The Burning by Will Peterson Page B

young boy moaned softly in his sleep and threw out an arm.
    Gabriel shrugged, his eyes closed. “I’ve got a few names,” he said.
    “What, like aliases?” Adam asked.
    “Yeah, I suppose. Comes in useful, keeps people guessing.”
    “Are you hiding your real identity then?”
    “We all are,” Gabriel said.
    Gabriel’s face was in shadow. His voice sounded no morethan a whisper, although they were shouting above the noise of the engine. The sacks piled all around them were dark, hulking lumps, and loose vegetables rolled and rattled on the bare metal floor as the truck swayed on the bumpy road.
    “So where are we going?” Adam asked.
    “I thought you were happy enough with ‘away’,” Gabriel said.
    Rachel turned to her brother and looked at him like he’d gone mad. “We’re going home,
obviously
. We’re going to see Mom.” She turned back and stared at Gabriel, who was now sitting up, eyes wide open. “That’s right, isn’t it?” The look that passed across Gabriel’s face was like ice pressed against her skin.
    “Your mother isn’t at home.”
    “We’ve spoken to her,” Adam said. “She called every night from New York.”
    “She’s not in New York,” Gabriel said. He glanced towards the road. “She’s back there.”
    Adam moved across the floor of the truck. “Don’t be stupid!” he shouted. “She’s at home. We
spoke
to her.”
    “She never left,” Gabriel said simply. “It was a trick, that’s all.”
    Rachel got to her feet, almost falling as the truck lurched. She grabbed on to the metal rail that ran round the inside of the trailer.
    “Turn the truck round.”
    “It’s not me driving it,” Gabriel said.
    Now, suddenly, Rachel was shouting too. “Do whatever you did before then. Get the driver to stop and turn round. We have to go back.”
    Gabriel shook his head.
    “You don’t understand,” Rachel said. “We can’t leave her. She’s our mother … she’s in danger. We
have
to go back.”
    By now Adam was on his feet next to her. They stared down at Gabriel, urging him to move, to do something, but the boy looked calmly back at them as though unable to comprehend their panic.
    Rachel glanced across to make sure that Morag and Duncan were still asleep, then lowered her voice. “Their parents were killed. I saw the whole thing in a dream. I guess I must have tapped into their thoughts, or memories, or whatever.” She was aware of Adam’s look. She hadn’t told him: had not wanted to frighten him. “Their car was driven off the road and there were frogmen waiting under the water. They took the children out and left their mother and father to drown.” She waited for a reaction from Gabriel, but did not get one. “I
saw
it. Those people back there are murderers.” She looked across at Morag and Duncan again. “They orphaned those kids…”
    “Take us back,” Adam said. “Now!” His fists were clenched, as though he was a split second from falling on Gabriel and beating him into submission.
    “I know exactly what they’re capable of,” Gabriel said, “and they won’t hurt your mother. I promise. She’s safe aslong as they’re still trying to find you.” Now he was the one who seemed desperate, and there was something like a plea in his voice. “We’ve got to keep moving; we’ve got to stay ahead of them.” He held out a hand to each of the twins but let them drop when neither Rachel nor Adam responded. “I know how you feel, really, but you’ll have to trust me.”
    Rachel and Adam looked at each other, then finally, after a few long seconds, they moved back to their own side of the truck and dropped down among the heavy sacks of vegetables.
    There was nothing else they could do.
    Rachel thought about the argument she’d had with Adam the night she’d discovered their grandmother’s body. She remembered what he had said about Gabriel: how their lives were easier where they were; how they were better off without him. At the time Rachel had