Arnauld nodded. ‘Without a doubt. And we have to get there before he opens it. Once he does, we might not be able to follow him. Unless, of course …’
He trailed off. Alex looked at the carvings. It seemed so obvious to him now that there was almost no point in saying it. He slowly turned to the dog.
‘You think I can do it too, don’t you?’ he said quietly.
Arnauld nodded. His eyes were glinting.
‘Alex,’ he said. ‘I have spent my whole life trying to open that door. My whole life. You might be my only chance of succeeding.’
Alex blinked. ‘But … why? Why do you need to get in so much?’
Arnauld didn’t reply at first.
‘It has … something,’ he said eventually. ‘Something very important to me.’
The dog looked past Alex to the carvings on the wall behind him.
‘Something I lost,’ he said.
Suddenly, the air around them was cut through with a terrible roar. Alex leaped up.
‘What was that?’ he said.
He stopped. The ground beneath his feet was beginning to quake, slowly at first and then harder, more violently. He looked up.
‘What’s going on?’ he cried. ‘Arnauld, what’s …’
‘It is carving!’ said Arnauld excitedly. ‘The tower! It is making a new carving!’
Alex gaped at him. ‘Making one …?’
There was another terrible roar. He flipped round. The stones of the wall behind him were bending and wrenching against each other. Tiny fragments of stone poured out from the cracks from high above and covered them. The ground shook. Alex gasped. The tower was moving.
‘But … but why is it making one?’ he asked.
‘It means someone is trying to get inside,’ said Arnauld.
They glanced at each other.
‘My dad,’ said Alex.
All at once the walls gave a final groan, and with a heave and shudder the stones at their feet corkscrewed up from the ground, wrenching up the ancient soil and showering them with dust and debris from above. Alex stumbled backwards, staring down in disbelief. Sure enough, there at the base of the wall – where the picture of Alex’s father had been only moments before – lay a new carving.
They both stood staring at it for a moment. Then they furiously brushed away the unearthed soil from the freshly carved picture. It showed the tower. In its side was a hole, and in the hole was the leg of a man, disappearing inside. Arnauld leaped up in excitement.
‘He has done it!’ he cried. ‘He has made it inside! And the door, it is only up here … What are we waiting for, Alex? We have got to get there now, before …’
All at once, the ground started shuddering again, and an almighty groan vibrated up through their bodies. Alex and Arnauld shared another glance.
‘Again?’ said Alex.
‘No,’ said Arnauld. ‘No, it cannot be …’
Dust started falling down on top of them, and with another great groan the tower unscrewed from the ground once more before their eyes.
‘But how?’ said Arnauld. ‘How can …’
A new picture rose from the dirt before them, packed with soil. Alex frantically brushed it away. Beside the tower stood two new figures. A boy and a dog.
‘It’s us,’ said Alex. Arnauld blinked in disbelief.
‘Well, what are we doing?’ he said. ‘Are we breaking inside too?’
‘No,’ said Alex. ‘We’re … we’re running.’
He stared at the picture in confusion. There was another shape too, carved behind the two figures. Alex rubbed his fingers over the round oval in the stone.
‘It looks like a balloon,’ he said.
A single bloodcurdling howl rang out behind them. Alex and Arnauld spun round. Emerging through the smoke behind them was the black zeppelin, billowing through the haze like the bow of a great ghost ship. At the front a pack of ferocious wolves tore forwards against their rusting chains, their shoulders heaving and their teeth bared and their eyes crazed with hunger as they flew across the slimy rocks towards them.
27
Alex and Arnauld stood frozen to the ground.
‘Who are they?’ said Alex.
‘It is the humans. From the Cusp,’ said Arnauld, his eyes white with horror. ‘They have followed us.’
Alex sat bolt upright. ‘Kyte?’
‘Yes,’ said Arnauld.
Alex gulped. ‘Then what do we …’
‘Run!’
