by Robin Jarvis
Cursing the rain, he set light to the paper tied round a vodka bottle and sent that spinning. This time the glass did not break. Alasdair swore again. He was out of practice.
His mind went back a few months, to a siren-filled night when he and his parents chucked petrol bombs through the windows of the Waterstone’s on Princes Street and George Street in Edinburgh and watched them burn. That was the time the loudhailers made their first appearance. Hordes of converted Jaxers roamed the streets, chanting from the book. As Alasdair ran through Princes Street Gardens to escape, the power of Austerly Fellows’ words finally overwhelmed his mother and father and they turned on him. They tried to deliver their son to the mob, for it to throw him into the blazing bookshops. He had barely got away with his life. That was the last time he saw his parents.
Alasdair drove the painful memory from his head and looked at the bottle of rum in his hand. Alcohol wasn’t as flammable as petrol, but this was ninety-five per cent proof. If this didn’t work, nothing else would. He made sure the paper was ablaze with bright yellow flame before hurling the bottle at one of the bed bases. There was a satisfying explosion of glass. Then the alcohol vapour ignited and the spilt rum burned.
“Scotland forever – ya giant bobies!” he yelled, chucking more bottles after it and taking a great swig from the last.
Pale, flickering flames lapped round the threshing forest and deep beneath the ground came a rumbling bellow. Tremors ran through the camp. The Punchinellos ceased shooting and stared about them. For the first time they looked truly afraid. The triumphant grin slid from Alasdair’s face. Lee threw his spear down and backed away. Something was coming. The rest of the immense creature was pushing to the surface. Cracks and crevices opened in the shaking lawn, radiating out from the broken cabin. The children cried out and jumped away as the earth bulged and shifted beneath them. The maypole toppled over. Around the camp, the fence posts trembled and the barbed wire rattled. The skelter tower creaked and teetered unsteadily and the searchlight’s harsh beam shook through the rain.
Only Jangler stood his ground. He finally knew what to do. Striding up to Yikker, he calmly seized the guard’s automatic pistol and took careful aim.
A single shot rang out. On one of the collapsed walls there was a shower of sparks and a fork of blue lightning escaped from the shattered brass grill in the Bakelite device. The static leaped across to the twisting army of tentacles. It flashed and coiled about them. There was a piercing whine and the smashed bridging unit clattered down the wall.
The crackling lights flared. A sound louder than gunfire went booming over the trees. The children covered their ears and blinked – the ruined cabin was empty. The monstrous creature was no longer there. It had snapped out of existence in this world. The debris of the smashed building slid into the open fissure it left behind and across the camp the ground sagged. Huge dips sunk into the lawn. It was over.
“I am heartily sick of uninvited guests,” Jangler said with a sniff as he returned the gun to Yikker. “What exactly was that thing? I can’t recall anything of that nature in Mooncaster.”
Yikker was too slow-witted to think up an answer, but Captain Swazzle was instantly at their side.
“A Marshwyrm,” the Captain said with a sideways glance at Yikker.
Jangler pulled at his moustache. “Ah,” he said bluffly. “One of those dangerous beasts that sometimes creep in under the hills. I’ve never seen one; that explains why I didn’t recognise it.”
“Most nasty,” Swazzle declared. “Big trouble.”
“Yes, well, it’s gone now. Let’s get this place back to normal. Such a shame about having to sacrifice the bridging device and a pity about your fallen comrade. He died most courageously. I’ll get some of the aberrants to dig a grave. We’ll sort the rest of this mess in the morning. It looks like a tornado has struck. Hmm… I suppose the boys from this cabin will have to share with the other three lads. Line everyone up for a quick headcount. Make sure everyone’s present and correct.”
The guards pushed the stunned, staggering children into their usual rows. Yikker quickly noticed one of them was missing.
“Where Stinkboy?” he demanded. “Where he?”
Maggie raised a tear-stained face.
“He’s gone,” she said desolately. “That monster dragged him down. Marcus is gone – he’s dead.”
