by Robin Jarvis
“Probably fallen over,” the boy murmured to himself. “Hope he flattened that massive conk, the lightweight milk jockey.”
Even as he said it, the white fedora bobbed into view. Alasdair applied the cutters feverishly. It wouldn’t be long now. He wrenched at the steel mesh, making a hole just large enough to crawl through. Then he turned the aerosol on himself.
“Halt!” Captain Swazzle shrieked in the distance. “Stand and disclose!”
Alasdair was already on his stomach, worming through the fence. A strand of sharp steel he hadn’t bent properly ripped through the shirt and gouged along his back. He stifled a cry and hauled himself clear.
Squawking, the Captain came running. Alasdair scrambled to his feet and hared into the trees, squirting a trail of body spray as he ran, in the opposite direction to the one the others were going to take.
Swazzle halted in front of the damaged fence. The hideously wide mouth gibbered with rage. The Punchinello glared at the trees beyond, then let the machine gun do its screaming.
On the skelter tower, Yikker heard the weapon blasting into the night and lumbered to his feet. The great hooked nose trembled as the sensitive nostrils caught a familiar and much despised scent on the air – one that Yikker had thought never to smell again.
“Stinkboy!” the guard growled.
Yikker had been sorely disappointed not to have been the one to kill Marcus. The guard had always been suspicious that there had been no corpse found and harboured a secret belief that he had somehow managed to escape during the appearance of the tentacled monster that rainy night.
Now the night air was giving proof to that belief. Stinkboy was back!
Whooping, Yikker turned the searchlight on, directing the beam towards the gunfire. Then the guard went clomping down the tower stairs, his own pistol in hand.
Lee and Spencer were still in the cabin with the last three girls when the shooting started.
“Could just be firing at nuthin’,” Lee said, trying to make the girls less terrified. “You know what them big-nosed goons is like.”
Suddenly the TVs were switched off next door and the abrupt silence was more frightening than the gunshots. Garrugaska and Bezuel came rushing out, eager to see what was going on. They scampered between the cabins and ran to the rear fence.
“Now!” Lee said. He opened the door and looked around. He saw the searchlight pointing towards the back of the camp and breathed a huge sigh of relief. He hoped Alasdair’s little diversion would detain those bloodthirsty monsters just long enough.
Behind them, the bedding stuffed under the bathroom door darkened and furred with mould as the splinter of Austerly Fellows emerged.
Lee and the others ran past the end cabins. There was more gunfire and the guards were quacking shrilly, revelling in every moment of the chase. Lee turned. That Scottish kid did all right and those Punchies were stupider than he imagined, if they were beyond the fence, chasing empty shadows in the woods.
Spencer and the girls ran on, to where Maggie was waiting. Lee was about to follow when he caught sight of Esther sobbing in fear on her step, too afraid to move. She had changed her mind. She didn’t want to be left here on her own. But now the guns petrified her.
“Hell,” Lee mumbled, doubling back to fetch the stupid girl.
“I can’t move, I can’t move!” she snivelled when he reached her.
“Now you can,” he said sternly, grabbing Esther’s arm and frogmarching her towards the graves.
“We’re going to be killed!” she wept.
“Don’t tempt me,” he replied, brandishing the skull stick in his other hand.
They rushed to the fence. Maggie and everyone were now on the other side, waiting anxiously.
It was ten to eleven.
Lee pushed Esther through then stepped away and held up his hand in farewell.
“What are you doing?” Maggie asked. “There’s no time. Come on!”
“Ain’t comin’,” he answered. “Least, I got me summat to do first. You go find that truck and get the hell outta here. Look after my sweet’s girls for her.”
“Lee!” Spencer called. “Don’t do it!”
He was wasting his breath. Lee was already striding back over the grass, towards the end cabin. The unicorn club swung menacingly in his hand.
Spencer turned to Maggie. “You heard him,” he snapped. “Get going.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Stop here till the guards come back – till he comes back – I don’t know. Now get lost – go on!”