Before he knew it Alex was on his feet, and in seconds the carvings were flashing past and blurring into one another as he sprinted round the great curve of the walls as fast as his legs could carry him.
‘Where are we going?’ he cried.
‘Where do you think we are going?!’ said Arnauld. ‘The only place we can go!’
The zeppelin groaned in the air behind them like a dying monster. Alex’s stomach dropped, and against his better judgement he glanced backwards. The wolves had turned on the stones. They were heading straight for them.
‘How much farther?’ he cried, his heart racing.
‘Almost there!’ shouted Arnauld.
‘And then what?’
‘You have to try and open the door!’
‘But what if I can’t …’
‘Alex, just shut up and run!’
‘Squiggles,’ said Kyte.
He threw himself against the glass. There it was. In front of him, looming like a gravestone from the smoke – the centre. He had found it.
‘Squiggles,’ he croaked, his back reeling.
The zeppelin suddenly turned, twisting in the air like a building on the verge of collapse. Kyte held onto the windowframe and looked down at the chains disappearing into the smoke below. The wolves were running off course. They had found something.
‘The boy,’ he seethed.
His teeth flashed, his mouth foaming against the glass. The centres of his eyes became pinprick knives of light. He clutched onto the windowframe.
‘Faster,’ he said. ‘Faster, faster!’
‘Faster, Matthew!’
Matthew tore down the walkways of the kennels towards Martha, slamming shut the cage doors as he did.
‘You’re certain this is going to work?’ he shouted, hurriedly pasting the last of the fur to his cheeks. Martha glanced back up at him. Like Matthew, and all the other prisoners, her face was now completely covered in wolf hair, held in place with thick smearings of axle grease.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Does it matter?’
The sides of the balloon beside them groaned with strain. Its metal skeleton was disintegrating, twisting itself into threads. Matthew glanced back at the girl.
‘I guess not,’ he said.
Martha glared back at him through handfuls of black fur. ‘Then run!’
Another howl rolled across the stones. Alex’s blood filled with dread. The wolves sounded much closer than they had only a moment ago. He could hear the scrape of their claws on the stones behind him, and the hiss of their desperate breath.
‘There!’ cried Arnauld. ‘There it is!’
Alex glanced back up. There, along the unbroken wall of the tower far ahead, a shadow lay across the path.
‘There it is …!’
His voice was suddenly lost. The ground shook, and the stones began to quake and tremble beside them. Dust flew down.
The tower was making another carving.
There he was on the ground below, running through the smoke ahead of them.
‘The boy,’ gasped Kyte.
He threw himself from the window and onto the desk, bent double in pain, slamming his hands against the buttons on the surface. The television screen flew out of the drawer beside him, spraying sparks. The kennels appeared on the screen, the remaining wolves heaving in their harnesses and thrashing against the bars.
‘Davidus Kyte!’
The shout came from outside the double doors. Kyte did not turn round.
‘This is Greg!’ cried th
e voice. ‘Your office is now surrounded by a dozen guards. We’ve locked the doors and we’re taking over the zeppelin. There’s no way out. Give yourself up and let the boy go!’
Kyte turned to Number 51. He smiled.
‘Kyte?’ Greg called. ‘Did you hear me?’
Kyte turned back to the desk, his ragged fingers slowly uncurling towards the buttons.
‘Kyte!’ Greg snapped. ‘We mean it! Bring up the wolves and let him go!’
One by one, Kyte pressed down the buttons on the tabletop. On the screen before him the cage floors dropped, and wolf after wolf was lowered down to the ground.
‘All of them,’ said Kyte quietly. ‘Send them all down. All of them.’
‘All of them?’ Martha cried.
Matthew flew towards her. ‘Yes!’ he shouted. ‘The cages are all set!’
Martha nodded, her eyes sparkling. ‘Then we just need …’
There was a great clang. Martha and Matthew froze, their eyes widening with horror. The chains in the cages beside them were unwinding.
‘There’s no time!’ she cried. ‘We have to do it now!’