LEE AND SPENCER were chosen to dig Anchu’s grave. It was no use protesting, so they worked as fast as they could. Jangler granted them permission to work past eight o’clock to get the job done. Garrugaska watched, the rain dripping from the Stetson and running down his hooked silver nose as the guard chain-smoked cheroots. When the boys were finished, the dead Punchinello was dropped into the ground, without words or ceremony. The other guards weren’t even present. For them there was no grief, no sense of loss, just a corpse to be disposed of and more booze and cigarettes to go round.
Lee wondered what would have happened if Jangler hadn’t insisted on the burial. What would they have done? Left the body to rot, or would they have made use of it in the same way they had made use of the dead Doggy-Long-Legs? The boy’s skin crawled. He and Spencer filled in the grave as swiftly as they could then handed back the shovels and traipsed into their new cabin.
Lee commandeered the mezzanine for them both. Neither Drew nor Nicholas dared oppose him. Alasdair was standing on a chair examining the Bakelite device fixed to their wall.
“Is it true?” the Scot asked them. “Is Marcus really dead? He’s no just escaped under the fence in the confusion?”
Spencer stared at him angrily. “He wouldn’t have gone on his own!” he snapped. “He wasn’t like that. Marcus was… he was going to take…”
“Oh, he’s real dead,” Lee interrupted quickly, in case Spencer let slip about the tunnel. He still didn’t trust anyone outside their little group. “Maggie says that thing just snatched him clean down. Happened in a click.”
“Yeah, but she’s no exactly reliable, is she? And him…”
“I was there!” Spencer shouted back. “One second Marcus was talking, the next… he’d disappeared and those massive worms were everywhere! He was my friend, so don’t you say anything!”
Alasdair chewed his bottom lip. Spencer’s outburst astonished him. That spotty lad was like a ghost usually. He was so quiet and withdrawn you forgot he was there – especially now he no longer had his cowboy hat.
“I didnae like the guy,” he admitted. “But I wouldnae have wished that on him.”
“Try putting yourself in Maggie’s shoes,” Lee said. “She did like the guy – a lot.”
“What were those things?” Nicholas asked suddenly. “I can’t make sense of it. Monsters like that aren’t real. What was it? How did it vanish like that?”
“Kid,” Lee said impatiently, “you is living in a place where all kinds of crap that shouldn’t be real are part of your every day. Why you still aksin’ questions from the top of the dork sheet? Somebody smack him awake.”
Alasdair tapped the Bakelite unit with his fingers. “It were something to do wi’ this,” he muttered. “Did ye hear what old Mainwaring said about these jobbies? Called them bridges. How does a knackered old radio bridge anything? What the hell is going on here?”
“You just answered your own question there,” Lee replied, trudging up the stairs.
In Maggie’s cabin, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring blankly into space. Charm had remained with her till lights out when she had to leave. There was nothing she could say, no comfort she could give. Charm asked the other girls in there to look after her, but they made no answer. Most of them were too traumatised by what they had seen. They were terrified something else would rise through the earth to destroy their cabin and kill them too. Jangler had assured them that was not going to happen, but no one believed him.
Jody voiced doubts that no cabin was safe now anyway and they were bound to collapse after all that violent shaking. She pointed to a long crack in
the plaster that ran across one wall as evidence the structure was now unsound and dangerous. She demanded they be relocated. The old man merely laughed at the suggestion. Just who did she think they were? If the roofs fell in on them, it wouldn’t matter. They weren’t important.
And so the girls lay in their beds, wide awake, straining for strange sounds and expecting the floor and walls to tremble and cave in at any moment. How could they possibly get any sleep?
An hour passed and still Maggie did not move. Darkness filled the dorm, but she was unaware of everything around her. Her thoughts were empty and numb. Eventually her face clouded and she uttered a dismal groan.
“I never even saw him without bruises on his face,” she declared. “I’ll never know what he looked like without those black eyes.”