Maggie hugged him quickly then ran into the trees with the rest, heading for the main road, the wand still in her grasp.
Lee’s brows hooded his eyes. His mind was calm. What he was about to do was going to be in cold blood. He’d enjoy it more that way.
“What anarchy is this?” a familiar, pompous voice spoke out. Jangler’s portly shape was standing outside his cabin, staring sleepily around at the camp and listening to the gunfire in the distance. In his hand he held his mobile and he adjusted his spectacles as he read the latest text.
“Old man!” Lee called out. “You an’ me got business.”
Jangler turned to him and put the phone into his pocket.
“So,” he declared. “You’re the one. I did wonder if the spotty cowboy lad was the Creeper, or that Esther girl; they’re both skulkers by nature. What is that you have there? Been to a jumble sale, have you?”
Lee tapped the skull against the palm of his hand. “This is what I’m gonna beat your sick brains in with,” he promised.
“I think not,” Jangler said and he called for the guards.
Lee took a step nearer. “Oh, them’s way too busy chasing nuthin’, back there in the woods,” he said. “Jus’ you an’ me here.”
From Lee’s cabin, the splinter of Austerly Fellows came bubbling and seething. It pulsed on the doorstep, viewing the showdown between the gaoler and the Castle Creeper. It tensed, preparing to intervene and protect the Lockpick’s life.
The old man took his hand from the pocket. He had exchanged the mobile for a small pistol. He wasn’t stupid enough to arm the guards and not take precautions of his own.
“You, me and my gun,” he told the boy. “Now drop the white elephant.”
Lee hadn’t anticipated he’d be armed. It showed in his face and he let the skull club fall to the ground.
On the step the pulsating black mould quivered in amusement. The danger to Jangler was over. That wily old man was more than capable of looking after himself. But it was time the guards returned to hunt down the escaped aberrants. This camp had ceased to be of worth. New and larger camps in other countries would be opening soon. Spilling on to the ground, the mould streaked through the grass, rushing swiftly towards the back fence to summon the Punchinellos back. The woods were full of moving targets for them to gun down.
“You ain’t gonna pop that thing at me,” Lee said, eyeing the gun. “Your Ismus guy needs me alive.”
A callous smile tweaked Jangler’s moustache.
“I hold a different view,” he said. “The Creeper is far too dangerous to be allowed to live. You could wreak havoc in Mooncaster if unchecked. I suggested massacring the lot of you right at the start to be sure, but Mr Fellows disagreed. I would never presume to correct the Grand Duke, but it would seem my opinion was the correct one. You should have been slaughtered then. That is an omission I shall now set right, and balance the account to my satisfaction.”
Holding the gun at arm’s length, he braced himself for the recoil.
“Beyond the Silvering Sea…” Lee said suddenly. “Within thirteen green, girdling hills…”
The old man started and gaped at the boy incredulously. What was he doing?
“…lies the wondrous Kingdom of the Dawn Prince…”
Jangler’s head began to nod and he started to rock backwards and forwards, slipping into that other existence. He felt a cold breath on the back of his neck and the will ebb
ing out of him. The gun fell from his fingers.
Lee came stampeding forward with his head down. Yelling ferociously, he dived at the old man, his hands grabbing the gaoler’s throat. Together they fell, but by the time Lee hit the ground, Jangler was nowhere to be seen and the boy was unconscious.
Jangler looked up. It was still night but it was cold. He saw the stars blazing brightly in the sky, the way they burned in…
“Get up, you lowlife. I wanna knock you down again.”
Lee was standing over him. Jangler sat up and fumbled for the gun. It wasn’t in the grass and the ground was wet and boggy. He stared around fearfully.
They were on a strip of spongy ground. Around them was a fetid swamp.
“Where…?” he spluttered.
“Don’t you recognise the neighbourhood?” the boy taunted. “Guess you castle guys don’t make it out this way too often.”
“I’m… in Mooncaster?”
Lee seized the collar of the Lockpick’s costume and hoisted him roughly to his feet.
“Yeah!” he roared right in his face. “I brought you home!”
