by Robin Jarvis
Lee shook his head fiercely and the little girl choked in his strong grip. Pleadingly, she looked over to Alasdair and stretched a feeble arm towards him. The Scot charged at Lee and threw his weight against the boy. They went crashing to the carpet and Christina fell to her hands and knees, coughing.
“You madman!” the Scot yelled as he struggled and fought, one-handed. “What do ye think you’re doin’? She’s but seven years old! You out of your mind?”
Lee tried to push him off, but Alasdair’s fury gave him strength and he punched Lee in the face. The two of them vied with one another and Christina picked herself up. Not looking back, she hurried to the door again.
“Stop her!” Lee shouted.
Christina opened the door, but was snatched back by Maggie, who hauled her further inside. The young girl clawed and screamed like a wild animal. By now Drew and Nicholas had heard the commotion and were running down the stairs. Spencer ran at them with the wand and the skull club.
“Stay there!” he told them.
“What’s going on?” Nicholas cried. “What’s she doing to Christina?”
Maggie shoved the girl on to a bed and tried to hold her down. Christina pushed back her head and screamed at the top of her voice.
“Jangler! Jangler! Help me!”
The noise of the Punchinellos’ TVs drowned out her screeching. Nobody outside the cabin heard her.
Lee finally managed to overpower Alasdair and came lurching to help Maggie.
“You goin’ no place!” he told Christina.
The child glared at him. Then she called out to Nicholas and Drew, sobbing in anguish.
“I’m scared. They’re hurting – save me! I don’t understand! What have I done wrong?”
The boys on the stairs tried to push past Spencer to help her, but he struck one against the head with the skull and kicked the other in the stomach. Both of them stumbled to their knees. Spencer took a deep breath. He didn’t know he could do this sort of thing. He kind of enjoyed that. But he hoped they weren’t badly hurt.
Alasdair was back on his feet and came running. Spencer pointed the unicorn’s horn at him and the Scot skidded to a stop before it.
“You’re all mental!” he raged. “You’ve woke up crazy. Let her go, for heaven’s sake! She’s only a wee lass!”
“Alasdair!” Christina wept. “Make them stop.”
“In God’s name!” he begged.
Lee stared down at her, revulsion contorting his face.
“This ain’t Christina,” he said. “That little girl ain’t been around for a long time. What we got here is a spycam.”
“What?”
“You always thought we had an informer in here with us. You was right, but you was lookin’ in the wrong places.”
“Dinnae be absurd, man. You’re no makin’ sense! Listen to yourself! That’s Christina there. Can ye no see that?”
Maggie shook her head. “Christina’s dead,” she told him.
“You’re out of your minds! She’s right there!”
“That’s just her body,” Lee insisted. “He’s been inside it all along!”
“What? Who?”
“The Ismus! Watching and laughing at us. Makin’ us fight ourselves, telling tales to Jangler, grassing on Jody, making her do stuff – pushing her over the edge.”
“Christina wouldnae ever do that!”
“Oh, open your eyes! Look at her!”
Alasdair gazed down. The seven-year-old had stopped struggling, her energies spent. He wanted to rescue her from these mad people, but with only one good hand it was impossible. He felt such a failure. He failed everyone – Jim, then Jody, now her – as he had failed to save his parents, that night in Edinburgh.
The boy caught his breath.
A change had come over Christina’s face. The eyes were darkening and her trembling chin set hard. Her mouth became cruel and severe. She turned her head and those black, glittering eyes regarded Alasdair with scorn.
The Scot swore and retreated fearfully.
“Och, no…” he breathed.
Christina’s lip curled and she opened her mouth to speak. But the voice was not her own, it was that of the Ismus. Christina’s voice was gone forever.
“You and Jody were so easy to delude,” the man snarled. “It was too easy really, there was no challenge there. You got boring very quickly. What a dreary pairing you made. Is it any wonder I spiced it up a little? At least Fatty and Muscleboy had comedy value. A shame he got digested by one of my Lord’s pets. I used to enjoy pretending to faint so he could carry me. Do you realise what a chore it is, making these dead legs walk?”
