The Challenge Read online

  THE CHALLENGE

  Ben’s best friend has been found dead after mysteriously disappearing from outside his house. Ben has never felt so alone, until twins Sam and Jack arrive at school and introduce him to The Challenge.

  What first seems to be a harmless popularity contest quickly turns sinister. But once you’re involved with The Challenge, it’s very hard to get out . . .

  To my family

  CONTENTS

  ONE WEEK TO GO

  MAY 2011 – SEPTEMBER 2011 LIFE AFTER WILL; LIFE WITH THE TWINS

  SEPTEMBER 2011 ANGELS

  SEPTEMBER 2011 FIRST BLOOD

  SIX DAYS TO GO

  SEPTEMBER 2011 SHADOW OF THE PAST

  SEPTEMBER 2011 STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

  OCTOBER 2011 MAGIC

  FIVE DAYS TO GO

  OCTOBER 2011 AUTUMN LEAVES

  NOVEMBER 2011 AT THE MOUNTAINTOP

  NOVEMBER 2011 GAME THEORY

  FOUR DAYS TO GO

  NOVEMBER 2011 BULLSEYE

  NOVEMBER 2011 THE INCIDENT IN THE NIGHT-TIME

  NOVEMBER 2011 LONE SUSPECT

  THREE DAYS TO GO

  NOVEMBER 2011 BEYOND DEATH

  NOVEMBER 2011 PUPPET ON A STRING

  NOVEMBER 2011 THE LANTERN ROOM

  TWO DAYS TO GO

  NOVEMBER 2011 BEYOND DEATH

  NOVEMBER 2011 DEATH

  A FEW HOURS TO GO

  AFTER THE MEETING WITH JACK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THIRTEEN

  SPIDERS

  SURVIVOR

  ONE WEEK TO GO

  Draft Email

  To:

  Cc:

  Subject:

  Someone else has to know the whole truth.

  ‘Christmas Eve, 2016. The middle of London, next to Big Ben. Midday,’ he said. Then I watched him disappear into the woodland. With anyone else, they’d be empty words.

  It was so far in the future I thought we’d never get here.

  I came close to |

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  MAY 2011 – SEPTEMBER 2011 LIFE AFTER WILL; LIFE WITH THE TWINS

  My story begins when I was fifteen years old. It was May 2011, a Saturday, 4.45 p.m., immediately after the FA Cup final. It begins the moment I spun the back wheel of my bike and sprayed wet mud across the road.

  Bullseye, the dog belonging to Mike, who lived opposite, stood in his open gate and howled. Will swore at me as he wiped specks off his T-shirt.

  Will Capling. We had grown up together, our houses more or less opposite one another.

  ‘Hey – where’s my hoodie? Have you got it? Thief!’ Will’s favourite jumper was blue with white strings. If I hadn’t splattered his T-shirt with mud, maybe he wouldn’t have thought of his jumper.

  ‘You left it in my room, you muppet. You just sit there while I’ll get it,’ I said as I ran inside. I glanced behind once, and saw Will circling in the road on his bike, one hand on his mobile phone.

  Bullseye barked.

  ‘Benny, when you come back, I need to tell you something,’ Will shouted. Those were his last words. They were possibly his last words ever.

  The very last time I saw Will Capling, he was playing on his bike in the road.

  That was a line from my statement.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ he’d said.

  He never had a chance to tell me what.

  Thousands of times afterwards, I reconstructed the scene, straining for details. Was there someone in the distance? The sound of a passing car? Anyone? Anything?

  I took the stairs two at a time and shouted to my gran: ‘I’m just grabbing Will’s hoodie. It doesn’t feel as warm today.’

  I couldn’t have been inside for more than ninety seconds, but in that time Will disappeared.

  It was a while before I realized something terrible had happened. ‘Will, where are you?’ I shouted as I came back out into the lane. I rode hundreds of yards in both directions, up and down the road, Will’s hoodie tied round my neck, telling him to stop messing about. Then my voice gradually rose: ‘Will – don’t be a prat! Will? William!’ William was what his mum called him.

  Bullseye barked again.

