The Cliffhangers Read online

  I stop still and stare. It’s not what I expected. It’s a shop, or something like a shop. Lit up, gold letters over the door, all plate glass and clean, beautiful, like none of the other buildings in the row. None of them is lit either. There’s nothing to see in those windows; nothing seems to be for sale. But what else can I do? I put my hand on the door and push.

  Inside is warm, and quiet. There are shelves of books, the kind that are there for decoration and probably don’t have any actual words in. Comfortable-looking chairs group under a lamp and a desk stands at just the right angle, with a device on it and a woman sitting behind in a pool of soft light.

  I almost back right out again. Almost. That woman is so perfect-looking, with her close-fitting green dress and her hair all piled up, earrings. She might be a lawyer or a politician, as much as I know what either of those types of people are like, and yet two things. One: she looks like a swan, so graceful, but all the same there’s that feeling of something going on underneath, something frantic. The other thing: I feel like I’ve seen her before somewhere.

  She looks up anyway, and carefully smiles. “Can I help you?” she asks.

  It’s as if she’s looking right into my soul, honestly, and I’m thrown. Can she help me, I ask myself stupidly? “What is this place?” I ask her.

  “If you don’t know that already, you probably shouldn’t be here. I suggest you go home.”

  “No, I…” I shake my head. Why is this so hard? “Do you know Rellian?” How could someone like her know someone like him?

  “Rellian?” She loses it for a moment. I can see her throat move as she swallows. She doesn’t know what to do.

  “I came here with Rellian,” I say. I’m all right now. She lost it and I got it back.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s outside, he…”

  That’s when the walls start to shake. They don’t shake in a way you can feel, they flicker like flames. Everything does, the room I mean, and all that’s in it. It all shimmers into clouds of colour that drift away leaving an entirely different room, wider, shabbier, and far more real. It’s brighter. I blink in that brightness. It’s colder. I look at the woman and she isn’t a woman any more, or not quite. She’s a girl. The green dress and the hair are gone, changed, and she’s looking at me still, like she wants to know what I think.

  “Come on! She said Rellian’s outside.” There’s someone else here, a great growly-voiced overgrown boy, bounding through the room. “Where is he?” he asks me.

  “Just in the street.” And we all go, out the door into the night in a blurry rush so I can’t have any time to think about what just happened.

  He’s still where he was.

  “Rellian!” The boy yells at him, and shakes him.

  “What’s wrong with him?” the girl asks.

  “He fell and broke, got fixed. A girl fixed him; we went to her house. And then we walked. It was a long way.” I shrug.

  “What about Feder? Did you see Feder?” The girl is standing up, chewing her lip.

  “I don’t know who that is,” I say.

  “Sister, he hasn’t got the money,” the boy says. He’s got an edge in his voice, and he’s rummaging, like I did.

  “What do you mean? He has to!” She gets down and rummages too.

  I’m interested. I thought they cared about Rellian. Seems like they care about money.

  “Rellian, wake up!” the boy says, shaking him again, harder.

  “He won’t if Ilse fixed him,” the girl says. “Not for ages.” She stands up. “So, what do we do now?”

  “You said he fell. Did you see him fall?” The boy picks Rellian up like you might pick up your shopping in a box. He’s a crazy looking human, bulging muscles all over, like a superhero. His brown-black hair falls in his eyes.

  “He fell on me,” I say.

  “Where?” asks the girl.

  He called her ‘Sister’, but she can’t be his sister. They don’t even have the same colour skin.

  I couldn’t possibly know, but I do. “On Lon Lee,” I say. She was on Lon Lee. I remember him saying it to Ilse. I’m good at remembering things like that. It’s not my skill, but it’s one I know.

  I go back to the Cliffhangers with them, even though I’m not invited. It looks different now; it’s changed. There are no lights and the sign over the shopfront is just painted on in black, not even neatly. My stomach growls. The boy dumps Rellian on a massive broken sofa where there’s already one boy lounging.

