Sapphire and Steel Read online

  ‘The corridor thing, have you ever seen it?’ asked Rob, trying to keep the fascination going.

  ‘Not properly.’ Sapphire replied as she placed the poker back at the side of the stove. ‘It’s both difficult and dangerous to see. Time always is. You can’t go backwards into Time to look. Or forwards.’

  ‘Then how can you see it?’

  ‘You see it when it breaks in, of course.’ And she seemed a little tired of the explanation as she moved to the sink to wash her hands.

  Rob moved to help her. He turned on the tap and handed her some soap and a towel.

  ‘We had this assignment once,’ said Sapphire.

  ‘Assignment...?’

  Sapphire nodded as she washed her long, sensitive-looking hands. ‘On a ship, of all things.’

  ‘A ship?’ Rob pursued it, intrigued.

  ‘Yes. Time breaking through in the middle of the ocean, would you believe?’ She took the towel from Rob. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And is this...?’ Rob began.

  Sapphire looked at him.

  ‘Is this — well, you being here. Is this also an assignment?’

  Before she could answer him, Steel had appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. He watched them.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sapphire to Steel. And, during the fraction of a second that it took to return the towel to Rob, she was back in her original clothes.

  Steel walked slowly into the room. ‘Perhaps, when you’ve finished telling the boy all about the nicer aspects of our job,’ there was an edge to Steel’s voice, ‘you’ll also tell him about the dangers.’

  ‘He knows about them.’ Sapphire replied.

  ‘Enough about them? Enough about the dangers in this house?’

  Sapphire said nothing as Steel walked slowly to Rob and stared at him for a moment or so. ‘This corridor, it’s immense,’ said Steel. ‘So don’t try to imagine it.’

  ‘No,’ said Rob.

  ‘Because Time is immense.’ Steel held up finger and thumb, indicating a measure. ‘So try to imagine instead, if you’re capable of it, Mankind, or the existence of mankind, as approximately one inch in length.’

  Rob nodded as Steel placed his finger and thumb approximately one inch away from the boy’s face. ‘Then compare it with this corridor called Time, which is, say, a thousand million miles long.’

  Rob tried to focus on the finger and thumb that were held close to his face.

  ‘Mankind — one inch.’ Steel continued. ‘Time and the unknown — a thousand million miles. Just compare them. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ lied Rob.

  ‘Good.’ Steel removed his hand. ‘Because I think you’ve already witnessed a fraction of those dangers this evening, whether you recognised them as dangers or not.’ Steel pointed. ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Oh, I realise...’ Rob began to say.

  ‘Because some things have access to that so-called corridor.’ Steel began to cross the room as if he had finished what he had to say. He began to check the clocks.

  ‘Things?’ Rob asked nervously.

  Steel turned to look at Rob once more. ‘Yes. Things.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ asked Rob.

  Steel glanced at Sapphire, as if to say, ‘Just what have you started?’ He then looked back at Rob.

  ‘Things,’ he said the word again, making it sound even more sinister. ‘Things from the very beginnings of Time. Or things from the very end of Time. Take your pick.’

  Rob looked at Sapphire, then back to Steel.

  ‘And these things are — these things are in that corridor?’ Rob half-whispered the question.

  Steel nodded. ‘Forever moving along it. Backwards and forwards.’

  The fear inside Rob was sudden and sharp, like a pain. It was a fear for his parents that was not helped by the jumbled thoughts in his head. And he found that his mind seemed to be confused by the bright magic of Sapphire and the cold logic of Steel.

  He could hear the man’s words through the mild chaos of his thoughts and feelings. ‘And they move to and fro in that corridor.’ Steel’s voice continued with its warning, with its threat. ‘Ever looking. Ever searching. Always trying to find a way in, trying to find a way through the fabric.’

  Helen could not sleep properly. The events of the evening and being put to bed in a strange room probably caused the unrest. And so she awoke, reached for her teddy-bear, then climbed out of bed.

  She opened the door of the spare bedroom then, dressed only in her nightgown, she moved out on to the landing.

