The Dreables, A Merryweathers Mystery

by RA Jones

  “Wait here,” Sam said and backtracked along the tunnel. He was looking for a toolbox, but he found something better. In an old wheelbarrow, on top of some mud-encrusted gloves, sat a pair of pruning shears. Sam took them and quickly poked a hole through the polythene and slit it right up the middle to make a door. There was now a ten-foot gap of open ground between them and the end shed, in full view of the Dreables. But they were snoozing. Ginger went first, then Troop, and finally Sam, the three of them sliding around the side of the end shed. But the Dreables’ snores continued without interruption.

  “Right,” Sam said, catching his breath. “That was close. Still, we’re here now. So, let’s find the girl.”

  Chapter 6

  Poppy Stevens

  They crept around to the rear of the sheds which had been built into the bank of earth behind. There wasn’t much room and the ground was littered with discarded plastic sacks which had once contained chicken manure. It was a warm day. The smell was not exactly pleasant and Sam found himself dabbing his eyes to stop them running. They eased their way along until they were just a few feet away from the snoozing Dreables. Above them, in the rear wall of the shed, was a small window. Sam found some tiny pebbles and threw them one at a time up at the grimy panes. After the fifth one struck, he heard a voice.

  “Go away, you Dreables!”

  It was a small girl’s voice. The same one he’d heard that morning from within the cloud of mist – or whatever it was – that had erupted from Gran’s car.

  “Shh,” Sam said, alarmed that her voice would alert the things in the chairs. “We’re not Dreables.”

  “Yes, you are, you’re horrible Dreables but you can’t come in here, so go away.”

  “We’re not Dreables,” protested Sam an as loud a whisper as he dared. “Look, I’ve got animals with me.”

  He heard some movement from inside the shed and an eye appeared behind the window.

  “You’ve got a cat and a dog? How come?”

  “They’re my gran’s.”

  “Your gran’s? Who’s she then?”

  “My gran, that’s who she is. You sent a message to her this morning, didn’t you?”

  “Mother Merryweather? You came with Mother Merryweather?” There was no denying the sudden excitement in the girl’s voice.

  “Gwladys Merryweather is my gran’s name, yes. Look, I’m Sam Jones and this is Troop and Ginger.”

  The window opened another inch and Sam saw two bright blue eyes staring down at him.

  “How did you get past them?”

  “We sneaked. They’re still there, snoozing out the front. Is there another way in?”

  The girl shook her head. “I double-locked the door with onions. They don’t like onions. No one can come in unless I let them.”

  “Okay. What’s your name?”

  “Poppy. Poppy Stevens.”

  “What’s going on, Poppy? Who are the Dreables?”

  “Wait a minute. If you are Mother Merryweather’s grandson, you’d know about Dreables.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. She tells me all sorts of stuff but she’s never told me about Dreables.”

  Poppy seemed to hesitate and think. “Maybe not. Mother Merryweather wouldn’t speak about them unless she had to. It’s bad luck. The only things that want to talk about Dreables are Dreables.”

  “Well, I’m not a Dreable.”

  “You don’t look like a Dreable. And them animals look real. But Dreables can steal voices. That’s how they get you at night. Make themselves sound like your friend so’s you open the window and they grab you out of your bedroom.”

  “Well, I’m not a Dreable,” insisted Sam, but his mind did a cartwheel at what Poppy was telling him. “I’m Sam Jones.”

  “Say Mother Merryweather’s mantelpiece.”

  “What?”

  “Say it. Dreables won’t say it. It makes them go all funny if they say it.”

  “Mother Merryweather’s mantelpiece,” Sam said, feeling a little bit awkward.

  There was the sound of movement in the shed and then the window opened and Poppy propped it up on a metal stay. Sam could see two-thirds of her face now and along with the blue eyes there were freckles and two braids of plaited hair. She was younger than Sam by a year or two, he guessed.

  “You’re definitely not a Dreable,” whispered Poppy, and her face suddenly lit up. “But if you’re here and Mother Merryweather is too, it means we can fight them.”

  “Whoa,” Sam said. “Fight the Dreables?”

  “Yes. Mother Merryweather knows how. She’s the only one who does.”

  Sam frowned. The idea of Gran fighting anyone at the best of times was pretty weird. But the Gran that he’d left passed out on the floor of her cottage was not capable of fighting anything.

  “My gran hates fighting. She always tells me to be extra polite to people who want to fight you. She says it takes away their power.”

  “She’s a cunning lady is Mother Merryweather. That’s what they all say.”

