Spiders Read online

  ‘It’s cloudy,’ clicked the monstrous figure.

  Abbie repeated the verdict. ‘Cloudy.’ She knew that it would be overcast. Cloud often rolled in after sunny starts. Maybe such things as demonic spider-figures did exist, and it was in this unusual place that they could be seen. Maybe her father was right. Maybe this group was made up of ‘the most liberated and important people in the universe’.

  She slipped out of the chair, keeping as far away from the creature as possible, and pulled back the curtains. The sun had gone behind one of the mountains, but there was no mistaking the deep blue of the clear sky.

  The creature was wrong. She was hallucinating; the spider was a figment of her own imagination.

  It was when Abbie sat down for dinner and saw Bolleskine watching the food arrive that she began to build a theory. If I’m being drugged, it must be the water , she thought, or maybe the food .

  ‘Come on, Abbie,’ said her father, nudging the bowl. ‘Eat your dinner.’

  ‘I’m not very hungry,’ she said. ‘My stomach is a bit unsettled.’

  ‘Shame,’ said her father in a level voice that reminded Abbie of their old life. ‘The food is good here.’

  Avoiding the main course was much more difficult. Eating well and staying fit were considered obligations for members of the community. ‘I’m really not hungry,’ said Abbie. ‘It’s probably a girl thing.’ That was usually enough to end a conversation with her father.

  Bolleskine slithered in, slim features and bright brown eyes hinting at abundant energy. ‘You should eat something,’ he said. ‘We’ve prepared this especially for you. Or at least have a drink.’ Large jugs dotted the length of the table.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Abbie said, looking at the water, the first hints of thirst appearing, but thinking of using the taps later.

  After supper she went with her father back to Bolleskine’s mirrored room. She could see a reflection of the mirror behind them as she sat down. The room confused her, and the more she tried not to think about water, the thirstier she became.

  ‘We have no secrets here,’ said Bolleskine, ‘just as we share everything else.’ He looked intently at Abbie, then turned to her father.

  ‘Abbie, I want you to know about our work here,’ her father purred, his mannerisms and expressions increasingly echoing Bolleskine’s. ‘We are building an incredible kingdom.’

  Abbie nodded impassively.

  ‘The kingdom is a great one – full of outstanding people,’ Bolleskine said. ‘We have gathered together the most able of the current generation to build our new world. It will be a paradise. A place where we overcome and embrace our fears, where everyone works together, men and women and children all equal, guided by an exceptional leader.’

  ‘And that’s you?’ Abbie asked, unsmiling.

  Bolleskine laughed. ‘Ha! How you misunderstand me!’ He shook his head. ‘I am merely preparing the way.’ He leaned forward, animated now. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ said Bolleskine. ‘I was not alone in the early days here, but worked with a greedy, impatient man, who stole a third of our group. He was inspired and understood deep truths, but was a slave to his own desires. He was called Coron.’

  Abbie thought she had heard that name somewhere before.

  ‘Coron knew he would die if one chosen boy was not killed before the appointed time – and one second after this current year began, the prophecy was fulfilled,’ Bolleskine continued. ‘Coron was right. Despite his evil betrayal of us, he was right about our leader: one chosen for us. And it is your father who will now go and bring him to us.’

  ‘Who is this person?’

  Bolleskine tapped a large leather book on his desk. ‘His name is Adam. He does not know it yet, but he will lead us into the promised world.’

  Abbie left in silence with her father. Her thirst had grown beyond a distraction and was edging into discomfort.

  Toilets, sometimes in the same rooms as showers, were dotted around the castle as no rooms were en suite. Abbie mumbled that she was going into one as they got nearer to her room. She went straight to the nearest tap.

  Nothing.

  She turned the tap at the second sink.

  No water there either.

  The water supply to Abbie’s part of the building had been cut off.