  “What’s wrong with Rellian?” that boy asks, drawing his skinny limbs together to make room. I didn’t notice him before. You wouldn’t.

  “He’s sleeping. Don’t get any ideas.”

  “So, we go to Lon Lee and look. I don’t see what else we can do,” the girl says.

  “We can’t. She’s coming tonight, remember?” the tall boy says. “One of us has to stay here, at least.”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t her,” the skinny boy says. He has a deep voice; he’s older than he looks. “You got it wrong, you said.”

  I don’t know what they’re talking about. The room is beginning to swim around me, not like it did before though. That was somebody’s illusion skill; this is just my hunger.

  “I didn’t get it that wrong. Whybrow’s still coming. She wants her boy back, or her money, at the very least.”

  The skinny boy groans. “I can’t do it again tonight, Yuuto,” he says.

  The large boy throws him a disgusted look. “Yes, you can. You have to. Stay here with Sister and eat something, for a change. I’ll go to Lon Lee.”

  “You can’t go by yourself,” says the girl, “not at night. Wait till River and Skinner get back.”

  “They might be hours yet. Whybrow’s on her way and the money is gone. Don’t you get what that means?”

  “I get it.” She’s annoyed, but she doesn’t seem as worried as he does. “It’s just…”

  “I’ll go with you.” I plunge in.

  “What good is that?” he asks.

  I shrug. “You don’t know. Give me something to eat and I’ll go with you.”

  And I’m walking again. I don’t know why I did that. That girl, Sister, she didn’t want me to. Maybe that was why. But she didn’t stop me either. The boy called Yuuto walks even faster than Rellian.

  “What is the Cliffhangers?” I ask him.

  He looks at me for a moment. “We’re an agency,” he says. “We find things.” He shrugs.

  “Using skills?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  I laugh. “Nothing. I’ve just never heard of anyone using skills, for what, to turn a profit? It’s interesting.”

  He stops and spins about, pins me with a glare. He’s huge. “I don’t need you. I can get this done by myself, whatever Sister thinks,” he says. “You can cut along if you want.”

  “How?” I ask. “I mean, how are you going to get this done? You are looking for a boy called Feder, who may or may not be on Lon Lee. Even if he is on Lon Lee, you don’t know exactly where, do you? How are you going to find him?” I’m trying to psych him out, I’ll admit, but I’m enchanted as well. How do you use skills to find people?

  “It’s none of your business,” he overbears, stalking off once more.

  I chase after and we get back to walking, and walking. But I didn’t find out nothing. I’m not hungry and I’m not cold, excited is what I am. The buildings around us begin to glower and loom, to form themselves into shapes I’ve seen before.

  Yuuto grabs my arm. “This is not a nice neighbourhood,” he says. “Stay awake.”

  There’s nothing to show that, not really. There are a few people about walking, the occasional carrier, not much noise coming from those closed doors and shrouded windows. That’s what it’s like though, in these kinds of places. Nothing seems to be happening, until it did or it does, or it has or it is, right in front of you, lucky or not. I don’t know how I know that. Maybe it’s from games I’ve played, or pict
ures I’ve seen on devices. It’s a dream kind of knowing, not real exactly. We’re still walking. The sky squeezes dark between the buildings. I look up and I almost see a boy falling on me. I draw in a breath. “This is where,” I say.

  Yuuto nods. He stands still with his head slightly tipped on one side, like he’s listening. “I can’t hear…” He stops. “No, wait!” He has a grin all over his face; there are lights enough in the street to see that. When he smiles he’s cripplingly, astonishingly handsome. Doesn’t last long though. “He’s up there,” he says. “How do we get in?” He’s not asking me. He’s talking to himself.

  “How do you know it’s him?” I ask. He’s got a hearing skill, clearly. I want to know everything about how that works.

  “I’ve met him a few times. I know his voice.”

  “Can you hear what he’s saying?”

