by Robin Jarvis
The girl shut her eyes and pretended it wasn’t happening. She wanted to retch when she felt his warty fingers on her. If she hadn’t been so frightened of what he might do, she would have slapped that foul face.
Jangler surveyed the haul with satisfaction. “No more beeps or raucous ringtones,” he said happily. “No more inane chatter or moronic texting. Just perfect peace – and no one will be tempted to email foreign news sites.”
Alasdair looked up sharply. Did Mainwaring know about the messages he had sent yesterday? The old man was not looking in his direction; maybe it was just coincidence. He looked over to the maypole. If the rest of the world could see that, it wouldn’t waste another moment in taking military action against this mad, barbaric country.
“Now,” Jangler said. “Before you get down to work, let’s begin with a chapter – something humorous about Lumpstick, the droll rat catcher and mole choker. The night he chased those blue rodents through the Queen of Hearts’ boudoir…”
No one could believe their ears. Just metres away, Jim’s blood was soaking into the ground, Jody’s back was in urgent need of medical attention and here he was giving a reading from that book as if nothing had happened. Alasdair wondered if the old man had been insane even before Dancing Jax. The boy glanced around at the Punchinellos. They weren’t taking any notice of Jangler’s pompous preaching either. What were they? Where did they come from? How did they get here?
When the reading was over, Jangler sighed dreamily and the children were finally permitted to commence work. They set to it with vigour and determination. The sooner they finished, the sooner they could get to Jody. They scrubbed and swept, mopped and polished until the main block looked better than when they first arrived. Then they hurried about the camp with bin bags, picking up streamers and garlands, anything that made it look untidy. It was past two o’clock before Jangler was content with what they had done and allowed them to attend to Jody and the dead boy.
Jody was their immediate concern. There was nothing anyone could do for Jim now, but Marcus covered him with a cloak as Alasdair cut her down. She groaned as the wounds on her back opened again. Anxiously the Scot and Maggie carried her into the cabin and put her on the nearest bed. Christina looked on, staring with wide eyes at the raw flesh.
“Got to clean that,” Maggie said, trying to be practical and stop herself thinking about the dead boy still outside. She wanted to stop thinking about everything. She wished she could run on autopilot and do what had to be done without wanting to scream every few seconds. Taking a steadying breath, she forced herself to inspect the wounds.
“It won’t look so bad once that dried blood is washed off,” she said for Christina’s benefit.
“Yes, it will,” the little girl uttered.
“’Ere,” a voice said. “Use this.”
A large natural sponge was pushed under Maggie’s nose. She looked up and there was Charm. The animosity of the past had been forgotten.
“Thanks,” Maggie said, “but it’s no good, it’s not sterile. We’ve got to be real careful. If this gets infected…”
“I’ll go boil it,” the model suggested. “That’ll be all right, won’t it?”
Maggie wasn’t sure. “I think so. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor! I hate biology.”
Charm held out her hand to Christina. “Why don’t you come wiv me to the kitchen?” she said. “You can help.”
“I want to stay,” the seven-year-old said stubbornly.
Maggie stroked the little girl’s hair. “Don’t you worry,” she promised. “Jody’s not going anywhere. You’d be helping make her better if you went.”
“Yeah,” Charm said. “Cos I am hopeless, can’t switch a kettle on, me – and fink toast is just bread wiv a spray tan. Come on.”
She led Christina outside and Maggie mouthed a “Thank you”.
It was then Marcus came running in, carrying a green plastic case.
“Every canteen’s got a first-aid kit!” he announced, opening it up. “Knew there’d be one. Found it right at the back of a cupboard – how mad is that?”
“You’re a bloody miracle!” Maggie cried. She almost said she could kiss him, but stopped just in time in case he took it the wrong way. Then she realised how stupid she was being. Their recent history was so insignificant right now.
“What’s it got in there?” she asked.
“Bandages, wipes, lots of little blue plasters, not very useful… tons of other good stuff.”
She reached for a dressing then thought better of it. “I’d better wash my hands first,” she said, running to the bathroom.
Alasdair had been hovering nearby. “If I had a phone,” he said trying to control his anger, “every news agency in the world would see this – and poor Jim out there.”
“Are we really going to bury him?” Marcus asked. “That’s…”
“There’s no right word for what this is,” Alasdair snapped. “But the old lunatic is correct about one thing. Nobody out there in this country gives a monkey’s what happens to us. The police are all Jaxed up. We’re on our own here. This is it. This is our normal from now on. They could skewer us all and no one would do a thing.”
“How… how do you bury someone?”
“We start by digging a very big hole and take it from there.”
They were about to leave the cabin when Maggie emerged from the bathroom.
“Did I hear you wanted a mobile?” she asked.
“Aye,” he said. “But what’s the use of…” He stopped when she handed him her iPhone.
“How did you manage that?” Marcus asked. “Those monsters looked everywhere.”
Maggie coughed and looked at the ceiling. “Not quite everywhere,” she said. “It pays having a quick brain and a bum the size of Wales.”
In spite of everything Alasdair managed a grim laugh. Picking up the phone, he took photos of Jody’s back.
