hopes were soon dashed. It was flimsy, made of tin. They hadn’t bothered with a knife or a fork.
She didn’t feel like eating yet. If anything, the sight of the starvation rations brought home the full horror of her situation. These people were utterly merciless. They wanted her to live but they didn’t care how miserable or painful her life became – they had made that much clear. Scarlett sat down on the bed and sank her head into her hands. She thought she was going to cry, but the tears didn’t come. The Old Ones. The Gatekeepers. The twenty- five doors around the world. Everything that Father Gregory had said seemed to spin round and round her, sucking her ever further into a tunnel of misery and despair. How could this have happened to her? Could any of it really be true?
Somehow, she forced herself to go over it, to unpick the words. Much of what Father Gregory had said sounded completely insane. But at the same time, she had to admit that a lot of it was strangely familiar. There were echoes. There had been strange incidents in her life and they had taken place long before she walked through the church door.
The dreams, for one. Father Gregory had mentioned five children – four boys and a girl. Scarlett had been dreaming exactly the same thing for almost two years. And how had this all started? She had actually seen Matt, in St Meredith’s. He had been the one who had led her through the door, although now she wondered if he had really been there at all. He had been silent, ghost-like. It wasn’t that she had imagined him. But perhaps what she had experienced was some sort of vision. If he had really gone through the door, wouldn’t he be here now?
And then there was the door itself. Scarlett had tried to persuade herself that she had been drugged and kidnapped, but the more she thought about it, the more she accepted that it hadn’t happened that way. Father Gregory had told her the truth. She had gone through a door in London and ended up in Ukraine. There had been no flight, no drugs. And if she accepted that, what choice did she have but to accept the rest?
She went over to the table and examined the food. It looked far from appetizing, but she made herself swallow it, the soup cold and greasy, the bread several days old. It was all she was going to get and she needed her strength. The candle in the lamp was only an inch tall and she wondered how long it would last. When it went out, she would be left in total blackness. The thought made her shudder. There was already so much to be afraid of but being on her own, locked up in the dark was somehow worse than any of it.
It would be better if she could sleep. She didn’t undress. It was far too cold to even think of taking off her coat. She climbed onto the bed and pulled the two blankets over her, burrowing into them like an animal in a cave. She lay like that for a long time and when sleep did finally come she didn’t even notice it. She only knew that she was no longer awake when she realized that she had begun to dream.
She was back in the strange, airless world that she had visited many times. She recognized it and she was glad to be there. She was desperate to see Matt and the other three boys. If anyone could help her, they could. At least they might show her a way to break out.
But there was no sign of them. While part of her slept, alone in her cell, the other part was stranded here, alone on the edge of a grim and lifeless sea.
Something in the dreamworld had changed. Scarlett became aware of it very slowly, not seeing anything but sensing it, a sort of throbbing in the air that was coming from very far away, from the other side of the horizon. She heard a faint rumble of thunder and saw a tiny streak of lightning, like a hairline crack in the fabric of the world. Her head was pounding. She noticed the water, the surface of the ocean, begin to shiver. A gust of wind tugged at her hair. The sand, or the grey dust, or whatever it was, spun in eddies around her feet, then leapt up, half blinding her and stinging her cheeks. She backed away, knowing that she needed to hide. She still didn’t know what she was hiding from.
And then, in a single moment, the ocean split open. It was as if it had been sliced in half by some vast, invisible knife – and the black water rushed in, millions of gallons pouring from left and right into the chasm – a mile long – that had been formed. At the same time, something rose up, twisting towards the surface. At first, she thought it was a snake, some sort of monstrous sea serpent that had been resting for centuries on the ocean bed and had only now woken up. She smelled its breath – how was that possible… how could you smell anything in a dream? – and cried out as it rushed towards her, its eyes blazing, flames exploding around its mouth. It was a dragon! Straight out of ancient folklore. And yet it was horribly real, howling so loudly that she thought her head would burst.
SIGNAL ONE
The two words had appeared in front of her. They were written in neon: huge red letters hanging from some sort of frame, the light so intense that they burned her eyes. Where had they come from? They must have risen out of the ground because only a moment before the landscape had been empty. The neon buzzed and flickered as some sort of electric power coursed through it. Scarlett looked down at her hands and saw that they were blood red, reflecting the light. It was as if she were on fire.
SIGNAL ONE… SIGNAL ONE…
It flashed on and off. The dragon was there one minute, then gone the next, lost in the darkness, reappearing in the light. But each time she saw it, it was a little closer. The wind was blasting her. If it got any stronger, it would throw her off her feet. She tried to run but she couldn’t move. The dragon opened its mouth, showing teeth like kitchen knives.
And that was when she woke up and found herself still lying on top of the bed and covered by the two blankets, but with the first, dreary light of the morning creeping in through the window and ice cold all around.
Scarlett sat up. She was already beginning to shiver. What had that all been about? Signal One? She had never seen the two words written down before. She had no idea what they meant, even if she was certain that they must be important. They had been shown to her for a reason.
She looked up at the window and guessed that it must be about five or six o’clock in the morning. It was difficult to say without her watch. Presumably the monks would bring her some sort of breakfast. They had made it clear that they needed to keep her alive. Could she somehow overpower them when they came in, fight her way through the door and make a run for it? She doubted it. The monks were thin and malnourished but they were still a lot stronger than her. If only she had a weapon! That would make all the difference.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she searched through her pockets. All she had was a blunt pencil, left over from art class, a comb and an Oyster card. The sight of it made her sad. It was so ordinary, a reminder of everything she had left behind. How many thousands of miles was she now from London buses and Tube trains?
There was nothing she could use. She considered taking off her coat, throwing it in the face of whoever carried in her food. But it was a stupid plan. She still didn’t know there was going to be any food and anyway, it wouldn’t work. They would just laugh at her before they took her away and whipped her or whatever else they planned to do.
There had to be a way out of the cell. Scarlett got up and examined the door a second time, running her hands over the hasps, pressing against it with all her weight. It was so solid it might as well have been cemented into the wall. That just left the window. There were three bars and no glass. The cell had been built to house a man, not a child – and certainly not a girl. Might it be possible to squeeze through after all?
She hadn’t been able to reach the window before but maybe these monks, as clever as they might be, had made a mistake. They had supplied her with a table and a chair. Quickly, she dragged the table over to the window, put the chair on top and climbed up.
For the first time, she was able to look outside. There was a view down a hill, the ground steep and rugged, thick patches of snow piled up against black rocks. A few buildings stood in the near distance, scattered around. They looked like barns and abandoned farm houses which might belong to the monastery but which were more likely part of a village, just out of sight. A series of icicles hung above her, suspended from a guttering that ran the full length of the building. She had forgotten how cold it was but she was quickly reminded by a sudden snow flurry, blowing in off the roof. Her lips and cheeks were already numb. It had to be less than zero out there.
There was no way down. The bars were too close together and even if she had managed to slip through, she was at least twenty metres above the ground. Try to jump from this height and she would break both her legs.
She was still in the cell two hours later when the door opened and they finally brought her something to eat.
Breakfast was a bowl of cold porridge and a tin mug of water, carried in by a monk she hadn’t yet met – for his face certainly wasn’t one that she would have forgotten. It was horribly burned. One whole side of it was dead and disfigured as if he had fallen asleep with his head resting on an oven. Scarlett turned her eyes away from him.
