Hollow Earth Read online

  Simon nodded. ‘When it’s light, I’ll set an internal investigation in motion.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Chief Constable Bond will handle the investigation of your mum’s disappearance from the civilian side of things, but your grandfather has his own network of Guardians. They’ll begin a search on our behalf.’

  Mara sighed. ‘Finding Sandie would be so much easier if their dad were here.’

  Simon glared at her.

  This sudden suggestion from Mara was as surprising as the flash of anger from Zach’s dad. The twins looked from one adult to the other, hoping Mara would elaborate. Their mum and their grandfather had kept promising more details later, but with one in a coma and the other missing, the twins wondered if they’d ever find out more about their dad.

  ‘Well it’s true,’ Mara went on stubbornly. ‘As Sandie’s Guardian, Malcolm would at least be able to sense if she were alive or not.’

  ‘Mara!’

  ‘Do you know where Dad is, Mara?’ Em asked, taking no notice of Simon. ‘Couldn’t we contact him and ask him to help us?’

  ‘I’m sure if our dad knew Mum was in trouble, he’d want to get involved,’ added Matt, sitting up straight in his chair.

  Simon gently squeezed Matt’s and Em’s shoulders. ‘We’ll find your mum. I promise. We don’t need your dad’s help. Mara? Enough,’ he added, letting his fingers graze the back of Mara’s hand.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Mara, her voice softening the longer Simon focused his attention on her, ‘we’ve not received any kind of ransom demand, which suggests that whoever has taken your mum isn’t looking to trade for her. But Simon is right, we’ll find her.’

  Simon is a good Guardian. He’s settled Mara’s frustration.

  Maybe. Or maybe she’s just not willing to challenge him in front of us.

  ‘Whoever took Sandie must have a game plan for her,’ continued Mara, wandering over in front of the shelves they’d just sorted. ‘You know as well as I do, Simon, that that’s not only puzzling, it’s virtually unprecedented.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ signed Zach, leaning over the chair behind Matt.

  ‘In all the history of our kind, there are only a few instances of Animare breaking the rules for their own gain or being manipulated or coerced for their powers,’ Mara explained.

  ‘Were they successful?’ asked Matt. He moved towards the library doors to get a closer look at the scratch marks.

  Mara ran her finger along the leather spines of the books above Renard’s desk, stopping midway as she slid a slim volume from its place and carried it back over to the couch.

  ‘Centuries ago, a wealthy patron of the arts and a Guardian, Grace Fortescue, admitted in her private memoirs to having coerced her Animare for years.’ Mara held up the book, flipping through the yellowed pages. ‘As a result, she built a fortune in priceless artefacts that she made her Animare create for her.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ said Em.

  ‘Quite,’ said Mara, passing the book to Em. ‘But who’s to say that such a relationship didn’t also benefit her Animare? It makes for fascinating bedtime reading, however you look at it.’

  ‘There are perhaps two or three other examples,’ Simon went on, ‘but Mara’s correct – the instances are rare.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Good grief! It’s almost dawn. I’ll have to answer to Jeannie’s wrath on her return if you three are tired tomorrow.’

  He locked up the library, following Mara and the children up the stairs to their bedrooms. Mara turned to Simon and said in a low voice, ‘You do realize that there’s another possible explanation for Sandie’s disappearance, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sandie could have staged this entire episode herself.’

  ‘That’s absurd!’ Simon said in shock. ‘Sandie’d never abandon Matt and Em, and she’d never do anything to hurt Renard.’

  ‘She had no problem hurting Malcolm,’ snapped Mara.

  Simon watched Zach, Matt and Em disappearing down the hallway to their own wing of the Abbey before answering.

  ‘This again, Mara? Your spite towards Sandie has always been misplaced, and I’ll not dignify it with any more of my time.’

  Simon took the stairs two at a time, leaving Mara standing alone at the bottom.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The next morning, a storm from the Atlantic had anchored off the coast, with heavy winds and pelting rain making travel treacherous. Jeannie had made it back to the island on the dawn ferry before the storm broke, but the grey skies and a late bedtime were making it difficult for Jeannie to rouse the boys for breakfast. While she pounded on their bedroom doors, a lone figure on a motorcycle was carefully cresting the hill into Largs.

