In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson

ONE
Adam Kelly loved to play in the derelict houses, loved the musty smell of
the old rooms, the way they creaked and groaned as he moved around
inside them, the way the sunlight shone through the laths, casting striped
shadows on the walls. He loved to leap the gaps between the broken stairs,
heart in his mouth, and hop from rafter to rafter, kicking up plaster dust and
watching the motes dance in the filtered light.
This afternoon, Adam had a whole village to play in.
He stood at the rim of the shallow valley, staring at the ruins below and
anticipating the adventure to come. This was the day he had been waiting
for. Maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Anything could happen down
there. The future of the universe depended on Adam today; the village was
a test, one of the things he had to conquer before advancing to the Seventh
Level.
The only other people in sight stood at the far end, near the old flax mill: a
man in jeans and a red T-shirt and a woman all dressed in white. They were
pretending to be tourists, pointing their video camera here and there, but
Adam suspected they might be after the same thing he was. He had played
the game often enough on his computer to know that deception was
everywhere and things were never what they seemed. Heaven help us, he
thought, if they got to it first.
He half-slid and half-ran down the dirt slope, skidding to a halt when he
reached the red, baked earth at the bottom. There were still patches of mud
around; all that water, he supposed, wouldn’t just evaporate over a few
weeks.
Adam paused and listened. Even the birds were silent. The sun beat down
and made him sweat behind his ears, at the back of his neck and in the crack
of his bum. His glasses kept slipping down his nose. The dark, ruined
cottages wavered in the heat like a wall behind a workman’s brazier.
Anything could happen now. The Talisman was here somewhere, and it was
Adam’s job to find it. But where to begin? He didn’t even know what it
looked like, only that he would know it when he found it and that there
must be clues somewhere.
He crossed the old stone bridge and walked into one of the half-demolished
cottages, aware of the moist, cool darkness gathering around him like a
cloak. It smelled like a bad toilet, or as if some gigantic alien creature had
lain down to die in a hot, fetid swamp.
Sunlight slanted in through the space where the roof had been, lighting the
far wall. The dark stones looked as slick and greasy as an oil spill. In
places, the heavy stone flags that formed the floor had shifted and cracked,
and thick gobbets of mud oozed up between them. Some of the slabs
wobbled when Adam stood on them. He felt poised over a quicksand ready
to suck him down to the earth’s core if he made one wrong move.
There was nothing in this house. Time to move on.
Outside, he could still see no one. The two tourists seemed to have left now,
unless they were hiding, lying in wait for him behind the ruined mill.
Adam noticed an outbuilding near the bridge, the kind of place that had
perhaps once been used to store coal or keep food cold. He had heard about
the old days before electric fires and fridges. It might even have been a
toilet. Hard to believe, he knew, but once people had to go outside to the
toilet, even in winter.
Whatever it had been, The Destructors had left it largely alone. About seven
feet high, with a slanting flagstone roof still intact, it seemed to beckon him
to come and vanquish it. Here, at least, was a structure he could mount to
get a clear view. If the pretend-tourists were hiding nearby, he would see
them from up there.
Adam walked around the outbuilding and was pleased to see that on one
side a number of stones stuck out farther than others, like steps. Carefully,
he rested his weight on the first one. It was slippy, but it held fast. He

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson