by Sophie Green
‘Have you?’ Naomi turned to Abe and narrowed her eyes. ‘Really?’
Abe tried to laugh it off in a strange combination of snorts, shrugs and the occasional ‘ha!’, then he leant on the end of one of the shelves, which pitched under his weight and jettisoned a row of soft-bodied clowns into the air.
He grabbed a couple of fistfuls and stuffed them hurriedly back onto the shelf where they slumped forward like they had bellyache.
‘Yes,’ said Lil matter-of-factly. ‘You see, I have secrets too.’
She and Naomi stood in silence for a few seconds, neither one looking away.
‘If we’re all going to work together,’ said Nedly. ‘We’re going to need some kind of a plan.’
Lil nodded imperceptibly. ‘OK, Mum, Abe. Listen up.’
She pushed all the pots, bobbins and tools off the top of the workbench with the sleeve of her mac and threw down a couple of handfuls of sawdust, scattering it thinly. Then she picked up an old cane someone had used for stirring paint.
Abe, Naomi and Nedly gathered round. Along the shelves, rows and rows of glassy-eyed dolls watched in silence.
‘All right. Once we have found the right toys we’re going to need to destroy them as soon as possible. We can’t afford to waste time if one gets set off accidentally while we’re searching.’ She glanced over at Nedly and he gave her a reassuring thumbs-up. ‘Here’s the workshop,’ Lil said, drawing a large rectangle in the dust with the cane pointer. Then she drew a circle. ‘And that’s me.’
She put in a dividing line of shelving across the rectangle to create the back room. ‘It’ll be faster if we do it in a kind of throwing relay. Mum, you wait here at the top of the stairs.’ She added a couple of lines for the stairwell and sketched another circle. ‘I’ll throw each toy we find to you, then as fast as you can you throw it downstairs for Margaret, here.’ Lil tapped the bench. Margaret was too small to see the plan in the dust, but she cocked her ears at the mention of her name.
‘What about me?’ said Abe.
‘Tell them about the furnace,’ Nedly cut in eagerly.
‘Give me a minute, will you?’ Lil muttered at him.
‘Sorry, I –’ Abe buried his chin in his crumpled collar.
Lil sighed. She had run out of bench. ‘It’s not to scale,’ she explained as she squished in a thin sausage-shaped room right at the edge. ‘Abe, you’ll be down here.’ She tapped the sausage with the pointer and made a tiny circle. ‘Right by the furnace. That’s how we’re going to destroy them.’
‘Where do I fit in?’ Nedly asked.
Lil let the cane rest on the sawdust in the corner of the workshop. It left a small dot behind, a fifth circle in the dust. Abe saw it too and nodded.
‘Keep an eye out,’ Lil murmured to Nedly and then she raised her voice again. ‘But first we have to find these haunted toys.’
Abe pulled off his rubber hand and flexed his pliers. Naomi pushed up the sleeves of her camel-hair coat and scanned the shelves. ‘This place has nothing but creepy toys. What are we looking for?’ She scrutinised the faces of a row of baby dolls in front of her, pausing at one with a lazy eye whose hair looked like it had been cut by a buzz saw. ‘How about this one?’ She reached up to grab it.
‘Stop!’ cried Nedly, Abe and Lil all at the same time.
‘You didn’t warn her about the bells,’ Nedly added.
‘There’s one thing we forgot to mention.’ Lil gingerly picked up the doll to examine it. Very lightly she gave it a shake. Breathing out she replaced it. ‘The ones we’re looking for will have bells on them or inside them to make a noise. We’re going to have to shake them to see if they’re the right ones but very carefully, because as soon as we do the spooks will start coming. That’s why we have to act fast.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Ready? OK, let’s do it!’
Dust floated in the air as they set to work.
‘Hey, Lil!’ Nedly piped up. He was standing on a cardboard box and searching along the high shelves. Lil stood on a crate to join him and came face to face with a balding clockwork monkey in a threadbare silk waistcoat. It was brandishing cymbals and the sort of smile you would have if you were being electrocuted.
She winced at it and murmured, ‘This one is horrible.’