  She thought, at first, that she might go downstairs. She could hear Rob, Steel and Sapphire talking in the kitchen below. But, in her young mind, there was time to see them later. Time enough to talk to them afterwards.

  Helen moved to the cupboard-stair door and opened it. She peered up towards the dark attic landing.

  ‘Look for Mama and Daddy, shall we, ’Becca?’ she asked the toy.

  She rocked it in her arms, then looked up at the landing once more. ‘See the pretty pictures again, shall we?’ And she made the teddy-bear nod its head in answer.

  Still cradling the toy, Helen began to climb the steep, dark stairs to the attic above.

  ‘But what made them come in?’ Rob was still trying to get things straight, still trying to understand it all in his mind. ‘What made the things choose this house?’ he asked. ‘Why our home?’

  ‘We’ve already explained that to you,’ said Steel. ‘The fabric is here. The echoes of the past, all the right — or wrong —ingredients are here in this house. Therefore the pressure-point was here.’

  ‘Upstairs in Helen’s room?’ said Rob.

  Steel nodded. ‘But we’ve stopped them. We’ve held them. We’ve destroyed the final echo. The last ingredient. The trigger.’

  ‘The trigger?’ whispered Rob.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sapphire, and pointed to the stove. ‘You watched me burn it, didn’t you?’

  ‘I watched you burn the book, yes. Was that the trigger?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Sapphire. ‘But one particular line was. The next line. The line that Steel prevented me from saying. Remember?’

  And Rob remembered the rhyme read aloud and the wall that pushed outwards and the terrible sound. ‘Yes, of course I remember.’

  ‘Well, that was the trigger.’ Sapphire was looking at Rob steadily. ‘One particular line, from one particular nursery rhyme, said aloud in one particular room. Helen’s room.’

  Helen had opened the door of her bedroom and she had switched on the bedside lamp. She now knelt upon the bed, the teddy-bear cradled upon her knees. She did not miss the book because she had a good memory for her age and therefore knew her favourite nursery-rhyme by heart. Every last word and letter of it.

  Helen began to swing the teddy to and fro as she chanted the rhyme. ‘Ring-a-ring o’ roses. A pocket full of posies...’

  In the kitchen, the wall clock stopped first. Steel had already hurried across the room. He dragged open the hallway door as the second clock stopped.

  The hallway clocks also ceased their ticking, first one, then the other as Steel ran to the foot of the first flight of stairs.

  Steel was looking up at the landing above, listening for something, as Sapphire and Rob hurried along the hallway to join him.

  They could just hear, from the very top of the house, the faint sound of Helen’s voice as she recited the rhyme.

  ‘The king has sent his daughter...’ As the child’s chanting voice floated down to them from the attic room Steel, Sapphire and Rob were already running up the first flight of stairs.

  By the time they had reached the first landing, Helen’s voice could be heard more clearly. ‘To fetch a...’ The child seemed to have forgotten the sequence.

  Steel, Sapphire and Rob had crossed the landing and were climbing the second flight of stairs as Helen remembered. ‘...To fetch a pail of water. A-tishoo! A-tishoo...’

  They heard the rushing, rumbling sound as they reached
the second floor landing. And, as they clambered quickly up the steep attic stairs, the sound had already increased and was growing even louder.

  ‘The bird upon the steeple.’

  ‘Helen!’ Rob found himself shouting as Steel shoved open the door of the attic room.

  ‘Sits high above the people.’

  And Helen was there in the room, cradling the teddy, her face reflecting the light that was already spilling from the wall. The light breeze blew through the room and the jumbled, restless shapes were there, like a part of the radiant light. But the shapes moved faster now, so that the wall was beginning to lose its natural form. To Rob, it no longer resembled a wall. It was like a lot of different places somewhere else. A lot of voices. A lot of people. A madness. A confusion. It was, to him, like the worst of the cold, feverish dreams that you woke screaming from during an illness. The most disturbing nightmare snatched from sickness and thrust forward and magnified a thousand times.

