Seaward by Susan Cooper

“So they came after me,” he said. “But it was her they killed.”
    The room was very quiet.
    â€œThere were three black cars out in the street one day,” Westerly said. “And a hammering at the door. My mothermade me push a table against the door, and when I turned round again she’d pulled down an old rug that had always hung on the wall, and there was another little door behind it that I’d never seen before. She said, ‘Don’t ask questions, do what I tell you. You must close your eyes and open that door, go through it, count to three and open your eyes. Then pick up what you will find waiting, and wherever you may find yourself, however strange or terrible things may seem, go on, as far and as fast as you can. Travelling. Seaward, to your father.’
    â€œI couldn’t understand what it was all about. I said, ‘I’m not going anywhere without you.’ She wasn’t listening, she said, ‘Tell no one where you come from, and trust only three—’ ” He broke off; his face was closed, inturned. He took the flask from Cally and began turning it in his hands.
    â€œThey were still hammering at the door,” he said, “and they yelled that they’d shoot if we didn’t open up. I was scared. I grabbed at her to pull her out of the way. But I was too late. They fired a burst through the door and it hit her full on. Slantwise across her chest. Knocked her back against the wall. She was dead before she knew anything. I’ve seen people dead before, but—but it was her— ”
    Cally stared at him in horrified silence. He was looking straight ahead at the wall. She reached out a hand to him and then let it drop again; the inadequacy seemed too great.
    Westerly’s voice was calm, empty. “I think I screamed,”he said. “I went out of my head for a minute. I wanted to kill them, I picked up a chair because it was the only thing I could see, and then I remembered my knife and I pulled that out. They had something heavy now, they were hitting the lock where they’d shot at it. I looked at my mother lying there with her eyes open and blood all over her, and although she was dead I swear I heard her voice from somewhere, very loud, very strong, filling the room, filling my whole head. Do what I tell you . . . however strange or terrible things may seem, do what I tell you. . . . So I did. I put down the chair and I closed my eyes and went through the little door in the wall. I could hear the crashing as they broke the other door in. I closed my door and counted three, and there was no sound at all from the other side then, just birds singing, and a wind blowing. And when I opened my eyes I was standing somewhere I’d never seen, high up on open moorland with a track leading away down the slope. This pack was on the ground beside me, so I picked it up. And when I looked back, there was no door and no house, nothing but moorland and sky all around. So I started off along the track, because that was what she’d told me to do. And because sooner or later I knew they’d find a way to follow.”
    He stopped. “And here I am,” he said.
    â€œOh West,” Cally said in a whisper. “That’s terrible. That’s —”
    â€œDon’t worry,” he said. “It seems like a long time ago now. Yes, it was the most terrible thing in the world. But it happened. And all I can do now is what she told me to do. Look for my father. Go to the sea.”
    Cally said, “How did she know about the door?”
    Westerly shrugged. “My mother’s . . . different. Was different. She’d always known things. She taught me some of them—words, rhymes, things to do with my knife. Sometimes I’d walk into the room and she’d be talking to herself as if there were somebody else there. I was a bit scared of her, to tell you the truth.