As I had expected there were closed-circuit TV monitors in every room but they were switched to surveillance of the outside. I realised to my horror that there must have been more cameras in the garden because in one of the monitors I could clearly see our old house. I could even see my bedroom window. I wondered if the Polsons had two sets of cameras, one set for outside surveillance and one for inside. Perhaps if the cameras spotted an intruder coming in from outside, the surveillance was switched to internal monitoring. And as I had got into the house the back way, the internal monitors had not been switched on. I had to believe this. It was my only hope. Upstairs every room glowed with a pale-blue light which was coming from the monitors. As I shone the torch tentatively towards a window I realised why the light couldn't be seen from outside. There was a thick black blind blanketing out each window, shutting in the light. Jamie must have pulled open the blind the night I saw him dancing at the window. He must have been crazy ... out of his mind. My search was proving futile. I seemed to have been in and out of every room twice and there was still no sign of either Jamie or Mark. A new thought occurred to me. Was it possible that the Polsons had smuggled the boys out in the back of the car? But something told me that they were here in the house. I was starting to feel their presence very strongly and I could no longer tell the difference between this feeling and the one I had experienced earlier about Trancer's presence. Then I remembered the electrocardiogram which I had seen plotting the boys' heartbeats. What further proof did I need that Jamie and Mark were somewhere very nearby? I had to find them. The time was now five o'clock. I had exactly thirty minutes. I returned downstairs and stood in the hallway, trying to think. Big Bad Jonah had quietened down in the utility room, but he was still giving the occasional bark and growl. And I had yet to work out how I was going to get out of the house without being torn to pieces by him. Was there another room I had overlooked? Again I tried to think. Where did we used to play? Once again I recalled the dream in which Jamie and I played hide and seek and the awful falling sensation as I descended through the floorboards. That's where I come from ... Somewhere down there ... And at the same moment I remembered the muffled cry that seemed to come from under the house while Sophie and I were talking to Polson. Of course! How could I have forgotten! The playroom was in the cellar. How could I have blocked out that memory? I knew the answer. I didn't block it out. Polson did! It was just after Sophie and I heard the cry from the cellar, that Polson had said those words that seemed to mesmerise us. Impossible ... impossible ... lamplight ... lamplight ... leaves ... leaves ... shadows ... shadows ... imagine ... imagine ... imagine ... imagine ... No wonder I had forgotten! I tiptoed towards the cellar door below the staircase and as I approached it I saw the bgcolor="black number pad and realised to my dismay that it was a combination lock. My chances of stumbling on the combination and opening the door were infinitesimal. Above the pad was a small, glass peephole. Leaning forward, I peered into it. My heart began to pound and my chest felt so tight I could hardly breathe. For the first few moments my mind could hardly register what I was seeing ... and when it did I started back in horror... Nothing could have prepared me for the extraordinary scene I had just witnessed: through the fisheye lens I made out an ultramodern computer lab. In the eerie artificial light, two boys were sitting rigidly still at a long bgcolor="black workstation desk, both of them hooked up to what looked like virtual reality headsets. Occasionally they moved a joystick but mainly - and what made my blood run cold - they were frozen like zombies in a VR trance, their faces pale, lifeless, completely without expression. A spaghetti of wires were hooked from their heads and bodies to a stack of bgcolor="black machines. What did this remind me of? I remembered Trancer at the end of the day in Reading as he was transformed in front of my eyes into a lifeless zombie and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the older of the two boys was Trancer. And I also knew that Trancer was Jamie. But another, much older, memory came into my mind. It floated back to me across the years. Jamie and I were seven years old and for our school Christmas play we had taken the parts of Kay and Gerda in Hans Andersen's The Snow Queen. Jamie was Kay, who sat in the Snow Queen's frozen palace, rigid and cold, making "Ice Puzzles of Reason". The Snow Queen had entranced him so that he was blind to everything but solving puzzles made out of ice, because of the splinter of glass which had come from the "Devil's mirror" and had got into his eye. I was Gerda, who had set out to rescue him and after a lot of adventures had finally managed to find him in the Snow Queen's palace while she was away. But Kay didn't respond to Gerda, and it was only when she was so upset that she began to cry and shed hot tears that penetrated Kay's heart and thawed the little bit of mirror in him, that Kay recognised her. But at this moment, I had no tears to cry. I was too horrified, too numb. Instead I found myself shrieking, "Jamie!" He didn't react, didn't turn. There was nothing I could do. Nothing more I could say. I don't know how long I stayed there transfixed at the view, but I suddenly realised that I had very little time left before the Polsons were due to return and yet I was still feeling too weak and dazed to move. As I tried to pull myself together I was reminded of the fact that I would have to leave the same way I came in. From the utility room I could hear BBJ give a long, low growl.
