The Trouble with Perfect Page 9

  The tomb she now stood before had a solid stone lid, carved with words. Violet ran her fingers across the engraved letters, but many were too worn by time to read. She pushed against the stone cap but it was much too heavy to move. So she traced her fingers under the lid, hoping to stumble across a lever or button that, once triggered, might open it. Having no success, she bent down onto her knees and crawled around the base, inspecting the stone sides, but there was nothing to indicate how the tomb opened.

  “Look, over there, Violet!” Anna whispered, pointing across the graves.

  Violet followed the little girl’s finger and her eyes fell upon a stream of white mist rising out of another tomb, a little way away. Curious, she picked herself up from the ground and walked towards it.

  The closer she got to the mist, the more enraged and fearful Violet became. At just steps away, her body shook, and her heart beat rapidly. Every fear she’d ever had raced round her mind until she felt overwhelmed and longed to cower into a tiny dark corner, forgotten.

  The stone lid of this tomb was shoved a little to the side, and the strange fog was streaming out from its dark interior.

  Some of it wafted around the tombs, creating the mist that was a constant in the graveyard. The rest formed small, unusual clouds that floated up into the sky.

  Violet felt physically sick. Her body convulsed, and it screamed at her to run, as fear tried to grab hold of her mind.

  She willed herself to stay put. There was something odd about this mist.

  “Violet, can we go? I don’t feel good. Please can we go, please?” Tears stained Anna’s cheeks.

  “In a second.”

  Slowly, Violet forced herself further forward into the fog.

  She retched as she gripped the stone sides of the tomb to look inside. It was dark, much too dark to see the source of the vapour, so, resting her stomach on the front stone, she dipped forward. She was now half-inside the tomb, her legs dangling off the ground.

  A huge swell of anger then overtook Violet. Her whole body shook rapidly. For a second she lost her grip on the stone edges and tumbled forward.

  Violet gasped as she fell at huge speed down a dark, metal pipe full of mist. The last thing she remembered was a bright white light.

  Violet felt woozy. Her head hurt a little as she opened her eyes. She was lying on her back on a white tiled floor. A strange hissing sound played round her ears and her vision was cloudy.

  Panicked, she sat bolt upright.

  Her eyesight immediately cleared. She looked down to see that her legs had disappeared into a dense fog that covered the bottom of this strange room. The floor, walls and ceiling were a stark, bright white and there wasn’t a door or window to be seen anywhere. The brightness of the walls was dazzling, and she closed her eyes for a moment.

  The space was really warm. Her cheeks felt flush and sweat pimpled Violet’s skin, causing her clothes to stick. The mist she’d been lying in was rising and had now reached her chin.

  Her body shuddered as though electricity coursed through her veins, and her heart thumped wildly. Everything felt intense. She wanted to scream or hit something, or somehow release the pressure that was building inside her.

  Suddenly her ankle erupted in pain, as though something had bitten her. She winced, pulling it back, and looked through the fog at her foot. The bare skin between her sock and jeans was burned and blistered.

  She felt around the space where her ankle had been. Quickly she moved her fingers away as they stumbled upon searing hot steam streaming from a tiny white pipe in the wall, filling up the room.

  The vapour was so thick now she was finding it hard to breathe. Afraid she’d choke, Violet clambered up from the floor, and frantically searched for a way out. Everything looked smooth and white; she couldn’t see a window or door anywhere, or the pipe she’d fallen down.

  In the midst of her panic, a tiny round beacon high up on one of the white walls started to flash. It turned the place a ghoulish green colour. A large hatch slid open in the wall beside the flashing light, releasing a burst of cold air down into the room.

  Then the green light turned red and a small pipe high on the opposite wall sprayed something into the space.

  Overwhelmed, Violet backed up against one of the walls and slid down onto the floor, before curling into a ball. Her head and heart pounded, and tears streamed down her face.