  He’s not listening to me. He’s walking away, towards the building, looking for a way in, finding it: steps going up and a list of bells to ring. I go with him, wondering what will happen if I press a bell. Something. I press one.

  “Don’t do that!” he says, too late.

  “Who’s there?” A voice comes from the wall.

  “I forgot my plas,” I say. “Can you buzz us in?”

  “No,” the voice says. It laughs too. “Get lost.”

  I push another bell.

  “Stop!” He grabs my arm to keep me from doing it again, and it’s like he’s made of stone, or concrete. I can’t move.

  There’s no answer anyway. And then the door opens, outwards, letting a person come out. Yuuto catches hold before it shuts. The person doesn’t even notice. We’re in.

  “That was easy,” I say.

  “Shut up,” says Yuuto. He’s glowering, listening again.

  “Can you hear him?”

  “Not if you don’t…” He can’t hear anything, I can tell. He shakes his head as if that might help. He’s losing his skill like you’d expect. I’ve never heard of anyone as old as him who still has their skill. “He’s up at the top though,” he says.

  It’s a long way up: a lot of stairs to climb. There’s an elevator but we don’t even look at it. Maybe you can’t hear people’s voices from inside an elevator. What do I know? On the way up I have room to think. It’s quiet most of the time, with the occasional shockingly loud sound to punctuate, a door banging, a shout, a few seconds of garbled music before another door slams it away. We’ll find this person, Feder, and what? Rellian was going to give him money, it seems. Yuuto doesn’t have any money to give him, so what’s he going to do?

  Yuuto stops. “I can hear him!” The momentary smile returns. He looks so different when he smiles, younger, hopeful. My heart pounds for him for a second, but I pull it together. I’m slipping. I don’t even know him.

  “What are we doing?” I ask.

  “We’re getting Feder. We need to take him back to the Cliffhangers and feed him to that woman, his mother.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” he says, with an entirely different kind of smile. “You can stay here if you want.”

  I’m not going to do that; this is all too interesting. Yuuto might be older than me and made of concrete or whatever, but he’s not that much older than me, and I don’t see how his plan is going to work. Seems to me you’re not going to sell someone to his own mother if you had to beat him up first.

  I don’t say anything though. One more flight and we’re in the right place. We walk along a gallery corridor to a front door that is wedged open; nothing to do but step inside.

  There are plenty of people in here, but all of them are kids, my age, mostly boys, playing devices and eating sweet things out of packets, laughing. They stop laughing when they see us though. They all stare at Yuuto; he’s the size of three of them together.

  The devices carry on making pictures, light and sound all around. They’re loud, but Yuuto’s voice is as big as he is. “Feder, you’re coming with us,” he says.

  I should have guessed which boy is Feder. He looks like a snake somehow, all slinky, and his eyes have nothing in them. He laughs. “No I’m not,” he says.

  “Yes you are,” says Yuuto. “I can make you if I have to.”

  “Really?” He has a knife in his hand and he’s up; he’s fast. And some of his friends have knives too.

  Yuuto doesn’t look as if he cares much. He’s like a great bull. He could have three knives stuck in him, and perhaps he wouldn’t notice, perhaps. But he won’t get those knives off those boys without doing damage to them, something tells me.

  This is like a device game, this whole situation. Maybe none of it is real. I feel like I can do anything. I get in fast, next to Feder with my eye on his blade. I’m not scared, why should I be? “All right, fine,” I say to him, quiet. “Don’t come with us. Then you won’t get the money.”

  “What money?” His eyes gleam.

  “Put the knife away and I’ll tell you,” I say.

  He does. “What money?” he asks again.

  “I can’t hear myself think in here,” I say. I look at Yuuto. He’s standing like a statue, glaring. “Can we go somewhere quieter?”

  “I suppose,” Feder says.

  We go out of the room, away from some of the noise and most of the light, thank God. “I’ve got some money for you,” I say, “but you have to do something for me if you want it.”

  “You mean cash?” He narrows his eyes. “How much?”

