by Robin Jarvis
“What’s that?” Marcus asked, coming up the stairs after showering, towelling his hair. “Didn’t hear you.”
Lee kept his realisation to himself. He knew the other boy hadn’t been in the dining hall last night, but someone else could have told him. The past five months had taught Lee to trust nobody. Even Alasdair was a suspect.
“Just sayin’ it’s been a tough, brainsick day,” he lied. “I need to get me some sleep.”
“In your trainers?” Marcus observed.
“From now on I am going to be ready for anything, at any time.”
Even as he said it, the lights went off. It was the same in every cabin. They were plunged into total darkness. Some of the younger girls screamed in panic, their voices carrying through the camp.
“Eight o’clock,” Marcus said. “Lights out.”
“Another thing we’re going to have to get used to,” Lee commented, turning on his side.
“Not me,” Marcus promised himself.
“You did good today, Ladies’ Man. Did that kid proud. Maybe you ain’t such an asshole after all.”
Marcus snorted. “Is that really what it takes for us to be mates?” he said. “Digging some poor lad’s grave together?”
“I never said we was mates,” Lee corrected him. “Goodnight, pussy face.”
Marcus couldn’t tell if he was serious, but at that moment, he didn’t care. He was mentally, emotionally and physically drained. He found his bed in the dark and crawled into it. Within minutes, he was sound asleep.
Lee remained wide awake. There was something he had to do. He closed his eyes and focused. In a soft, barely audible whisper, he began reciting the opening lines of Dancing Jax. He felt the same sharp cramp in his heart he had experienced those previous times and his skin began to crawl. Then that icy, rushing sensation took hold, followed by the roaring in his ears, the lurching of his stomach and the burning at the back of his throat.
It was a mild autumn afternoon in the Realm of the Dawn Prince. A sweet rain shower was still glistening on the hedgerows, sparkling over ripe clusters of fat, juicy brambles. The Kingdom was washed clean and the larks were singing in a forget-me-not sky.
Lee looked up. A lonely country road stretched before him. In the hazy distance, beyond the thatched roofs and smoking chimneys of Mooncot, the towers and battlements of the White Castle rose gleaming in the sunlight. He took a step back. It was always a jolt, finding himself here, but he was gradually getting used to it.
His heel splashed in a puddle and he glanced down at his muddy Nike. With a startled cry on his lips, he scanned up the length of his trackie bottoms, to his T-shirt. He could actually see them! This time he was visible, not a shadow-shape, not an ethereal presence. He was properly here! His mind was his own, he wasn’t dressed as one of those lame fairy-tale characters and he knew precisely who he was. Apprehensive, he raised his hands before his eyes. Then he leaped in the air, giving a euphoric shout. His skin was black.
“Who goes there?” a wheezing voice called from above.
Lee wheeled about. He didn’t want to be discovered. When he saw who spoke, he relaxed and laughed.
At the side of the road was a tall gibbet. Within the iron cage suspended beneath was a withered, cadaverous figure, more bones than papery flesh. Threadbare rags, grey with age, still covered the emaciated corpse. Hanks of grizzled hair clung to the wormy skull, but in the dark sockets there were no eyes. Gorcrows sent by Haxxentrot had dined on them long ago.
“How dare you ridicule me so?” the chattering jaw demanded. “No one mocks Oak-Chested Jacky Samson – brawny cut-throat and baron turned brigand, Bane of the Northern Marches – and lives!”
Two skeleton hands gripped the iron cage to shake it fiercely, but it was the fragile bones that rattled.
“How long you been up there, my man?” Lee asked. “Cos you ain’t the buffed roid monkey you think you is.”
The skull gnashed its teeth and one of them fell out. The skeleton sagged and gave a miserable groan.
