Matt shrugged, and shook his head. ‘I’m not sure.’ Then he turned to Kassy. ‘Listen, we’d better get—’
The pavement behind them was empty.
‘Where’d she—’
‘There,’ Keech pointed to the opened crack in the fence. ‘She’s heading down there already.’
He watched the curve of her blonde hair lowering into the grass, like she was being swallowed by the world. But then she put out her hand. She curled a beckoning finger towards them.
Come on … come down here. It’ll be fun.
Words she had no doubt said to Holly.
She pulled the hatch shut.
Keech was already jogging toward the gap. ‘Let’s get after her.’
Matt winced. ‘Maybe we should wait.’
‘What for? The guy’s been arrested and I’ll only be a sec.’
He watched Keech scrape himself through the gap on his own. He shook his head.
‘Hold up,’ he ran up behind him and stooped through the fence. Splintered wood scraped the back of his head. Inside, the vaults were just a patch of knee-high grass. They waded through it as it swayed in the night’s constant breeze, and a few huge nettle bushes that looked like mad alien creatures tried to reach out and grab them both. On the ground he kept noticing gaps in the grass that hid grey discs sitting at the bottom. These were the sealed metal hatches to the vaults. Though in this light they looked, naturally, like rabbit holes, burrowing into the ground.
He kept moving, confused at how it seemed to be taking them such a long time to cross such a small space, and he could see – near the far corner – the faintest glow coming from a slit in the ground. They hurried toward it and discovered the only hatch that was open, just a crack. So was this the one Holly was dumped in, one cruel Halloween night? With a bunch of cackling harpies in fancy dress slamming the lid shut?
Keech grabbed the rusty handle and yanked at it like it was the door of a tank. It opened pretty easily and popped further back than he expected. When they looked down Matt saw a row of three candles ten foot down in the dirt, flickering at the base of a warped-looking metal ladder.
He got an instant flash of anger. Picturing Holly thrown down here and shut in. And he figured that Holly really did deserve an apology, even if she couldn’t possibly hear one. He was about to head down when he heard his phone was ringing. He was surprised when it was the ringtone he’d assigned to his house, which Amelia had insisted he install. ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ crackled out. Amelia liked that song because it was about space. It sounded tinny and slim now, echoing off the tall black buildings. Karen Carpenter sounded like some wistful ghost, dancing through the long grass behind him.
Keech stared at the phone in confused disgust. ‘I’m going down.’
‘Just give me a minute,’ he fumbled with the phone.
‘I’ll meet you down there.’
‘Wren?’ Matt said, as Keech put his foot on the first rung.
‘It’s Amelia.’
‘Hey, Midget,’ he whispered. ‘I’m busy and it’s really late. I’ll have to call you ba—’
‘Come down to me.’ Her voice was quiet and gravelly.
‘Pardon?’
‘The shadow in my room … it says come down here and give your mum a hug.’
He frowned at the phone, ‘Amelia?’
‘Nana’s opening her arms …’
‘Amelia, you’re dreaming. Put Mummy on.’
‘It’s cold here, Matt. It’s cold in the dark.’
‘Put Mummy on.’
‘Soon, she says. She’s going to see you soon. And you’re gonna like it.’
Keech called up to him, still waiting at the bottom of the ladder. ‘Call them back! Kassy’s long gone.’
Matt heard a ruffled sound, and then a new voice answered. ‘Matt?’
‘Wren.’ His shoulders sank in relief. ‘Is she asleep?’
‘Yeah. She’s walked into my room. Found her standing by my bed, which was freaky. Listen, when are you coming home because we all—’
‘I’ll call you back, okay?’
Wren let out a breath into the phone.
‘Sorry. Just tell her I love her and I’ll be home as soon as I’m—’
‘Fiiine,’ she said. The phone clicked off.
‘Are you done?’ Keech was at the bottom.
‘Coming.’
Matt looked down the rusty metal ladder, bolted into the stone. The light from the three candles shimmered off Keech’s shiny shoes. God, it looked like a grave down here; they’d locked her in a tomb. Just before he headed down he glanced back at the gap in the fence and the police car beyond it. Then up at the black spread of the sky above him.
Back in Dunwich, where he grew up by the sea, he and his mum would often sit on the beach at midnight, watching for falling stars. The skies were far, far clearer than they were here. Whenever one of them streaked across the sky, she’d say that the night was so full of stars that every now and again God would flick one away to make room for the others. But as he looked up now, he saw nothing but cloud, smog and dust-covered moths in the air, and he felt a biting coldness moving through his chest that he was struggling to explain because right now the breeze had gone.
He put his foot on the ladder.
Don’t jump off, son.
He started heading down.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Rabbit tumbling down the hill,
in grass and flowers, filled with plenty
pleasures growing, singing gently,
channelling the power of twenty,
thousand, million days and seconds,
Sad for those that never ran,
Never stopped the girls
Who climb inside the riddled mind of man.
who
Smash the heart of worlds and planets.
Devils hopping through the wood,
Calling up the seed and soil.
So gentle grass might turn to blood.
But not for rabbit,
Time to tear a
Light in shadows,
Almost there.
Almost there.
To cut her down.
Snap the twig,
To save the town.
Snap the twig,
And slit her open,
Guzzle
all her power down.
Turn the bad to light.
Petals back to white.
Shout it from the hill and dance,
That rabbit made it right.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
So, Rachel thought, as the images swam. Hell is a warren.
Hell is a rabbit warren deep inside the
