The Trouble with Perfect Page 16

  “That’s amazing,” Jack said, standing up.

  “I hope no one heard that noise,” Violet whispered. “We really don’t want them to know we’re coming.”

  Jack took a deep breath. “I guess we better go in?” He looked nervously at Violet.

  She nodded, and the pair began to descend the steps together. A shiver of fear raced along Violet’s spine. Her mam always told her it was bad luck to walk on someone’s grave – she wondered what Rose would say about walking into one.

  Jack stopped, halfway down the steps. His fingers rested on a small rectangular piece of stone jutting in from the wall of the tomb. It had to be the piece that contained the word GAME on the outside. He pushed it again, there was a click, and the strange scraping sound filled the air once more. The narrow front panel of the grave rose up from the ground and the passageway was plunged gradually into complete and utter darkness.

  “We didn’t bring a light.” Violet panicked, as she wobbled unsteadily down the remaining steps onto flat ground.

  “Just wait a little bit for your eyes to adjust,” Jack whispered. “We weren’t allowed lights at night in the orphanage dorms, but I could still read. I got used to the dark.”

  After a few minutes, just as Jack had said, her sight cleared enough to make out their surroundings.

  The walls of the tunnel were brown and uneven, like roughly-cut dirt. The floor was covered in worn flagstones, and a string of unlit light bulbs hung above their heads. It seemed very familiar.

  “Straight ahead?” she whispered.

  “Doesn’t appear to be any other way,” Jack replied from just behind her. His breath was heavy, and she could tell he was nervous as they moved quietly along the passage. When they grew more accustomed to the dark, their pace picked up.

  They’d been walking a short while when Violet saw a room to her left and she ducked quickly inside. The stone space was stacked with boxes and a huge propeller spun round high in the opposite wall.

  “This is where they store the gas,” she whispered excitedly. “I was caught by the nurse just outside this room. The cell that Conor and Beatrice were kept in is not far from here.”

  “Come on, Violet,” Jack said, pulling her back, “we can’t waste time.”

  Quickly, they continued onwards and were just nearing the room with the prison cell when the light bulbs hanging along the tunnel flickered and lit up.

  Violet panicked and grabbed Jack’s arm. Racing forward, the pair ducked into the only hiding place available – through the archway and black-iron gate, into the darkest corner of the tiny cell.

  Violet held her breath.

  Footsteps echoed, coming towards them. The sound grew louder until someone was almost outside the arch. Violet tensed, ready to spring when the person passed by.

  After a few minutes, the place plunged back into darkness. The pair waited for a while before shakily slipping out of the cell and returning to the tunnel.

  “I wonder who that was,” Violet whispered.

  Jack shook his head and put a finger to his lips. “Be quiet, they could still be about.”

  They continued forward and soon a breeze whipped Violet’s hair. She was sure they were nearing the outside, when she hit a dead end.

  This couldn’t be it – where was the breeze coming from? Violet threw her head back and looked skywards.

  “Jack.” She grabbed his jumper, pointing upwards.

  A shaft stretched vertically above them, as though reaching for the heavens. The walls were curved and laid in stone and a small circular opening framed the distant night sky. She could just see the edge of a large white moon.

  “It looks like we’re at the bottom of a dry well,” Jack gasped.

  Violet’s heart pounded – that’s exactly what it looked like.

  “But how…how do we get out?” she stuttered.

  All of a sudden, Violet felt trapped. Her chest tightened and the tiniest of sounds convinced her someone was coming. The pair paced back and forward across the small space, looking for a ladder or a rope or something to help them get up to the outside.

  “The quote on the tomb said life is a game. We had to push on the word GAME to get into the tunnel. So maybe this is another game of sorts,” Jack mumbled.

  “Like a puzzle?” Violet asked. “I’m not very good at those.”

  “Well, I was the orphanage puzzle master,” he boasted, searching the walls.

