‘Shove you in . . . an oven?!’ Ari’s tail twitched for an instant, either in amusement or surprise. ‘I think you are somewhat confused.’
‘Can you really understand what he’s saying?’ asked Jaide.
‘Yes!’ snapped Jack. ‘Obviously!’
‘Well, don’t listen!’ Jaide snapped back. ‘It . . . it isn’t right. You shouldn’t be able to talk to cats, or think you are! It’s part of everything that’s wrong here! Come on!’
She pushed him again, and this time Jack didn’t resist. Stepping around Ari, he followed his sister. But Ari followed, too, and began to weave in and out of Jack’s legs, slowing him down.
‘I don’t know what’s so wrong about talking to me,’ said Ari. ‘Like I said, we’re friends, and as a friend, let me repeat: You should go back home now.’
‘Are you sure you can’t hear him?’ Jack asked anxiously as they rounded the corner.
‘Of course I can’t,’ said Jaide. ‘Ari’s just a cat. He can’t talk.’
Ari looked heavenward and sighed.
‘The words just and cat were never meant to go together,’ said the ginger tom to Jack. ‘Tell your sister she could hear me if she listened properly. Maybe I could talk some sense into her.’
‘He says —’
‘I don’t want to know!’ Jaide put her hands over her ears. ‘Whatever he’s saying to you, it has to be a trick. Ignore him before he talks you out of escaping!’
‘Ah, the foolishness of the troubletwister,’ sighed the cat. ‘Remember that I tried to warn you.’
The cat angled away from them, slinked between the shops on Dock Road, and swarmed up and over a fence.
‘He’s going to tell Grandma X where we are,’ said Jack.
‘Was that what he said to you?’ asked Jaide. She might have protested otherwise, but she did believe Jack had talked to Ari, and she didn’t like it. She was worried, too, that Jack was beginning to doubt her plan. She couldn’t see it through without him.
‘No. He said that we should go back to her house, that we’re not safe out here. I’m sure he’ll tell her, though.’
‘Then we’d better hope Mr Carver gets to work early,’ said Jaide. Her eyes flickered as she spoke. There was something in the corner of her vision again, something that was moving with them, that she just couldn’t get a good look at.
Please, please make all this weird stuff stop, she thought. If we can just get to school, I’m sure we’ll be okay.
The school was on the elbow formed by Main Street and Dock Road, but the entrance was from River Road, which defined its northern edge. The river was sluggish and wide where Main Street crossed it via the old iron bridge. A steep bank sheltered by willows led down to the water opposite the school. Birds squawked and argued in the hanging branches as the twins turned left off Main Street and hurried toward the front gate of the school.
‘We’re going to make it!’ said Jaide happily, a microsecond before she saw the first rat.
It shot out of a roadside drain and came crawling directly toward them with its nose upraised. Its eyes were the same horrible, shiny, milky white as the eyes they had seen in their old home.
Instinctively Jaide stopped. The rat looked at them with those hideous white eyes for two very long seconds, then it turned and fled, its pink tail whipping behind its fat, black-furred body. It ran up the path and ducked through a hole in the school wall.
A moment later, it reappeared atop the wall, and it wasn’t alone. Dozens of rats slowly spread out along the wall, every one of them looking at the twins, every one of them with those same milky, staring eyes.
‘They’re all around the school,’ said Jaide grimly. ‘That cat must have told Grandma X already.’
Jack’s face was pinched and pale. ‘What do we do now? We’ve got nowhere else to go!’
‘Troubletwisters!’
The call came from behind them, but it wasn’t Grandma X’s voice. This was a softer, straining kind of whisper.
‘Young troubletwisters, come closer.’
‘Who’s there?’ Jaide called out. She and Jack edged nearer to each other, both of them peering around in all directions.
‘Look under the trees. Come to us and we will help you. We are your friends.’
Jaide and Jack took a step back, paused, and looked across at the school. The rats’ heads tracked their every movement.
‘Let’s look,’ Jaide whispered. ‘But be ready to run.’
The twins warily crossed the road and looked down the slope, through the gnarled branches and misshapen trunks to the river. But they couldn’t see anyone – or any rats – which was a relief.
‘Where are you?’ called Jaide. ‘I can’t see you.’
‘There,’ said Jack, pointing.
As if he had made the person appear, Jaide now saw a solitary human figure standing under one of the twisted trees, wrapped in shadow.
‘We are your friends,’ the whispering voice repeated. ‘Only we can save you from the witch. Come.’
There was something fascinating about the voice. The twins took a step closer without even thinking, and would have taken another step, but the voice was interrupted by a car that drove across the bridge to their right. The iron bridge hummed with its passage, and strange, rhythmic echoes spread across the water.
‘Who . . . who are you?’ Jaide called.
‘You do not know us yet, but you will. It is time. We will tell you everything,’ the figure said. It thrust out an arm in a jerky, peculiar wave. ‘Come with us. Hurry.’
Jack started to head down the slope, moving like a sleepwalker. Jaide made a grab for him but missed.
‘Jack, wait!’
‘We will tell you the truth,’ said the voice. The figure stepped partly out of the shadow of the tree, legs jerking like a puppet’s. Jaide hesitated, then jumped down the slope after Jack.
‘Jack! Come back!’ she shouted. ‘Something’s wrong!’
‘We want only to help,’ said the figure soothingly. ‘Come to us, troubletwisters. Quickly!’
Jack moved faster. Jaide slipped in the mud and fell on one knee.
‘Jack! Stop!’
The figure under the tree reached out, as if in welcome, but its arms were too long. A cat yowled somewhere in the distance behind them.
Jack started to run toward that strange embrace.
‘Yessss,’ said the voice. ‘Welcome!’
With that last word, the figure fell apart, white-eyed rats cascading off a decaying, scarecrow framework of sticks and black cloth, the illusion of a person completely gone.
In that same moment, the ground in front of Jack collapsed. His balance went, and he fell backward, twisting around as the earth carried him down into a sudden sinkhole.
Jack slid down, down, down, the loose soil carrying him deep underground. Desperately he tried to scrabble and claw his way to the surface, but there was nothing to hold on to, and nothing solid under his feet.
He sank deeper, gulping one desperate breath before the earth closed over above his head.
UNLIKE HER BROTHER, JAIDE DID scream as she tried to stop herself from being swallowed up by the hole as well. She was already sliding in the mud, slipping inexorably toward the patch of turbulent earth, which was moving as if in answer to strong currents below the surface. But at the last second she managed to grab a tree trunk, forcing her fingernails into the bark so hard they broke. She came to rest with her feet in loose earth up to her ankles.
‘Jack!’
There was no answer.
‘Jack!’
Again Jack did not answer, but something else did. There was a flicker of movement in the hole. Jaide pulled herself back with a shriek as thousands of red ants boiled up out of the earth.
But the ants
didn’t attack. They were busy filling in the hole, burying her brother. Jaide scrambled upright and put her back to the tree, just as a dozen milky-eyed rats poked their heads out of the roiling mix of dirt and ants. The rats turned as one and opened their mouths, speaking together.
‘Come! Come to us, troubletwister!’
Jaide screamed again and went up the tree faster than she had ever climbed before. The rats watched her, their horrible eyes moving in unison, and then a great column of white-eyed red ants swarmed out of the dirt and came straight to the tree, climbing in an incredibly fast swathe of red and black and white.