  CHAPTER 16

  OUT OF THE FRYING PAN, INTO THE FIRE (MONDAY 15TH DECEMBER 2014)

  Adam felt his stomach rise. Even in the midst of his chaos and fear, for an instant he thought of a rollercoaster ride. The first part of his fall took two seconds, during which he experienced a Thorpe Park sensation, and – immediately afterwards – understood that the fall would end with a dreadful crunch, probably on to rocks. He tensed and waited for it to happen, unable to hold in a yell.

  Adam’s skis hit the compacted snow and snapped free of their bindings; his boots dug against something hard and jolted him, making him groan as his lungs emptied. This saved his life: it deflected him away from a large and jagged rock and slowed his fall.

  Three seconds after the fall began, snow hissed and then squeaked as Adam fell into a drift that lay against the rocks.

  He opened his eyes and saw white all around, pressing against his eyes. It was the pain in his left shoulder that told him he was alive. He muttered to himself, ‘I’m not dead.’ Still lying on his left side, with his right hand he felt his chest and both legs, then patted his head and face. ‘I’m not dead!’

  He sat up and looked towards the sky. Snow was falling heavily and the mist was too thick for him to see more than a few feet in any direction. Pain seared through his left shoulder. Adam slid his right hand inside his jacket and felt the area. He had no idea how to tell if a bone was broken, but at least nothing was poking out.

  High above, the four adults sent by Bolleskine realized that it was impossible to follow Adam over the edge. They peered into the billowing snow but could see and hear nothing. ‘Let’s ski down and then head up into that valley,’ said one.

  Shakily Adam stood. His left side hurt, his ribs in general, his shoulder in particular, and there was a bump on his forehead, but he had a short spike of excitement that he had survived such a fall. His mobile phone, though, was smashed to the point that green innards and dented silver circuitry were visible.

  Adam saw that a greyness was mingling with the white. Dark came early this far north, and he would freeze if he didn’t get down the mountain. One ski was pointing upright and undamaged as if he had stuck it in the snow for safe keeping and one ski pole (bent at a right angle) was still around his wrist, but the other ski and pole were nowhere to be seen.

  Adam put on the one ski and started his way down the mountain, panting and wincing as he scraped over stones, but then it became a gentle slope and he made better progress. It was when the stones returned, and he was forced to remove the ski, swearing to himself about the obstacles, the falling snow and the overall wretchedness of his life, that he heard voices coming towards him.

  ‘He just skied off, looking really stressed. We couldn’t catch him.’ Rachel was sitting in the middle of the group, shrugging her shoulders, confusion mingling with adrenalin.

  Mr Macleod made frantic phone calls. Comments such as ‘How could you just lose him?’ and ‘But it’s such a small place!’ didn’t help. Then there was a quieter phone conversation, back turned, with Adam’s parents.

  Rachel was going over the story: ‘Apparently he said to the guy who was at the bottom of the lift that there were people after him – but we were the only people after him.’

  Megan bit her lip and looked at the swirling patterns on the carpet. Without a word she went over to Mr Macleod. ‘Could I?’ She gestured towards the phone.

  ‘Mrs Grant, it’s Megan. I’m so sorry about Adam. He really hasn’t been right. He was convinced that people were after him. I’m sure he’ll calm down and come back.’

  As Megan gently convinced Adam’s mum – gradually turning her anxiety into hope – she felt her own belief tha
t Adam was ‘just being a bit odd’ ebb away. She knew that Adam was not mad. She thought of what had happened to Jake and at the indoor ski centre. Maybe she was losing her mind as well.

  Mr Macleod spoke to all the group very firmly about the need to stay inside. They all agreed at the time, but later Megan realized that she had to disobey this instruction and leave.

  Adam crouched down as the voices approached – there were two people, perhaps three. Risking a glance, he saw a bubble of torchlit mist coming towards him.

  His listened carefully, desperately hoping that they were rescuers rather than pursuers. Then his eye fell on his remaining ski, poking out from behind a rock.

  ‘. . . take him back to the castle . . .’

  ‘. . . such an important mission . . .’

  Adam screwed his face up and tried to force himself deeper down into the snow.

  He lay absolutely still as the voices came level with him and held his breath when the snow around him was briefly illuminated. Then, agonizingly slowly – far slower than they arrived, it seemed – the voices drifted away.