“Nine winters have seen me dangling in this rusty surcoat,” it said. “How was I to know the old beldame my horse kicked into a stream as I rode by was a witch? Famous I was, in my prime. Big, burly Jacky Samson, the high-born robber and sometime pirate. When the Constable caught me carousing at The Silver Penny, I didn’t grudge the shackles, nor the fate that awaited. Jacky’s sword had lopped many a head, my lad, and he’d enjoyed the full merry of a fast burned life. So I knew the reckoning was squarely earned. What I didn’t bargain for was the malice and might of the crone in the Forbidden Tower. Afflicted me with one of her spells she did, so poor Jacky can’t ever die proper, just keeps lingering. There’s a thrush’s nest in his ribs, spiders in his brainpan and this winter may see the ligaments finally crumble and Jacky will be a pile of loose, unconnected bones up here. Not much of an unlife – and awful lonesome too.”
“Sounds hardcore, friend.”
“You have a curious form of speech,” the corpse said, angling the hole where its left ear had been in his direction. “You don’t sound like a knight or a serf. Who are you, stranger?”
Lee grinned widely.
“I believe in this here neighbourhood they call me the Castle Creeper.”
AT FIVE IN the morning the usual transit van left the camp, fully laden. Jangler saw it depart and peered into one of the cabins. As he anticipated, the nightmares had been particularly vivid and powerful that night. This time some of the beds had been overturned. The children were still locked in the bridging devices’ unnatural sleep.
He consulted his watch and his moustache gave a sideways twitch. “They’ve got one hour,” he said.
At six he rang his bell outside on the lawn. The children came to, uttering pained groans. Jody had fallen on her back and cried out.
“What goes on here at night?” Maggie asked angrily as she helped her on to the bed. “You don’t think them hunchback things come in and slap us about, do you? But how could they without waking us up? We can’t have been drugged yesterday. It just don’t make sense.”
“Remind me the last time anything did,” Jody said.
Maggie glanced at the time and swore. According to the work roster she was due in the kitchen in five minutes and didn’t dare be late. She pulled on some clothes and hurried out.
A Punchinello was waiting for her. He was perched on one of the steel surfaces, a spear across his knees. A thirteen-year-old girl called Esther, from another cabin, had also been assigned cooking duties. When Maggie arrived, she was already there, afraid to be alone in the room with that creature. She was cracking her knuckles nervously.
“Are we supposed to make the breakfast for everyone?” Maggie asked. “It’s sexist is what it is.”
The Punchinello licked his teeth. “Yes, you cook,” he said. “You make.”
“But there’s nothing in the storeroom,” Maggie said.
The guard pointed at the door with his spear. “Food, yes, in there.”
The girls went to see. There had been a delivery of eight large plastic containers.
“Plenty for week,” the creature said.
“Dunno why I’ve been put in the kitchen.” Maggie grumbled. “Just cos I enjoy my grub doesn’t mean I’m Gordon flippin’ Ramsay. I can fry an egg and use a microwave, but that’s about it.”
“We can sort out twenty two-breakfasts OK,” Esther said optimistically, acutely aware that the guard’s eyes had narrowed and his mouth was downturned. “And if there’s cornflakes and bread for toast, it’ll be dead easy. We’ll worry about lunch and dinner after. We can do it.”
They opened the nearest container.
“Must be a mistake,” Maggie said.
They opened another and another. She hurried back into the kitchen. The Punchinello was laughing now.
“What’s going on?” Maggie asked. “Where’s the food? Them boxes are just filled with garbage, old peelings and cabbage leaves.”
“Is good, yes?”
“We can’t
eat that!”
“Came from good eaty places!” the guard replied. “Good food, yes? Yum yum.”
Maggie tried to make sense of what it was saying. “Do you mean those boxes came from restaurants? That we’re expected to eat their scraps and leavings? Basically what we’ve got in there came from their bins? You wouldn’t feed those leftovers to animals.”
“Piggy wiggy farm no want,” the Punchinello told her with a shrug.
“So it’s not even fit for pigs?”
Esther hugged herself and wept silently. She was so unbelievably hungry. Maggie opened the large fridge. It was crammed with trays of raw sausages. Her mouth watered, but she knew they weren’t for her and the others. That was why the guard was in here, to make sure none of them were stolen.
“Squassages!” he sniggered, kicking his feet against the cupboards with childish glee.
“I’m going to speak to the Jangler bloke,” Maggie said angrily. “We can’t seriously be expected to eat that muck. This can’t be right.”