“That won’t prove a thing though,” Marcus said. “We should’ve done them when she was still tied up. Who’d believe it anyway?”
Alasdair knew he was right. Only a photo of Jim would do. That irrefutable evidence would convince everyone. But how would they be able to get a photo of him out there, under the fierce scrutiny of those guards?
Presently Alasdair, Lee, Marcus and the boys who had shared the cabin with Jim gathered about his body. A coffin was out of the question, Jangler had said, with an indignant snort. So they had decided to wrap him tightly in his duvet, together with his beloved comic books and whatever mementoes from home he had brought with him. It wasn’t much to show for twelve years of life. They didn’t even know what his family was like, or if he had any brothers or sisters. Until the night of the drugged May Cup, he hadn’t really said much to anyone.
They stared down at the cloak that still covered him, unsure how they were going to do this. Two Punchinellos were leaning on their spears, watching and snickering at their ashen faces. The sound of splintering wood filled the air as the stage was pulled apart and Jangler was giving instructions to the foreman about the helter-skelter.
“Someone needs to lift that cloak off,” Lee said gently.
Marcus volunteered. He felt he owed the dead boy. If he hadn’t been so cowardly earlier, he might have been able to stop him attacking the guard. Crouching down, he held his breath and drew the cloak aside.
“Don’t you call me a fat cow!” Maggie’s voice hollered suddenly.
“You’re right!” Charm yelled back at her. “Cows ain’t nowhere near as big as you. You’re a giant munter, you are! You don’t need one gastric band – you need a whole bleedin’ music festival.”
“Shut it, you tangerine-faced twig!”
“Yeah, well, at least I didn’t fall out of the minger tree – and then ate it!”
“Come here, you scrawny bitch!”
The two girls started fighting. They pulled each other’s hair and Charm shrieked shrilly.
The Punchinellos turned to view them and cackled. Moments later, Al
asdair ran over and pulled the girls apart.
“What is the matter with you?” he cried, leading Maggie back to the cabin and sending Charm off to her own. “Are you both mental? We dinnae need this!”
Once they were back inside, he let out a sigh of relief and brandished the phone. “We got one,” he said. “But you really dinnae wanna see. I could hardly bear to look.”
Maggie shook her head in agreement and returned to nursing Jody.
“The minger tree?” the wounded girl muttered.
“I had to tell her that one,” Maggie chuckled, relieved to see Jody awake. “That poor girl’s a bit too nice and couldn’t think of anything nasty enough. I’ve heard all the fat insults there are.”
“Nice? Don’t you believe it.”
Alasdair tapped away at the phone.
“Och, there’s only ten per cent of juice left!” he said with irritation. “How’d you let it get so low?”
“I was looking at YouTube in bed first thing,” Maggie explained sheepishly. “And taking pictures always drains it real fast.”
He composed a hasty follow-up email to the one he had sent out the other night, attaching the shocking, macabre photograph taken during the girls’ diversion. Then he did a rapid search for the news sites, adding them to the address list. Abruptly the screen went blank.
“No!” he cried in exasperation. “I was just about to send. Quick! Where’s the charger?”
Maggie’s face fell. “They’ve got it,” she said apologetically. “I couldn’t hide that as well.”
Alasdair stared at her a moment, then he covered his eyes in defeat.
“Plugs have prongs,” she added dismally.
The boy lifted his face and stared out of the door as a fresh, dangerous idea took hold. “There’s only one thing to do then,” he said decisively. “We’re going to have to steal the charger back from old Mainwaring’s hut.”
Lee and Marcus took it in turns to dig the grave.
They chose a spot furthest away from the chalets, close to the newly completed fence. One of the Punchinellos oversaw them as they toiled. It was the one called Yikker and he delighted in kicking earth back into the grave when Marcus was trying to dig it out.
Spencer scrounged a wide piece of wood from the dismantled stage. Nicholas, one of the Xbox boys, turned out to be good at drawing and he printed Jim’s name and age on it in felt pen. It was a pitiable memorial.
Apart from Jody, every other young person gathered at the graveside to pay their respects, as the duvet bundle was lowered reverently into the ground.
“Shouldn’t we say something?” Maggie asked. “Something religious about dust and that kind of thing? A prayer maybe?”
“Do you even know if he was a Christian?” Lee asked.
“No, but it doesn’t seem right, just putting him down there without special words.”
Charm agreed with her. “Got to do it proper,” she said. “We ain’t animals.”
But nobody knew the right words to say and Google was no longer an option.
“Hell,” Lee said. “I’ll do it. I heard me enough sermons, something must’ve stuck.”
He did his best, and the other children took solace in what he said, but he felt a fraud. He never did have much of a faith before that book took over and certainly none after. Seeing how easily his grandmother had removed her favourite painting of Jesus from the wall and replaced it with a print of Mooncaster had killed that. Where was God when Jim had needed him? Where was he for them right now?
“We should sing something too,” Maggie suggested when Lee finished speaking. “What hymns do we know?”
Only a few of them knew any by heart. They were going to give up on it when Charm began to sing, in a faint, wavering voice.
Silent night, holy night.
