by T C Shelley
Sam shook his head. ‘Too much noise. Woermann could track you down. We need to get out without setting off the alarm and …’
‘The boy’s right, it’s a Tutum 520 System. I don’t suppose you know the key code?’ the bigger badger asked.
Sam shook his head.
‘Hmmm, then no idea what we can do to open it,’ the badger said. ‘I’ve installed at least twenty of these. He presses six keys then we’ve got a million combinations to figure out. And we’ve only got three chances to get this right before we set it off.’
Sam remembered the beeps. ‘He pressed four keys.’
The badger sighed. ‘That narrows it down to a thousand possible combinations, which increases our chances, I suppose.’
‘What if I can sniff the keys?’ a bloodhound asked. ‘He’s a pretty pongy cat.’
‘Oi,’ Cecile said.
Sam assumed the expression on the badger’s face was a wry grin. He’d never met a badger before. ‘That narrows it down to twenty-four possible combinations. Twelve and a half per cent chance of getting out. I suppose it’s better than three in a million.’
‘All right,’ said the bloodhound. ‘Let’s find the alarm pad.’
The thirty or so shifters crept along the corridor towards the front door. The keypad was easy to find. Right next to the door and, at night, it flickered like the fairy lights in the Pixie Cavern.
‘Flip open the cover, then,’ the badger said to Sam. ‘If we can narrow it down further, we’ll get you to press in the code.’
‘Me?’ Sam asked.
‘Opposable thumbs and at least one finger are useful,’ the badger replied.
‘What if I press the wrong numbers?’
‘There’s a good chance you will, but even if I could shift back –’ the badger shuffled and studied the keypad – ‘I haven’t got any clothes, and I’m a bit loath to work in the nuddy. Children present an’ all.’ He waved a claw at the crowd behind.
A rabbit sat up and looked at the stairs. ‘I can’t hear anything. He’s still asleep. Right?’
Sam listened too. The snoring went on.
Sam leaned forward and flipped open the plastic cover of the alarm. The bloodhound jumped up and leaned against the wall. It chuckled. ‘Nine.’
‘What do you mean, “nine”?’ the badger said.
‘The only key he presses is nine. He must press it four times. His favourite number. Nine lives and all that. Typical cat.’
‘Oi,’ said Cecile Siamese.
The bloodhound squinted at Sam. ‘Go on then, press them.’
‘Are you sure?’ a hedgehog asked. ‘It seems a little easy.’
‘If I’m wrong, then we break the window,’ the bloodhound said.
‘Which wastes precious seconds,’ a rabbit replied.
The bloodhound snuffled over the keys again. ‘I’m one hundred per cent certain. You sure it was four buttons, Sam?’
Sam suddenly wondered. Was it four? Or was it five?
‘We’re burning moonlight,’ the cat said. ‘No point waiting for it. If we’re wrong, at least we gotta better chance than waiting for him to come down the stairs.’
The animals turned their gazes on Sam. His hand shook.
Sam pressed the nine key. Once. Twice. Thrice. Four times.
Nothing happened.
Sam stared at the badger.
‘I’m cracking the window. Give me a leg up,’ the larger rabbit said, pulling on the bloodhound’s ear.
Before the good creature answered, the red lights turned green. But the alarm let out a loud single beep.
Upstairs, Woermann cried out. ‘What? What?’
Sam held up his hands and pointed to the ceiling. The little group went as silent as they could, but the marching band tattoo of their hearts beat at Sam. He listened for the footsteps of the man cat upstairs.
Woermann was awake, that was true, but he hadn’t climbed out of bed. Yet.
Woermann’s pillows flumped as he lay down again. His ears weren’t as good as Sam’s but if anything bumped, dropped or opened in the foyer, Sam thought the cat man would hear that.
Sam motioned his arm down, and put his palms together under his head. The sign for sleeping.
Sam looked at the window the rabbit wanted opened. The sound of it would ride up the stairs.
He motioned them back to the kitchen.
CHAPTER 15
Sam went ahead. Softly, softly, listening all the way until he heard Woermann snoring again. He trembled. If the cat man woke once, he’d be awake again very soon.
