by Crowl, Mike
And then something began to happen to the witches themselves.
A few metres away Metabola tried to stand. ‘This is Madeleine’s doing!’ she said with enormous venom, looking straight at Billy. Even while she was still trying to push herself up off her hands and knees her hair flared up on her head as though she’d received an electric shock. Her arms spread out wide against her will and she was pulled upwards off the floor by some invisible force. Her legs splayed out, and she was lifted high into the air. And then moment by terrible moment she began to turn to dust. The last thing they saw were her eyes, full of fear, and then they too vanished. The dust swirled like a sandstorm, lingered in the air, then scattered and disappeared.
At first the other witches didn’t notice, they were so intent on trying to scratch their way through the invisible cage. But when they saw Billy and his family looking up with their mouths wide open in consternation at where Metabola had vanished, they turned around.
And at that moment another witch found herself flying off, over and over, head over heels, and disintegrating into thousands of tiny pieces. And then another and another.
Necessita was next. She reached out to Ligula with an awful scream before twisting round and round like a whirlwind, faster and faster, until she suddenly burst into thousands of fragments like an exploding firework.
Ligula shrieked at Venska, slapping her face and pulling her hair as though it was her fault. But blaming Venska didn’t help her in the slightest. The eleven other witches had already vanished, and there was no hope for these two. Ligula tore at Venska in fury, and Venska gave her as good as she got, until they discovered, as they rose in the air still fighting, that there was less and less to tear at. All in a moment what had been a perpetually angry Ligula and what had been a sneering, overbearing Venska disintegrated together in millions of particles of dust.
Everywhere above the Mumbersons’ heads dust clouds swirled, but soon even those dissipated through the length and breadth of the enormous hall, until it was impossible to tell what was the dust of ages and what was the dust that had once been witches.
Billy couldn’t even begin to guess what his mother had to do with it all. By this time Jerry had ripped off his jacket, and then his shirt. He tore the shirt into a makeshift bandage and wrapped it tightly around Billy’s hand. The blood soaked through almost immediately. Billy shivered, feeling as though he was going to faint. Olivia held his other hand, and told him he was very brave. His grandfather wrapped Jerry’s jacket around him to keep him warm, and then wrapped his arms around him too.
Meanwhile Adiblo tapped at the magic cage that had protected them from the witches. He hit it once, twice, and both times it was solid. He thumped hard with both fists, and nothing happened. ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ he cried and banged his head against it in frustration. There was a loud crack, which was not his head breaking, and then a bang like an enormous balloon bursting.
He pushed once more at where the invisible cage had been. His hands went straight ahead, he fell forward, and landed sharply on his knees.
‘It’s gone!’ he said, with a smile.
‘Then let’s get out of here,’ said Jerry, picking up a pack of cards that had fallen out of his jacket pocket.
They raced towards the dungeon door but were stopped by a cry from Lavitch, who was entangled in cords from his shoulders to his feet. ‘Don’t leave us here! We’ll never get out.’ Slaggard was incapable of saying anything because the cords had wrapped themselves around his head.
‘Forget them,’ said Mr Mumberson, walking faster. ‘It’s what they deserve.’
But Olivia stopped him. ‘We can’t. They’ll die in here.’ She ran over to the two men. ‘Can we cut the cords round their legs so they can walk?’ she called back to the others.
Jerry, with an enormous sigh, took Billy’s knife from him, and raced across to the two men. He hacked away at the cords tangled around their feet. ‘Get Billy out of here,’ he shouted to his father. ‘He needs to go to Emergency.’
Mumberson and Adiblo helped Billy, who was now feeling very faint, towards the door. They were within a metre or two of it when all three realised something that made their hearts sink like stones.
The door was locked. The key had been in Necessita’s pocket. And Necessita - and the key - no longer existed.
Chapter 13 - The door
‘Dad, we can’t get out!’ shouted Billy. He felt sick. Was he going to die in this awful prison?
‘I’ll be there in a second!’ Jerry shouted back. He’d managed to cut the cords around Lavitch’s feet but the man was still bound from the waist up. Slaggard was almost buried beneath cords around his upper body and head, but could walk once he was helped to his feet. Jerry told them to get moving. ‘And no funny business,’ he added, ‘otherwise I will definitely leave you here.’
Lavitch mumbled, ‘No funny business,’ and sounded like he meant it. He was bent over, and stumbled along, even though Jerry insisted he move faster.
Adiblo was trying to pull the door open, which was ridiculous. His chin only reached the handle and the door was as heavy as a house.
‘Stand out of the way,’ said Jerry, giving the handle a pull himself. It made no difference. He turned to Billy. ‘What about the blood?’
Billy hadn’t thought about that; his head was more woozy than ever. With Jerry and Olivia’s support, he took hold of the handle and smeared some of his blood on it, twisting it back and forward.
Nothing. The door stayed firmly shut.
Slaggard had just reached the group. He said something but it was muffled by the cords around his face.
‘What?’ barked Jerry, pulling the cords away from Slaggard’s mouth.