  Her mind swam with worries. She thought about Anna alone in the graveyard. Violet had abandoned her. What was she doing? Why couldn’t she just be a good friend? She’d abandoned Town too, and Beatrice and Conor. Then she thought about Boy and her blood boiled, as the fog engulfed the room in a white haze.

  She felt woozy and gasped for air. Then suddenly the ceiling of the white room parted above her, and all the fog was sucked right out of the space into what looked like the funnel of a metal pipe. Most of her fear and anger vanished with it.

  Moments before, she’d felt awful. It was how she usually felt in the Ghost Estate except much, much worse. Now she was okay again. What was this place?

  Violet climbed up from the floor. She needed to escape. She’d gotten in, so there had to be a way out.

  The pipe in the ceiling, the one that just sucked out the vapour, had to be the same one she’d fallen down. From the brief glimpse she’d gotten, it looked vertical and much too steep to climb back out – even if she could reach it.

  She looked to the cold-air hatch, high in the wall to her right. It would be big enough to climb inside. That was when she noticed a column of white metal bars, almost invisible against the wall – they reached, like a ladder, up to the hatch. Though she didn’t know where it led, it seemed to be her only opportunity for escape.

  Hissing passed through the room once more, as the pipe in the bottom of the wall pumped out steam. Then the beacon flashed green and Violet watched the cold-air hatch zip open. Over the next few minutes, the red light flashed, the gas was released, the vapour built up, the ceiling parted again and it all disappeared up the metal pipe above her.

  The sequence of events seemed to work on a cycle. If she could time it right – and be at the top of the ladder when the cold-air hatch opened – she could climb inside and try to escape.

  Violet waited. When the steam started again, she sprung to life, ignoring the pain in her blistered ankle. Quickly she climbed the white ladder, and was at the top of the steps when the hatch opened.

  Struggling against the blast of cold air, she wriggled through the opening, into a metal pipe just like the one she’d fallen down, except this one wasn’t steep at all, it was horizontal. The space was tight and Violet had to shimmy along a short distance to a huge turbine, which had to be what created the blast of cold air. Its propeller blocked her escape.

  The propeller was like something from the bottom of a ship and whirred to a stop when she reached it. The space between its blunt metal blades was just big enough to squeeze through, but she’d need to move quickly before the cycle started again.

  She poked her head in the gap between the blades for a look. On the other side of the turbine was a storage room filled with brown cardboard boxes.

  Violet moved back into the pipe and wriggled around in the tight space, so she was facing the propeller feet first, which would make it easier to drop onto the floor on the other side.

  The turbine clicked. Her heart jumped.

  Nothing happened.

  Quickly she shoved her legs through the gap, but her right shoe got caught on the edge of a blade. She tried to release her foot, as the turbine clicked once more. This time, the blades rocked a little.

  She grabbed at her shoe but it wouldn’t budge. Panicked, Violet pulled her legs back inside the pipe. Her right shoe fell off into the storage room.

  Thinking quickly, she yanked off her sock, spun back around and planted her feet on either side of the pipe. The toes on her right foot gripped the cold metal. There was a small ledge round the rim of the turbine. She held onto it, and braced herse
lf for the blast of cold air.

  The blades came alive. Violet ducked as far as possible down in the pipe, trying to avoid their full force. The propeller picked up speed. Cold air washed over the back of her head and body, as she clung on for life.

  Her fingers slipped from the ledge and she began to slide back down the pipe. The skin on her right toes ripped against the small metal rivets.

  Just millimetres from the hatch, the propeller clicked and slowed, the whirring silenced, and the force of the cold air stopped.

  Violet scrambled forward and flung herself through the propeller, into the storage room below. She landed with a thud on a stack of brown boxes, sending a clatter of small metal canisters across a stone-flagged floor.

  Clambering to her feet, Violet stumbled through the squashed cardboard, wincing in pain, and found her shoe before gently easing it on.

  She was standing in a vaulted stone room full of cardboard boxes. The boxes were marked with the letters OA in large red print. Violet opened one. It was full of the same small canisters she’d just sent scattering across the floor.

