Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 82

Chapter Twelve

                ‘Where’s he gone?’ Elle asks.

                I can’t see. All I can see is white, like when someone takes a flash photograph in a dark room.

                ‘My eyes!’ Graham whines.

                ‘He can’t have just disappeared,’ Elle continues.

                Slowly, my vision returns. This time there’s no scorch mark. Teague has indeed disappeared, leaving nothing behind him.

                ‘I thought he was going to explode,’ I say, relieved. ‘Maybe he’s travelled again? Like we can?’

                ‘That didn’t look like travelling to me,’ Elle replies.

                ‘Did you hear what he said about Robin Thacker?’ I look at the pair of them.

                ‘Death hasn’t changed you,’ Graham says. ‘Still on Thacker?’

                ‘I told you, if you gave it a chance after chapter one, you’d get into it.’

                ‘If I was supposed to read it, then he would have been good enough to grip my attention from line one,’ Graham says, like he’s considering Thacker for publication.

                I raise a finger, opening my mouth to object but Elle shushes us both.

                ‘You said Thacker annotated the margins to his first edition,’ she says. ‘Teague said he saw a page of one of Thacker’s books on the internet and it sounded like that’s where he started, maybe we should follow him.’

                ‘Wait,’ Graham stopped her. ‘Where did you find a first edition Thacker?’

                ‘Oh I broke into the Thacker museum yesterday. I left the Alchemist manuscript with a heavily depressed man who lives in a hayfield. Sorry, I left that bit out.’

                Graham’s eyes widened. ‘I have to say, death sounds a lot more interesting than life.’

                ‘If you ignore the fact that you can get lost in your memories at any given moment,’ I challenge.

                ‘Depends on the memory,’ retorts Graham. ‘But I’ll stick with my fleshy prison.’

                ‘So we go and find the manuscript again,’ says Elle. ‘You said that Yates took it back to the Thacker museum after you left right?’

                ‘I said he was going to,’ I say. I hold out my hands. ‘Graham, pack that stuff away, we’ll need all of it. We’re travelling again.’

                Graham starts throwing indiscriminate items of equipment into a backpack, leaving the EMF meter and the ionizer until last. ‘Can’t we take a car or something?’ he moans

                ‘That’s like saying you want to ride with the luggage when you can fly first class,’ I say. Elle takes my right hand, I hold out my left to him.

                Graham shuts off the ionizer and shoves it in the bag. We’ll now be invisible to him.

                ‘This is discrimination you know,’ Graham mutters, holding out his hand to thin air. I grab it and we disappear, the scent of hay clear in my nostrils.