The shifters followed Sam to the kitchen. They stared at the white door that had been the gate to their cell; a few shuddered, then scooted after Sam as he went to the kitchen doors, the ones that opened out on to the wide brown lawn and round to the driveway. He stopped, listened for snoring and opened the lock near the handle. Sam gestured at the alarm; it was all green lights now.
The door clicked open. Sam stepped outside and felt the clean night air on his face. One ear listened to the outside world, one to the cat above.
The night outside was moonlit and quiet. The fresh air floated into the room, and the animals inhaled as if they had never smelt such air.
‘OK, everyone out,’ Sam whispered.
The rabbits couldn’t get out fast enough. They bounced straight across the lawn, towards the hedge, even the babies were as fast as their parents. At the hedge, the adult rabbits guided the little ones underneath, looked back at Sam, waved and they were gone.
The shelties picked up the hedgehogs. Those little ones wouldn’t be going anywhere fast unless they got a lift. In a few quiet seconds, the kitchen had almost emptied of animals.
‘This way to the road,’ the bloodhound said, lowering its gruff bark. He raced for the gate and with the help of the shelties dug quick holes, sliding through the slush, their bodies moving underneath and encouraging smaller animals through. A few snouts submerged, Sam heard coughing and spluttering. The rabbits squeezed under the hedge, followed by kittens, puppies and hedgehogs.
Sam stepped outside with the cat.
‘Come on then,’ the badgers said, expecting everyone else to be behind them. Wilfred’s, Amira’s and Hazel’s families remained on the kitchen floor.
‘What’s going on?’ Sam asked.
‘There’s a thing in the cellar,’ Wilfred said. ‘Right, Dad?’
‘A thing in the cellar? What thing?’ Sam asked. ‘It can’t be that important that we stay for it.’
‘I don’t know why, but I think it is,’ the detective inspector said as the others nodded at Sam. ‘But you lot go on …’
‘And how do you propose to move it?’ Amira’s mum asked. ‘Either we all go now, or we all go and get it, but we have to move fast. No one’s leaving you here, Lee.’
‘What’s going on upstairs, Sam?’ Dr Kokoni asked.
Woermann’s breath was low and pleasant. Sam said so.
‘I wouldn’t risk it,’ Cecile said. ‘Cats are crepuscular and nocturnal animals.’
The bigger badger snorted. ‘Crepuscular. Ha!’
Cecile hissed at the badger, then turned to look at Sam. ‘It’s a creature who likes wandering around at dusk or dawn. But cats are nocturnal too. How long’s Woermann been asleep?’
‘I don’t know, an hour. But he was awake all day.’
‘Then he may sleep a bit longer, but instinct is instinct. The closer to the full moon you get, the more that lunatic upstairs will become catlike. Like I said, I wouldn’t risk it.’
The adult dogs sat on their haunches. ‘You go, we’ll catch up.’
The smaller badger gave Sam a snuffly kiss and the badgers raced off. Only Cecile looked back, then bounced straight across the lawn, towards the hedge, where a pair of shelties waited.
Sam watched the shelties guide the badgers under and heard gurgles as they submerged in a puddle, while Cecile, after trying alone, accepted the dogs’ assistance.
‘I’m almost positive it’s
why we’ve all been caught. It’s got something to do with that thing,’ D.I. Kintamani said. ‘Sam, you and the pups need to leave …’
Dr Kokoni shook her head. ‘I still can’t change. Not even a whisker, not even with that door open. I’ve been trying since Sam let us out. That stuff hasn’t cleared my system. We’re going to need Sam. Sorry, boy.’
Sam looked at the doggy doctor.
‘Your hands,’ she replied to his stare. ‘If we’re doing this, we’ll need someone to lift it.’
Lift what? Sam thought. He wished they’d tell him.
‘On to what?’ Amira’s mum asked, then she took off, sniffing at drawers and cupboards. ‘Sam, heel!’ she said, and pointed her nose at the drawer. ‘Open!’
Sam did as he was told. All he could see were tea towels and other fabric things.
‘The tablecloth,’ Amira’s mum said.
‘Brilliant!’ D.I. Kintamani replied. ‘All right, there’s four of us. We take a corner each. Caitlyn, you go with the kids.’