  I hate the memory of what happened next. I shouted and walked into Will’s place. I didn’t knock – that’s how close we were. My life flowed in and out of their house.

  It was half an hour before we started to think something had gone wrong. It was two hours before Will’s dad called the police. I remember going to Will’s room, folding the hoodie, laying it on his bed. So much of my life had revolved around Will, another only child, the only other boy in a tiny village. When he was taken away, my life was ripped apart.

  I was different after Will died. I locked the door to my bedroom; sometimes I also put a chair against it in case an intruder magically slid the bolt across. Maybe I thought whoever murdered Will was going to attack me. Maybe I was worried that Will wasn’t around to look after me any more.

  The nightmares came: pleas carried by the wind that howled across the Lake; a monster that crawled among reeds and gravestones; faces that yelled at me from underwater, bubbles erupting from their mouths. I was different, withdrawn. Some said I had changed because I’d lost my only close friend, others that I believed it could have been me. I suppose I thought that Will was the better looking one, the funnier one, the sportier one, and felt I wasn’t worth as much without him.

  As the rest of term passed after Will died – June slipping into July, and a lost, empty summer ahead – sympathy evaporated as people began to forget about Will. Plans for the ‘Will Capling Pond’ had been put on hold and the new ‘Will Capling Cup for Character’ was already in danger of becoming another unnecessary prize at the end of term.

  I remember one lesson about future careers, when we had to write down what other people thought of us.

  Darren Foss, on the table next to mine, put his hand up. ‘Benny wants to know how to spell “weird”,’ he said. Then, ‘Benny wants to know how to spell “arse-rash”.’ Everyone laughed. The teacher just told him to be quiet.

  The Twins arrived on the first day of the new school year in September 2011 and changed everything. The first day of The Twins was Day One. Of the 6,000 days of my life, more happened in 100 days with The Twins than in all those days before. Even the days with Will.

  The Twins. Sam and Jack. And everyone said ‘Sam and Jack’, never the other way round. Sam was older by a few minutes and he seemed to be the one who made the decisions when they couldn’t agree. They were identical, absolutely indistinguishable – not a mole, an eyelash, or an interest that was different – the same liquid poured into two identical pots.

  On that first day, I had gone into the toilets and couldn’t turn around in time after spotting Darren and a couple of his mates standing between the urinals and basins. I diverted to the cubicles, but a foot appeared in the door just before it closed.

  ‘Aren’t you in the wrong room?’ said Darren.

  ‘What?’ I said, hating myself for having come in while they were around. They had caught me in the same toilets near the end of the previous term and forced my head into the bowl and flushed. Afterwards, I had cried and felt sick, but not because of the physical bullying: for years, Darren had called me ‘Will’s shadow’; now he thought it was funny to say I was ‘a shadow without a body’. It was hard to hide how much that hurt.

  ‘You should be next door with the girls,’ he said, mates peering over his shoulder. ‘I suppose you’re in here because you need to sit down to piss.’ They laughed.

  I didn’t know what to say. That was always the problem. All those words on a page, a top-of-the-class brain, but I couldn’t string a few words together.

  Darren grabbe
d my neck with one hand and whipped a pack of cards from my pocket with the other. He tipped them over the floor. I looked down and saw four jacks and four kings scattered around my feet, all the other cards face down. I know the chances of that happening are microscopic, and I don’t believe in signs. Maybe I only noticed those cards.

  Then I heard a confident voice. ‘Can we help in there?’ It was the first time I had ever seen The Twins. I think it was Sam. I hadn’t heard them enter. I wasn’t sure whether they were talking to Darren or me.

  ‘Hey, man,’ Darren said, looking from one identical face to the other. ‘He’s all yours.’ Darren turned to leave but The Twins were shoulder to shoulder, blocking his way out of the cubicle, as well as trapping me inside. Darren’s mates slunk away without a word – I heard a burst of chatter from outside as the door opened and closed. The four of us stood still.

  Jack – and I know it was him because he had ‘JT’ – Jack Thatcher – embroidered on his shirt – stuck out one finger and gently pressed it to Darren’s upper chest. Jack’s brown, almost ginger hair flopped down over his ears. Light reflected off his deep brown eyes. He smiled calmly.