  Flash-flooding at low stretches of the main road from Glasgow had twice sent the tail of his Harley spinning, taking every skill he possessed to avoid wiping out. When he reached the ferry, he was drenched and disappointed to learn that the ferry wouldn’t leave until the storm shifted inland. Parking his motorcycle in a narrow lane behind a tearoom on Main Street, he went inside. He’d already waited years to return here. A few more hours wouldn’t matter.

  The boys came slouching down the stairs to the kitchen, snatching toast from Jeannie before she cleaned up breakfast.

  ‘You seriously don’t remember Grandpa telling us who Zeuxis was?’ Matt asked Zach, folding a slice of toast together and swallowing most of it in one bite.

  ‘The head of the Greek gods?’ Zach gulped a glass of juice.

  ‘Not Zeus – Zeuxis.’ Matt slowed his signing to spell out the letters XIS.

  ‘Zeus’s sister?’

  Matt snorted, headed to the utility room at the back of the kitchen and grabbed his raincoat and boots.

  Em was already sitting at the hearth, struggling to pull on her wellies, trying not to dwell on what might have happened to her mum. ‘Actually, Hera was Zeus’s sister,’ she said. ‘Oh … but I think she was also his wife.’

  ‘Ew!’ said Zach and Matt in unison, as they wrestled with their waterproofs.

  ‘Grandpa told us that this Greek guy – Zeuxis – might have been the first Animare,’ continued Matt. ‘Apparently he laughed himself to death after painting a very funny picture of a woman.’

  ‘Och, that poor dear,’ sobbed Jeannie, lifting up her pinny and dabbing her eyes. ‘I can’t bear thinking about him.’

  Matt and Zach looked quizzically at each other. ‘You two are idiots,’ said Em, marching past the boys and slapping each one playfully across the head. ‘She’s upset about Grandpa, not Zeuxis! Can I get you a cup of tea, Jeannie?’

  ‘Aye, hen, that’d be grand.’ Jeannie dabbed her eyes. ‘I just keep thinking if I’d not gone upstairs so early, I could’ve helped.’

  Em brought Jeannie her tea. ‘Simon said that we can maybe go and visit Grandpa tonight. I’m sure they’ll bring him out of his coma soon. He’ll know what’s happened to Mum.’

  Pushing open the French doors a crack, Matt and Zach squeezed out into the storm without letting too much of it gust into the kitchen.

  ‘Where are you off to in this weather? Ye’ll catch yer deaths!’

  Em dashed to the door before Jeannie could stop her. ‘Need some fresh air, Jeannie. We’ll be fine. Promise.’

  Outside, the rain was coming off the sea in sheets, forcing the three of them to fold into the wind as they struggled across the lawn. Between the blinding rain and the crashing waves, talking and signing was impossible. Linking arms with the boys, Em marched them towards Sandie’s studio, telepathing with Matt.

  Why exactly were you two arguing about Zeuxis?

  I think I’ve figured out how that creature got into the library. It’s something to do with Zeuxis.

  How?

  When Grandpa was telling us about the secret vault, he said that some of those paintings are especially powerful because their Animare is bound in them. What if your terror— I mean the dwarf thing, somehow came fro
m a bound painting?

  When they reached Sandie’s studio, they dashed up the steps, huddling under the thick stone eaves for shelter.

  Matt tried the door first. ‘I knew it!’ he said. ‘Locked.’

  Em cupped her hands, peering through the dark privacy glass. ‘It’s impossible to see anything. We need to get inside.’

  ‘Draw a key,’ signed Zach.

  Matt pulled his sketchpad from his raincoat’s inside pocket. With Zach acting as a barrier to the driving rain, he began drawing a key.

  Imagine the lock.

  Em nodded, closing her eyes. Matt’s hand scribbled across the paper as if his pen were automated. When he’d finished, Em took the sketch, adding teeth to the key. Then she outlined the lock, and Matt finished it. A flash of blue light surged from under the door handle, the old lock appeared to dissolve and, in an instant, a silver key appeared in a shiny new lock.

