by T C Shelley
‘He says … he says …’ Richard couldn’t finish.
Michelle looked to the policeman.
‘It looks like it could be an organised abduction, ma’am.’ The officer in charge put out his hand. Michelle stared at it numbly. ‘I’m Sergeant Trelawney,’ he said, tugging an imaginary forelock, ‘and this is PC Teague.’ Michelle’s dazed gaze took in her face.
‘From what the experts outside have told me the blanket and bottle were removed, which suggests whoever took the baby means to look after her. There’s a chance a ransom may be requested.’
‘A ransom?’
Richard held Michelle’s hands. ‘The detective here seems to believe Da’s death brought this on. The house is worth a lot, and the kidnappers think we have money.’
Her eyes brightened. ‘OK. We give them everything. We will, won’t we, Richard? They can have everything.’
Sam knew pixies wouldn’t ransom anyone. He felt the tea-shop food slurry in his stomach. It was his fault this happened to them. He should have left the moment Maggie appeared.
‘We’ll do everything we can to get your baby back, ma’am. Who knows, one of the neighbours may have heard her crying and come to collect her.’
‘Her name is Beatrice.’
The sergeant flipped his notebook as if confirming this. ‘Beatrice, yes.’
‘I was with her the …’ Nick turned to Sam, his expression pleading to be believed. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry.’
‘If it’s a ransom it could be over quickly?’ Michelle grabbed Richard, shaking him to confirm it. ‘It’ll be over quickly, Nick. Don’t worry.’ The smile on her face made Sam uncomfortable and he stepped back.
‘Is this your son too?’ The sergeant pointed his chin at Sam.
‘Yes.’ Her eyes lit on him. ‘I mean, no.’
‘He showed up at the house yesterday afternoon, during the wake. We don’t really know who he is …’ Richard trailed off.
‘You didn’t think to call Welfare?’ the PC asked.
‘Teague,’ the sergeant warned her.
‘Yes, we did, but it was so late last night and … so much happened yesterday; we didn’t know what to think. He looks like a family member.’ Richard shook his head. ‘Do we really have to go into that now? Our daughter’s missing.’
‘We just wonder if his presence might have anything to do with that,’ Teague said.
‘He’s been with me all morning,’ Michelle said. She stopped and studied him, putting a hand over her face. ‘Please, Sam, please. You didn’t have anything to do with this, did you?’
Sam peered at each face in turn. He had brought this down on them.
‘Distracting you, perhaps?’ The sergeant stared at Sam. ‘Son?’
Michelle cried.
‘Yes, it’s my fault, sir.’ Sam’s eyes burned. ‘Pixies took her because of me. It’s my fault.’ Sam bawled. His stomach ached, his head hurt. Every awful emotion he knew to feel filled him until he felt sick.
‘Take it easy, son, you’re sounding a bit hysterical. Doesn’t sound like you’re to blame at all.’ Sergeant Trelawney stepped closer.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry,’ he said to Michelle. She reached for him. Nick stared at Sam, the dazed expression lifting for a moment.
‘Come on … Sam, is it?’ PC Teague moved to touch his shoulder. ‘Calm down. If you were in town with Mrs Kavanagh, we’re sure …’
Sam saw Trelawney and Teague stalking him from both sides. He’d been hunted from the moment he was made, and he knew what it looked like.
He ran.
He dashed from the living room, down the corridor and through the open front door. He swung his pack on to his back so it rattled and bounced as he ran.
Trelawney and Teague yelled after him.
Michelle called, ‘Sam?’
He ran past the investigators searching the garden.
The police officers’ yells grew louder as they broke free of the house, and Sam bolted out of the garden. He did not think where to go. His bare feet bashed against the hard footpath.
A huge ee-awwing sound started behind him. A monster pursued him; it flashed red and white lights. He ducked down a path between houses, hearing the chase behind him.
‘Down there, down there!’ someone yelled, and he looked ahead to a green expanse. He would have nowhere to hide out there. He jumped the fence next to him.