Jody let out a bored grunt. “You didn’t miss much,” she said unpleasantly. “Marcus were a thick meathead with a mug to match.”
Maggie turned, slowly emerging from her frozen daze. “What?” she asked, unable to believe she had heard her correctly.
“Not exactly a tragic loss to the gene pool, were he?” Jody continued. “Least he didn’t get to breed. Or maybe he did? Wouldn’t surprise me, he were always on the sniff. There’s probably half a dozen of his monobrow sprogs dragging their knuckles out of their buggies round Manchester already.”
“You’d best shut up,” Maggie warned.
“Don’t you try bossing me about,” Jody told her. “That’s what your big-nosed buddies do. I’ll say what I think, cos I’m not a hypocrite and I’m being honest. Do you even know what that means?”
“I said, shut up.”
Christina sat up in bed and chuckled softly.
“What’s it to you anyway?” Jody taunted. “It were plastic satsuma face he had the hots for. Had the horn for her since we got here, he had. Pathetic it were. Us all laughed at him.”
That was it. She had pushed too far. Maggie stormed round to her bedside and smacked Jody hard. The girl cried out in surprise and clasped her stinging cheek.
“You know nothing!” Maggie shouted. “Marcus read you right. You are twisted and full of bile and…”
The rest of the sentence was cut short as she was wrenched backwards. Christina had jumped up and caught hold of her hair. Maggie fell back on to the bed. Jody leaped after her, landing on the girl’s stomach. She repaid the smack three times over, followed by a punch in the ribs.
“What you goin’ to do now, Gutso?” Jody cried. “You only got one macho wazzock left to defend you – and he’s too interested in Barbie to do owt about it. With any luck, he’ll have caught pneumonia digging that grave out there tonight.”
“Hit her again!” Christina urged, tearing at Maggie’s hair. “Thump her, scratch her. We hate her, don’t we?”
Maggie arched her back and swung her arm round, clouting Jody’s head and throwing her off. Then she reached back and shoved Christina roughly with both hands. The seven-year-old squealed and rolled off the bed. Maggie got to her feet in time to confront Jody springing back at her. The two girls fought with their fists. They swiped and flew at each other, but Maggie was the stronger. She landed a punch on Jody’s jaw that sent the other girl reeling.
Christina howled and ran at Maggie, with her teeth bared. She clawed and bit her arm till it bled. Maggie picked her up and flung her across the room. Christina landed on one of the other beds and bounced back for another attack.
The other girls were kneeling up, watching the shapes of the combatants vie with each other in the gloom. It took their minds off the horror of before and they started calling out, encouraging Jody to get stuck in and teach the dirty traitor a lesson. Then one of them got out of bed to join in. Another followed. Then another. The dark cabin was alive with violence and anger.
Maggie was surrounded. She couldn’t fight them all and she couldn’t escape. One foot outside the door would be answered with a hail of bullets. They had her trapped. The pent-up fears of every girl came boiling to the surface and they lashed out at her. She couldn’t defend herself against so many. They tore at her arms and dragged her to the ground. They stood on her hands and pinned her down. A foot pressed heavily on her chest and they sat on her legs. The darkness was thick with their panting breaths and they looked to Jody for instruction.
“Get off me!” Maggie demanded. “Let go!”
Jody leaned over her face, menacingly, then kicked her head. Maggie roared.
“You’ve had this coming a long time,” Jody snarled. “You’re filth. You’re double-dealing scum. This is payback time.”
She spat in her face and ordered the others to do the same. As they obeyed, Jody went searching through the nearest bedside cabinet.
“I know what to do with the likes of her,” she said, returning with something in her hand. “If she loves the world of Mooncaster so much, she can eat it.”
Then the others realised what she was holding and they murmured uneasily. It was a copy of Dancing Jax. Jody laughed at them for being so weak and afraid.
“I’m going to feed her fat face with it,” she growled, opening the book and tearing out the first page.
“You’re mad!” Maggie shouted. “You can’t do this!”