  Maybe Jack was right, maybe it was some sort of a game. She traced her hands over the roughly-cut stone, hoping to find some sort of a hidden lever or button that might help them escape.

  After a while, feeling panicked and tired, Violet slid down the curved wall onto the stone floor to gather her thoughts. Something caught her eye.

  She scrambled onto her hands and knees, and crawled forward. Engraved into the top left corner of the flagstone beneath her was a small carved W. She looked at the stone beside it and rubbed away dirt to reveal an X, also in the left corner.

  Violet continued across the rest of the floor, wiping away bits of debris to uncover more hidden letters. Each of the lettered stones gave way slightly under her weight.

  “It’s an alphabet, Jack,” she whispered. “It’s an alphabet floor. Each of the stones has a letter on it, see? You can press them down like buttons.”

  Jack scrambled onto his knees beside Violet.

  “I bet we need to spell something out,” he said excitedly.

  He reached for the G, then the A, the M and finally the E. Nothing happened.

  “I thought since we used the word game to get in, it might be the same word to get out,” he whispered disappointedly.

  “What about ‘Archer’?” Violet said, spelling it out on the floor.

  “No, Violet,” Jack replied, before she’d even finished. “The Archers didn’t make this tunnel. These passageways have to be ancient.”

  “Then what did that quote say exactly, the one on the tomb we used to get into the tunnel? Can you remember?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Something about life being a cruel game. Maybe spell ‘life’ or ‘cruel’?” Jack tried both, but neither worked.

  “What about that poet’s name? The ridiculous one?” Violet was flustered now.

  “Q, u, i, n, t, u, s, H, o, r, a, t, i, u, s, F, l, a, c, c, u, s,” Jack spelled, but nothing happened. “I’ll try ‘Horace’,” he said a little later, but, again, there wasn’t a stir.

  The pair spent what felt like hours racking their brains for words, until finally Violet sat back against the wall, defeated.

  “Maybe the floor’s got nothing to do with getting out of here.” She sighed. “Maybe we have to do something else, like climb out?”

  “I don’t think so!” Jack craned his head back to look up at the circular piece of sky which was just beginning to lighten as dawn approached. “The floor has to have been built this way for a reason.”

  “I feel like giving up.” Then it hit her. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

  Violet crawled across the stones until she found U, and put some pressure on the paving. Then she searched out P and pressed it.

  The floor shook a little, then moved swiftly up the walls of the well like a lift, towards the outside.

  “Up,” Violet whispered, relieved. “Maybe I should be crowned puzzle master!”

  Violet and Jack were propelled up into the open air. When the platform stopped, the pair jumped off and quickly hid behind a huge twisted tree. The tree was growing beside a lane that wound behind them, disappearing into a forest some distance away. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.

  Directly across the lane from their hiding spot was a cottage thatched in straw, like the homes in history books. Its rough walls were painted white and the window sills and door a bright yellow. A yellow, wooden fence edged an elaborate rose garden to the front and side of the house.

  On the other side of Violet and Jack’s hiding spot was a large ploughed field, and across the field were
two stone stables with yellow-painted doors.

  Perched on the edge of the lane where they crouched was a road sign. It was covered in dirt. Jack pulled himself up beside the sign and rubbed away the years of green gunge to reveal raised black letters beneath.

  “I knew it,” Violet said, reading the worn wording. “This is the place Edward and the nurse talked about. Boy has to be here somewhere.”

  “And if he is, the nurse probably is too,” Jack whispered. “So we have to be quiet.”

  “Let’s check out the stables first then.” Violet pointed across the field. “It might be easier to look there – someone might be asleep in the house.”

  Jack nodded and the pair kept low and to the edges of the ploughed field, trying to keep out of sight of the cottage. They moved quickly towards the stables, their pace only slowed a little by the thick brown mud.

  A small cement footpath led up to the stables, and Violet stepped onto it, ahead of Jack.

  “In here,” she said, ducking inside the first yellow door.