‘No,’ Amira’s mum said. ‘We’re going to need someone to guide us, or we’ll go all over the place. I think that should be you. We’re going to need the whole pack. Sam puts the ball in the middle, he can take off, and good officer Lee Kintamani leads us out.’
‘Agreed,’ the Kokonis and Mrs Kintamani said.
‘It’s a plan. We just need to find somewhere to hide it and then we run,’ D.I. Kintamani said. ‘Five, maybe ten minutes at the most. Do we have the time, Sam?’
Woermann’s breathing was so low, Sam thought they might have, but he was still confused by what was going on.
‘What can we do, Dad?’ Wilfred asked, his tail wagging.
‘You get out and hide somewhere on the other side of the road. We’ll sniff you out.’
‘No way,’ Amira said. ‘You’ll need someone up here to stand guard. If it’s only ten minutes …’
Sam’s shifter friends dropped their haunches on the tiles. Naughty puppies.
‘No time to argue,’ Dr Kokoni said. ‘Let’s just do it, but I will deal with you later, Hazel.’
Hazel lowered her head, but she didn’t budge.
Sam heard the other animals leaving, the gravel of the road crunched under bare paws and then they ran on grass. They were putting a lot of distance between themselves and the house. Above them, Woermann growled in his sleep and turned over. He purred again straight away. They had a little time.
Sam and the three dog families stood at the top of the stairs leading to the basement.
The door leered open and the reek of unhappiness, not just dogs but cats and rabbits and hedgehogs and other animals too, punched out. Sam peered into it, and squinted. The first time he’d looked he’d only noticed the dark, but he realised a gentle light glowed up from below: a night light, maybe. Pungent magic wafted towards him, a fresher version of the same dusty scent covering Woermann.
The door had no inside handle. Sam looked around for something to hold the door open and his gaze set on a spatula hanging from a hook. He let go of the door to run for the spatula. The door swung shut like scissors. Schick. The dogs jumped.
The spatula wobbled under the door, but it held it open. ‘Watch that,’ Sam said to the puppies.
Sam followed the dogs down into the cellar.
Unlike the rest of the house, the room had not been renovated; the boards of the floor were rough and unsealed. A mess of mattresses and blankets covered it and lay alongside bowls of dirty water and congealed food. The room was not insulated and an earthy cool seeped into the room. It was the most awful room Sam had ever seen.
Sam heard the distant voices before he got to the base of the steps, and they came from a light on a stand in the middle of the room. The thing was a glowing white sphere.
He couldn’t hear words exactly, just the tone. The speakers seemed lost, talking to each other, coddling, calming, comforting.
He knew what they were straight away. He also knew why the dogs couldn’t go without it. Even though they may not have known what the orb was, soul calls to soul.
Amira’s mum spat out the tablecloth. ‘Do you think it’s more magic? Do you think the urge to take it is so strong because it’s an enchantment? What if it’s … evil?’
Sam turned to see Wilfred, Hazel and Amira at the top of the stairs straining to see what their parents were doing.
‘No,’ Sam replied. ‘It’s not evil. It’s like the Vorpal Sword. It’s full of souls.’
‘Vorpal what?’ D.I. Kintamani asked.
‘Sword. Sam found it with the ogres,’ Hazel said. The pup, little more than a silhouette at the top of the stairs, had taken a step into the room.
Sam walked forward and touched the orb.
It had a physical surface, unlike the Vorpal Sword, which had been pure soul. The souls inside the orb hummed under thick, opaque glass which felt cold on Sam’s hands. There were hundreds of them inside, much fewer than in the Sword of Souls, but buzzing with power. He sensed rather than heard the souls hitting the inside of the glass. Their hums sounded so far away; he couldn’t distinguish their words, and they didn’t appear to know he was there.
Sam picked up the orb and flung it at the wall. It hit it with a chink and thudded on the floorboards. The dogs jumped.
‘Well, that was useful,’ Amira called down.
‘Amira, hush,’ her mum’s voice replied.
‘What were you trying to do?’ Hazel asked. She was closer than before, almost at the bottom of the steps. Amira stood just above her; only Wilfred remained in the doorway shivering.
‘Last time I found something like this, I just broke it, and the souls flew away.’