  This is the hard part. I don’t know how much is enough for him, and I don’t know how much I have either. I never had a chance to count it. I calculate. “Two hundred,” I say.

  It’s enough. He lets out a sigh that’s a bit like a moan. “Where is it?” he asks.

  “Some of it is right here.”

  “And the rest?”

  “You have to come with us. We’ll give you the rest when we get there,” Yuuto says. He’s cottoned on that I have Rellian’s money. I don’t know if this is good or not.

  “I don’t have to do anything,” Feder says. He sounds like me, I have to admit.

  I slide my hand into my pocket and into the packet and try to count notes without either of them seeing. At least it’s dark. I pull my prize out awkwardly. “Here’s half,” I say. “But I’m going to tell you the truth. We’re working for your mother.”

  Yuuto grunts in disgust, but there’s nothing he can do about it.

  Feder doesn’t notice. He’s laughing. “She’s paying you to pay me? I don’t get it. She could just do that herself, only she never does!”

  “She’s paid us to find you,” I say. “She wants you to go home.” I know all this. It’s not difficult to figure things out, and I’m pretty clever.

  “Oh God,” Feder says. “I’m not going home! I’d rather live on Lon Lee, or on the street. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “You’re coming with us,” Yuuto says. It doesn’t help. In a minute Feder’s going to get his knife back out, and his mates, and we’ll be where we started.

  “It’s your decision,” I say. “But I know what I’d do.” I can’t believe I’ve got all this money and I’m about to hand it over to some little snake of a person I just met, a stranger. Money feels like something I’m supposed to keep hold of. “Come with us and take the cash. Go home for one night and then come back here again, or wherever you want to go.”

  Yuuto is seething, I can feel it, but he’s not stupid. He stays quiet.

  Feder lets his held breath escape. “All right,” he says. He stretches out his hand to take the money.

  He is stupid, and he’s lucky. I could have walked away with this money so many times. I could have spent it on food, a place to stay maybe. Perhaps I could have used it to find things out. Feder would have been wrapped in concrete and Yuuto would have been stuck with knives, but no doubt both of them would have survived it. Thing is, this money is not mine. I’m not a thief, as far as I know.

  Sometimes my skill just reach
es out and begins to use itself without me wanting it to, that’s the trouble. I’m walking again, weaving through the streets between these two boys, and my head is spinning because I’m so tired.

  “She’s here.” Yuuto didn’t speak to me all the way back to the Cliffhangers. He couldn’t say what he wanted to, so he didn’t say anything. I didn’t care. Now he sounds almost jubilant.

  The shopfront is lit up and beautiful once again with its gold letters back in place. But I’m too tired to notice anything much. I just want to crumple up on the floor and go to sleep. I was hoping they’d let me.

  “My mother?” Feder asks. He looks like he’s about to throw up.

  Yuuto has dragged the three of us to a stop. “We’ll have to go round the back,” he says.

  We go back the way we came, down the street we just trudged all the way up, behind, along a dark and cluttered alley. We have to climb over an old truck that’s wedged there, though a gate into a yard. The back of the Cliffhangers has a grubby galley kitchen, but I don’t notice that, because the other side of the illusion wall looks so strange, like a waterfall. You can see through it, and hear.

  “I daresay I have been somewhat naïve,” a woman’s voice filters through the wall, clear as a bell. “I believe now that I am being taken advantage of. Time will tell. You still have thirteen minutes.”

  I can see Sister, in her grown-up guise, the back of her anyway, all elegant. She doesn’t say anything.

  “Hazel!” Yuuto says. “What’s going on?”

  I swing my attention back to where I’m standing. Rellian is lying on the sofa, exactly as he was when we left, asleep, or something.

  That skinny boy is sitting on the sofa too, with his head in his hands. He looks up and his face is all tear-track dirty. “I thought you were never coming back,” he says.

  Nobody seems to care to keep their voice down, but I remember what it was like in that front room, how quiet it was. I know they can’t see us; perhaps they can’t hear us either.