  I waited for an onslaught from Darren, but nothing came.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Sam – ‘ST’ embroidered on his shirt – asked me.

  ‘I’m B-Ben,’ I stammered. I had never called myself Ben before; it had always been Benny, or sometimes Benedict.

  ‘Ben,’ Sam said calmly, ‘I know we’re going to be great friends. See you later.’ I know we’re going to be great friends: it was the sort of precise thing The Twins would say. Not I hope we’re going to be friends. Absolute certainty.

  I squeezed between Darren and The Twins, and left as quickly as I could. No sooner had I stepped into the corridor than the bell went. I stood at the corner, just beyond the last locker, waiting for the blue toilet door to open.

  Two minutes later, The Twins strode out, chatting casually, heading in my direction, offering me a full deck of cards. ‘Hey, Ben,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll see you around.’

  I waved the cards at them and smiled. ‘Yeah. That’d be great. Any time. Thanks. Really. Thanks.’ I sounded desperate, pathetic.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow break-time?’ said Sam. He smiled and flicked back hair that was getting close to his right eye. ‘You seem pretty cool.’

  He was totally convincing, though no one had ever called me ‘cool’ before (well, my gran genuinely thought I was cool, but she was not a good judge).

  ‘Yeah. Great.’ I nodded and grinned, probably giggling a little, but they gave no sign that I was embarrassing myself.

  Darren still hadn’t emerged from the toilet.

  The Twins saw me staring at the door and smiled at each another.

  ‘We just . . .’ said one.

  ‘. . . helped him understand,’ said the other.

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  SEPTEMBER 2011

  ANGELS

  Most people would think it’s impossible that they charmed everyone from the start, but that’s only because you didn’t meet Sam and Jack. Being identical twins made them interesting, but it was much more than that.

  On Day Two, I saw them at break. I was with Blake. Blake had somehow been left behind after friendships were formed. He was gangly and poorly coordinated; he wore thick glasses and had a squeaky voice. He was like a cartoon nerd. We were bonded by the fact that, along with three or four girls, we aced our summer exams. It would have been better if the other boy to do that hadn’t been Blake – but I was grateful for his company after Will died. Anyway, Blake and I stood on the sideline together and watched the football, mainly because I had spotted The Twins, though I didn’t mention that to Blake. I toyed with a pack of cards and Blake pestered me about tricks.

  I did have one hobby: magic. It made other people fade into the background, helped me feel strong. Gran had told me that Grandad used to do some magic. And that’s another thing that made me different: being brought up by your grandmother. ‘His mother died in childbirth’ sounds Victorian. Not knowing who your father is sounds twenty-first century.

  I couldn’t tell which Twin was which, but it was obvious that Sam was the best player on one side and Jack the best on the other. They were even better than the school captain, Head Boy and golden boy, Mark Roberts. He was a year older, training with Bolton Wanderers, and on track to be a professional.

  A flick of the ball, a dip of the shoulder, a spinning pass – The Twins were graceful players; they seemed to have more time than everyone else. And it wasn’t just that. They were competitive, even aggressive, but stopped playing if someone was injured (or feigned injury) and congratulated team-mates and opposition alike on their play: ‘Tekkers’ and ‘Skillage’ and ‘You’re the best, man’. All of this would have been mocked if it had come from anyone apart from a brilliant player.

  When the bell went, they walked off at the centre of a crowd of sporty kids, chatting and joking, kicking a ball around. Even Mark Roberts had fallen under their spell. The Twins said Mark was the best player on the pitch – which was nonsense, and Mark must have known it.

  The sudden hand on my shoulder was Sam’s. ‘Hi, Ben! I was hoping you’d play.’

  I was an OK footballer, but it would never have occurred to me to stand with the other guys when the teams were being picked. ‘No, I don’t usually play,’ I said, looking down to the ground, surprised that he had remembered my name. ‘Usually’ was an overstatement; I had never taken part.

  ‘Well, I want you on my team tomorrow,’ Sam said. He raised his voice: ‘Hey, guys, Ben’s my first pick tomorrow!’

