by Robin Jarvis
Lee wiped the sweat from his face. He’d been in the other work party. “Same here,” he said. “We were taken miles the other way – there was a truck waiting for us to fill too.”
“It’s a jungle in some places,” Alasdair continued. “You cannae get through them vines and they’re covered wi’ sharp spines and needles. We’ve all been cut to ribbons. The wee ones had to crawl deep into thickets cos the biggest fruits are right inside the shady bits. Then, when we’d done, those vicious beggars marched us back, ‘lickety-split, lickety-split’ they said, no dawdling allowed, like we’re marines on a training run. We’re dead on oor feet. I just wanna crash oot.”
“I’ve got some more soup ready,” Maggie said gently. “It’s better this time, more filling and I used a handblender thing so it’s nice and thick.”
“I got to wash this clarty muck off first,” Alasdair said in revulsion. “I’d puke if I tried to eat right noo.”
It was long after seven o’clock by the time they had all showered and eaten. They were glad of the soup and no longer cared it was made from kitchen waste. At that moment in time, it was the most welcome, most delicious meal they’d ever tasted.
Charm had scrubbed her hands almost raw, but couldn’t get the ugly juice stains out.
“I spend me a fortune on manicures,” she moaned despondently. “They’re ruined now. I’ll never get no work being a hand model again. If we ever get out of ’ere, I’ll have to wear gloves. If we get out… like that’s ever gonna happen. Is it gonna be same as this every day? I don’t fink I can do it – an’ that Bez monster’s been leching at me the whole time. Ugh, his beady eyes were on stalks.”
“You can do it,” Lee told her. “You’re stronger than you think.”
Alasdair tried to move his stuff into the other boys’ cabin, but Jangler wouldn’t permit it and ordered Nicholas and Drew to move across to join him instead. It wouldn’t do for one of the bridging devices to be left without any young minds to tune into.
Irritated, the Scottish lad went to have a quiet word with Lee. Marcus was spark out on the other bed.
“What we talked about this morning,” Alasdair began in a low whisper. “I meant it. We need to get a charger back from that old guy’s cabin.”
“Ain’t interested,” Lee answered with a shake of his head.
“How can you no be interested? It’ll get us oot of here!”
Lee rubbed his eyes and yawned. “You’re foolin’ yourself,” he told him. “There won’t never be no cavalry coming to rescue us. We’s stuck here. You’re just going to get yourself stuck on one of them Mr Punch’s cocktail spears.”
“So that’s it, you’re giving up? You’re just going to lie back and take this? Soup and slavery, how long do you think we’ll last on that? I’d give it a month at the most. Look at the state of us after just one day of it!”
“I ain’t risking my neck for no dumb scheme to swipe a phone charger.”
“Is this you no getting involved again? I thought you was just being selfish last time, but that’s no it. You’ve been saying all along we weren’t ever going to get out of here. You guessed there’d be fences and guards.”
“No, those guards were a surprise to me too.”
“But you knew about the fences. Why the hell did you no tell anyone? We could’ve done something about it if we’d known.”
“Real question you should ask yourself is, why didn’t you expect the fences? Did you really think you was only here for a happy weekend? They was a foregone bit of obvious to me.”
“If I’d known, I’d have run. I wouldn’t have sat back and waited for it to happen. You took that choice away from me – and everyone else here.”
“Oh, be real. How far do you think you’d have got if you’d run away? They’d have caught you and brought you right back. I saved you a lot of wasted hope and energy.”
Alasdair moved away from him.
“For a minute there I almost thought you was chicken, but that’s no it. The problem wi’ you is, you’ve given up. Och, you’re full of the big man, sassy talk and attitude, but you’ve really caved in and surrendered inside, haven’t ye?”
Lee checked his watch. “Almost eight,” he said dryly. “You’d best get back to your own place before lights out.”