  The stable was dark and, like in the tunnel, it took a moment for Violet’s eyes to adjust.

  Though she hadn’t been in many stables, she knew they were normally filled with straw or animals, or some mixture of the two. But straight in front of Violet, fixed to the far wall in a line, were three small screens. In the middle of the stable was a black leather chair, facing the screens. To the right of the chair was a small table with a neat black box resting on top of it.

  “What is this place?” Violet whispered.

  Jack shrugged and walked towards the screens. Violet followed, stopping at the chair. She sat down and inspected the box on the table beside her.

  In the middle of the box was a small joystick, and behind the stick were three green buttons.

  “It looks like some sort of control box, Jack,” she said. “Maybe it’s a remote for the TVs?”

  “There are names on the buttons,” Jack pointed out, walking back towards her.

  Violet bent forward for a closer look. Jack was right – small clear stickers rested over each button. The first sticker read Denis, the second Hugo and the third Denise.

  “Hugo!” she whispered excitedly. “That’s the Child Snatcher’s name.”

  The pair looked at the button, then back at each other.

  “What do you think the buttons are for?” Violet asked slowly.

  “I don’t know.” Jack shrugged, looking nervous.

  “Will I press it?”

  “What if it’s an alarm or something, and it lets the Archers know we’re here?”

  “But what if it’s a camera or something, to show us where Hugo is? Maybe he’s in the same place as Boy.”

  “Okay, just for a second though – then turn it straight back off,” Jack warned.

  Violet nodded and her hand shook as she pressed down on the green button bearing Hugo’s name.

  The middle TV on the back wall turned on. An image filled the screen. Violet’s heart pounded and her finger shook as it was poised over the green button, ready to slam back down.

  The TV showed the inside of a stable that looked exactly like the one they were in. The picture on the screen moved from the door across the stable until Violet and Jack were looking at the side view of a man strapped to a stone wall. It was like something from a scary film.

  “What are we watching?” she stuttered nervously. She didn’t lift her eyes from the screen. “Will I turn it off, Jack?”

  A long, slow groan filled the air. It sounded close by. Violet’s skin broke out in goose pimples, as her left hand gripped the arm of the leather chair.

  “What is it, Jack?” she said again, looking round this time.

  Jack had disappeared. Violet’s chest tightened, then suddenly he reappeared on the TV screen in front of her. His face was as white as a Perfect bed sheet.

  “Violet,” he whispered.

  The sound didn’t seem to come from the screen but from somewhere nearby.

  Her goose pimples grew.

  “Violet, you need to come in here,” Jack hissed.

  “Where are you?” she asked, talking to the air.

  “I’m in the stable next door.”

  Her mouth dry, Violet slipped outside and in through the second yellow door. Jack was standing in the middle of the stable. In front of him was Hugo.

  The Child Snatcher was strapped to the stone wall by some sort of a harness, and either side of him were two other monsters, also tied to the wall.

  Violet grabbed Jack’s arm, as a wobble rocked her legs and her stomach churned. She closed her eyes in case she was dreaming, and steadied her breath, before slowly opening them again.

  The three monsters were still there in front of her. They were standing upright, their feet firmly on the floor. The black harnesses sat over their shoulders, securing them to the stone wall. They looked as though they were about to take a trip on a roller coaster. Two of the bodies had bowed heads, as if asleep, but Hugo, the third figure, was awake, and staring at Jack.

  The Child Snatcher grunted and squirmed, pushing against his harness as if he was trying to release himself.

  “The green button, Jack. I…I must have switched Hugo on!” Violet stammered, dashing back next door.

  She stabbed the button bearing the Child Snatcher’s name, and the TV went blank.

  “He’s gone back to sleep,” Jack called weakly.

  Violet breathed a moment’s relief, before heading back to the stable.

  Jack was standing frozen in front of the Child Snatcher.

  “What are these things?” he asked, breathless. “They’re not…they’re not human!”