Somehow I would have to make my escape. Still trembling with the shock of what I had just seen, I made my way back along the hallway to the kitchen, beyond which was the utility room and suddenly froze in my tracks. I had just realised that when I opened the utility-room door, BBJ would charge out at me, but this time - unlike before when I had been able to swing the door round and hide behind it - I would be unable to do so. Because the door only opened one way ... and that was back into the utility room. This time I would have no place to hide ... I thought of my options. The most obvious was to leave by the front door but I instantly ruled that out. I would never get past the surveillance cameras: I had visions of alarms going off, police arriving ... the Polsons had friends in high places. Besides, I already knew that it would be impossible to open that thick steel front gate that was obviously connected to the security system. The other downstairs exit was via the garage but as I had seen from the front security system and the remote control of the driveway gates, I knew that opening the garage doors would be electronically controlled. I would be as much a prisoner in the garage as in the front garden. I thought of getting out through an upstairs window and sliding down a drainpipe. But this option was even more preposterous: I had no head for heights and even the thought of it made me feel dizzy and nauseous. The fourth alternative was to find a place to hide until BBJ was safely out of the utility room. But then again I might have the three of them to contend with. There was one more option and that was simply to open the utility room door and brave BBJ. However crazy it might sound now, I decided this was what I was going to do. At that moment I just wanted to get out of the house before the Polsons returned and I wanted to believe that I could still win BBJ round by gentle handling. As I crossed the kitchen I heard the Alsatian growling from behind the bolted door. Nervously I unbolted the door, knowing that he could now be just feet away. With a shaking hand I pushed the door open ... Big Bad Jonah was crouched in the middle of the utility room. Instantly he jumped up, barking furiously. Hardly believing what I was doing, I knelt down so that I was level with him. This seemed to have some effect because, instead of springing at me, he stood fixed to the spot, baring his teeth and growling. I would like to say I stood my ground and made friends with him, but the truth is I was quickly losing my nerve, especially as I could see he was very hungry and, still growling and salivating, was beginning to approach me. I felt my heart pounding as I edged away, backing out of the kitchen into the hall. I was now certain that any second he would leap on me ... I could see him tense, getting ready to spring and I backed away further. He was about to jump at me, when I collided into something big, solid and immovable behind me. To my amazement and relief BBJ lay down on his haunches and whimpered obediently. Swinging round, I found myself face to face once more with Jamie - but not my friend of many years ago, nor the dancing boy in the window nor Trancer as I had seen him at the Phoenix Festival and had got to know him at Reading. His face was set like granite. He didn't even appear to see me. "Jamie ... I - " A voice comes roaring into my head, like a train approaching out of a tunnel. Get out ... go away ... we don't need you ... The voice grew to an ear-splitting crescendo until I had to put my fingers in my ears. And yet Jamie remained motionless and said nothing. He looked past me at Big Bad Jonah who almost casually, reluctantly, stood up and walked past me to a smaller figure who was standing behind him. It was Mark Canon. I found it almost impossible to recognise in this impenetrable figure the little imp who used to giggle and fight with Sophie in the back of Fran's car. What would she think of her darling little Marky now, I wondered. Because, while Jamie seemed vacant, rigid, like stone, there was something threatening and malign in the way Mark's concentrated stare seemed to laser through me. It reminded me of Polson's drilling gaze and I felt I had no way of protecting myself from it. You are not wanted here ... The voice that was roaring in my head, making it hard for me to think, was harsh and unyielding. How could you let them do this to you, Marky? I found myself thinking, as though I now had no alternative but to respond to him telepathically, as Mum would have put it. And even though I felt cold waves of terror sweeping over me, I still found in myself a small, safe area where I could talk to myself and try to reason out what was happening. I knew as long as I stayed in this safe room the voice couldn't harm me. I even started to picture the room: it was like our sitting room used to be in London and I saw Mum and Dad sitting there and some of my friends from school; I even allowed Sophie to come in as long as she kept her trap shut. We were all laughing at the voice, like Sophie and I sometimes used to do when we stayed up and watched a really bad late-night horror film in bgcolor="black and white from the nineteen fifties. And then I knew that it was Mum I needed to talk to. The conversation that followed between me and Mum in my safe room, which I will try to relate as accurately as I can, took only a few seconds of real time, but I experienced it in what I later decided to call "safe-room time" which I believe is much slower. I think it was the very fear I was feeling which must