Matthew started. ‘But …’
‘Now, Matthew!’
Alex threw himself forwards, stumbling across the path. The walls beside him wrenched and tore against themselves as they heaved out of the ground.
‘We can make it, Alex!’ Arnauld cried. ‘Just don’t take your eyes off the path!’
A great clang suddenly sounded from above. The zeppelin was almost right on top of him. Alex looked up, and gasped. Through the smoke, even more wolves were being lowered to the ground from a new set of chains at the back.
‘Alex!’ cried Arnauld. ‘Look ou –’
Without warning a rock from above crashed on the path right beside them, smashing on the stones and showering them with dust. Alex cried out, and before he knew it he was flying straight off the path and down onto the slippery stones below. He tried to right himself, but kept falling, crashing again and again down the slime of the crater that lay beneath.
He skidded to a stop and looked up in horror. Arnauld was nowhere to be seen. He was alone.
‘Arnauld!’ he cried. ‘Wait …’
A howl rang out. Alex spun around.
There, emerging from the smoke across the stones, were the wolves. They were heading straight for him.
Alex turned and flew up the walls of the slimy crater as fast as he could, his breath heaving. Up ahead, the walls of the tower reappeared in the smoke.
‘Arnauld!’ he cried. ‘Arnauld!’
He looked behind him and gasped in horror. The wolves were tearing up the slope towards him at a furious pace, their teeth foaming, their eyes rabid with delight. Alex made to stand up but his feet slipped beneath him and he came crashing down once more.
‘Arnauld!’ he cried.
The wolves sensed their moment. One by one they leaped through the air, splaying their claws and opening their mouths for the kill.
‘Arnauld …’
The wolves came roaring down upon him, and Alex closed his eyes.
28
Alex waited.
And waited.
He kept his breath held and his eyes clamped shut, waiting for the end to come.
Only it didn’t seem to be coming.
Eventually he opened his eyes.
He was lying on the stones. The wolves stood in front of him, their mad jaws snapping furiously only inches away, their claws thrashing hopelessly through the air. Only they couldn’t move. They heaved and heaved against their harnesses, but it was no good. They couldn’t take another step forward.
Above them, the zeppelin had come to a complete stop. A new set of chains had appeared, dangling down from the kennels at the back. And they weren’t being pulled forwards by the wolves. They were being pulled backwards. The zeppelin was stuck in mid-air.
Alex’s gaze ran down the new chains. Another pack of wolves stood on the stones in the far distance. They were heaving the zeppelin away from the centre with all their might, fighting against the wolves in front.
‘Alex!’
Alex looked up. Two more wolves were slowly being lowered by chains through the smoke above him. At least, they looked like wolves. They looked quite like people, too. In fact, the more Alex looked at them, the more he thought they just looked like people with handfuls of wolf fur cackhandedly glued to them. His jaw dropped.
‘Martha …?!’ he cried. ‘Mr Price?’
Martha grinned and waved a hairy arm.
‘Right first time, Alex!’ she shouted. ‘Sorry about the disguises – it was the only way we could trick Kyte into sending us down! Looks like they hit the ground just in time.’
She pointed to the pack of prisoners in the distance, heaving the zeppelin away from the centre, their faces and bodies also pasted with poorly glued fur. ‘Is that the boy?’ cried one, whose fur had been artfully arranged into a whiskery moustache. ‘Is he safe?’
‘He is, Major!’ shouted Matthew. ‘We were just in time! Keep pulling!’
‘It’s not as if we have a choice!’ snapped the Grand High Pooh-Bah, pointing at his feet as they paced furiously on the stones against his will, already bewitched by the power of the Forbidden Land.
‘Oh pipe down, you whining old codger!’ snapped the Major. He shook his fist in triumph. ‘Good on you, Alex! Well done for getting so far!’
‘Yes Alex, well done!’ said a wolf wearing spectacles.
‘Hear, hear,’ another added, with a hiccup.
Alex gaped at them. ‘But … what are you all doing here?’