But it was right. Jangler informed her that was the only food they were going to get this week and if she didn’t get a move on cooking something, the work parties were going to have to begin the day with empty stomachs.
After the first reading of the day, conducted outside on the lawn, the others gathered in the dining hall, desperate for something to eat; they smelled the sausages cooking and their hopes soared. Maggie had to break the bad news and began slopping out a thin soup. It was the only thing she could think to do with the rubbish provided.
“I can’t eat this,” Marcus protested in disgust. “It’s swill.”
“I know,” she agreed. “But it’s all there is. I can’t cook what isn’t there.”
“Are ye serious?” Alasdair asked. “Is this really what we’re getting from noo on?”
“Looks like it.”
The children stared at their bowls in dismay. Christina wrinkled her nose. Maggie told the seven-year-old to eat up then she could take a bowl to Jody who had remained in the cabin, unable to move.
“Are we just going to accept this?” Alasdair challenged everyone.
“You want to go argue it out?” Marcus asked. “You’ll be keeping Jim company, out there in the ground, if you do. You can dig your own grave though; there’s no way I want to do that again.”
The rest of them knew he was right. Charm was the first to tuck in.
“It’s full of vitamins, innit?” she said, with a fixed smile. “See, it’s got… green bits and no carbs. Better for you than a fry-up. Brilliant for the complexion.”
She didn’t convince them, but they were so famished they lifted the spoons to their trembling lips.
“If you don’t eat nofink,” she continued more seriously, “you ain’t gonna make it. So get it down your necks.”
“Least it might clear up your zits, Herr Spenzer,” Marcus said, grimacing as he sniffed it.
Lee stirred his spoon through the unappetising contents of his bowl. He glanced out of the window at the fence behind the main block. Out there, in the woods, were the provisions he had stashed. He had guessed it would come to this. He had known they were never getting out of here after the weekend was over. All he had to do was figure out how to get through that wire and bring the food in, bit by bit. How was he going to manage that? And there was something else.
At that moment, under his pillow, was an apple he had brought back from Mooncaster last night. He had pulled it from a tree as an experiment to see what would happen. He didn’t want to eat anything there in case, on his return, it turned to slime or was riddled with maggots. When he had examined it, first thing, it looked just as edible here as it did there. That gave him plenty to think about. What else could he bring back from that place?
“We have to talk.” Alasdair’s earnest whisper broke into his thoughts. “I’ve got to figure a way to get into Mainwaring’s cabin.”
Lee looked around the table before answering. “You’re crazy,” he muttered back. “And there’s too many ears here.”
Before they could continue, Captain Swazzle came stomping in. Breakfast was over. Nineteen frightened children were quickly split into the two groups written on the roster. Christina tried to run out of the dining hall, calling for Jody. The creature called Yikker snatched her back and pushed her roughly into the others. Marcus caught her and stopped her darting off again.
“Don’t make them angry,” he urged, trying to calm her down. “You saw what they can do.”
“No speak!” Yikker snarled, glaring at him and pinching his long, curved nose. “You stink big!”
Four guards then shunted everyone out, herding them towards the gates, pushing and shoving the stragglers with ungentle hands.
“Where they being taken?” a worried Maggie asked the Captain.
“You curtsy to Captain!” he screamed at her, stamping one foot. “Abrants always bow and curtsy to Captain! You are scum – you are dirty, under-boot wormdung!”
Maggie obeyed hastily. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know we had to. If… if you don’t mind me asking, where are my friends going?”
The Punchinello twirled one of his whiskery eyebrows with a long finger. “Heigh ho,” he sang with a sardonic grin. “Off to work they go.”
“Outside the camp? What work are they doing out there?”
Swazzle coughed up a ball of phlegm at her feet, licked his teeth and swaggered away.
“A simple ‘mind your own business’ would have done,” the girl muttered.
Alasdair was asking the same questions of the guard closest to him.
“Where we going?” he demanded.
“No talk,” he growled. “Or Anchu spike!”
Jangler unlocked the gates and swung them open.