“I’m goin’ all right,” Alasdair said. “I cannae stand the smell of defeat and self-loathing in here; it honks worse than what we were picking all day long.”
He stomped down the stairs and returned to his own cabin. Lee put a pen in his mouth and wished he could light it. On the next bed Marcus stirred.
“Now who’s got their handbags out?” the Manchester lad asked with a mocking grin.
“Shut up, Lynxstain.”
“You’re both right though,” Marcus said, turning over. “And both wrong too. Trying to nick something from that Jangler’s cabin is a moronic idea. Trying to get out of here isn’t. I’m going to escape, first chance I get.”
“Then you’ll wind up dead.”
“Not if I’m clever about it.”
“Then you’ll definitely wind up dead.”
Spencer was sitting on the step when the lights went out. Jumping up, he opened the door hurriedly then glanced over at the wooden skelter tower. One of the Punchinellos was stationed at the top. He was sniggering and humming to himself, his ugly face illuminated by a flickering glow. The boy heard faint but familiar sounds and realised the creature was holding his own media player in its large hands, watching one of his Western movies.
“Cat Ballou…” the guard gargled along to the title music. “Cat Ballooowooowooo.”
Spencer had seen that film dozens of times. It was one of the few comedy Westerns he enjoyed, with two terrific performances from Lee Marvin in dual roles: one an over-the-hill, drunken gunslinger, the other a sinister hired gun with a false silver nose. Spencer hated that the revolting guard was going through his collection and didn’t understand why it would even be interested. It was incomprehensible and sort of creepy. Perhaps it and the others were also going through their phones, reading the texts and poring over the photographs.
“You!” a sharp voice screamed at him from the darkness nearby. “Go – in hut!”
Another of the sentries came scampering towards him, out of the night, spear in hand. Spencer obeyed quickly and kicked the door shut behind him.
In the blackness of their cabin, Maggie and Jody were speaking softly so as not to disturb Christina who was sleeping in the bed between them.
“What you were on about before,” Maggie said. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“You’ve seen the way they treat us. How can you believe otherwise?”
“It won’t ever come to that.”
“I bet that’s what everyone else it ever happened to thought, before they got murdered. Let them eat cake, yeah?”
“Don’t say that word!”
“Murdered?”
“No, cake.”
There was a short silence, filled only by the soft sleeping breaths of the others around them.
“What I want to know,” Jody murmured eventually, “is what were those two trucks for? Who, or what, wants all that filthy minchet fruit?”
Maggie remained silent and Jody realised she had fallen asleep. Jody stayed awake, thinking, for several hours.
At midnight, the Bakelite devices began to hum and another old song from the 1930s crackled through the camp…
In the morning the cabins were in disarray once more. When Jangler rang his bell, the children picked themselves up from the floor, aching and bruised again.
Maggie went to the main block. There was a plastic carrier bag beside the doors. Curious, she picked it up and looked inside. It was full of apples, almost two dozen fresh, rosy apples – rounder and redder and shinier than any she had ever seen. Their fragrance was strong, sweet and delicious.
The girl gave a cry of surprise then looked around sharply. The guard in the tower was glaring down at her.
Hugging the bag close, she pushed open the doors and hurried to the kitchen, hiding her precious find under a chair in the dining hall on the way. She had no idea where the apples had come from, but she was sure they were forbidden.
The same Punchinello as yesterday was waiting for her, impatient for his “squassages”.
As work began on the morning soup, in the first cabin Charm had managed to monopolise the bathroom yet again. Gazing at her scratched and weary face in the mirror, she hardly recognised herself and indulged in tears of self-pity.
“Hurry up in there!” the other girls called outside the door.
Charm recalled what Lee had told her and realised he was right. Yes, she was strong. You didn’t get far in the modelling world by being a pushover. You bounce back no matter how many knocks you get. Ambition equalled ruthlessness. She’d elbowed her way into many situations and junkets by sheer force of personality and determination. Her mother had always joked she had a steel core. The girl’s face hardened and she pulled her frayed nerves and self-confidence together. Yes, she was tough enough.