  Sam wanted to tell her about Gran and Libby Brown, but somehow he couldn’t quite do it at that moment. He needed to know what was going on.

  “Poppy, what exactly are Dreables?”

  “They’re things that used to live in the Barrows. My gran said they were here before there was telly and cars and roads and stuff. They used to do horrible things to people that got lost on the moor. My gran told me that a Wiht Warlock made them to be his army. He made them from things that lived under the ground.”

  Sam made a face. “I’ve never heard of them before.”

  “All the children that live in Wihtlea know about them. We know not to go poking in caves and stuff. But that doesn’t stop the tourists.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It happened last week. Pot holers going where they shouldn’t have. They found a bottle. Just an old bottle. But inside it was a piece of parchment with some writing on it. They showed it on the local TV.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I can’t say it. You mustn’t say it.”

  Poppy disappeared and Sam heard her moving about. She came back and thrust a piece of paper at him out through the window. There were letters on it in red crayon. Sam tried to read what was written:

  Dynnargh a-berved ein breddwd.

  “What does it mean?”

  “If you read it out loud it gives them permission to come into your dreams. Stupid adults anyway. That’s how it starts. Once they get in, they make you do things. It only needs one person. They made Mrs Hopkins go to the standing stones and let them all out.”

  Sam was shaking his head. It all sounded completely mental.

  “Where is everyone else, Poppy?”

  “In the Barrows, I expect. The Dreables like to put them to sleep. That way they’ll keep longer. The Dreables are hungry and they haven’t eaten for a long time, maybe thousands of years, my gran said.”

  “You mean they eat people?”

  “Animals mostly, my gran said.” Poppy’s voice fell. “They keep the people for something else.”

  Sam remembered the thing he’d seen in the cottage. “I saw a Dreable in my grandmother’s cottage. At least I think I did. And I saw one in the park. It was like it was a ghost and it just ran into a woman’s body.”

  “Those are the Dreable wraiths. To begin with, they can only get in through dreams. But now they’re stronger they can possess adults because adults can’t see them. But we can see them, and they can’t possess us. They send the drones after us.”

  “Those two outside, are they drones?”

  Poppy nodded. “They’re lazy and smelly and solid. But they like frightening the little ones. That’s what he really likes, the boss of the Dreables. He likes frightening us. It’s what he feeds on.”

  “That’s why he takes children?”

  “Yes,” Poppy said in a very small voice. “He locks them up in the dark and tells them things. Horrible things.”

  A chill wind gust
ed around them and in the shadow of the shed, Sam shivered. “What about this fog, is that Dreables stuff too?”

  “It’s called the creeping Nule.”

  Sam shook his head. “I still don’t know what my gran has to do with all of this.”

  “My Granny Stevens and your Granny Merryweather grew up together here. My gran’s job was remembering and telling everyone else to mind the Dreables to make sure it never happened again.”

  “In case what ever happened again?”

  “This,” Poppy said. “The Dreables getting out and stealing people and animals to eat and taking the children and locking them in dark caves and whispering horrible things to them so they’ll cry and be miserable and waste away. My gran died last year and she made me the Keeper. She told me what to do. How to call the cunning woman.”

  “Gwladys Merryweather?”

  Poppy nodded.

  Sam swallowed. There didn’t seem much choice now. Poppy ought to know. “They tricked my gran too, Poppy. They tricked her into eating a cake and now she’s gone to sleep and I can’t wake her.”

  Poppy stared at him. She didn’t make any noise, but two very big tears started to run down her face. “Then I don’t know what else to do,” she said. “Are you sure Mother Merryweather didn’t tell you anything?”

  Sam thought about all the stuff his gran had said to him and how he’d not really listened to any of it. But he was pretty sure that she hadn’t ever said anything about how to fight Dreables. He didn’t tell Poppy that his gran didn’t even know he was here. She didn’t look as if she could take much more.

  “Maybe I can go for help. The Dreables don’t actually know I’m here. How far is it to the next village?”

  “Five miles to Lockley. But Constable Booker went yesterday and he hasn’t come back.”

  “Stay here,” Sam said. “Lock the window and don’t let anyone in. It’s only five miles and I’m used to walking. That shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. I’ll be back in no time.”

  Poppy just blinked. There was desperation in her face. “But she’s supposed to pass it on. She’s supposed to teach you what to do.”

  “Well, she didn’t, okay?” Sam felt his face flush angrily. This wasn’t his fault. Why had Gran not told him any of this? “Stay here,” Sam urged. “We’ll be back. Promise.”