  Shaking one of the cans, she pushed the nozzle and sprayed a little of its content into the air. Immediately her fear and anger flared, and she felt just like she had in the white room. What was this stuff?

  Violet had to get out of here and find help. She had no idea what time it was, her parents were probably worried and she had to find Anna.

  There was a stone arch at the far side of the room. Violet limped across the space, out the door, and passed into what appeared to be an underground tunnel. It was just like the one she and Boy had discovered last year that led from the Archers’ Emporium to the graveyard. She’d been told that because it was really old, Town had lots of similar passageways winding underneath it.

  The floor of the tunnel was flagged in large stones and the dirt walls were roughly cut. Bulbs were strung along it, dimly lighting the space.

  “I thought I heard a noise, and now I see we have a visitor,” a voice sneered from the darkness in front of her.

  Violet stiffened as a shadow walked forward into the light. It was Nurse Powick.

  “How did you get down here, young one?” the woman asked, her voice high-pitched.

  “I, erm…I…” Violet trembled, unable to speak.

  “Cat got your tongue, girl? You’re lucky I haven’t got it…yet!” The nurse cackled. “Now, tell me how you wriggled your way in here. We don’t take kindly to nosy parkers.”

  “I, erm…Boy caught me,” Violet stuttered, thinking on the spot.

  Something told her not to tell the nurse she’d found the white room.

  “He did, did he? That young man’s a mystery to me sometimes.” Powick grimaced, shaking her head as she walked forward.

  Violet turned to run in the other direction, but slammed straight into the Child Snatcher, who was silently standing behind her in the tunnel.

  “Hugo, we’ve another visitor,” Nurse Powick snarled. “Grab her!”

  The huge monster lifted Violet by the collar, into the air. She kicked and squirmed, but he wrapped one arm round her flailing legs, stopping them dead, and threw her roughly over his shoulder.

  “Put her with the others,” Nurse Powick spat, “while I find this obstinate boy!”

  Hugo was horrible. The night he’d tried to kidnap Violet in the driveway outside her home, she’d noticed his eye-plant eyes, and in the graveyard she’d seen his melted skin. But now – as she hung upside down over his shoulder – she wasn’t sure if he was human at all.

  His clothes were dirty and tattered, and huge holes in the material revealed much of his body underneath.

  Running along the length of the monster’s spine was a curious metal bar. Tiny holes pierced the bar at regular intervals, and from these snaked small wires that appeared to be attached to his skin. Similar bars also traced the back of his arms and legs, like some kind of mechanical outer-skeleton.

  Hugo’s skin was mainly grey, blue and purple, as though badly bruised. It looked almost melted or eaten in places but in other places, like the back of his leg, it was pink and hairy and looked soft. The Child Snatcher was also dotted in bits of coloured fur, which seemed to be stitched onto him like patchwork. One of the fingers on his left hand was missing too, replaced by what looked like part of a toy doll’s leg.

  The monster was covered in stitch marks. A line of rough stitching traced his left wrist. More ran up the side of his leg, and others over his feet. He looked just like the rag dolls Mrs Moody had tried to make the girls sew in school one day. Violet had refused because the boys weren’t doing it, but Mrs Moody had said boys did other things, like carry stuff. Violet said she’d carry stuff too, then, and got extra homework that night.

  Gradually, the sound of whispering voices reached along the tunnel and Hugo ducked through a narrow archway to his left into a small stone room, a little like the one with the cardboard boxes.

  The voices stopped.

  The Child Snatcher threw Violet roughly down onto the flagstone floor and she winced as her sore foot hit the stone. The monster then rested a hairy bare foot on her stomach to stop her struggles as he searched his torn pockets for something.

  In front of Violet was a row of black iron bars, blocking off what looked like a prison cell behind. Light didn’t penetrate far enough into the small stone space to see what was locked inside. Violet shuddered as the Child Snatcher pulled a set of large rusted keys from a tattered trouser pocket and slotted one into the iron lock.

  There was a loud click, and the cell door screeched open.