“If you can blag your way past Security at the TV Choice Awards and don’t never flinch at a home bikini wax, this ain’t nofink, doll,” she scolded herself.
Reaching into the shower, she turned it on and when it ran warm, stepped inside. The water beat against her upturned face. Standing there, motionless, she imagined herself somewhere glamorous: beneath a tropical waterfall – on a photo shoot for swimwear or even her own calendar. These were the dreams that had always sustained and inspired her.
“Forget that,” she said, squeezing shampoo on her palm and massaging it into her scalp. “You’ve got to get yourself a new Plan.”
Soon the foamy water was swirling down the drain between her feet. With her eyes shut tightly against the soap, she heard the others start tapping on the door again.
“Gimme a bleedin’ chance!” she called out.
The tapping continued. With water in her ears, the noise sounded strange, not like knocking at all any more. In fact, not even like knuckles on wood, more like pliers snipping at a plate.
“Hold your horses!” she shouted.
The tapping became more urgent and was joined by frantic scratching.
“Cross your legs!” she said, really getting annoyed now. “I’m almost done.”
Then something scraped across her foot. Charm wiped her eyes and glanced down.
There was a jagged, CD-sized hole in the shower tray, beside the drain. The ceramic had been bitten and chewed by powerful jaws. A bent and broken stick was poking out of it. That’s what had touched her foot. Suddenly the stick moved. It jerked and scrabbled around the hole. Even under the warm shower, the shock of realisation froze the girl’s blood. It wasn’t a stick. It was a long segmented leg, like that of an insect, magnified many times.
The curved claw at the end tapped and groped the glazed surface, blindly exploring this splashing world. Then a second leg pushed up from the darkness below, rapidly followed by another and another. Four spindly jointed legs, spiky with coarse hairs, clattered and slithered on the shower tray, trying to get a grip. Two black, glittering eyes, surrounded by dark, wiry fur, squeezed up out of the hole. Then, twisting and distorting with strain, came a fleshy mouth, crowded with fangs and razor-sharp teeth.
Charm screamed and threw the shampoo bottle at it.
It bounced off. The eyes fixed on her and the jaws snapped the air greedily. The hideous face lunged to bite her, but the hole it had made was too small. The rest of its body couldn’t pass through. It screamed back at her, then wriggled down in a frenzy and immediately began crunching more of the ceramic away with its teeth.
Still shrieking, Charm leaped clear. She snatched up her robe and wrenched at the door, forgetting she had bolted it.
“Let me out!” she screeched in terror.
The noise of the snapping ceramic ceased abruptly. Trembling, she turned and saw the legs reappear. The savage face came after, its eyes riveted on her. This time the rest of its body was pulled out with ease and, with it, four more insect-like legs.
Charm didn’t know what it was. Its kind had never sullied this world before. It was the size of a large terrier. There was no head, just those protruding eyes and the vicious mouth, which slashed across the front of the body.
For a moment, it stood in the shower, tensing and shaking itself in the warm water. Then, with jaws gaping as wide as they could, it sprang forward.
Charm never stopped screaming, but she hurled everything she could lay her hands on at it: soap, perfume, toothpaste tube, toilet roll, glass tumbler, hair brush and can of hairspray. It ducked and dodged the missiles, but didn’t falter and came running for her. As it jumped up, she flung a towel. It was a lucky throw. The towel covered the creature completely. It let out a muffled yowl as it fell, then wheeled around, demented, trying to get out from under, but only became even more tangled and wrapped.
The maddened bundle lurched from side to side. It banged into the sink pedestal and snarled furiously. Charm searched for something she could smash down on top of that reeling shape, to splatter the thing beneath it, but there was nothing. Then her terror doubled. Four more legs were rising from the hole in the shower tray. Another of those nightmares surfaced into the bathroom, jaws snapping.
