by Zizou Corder
‘It’s a funfair,’ she said.
‘Yep,’ I said.
‘It’s weird.’
‘Yep.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘That’s why we’re here. It is extremely dangerous. Imminent collapse, et cetera. Nobody in their right mind would come here. Look at those signs.’
The wide chain perimeter fence which we’d negotiated the night before was strung with metal signs reading ‘No Entry’, ‘Danger of Death’, ‘Toxic Area’ and suchlike encouraging phrases. Some of them might be true. But as far as I knew nobody had come to any harm here.
Over to the left were the remains of a fortified hut where a security guard had been lodged, years ago when some company had plans for the ruin – plans which came to nothing. The hut, however, remained. I had high hopes of the hut.
‘Let’s go and have a look,’ I said, pointing it out to her. ‘It’s either that, or the skatepipe, or the old Ghost Train.’
The hut had a dead seal in it. Complete with maggots and god knows what eating it, and a stink as revolting as the shores.
‘Ghost Train it is then,’ said Janaki. I think the daylight cheered her up.
We slopped away on foot past the Flying Saucers and under the Big Wheel.
She stared up at it.
‘It could fall, couldn’t it?’ she said.
‘Pigs could fly,’ I said. ‘Looks all right to me for now.’ I kicked it and a shower of salty rust flakes fluttered down on our heads.
The Ghost Train tunnel was water-filled ankle-deep, like everywhere. The air became denser and smelly: dank, metallic, salty – like engine oil and canvas and mould. The roof was low and dim, tattered with dangling remnants of lord knows what that had been hung there to frighten the daylights out of the children of fifty years ago.
But part of the works was housed in a chamber above the tunnel – it was the bit where the skeletons were concealed before they jumped down on you. This little room was above the water level, so it was dry and nice. Well, drier and nicer. Plus it had a hatch at the side, facing towards land. This could be our window and lookout spot. Not that I was expecting anybody. But you never know.
The machinery which had worked the skeletons was a bit in the way, and the wooden skeletons themselves were swollen with the damp air and stuck in peculiar positions, but we found that if we whacked them and folded them over they made quite good chairs.
‘I’ll go and get the boat,’ I said. Janaki was getting the window open, rattling it and pushing. ‘If you can get some of that thick grey weed, it’ll burn when it’s dry.’
When I got back, she was sitting under the window, her head in her hands. I took off my boots, started unpacking the little stuff we had, and offered her an apple and a bit of salami for breakfast.
We sat on the skeletons and munched. For the first time I felt relaxed.
‘Lee,’ she said.
Crike, her and her questions.
‘What?’ I said.
‘How did you know about this place?’
I grinned. ‘My great-aunt Jobisca,’ I said. ‘She used to ride the Wall of Death on a motorcycle here when she was young. Years and years ago. She told me about it.’
‘But that was before…’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Norfolk and Suffolk having been falling into the sea for centuries…’
‘Yeah, but before this part was drowned… What about the boat?’
‘Family stuff,’ I said, but she gave me such a look that I continued. ‘It’s a bolthole for Ravens. If any of us is ever in trouble, we can come here. It’s safe, because everyone else thinks it’s dangerous. Aunt Jobisca knew how it was built – her husband’s granddad did the concrete and he was the best. She paid a guy in King’s Lynn to keep the boat in good nick. It’s here for us, if we need it.’
‘So does your dad know about it?’ she asked.
‘Course not!’ I said. ‘It’s him we’d most likely be running away from!’
The sun had moved round and was coming in the hatch now. Janaki turned her face up to it.
‘Well, we can’t stay here forever,’ she said.
‘Nope,’ I agreed. ‘But we can stay here for now.’
She got out the bedding and laid it in the sun to air. Then she lay down on it and went back to sleep.
Me? I took out the book, and sat it in the sun, and opened it up.
‘You all right?’ I enquired.
‘Not bad,’ he said. He sounded sleepy.
‘Do you like the sun?’ I asked.
‘I love it,’ he said, so I laid him on my belly in a pool of sunlight.
After a while, quietly and gently, he began to tell me about a boy who stowed away on a pirate ship.
A while after that, I saw that though Janaki’s eyes were still shut, she was awake, and she was listening, and her mouth was smiling.
I don’t know if the book noticed.
It’s really inconvenient him not having a face. How can he be so like a person but not have a face? There’s so much you can’t know… He’s so mysterious.
CHAPTER 33
Nigella
Well. How very naive nice people are.
It took me one minute to talk my way into Mr Maggs study and one minute while his back was turned to fix my little bug on to his telephone.
And not much longer for the girl to ring up and tell Mr Maggs – and me – all we needed to know.
The Drowned Lands!
What an intelligent place to take a valuable, indeed irreplaceable, book.
I’d better go along and bring it back.
Maxim!
CHAPTER 34
Lee
Looking back, I really liked our time at the fair. Seems weird, because we weren’t that comfortable and it was cold and damp and we weren’t safe and we knew we’d have to move on… but it was nice.