  At that moment, I wanted to be like The Twins; I wanted to be them. Will suddenly seemed like a kid – these boys were like adults. I didn’t consider the arrogance of it: Sam knew that he would be picking the teams the next day, despite the fact that he had just arrived at the school. That was simply the way it was going to be.

  From behind, someone shouted, ‘You don’t want Bender on your team. He’s shit.’

  There was another voice: ‘All he wants to do is mess around with that magic crap. How old is he? Ten?’

  ‘I trust this guy,’ Sam said, arm still casually draped around my shoulder, but turning to the voice. ‘I reckon he’s nearly as good as you. Tomorrow, Ben’s my main man.’ I felt muscles press against my back as he held me tighter.

  You see? I reckon he’s nearly as good as you. It wasn’t quite an insult to the other kid, but could have been ironic, and it sounded like a compliment to me.

  Something was shouted from a group of four boys who sat on a thick metal handrail in front of the classrooms. As usual, they’d ignored the bell, determined to slouch in last. These kids were even rougher than bullies like Darren, real thugs and druggies from the year below who didn’t care about anything and would be leaving after one more year of doing nothing.

  Jack strode over to them as if they were old mates. At first there were hand gestures and swearing from the four, but then Jack started talking and they straightened and laughed. I could hear, ‘Yeah! Man!’ and ‘Yo! Dude!’

  You see – it wasn’t just me.

  Will had been popular with girls in a general way, but I’d rarely spoken to any outside of lessons. There was one girl I sometimes talked to at chess club, but she was old-fashioned and a bit strange – people made fun of her. I had certainly never spoken to Caroline Termonde.

  Caroline Termonde. I analysed every little look, searching for any glimmer of interest in me, but I was just background scenery in her A-level History class.

  The History room was like being in a goldfish bowl: it had one big table in the middle and large windows that meant you could see people passing. Caroline came in and sat halfway down one side of the table, shaking her hair into place. I risked a tiny glance.

  Behind Caroline, in the corridor, I saw Sam and Jack looking for the right room. They saw me and immediately shouted, ‘Ben!’ as if it were a fantastic surprise. I slapped hands with both of them
and couldn’t help looking at Caroline, just to make sure she noticed that I was in with the new kids.

  ‘Hi – you must be Caroline,’ Jack said as he sat down opposite her.

  ‘Yeah,’ she smiled. ‘How d’you know my name?’

  ‘You look like a Caroline.’ Jack then turned his attention to me. ‘Mate, it’s good to see you.’ And that killed the jealousy that had shot inside me.

  Sam then sat next to his brother. ‘Hi – you must be Ms Termonde.’ He reached out his hand.

  Caroline put two hands up and laughed. ‘Come on, guys, how did you . . . ?’

  ‘It’s Ben – he mentally transmitted your name.’ Sam waved his hands as if to show how the thoughts had moved through the air.

  Caroline turned to me. ‘Hi, Ben.’

  After four years, two words. She had said ‘Ben’.

  ‘Yeah – a bit of magic,’ I said. My face was red but the words sounded OK.

  Jack gestured to the pack that sat on top of my books. ‘Got any tricks?’

  I took a deep breath. The only person who’d ever spoken to me about tricks before was Blake. ‘Yeah, OK.’ I quickly ‘shuffled’ – that is, I organized the pack. Dr Richardson was bound to arrive any minute so I did a classic I’d practised a hundred times in front of the mirror at home.

  It’s dead easy: you ask someone to pick a card as you flick through the pack, but just hold back the last one with your index finger and let them see it for a fraction longer than the others. In this case, I held back the Queen of Hearts. Maybe that was a silly choice, but it’s recognizable. Caroline fell for it – for such a simple trick, it’s great that it never fails.

  ‘Ben, that’s really amazing, how did you do it?’

  Nine more words!

  ‘Magic?’ I suggested.

  ‘That’s so wicked!’ said Sam. ‘Queen of Hearts!’ And then in a whisper, ‘Smooth.’

  The handful of other kids who had come into the class muttered in appreciation and gave a patter of applause. One or two called me Ben.