The other girls looked worried. Defacing that book was a serious crime. None of them dared go that far. Jody tore out a second page and crumpled them together.
“Open the whale’s mouth,” she said.
The girls hesitated and shook their heads.
“Scaredy-cats,” Christina called them, pushing through to pinch Maggie’s nose tightly and force her chin down.
“Good girl,” Jody praised her. “Now let’s choke the gormless lardo with Austerly Fellows’ evil prose.”
She pushed the scrunched-up pages into Maggie’s mouth. Then she ripped out more and crammed them in after. The other girls shrank away. The frenzied hysteria had burst and their madness had evaporated. They watched Jody with increasing horror. As Maggie gagged and struggled to breathe, her tormentor began to laugh. It was a horrible, insane sound.
“That’s enough,” one of them said.
“You’ll kill her,” another girl cried.
Jody threw them a disgusted glance. “It’s what she deserves! We’ve all suffered in this place. She’s a spy for baldy. I hope she does die!”
“Stop!” the girls called. “Stop it!”
“Never! I’m making her eat these lies. This book ruined everything. Don’t you want to make her pay? I ruddy do – and if I had a knife, I’d trim some of her ugly blubber off as…”
Suddenly the door was thrown open. The searchlight swept down from the skelter tower and shone directly into the cabin. The girls fell back. Captain Swazzle’s grotesque silhouette was standing in the dazzling white glare. The Punchinello barged in, knocked Christina out of the way then seized Jody by the throat.
“Jody Jody Jody,” the Captain’s nasal voice hissed. “You think you hurt sacred book and we not feel? You very silly. Me punish you big now – oh, yes, oh, yes.”
He dragged her, shrieking, from the cabin. Christina tried running out after them, but one of the other girls pulled her back. On the floor, Maggie retched and spat the pages out.
Every guard had sensed the violation of the book. They stationed themselves outside the cabin doors and the children inside peered past them to see what was happening.
Jangler heard the commotion and came trotting out. Captain Swazzle had hauled Jody to the skelter tower and the old man hastened over there.
“A most heinous act!” he exclaimed as soon as he found out what had occurred. “This disgraceful, pig-headed girl refuses to behave. What are we to do with her?”
A wide, leering grin spread over Swazzle’s face.
In his cabin, Alasdair was watching helplessly. “What’s she s’posed to have done noo?” he demanded, banging on the door glass at the guard standing outside. “Leave her be, ya toaty bawbags!”
Yikker ignored him. The guard was sulking that Marcus
was no longer here to torment.
The other prisoners looked on fearfully. Charm put her arms round her girls. She hoped Maggie was all right. What was Jangler going to do to Jody this time? They did not have to wait long for the answer.
Ropes were tied round Jody’s wrists and Swazzle darted up the stairs inside the tower. Then the Captain heaved on the ropes and the girl was hoisted halfway up. As she cried and begged for help and mercy, the Punchinello bound her to the timber framework and she hung there, like so much washing on a line.
“You stay,” Captain Swazzle called to her. “You stay, you suffer – Jody Jody Jody.”
The imp came scampering down the steps again and Jangler nodded his satisfaction.
“Let her dangle there another three days,” the old man said. “That should break her. Make sure none of the others get close or speak to her.”
Captain Swazzle gave a little skipping dance then narrowed those beady eyes. “We need talk,” he said. “We need new clothes.”
“If your tunics are dirty, order some of the aberrants to wash them.”
“No. Want new different clothes. Not tunics. We no likey tunics. We want change – like Garrugaska.”
“You all want to wear cowboy outfits?” Jangler asked in astonishment. “That’s ludicrous! This isn’t the Alamo or the OK Corral.”
“Not cowboy,” Swazzle told him. “We want different. Each want different. Must have.”
“Very well, I’ll see what I can do. But it’s most irregular.”
“You do. I tell what we want. Must have.”
They wandered back to Jangler’s cabin to discuss the new clothes, leaving Jody suspended high above the ground, lashed to the skelter tower.