“Remember,” he cautioned the children sternly, “the Captain’s bonny boys are just waiting for an excuse to wet their spears again. Don’t antagonise them. Do precisely what they say. You may be leaving the confines of the camp, but one false step out there will be fatal. Two deaths in as many days really would be so very careless of you.”
The Punchinellos laughed raucously and drove their young prisoners up the forest road. Jangler closed the gates behind them and turned one of his many keys in the lock.
Lee looked back at the sealed camp then up the long road. Where were they headed?
Jody sucked the air through her teeth as she tried to raise herself to eat the soup Maggie had brought. Her wounds had opened in the night and she could barely move. Even Jangler could see that, otherwise she would have joined the work parties.
“Why outside?” she asked. “What’s out there?”
Maggie had no answer. “P’raps to help out at a stables or do the dirty work in a big house or hotel?”
“They don’t send kids up chimneys no more.”
“There’s a lot of things they never used to do any more, but it don’t stop them now!”
Jody slurped the soup thoughtfully. She didn’t think it was that bad. Then a sickening thought struck her.
“What if,” she began. “What if they’ve been taken out… to be murdered? That’s what always happens. Those monsters could be filling in a mass grave right now.”
“Don’t say that!” Maggie cried. “It’s horrible!”
“We’ve got to expect it. It’s inevitable. You do realise, as soon as they want rid of us, we’re done for in this place. It’s a concentration camp, for heaven’s sake! Look what they’re still doing in countries where that book hasn’t brainwashed everyone; human beings do terrible things to other human beings – hello, Guantanamo Bay. And those guards out there aren’t even human. They see us as a lower form of life. Frankly I don’t know why they’ve bothered keeping us alive. What’s the point? What’s in it for them?”
“You shouldn’t talk like that, it’s morbid.”
“No, it’s realistic. Honestly – we’re on borrowed time here and the clock’s ticking.”
The day passed slowly and no si
gn was seen of the others. Maggie and Esther sorted through more of the peelings, washed the usable elements, sorted them into piles and made a thicker, more substantial soup for lunch. But no one returned to eat it. Jangler fitted a padlock on the fridge then retired to his cabin and Captain Swazzle disappeared into the one next to it, reappearing on the hour to patrol the fence.
It was getting on for six o’clock. Maggie was standing on the step of her chalet, staring anxiously through the gates, when at last she spotted them.
“They’re here!” she called back to Jody, as she and Esther ran forward.
They hurried to the gates and their faces fell. The other children were stumbling and staggering along the road. They looked dirty and exhausted; some of the younger ones were being helped by the teenagers. Their clothes were torn and, when they drew closer, Maggie saw that their arms and faces were covered in scratches, many of them bleeding. Their hands were stained a livid greyish-yellow colour and then the smell hit her nostrils.
Maggie and Esther shrank back and choked. A fetid stench of decay and corruption flowed before the returning group. It was unbearable. By this time Jangler had emerged from his cabin and came to unlock the gate.
Christina was on Marcus’s shoulders. Her head drooped forward. She was worn out. It had been a shattering day for all of them.
They shambled into the camp, where some of them collapsed immediately on to the grass, unable to take another step. Jangler closed and locked the gates behind them.
“What happened?” Maggie asked.
Alasdair turned his weary eyes towards her as Charm tottered past, heading for her cabin. Jody would have paid money to see her in that wretched state. The teen model looked a wreck. Cuts covered her bare arms, not one of her fingernails had survived the day’s labour intact and her hair was wild and stuck with twigs and dried lumps of minchet.
“Soon as we reached the road, they split the two groups,” Alasdair explained to Maggie. “We only just met up again half an hour ago. They marched us miles this morning and again just noo. I dinnae know about the others, but we went to a spot where them plants have taken over. Gone mad they have, really choking the trees, strangling everything. There was a truck waiting. We had to fill it wi’ that reekin’ fruit. Been pickin’ it all day wi’out a break. It’s no easy and there’s clouds of flies everywhere. You cannae breathe or speak wi’out swallowing a dozen at a time – an’ that’s all we’ve eaten. Ye cannae eat that minchet slop. Apart from it tasting like cat sick, It doesnae fill you an’ makes the hunger even worse wi’ gut ache after.”