A grate was set against the inside of the fence, underneath the end of a drain pipe. He looked at it. He knew where Beatrice would be, and he was the only one who could bring her back. He slid between the bars of the grate, like a monster, as slick as a pixie, his body snaking into the darkness.
‘He went down here!’ Teague’s voice yelled.
Sam stepped back into the darkness between the human world and the monster world. Had they seen him slip into the grate? They couldn’t follow him, could they?
‘He must have gone into the Downs.’
‘Can’t see him.’
‘Stay here, he might have gone into one of the gardens. If you see anything …’
Footsteps pounded past him and softened as they hit the meadow.
Sam panted. He looked between the bars. The day above was beautiful and he felt wretched. His heart hammered in his chest and ears. No matter what those poor humans did, they’d never find Beatrice again, not unless the pixies brought her back, and did pixies ever return the things they stole? Sam considered the darkness. If he followed it he’d find The Hole. He had to find those pixies. He had to get Beatrice back before her sparkles faded out in that horrible place.
CHAPTER 13
The bars of the drain cooking in sunshine smelt like blood, but the scent faded as he moved further in, and the temperature lowered. Sam wondered which direction the pixies had taken Beatrice. He knew it wasn’t down this particular dark cavity, the old stink of goblins and trolls seeped from the walls, but there was no human smell. Still, all tunnels led to one place, The Hole, and he was sure the pixies had taken Beatrice there. If he hadn’t been forced to run, he might have tracked her from the Kavanaghs’ house, but it was dangerous to go back and start again. The police were hunting him in the lanes and fields above his head.
He climbed deeper into the gloom, and when he turned to catch a last touch of daylight, he could no longer see the opening behind him.
It was dark. Sam could still see, he had a gargoyle’s eyesight, but there was more to this darkness than a lack of light.
He descended into its inkiness, dropping a few feet to land on his bare feet.
He rested, explored his backpack, checked his two bars of chocolate and the sleeping bag. He found something else under them and smiled. A sandwich. The last Daniel had given him before they left the cathedral. It looked a bit squashed.
‘Thank you,’ he said into the darkness. The walls did not echo his words.
Then he walked for a long time, following the shafts and the ogre stink ages away. He walked over debris and tunnel floors smoothed by centuries of footfall. Pixie footprints and the clodding marks of trolls patterned the ground. With each step, he hoped he could find some trace of Beatrice.
In one tunnel, he found a hessian-dressed human skeleton. It had been there so long, its smelt only of dust and dirt. The dark holes in its skull stared at him. Sam felt sorry for it.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Are you lost?’
The skeleton did not answer. Sam wished he knew its name and where it belonged. He had the horrible thought that a monster had kidnapped this poor human and been turned to ash, leaving the person to wander around in the monstrous dark before starving to death. It hadn’t occurred to him before, and he wondered if Beatrice was lying in these catacombs somewhere with a pile of ash next to her.
If the souls did that, it would be as bad as letting the ogres eat people. Beatrice would only survive if they weren’t that stupid. Sam hoped they weren’t.
The grey tunnels sucked him further. When he heard the thumping of
pickaxes behind stone walls, Sam stopped and listened.
‘Tommyknockers,’ he guessed.
Sam sniffed and rot greeted him. In the distance, the sounds of the monster hive hummed and growled. He was close to The Hole.
One step closer to finding Beatrice.
‘It’s my fault she’s here,’ he said to the walls.
A troupe of dwarves with coal-blackened faces stomped out of a hole at Sam’s right, the tommyknockers he’d heard. Sam stopped again. Thunderguts had sent pixies to find him. Were other imps looking for him too? He knew they wouldn’t eat him themselves.
One peered at him, yawned and strolled after its pack.
Sam relaxed, but reminded himself to be careful in future.
He followed the tommyknockers to a cobbled entry. When they had gone through, he peered inside. He was high above the Great Cavern. The murderous bellowing clicked into sudden volume, and he watched thousands of ogres and imps travelling below on their diabolical business. He sniffed, but with the overpowering reek of ogre paddies, he could barely make out the troll sweat and pixie fear, so the gentle scent of baby was undetectable. Nonetheless, the Pixie Cavern was in here somewhere, and someone there might know something. His heart chilled, the opposite of the way it felt when filled with hope. But it was all he had to go on.