have opened the door that led me into that room. What's going on, Mum? I asked her in my mind. I'm not sure, Abi, she replied, in that gentle, thoughtful way of hers, but I've got the sense that Mark especially has become the prime target for psychic programming. After all, Polson got him when he was young. How can I help Mark? Can't I do something? Not now, Abi, not yet. But maybe ... What? Well, it's occurred to me that more than fifty per cent of the will being exerted against you is coming from Mark. I think Jamie would like to be free and has had to find a way of escaping from the Polsons in his mind. And when he escapes he becomes Trancer. Do you mean Trancer wasn't really there at the Phoenix and at Reading. I think he was there, in his mind. He was able to go there because of you. How do you mean? This is what I think, Abi, and I may be wrong. I think both boys have an unusual psychic potential-- You mean psychic power? Yes, and I think that the Polsons have been exploiting this for their own purposes. They have been force-feeding Jamie and Mark's psychic energy. Come again? Do you remember Hansel and Gretel, when the witch feeds them up-- So that she can eat them? Are the Polsons going to eat them? No, not physically, but they are feeding off their psychic energy. And that's why the boys were hooked to the machines? Yes, it's a bit like the way they battery-farm chickens. They're being forced day after day to raise the levels of their psychic power. And is that how Jamie was able to travel in his mind? Yes, he has the ability, but it is also his escape. In order to travel he became Trancer. But Trancer doesn't know Jamie and Jamie doesn't know Trancer. He doesn't know he's doing it? I think he's starting to. I think the two halves of Jamie and Trancer are starting to connect. But if he wasn't really there, physically, how was Lizzie able to see him as well as me? Through you, Abi, you are his lifeline and Lizzie saw him because you did. So what can I do to help Jamie now? Invite Trancer into the safe room now and introduce him to Jamie. In my mind I did as she told me. I opened the door and let Trancer in. He walked in grinning, did a couple of somersaults and then danced around the room before looking contrite and a little embarrassed. It's OK, Trancer, these are all my family and friends, they want to help you, I said. Then I brought in Jamie. He seemed in comparison inert, lifeless but even in my safe room I could sense his power - a power that had been turned in on itself, like a muscle-bound athlete. Jamie, I said, looking towards Mum for support, I want you to meet Trancer. Trancer is you, Jamie, the part of you that wants to be free of all this. At first the Jamie who walked into my safe room didn't respond but then he began to stare at Trancer as if at a ghost, as though he'd woken up from a long sleep and were staring at himself in the mirror and could hardly recognise what he saw, but knew in his heart that it was his own reflection. Then his expression changed again. He was growing agitated and his face began to contort in a scream of agony and remorse. And all the while Trancer remained serene, unperturbed, unaware of the effect he was having, happy as before to be oblivious of "the bad things". As Jamie began to scream, the floor of the safe room started to shudder and shake as in an earth tremor. Once again Mark's voice came roaring into my head and the safe room dissolved. Go now ... we don't need you ... you are not wanted here. I found myself backing away again, this time towards the kitchen, but as I did so I could see a change in Jamie - not the Jamie in my safe room, but the real flesh and blood Jamie who was standing in front of me. I could swear that he too, like safe-room Jamie, was waking up. "Abi?" he said, in a thick, troubled voice. He looked lost and bewildered. Go now ... the voice was continuing to thunder in my head. "Jamie!" I pleaded, desperately wishing that I could drag him away with me, but by now it was impossible for me to resist the magnetic force that was repelling me away from him. "I'm a transmitter, Abi!" Jamie shouted, screwing up his fists as though he were fighting a voice within himself - or was it also emanating from Mark? You mean nothing to us ... get out ... "Help me, Abi!" Jamie gasped. "Help us ..." But I knew that his voice and will were growing weaker as Mark's voice grew stronger. "I'll get help, Jamie, I promise," I shouted back as I felt myself propelled towards the utility room. I was dimly aware that I still had to relock the door between the utility room and the kitchen, but where was the paper clip? My hands were shaking and I doubted whether I would have had the ability to do it anyway. But then to my amazement I heard the lock turn. How could that be when seconds earlier I had seen Jamie and Mark standing at the far side of the hall? Of course I knew the answer: it was Mark who was using his mind power to lock the door. But I had no time to wonder further about the nature of that power. From outside in the driveway I could hear the Polsons' car pulling up in the driveway and preparing to enter the garage. I had no choice but to crouch behind an old cupboard in the utility room. I heard the garage door shut and then the Polsons' voices only a few feet away. If I was to escape, now was my only chance. A disturbing thought now came to me: would the boys - would Mark - squeal on me? Maybe they wouldn't need to. Maybe Polson would know. As I crouched in the darkness I wondered what the extent was of his psychic power? Somehow I sensed that it was limited - that while he could exert his will and use hypnotic control, he did not have the same gift to read minds and transmit