Jangler blinked and shuddered. “It… cannot be,” he stammered. “How can I be here and know who you are – and know of that dream life in the camp? It’s… it’s not possible. I’m not still asleep. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Awww, shoulda brung your clipboard. You coulda worked it out on there.”
“I… I don’t understand this.”
“You won’t have to get used to it for long,” Lee told him, taking the phone from the old man’s pocket.
“That device!” Jangler cried. “It has no place here! It doesn’t belong!”
“Ain’t no coverage neither,” Lee remarked. “That’s OK. I weren’t gonna ring no one. Mmm… nice sealed unit, looks waterproof to me, does it to you? Let’s find out, yeah? Just setting the alarm to vibrate.”
He gave the old man a contemptuous shove that threw him off balance and sent him tumbling. His hands splashed into the brackish bog and he only just saved himself from tipping head first into the swamp.
“See,” Lee said, squatting on his haunches to stare him in the face. “Beating your brains in really weren’t enough. What you did to her – that deserves something a bit more special. A bit more off the hook.”
He tossed the phone in the air then jumped up and caught it. Reaching back, he threw it into the middle of the dark, sludgy water. The mobile floated on the thick slime for several moments then it sank slowly down into the cold darkness.
“Now get up and go fetch it.”
“What?”
“I said, GET UP!”
Lee hauled him to his feet again and pushed him into the slime. But the old man’s initial shock at being dragged here had faded and he refused to be pushed around. He was Austerly Fellows’ most trusted servant and had led the Inner Circle for many years in his absence.
Squelching back on to the bank, he raised his fists.
“Oh, you just made this so much more fun for me,” Lee said, grinning.
Jangler ran at him and Lee learned his appearance was deceptive. The old man was strong and solid. He dashed the lad’s hands aside like straws and came barrelling in to smash a punch on his jaw and follow it with an uppercut under the chin.
Lee reeled sideways, stepping into the mire. Jangler shrieked wildly and kicked out with his foot. Lee sprawled into the marsh, but he reached out and pulled the man with him. In the sucking mud, the pair of them slugged it out.
Down in the deep, the mobile began to flash and vibrate.
Caked in filth they battled. Hammering blows were dealt on both sides and blood mingled with the ooze. Jangler’s thumbs reached for Lee’s eyes and began to push them into the sockets. The boy bawled then slithered and slipped out of his hands. The marsh was pulling them further down. They were going to drown here.
“OK,” Lee accepted grimly. “Long as he goes down with me – I’m cool with that.”
He launched himself at the old man and tried to duck him under the surface.
In the centre of the wide swamp, large bubbles began to rise and break in the air.
A great disturbance was travelling up through the reeking mud. Lee and Jangler were lifted on the swell. The boy used it, thrashing his arms and legs to try and catch hold of the grassy clumps that grew around the edge of the bank. Clawing at the sod, it took every ounce of strength to trawl himself clear and he dropped, exhausted. Gripping one of Lee’s ankles, Jangler pulled himself out after and staggered upright.
The old man’s dripping face was plastered in scum and algae. He spat it from his mouth as he addressed the boy one last time.
“You want to know how she died?” he tormented him. “Screaming and slow, screaming and slow.” Throwing back his head, he laughed repulsively.
Lee pressed his face against the wet ground and his fingers raked through the soft clay. He couldn’t go on. He couldn’t live with this. Tears fell from his eyes, but he knew he had to make one last effort. He raised himself on his elbows and started crawling away.
Jangler’s foul laughter reverberated over the swamp. Then his voice changed and the laugh became a strangled shriek. Lee didn’t turn round, he kept on moving.
Jangler howled. A pale, mottled tongue, as thick as his arm, was coiled about his middle. It tightened and squeezed the old man’s stomach then pulled and tugged him around. Jangler’s spectacles were lost in the mire, but he could still see the immense horror of the Marsh King. The tawny eyes bulged out at him and the tongue began to tow him back into the mud.
The third generation of Janglers screeched in terror.