Alasdair staggered away. “Make it stop!” he said. “Shut its filthy mouth afore I do.”
“This body had served its purpose anyway,” the Ismus continued as inky spots peppered across the forehead and the mould came sprouting out. “You won’t be able to stop me when I leave it. I might even pounce on one of you and take you over, for a laugh.”
The pitiless eyes fixed on Maggie. “I wonder what it feels like, being a walrus in a dress?” he sniggered. “I might crawl inside you. Mmmm… nice and roomy – I could throw a party.”
The head lifted to stare at Spencer. “Or how about you, Cowpoke? I’d make you run outside and give Garrugaska a rootin’-tootin’ treat by letting him gun you down like an outlaw – or maybe he could hang you. It’d be the first dance you were ever good at. Aww, don’t look so nervous. It’s what you wanted a while ago.”
Then the Ismus’s attention rested on Lee. “And what of you, Creeper? Shall I invade your head and see what makes the tocks go tick? Not quite the nice boy your proud mummy thought you were, are you? See, I did my research very thoroughly. A gang member – tut tut, blud. And that night, when you were going to mete out some hard justice to those other lost youths… who was it really had the gun? It was yours, wasn’t it? I’d like to know if you fired it before you were dragged to Mooncaster that first time. If I rummage around in your stubborn head, will I discover what truly happened in that underground car park? How many did you shoot as they read my sacred words to you and your bruvs?”
“You won’t climb inside my head,” Lee stated coldly. “You need me alive. I’m the only one can kill your Bad Shepherd and that’s way too juicy a peach for you to chuck. You daren’t get rid of me – case I change my mind and do it.”
“Lee!” Maggie cried.
The Ismus laughed.
“I knew my offer didn’t fall on closed ears!” he chuckled foully. “What I said can still be yours – you and the delectable Charm, together…”
Lee lifted the girl’s body from the bed.
“Yeah, but like I told you, next few minutes of my life gonna be real busy.”
“I won’t allow you to kill Jangler!” the Ismus warned.
Lee carried Christina to the bathroom and thrust her inside, pulling the door shut.
“Time to advertise for a new gaoler,” he muttered.
“You can’t keep me in here!” the Ismus yelled, heaving on the handle. Black mould foamed from Christina’s eyes and ears.
On the other side, Lee told the others to grab the duvets and force as much of them under the door as they could to seal the gap.
“He can’t get through there, surely?” Spencer said.
“You better be glad there ain’t no keyhole in this,” Lee replied. “Now find somethin’ to keep this door shut with! And if you see any stuff crawling through, jump the hell away from it. Don’t let it touch you.”
There wasn’t much time. He told Drew to hold the handle then claimed the unicorn stick and Malinda’s wand from Spencer.
“You can’t just go kill the old man,” the boy told him.
“Come watch me.”
“But it’s quarter past ten now. There’ll be a lorry waiting for us at the top of the road at eleven. We can get out. It doesn’t have to end here!”
“Ended for me when he butchered her. No going back from that. And he nee
ds to pay.”
“Stop feeling so sorry for yourself! You’ve got this amazing gift that no one else has and you’re the only one who can stand up against that devil in there! How dare you think of throwing it away!”
Maggie left Drew stuffing a duvet under the door and barricading it with pillows.
“Spencer’s right,” she said. “We’ve got a chance to escape from this place. The only one we’ll ever get. What do you think is going to happen to us? Me and Spence are good as dead if we stop here after what we’ve done. And what about Charm’s girls? She’d give them this. She gave them everything she had.”
Lee hated it when other people were right. Even so, there might be a way to accomplish both… He glanced out of the door. Yikker was still singing up in the tower. But Captain Swazzle was making a drunken patrol of the perimeter, armed with the machine gun.
“How we gettin’ past that?” he asked.