She spun back to the door. This time she remembered the bolt, dragged it back, rescued her make-up bag and flew out.
“What you been doing in there?” an irate twelve-year-old girl, at the front of the queue, demanded. “Was you singing death metal? You suck.”
Charm stared at her dumbly. Before she could answer, a thud rammed into the door and feverish clawing of the wood began.
“What’s in there?” a younger girl asked. “Is it a dog? Can I stroke it?”
“Let me in,” the first girl insisted. “I’m busting.”
Charm wouldn’t let go of the handle. “You can’t!” she cried. “Everyone clear out! Go get one of them guard fings. Get the old bloke! Hurry! Move it!”
The girls didn’t understand. Then one of them squealed. A jointed leg was thrashing under the door and the unmistakable sound of ripping and splintering wood began.
“Get out!” Charm yelled again. “All of you!”
Still clutching their toothbrushes, the girls fled from the chalet. Charm took one last horrified look at the bottom of the door. The teeth that had bitten through a ceramic shower tray would make very short work of a flimsy bit of wood.
Shutting the outer door behind her, she ran out on to the lawn where the panicking girls were scattering in all directions. Jangler was over by the skelter tower, discussing the day’s schedule with Captain Swazzle. The two of them regarded the screaming girls with sneering derision.
“Female hysterics,” the old man commented. “They’re obviously feeding too well if they have so much spare energy to burn.”
Christina left Jody’s side to see what the disturbance was. Lee was sitting on his step, turning a chewed-up pen over in his fingers. When Charm came racing from the cabin, he rose and ran after her.
“Whassup?” he asked.
The girl couldn’t stop to explain. She rushed across to Jangler and the Captain.
“There’s fings!” she jabbered wildly. “Back there! Revulsive fings – comin’ up out the plughole. Big, hairy spidery fings wiv a gob full of teeth!”
Jangler scowled irascibly at her over the top of his spectacles, but Captain Swazzle sniffed the air and tightened his grip on the spear.
“Me smell witchy pets,” he announced. “Doggy-Long-Legs.”
Jangler’s expression changed at once. “The Gangles?” he cried in dismay. “Here? How did… where are they?”
“In our bathroom!” Charm answered. “But they won’t be in there long, not wiv them choppers.”
Jangler wasn’t listening; he was already darting up the tower steps to escape them and Captain Swazzle was bawling orders to the other guards as he scampered towards the invaded cabi
n.
By now the other children had been lured outside by the noise.
“What’s happenin’?” Alasdair asked Christina.
The little girl shook her head. Marcus folded his arms and looked on with the same attitude Jangler first displayed. Spencer leaned out, wearing his Stetson.
“Still playing John Wayne, Herr Spenzer?” Marcus asked. “It only makes you look twice the dork you already are, you know. Look at this palaver; there’s a big spider in the shower or something.”
Captain Swazzle reached Charm’s cabin. The Punchinello’s hand made a grab for the door handle but, with a splitting and rending of wood, the first of the ferocious spider creatures burst out and scuttled between the Captain’s legs.
The watching children screamed in horror as the thing zigzagged swiftly over the lawn, veering from one side to the other as it chased them, nipping at their heels.
Marcus started and barged past Spencer, running into the cabin. Christina wailed but was too afraid to move. Lee and Charm were pursued round the tower. Then one of the other guards hurried over, yelling an attack cry. The Punchinello’s spear came stabbing down, each blow narrowly missing the scurrying, eight-legged target.
Squawking in frustration, the guard dived forward. The spear drove clean through the furry body, and into the ground beneath. The long legs flailed and the fanged mouth gurgled in pain as bile-coloured blood came bubbling up. Then the legs became still and went limp.
“Bezuel kill!” the guard crowed in triumph, pulling the spear from the ground with the thing still impaled on it. “Doggy-Long-Legs deaded. Oh, yes, oh, yes…”