Very carefully she shook it. Nothing happened. Lil started to return it to the shelf and then paused. With trembling fingers she turned the cold metal key in the monkey’s back. The ticking of a mechanism unwinding filled the silence but the arms stayed still. It was broken.
Abe was working his way down a line of teddy bears, his hand finally coming to rest on a saggy-chested bear with a shiny bald pate and misty eyes.
He smiled at its kindly face, and then the smile vanished and he murmured: ‘Please, not you.’ He gave the bear a gentle shake. The straw in its body rustled. Abe breathed a sigh of relief, stretched up to replace it and then thought twice and stuffed it into the pocket of his mac. He looked up furtively to find Naomi staring at him, eyebrows raised.
‘Ha! Caught me red-handed!’ He held up his pliers in surrender. ‘There’s a kid that Lil knows down at the orphanage, his toy got destroyed a while ago and I figured this might be a good replacement.’ He squashed the bear further into his pocket.
Naomi smiled then took a step sideways and bumped against a wooden crate. She peered inside; it was full of pale sack-cloth poppets, mannekin-shaped with a topknot of cloth on their heads where the material had been gathered and tied. Some were featureless but others had black-thread crosses for eyes, a single stitch for a mouth.
‘These ones are horrible!’ she said. ‘And there must be more than fifty here. Tell me these aren’t the ones we’re looking for?’
Abe looked over at the crate and poked a couple of the poppets with the end of his pliers.
‘I can’t see any bells attached, but maybe there’s something inside that could make a noise?’
Naomi swiped the nearest poppet and shook it, while the others held their breath. There was no sound, so they all exhaled and Naomi chucked it back into the pile.
As Abe straightened up he came face to face with his dusty reflection in the cabinet. He wiped his hand across the glass and saw a shelf full of the same sack-cloth poppets.
Each one had a tiny silver bell tied round its topknot.
Naomi peered over his shoulder. ‘Like those ones?’
Abe croaked, ‘Yeah, that would do it.’
They all stood looking at the poppets who stared disconcertingly back with their crosses for eyes. Their cloth bodies had mouldered and sagged, pulling their mouths downwards.
‘OK,’ said Lil, breaking the silence. ‘Let’s get to work.’
Abe, Naomi and Margaret left to take up their positions while Nedly stood by the window in the opposite corner to Lil, where he had the best vantage point to watch for the other ghosts.
Very slowly, Lil extracted the first poppet, holding it by its little bell to stifle the ringing. She ordered her hand to stop shaking but it just got worse. The grey body jiggered beneath her fingers, its damp cloth face brushed her palm and she nearly let go.
She blinked. Why was she hesitating? It was just a doll. But somewhere sleeping behind those cross-eyes was a murderer, and in a second it would wake. Doubts crept in and stretched their spiky limbs; this was her idea, and if she’d got it wrong then one of them could die. Maybe Abe. Maybe her mother.
‘I’m ready, Lil! Give it your best shot!’ Naomi yelled from the back room.
Lil looked at Nedly, and he nodded encouragingly back at her: Do it!
She swallowed hard and took a deep breath, pulled her arm back and swung it low. ‘Incoming!’ she shouted, as soon as the poppet had left her hand. Lil watched it turn somersaults in the air, arms and legs wheeling. She heard the little bell on its head tinkling softly as it soared above the other toys, and then over the dividing shelves and out of her sight.
‘Whoops!’ Naomi exclaimed. ‘Dropped it.’
The temperature beg
an to plummet
‘Here they come,’ said Nedly.
‘Throw it to Margaret now!’ Lil shouted. Her breath curled out, a white wisp on the freezing air and the plastic toys on the shelf all turned to look at her. There was a beat of silence and then she heard the tiny bell ring out once more as Naomi hurled the poppet.
The strip light flickered. Nedly’s wide eyes tracked sideways as something crossed the room, towards the basement, following the sound.
At the bottom of the stairwell Margaret leapt, curling her body to propel herself upwards, and snatched the poppet out of the air with a toothy grimace. She hit the floor at a run, high-tailing away from the thing on the stairs, down the short corridor to the furnace room where she skidded to a halt, her claws skating over the concrete floor. She released the poppet at the same time as Abe’s multi-use pliers reached for it and in one fluid movement he hurled it into the flames.