  Zach opened the door.

  ‘Wait!’ said Em. ‘Mum will be okay with us doing this, won’t she?’

  ‘If we want to help get her back,’ said Matt, ‘we have to.’

  The twins hesitated for a second, then followed Zach inside.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘Look out!’ yelled Matt, pulling Zach to the ground, as a colossal wave crashed through the window of Sandie’s studio.

  Behind them, Em exploded in laughter.

  Dazed, the boys looked up from the floor, realizing they’d ducked an angry wave painted on a wall-sized mural. The image had looked so realistic that Matt had thought water was surging through the glass. Sandie had painted the wall to look as if a storming sea was directly outside, matching a similar view she had on blustery days from the real window of her studio. The fact that a storm was actually battering the building had made the illusion even more powerful.

  Matt remained on the floor for a few minutes, getting his bearings, adjusting to the sheer number of startling images around the walls.

  ‘Every drawing looks three-dimensional,’ he said, as Zach gazed around in amazement. ‘How did she do that?’

  ‘It’s called trompe-l’oeil,’ Em said. ‘French. Means “trick the eye”, I think. With Mum’s abilities as an Animare, it makes the paintings and murals even more amazing … and almost real.’

  Matt felt like clapping. The entire studio was one trick painting after another. So many images were drawn on the walls and up across the ceiling that it was difficult to distinguish between the real objects in the room and Sandie’s imagined creations.

  ‘It’s going to be impossible to search this place before Simon and Mara get back from Largs,’ he said at last. ‘They mustn’t find out we’re trying to figure out what happened to Mum on our own.’

  ‘Why don’t we divide the room into sections?’ said Em. ‘That way each of us can look carefully at a smaller area, and the room won’t be so overwhelming.’

  Zach began walking the perimeter of his section. Without thinking, he reached into a glass bowl for a sweet – only to have his fingers hit against the wall, the bowl an optical illusion.

  Em was briefly transfixed by one corner of the studio, which burst with exotic flowers so lush and beautiful she could almost smell jasmine, lilac and the faint scent of her mother. Choking back tears, she shifted to the area around a long trestle table covered with paint pots and brush jars. On the wall above the table, she ran her fingers along painted images of brass hooks with antique keys hanging from them. There was a pyramid of pigeonholes with ribboned scrolls and poster canisters inside them, and a painting drawn to look like a framed photograph of a Victorian woman wearing a velvet hat. The woman’s hat looked to Em like a hairy black spider perched on her head. But Em’s favourite was a row of fake windows painted at eye level above her mum’s worktable, with views of places Em remembered from her childhood in London: the steps outside the National Gallery, the Henry Moore sculpture at Westminster, the cobbled square at Covent Garden, the pond in Kensington Park.

  ‘Hey, take a look at this. It’s incredible!’ Matt called from his corner of the room.

  Em nudged Zach. They both looked. A tower of luggage, consisting of an old-fashioned shipping trunk, a boxy black suitcase, a bulging red tote and a brown leather doctor’s satchel, which Em thought looked vaguely familiar, were painted on top of each other to look as if they were balancing precariously on a luggage trolley that was collapsing from the weight. The image was as tall as the studio’s door, much taller than any of the children.

  They spent the next ten minutes examining the other images in the room. Matt and Em began feeling more and more overwhelmed by the sheer volume of their mum’s art and the aching sadness of their loss.

  I miss her.

  Me, too.

  Do you think she’s okay, Em? Can you sense if she’s okay?

  I can’t. I really can’t.

  And as much as Em hated to admit it, the fact that she couldn’t sense her mother worried her most of all.

  After about twenty minutes in Sandie’s studio, Em lost hope. A dark shadow seemed to cover her mind. She sensed Matt’s thoughts as clearly as her own, spiralling into despair beside her. They’d never find their mum this way. She was gone – maybe for ever.

  A spider the size of a cat suddenly pounced out of the painting of the woman with the funky hat. Leaping over two pots of paint and scampering down the table leg, the hairy black spider scuttled across the floor towards the twins.

  Em screamed.