The tommyknockers climbed down into the great mass, using their picks to steady their descent. Sam shuddered, and followed them into the murky, mucky space below. All the imps and monsters on their important business, scurrying about, ignoring the doings of other panicked creatures as they worried about Thunderguts’s moods and orders. Nothing looked at him, nothing cared. The multitude would give him better cover than an empty corridor.
Sam dropped into the rabble, knocking over a brownie, which took off at full speed. Goblins loomed over him, and hundreds of pixies shuffled at his knees and waist. Each face was a map of intent. He stayed with the company of pixies and followed them into a tunnel which had ‘To the dunjuns’ chalked over its entrance way in bony white.
Sam tucked in his head, pushed up his backpack and moved with the press. He hoped this pack would lead him to more of their kind, to the pixies’ cavern where he might find some information on Beatrice. He swayed like a troll as the push of the mob shoved him onwards.
Still the creatures shuffled directionless and frenetic. He continued hunching hoping they wouldn’t look his way. Sam saw plenty of dark entrances leading off the main corridor and wondered where they led. Many of the black mouths swallowed up imps, while other doors vomited yoghurt-white pixies and brownies back into the great crowd. He still couldn’t smell the baby; the bare hints of human scent seemed ancient and long gone.
When the pixies made a left, Sam followed them.
‘Oi, you!’ An ogre with tusks and one good eye leaned against a wall next to a dark entrance. It called and pointed over the mob.
Sam hunched into the ground, waiting for its huge claw to fall on him and jerk him into the air, but the great brute flicked at a pixie clutching a small brown paper parcel. ‘What you got there?’ the ogre asked.
‘Nothing.’ The pixie shook so much the wrapping crackled. ‘It won’t interest you.’
‘Likely story,’ the ogre said.
The ogre plucked the package from the pixie’s arms and ripped through the paper, then held up a small grey-green tunic. The crowd had slowed, squashing Sam against the wall. All the pixies’ eyes, round and wide, watched to discover the parcel carrier’s fate. Sam stared with all the others as the ogre studied the parcel and the pixie shivered. Hundreds of imps gaped at the pair, pressing at them, like water around a rock, pooling around the prodding, poking bully and its victim.
‘Get out of here! Go home!’ Sam hunched further down, his bottom on the hard dirt. His heart rattling. He looked around, but no one was talking to him. The ogre flicked the tunic at the sobbing pixie, then raised its arms. ‘Don’t the lot of you know it’s guards and prisoners only in the dungeons? What you trucking useless stuff about for?’ He aimed a kick at the parcel-carrying pixie, and the imps turned to scamper back the way they had come. Sam would have followed them, but his feet were stuck to the floor, and if he didn’t move, the ogre would see him.
It’s fear, just fear, Sam thought. No time for fear. He had to find Beatrice.
The pack attempted to reverse, but a few trolls and goblins pushed on, wanting to get further down the dungeon corridor. Five pixies and a goblin a head taller than Sam exchanged blows in front of him. The goblin seemed to think Sam was in the fight too and shoved him backwards. Sam fell, expecting to hit the wall, but he found himself landing with a solid thump inside the entrance to a side tunnel. He could see out to where the imps squabbled. A pixie in a top hat sailed into the tunnel and plumped next to him, but it sprang up without paying him any mind and threw itself back into the fray. The ogre who’d started it all guffawed and the goblins sent a few more pixies flying.
Sam turned his head to try to peer further into the thin corridor. He was met with, not complete darkness, but flickering flames high up on the inner walls. He smelt the hint of a human, newer than before and as gentle as fresh air. It came from a long way back in the tunnel. He crept towards the aroma, sniffing as he went, aware that any nasty could be ahead as he had lost the protection of the crowd. He would be easily seen, but he had to follow that scent.
Torches sputtered in the blackening corridor. Flames licked hungrily at metal rims, and tar drooled to the ground beneath.
Behind him, the one-eyed ogre giggled and grunted, the battle noises fading, before the monster’s footsteps got louder. He was following Sam into the side tunnel.