‘What does it look like we’re doing, Alex?’ Martha snorted. ‘We’re going to pull this heap all the way back home. We’re rescuing you!’
She landed gently on top of the wolves in front and started hopping between their furious and snapping heads like they were stepping stones.
‘All of it my idea, if I do say so myself,’ she said proudly. ‘We shaved all the wolves and locked them up in the pens. The guards have already surrounded Kyte in his quarters and barricaded him inside. He won’t even be able to control the ship once we rip out the main switchboard.’
Alex frowned. ‘What’s the main switchboard?’
A large metal box suddenly landed beside them, shattering on the stones. Martha grinned, her metal teeth sparkling. ‘That.’
‘But how are you going to get back?’ said Alex.
‘The power of the Forbidden Land, Alex!’ said Martha, pointing at the ground. ‘Once us normal people step on the surface we run all the way home – remember? With that lot pulling us backwards we’ll be back at the Cusp in a couple of days.’
The wolves at her feet suddenly roared with anger and heaved themselves forward against their chains. Martha rolled her eyes.
‘Speaking of which, I think they need a bit of a hand,’ she said. ‘You still have my teeth, don’t you?’
Alex grinned. He reached into his pocket and held up the two tiny pink curves on his palms.
‘They’re a bit dusty,’ he said apologetically.
‘Brilliant!’ said Martha. ‘Well, look after them for me.’ She flashed her new metal fangs. ‘I want to keep a hold on these bad boys for a while longer.’
With that, she leaped onto the ground. In a snap the force of the Forbidden Land took over and she was pacing across the rocks at lightning speed towards the other prisoners, her chain snapping taut in mid-air. The wolves were suddenly hauled backwards again, their paws slipping on the stones.
‘That’s it!’ shouted Matthew from above. ‘Keep pulling, everyone! They can’t keep it up much longer!’
Alex looked up. Matthew was still descending towards the ground above him, shedding fur and pinwheeling his arms gracefully.
‘Hi, Mr Price,’ said Alex.
Matthew looked down and smiled.
‘Hello, Alex,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Sorry you have to see me in my underpants.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Alex.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m sure it is.’
There was an awkward pause. Matthew sighed.
‘Er … before I get going, Alex, there’s something I need to say to you,’ he said. ‘I … I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. I should never have let Kyte take you away like that.’
Alex blushed. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Price, you don’t need to –’
‘No, I do, Alex,’ Matthew interrupted. ‘I do. Had I known the truth, of course, I never would have done it, but that doesn’t really mean much now. I’m sorry I let you down. I’ve been so worried about you.’
Alex started. ‘You … you have?’ he said.
Matthew laughed. ‘Of course I have, Alex! Martha too … I mean, why else would we have come all this way?’
Alex was speechless. He started fumbling with his jumper.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing, Alex,’ said Matthew. ‘Although you could make it up to me by having a word with Mrs Beaumont when we get back. I think I might be in a bit of trouble with her.’
Alex shifted awkwardly.
‘Er … I’m not going back, Mr Price,’ he said.
Matthew’s face drained.
‘What!?’ he spluttered.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Alex. ‘I can’t. I have to find my father.’
The wolves started skidding backwards inch by inch. Matthew looked down nervously. His feet were almost skimming the stones. ‘Alex, listen to me –’
‘You see, he’s all I have left now,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing for me back there.’
‘Alex, you idiot,’ Matthew snapped. ‘I haven’t just chased you across a forest and a desert and an ocean for you to say you have nothing. I’m your friend. So is Martha. And none of those people would be pulling a zeppelin backwards for you if they didn’t think you were worth something, too. OK?’
Alex was lost for words. ‘But … but my mother, she …’
‘It was all lies, Alex!’ said Matthew ‘Everything Kyte told you was lies. Your mother never gave you up. She loves you! She’s probably worried sick about you, for heaven’s sake …!’
Alex, the Dog and the Unopenable Door Page 18