thoughts or to travel in his mind which Jamie and Mark had. The Polsons could feed off their psychic energy but they couldn't generate it themselves. That was why they needed the boys. I sensed and knew all this without actually consciously thinking it, just as the conversation between me and Mum in the safe room had happened on some intuitive level that was different from the normal exchange of thoughts and ideas. I heard their voices recede into the house and then I slipped out of the back door, Locking it behind me and creeping to the back of the driveway, I slipped out the way I had come in. Five minutes later I was back on the pavement outside the Polsons' house. As I was about to cross the road and return to the flat I glanced back. "Look at me, Abi, I'm dancing!" Jamie was back at the window. The light was on. The blinds were undrawn and once again he was dancing. Out of his body. Out of his mind. Oh God, Jamie, what are you doing? I said to myself and then it occurred to me that this was Trancer again - Jamie's other half - and that although I could see him, the Polsons couldn't. But seconds later, I began to wonder. For behind Jamie/Trancer I saw a shadow, the silhouette of Polson as he entered the room. The light went off. The blind was drawn. I suddenly knew with an awful certainty that Jamie Canon had begun the process of consciously acting out the rebellion of his secret, unconscious half, Trancer ... and that his life was now in terrible danger ...
I stood on the grey pavement feeling the chill of the early September evening creeping into my bones and gazed at the front of the house for I don't know how long, watching the bgcolor="blackened-out bedroom window. Why was I waiting? For Jamie to reappear at the window? Or to come running out of the house, greeting me with some awful quip and then we'd trundle up the hill to school like we had at the beginning of a new autumn term seven years ago? I was so lost in reverie, trying to reconcile my recent appalling encounter with the boy I used to know, who had made me a mouse's head and read my eyes and done the Moonwalk, that I didn't notice the front door open. "Ah, you must be looking for your young friend again." My blood froze. I felt as though a very large building - say, the size of your average Transylvanian castle - had fallen onto my head and I couldn't think, let alone speak or move. Polson was standing at the door smiling benevolently at me. At least I think he meant it to appear benevolent but if skin could actually crawl, my skin would have been crawling along the South Circular Road at sixty miles an hour. "Perhaps it would be a good idea if you came in. Then I might be able to convince you that your ... what was his name?" "Jamie ..." I managed to say. "Ah yes, Jamie ... he is not here of course, but I don't think you will believe me unless you see for yourself." I was slowly starting to be able to think again. At least I had recovered enough from the initial shock to realise that the surveillance cameras must have spotted me. How ironic that I had managed to break into their house, evade their security, escape their guard dog, hack into their computer and locate Jamie and Mark and yet here, out on the street, I had been picked out by their cameras. What was I to do? If I refused to go in it would be inconsistent with my presence there today and my previous request to see the boys. He might suppose that I was devious, or frightened or suspicious, and the Polsons might tighten their security even more. What had he to gain from my coming into the house? Was he planning to abduct me as well? I couldn't imagine so. From everything I had learned, from the details in Duncan's letter about the Polsons' early interest in the boys and the elaborate system that had been set up around them, it was obvious that the Polsons were not into random kidnap. It would serve no purpose to kidnap me or kill me. My presence would be missed and suspicion could easily fall on them. On the contrary, I decided that this was more likely to be a public- relations exercise: they would have good reason to imagine that I had told other people of my suspicions that Jamie and Mark were in the house. So if they could convince me that the boys weren't there, they could relax in the knowledge that their security was assured. What had I to lose? I might be able to find out something new, pick up further clues about what the Polsons were using the boys for. And maybe, just maybe, I would be able to get to Jamie again, before the blanket over his mind came down again, like the blanket his mother used to put over the telly when Michael Jackson's Thriller video came on so as not to scare little Mark ... And all the while another far more disturbing thought was going on in the back of my mind, like those subsonic hums you get in horror movies when the director is signalling to the audience that something really nasty is about to happen. Maybe all the reasons I was giving myself for returning to the house now with the Polsons were coming from them! Maybe Polson was planting in my mind a compulsion to go back in and all my reasons ... excuses? ... were the result of hypnotic suggestion. For all the time I had been hesitating he had been fixing me with those cold blue eyes and I had no power to resist. I had to obey him. The entryphone buzzer sounded and the gate swung open. I felt myself almost being pulled up the garden path towards Polson and as I did so my head began to feel heavy again and I felt once more that tingling in my cheeks and fingertips, as though thunder was in the air ... "As you will see ... Abigail, isn't it ... we have a quiet little house here. Unfortunately my wife and I are childless, but as we