Sam scampered in further, listening as the ogre trailed him.
Then ahead, out of the gloom, came the slapping echo of mighty, flat feet.
Ogres in both directions, Sam thought. I’m trapped.
He scaled the wall and clung on to the ceiling. His backpack hanging down. A large ogre could brush its head against it, even if it didn’t see him first.
The ogre coming from inside the tunnel was a short one, but if it looked up it might’ve been surprised to find Sam there. It had sharpened tusks, an enormous skull and bulbous nose, and one arm dragging by its side. It swaggered down the corridor and as it did, the one-eyed ogre galumphed down the tunnel towards it. Matted feet smacked the earth. One-Eye passed under Sam and stopped.
‘I was coming to get you,’ One-Eye said.
‘Any news?’ Tusks asked.
‘Won’t be long now. Thunderguts says a coupla things ain’t gone quite right but he’s got a plan.’
‘He’s always got a plan.’
The two chuckled.
Tusks spat up something solid. One-Eye leaned over to pick it off its toe. It squelched. Sam held his position and his breath.
‘Finished?’ One-Eye asked.
Tusks grunted. ‘Someone I ate. Didn’t agree with me.’
‘Well, they never do,’ One-Eye said.
The ogres laughed a horrible gutter-belch of noise.
‘Come on,’ said One-Eye.
The pair took off back the way Sam had come.
When the ogres were far enough away, he let his breath rasp out.
They hadn’t bothered to look up. Sam guessed, when you’re the biggest, most frightening thing in the room, you don’t check your surroundings. Sam scuttled along the ceiling, increasing the distance between him and the ogres.
The last turn plunged Sam into a sombrely lit, stone-lined pit. Stairs spiralled down its sides. Vicious hooks and manacles hung from the walls, too high up for even the tallest ogre to touch the ground, although Sam doubted the hooks were for ogres. He dropped from the ceiling, rolled in the air, and landed on all fours. He smiled. He hadn’t known he could do that. Behind him, voices drifted away. Ahead the snore of a heavy animal travelled up the stairs.
Sam held his shaking hands together and ran into the sepia darkness. His feet were braver than he; they took each
step in a rhythmic stride as his parrumping heartbeat echoed off stone walls. The smell of human grew stronger.
It wasn’t right though, too diluted. A dead body? He hoped not, he really hoped not.
At the bottom of the steps, a rusting gate stood ajar. Sam sized up the thin gap in the gate, then slid through. As his pack scraped the wall, the hinges shrieked.
‘My name’s not Tinkerbell,’ a rough voice called.
Sam stopped everything – moving, breathing, daring. Sweat gathered at his hairline.
Snores started again. Sam blinked and slipped free of the gate and, with the last of his courage, tiptoed towards the human smell.
The ogre guard’s snores filled the space between four small, black-barred cells, and the thick smell of blood crammed up Sam’s nose. The great creature’s bum smothered a suffering three-legged stool and mounds of fat from its backside cascaded down the sides, legs bowing under the weight. The ogre’s convex nose draped over its chin. Twin horns – stained a deep, rotten red – stuck out of its forehead. It drooled on to its pot belly, its tongue lolling all the way to the top of its shorts. From underneath the stool, a twinkle caught Sam’s eye, as if a tiny piece of sunlight had caught there.
The ogre stank. It sleep-belched and the pungent copper smell eddied off its breath.
Sam smelt the remnant of fresh air clinging to its breath. There was a whiff of sunshine, but whatever it had been hadn’t been human. This wasn’t the scent he had followed. It was an animal smell. Sam felt sorry for it. The poor creature was gone, and all its sunshine with it.
The gruff voices of ogres echoed into the stairwell, followed by flat, meaty footfalls descending the steps. The ogre muttered in its sleep. It burped again and Sam backed further into the dark space of the cells.
Sam looked around and realised they were empty. Their doors hung open. He slipped along the short corridor and looked in each as he passed. Dirt floors furnished with misshapen rocks and rotting wood. The human smell came from the last one, but subtle, slight. The touch of a fingernail or a hair in a brush, not a whole person.