  Adam was suddenly conscious of how dark it was. The smothering white had now been replaced by a blanket of black. Adam found it impossible to go more than a few yards without stubbing a boot into a rock. He felt, rather than saw, the falling snow, which stuck to his face and forced its way into his mouth.

  The cold began to wrap itself around him and bite through his sweat. Three layers, he knew, would not be enough to get him through the night, especially as there was nowhere to shelter. Adam had hopes of discovering a dry cave, ideally with the materials to start a fire – not that he knew what to do beyond rubbing sticks together – but these were open and treeless slopes.

  Perhaps he should have handed himself over. It might have been better than freezing to death.

  Abruptly and unexpectedly, Adam slipped and fell on his right side. After he heaved himself up, he swished his ski pole in frustration, only to find it thumped against something raised from the ground. Adam took off a glove and extended his hand into the darkness. Despite the deep thudding sound, he imagined touching a face or an animal . . .

  It was a fence.

  So Adam started going down, fence pole to fence pole, always downhill. The cold was inside him now and he felt a deep tiredness taking hold, but he didn’t allow himself to stop – always downhill, trudging, sliding, plodding. He felt the ache in his shoulder, his hunger, his fatigue. Anything would be better than this.

  A few minutes after he decided that he would have to sit down and close his eyes for a rest, he saw a glow ahead and the mist lifted slightly. It was the car park at the bottom of the slope.

  ‘Adam? Adam Grant?’

  He had been spotted stumbling out of the gloom. There were five vehicles in the car park: two menacing and empty 4x4s; a white Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Land Rover and two police Range Rovers.

  A policeman ran forward and helped Adam the last few yards.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Adam said hoarsely and slowly. ‘I’m OK. But stay with me.’

  ‘You’re safe now. We know who you are and we’ll get you straight into Aviemore and check you over.’

  Other people, hazy to Adam, were using walkie-talkies.

  He was surrounded by police officers and burly mountain rescuers. He breathed a premature sigh of relief.

  Mid-evening, Mr Macleod received the message that Adam had walked off the mountain, suffering from exhaustion and minor injuries, but otherwise unharmed. Adam was being taken to Aviemore Medical Practice to be looked at by a doctor, before possibly being taken to a hospital.

  Megan had just gone to her own room when Mr Macleod knocked on the door and announced what had happened. ‘Thank God,’ he finished. He explained that he was going to see Adam but wouldn’t be gone long. ‘Miss Frances will be in charge,’ he said, as he strode off down the corridor.

  Rachel came over and put her arm around a tearful Megan as she sat next to her on her bed. About three minutes passed, during which a door opened and closed outside, unnoticed by the girls.

  ‘I wish I could help him,’ said Megan as she leaned into Rachel again. Then she leaped up. ‘Maybe Mr Macleod will let me see him.’ She dashed to the window to check that he hadn’t yet set off. Mr Macleod and Oliver were talking together as they crossed the car park.

  Megan opened the bedroom window as far as she could. ‘Mr Macleod! Mr Macleod! Can I go with you to see Adam?’

  ‘Megan, I do understand,’ he said, reluctant to take her in case there was a scene, ‘but Oliver has already offered.’

  Megan then had one of those moments that changes everything: she felt fear and danger. She saw Oliver at the indoor ski slope putting his ski boots on. Putting his ski boots on! Near the end of the session. Before the dead boy was discovered. And he had left Adam’s party early. Early! Before Jake was attacked. No one had thought of Oliver .

  ‘No!’ she shouted aggressively. ‘I should go. Or Asa.’

  ‘Megan –’ Mr Macleod sighed ( This was exactly what I feared , he thought) – ‘we’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Stay there!’ she bellowed.

  But Mr Macleod and Oliver were into the minibus and away before Megan could put her shoes on. When she went back to the window there was only an oblong snowless patch where the bus had been.

  Adam was sitting on the bed facing a doctor when Mr Macleod walked in with Oliver.