are psychologists we know a little about young children." From the kitchen I could hear BBJ barking again. "... And dogs." He smiled. "Dogs are just like children, you know. They need a certain amount of training in obedience, just as we human beings need the correct education and mental discipline to train the mind." He opened the door to the front living room. I had been in here earlier and noticed even more this time just how sterile and unlived-in it felt, like the fake living-rooms you get in the furniture departments of large stores, with a three-piece suite comprising a long bgcolor="black Chesterfield sofa and two smaller bgcolor="black leather armchairs, onto one of which he gestured for me to sit. I noticed a grandfather clock in one corner, and a couple of reproduction Georgian cabinets with glass doors that displayed various pieces of bric-a-brac. "Ah," he said, as he saw me staring at an object shaped like a tall cross with a loop on the top. "That is an ankh. It comes from Egypt and it is a very powerful symbol of eternal life. "This Jamie of yours sounded an interesting fellow. You must have had quite a soft spot for him. Maybe you were sweethearts--" "I didn't say that ..." I said angrily. "But it occurs to me that you had not seen him for some years and then of course, as I understand it, he died in a car crash." I was tempted to call him a liar but thought better of it. I couldn't tell him that I had seen Jamie only an hour or so earlier in the cellar and then in the hallway. "Did he, perhaps, write to you or get in touch some other way. Perhaps in a dream?" "I told you last time, I saw him dancing ... in the window." "So you did, so you did ..." I started to feel dizzy under this interrogation, as though I was a patient in the adolescent unit of a mental hospital and he was the psychiatrist. He stood above me - towered above me - and every now and then he would start to pace. "Would you say there was anything unusual about him?" "I don't know what you mean." Although of course I did. "Could he, for instance, have had the power to communicate to you from beyond the grave? Do you remember his having psychic gifts?" "I've told you, I saw him in the window. I know he isn't dead!" I had decided that it was best to stick to my original story for consistency's sake, but I couldn't let him know that I had seen the boys inside the house. "So you've seen him again, since the time when you saw him, as you say 'dancing in the window'? This interests me very much. My wife and I have a deep interest in the paranormal and it seems that your Jamie may indeed be a ghost." I was surprised that he had gone so far as to admit at least this much about his interest in psychic research, but his questions were all angled in such a way as to make me believe he thought Jamie was dead. I knew of course that was a lie. But all the same, I couldn't see why he was asking me these questions. After all, he must already know the power of Jamie and Mark's minds as he had been working on them for the past few years. Could all this be a diversionary and delaying tactic while Mrs Munster cleared out all the evidence of Jamie and Mark's presence and disposed of them into some nether region of the house that I wasn't aware of? But then I realised the thought was preposterous. The boys must be locked securely in the cellar and the Polsons were hardly going to be escorting me around their computer lab. They would only let me see what they wanted me to see. And then suddenly I could see the purpose of all the questions. Polson wanted to know if Jamie had the power to escape his influence. His power over Jamie had its limits and where those limits ended, which was when Jamie appeared to me as Trancer, that's where he couldn't go. I don't know how I guessed all this, but it came to me in a flash and just as it did I could sense Polson's mind switching gears as it had done on the doorstep the first time I talked to him. Once again I felt the sensation that he was drilling into my head, trying to take control of my thoughts. But this time I had a place to go where I could protect myself against him. With a huge effort of will I turned my head away from his and looked down into my lap. But as I started to conjure up the safe room I felt the full force of Polson's own will. It was different from protecting myself against the voice that semeed to have emanated from Mark. That voice was like when you tuned the radio into one station, which was your own mind, your own thoughts, and another station emitting a stronger signal threatened to drown out the first station. By going into my safe room I had been able to listen to my own mind; I could still hear "Mark's" voice but I had been able to stop listening to it. But when Polson began drilling into my mind I couldn't hear another station; he wasn't transmitting another signal. He wasn't a transmitter, he was an amplifier, and it was more like he had control of the volume knob, so he could shut down my thoughts, but at the same time he was also able to fill my mind with bgcolor="black, sticky treacle which was how I imagined the content of his mind to be. I concentrated on the safe room and imagined that me and my family and friends were painting the floor, walls and ceiling with thick gold paint that was able to seal it off from Polson's cloying will. I was aware that he was still talking, but his voice now seemed to bombard my mind in waves, like the waves of pain you get when you have toothache. When the pain was at its most acute I imagined I was at home in bed, with the cover over my head, hiding from the thunder, and Mum was saying: Don't worry, Abi, it can't hurt you. It will pass. You're quite safe. I looked up. The