  Something shuffled about in the furthest corner of the cell and Violet panicked as the Child Snatcher grabbed her jumper, dragged her roughly across the floor, and flung her inside, locking the door behind her. Then the creature grunted and stomped back out into the tunnel.

  Violet shuffled up against the iron bars, afraid of what lurked in the darkness.

  “Hello…?” she whispered, her voice weak.

  “Shush!” someone replied sharply.

  A shadow moved towards her.

  “Beatrice!” Violet gasped, relief flooding her. “You look, you look…”

  “She looks awful, doesn’t she?” Conor Crooked croaked, crawling out of the dark.

  Beatrice burst into tears, curling up by the iron bars. For the first time ever, Violet reached forward and forced herself to hug the red-haired girl.

  “What are you doing here?” Conor asked. Deep navy circles shadowed his eyes. “Did he get you too? I thought you were meant to be his friend!”

  “I…I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Violet shook her head as she sat back against the bars. “I fell into a tomb in the graveyard, and landed in a weird white room; then the nurse caught me, and…”

  “Nurse, what nurse?” Beatrice sniffled, looking up.

  “The one who owns the monster?” Violet answered, taking in their blank faces. “She wears a white uniform and a strange hat…I think Boy might be helping her?”

  “Boy!” Beatrice cried, yanking Conor’s sleeve. “Don’t talk about him. I never want to hear his name again.”

  “Get off me,” Conor said, pushing Beatrice away roughly. “Now that Violet’s here, the girls can do all their moaning on that side of the cell, thank you very much. This side is for boys, and since I’m the only one of those here, it’s all mine.”

  The heavyset boy stood up and traced his foot along the floor, from the back wall to the black iron bars of their prison, creating a line in the dirt. Then he pushed Beatrice over onto Violet’s side of the space.

  “Don’t cross that line!” he said, pointing to the freshly-made divide.

  Suddenly the light bulbs that hung in the main tunnel went out, and the place was plunged into total darkness.

  “Great.” Conor sounded like he was smiling. “Now I won’t have to look at your two ugly faces any more.”

  “Means we don’t have to look at yours either,” Violet snapped.

&nb
sp; She’d never liked Conor Crooked before, and now she knew why. Even being kidnapped didn’t make him a nicer person.

  “You never said who the nurse is,” Beatrice whispered across the darkness.

  Violet’s eyes were adjusting to the lack of light and she could just about make out the girl’s features. Beatrice’s cheeks looked hollow, as though she hadn’t eaten in a while. Her once glossy hair was dull and lifeless, and her clothes were filthy.

  “Have you really not met Powick?” Violet asked, confused. “She told the Child Snatcher to bring me here. I think she owns him or something. She called him her ‘creation’ in the graveyard.”

  “What do you mean, owns him? Like he’s her slave or something?” Conor snorted.

  “I’m not sure,” Violet said, a little nervously. “Have you seen him up close? I know it sounds weird, but he looks like he’s been pieced together – like the rag dolls Mrs Moody made us sew in class.”

  “Like he’s dead or something, like a zombie, you mean?” Conor gasped, stepping across his own line.

  “Get back, Conor, this is our side,” Beatrice barked, finding her voice, “and he’s not a zombie, Violet said he’s a rag doll. Zombies don’t exist!”

  “Neither do walking rag dolls,” Conor said.

  “So you’ve never seen the nurse?” Violet quickly asked.

  “No,” Conor stated drily. “We could do with a nurse, though, Beatrice’s farts are pretty awful. There has to be something dead in her stomach.”

  “Conor!” Beatrice roared. “I told you, I don’t do disgusting stuff like that.”

  “Everybody farts, B – just not everyone’s smell as bad as yours.”

  “Stop it, Conor,” she fumed.

  “I know…maybe that’s how we’ll escape. When Boy comes back with another kid, Beatrice can fart and knock him out. We will call her Farticus. You know, like Spartacus, the fella Mrs Moody said saved all of Rome or wherever. You’ll be a hero, Beatrice!”