First thing, we prepared our defences. We collected stones, bits of metal, crocks of concrete, anything we could find, and we lugged them up the Big Wheel to the top. Was it hard? Yes, it was. Climbing a rusty old pile of machinery with a sack of rocks on your back is hard. The first part was OK because there was a set of metal maintenance steps built into the main trunk of the wheel, but after that we had to clamber up one of the arms at an angle, and then round the frame to get to the bit holding the cab on, and then let ourselves down into the cab itself. We mangled our hands and broke our nails and stubbed our toes and strained our muscles reaching from one rough girder to another, always afraid that something might shift in this giant rusted-solid Meccano, and tear our flesh, or drop on us. But in the end we had two cabs armed with enough ammo to give a decent battle to anyone who might turn up after us. I also, though Janaki didn’t know this, had a packet of flares, two catapults and four strong fine-weave fishing nets that I’d got in Norwich. I put the nets and catapults in the cabs too, tucked away under the seats, along with most of the flares and boxes of matches. A couple I kept on me. I wasn’t expecting anybody but you never know.
Janaki dried seaweed in the sun. I went out in the boat a few times and caught fish. The night we made a fire for the first time, and cooked three little mackerels, was really nice. She was laughing at my jokes, and she sang me a song in her dad’s language and I laughed at that. We ate the hot food and had a cup of hot tea. It don’t half make a difference, hot food and drink. Especially when you’re living like a frog, in and out of the water.
So we were sitting with our tea, and she said, ‘Lee – do you think – do you think the book would, um, tell us a story?’
Well, I had been thinking about this. Now that Janaki knew about him, and knew he spoke, would he speak to her?
He was getting better, that I knew. We’d had a long chat that morning while Janaki went on a half-hour walk – well, wade – to try to find somewhere private to pee (yeah, like I’d be looking at her!). He was still weak, but he was getting better.
But would he speak to me with her there? Would he spea
k to her? I didn’t know. And I didn’t want to be cheeky and assume anything. And I didn’t want to ask him, in case he felt obliged…
‘If you open him,’ I said, ‘he’ll tell you what he needs you to know.’
Her eyes lit up.
‘May I?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘He’s here for everyone to read.’
So I carefully handed him over, and I saw how gently she held him, and how carefully she turned him over to look at his vellum cover, and how tenderly she finally opened him.
She started to read.
‘What’s he say?’ I asked almost immediately.
Tell the truth, I was jealous. She was doing the thing he was for. I couldn’t do it. I felt left out and a bit useless. But I wasn’t going to be angry with her about it. Not her fault I can’t read. I can’t go on being angry with everyone else about that.
‘It’s from the Bible,’ she said. ‘It’s the bit where Jesus says, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s”.’
‘What’s that about then?’ I asked. Bible study is not my strong point.
‘It means, I think, that everybody gets what is right for them, and you don’t get what is not yours. So I suppose he means he’s not going to speak to me because that’s not right for me, for some mysterious reason. Oh well.’
She was disappointed.
And a bit cross.
‘Why does he speak to you then!’ she burst out. ‘What’s so special about you!’
Well, that made me laugh.
‘I ain’t special!’ I cried. ‘He talks to me because I ain’t special. He talks to me because I’m useless.’
‘What?’ she said.
‘He talks to me because I can’t read him.’
‘What?’ she said again, being pretty dim for a clever bird.
‘I can’t read, Janaki. Remember? I can’t read. I am illiterate. So he tells me stories instead. And through telling stories, we got chatting. And through chatting, we got friendly.’
Her face was a picture.
Me, I felt kind of good. Just saying it out loud.
She looked down at the book, which lay there all silent and innocent in her hands.
‘So he’s like a person,’ she said.
‘Yup, in many ways he is.’
‘And I’m holding him.’
‘Yup.’
‘Can he hear us?’
‘Course he can.’
She stared at him for a bit, taking that in. Then she gulped and said, ‘Doesn’t he think it’s a bit familiar, me holding him and him hearing and thinking and everything, and not saying anything to me, and me not able to see his face or anything? Has he got a brain?’
‘He’s a mystery,’ I said. ‘That’s the point.’
‘And isn’t it a bit rude of us to be talking about him in front of him like this?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think he must be used to it.’
And then she held the book up in front of her face and she said to it, ‘I’m sorry if we’re being rude. It’s just even if you’re used to it we’re not. Well, I’m not. So I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to rude.’
And the book said, ‘Well, that’s all right, dear. I understand.’
And then I was really jealous.
He didn’t say anything else to her. Or me. He went back into silence. So did I. I just quietly took the book back off her and said, ‘I’m going to sleep now. Night.’ I still had that headache, to tell the truth, and all this damp and bad sleep wasn’t making it any better.
The next morning I felt I had been snarky, so I let her read him. It was good for him to be read by her. I knew it would make him stronger. She was a good reader, just the kind he wanted, clever and interested and full of passion. She didn’t talk to him again, and he didn’t talk to her either.
Maybe I had been mean. It wasn’t like I was in charge of him, anyway. He could talk to whoever he wanted, if he wanted.
When she went off to pee again (I just peed out the window. Girls are funny though) I opened him up.