assault had passed. I could think again. It felt like a victory. "So if you have had a visitation it would be of the utmost interest to us for you to let us know," he was saying, but I sensed he was disappointed, perhaps even slightly baffled, that he had been unable to dominate my thoughts. "So much for the spectre of your deceased friend. Now, perhaps, I can demonstrate the physical evidence that he is not here by conducting you on a short guided tour. If you will come this way ..." He beckoned me to the door and then led me from room to room. To my surprise there was no sign of the surveillance monitors in the upstairs rooms. I was starting to wonder what had happened to Mrs Munster when she suddenly loomed out of the darkness in the landing, rather like one of those skeletons that swing out at you on a ghost train. "Perhaps it's time for our young visitor to be leaving," she said and I could hear the tension in her voice. "I'm sure your parents will be getting worried." "I'm not staying with my parents," I replied without thinking and then caught the look that passed between them. "So ... you seem rather young to have left home," Polson said. "You are with relatives, friends of the family maybe?" I cursed myself for having slipped up so badly. It was obvious they were fishing for information and I wasn't going to let them imagine that if I went missing no one would notice. "Something like that," I replied, remembering that knowledge is power. They weren't going to get any more out of me. Instead I said: "Could I see the cellar?" I don't know what made me say it. Perhaps I wanted to call their bluff and see their reaction. But mostly it was pure frustration that they could imagine they could simply bamboozle me into thinking Jamie and Mark weren't there. Again I caught the glance that flitted between them. "The cellar?" Mrs Munster said in surprise. "Why do you want to go there?" I bottled out somewhat and replied rather feebly, "We used to play there ... I thought it would be nice to see it again ... it would bring back the memories." To my amazement, Polson smiled. "Very well, we will go and look in the cellar." He turned and started walking down the stairs from the upper landing to the hallway. I followed between him and Mrs Munster, my insides churning as I realised that the moment of truth had arrived. How, in the time I had been talking to Polson, would Mrs Munster have possibly been able to get rid of the computer laboratory, let alone any signs of Jamie and Mark? Where else could they be? As Polson approached the cellar door, he pulled a bunch of keys from his jacket. "I hope I still have the key," he muttered. "We don't often go down there." Liar, liar, liar, I thought, but I was still baffled. Why bother with this charade when he was about to reveal the truth to me? He pulled out an old rusty key and to my surprise unlocked a padlock that I couldn't remember seeing on the cellar door earlier. It suddenly struck me: the combination lock had disappeared. The door slowly opened and I had to stifle a gasp of amazement. Instead of the computer lab, I was staring down into a bgcolor="black hole: the smell of damp cobwebs hung from dank, milldewed rafters. Several of the steps were missing and all I could make out at the bottom were bags of rubble, pieces of broken furniture, an old mattress, the remains of a dismantled lawnmower. It was a typical disused cellar. "And now I think as you have seen everything there is to see," said Polson, "it is time to say goodbye. Thank you for our most interesting talk." He barely concealed the disdain in his voice as he led me back to the front door. "As you can see, your Jamie is no longer dancing in windows." He pressed a button by the study door and the outside gate opened. "Do give my regards to your ... family friends."
"What on earth have you been doing?" Nettie said, looking me up and down with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. I couldn't blame her. I looked a mess with my ripped jeans and jacket and I guessed that she was already wondering what she was going to say to Mum and Dad. "Oh, I went for a run and I ... tripped on some barbed wire ... I'm OK, really, Nettie, honestly I am." She looked dubious but said tactfully, "Well, you probably want a bath. There's a dressing gown in the bathroom. I'll see what I can do about your clothes. I'll fix you a cup of tea - or would you prefer hot chocolate?" "Thanks, Nettie, chocolate would be great." I beamed at her and gave her a kiss. I was on the verge of bursting into tears and telling her everything and that would have been a total disaster so I quickly made my exit and sank gratefully into a hot bath. Everything was churning around in my mind and I had to decide what to do next. Was I going mad? Could I have imagined seeing Jamie and Mark in the cellar? And yet ... the cellar I had just seen bore no resemblance to the old playroom, any more than it did to the computer lab. It didn't make sense. And then, all at once, it did. The cellar had been partitioned. It had always been so, even when the Canons lived there. There were two cellars with an entrance door from the hallway and a second door immediately to the left of the landing inside this doorway, which opened to a second staircase leading down to the old playroom. The Polsons must have painted it bgcolor="black, which was why I hadn't seen it in the dark. As for the combination lock, it must have been subtly masked. They had duped me and it only strengthened my resolve to rescue Jamie and Mark. And this time I wouldn't be going in on my own ... By the time I got out of the bath, all pink and shiny, I'd worked out a ground plan. Nettie was brilliant. She'd fixed the ripped