‘Better be quick.’ With some difficulty he nodded at the top of the door. ‘Magic timer. Top of the door. Door will vanish in sixty seconds!’ Far above their heads they saw a dial none of them had noticed before. A clock hand was racing around at great speed. Each time it passed a certain point, a number flashed: 55, 54, 53...
Lavitch groaned. And sniffled.
Jerry frantically banged on the door with his fists. ‘Open up, you stupid blasted thing.’ He gave it a kick as well, which only hurt his foot.
‘Dad. We can open it.’
‘With what, Billy!’
Billy swayed, and was caught by Adiblo. ‘Mum gave you something, didn’t she?’
Jerry’s eyes blazed at him. ‘This is no time for nonsense, Billy. It’s...’ He stopped, gulped, and leaned his forehead against the door. ‘I am such a fool!’ He thrust his hand in his pocket, and drew out the pack of cards. ‘How the heck can these help?’ He’d lost all his composure. ‘I don’t know what to do with them, Billy.’
‘Give them to me, Dad.’ Billy grabbed the pack and tore at the cellophane around it. ‘There must be something in here.’ He pulled the cards out of the box. They seemed to be an ordinary pack, like any pack of cards you’d buy from any shop. They smelt new, they were clean, they’d never had their corners turned down or been bent while being shuffled. Billy skimmed through them, not seeing anything. He was desperate. Perhaps he was wrong after all, perhaps this wasn’t what his mother meant when she’d told Jerry about a door that must be opened. He reached the court cards at the end, the jacks, the queens, the kings, the jokers.
But one of them wasn’t a joker. It was a Get Out of Jail Free card.
‘What do you do with it?’ yelled Jerry in frustration.
Before Billy could answer, the door began to behave very strangely. It started trying to do two things at once. The first was what Slaggard had said it would do: vanish. They could all see the edge of the door fading.
‘Quick!’ yelled Olivia. ‘Use the card!’
‘I don’t know how!’ said Billy.
But the door was also trying to do something else. It was trying to open. It growled, the way Stevedore did after Olivia dropped a bone for him on the grass and some other dog wanted
to join in. The fading stopped for a moment, then seemed determined to carry on. The edges shimmered. The door creaked loudly and opened a fraction. Jerry grabbed at the edge and tried to pull at it. He’d have lost his fingers if he’d left them there, because the door slammed shut again. The edges shimmered even more until the framework threatened to turn into the ordinary stone wall.
Billy forgot how sick he felt. He stood in front of the door and said in as loud a voice as he could muster, ‘This is a Get Out of Jail Free card. I command you to open, and stay open!’
The door made such a variety of noises no one afterwards could exactly describe them. It could have been several speedboats bumping and banging into choppy waves, or chainsaws spitting and barking as they bit into hard and ancient wood, or elephants trumpeting and thumping because their herd was under attack.
At the same time, the frame merged into the wall, though the shape of the door remained visible.
Finally there was a humongous sickening wrenching sound and they all leapt back - Slaggard had to be rolled out of the way because he’d fallen over with fright. The door tore itself loose from what had been its frame before it merged with the wall, and the huge thing crashed flat on the floor, its hinges warped and broken, its lock shattered into several pieces. The flagstones cracked and broke under its weight, and dust that had been on the floor for centuries flew up, covered them, and made them splutter and cough.
No one waited for anything else to happen. They ran through the opening to the steps and began climbing up them as fast as they could. ‘Wait for us!’ shouted Lavitch, as he shuffled forward with Slaggard.
But now they were out of the dungeon, the others wanted to make sure they weren’t going to get stuck anywhere else. Worse, the gas lights, which flickered and lit up when they started to set foot on the stairs, began to fade. It was like waking in the night and not being sure what you were going to walk into. Some of the gas lights popped, one or two exploded, and the glass mantles shattered around them.
Everyone was shouting at once. Jerry helped Billy up the stairs while Olivia raced ahead of them. Mr Mumberson muttered and groaned at having to climb so fast but each time he stopped Mr Adiblo gave him a hearty push and made him move. Their hearts were working overtime, especially Billy’s.
Lavitch and Slaggard were soon left behind. They were able to climb, but slowly, and Lavitch in particular sounded as though he was whimpering.
After what seemed a very long time they saw the door to the offices. Billy hoped they wouldn’t have to find some magic way through that, but by the time he got to the top of the stairs, Olivia was holding the door open with her foot. ‘Give me your phone, Billy. I need to text your grandmother. To bring the car around to the main gates.’
While he fumbled for the phone in his pocket, Jerry shepherded him through the door.
Mr Mumberson and Mr Adiblo arrived at the top of the steps a minute later. Mumberson was exhausted. However fit he might have been from his years in the mine, he was now struggling to breathe, making a horrible rasping noise. Adiblo supported him, so that at least he was able to keep moving, but they made an odd sight: the little man, barely reaching Mumberson’s chest, trying to hold the much taller man upright.