  As the sound grew to a high pulsating screech that seemed to cut through the ears and the skull and the nerves, Rob found that he could not look away from this tumbling mass of light and noise. It appeared to be advancing into the room, advancing towards him, gaining ground and space as it spread itself, so that the room appeared to be proportionately smaller. It was as if the attic bedroom was being absorbed, as if the shifting, growing light was soaking up all that was real and sane and safe. And, above it all, was the terrible tearing sound.

  ‘Hold her! Hold the child!’ Steel’s voice seemed as faint as a voice in a storm. ‘It’s too late to say the rhyme back. Just hold the child!’

  Then, among the shapes and half-seen figures that moved within the area of light, Rob saw the shadow of his mother. He recognised her by the slow, easy way she walked. Like someone who was never in any hurry. She was moving towards him. She then disappeared and reappeared again further back among the shapes, moving forward once more but smaller in perspective, as if the mass of light had a depth of its own. Then she was gone again. To Rob it was like watching a distant swimmer on a hot day, when sky and sea and haze merge with equal brightness. He thought, too, that he heard her voice under the shrill sound. On impulse, he pressed his hands hard against his ears and stumbled towards the area of light.

  He felt himself grabbed and dragged backwards suddenly and violently.

  Steel jerked Rob towards the open doorway, then released him. Rob felt a gentler hand take him by the shoulder. It was Sapphire. She was standing outside the door and holding Helen close to her.

  The area of light, the moving, shifting mass that was once a wall, now filled the room and was spreading towards them and the open door, throwing out its reflecting light as it moved.

  Steel reached out again. This time he snatched the bear from Helen’s hands. Before she could cry out in protest, Steel had leaned forward and tossed the soft toy into the centre of the light source.

  The teddy-bear did not complete its journey through the air. It did not fall to the floor. Rob saw it reach the area of light. There was a grabbing, snatching sound and the bear disappeared. It seemed to be sucked into the mass of light.

  Steel pulled the door to and slammed it shut for the second time that evening. From inside the room, the sound died, like something that had been switched off. But the glow flickered around the edges of the door fora few moments. Then that also died.

  A good three minutes seemed to pass before Steel was satisfied enough to turn from the closed door. He ignored Helen crying for her lost toy. Instead, he looked at Rob. ‘How many more rhymes has she memorised?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rob. It was the truth.

  Steel looked down at Helen, and Helen looked back up at him, still crying as she held on tightly to Sapphire.

  ‘Keep her with you at all times.’

  Sapphire nodded and Steel looked at Rob once more as the crying continued. ‘Has she other dolls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then find her one,’ was Steel’s only offering as he moved towards the stairs..

  ‘The way — the way that doll disappeared.’ Rob had to ask the question. ‘Is that — is that the way that my mother and father...?’

  ‘Yes.’ Steel stopped halfway down the stairs. ‘And you almost went the same way.’

  Rob looked at the closed door of the attic room. It was still quiet and the glow from inside the room was still extinguished..

  ‘So, from now on and until I say differently, this floor is out of bounds,’ said Steel as he moved on down to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘But my mother’s still in that room.’

  Steel’s reply came from the landing below. ‘Not any more.’ And his footsteps could be heard as he began to descend the second flight of stairs.

  Rob turned slowly to find Sapphire looking at him. ‘But I saw her,’ he insisted. ‘I saw her in the room.’

  Sapphire shook her head.

  ‘I did. I heard her voice.’ He remembered the strange light and the shadowy figures and that one familiar figure half seen, only half recognised. And he found, now, out here on the comparatively normal peaceful landing, that he was not completely sure of what he had seen, or what the strange light had wanted him to see.

  ‘It wasn’t her?’ he asked, tentatively.