  After greeting the teacher, Adam turned to Oliver, disappointed that Megan hadn’t come instead. ‘Thanks for coming, Oliver. Very kind of you.’

  ‘It’s the least I could do,’ said Oliver, hands in his pockets. In one, a mobile phone linking him to Adam’s pursuers; in the other, a syringe containing the same powerful drug as had been fed to Abbie.

  CHAPTER 17

  WATER (MONDAY 15TH DECEMBER 2014)

  Abbie looked out on Loch Dreich, thirst reaching up from deep inside her, its sandy fingers scraping her throat and drying her tongue.

  If only I had a mobile phone , she thought. This lot could be put on trial for poisoning, if nothing else!

  Even her father? She had already lost her mother. Abbie punched her fist into her bed. There isn’t even a landline or a computer that I can get to. One need stretched out in her mind, banishing all other thoughts: I must get water!

  The loch here was small compared to Loch Lomond or Loch Ness, but it was larger than most reservoirs and lakes in England. And it was made entirely of fresh water from the surrounding mountains: millions of pints of drinkable liquid.

  Desperation drove her on. If she could get outside, she could run thirty yards to the lake. Shoes and coat on, she pressed her ear to her door . . . All clear.

  She slowly poked her head out. She could hear the ticking of a clock and indistinct voices in the distance, but nothing near, and not a sound from her father’s room.

  She would have to go down two floors and somehow get out, where there was no security lighting, and then, at the end, pure, cool water . . .

  Abbie could think of nothing but her thirst.

  Planting her feet as quietly as possible, she followed the corridor around a sharp right turn and froze. Her father was standing in her way, a look of angry disappointment and fatigue on his face. He could have been waiting there, but it happened to be a chance meeting.

  ‘Where are you going?’ The words were suspicious, obstructive, hostile.

  ‘I need to visit the bathroom.’

  He took three steps back and pointed to the closest door on his right. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  He didn’t respond.

  Abbie went into a cubicle and locked the door behind her. The toilet itself was unflushed. She had a moment of excitement: the cistern! Water!

  Empty. Someone had already used it and it hadn’t refilled.

  Abbie looked at the window above the cistern. As she opened it, cold winter air rushed in and rattled the cubicle door slightly.

  Outside, her
father looked impatiently at the bathroom door.

  Abbie saw Loch Dreich stretching out before her in the thin slither of moonlight, and the hard, wintry ground more than thirty feet below. She looked up to the two upper floors, and down to the ground, covered with thin windblown snow. The castle walls were smooth, built for defence, not for escape.

  ‘Abbie? I want you to come out now.’ Her father’s voice was lower and flatter than it used to be.

  Getting down was hopeless. Abbie looked at the old iron drainpipe running down from the roof and the one just below her that ran from the bathroom and joined it. Ridiculous. She was unsure that she could scramble down, even if the pipe could take her weight. Her feet would slip on the walls . . .

  She could hear her father again.

  A fearful madness – fear of Bolleskine, fear of her own father – and a desperate thirst-fuelled craziness pushed her on.

  She stood on the cistern, then found herself crouching outside on the window ledge. Facing inwards she held on to the sill, edging down and dangling very briefly, until one foot and then the other found the metal pipe.

  It held her weight. She edged along, the window gradually disappearing from reach, until she lunged for the main drainpipe.

  Muscles rigid, hands aching with the effort, and three storeys above the ground, Abbie was now angled away from the window. She couldn’t go back even if she tried.

  Suddenly another fear hit: falling. She pressed herself against the building, her nose pushed hard against the stone, too terrified to move on, unable to retreat.

  ‘Abbie?’ Her father’s face appeared at the window, that new look of determined fervour in his eyes. He looked at her and then down. ‘Wait here. Don’t let go of that pipe.’

  She wasn’t going to.

  He disappeared for several minutes. Abbie felt that she didn’t have the strength to hold on much longer, or the resolve to let herself fall. She tried to spread her weight and hold herself up as much as possible. Snowflakes fluttered in front of her eyes, spinning in the wind.