Olivia, having finished texting Mrs Mumberson, continued to hold the door open, because Lavitch and Slaggard were still slowly making their way up.
Jerry said, ‘Leave the door, Olivia. Prop it open with that chair. We need to move.’
By the time they got to the front gate Mrs Mumberson had already brought the car around. Jerry immediately noticed the scraping along the left hand side but kept his mouth shut. Stevedore was standing in the passenger’s seat barking furiously. He stopped the moment he saw Olivia, jumped out of the car and gave her face a thorough wash.
Mrs Mumberson cried aloud at Billy’s bleeding hand, but didn’t ask for an explanation: there was too much else to sort out, like how to fit two children, four adults and a dog in the car.
Mr Adiblo helped out by saying, ‘I’ll walk. I need some fresh air after that stinking dungeon.’ He shook hands with Mr Mumberson and apologised three times for all the trouble he’d caused, and for being so suspicious. ‘I feel quite safe now that those awful women are gone.’ He set off down the hill. Stevedore decided to join him, and trotted alongside, either to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t do anything else he shouldn’t do, or merely to keep him company. Mr Adiblo leaned down and patted the dog on the head. Stevedore responded by almost swallowing his hand in one great lick.
Adiblo turned round and called back to the others. ‘I forgot. My car is at your house. I’ll have to collect it.’ Then he was off again.
Meanwhile Jerry had got in the driver’s seat. ‘We must get to the Emergency Department, before Billy loses any more blood.’ The others bundled into the car as best they could, and were about to set off when a green Commodore tore out of the entrance gates and stopped right in front of them.
‘What!’ shouted Jerry, banging on the steering wheel and blasting on the horn.
The Commodore stayed where it was. It changed from green to white, the black police markings reappeared, as well as a round blue siren on top. Lavitch was in the driver’s seat, looking like the big bully he’d always been, with his muscles once again bulging through the police uniform. Slaggard was in the passenger seat, an unpleasant grin on his face, trying to keep his police cap from slipping over his forehead.
There was no sign at all of the cords they’d been tied up in a few minutes before.
Chapter 14 - Happy returns
‘Should have left them in the dungeon!’ snarled Mr Mumberson.
Jerry reversed the Fiesta at speed and swung it round. The early evening sun nearly blinded him. He smashed down the sunshade and raced towards the top of Habitation Hill. Halfway down it they could see a cable car full of tourists making its slow descent.
Lavitch revved up the police car and drove close behind them, tailgating them, the blue light flashing and his siren blaring. In his rear vision mirror, Jerry saw the smug look on Lavitch’s face.
Just then, to the surprise of everyone in the Fiesta, Lavitch shot over to the wrong side of the road, and drove down it, parallel to them.
‘What the heck’s he doing?’ said Jerry. ‘He’ll run into a car coming up the street.’ The cable car was still ahead of them, doing a tenth of the speed of the two cars.
Both cars reached it together. As soon as they passed it, Lavitch pulled ahead and began to veer across the road towards Jerry. Slaggard waved and gave them a silly grin. Then his grin vanished and he drew back sharply into his seat, as Lavitch braked hard.
As did Jerry. Everyone in the Fiesta plunged forward in spite of their seatbelts, and there was a nasty smell from the tyres burning on the road. Jerry muttered several rude things under his breath. Mrs Mumberson said, ‘Gerard!’
The road was blocked. More skateboarders than they’d ever seen had appeared out of nowhere. They coasted around the moving cable car, like moths around a swinging light bulb, and blocked the rest of the road, in front and behind. None of the skaters seemed familiar to either Billy or Olivia. Perhaps they’d come from out of town for a competition.
Out of the corner of his eye, Billy saw Stevedore racing down the hill towards them. Mr Adiblo was far behind him, running, calling him, but he was wasting his breath. The dog had no intention of stopping. Stevedore raced in amongst the skateboarders, leaping and dancing as though he was chasing butterflies in a field.
The cable car came to a stop to avoid hitting anyone. The conductor leaned out the door and shouted, ‘Get out of the way!’ to the skaters, while the driver grabbed the clapper and banged it loudly on the bell. Several tourists cheered with delight and took photos on their smartphones.
Lavitch inched his Commodore around the front of the cable car, barely avoiding several fast-moving skaters in the process. Perhaps he intended to block Jerry from moving forward once the
skaters got off the road.
Just then, Olivia spied Liam amongst the skaters, and called to him out the car window. He turned towards her as he whizzed past, and shouted, ‘We’ve been waiting for you all to turn up!’
He gave a piercing two-fingered whistle and immediately all the other skaters gathered behind him. Almost as though they were one person, they swirled around the police car, which was now straddled at an angle across the road, its rear end over the cable car tracks. The skaters whirled round and round the Commodore until they were almost a blur, making a terrific noise not only with their boards on the road and as they drove over the tracks, but with a kind of chanting as well.
Lavitch’s confidence had vanished again. His hands seemed welded to the steering wheel, as though he was afraid he was going to be pulled out of the car. Slaggard shrunk into himself and his clothes got even more loose and floppy.