Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

“The note only tells you what you want to hear,” Mrs Cheng remarked.

“The bird chose it for me.” She held out the page so that Mrs Cheng could see it. “There you are. You can see for yourself. I’m going to be rich.”

Mrs Cheng nodded but said nothing. The two of them and Karl walked back to the car. And all the time, Scarlett’s heart was racing and she kept the piece of paper close to her. She had folded it quite deliberately. She had only shown Mrs Cheng half of what had been written.

For underneath the printed fortune, there had been another message, written by hand:

Scarlett.

You are in great danger. Do not let the woman read this. Come to The Peak tomorrow afternoon. Follow the path from Lugard Road. We will be waiting.

We are your friends. Trust us if you want to leave Hong Kong alive .

Scarlett knew something was wrong, the moment she opened her eyes.

A glance at her bedside clock told her that it was eight o’clock in the morning but for some reason the sun wasn’t reaching her bedroom. It wasn’t just cloudy. It was actually dark. What was going on? She turned over and looked at the window. At first she thought that someone had drawn a black curtain across the glass, but then she realized that it wasn’t on the inside. It was outside. How was that possible, twelve storeys up? She propped herself on one elbow, still half-asleep, trying to work it out.

And then the curtain moved. It seemed to fold in on itself and at the same time she heard the beating of tiny wings and understood what she was looking at. It was a great swarm of insects, black flies. They had attached themselves to the window like some single living organism.

She lay where she was, staring at them with complete disgust. She had never seen so many flies, not even in the heat of the summer. And this was a cold day in November! What had brought them here? How had they managed to fly across an entire city to come together on a single pane of glass? She could hear their buzzing and the soft tapping as they threw their bodies against the window. She could make out their legs, thousands of them, sticking to the glass. Their wings were blurring as they held themselves in place. Scarlett felt sick. She was suddenly terrified that they would find their way in. She could imagine them swirling around her head, a great black mass, crawling into her nostrils and mouth. On an impulse, she scooped up her pillow and threw it at the window. It worked. As one, the flies peeled away. For a moment they looked like a long silk scarf, hanging in the breeze. Then they were gone.

For about twenty minutes, Scarlett stayed where she was, almost afraid to get up. She didn’t like insects at the best of times but this was something else again. She knew that what she had seen was completely impossible… just like the door in the church of St Meredith’s. And that told her what should have been obvious all along.

She had thought that, at the very least, her sudden departure to Hong Kong would be an escape from what had been happening in London – the monastery, the sense of being followed, the restaurant that had blown up. But of course it wasn’t. It was a continuation, part of the same thing. The events that had closed in on her in London had followed her here. She was caught in the same trap. But here it was even worse. She was far from her friends and family, alone in a city that seemed to be hostile in every way.

This was all happening because she was a Gatekeeper. She remembered what Father Gregory had told her. He had talked about an ancient evil… the Old Ones. Scarlett didn’t know exactly what they were but she could imagine the worst. They were here, in Hong Kong. That would explain everything. The Old Ones were toying with her. They were the ones who were controlling the crowd.

What was she going to do?

She could march into the kitchen and tell Mrs Cheng that she didn’t want to wait for her father, that she was taking the next flight back to London. She could telephone her mother in Australia or the headmistress at St Genevieve’s. They would get her out of here. She could even contact the police.

But she knew that none of it would work. The forces ranged against her were too powerful. She could see it every time she went outside. Hong Kong was sick. There was a sort of cancer that had spread through every alleyway and every street and which had infected everyone who walked there. Did she seriously think that they were just going to let her walk out of here? So far, they hadn’t threatened her directly. That hadn’t been part of their plan. But if she challenged them, if she tried to assert herself, they would close in on her and she would only make her situation worse.

She had just one hope. The people who were trying to reach her: they had to be on her side. We are your friends. That was what they had told her. She just had to behave normally until she reached them. Then, once she knew what was really happening, she would be able to act.

She got up and got dressed. The fortune-teller’s note was beside the bed, but now she tucked it away beneath the mattress. Whoever her friends were, they were being very careful. They were contacting her in four separate stages: the guidebook hidden in her luggage, the illuminated sign across the harbour, the bird of fortune at Tin Hau and finally a meeting this afternoon. The question was, how was she going to persuade Mrs Cheng to take her back to The Peak?

They had already been there once. Victoria Peak was the mountain that rose up behind Hong Kong, a must-see for every tourist. Scarlett had gone there on the second day, taking the old wooden tram – it was actually a funicular railway – up the slope to the top, five hundred metres above the city. The views were meant to be spectacular but they hadn’t seen very much on account of the pollution. Maybe that was the answer. If the weather cheered up, it would give her an excuse to go back.

Mrs Cheng was in the kitchen, cooking an omelette for Scarlett’s breakfast.

“Good morning, Scarlett.”

“Good morning, Mrs Cheng.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Very well, thank you.”

As Scarlett sat down, it occurred to her that she had never seen the woman eat – not so much as a mouthful. Even when they went to restaurants together, Mrs Cheng only ordered food for Scarlett. In fact she had only ever shown hunger once. That had been at the market when they examined the hideous, sliced-in-half but still-living fish.

“So where would you like to go today, Scarlett?” They were exactly the same words she had used the day before. And she spoke without any real enthusiasm, as if it was simply what she had been programmed to say.

“Why don’t we go back to The Peak?” Scarlett suggested. “We didn’t see anything very much last time. Maybe we’ll get a better view.”

Mrs Cheng looked out of the window. “There’s a lot of cloud,” she remarked.

“But it’s going to cheer up this afternoon,” Scarlett said. “I saw the forecast on TV.” It was grim outside with a non-stop drizzle sweeping across the sky. And the forecast had said it would stay the same for the rest of the week. But somehow Scarlett knew she was right.

“I don’t think so.” Mrs Cheng shook her head. “Maybe you would like to go to the cinema?”

“Let’s see what it’s like this afternoon,” Scarlett pleaded. “I’m sure it will clear up.”

And against all the odds, it did. At around two o’clock, the clouds finally parted and the sun came out, still weak against the ever-present pollution, but definitely there. Even Mrs Cheng had to agree that it was too nice an afternoon to stay indoors and so the two of them set out.

The receptionist was in his usual place as they left Wisdom Court, sitting stiffly behind the desk and wearing the same dark suit and white shirt, watching them with no expression at all. As they went past, Scarlett noticed something. The man had a black spot, a mole, on the side of his face. At least, that was what she thought. Then the spot moved. It crawled over his cheek and began to climb up and she realized that it was actually a fly, one of the fat, black insects that had come to her window that morning. The receptionist didn’t move. He didn’t try to swat it. He didn’t even seem to have noticed it and did nothing as the creature reached the corner of his eye and began to feed.