“Marcus worked that out,” Spencer remembered. “He knew how long it took one of them to walk the fence. The speed Swazzle’s going, it’ll take a bit longer tonight. There’s plenty of time to dodge him completely.”
“Not long enough to get eighteen kids outta here,” Lee stated. “We wouldn’t make it.”
Alasdair stirred. “If we could cut the wire,” he spoke up, in a stilted, grief-cracked voice, “I’ve got an idea.”
Lee reached into his pocket and fished out the cutters.
Two minutes later, one end of a sheet had been tied to the handle of the bathroom door and the other to a railing of the banister. It wasn’t going to open any time soon.
Inside, the splinter of Austerly Fellows had evacuated Christina’s body and she was lying on the floor, finally at peace. The bubbling mass of mould sat on top of her. It gave a frothing chuckle when the edges of duvet came squeezing under the door. It didn’t even need to get out of here. There was a far simpler, faster way of warning Jangler.
In a New York penthouse suite, the Ismus opened his eyes and called for a telephone. One of the Harlequin Priests bowed and went to attend to it.
Back in the camp, Alasdair and Maggie waited till Captain Swazzle disappeared beyond the main block. Then they crept out. Crouching in the shadows, they hurried in turn to the other cabins and roused everyone from sleep, then hurriedly explained what was happening.
The girls were frightened but excited. Some were reluctant and didn’t want to take such a terrible risk. These were mainly in Esther’s cabin. Cracking her knuckles nervously, the thirteen-year-old refused to leave and said anyone who did was mad. They’d all be shot. Maggie and the others tried to tell her it was their only hope, but Esther was adamant. She was stopping.
In what had been Charm’s cabin, the girls there were only too eager to escape this horrendous place and listened carefully to what they had to do.
“If you’ve got dark clothes, put them on,” Maggie said in her own cabin. “But don’t bring anything. Leave your bags and the rest of your stuff behind. We’re going to have to run through the woods and can’t take anything that’ll slow us down.”
“Where will the lorry take us?” a girl asked.
“We don’t know, babes – but it’s got to be better than here.”
“Hey,” Alasdair said. “What happened to Marcus’s belongings? They still in the wreck of his hut?”
“No, Lee and Spencer collected most of it for me. In a bag over there. Why?”
“Och, he had a long-sleeved navy blue shirt. Would ye mind if I had a borrow of it? My gear’s no dark enough for slinkin’ aboot.”
“Sure.”
Alasdair opened the bag. He found what he was looking for and closed his eyes momentarily. Some lines from one of his favourite songs came whispering from his lips like a valediction.
“When darkness comes and pain is all around, like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.”
The significance of what he was about to do weighed heavily. Yet it was the only way – the others wouldn’t have time otherwise. One last hopeless chase and sacrifice, to try and atone for the mess he’d made.
“Great,” he told Maggie, making sure she didn’t suspect what he was up to. “We’re ready.”
IN THE END cabin, Jangler had fallen asleep in the armchair. The detailed report he’d been writing of the day’s events was on his lap, unfinished. His mobile phone was ringing fiercely on the desk, but he didn’t hear the Ismus’s urgent summons. The Punchinellos next door were so loud he had taken to wearing earplugs. He snored peacefully and dark, oily dreams dripped through his subconscious.
Almost sixty years peeled away and he was in flannel shorts, being led down a long, sickly-smelling corridor. Hushed, funereal voices spoke over him. He was shown into a large yet stuffy bedchamber where the curtains were drawn and black candles burned either side of the deathbed. His grandfather lay there, expiring, worn out in his Lord’s service – a parched husk waiting for the end to come.
The very first Jangler, who had been present at that fateful Beltane gathering in 1936, was too weak to rise. His failing eyes looked on the young boy who had been ushered in to see him, one final time.
“Initiate him into the faith,” he whispered in a phlegmy croak to the lad’s parents. “There must always be a Jangler. Mr Fellows will return. The world will ripen. The vigil must continue, unbroken. Jangler must be here, for him to depend on.”