pocket of my jacket but left the hole in the knee of my jeans - "you might want to keep it this way". Then at my request, she rang my parents and told them I wanted to stay one more day and then handed the 'phone over to me and Dad said I hope you're steering clear of the Polsons and I said of course and then Mum said you're not bothering Nettie and I said of course not etc. After a quick meal with Nettie, I excused herself and went back to the bedroom. For the rest of the evening I watched the house across the road from my window, thinking of the day's events and wondering how Jamie was. But there was no further sign of life from the house. The next morning I rang my old London friend Chrissie Somers - she was the one who used to be my best friend and then wasn't and then was again and so on - and she still lived half a mile away. Her dad was a vet and I used to take the cats to his surgery for their injections. We arranged to meet up with Chrissie's older brother Col that afternoon at his flat in west London. There was something I had to do first though and that was look for some buried treasure ... How could I begin to explain what had gone on? I started at the beginning, which was when I had seen Jamie dancing in the window, and told them everything. "I can't go to the police. Like my dad says, they'd laugh at me. But even Dad doesn't know the half of it. You should have seen them, Chrissie, they weren't the same. They were like ... robots ... at least Mark was, but I think Jamie's trying to free himself." "And that's where Trancer fits in? You think Trancer is actually Jamie's alter ego?" Col asked. "I don't know, but I think when I first saw Jamie dancing in the window I was seeing Trancer, I mean I was seeing the part of Jamie that was able to free himself." "But why was Jamie dancing at the window?" asked Chrissie. "I think I know, but it's hard to explain. It's like there's a part of him that he's protected, that Polson hasn't got to and then sometimes he just find himself in another place." "Like at the window," said Chrissie. "Or at festivals. I know you'll think I'm crazy but I believe he is able to get out of his body and go places." "You mean like astral travel?" said Col. "I think that's what it is. I've heard my Mum talk about that. The thing is, I'm sure Trancer didn't know who he was ... that he was actually a part of Jamie but then in a way he was giving me clues ... leading me to find Jamie. And now I've seen Jamie I know he has started to become aware that he is also Trancer. So when I saw Jamie dancing in the window again yesterday, I think this time it really was Jamie, the physical Jamie and not just his Trancer projection." "And what about Mark?" Chrissie asked. "I don't know. I keep remembering that little boy of six ... you remember him, Chrissie?" She nodded. "I still think he's in there, but he's become mentally powerful and I don't know if he still has the same personality underneath. I want to believe he has. I want to think that if we can get them both away from the Polsons, Mark will remember who he is." "But you think Jamie's more in touch with himself?" "Definitely. And he could also be the one who can rescue Mark." "So what do you think the Polsons are using them for?" Chrissie asked. I hesitated. I'd thought a lot about this and I still remembered snatches of the "conversation" I'd had with Mum in the safe room. "This is going to sound pretty weird and far out, but when I was in their study I saw all these books on vampires." I saw Chrissie and Col exchange sceptical glances. "So you think the Polsons are vampires? They're drinking their blood?" "No, not their blood. But I think they're feeding off their psychic energy." Col whistled. "Psychic vampires! Yeah, that's sounds reasonable. In a far out sort of way." I sighed. "I didn't expect you to believe it. I know you must think I'm imagining it, but if you'd seen them in that basement ... and the way Mark was able to get into my mind ... and if you'd met the Polsons ... I know they're somehow controlling it all, the Polsons I mean." Then I told them what Mum had said to me in the safe room about how she thought Jamie and Mark were being forced to boost their psychic power like battery chickens or Hansel and Gretel. Col smirked. "And the Polsons are going to pop them in the oven and eat them." "No, they're feeding off their psychic energy. That explains why Tracer suddenly went dead on me. That must have been when the Polsons were drawing on his energy. Like you drain a battery." They still looked sceptical but I knew I was getting through to them. So I told them my plan. Col worked for a computer company in London where he was a programmer. He also happened to be the oldest friend of Natalie Canon, Jamie and Mark's sister. "She actually got in touch with me a few weeks ago," he said. "She came back to London last month and we were talking about meeting up. I could ring her now if you like." I nodded eagerly. It was just what I was hoping to hear. After he had rung her, Col got out his camcorder and videoed me. I spoke to Jamie and Mark, and I even spoke to Tracer, but afterwards I couldn't remember what I said, except that all my words seemed to come out in a rush and probably didn't make any sense and at the end of the video, before he switched off the camcorder, I was in tears Natalie came over to Col's flat an hour later. Of course she was much older-looking than the last time I had seen her; her face deeply tanned - not just the type you get from a fortnight on the Costa Brava, but from spending many years abroad in a hot climate. She had lost a lot of weight - I think she'd got food poisoning in India - but it suited her. It was funny, though, how