‘Did I hurt your feelings?’ he said.
‘Bit,’ I mumbled.
‘You saved my life and I would do anything for you,’ he said. ‘You gave me my voice and, if you like, in your lifetime I will speak only to you.’
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I ain’t in charge of you.’
‘Do you trust Janaki?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I think I do. I think she’d always want to do the right thing, so I couldn’t be much of a scamp round her. Like she wouldn’t sit by and let me nick stuff, but I think she’d be loyal.’
‘I think so too,’ said the book. ‘And you, are you prepared?’
‘What for?’
‘For the future, Lee. For the challenge ahead.’
‘Nope,’ I said, in all honesty. ‘I can escape though. I’m good at that…’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed,’ he murmured.
‘… but I don’t always know what else to do.’
‘Lee,’ he said, ‘this is the end of running. It’s time to face your enemies.’
I heard a noise – a distant rumble.
I turned. Looked out the hatch.
Oh, holy crike. A speedboat, roaring towards us in a blur of spray.
Who the crike knew where we were?
I thrust the book inside my jacket.
Where was Janaki?
I nipped down the Ghost Train, barging through the last remaining dangling cobwebs. I peeked out the end.
The speedboat noise was droning and straining. I moved my head round a little and I could see it – they wouldn’t be able to see me though. It was about 500 yards away. And it wasn’t moving. It seemed to have run aground.
Well, thank crike for that.
There were two people on board. They were fiddling with the engine. One was waving their arms.
I didn’t have much time.
I dodged behind the Octopus and headed for the Big Wheel. Janaki would know to join me there as soon as she noticed the boat. But would she notice it in time?
I couldn’t help her.
They were engrossed in their engine and didn’t see me as I snagged round to the back of the Big Wheel. I was halfway up the maintenance steps when I spotted Janaki.
She’d seen the boat and was coming round the back of the skatepipe. I didn’t think she could see me, but it looked like she was heading for the Big Wheel.
I headed on up, keeping myself as best I could invisible against the girders. The morning light was behind me, so that was in my favour.
I’d made it to the wheel frame when I spotted Janaki on the trunk below me. She glanced up and I gave her a tiny wave of encouragement. She waved back and carried on climbing.
The figures from the boat had given up and were starting to wade towards the fair. One I could make out was a woman. Blonde. Oh yeah. The other was holding something out in front of him, like a gun.
All right then.
How the crike had they known we were here? I lay flat against the iron strut, muscles aching, getting my breath back, and I listened. Their low voices did carry over the water, but I couldn’t make anything out.
Below, Janaki was gaining on me.
If they didn’t spot us before they were close enough, we had a chance.
They were staring at the water, picking their way carefully.
I twisted, arched and slid down into the cab. Crouched there, I kept my head low. The weight of my landing had jerked the cab into movement. Pray they wouldn’t spot it.
After a couple of minutes I peeked over the side. They were still picking their way across, nearing the skatepipe now. Janaki was on the wheel rim, edging towards me. Looking up at her there now, I saw how exposed she was, how far it was to the shallow water below, how hard and horrible the metal around her was. Grimly she shuffled along, her body flattened for invisibility. She was heading to the cab beyond mine – why hadn’t I gone to the further one when I ha
d the chance and left this one free for her? Now she had further to go, at a more dangerous stage.
My head was pounding again and I felt hot.
Something rustled at my feet. I glanced down. A rodent!
Now how in crike did a rodent get here?
Never mind that now. The man and woman – I could see them quite clearly now – were poking around the skatepipe. Presumably they’d find the boat.
Sure enough. The man was dragging it out.
And kicking a hole in it. Well, that’s nice. So there was our transport, scuttled.
The woman quite clearly didn’t like being in the water. She didn’t even seem to have wellies on. It’s amazing really how dim people can be. How do you get to be a mysterious gangster queen, clever enough to find out where we were, and not be bright enough to put on a pair of wellies?
OK now.
Janaki was above my head now. I wanted to call out to her, but instead just turned my head up and gave her a big grin and a thumb’s-up. She grinned back at me and wriggled on. In a moment she was lowering herself into the cab, and dangling there about three yards away from me, way up in the sky.
The intruders were approaching the Ghost Train.
They didn’t go in – just peered through the entrance and then moved on.
Towards the Big Wheel.
Janaki and I glanced across to each other. I held up a flare. She smiled, reached down and held up a flare. I held up a box of matches. She did the same. Stones, catapults, all in place. We had planned to start with stones.
They were in range beneath us. The first blast would be the only one with the element of surprise. We each had a bag of stones and we each lifted them.
Eye contact.
Another grin.
A lovely feeling came over me in that moment. It was like she was my brother and we were together against the world, doing the right thing. I really liked it. I liked her. It felt good.
Five, four, three, two, one.
GO!
We each leaned over the edge of our cab, and we tipped and tossed the whole barrage down on their heads. Not stopping to see what damage we’d done, we loaded our catapults and began to fire alternately, big stones, aimed at them as they scurried away from the wheel. We had to fire accurately. We didn’t want to just scare them out of range. We wanted to scare them away completely, or damage them.