At first they thought she was making a sick joke or was too stupid to know it was only a Christmas carol. But, as she sang, they found meaning in those familiar, moving words and, one by one, joined in.
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
One verse was enough. They couldn’t make it through another. They cast handfuls of soil into the grave and said goodbye to the boy they had hardly known, but who had died trying to protect them. Marcus and Lee remained to fill in the hole.
Because Jangler had ordered the removal of all the “frivolous and blousy” hanging baskets and planters from the camp, the only floral tributes were small bunches of daisies the younger children had collected from the rear lawn.
And so, when Marcus patted the last shovel-load down, and the light began to fail, he tried to get his head around this awful, devastating day.
Everything was in place now. The workmen had left in their trucks hours ago. They had laboured long to get it completed in time. The camp was surrounded by a high fence, topped with vicious barbed wire, and the low wooden gates had been replaced with a tall barrier of meshed steel. The stage was gone and the helter-skelter’s slide had been removed, together with its cheery fairground covering.
Marcus stared up at what remained. A forbidding, skeletal tower reared into the evening sky. Stationed at the top, a Punchinello paced round the platform, glaring down over the camp, keeping vigilant watch. Two others patrolled the perimeter.
An eight o’clock curfew had been announced earlier. When Jangler came to reclaim the spade, he reminded them that hour was approaching.
“If any of you are discovered outside your chalets after then,” he warned, “Captain Swazzle and his chaps have been instructed to show no mercy, not that they would anyway, so you had best hurry along. An early night will do you the world of good anyhow. You’ll need your strength tomorrow. I think I was far too lenient today. Lumpstick’s comical escapades always sweeten my nature. Oh, and boys… pleasant dreams.”
The lads went to their cabin. Marcus paused before entering.
“So this is it,” he said, too exhausted and hungry to be outraged. “This is our life from now on. Locked up and forgotten, with monsters for warders.”
“You better get used to it,” Lee told him.
Marcus stared into the dorm. The flat-screen television had been torn from the wall and taken away, and so had the Xbox. His eyes roamed over the beds, resting finally on the empty one. He drew a hand across his bruised face.
“No chance,” he muttered. “They’re not keeping me here. I’m not ending up on the wrong end of one of them spears. That Yikker swine has already got it in for me. No, I’m going to get out of here – or die trying.”
Throughout the camp, the children were tearful with hunger. Their growling stomachs ached and they dreaded what new terrors the following day would bring.
In Alasdair’s hut, the Scottish lad was completely alone. The six other boys had gone home on the coach that morning and so much had happened in the meantime he had forgotten to move his belongings into the other cabin till it was too late. He strummed his guitar softly, playing a melancholy tune. He wanted to talk to Lee, but there hadn’t been a chance. He needed to sound him out about schemes to sneak into Jangler’s cabin without getting caught. He had to get that phone charger and soon.
“I cannae hack being stuck in here till I’m sixteen!” he told the walls.
The girls had been more organised. Two from Maggie’s cabin had gone in with Charm to allow Jody to stay where she was and Christina to be at her side. Jody’s wounds had been cleaned and dressed as well as Maggie could manage. Her back felt as though it was scored with flame-filled trenches. But her mind was concentrated on the Punchinello Guards.
“There’s nothing like them on this world,” she ranted. “Nothing! But that can only mean… Mooncaster is real, an actual other place, in another dimension, parallel universe or something. Does that mean everything else in the book exists out there somewhere?”
Christina nodded sombrely.
“Hurts your brain, doesn’t it?” Maggie said. “I can’t think
about it. I’m doing my teeth then turning in.”
She took her toiletry bag into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. A guilty, furtive look was on her round face. Unzipping the bag, she brought out two Mars bars and a Twix, handling them like sacred relics. She had taken them as snacks for the ferry ride to France before she was captured, but there had been so much food here she hadn’t touched them since. Now the overweight girl unwrapped one of the Mars bars and the smell of the warm chocolate sent her into raptures. She hadn’t eaten a thing all day and was ravenous. She knew she should share it with the others, at least with Jody and Christina, but she couldn’t stop herself and gobbled it down in moments.
“Whoever invented chocolate,” she whispered, “I hope you had a bloody long and lovely life.”
She looked at the inviting second bar and made short work of that too. It brought instant comfort and for several delicious moments blanked out what had happened.
“Must save the Twix,” she told herself sternly. “Give one each to Jody and Christina.”
A few minutes later, Maggie hated herself and stuffed three empty wrappers into her pocket.
Two cabins along, Charm was moisturising mechanically. She could cope with the hunger. She pretended it was one of her detox days, except without the fruit smoothies. Many unbelievable and harrowing things had occurred today, but she kept returning to the most painful, and the one which caused her the most grief. Why hadn’t her mother turned up? She had promised she would be there. Charm’s hatred for Dancing Jax finally blossomed.
Next door, Lee lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Something had been bugging him and now he realised what it was. How did Jangler know Jody had instigated the attack on the castle model? Someone had to have grassed her up. There was no other explanation. But who? The only people who had seen it happen were the other children.
“This place blows worse than I thought,” he muttered in disgust.