Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone (books for 6 year olds to read themselves txt) 📕

And when the cupboard door handle starts to rattle, to turn and turn, I want to scream – I need to scream – because it feels like that’s the only way to meet the blood and sweat and roar and rage and wrong that wants so badly to get in. I don’t know what it is we’ve done. I don’t know why they want to scare us, find us, hurt us. I don’t know why they want us to die. To hang us on a hook until we rot.

We scream when the door splinters open. When the deadlight and that first terrible face loom into the space they’ve ripped wide. Black bones twisted inside a blue beard. Grinning pointed teeth. Rum and smoke. A wink and a roar. And the bells only shriek and shriek.

*

One bell is still shrieking – and far too loud. Too real. Not a hangover from my nightmare, but here and now.

I feel impossibly heavy, impossibly tired. I flop over onto my side like a beached whale and eye the alarm clock. One-fifteen p.m. I’ve slept for thirteen hours. I’m not sure how that’s even possible. I sit up slowly, blink gritty sore eyes.

Get up, I think. That’ll be a good start.

But then I hear the bell again. Longer, more insistent. And I’m suddenly gripped by the worst sense of foreboding yet. The worst sense of doom. It keeps running through my head as I roll out of bed onto unsteady feet, casting about for yesterday’s clothes, trying not to topple over as I struggle back into them. Trying not to think of my dream, or of Something’s coming. Something’s nearly here. Like a shrieking, jangling bell.

I go out onto the landing. I can hear Ross in the shower, so I go down the stairs, one solid step after another. At the bottom, the ringing starts again, but it’s the knocking – loud and insistent – that finally wakes me up. I still hesitate at the front door, my breath shallow and too quick. But when the doorbell rings again, I pull back on the night latch, let in the bright cold outside.

It’s DS Logan. And at the foot of the steps behind him is the white-blonde pixie hair of Shona Murray.

‘Hello, Catriona,’ he says, with no sign at all of any dimples or winks. Or even that he’s capable of them. ‘We’re sorry to disturb you. Can we come in?’

‘Of course.’

As they move past me into the entrance hall, I keep my eyes trained on the path, the gate, the yellowing hedges. I busy my mind with thinking this is when I’ll tell them about the kayak. The emails and the diary pages. Even if they point a finger at Ross; even if they point another at September 1998 and the last day of our first life; the last day – night – of Mum’s and Grandpa’s lives. Even if those emails have told me to tell the police nothing. I’ll do it anyway. Because, suddenly, I’m too afraid not to.

They wait for me in the hallway, and for a moment I have no idea where to take them. The Throne Room is too ridiculous, the kitchen too personal, the pantry entirely off limits. I decide the drawing room is the lesser of all evils, until I usher them inside it and catch both of them looking at the Poirot and Chippendale lowboy with something close to awe; remember the cold of French polish against my overheated skin.

‘Would you like to sit down? Would you like something to drink? There’s something I want to—’

‘Cat,’ Logan says, and he puts his hand on my forearm. ‘Could you get Ross? Is he—’

‘I’m here,’ Ross says. But he stops inside the doorway, his hand on the door as if he might be on the verge of slamming it shut in our faces. He’s barefoot in old jeans and a Black Sabbath tour T-shirt, his wet hair flat on one side, spiked up like a toddler’s on the other.

Logan lets go of my arm, clears his throat. ‘You might both want to sit down.’

I choose the yellow brocade rocking chair next to the fire. Mum’s chair. Straightaway it starts to rock, and I lurch forwards, plant my feet on the floor until it stops.

‘What is it?’ Ross says, in a voice that doesn’t sound like his at all.

‘Ross,’ Logan says. ‘Why don’t you—’

‘I’m fine as I am.’

‘All right.’ Logan clears his throat again, and in the horribly expectant silence that follows, I glance up to see Shona Murray plonk herself down on the chesterfield.

Logan’s eyes flicker from Ross to me. ‘Yesterday, the MAIB …’ He shakes his head. ‘The Marine Accident Investigation Branch were reporting on a commercial vessel incident in the Forth, when … when they discovered something else … without … it wasn’t—’

‘What is it?’ Ross says again.

But I look only at Logan. Craig, if you want. My mum named me after a bloody Proclaimer. The grandfather clock’s slow and metronomic ticking reverberates inside my skull, behind my dry tired eyes.

‘They found the boat,’ he finally says. ‘They found The Redemption.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘How do they know—’

‘It’s got “The Redemption” painted in fucking gold on both sides,’ Ross growls. But his voice is so hoarse now, it’s hard to hear.

Logan looks at me. ‘They were using sonar, divers. The boat was in the deepwater channel, a few miles east of Inchkeith. We sent down our own divers and an underwater vehicle to confirm ID.’

‘Okay.’ I look across at the bottle-green fireplace, its carousel of pokers, shovels, and tongs. ‘Okay.’

‘We found evidence that it was scuttled.’

‘Sunk,’ I say.

Logan nods. He looks around at all the ridiculous chair options and elects to sink down onto his haunches instead, long arms dangling between his legs. ‘Deliberately sunk.’

‘How?’ Ross asks.

Logan reaches into his pocket and takes out his tiny notebook, flips through its pages. ‘The transom drain plug had been removed. It’s a small manual plug that’s used in