It’ll get dark soon, Mags.’
‘I know, but I shouldn’t be too long. And Grandpa Joe will be home any minute.’ Then she winked at me. ‘Stay right here, Pet.’
I smiled. Where else could I go?
An hour or more passed. It was dreadfully lonely up there, and dreadfully cold too. The tide was high but starting to drop now. The shape of the Wyrm twisted beneath the waves like a ghostly serpent. It was hungry. I became aware of a faint, high note buzzing in my chest – the song of the stones – a warning . . . Then, as I looked at the sea, I thought I saw something else – in the deeper water beyond the sandbank. A long, dark shadow. I squinted at it through Pa’s telescope but it was no use – it was getting too gloomy to see anything clearly now.
As night closed in on the Castle, it began to rain – heavy drops hammering on the lighthouse roof and strafing the windows – and I wished with all my heart that Grandpa Joe would come home. What can have happened to him? There was a dogfight happening several miles out over the sea – I could hear the whining of the engines and the rattle of the guns. Every now and then there were showers of light in the sky – firework-bright. The feeble wail of the village air-raid siren seeped in through the edges of the windows, but I knew that I couldn’t get down to the coal cellar by myself.
Perhaps Dover has been bombed, I thought. Perhaps that’s why Grandpa Joe hasn’t come home. But then I shook the thought from my mind. I can’t start thinking like that, not when I am all alone here in the dark – I’ll drive myself mad. I closed my eyes and started counting, promising myself that either Mags or Grandpa Joe would be back by the time I got to one hundred.
But I didn’t get to one hundred.
The darkness of the lantern room and the sound of the rain somehow cocooned me. The violence of the world outside was so muffled and so very, very far away . . . My mind slipped sideways into a dream of underwater shadows . . .
There are creatures slithering down here at the bottom of the sea – pale, squirming serpents, fish and eels – disgusting and tortured and suffocating in this liquid darkness. I try to swim away, aware that a huge mass has shifted beneath me – the ocean floor itself, lifting up, stretching out its scaled neck and tail, opening its foul, yawning jaws. It is following me through the black water – my lungs are bursting – I have been holding my breath for a thousand years. I stumble out of the water on to the sand, and I hear its hissing, rasping breath behind me. I scramble away. Its heavy, wet footsteps follow me, its long claws scratch against the rocks. I can feel its rancid breath on my back as it lunges forward, reeking of salt-water corpses and rotting flesh – it has killed so many already – what made me think that I would be the one to outrun it? There is nothing special about me. I fall to my knees, sobbing and panting for breath. I know it will happen now. The bony jaws of the Wyrm are about to close around me and it will all be over . . .
But that moment never came. I was suddenly completely awake, my ears ringing with the noise that had woken me. Gunfire.
I looked around in the darkness, my heart still banging from my nightmare. I strained my eyes to check every inch of the lantern room, listening for noises in the lighthouse and the cottage beneath me, but I knew the answer already. Grandpa Joe had not come back, and neither had Mags.