Lee stumbled to his feet and forced himself to look, for her sake.
The massive jaws opened and Jangler was drawn out, across the bog – towards those needle-like teeth.
“Screamin’ an’ slow,” Lee uttered bitterly.
The boy stared into the bloated frog’s speckled eyes.
“Make sure you chew that proper,” he told it. “No gulping it down. Make it last.”
Jangler’s frantic screams intensified. Lee lingered a few moments more, just to make certain.
“Bon appétit,” he said.
Spencer knelt over Lee’s unconscious form and looked around in bewilderment. Where did Jangler vanish to? He had seen Lee charge at him and saw them both fall together, but the old man had simply disappeared.
Spencer shook his friend urgently. They couldn’t stay here. It was eleven o’clock. The lorry would be leaving.
It was no use. It was as if Lee was dead. Spencer didn’t know what to do. Should he abandon him and run for the road, in the hope the lorry was still there? He couldn’t do that. Seeing the stick with the unicorn’s skull, lying close by, he reached for it. Then he saw Jangler’s gun.
Across the world something remarkable was happening. The hundreds of millions of copies of Dancing Jax were smouldering. In people’s homes, in their bags, in their hands as they were reading, in huge container crates awaiting distribution, the pages in which the Lockpick of the White Castle was mentioned began to burn. Every reference to Jangler, the gaoler of Mooncaster, glowed with scarlet fire. The ink was scorched clean off the paper, leaving blank spaces behind. The line illustrations depicting him as a portly man, with a waxed moustache and pointed beard, sizzled and flared, leaving no trace on the page.
In New York, the Ismus felt the old man’s death, like a knife in his own heart. Letting out an agonised yell, he collapsed into the arms of the Black Face Dames.
“Jangler!” he wept.
This was the power of the Castle Creeper. There was no character called Jangler in the book any more and none of the others would remember there ever being one.
Surging through the woods, chasing after the guards, the splinter of Austerly Fellows also felt the old man’s death. The frothing mould crackled and juddered. Rearing up, it shook, weeping in sync with the Ismus in New York. Then, when that man collapsed, the splinter exploded.
/> “Please wake up!” Spencer called to Lee. “Please come back!”
Growing more and more fretful, he decided to drag Lee over to the fence and pull him through the breach. He didn’t think he was strong enough to lug him through the trees to the road, but he’d try his damnedest.
And then he heard a sound that turned his blood to water.
A pair of spurs came clinking between the cabins and Garrugaska turned a delighted face upon him.
The silver-nosed Punchinello removed the cheroot from his mouth and spat on the ground.
“Get ready, little lady,” he drawled, quoting the Outlaw Josey Wales. “Hell is coming to breakfast.”
He nudged the Stetson on his head, and licked his lips. Then his large hand moved to the holster at his side.
“Prepare to do a whole lot of dying,” he snickered.
Spencer couldn’t breathe. A shot rang out across the camp and he was thrown back.
Garrugaska grinned widely. Then a trickle of dark blood dribbled down the silver nose and the beady eyes swivelled round.
“Awww… darn it…” he groaned as he crashed into the grass.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Spencer yelped, astonished by the recoil of Jangler’s gun. He waggled his hand and shook his arm. Then he ran over and tentatively touched the guard with his foot. He was undeniably dead.
Spencer grimaced and took the Stetson from him.
“Mine,” he said, wiping the hat on his trousers.
At that moment, Lee’s legs started to kick. He let out a woeful cry and snapped back into his body. Suddenly he was covered in stinking mud, his eyebrow was bleeding and he was choked with emotion.
Spencer hurried back to him.
“We’ve got to go!” he said. “Before it’s too late!”
Lee shook his head. He’d done what he wanted. He didn’t have anything left. This was it for him.
“You go,” he said in a hollow voice. “Leave me here.”
Spencer thrust his hand under Lee’s slimy arm and heaved. “Shift yourself!” he ordered.
“Can’t,” Lee answered. “I got things in my head I can’t get rid of. Don’t wanna live with them in there.”