‘Souls?’ D.I. Kintamani paced around the orb, sniffing it.
‘Whose souls are they?’ Amira asked.
Sam didn’t know who they belonged to. They were just souls.
‘Ours,’ the detective inspector said. ‘Shifter souls. It all makes sense. Shifters coming back, half crazed with misery, but unable to shift form. Not themselves any more. They really aren’t themselves. With only one soul they are no longer shifters.’
The dogs whimpered. D.I. Kintamani took another sniff of the orb.
‘Why shifters?’ Dr Kokoni asked.
‘You take a soul from a single-souled creature, what do you have left?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You have a dead body,’ Dr Kokoni replied. ‘But if you take one soul from a twin-souled creature, you might have missing people, but no bodies are going to turn up. There isn’t any evidence of a crime.’
‘That’s horrible,’ Amira said.
‘But it’s very clever,’ D.I. Kintamani said. ‘We need to do what Sam was trying. We need to break it open, so the souls can return to their bodies.’
Sam picked up the orb. Mr and Mrs Kokoni, Amira’s mum and Mrs Kintamani had a corner each and they readied the tablecloth.
D.I. Kintamani stared at Sam. ‘Let’s get it out of here. I’ve got a lot of questions for you afterwards.’
Sam heard the creak, and looked up. Wilfred was closest to the exit, but even he had taken two steps down.
‘Wilfred!’ Sam yelled. ‘Get out!’
Wilfred, ever the good pup, turned as if trained, and had managed a step, but the spatula flicked out, flying over the steps and landing on the orb. The door, vicious and quick, snapped shut and smacked Wilfred’s nose. They were all stuck in the dark again.
Sam was with them, unable to free them this time.
Bladder, Wheedle and Spigot listened as Maggie the crone limped to the right. They’d followed her, tiptoeing behind her in the dark. As she took every turn they’d intended to use, Spigot’s stone feathers bristled more and more. It was only at the last fork she turned left where they meant to turn right.
‘Thank goodness,’ Wheedle said.
Bladder led Wheedle and Spigot through a passageway. It was raw and rough, and getting rougher all the time.
The tunnel got smaller, until the
y came upon stones, dirt and tree roots blocking their path.
‘Are you sure it’s this way?’ Wheedle asked.
‘Well, I thought it was, maybe it’s left more. Let me just remember.’
‘What’d she mean about talking to the troops in the next hour? What about, do you think? What’s she going to ask them to do?’ Wheedle asked.
‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ Bladder replied. ‘It won’t be good, whatever it is. If she’s up there somewhere with a few thousand monsters, best we avoid it, don’t you think? Oh, yeah, it’s definitely left.’
‘It must be important if she’s gathering them all, and Sam …’
‘Exactly! Sam. The most important things first. Ooh, look. There it is.’ Bladder could make out the world above through the small circle of a burrow entrance. He saw the beginnings of a Sussex night overhead and smelt grass and animals close by.
Bladder climbed up and out.
Right between the nesting buttocks of two trolls.
The trolls didn’t notice Bladder, but he could see between them, into a valley. Their attention was focused on a large ogre in the centre of a low field, surrounded by thousands and thousands of various-sized monsters seated and looking down on the natural amphitheatre. Bladder backed into the burrow again, but Wheedle and Spigot pushed and oofed at his back end. They forced him all the way out, shoving him into a goblin’s elbow. Then the pair fought to see who could get his head out next, making all sorts of noise.
‘Get back inside,’ Bladder yelled at them.
‘Hey,’ a voice said as a hand the size of a small truck picked up Bladder by the tail. ‘Looky, I finds me a gumgoyle.’
‘Ooh, ooh, ooh.’ Goblin, ogre and troll heads turned to look at him. ‘Youse is right. Is a gumgoyle. Looky, looky, two more!’
CHAPTER 16
‘He’s coming,’ Sam said.
Woermann slept a couple more hours, despite the cat’s warning, and Sam spent the entire time exploring the room trying to find another way out. The dogs flumped on the mattresses, D.I. Kintamani assuring him they had searched everything, but as Sam could climb, he searched the ceiling too. At first, the shifters watched this with their tongues out and eyes hardly blinking. The pups fell asleep.