The light stabilised and the temperature rose again.
Lil peered round the shelves into the back room. ‘Are you OK, Mum?’
Naomi shrugged brightly back at her and said, ‘I don’t think that was too bad.’
Lil’s skin was dewy with cold sweat. She shook her head. ‘We have to be faster than that.’
In the minutes that followed the frenzied relay played out, the room dropping to freezing as ghost after ghost woke up bewildered, only to be extinguished again when their poppet was incinerated, until they only had one to go.
The last remaining poppet on the shelf glared coolly at Lil, who shivered and gave it the Squint. Outside in the street a car door slammed; at the sound the poppet flopped suddenly forward and slid from the shelf. ‘No!’ Lil cried, swiping it off the floor and pulling back her arm to hurl it.
‘Lil! Hide!’ Nedly shouted.
She ducked, fumbling the shot. The sound of the small bells ringing was drowned out by the ding of the shop bell as the front door opened. Lil threw herself behind the workbench and squatted there, heart pounding. She let her head drop back against the side of the bench and counted to three, trying to slow her breathing down, trying not to gasp back too much of the sawdusty air and then, as quietly as she could, she peered round the corner.
The new owner was back.
Chapter 24
Invisible Friends
The man they now knew to be Vassal Hench was standing motionless in the middle of the room, with only his too-blue eyes moving, taking in the scene: the ransacked shelves, the cabinet door open, all the poppets gone. Lil heard the creak of the floorboards as he crossed the workshop towards her.
‘Nedly,’ she whispered.
‘Stay down!’ he yelled at her. ‘He’s coming your way.’
She tried to squeeze herself into the space under the workbench, tried to make herself as narrow as possible. She screwed her eyes shut as if that would make her smaller and then opened one eye a crack so she could still see what was happening.
The shadow came first, followed by the man. Lil saw a pointed brown shoe and a chequered trouser leg pass her by and go straight through into the back room, creaking all the way. Nedly followed after a couple of beats. Then the creaking stopped.
‘Oh no –’ Nedly began.
Lil scrambled to her knees and looked past the sticky glue pots, through the dividing shelves and into the back room where her mother was.
Naomi spotted the poppet on the floor before she noticed Hench. She bent down to pick it up, just as he put the pointed toe of his patent-leather winkle-pickers on it.
‘Not so fast,’ he said.
Naomi tried to yank it out from under his shoe but only succeed in tearing its arm off. She stepped back, out of his reach.
Hench smirked. ‘Aren’t you a little old to be playing with toys?’ He stooped down, picked up the poppet very carefully, and pointed it at Naomi.
‘Hands up, baby,’ he snarled. ‘Nice and steady.’
Naomi didn’t put her hands up. At that moment she was the only person at the doll hospital who wasn’t afraid of a doll. ‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘I’m the owner of this establishment, so the real question is, who are you?’
‘I was just passing and I saw the light on.’ Naomi tried to look neighbourly. ‘Thought maybe something was up.’
Hench wasn’t buying it. ‘You here on your own?’
Naomi hesitated for a second and then yelled, ‘Abe? Can you come up here for a minute. Please?’ She gave Hench an amiable smile. Her eyes didn’t flicker away from his, not for a second. ‘I came here with a friend – he’s just down there. Checking to see if anything is up. Like I said.’
They all listened to Abe’s weary tread on the stairs. ‘Is that all of them?’ he asked as he emerged from the basement, sweating from the furnace and with his trilby tipped backwards. When he saw Hench with the poppet in his hand and Naomi’s warning glance he slowed, coming to a halt at her side.
Hench eyed him suspiciously. ‘Have we met before?’
‘I’m sure I’d remember you,’ Abe growled back at him, tugging down the brim of his hat.
Naomi dropped the severed arm at her feet. ‘We should probably go now.’
Hench shook his head. ‘I think you should stay.’
‘Really, we have an appointment in town.’
‘I’m sure no one will mind if you’re late.’ Hench grinned at her.
‘Look –’ Naomi began.
Hench stretched out the arm that held the poppet and pointed it at her. ‘Really, I insist.’
Abe stared at the poppet. ‘All right, pal, you’re holding all the cards; we’ll come quietly.’ He held up his hands.