  Grabbing a stool from under the table, Matt flipped it over and slammed it on top of the creature. The spider exploded in a burst of black charcoal dust. Em screamed again, as a swarm of spiders spewed from the woman’s hat as if it was an egg sack.

  With bulbous middles and bulging eyes, they streamed across the table, washing on to the floor in thick waves.

  Next, a thick, ropey vine from one of the exotic plant pictures untangled itself from its roots, slithered across the floor and wrapped itself around Em’s ankles. It tightened its grip, pulling Em to her knees.

  Three bigger spiders leaped from the table edge. Landing on Matt’s shoulder, they dug their legs into his neck, their hair scratching his skin like wire brushes. Matt batted them off with his hands, filling the room with more clouds of black charcoal.

  Zach ran to help Em, as still more spiders cascaded from the painting. By this time, Em had curled herself into a ball, covering her head with her arms, howling as one spider after another landed on her, tangling their legs in her thick hair and nipping at her skin.

  ‘You both hate spiders,’ signed Zach urgently. ‘You’re doing this! You’re upset about your mum … all these images … you’re losing control!’

  Em was now blanketed in angry spiders, but they kept on coming.

  I can’t stop them!

  ‘Help me get her outside,’ Matt gasped at Zach.

  Ignoring the spiders scampering up their own arms, the two boys tried to pull Em towards the door. They didn’t get very far. The vine was still holding her tight, squeezing the circulation from her legs.

  Zach darted to the spot where they’d dumped their wet raincoats, rifling in Matt’s pockets until he found the sketchpad and pencil. Matt was cloaked in the spiders too, but he was valiantly keeping as many from his sister as he could, booting them across the room when they landed near her. The air was choked with charcoal dust.

  I can’t … breathe …

  ‘Draw something!’ Zach shoved the sketchpad into Matt’s hands. ‘She’s going to suffocate!’

  Ignoring the hundreds of spiders thickening across his shoulders, Matt drew as fast as he knew how. He had to save his sister.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Matt drew the first thing that came into his imagination. A wooden axe with a bright red blade thudded on to the floor next to Em. With one swift swing, Matt picked it up and hacked through the vine. Suddenly free, Em was able to drag herself outside with Matt and Zach close behind. As soon as Matt slammed the door to the studio, the spiders covering
their bodies began popping like black, chalky firecrackers.

  ‘Thinking about Jack and his mighty beanstalk, were you?’ said Em a few minutes later, wiping her filthy face with her sleeve.

  ‘If I had drawn a chainsaw, I wasn’t sure that it would work without electricity,’ said Matt.

  Em laughed shakily. ‘I’m sure your imagination would have been a strong enough power source.’

  ‘Matt!’ Zach suddenly looked electrified. ‘Do you realize what you just did?’

  ‘Cracked a whopping big hole in my mum’s floor?’

  Em’s eyes widened. ‘You drew the axe without me! I didn’t help in any way. I wasn’t imagining an axe at all. All I was thinking about was missing Mum, and getting those disgusting spiders out of my hair.’

  Matt shrugged, as if this development was no big deal. Inside he was punching the air with excitement. ‘I guess I did animate that axe on my own, but Grandpa did say that might happen eventually … to both of us.’

  ‘Yeah, eventually,’ signed Zach, tossing each of them their raincoats, ‘but most Animare are adults when their powers are fully evolved. You’re not even thirteen yet. Think about what you might be able to do when you’re older!’

  The three children walked across the wet lawn to the jetty, trailing clouds of soot behind them like exhaust fumes. The rain had stopped, and the storm was passing. Zach and Em sat down on the bench at the end of the dock, while Matt skipped stones into the sea, trying to mask his excitement and nervousness at the striking development in his abilities.

  ‘Well, no matter what we figured out about my powers,’ Matt said between skips, ‘that was a fairly useless hour. We didn’t discover anything that could help us find Mum.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ answered Em, ‘but we learned that Mum is an amazing artist … and … and—’ Something suddenly came to her. ‘The brown satchel!’ she gasped. ‘Why didn’t I think of it before?’

  She jumped from the bench, heading towards Sandie’s studio again.