“Rest easy, Father,” the younger man said. “Little Maynard is already one of us. I have shown him a photograph of the Grand Duke and he worshipped it. The legacy will endure.”
Old Mr Hankinson raised a trembling hand to the boy, who reached up and took it in his. The grandfather’s last breath wheezed out and the candle flames were extinguished. The boy turned to his solemn parents. They were dressed in black robes, just like the other ten people in the room.
“Grand’da is lucky,” the boy said. “Now he is with the Dawn Prince.”
“Not until the rites are performed for him,” the new head of the family said.
“One day I shall be the Jangler,” the boy said precociously. “Hurry up and die, Daddy.”
In the cabin the mobile stopped ringing. Presently a text beeped in. And still he slept.
Alasdair’s cabin was crowded with everyone, except Esther. She had stayed resolute and remained in her own hut. No argument would budge her.
The girls were horribly afraid. Maggie tried to assure them it would be OK, but even she wasn’t a hundred per cent certain this would work. She just prayed that it would.
Alasdair’s plan was to cut two holes in the fence. One would be just behind the graves. The other would be closer to the opposite side of the camp. The hope was for Captain Swazzle to discover it on his way around and assume an escape had been made that way. This would give everyone time to make use of the first hole. It was going to be tight – there were only twenty-five minutes till eleven o’clock. They would have to race through the trees to reach the road and meet that lorry – if it was there.
They watched, hearts in mouths, as Captain Swazzle went stumbling past the gates.
“Get a move on,” Alasdair urged, under his breath.
Swazzle waddled further along until only his white fedora could be seen in the darkness. It drifted from side to side then turned.
Impatient, Alasdair opened the door before the Captain disappeared behind the main block, trusting to the drink to dull those sharp senses.
“Good luck,” Maggie told him.
“Aye,” he said, slipping out into the night.
Wearing black jeans, Marcus’s dark shirt and a torn length of black material tied round his head, to hide his sandy hair, the Scot flitted like a shadow past the two end cabins. Garrugaska and Bezuel were still boozing and watching their TVs and there wasn’t a sound from Jangler in his. Alasdair ran over the grass, towards the grave markers, and immediately set to work, snipping through the fence. It was tougher than he expected.
Presently Maggie joined him, with the first of th
e younger girls and carrying Malinda’s wand, in case they encountered one of the guards or Jangler.
“It’s taking too long,” she hissed, watching him struggle with the steel. “You can’t manage with that hand.”
“Yes, I can! There – it’s done. Get the lasses oot of here – I’ll go start on the other one.”
“Be quick!” she said. “You don’t have to make it as big as this. Just enough to make them think someone’s got out that way. Hurry back!”
“Dinnae worry about me,” he said with a mysterious, remote look on his face. “You guys be careful. I’m sorry – to all of ye, most of all to you. I was wrong, aboot so much, and made lives worse than they already were.”
Maggie stared at him, alarmed by his words. “What’s going on? Alasdair?”
The boy grinned. “Your pal, Marcus, wasnae such a choob after all,” he said, showing the can of body spray he had removed from the bag at the same time he took the navy shirt. “He’s going to give you time to get away. See – I was wrong aboot him too. I’m so sick of being wrong. Time to do something right. Something to make up for all them mistakes.”
“No!” she hissed.
“I’m doing this,” he said softly. “Just tell Lee, I was worth trusting.”
“The guards will slaughter you! It’s pointless! You won’t last a second when they catch you. Don’t do this!”
The Scot glanced at the board that marked Jim Parker’s grave. His eyes crinkled as he smiled.
“A hero never chooses his own battles,” he said, repeating words the dead boy had spoken to him so long ago now. “They choose him.”
He darted off down the fence, leaving Maggie distraught. But she couldn’t call after him and already the next pair of girls were running up, together with Drew and Nicholas. Pulling the wire back, she guided them through.
Alasdair followed the corner of the fence around and ran as far as he dared. Swazzle still hadn’t emerged from behind the main block.