Hench nodded at Abe’s Swiss-army attachment. ‘Put down the pliers.’
‘I can’t.’
Hench pointed the poppet cautiously in his direction. ‘Don’t mess with me.’
‘Sincerely. It’s a fixture.’ Very slowly he pulled his sleeve down to show Hench the leather-clad socket. ‘See?’
‘Still looks pretty useful to me. Hand it over. Nice and easy.’
Lil watched from behind the glue pots as Abe unstrapped his Swiss Army hand and placed it reluctantly on the floor. ‘Be careful with it.’
Hench laughed and kicked it out of Abe’s reach.
‘Now, where are the others?’
Naomi gave him a hard stare. ‘What others?’
‘Don’t act stupid with me – the other ones like Mr Inch here.’ As he lifted up the poppet in his hand, the bell gave a tiny tinkle and he sucked in a breath. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do.’ He stared daggers at Naomi.
They all stood in silence; the air seemed to buzz, like a cloud of flies was moving in from far away. A bead of sweat trickled down from Hench’s temple.
After a long moment he exhaled. ‘All right. You got lucky there. Let’s go.’
Lil watched Hench back her mother and Abe towards the stairwell. As they neared it Naomi glanced quickly in the direction of the shelves. Hench clocked it. ‘Anyone else here I should know about?’
Naomi shook her head.
Abe said, ‘I’ve got a dog.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘I mean down there – in the basement.’
‘Well, you’ll need all the company you can get. You might be staying some time.’ Hench disappeared from Lil’s view as he shepherded Abe and Naomi downstairs, leaving his shadow to trail behind him. ‘And if I forget all about you, you can always eat it, am I right?’
From down below they could hear Margaret growling, like the sound of a very small car revving up and about to burn some serious rubber.
Lil crept into the back room, picked up Abe’s Swiss Army hand and stuffed it in her rucksack. Then she took out her pencil, chewing it furiously while her mind raced through potential action plans.
Nedly paced around. ‘Now what are we going to do?’
‘I’m thinking as quickly as I can.’ Lil kept her voice low. ‘We’re on our own but we have a chance. First, can you kill the lights
?
Nedly glared at the strip light. The electricity inside it began to sizzle, the bulbs grew dazzling for a moment and then with a series of pings they went out one by one.
Lil nodded. The full moon left a grey shine on everything, but it would do. ‘He’s scared of that poppet he’s holding, maybe almost as much as we are. Lucky for us he hasn’t woken the ghost up yet.’
Nedly gulped. ‘She was already awake.’
‘What!’ Lil choked on a bit of chewed wood and had to suppress a cough. Her eyes watered with the effort.
Nedly gulped again and lowered his voice. ‘Mr Inch isn’t a “mister” at all. It’s Grima Cadiz, the Grey Hood. That woman who used to work in the courthouse, remember?’ He didn’t need to say any more. Lil remembered.
‘She’s wearing the …’ He indicated pulling something down over his head. Lil broke into a sweat; her chest seemed to have contracted so there was no way of getting enough air into it. ‘She woke up when you threw the poppet.’
‘So, where is she now?’
Nedly nodded at the doorway to the basement. ‘Waiting for instructions.’
‘OK,’ Lil whispered, just loud enough so that she could hear her own voice over her heartbeat and the rush of blood in her ears. ‘Here’s the plan. Hench doesn’t know about you, so you’re our secret weapon. He won’t be able to tell you and Inch apart.’
Nedly cast a nervous glance at the basement doorway. ‘You want me to put the frighteners on him?’
‘As soon as his guard is down I’ll go for the poppet.’
‘Sounds risky.’
Lil felt around below the workbench; she found a gap between two dustbins and squished herself into it, tucking her mac round her. Nedly crouched in front of the shelves behind. ‘He’s got Mum and Abe trapped down there and there’s still one poppet in the game. Nedly, it’s up to us … We’re their only hope.’
They heard footsteps on the stairs. Lil held her breath.
Hench walked slowly across the workshop. The moon reversed the lettering on the window and laid it out in shadow across the floorboards. When he reached the front door he flicked the light switch a few times and then rubbed a palm over his clammy jaw.