  Violet had forgotten he had never seen Hugo properly before.

  “I’m not really sure,” she replied, joining him. “They seem part-human, part-machine. Hugo has some kind of a metal outer-skeleton – I think it helps him move.” She pointed to the steel bars that traced his arms and legs. “And his skin is patched up with bits of weird fur.”

  “So the buttons next door switch these monsters on and off?” Jack whispered, moving closer to examine Hugo.

  “And…and I could see you on the screen, Jack, as if I was looking at you through Hugo’s eyes,” Violet stuttered.

  “His eyes are the eye plants,” Jack whispered, now only millimetres from Hugo’s half-eaten away nose. “So maybe that’s how you saw me on the screen next door. Hugo’s eye plants must be connected to the TV somehow.”

  “Maybe they work like the Brain in Town,” Violet said excitedly. “William told us the eye plants in the beds around Town send out signals of what they’re seeing and the Brain converts them back to pictures – he called them electric magnets or something. That’s why they worked perfectly as a security system – until Tom started stealing them.”

  “Electromagnetic signals,” Jack said, nodding. “We learned about them in school. It’s how our real eyes send messages through the optic nerve to our brains.”

  “You really are a brainbox!” Violet shook her head. “I know we learned a bit about eyes in school, but Mrs Moody is so boring I could barely keep mine open.”

  “I like learning,” Jack stated, still inspecting Hugo.

  He really was so different to Boy.

  “You mentioned Edward said something about charging Hugo up,” he continued, walking around the Child Snatcher. “Maybe these bodies run on some kind of battery power?”

  “But Edward told Madeleine that Hugo was dead. He’s a zombie,” Violet replied, wide-eyed.

  “I’m not sure zombies exist, except in books. All these bars and wires, they look mechanical. Maybe he’s some sort of robotic zombie…”

  Jack kept to his exploring, as Violet went to check out the other two bodies.

  Denise and Denis looked similar to Hugo. Both were traced in stitches, and strange furry patches covered various parts of their bodies.

  The male, Denis, smelled just like Hugo. His skin was a ghostly pale mixed with yellow and purple br
uising, and a large pink furry patch was sewn over his left cheek.

  Denise appeared to be a female, though it was hard to tell. Her hair was long and straggly. Large chunks were missing from her greenish scalp, replaced by what looked like blonde doll’s hair.

  A faint beeping sound caught Violet’s ears. She was drawn to a monitor screwed to the wall by Denise’s left shoulder. The monitor’s small screen was filled with flashing numbers, and a quick blue line zipped up and down across it, just like a heart machine in hospital. Beneath the monitor was a black box, again screwed to the wall. Red and black cables ran from it to a similar box dug into Denise’s upper arm.

  “It’s a battery,” Jack said from behind her. “All three of the zombies have them. They look kind of like the ones in cars.”

  “So you were right, they do run off batteries,” Violet whispered. “Look, Jack.” She pointed up to the top-left corner of Denise’s monitor, where a battery symbol blinked slowly. “It says eighty-five per cent. She must be almost fully charged.”

  “I didn’t notice that,” Jack said, stepping forward again for a look.

  Violet moved back towards the door.

  “We should go,” she said, eager to get away from the monsters. “We need to find Boy and we don’t want to be here when these things are fully charged.”

  Jack looked around and nodded.

  “That’s fine by me,” he said, as he crossed the stable and out the yellow door.

  “What about the cottage?” Violet pointed when they were both on the concrete path outside.

  “Like you said, there could be somebody asleep in there,” Jack replied. “It looks like a home.”

  “We’ll just have to be quiet then,” Violet whispered, leading the way.

  Violet pushed open the small yellow gate and stepped onto the red-brick path that led to the door of the thatched cottage.

  “Let’s just check in the windows first – we might be able to see if there’s someone inside,” Jack said, behind her.

  “Okay, I’ll look in the front two windows, and you go around the back. Meet here again in a few minutes.”