  Sapphire shook her head once more. Rob held her gaze for a moment, then had to look away, quickly. Helen’s crying had stopped but Rob felt tears inside himself. His throat was tight as he tried hard to fight the choked, helpless sensation. He had to fight it. He had no intention of breaking down in front of his sister and this woman called Sapphire. He did not trust her or Steel. Not completely. He accepted her and he was fascinated by her, but he could not trust her. Not yet. And, because of the young, and therefore strange, feelings that he had for her, she would be the last person to see him weep. Perhaps later, in the privacy of his own room, and in his own bed, he would allow himself the painful but necessary luxury of crying.

  ‘Mama’s coming home?’

  Rob realised that Helen was talking to him. He reached out and touched her, brushed her hair with his fingers. ‘Not yet,’ he answered.

  ‘Soon?’

  Rob looked up at Sapphire and Sapphire nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rob to his sister, as Sapphire led them down the dark stairs. ‘Soon.’

  Chapter Six

  Rob was awakened by the sound of hammering. He lifted his head from the pillow and stared around him at the daylight. It seemed a long time since he had last seen it.

  The noise of hammering continued. It was coming from above, somewhere on the top floor.

  Rob eased himself out from the bed. He pushed his feet into his slippers and pulled his dressing-gown on over his pyjamas. He then moved to the window and looked out.

  There was the usual high, pinched sound of the wind, but the day was bright and clear. There was something moving on the water of the bay, moving well out from the jetty at Scars Edge. Rob could see that it was a boat of some kind but he could not determine its direction, not from this distance. Then the boat was lost from view and Rob was reminded of the image he had seen in Helen’s room. He turned from the window.

  The steady sound of hammering grew louder as Rob came out from his room on the second floor landing. He pulled the door to quietly and looked towards the cupboard-stair. The stair door was closed but the hammering was taking place on the floor above. The attic room floor. The out-of-bounds floor.

  Rob walked quietly across the landing and opened the cupboard-stair door very carefully. The hammering sound reverberated on the boxed-in, narrow staircase. Rob closed the door gently, but left it off the catch. He then climbed the stairs cautiously, using his hands and feet to give him balance as he kept his head and body low down and out of sight. He reached the top of the stair, still keeping his head down, then raised it slowly to peer between the attic landing bannisters.

  Steel was working with hammer, wood and four-inch nails. Coolly and methodically, he was nailing-up t
he door of the attic bedroom.

  Rob came out from the cupboard-stair, closing the door quietly and carefully once more. He tip-toed across the landing towards the stairs. Then, noticing something, he stopped at the landing window and looked out.

  He recognised the vehicle even though it was one-point-nine-four miles away. It was the small, blue and white police car from Scars Edge. Rob watched it dip and bump off the small ferry-boat. Then it disappeared from view for a few moments as it moved down the slope at the side of the causeway. Rob waited and, sure enough, the white roof of Constable Daly’s car bobbed up again as it climbed the short incline on to the wooden bridge at the end of the dirt track road. The only road. The approach road to the house.

  ‘Breakfast!’ said Sapphire as Rob entered the kitchen parlour. There was food on the table and Helen was already sat there.

  ‘Oh, I’m — I’m not hungry, thanks.’ Rob lied, keeping his head turned away, knowing that if he looked Sapphire in the eyes he had no chance of telling a lie, let alone getting away with it.

  He moved to the window and looked out, pretending to be looking at nothing more specific than the general view.

  ‘What is it?’ Sapphire looked across at him as she put a plate of buttered toast down in front of Helen.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s out there?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Rob decided to give Sapphire at least one quick glance to show that he was behaving normally. ‘Just looking at the weather, that’s all.’

  Sapphire smiled slightly to herself as she turned to the stove. She took boiled eggs from a saucepan and placed them in two egg-cups.

  Rob tried to make it sound as convincingly casual as possible. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. He wants you. Asked me to tell you.’

  ‘Steel?’

  ‘Yes. He’s on the top landing.’

  Sapphire had probably decided to make the lie easier for Rob. She cracked Helen’s egg, set the plate down on the table, then turned back to the stove before asking, ‘So what does he want me for?’

  ‘He’s not likely to tell me, is he?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Sapphire replied, strictly for Rob’s benefit.