The Power of Five Oblivion

short that for a moment I got the impression that the food was somehow floating in by itself. I had never seen so much meat, not since the time when I’d managed to bag the deer in the forest. It looked like boiled gammon and I guessed that the village bred pigs … which was more than we’d ever managed to do. The vegetables were turnips and parsnips, and there were fewer of them to go round. The woman set the plate down with a little grunt of pleasure. The man with the violin stopped playing. All the others leant in as if to sniff the aroma that was rising from the food.
    Don’t eat anything, Holly .
    They were the last words I wanted to hear and I didn’t hear them anyway – once again they were inside my head and I knew that Jamie was responsible. I glared at him. I knew there were a lot of things that didn’t add up about Little Moulsford but couldn’t we find out what they were after we’d eaten?
    Say you want to go to the toilet .
    “I’m really sorry,” I said. “It looks absolutely delicious, but I’m afraid I need to use the toilet.”
    The major’s wife looked at me disapprovingly. It was probably bad manners to say something like that after the food had been served.
    “We don’t have any toilets,” one of the villagers said. “None of them work. You have to use the latrine.”
    “And where’s the latrine?” I asked. “It’s at the other end of the car park. Behind the pub.” Tell them you’re scared of the dark .
    It was almost too much. But I’d already invested everything in Jamie. From the moment I’d met him, I’d allowed him to rip my life apart. Why should I stop now? “I know this is going to sound really stupid,” I said. “But actually I’m quite scared of the dark.”
    And that was Jamie’s cue. “That’s all right,” he said. “Actually, I need to use it too. I’ll come with you.”
    The major’s wife was clearly disappointed. She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, you’d better go together,” she said. She turned to the boy. “Cosmo. You go with them. Make sure they don’t get lost.”
    She didn’t trust us. Cosmo lurched to his feet and grabbed a twenty-bore shotgun, which he slung over his shoulder. It seemed very strange that someone so young should be armed, but Cosmo held it like he’d been born with it. Together the three of us left the room. It was much colder now that the sun had set but there was still a glow in the sky, enough to see by. Cosmo pointed at a gravel path leading down the side of the pub. “It’s this way,” he said.
    “We’ve already gone ahead of you,” Jamie said. “You’d better hurry if you don’t want to lose us.”
    What he had said made no sense at all. We weren’t moving. We were standing right in front of him. For a moment, Cosmo looked confused. But then he nodded and set off into the darkness, disappearing out of sight, and I realized that this was down to Jamie, that he had somehow made Cosmo believe what he said, even though he could clearly see that it wasn’t true. In a way it made me shiver. Jamie was so ordinary in many ways. I mean, he was just another fifteen-year-old, like me. But at the same time, he was like some sort of superhuman. He was one of the Five. He had this amazing power.
    As soon as the boy had gone, Jamie began to move in the opposite direction. “Stay close to me,” he said. His voice was a whisper and he sounded afraid. “We’ve got very little time.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “I have to show you something. You’re not going to like it. But I have to see…”
    We went round the side of the Punch Tavern and came to a window that was illuminated by candlelight from within. I realized this must be the kitchen … where the meat had come from. I think I knew what I was going to see before I saw it. All my nerves were tingling and there was a sort of dread deep in my stomach. We tiptoed forward and looked through the glass. And there it was. I will never forget it.
    There was a chef in a white apron with a white hat on. In Little Moulsford they had to do everything properly, didn’t they. I bet he washed his hands before he began cooking. There was a huge slab of meat on a wooden board in front of him – except it wasn’t meat. It was a human being … or the remains of one. I could clearly make out an arm, a shoulder, and part of a torso, some of it wrapped in silver foil. So this was what we had just been served. This was what I had been about to eat. I