now I was sixteen and she was twenty-four I felt on much more equal terms with her than when I was nine when she sometimes baby-sat me and Soph. She was obviously desperate to hear of any news about Jamie and Mark. Looking at her face I could see Jamie's features, the turned-up nose and wide cheeky mouth. But her hazel eyes, edged with fine lines, had a hint of sadness in them and I wondered at all the experiences she had been through in the past seven years. She listened in horrified silence as I told her my story and immediately promised to do anything she could to help. Then she started to talk about the Polsons. "You probably know how they were psychologists and I think my father knew them casually - they were part of a small ex-patriot community in Stuttgart. "I couldn't stick him from the start. I felt there was something very creepy about him and as for her - well, you've met her - " "Mrs Munster's what Sophie and I called her." Natalie smiled. "Yes, but at least Mrs Munster has a sense of humour. She's like a cross between a bossy headmistress and the priestess in some bgcolor="black magic cult. You want to laugh at them, but they're scary ..." "I know what you mean," I said. "Anyway, Polson started coming round to our apartment, and then they both came. They used to ask questions about Jamie and Mark and kept saying what bright kids they were and how they'd be delighted to give them extra tuition as highly gifted children often needed extra stimulus, as they put it. "They would take them out on what they called 'educational trips' and I suppose I didn't really notice it at first but later it was obvious that they were influencing them - " "How?" Col asked. "It's hard to say. Both my brothers are ... were ... really high-spirited, they were always fooling around, well, you know, Abi." I nodded. "Anyway, after a few months they started becoming withdrawn at home, morose and sometimes, well, you know what kid brothers and sisters are like, they can be appalling." I thought of Sophie and agreed wholeheartedly. "But this was different ... They were becoming callous and sort of impenetrable. It was like they needed to exert their will over us. I had this definite feeling that they'd been got at - " "By the Polsons," said Chrissie. Natalie nodded. "And they seemed to be exercising more and more of a hold on them. Mum was uncomfortable about it, but Dad didn't seem to notice. "But I remember just before Dad died that he seemed to have fallen out with them and I've always wandered whether they might not have had something to do with his having a heart attack." "So you think they might have deliberately murdered your father?" Col asked. "I've got no concrete evidence. It's just a feeling that they would never let anyone get in their way. But as you know, after his death, they started to give Mum bereavement counselling and she started relying on them. And then they persuaded her to let them educate Jamie and Mark themselves. "I was finding it impossible to live in the apartment and it was mainly because of the Polsons so I decided to travel. I did have some money when Dad died, though not a lot because the Polsons had persuaded Mum to put a lot of her inheritance into an educational trust fund for the boys which they would administer. "So I left Germany and went to Australia and then Thailand and after that I lived in an ashram in India. "I used to write to Mum but I never got a reply. And then when I finally returned to Stuttgart I heard of her death. After that I decided to come back to London to sort out my life and see if I could find out what has happened to Jamie and Mark. "Well, now I know. It never occurred to me that they would be back at the old house ..." She stopped, her eyes full of tears and I hugged her. "Don't worry, Natalie," I said as we clung to each other, "we'll get them back." Natalie had brought with her a large package and she gave this to Col. Today was Thursday and school started in a week's time. We arranged to meet up at a cafe up the road from Nettie's flat on Wednesday at two o'clock. That left Col five days to prepare his box of tricks. Before we parted, Natalie said, "There's something else I should tell you which I've only just remembered. "One night when the Polsons came round to the apartment - this was in the first few months we were there when Dad was still alive - they got into a sort of discussion about religion and philosophy and so on with Mum and Dad. "My parents were both religious but not in any conventional way ... they didn't go to church but they believed in God. Anyway they were talking about what the Polsons called the 'transmigration of souls'." "What's that?" I asked. "Well, I think it's about how the soul passes from one body into another at death." "Like in reincarnation?" said Chrissie. "I think so. But the thing I remembered was that Gerald Polson started talking about how souls can be made to transmigrate before death. It sounded really weird but he was saying how he and Monica wife had been doing some kind of research - he made it sound very clinical and academic - that would prove conclusively that it could be achieved ..." We stared at her for a few moments in silence. Then Col said, "You think that's what they may be doing with Jamie and Mark?" "I know it sounds hard to believe - " Natalie said. "I believe it," I broke in. It reminded me again of Hansel and Gretel and how the witch fed them every day so she could eat them. "I had this feeling, especially with Mark, of a soul in peril, but I still believe Mark's in there somewhere." "So maybe Jamie - or Trancer - really has been sending out an SOS," Chrissie said. We looked at her, mystified. "SOS," she repeated. "Save Our Souls ..."