  He turned and the three of them tiptoed back to the poly tunnel and out onto the street. Troop and Ginger seemed to know what was expected of them and Sam didn’t need to ask. Just as well because he was too caught up with his own thoughts. He felt confused and a little bit scared. This was really weird stuff. The sort of stuff he normally liked to read about. But being in it, an actual part of it, wasn’t that much fun at all, he decided. But most of all he felt stupid. All the time his gran had been on at him for liking things like ogres and ghosts, and yet she’d grown up in a village where they had the real thing. So why hadn’t she told him any of it?

  An answer did pop into his head, but it wasn’t one he liked very much so he got rid of it and turned his attention to the task ahead. Above him lay the hills he and Gran had driven across.

  Just a little yomp, he told himself as he hurried along after Troop and Ginger.

  Chapter 7

  The Creeping Nule

  Troop led them back the way they’d come across the park to the edge of the village. It was mid-morning now but the roiling mist still clung to the tops of the hills. Troop stopped short of the road itself and stayed on a well-worn path that ran parallel to it as it meandered up and over the moor. Sam saw a wooden marked post engraved with the sign of an acorn and knew that this was a walker’s path. It climbed steadily and after a mile, Sam stopped to look back at Wihtlea on the Barrows. What he saw was a sleepy village with sandstone walled, slate-roofed houses lining winding streets. The whole landscape was quilted with patchwork gardens. But it was all eerily silent. No roar of motorbike nor bark of dog nor cry of child broke the unnatural stillness.

  Sam could feel the mist against his skin now; a cold damp kiss. It grew thicker as they ascended and the temperature started to fall. Sam was already sorry that he hadn’t borrowed one of Gran’s old coats from the cottage. Thinking of Gran alone on the kitchen floor made Sam walk a bit faster. Troop and Ginger kept up well but neither of them strayed from the path as the mist closed in about them.

  They’d gone about a mile and a half from the village when Sam realised he was having difficulty breathing. For a minute he wondered if they’d climbed the last couple of rises a bit too quickly, but they were mere bumps in the landscape compared with the coastal cliffs he’d tramped with his mother and father. Sam glanced at the animals. Troop’s tongue was hanging out and Ginger didn’t look all that comfortable either with his ears back and his tail down. Worse, a dreadful feeling of tiredness had suddenly come over Sam and the mist had thickened to the extent that he couldn’t see more than twenty yards ahead or behind.

  “Let’s just rest for a minute,” Sam said.

  Troop whined.

  “Just for a minute,” Sam insisted. He sat on a boulder at the edge of the path. Maybe if he just lay down for a while and shut his eyes, he’d feel better. The common sense part of his head – filled with mountaineering wisdom by his parents – knew that going to sleep on a mist-covered hill was a very, very silly thing to do. But he was just so awfully tired. Troop began making more noise, growling low in his throat, but Sam could hardly hear him. It was as if his ears and his eyes and even his mouth were being stuffed with cotton wool.

  Sam’s stomach rumbled. It was complaining again but he didn’t feel that hungry, just tired. So very, very tired. It was no good. He would have to just shut his eyes. His stomach growled again in a prolonged and loud gurgle.

  “Okay, okay,” Sam said, his eyes now barely open. “Just shut up. One cherry bakewell should do the trick.”

  Half dazed, Sam reached into the rucksack and found the half-eaten cake from that morning which he’d wrapped in kitchen paper. It would have to do. He couldn’t even smell the almonds anymore. Forcing himself to, he took a bite.

  The result was astonishing. As soon as the flavours hit his mouth, a light bulb lit up the dark and miserable basement his mind had become. An electric charge erupted from his taste buds and jolted all his senses into life. The lethargy and tiredness dropped away like a musty old blanket and, for the first time since they’d entered the creeping Nule, the truth of his predicament was revealed in sickening detail.

  It wasn’t just a mist.

  Wispy tendrils were pouring down the hillside like the tentacles of a million-armed octopus. And, like an octopus, there seemed to be a purpose. Sam watched the white fingers curling around Troop and Ginger’s bodies, coiling and uncoiling. Looking down at himself, he saw that they were doing exactly the same to him. This was not a hill fog, this was a clinging, strangling, breath-stealing Thing and they’d walked straight into it.

  Sam clawed at the strands around his face and nose, but like the fog it was, his fingers passed right through them with a swirl. Worse, the strands reformed immediately. Alarmed, he saw that Ginger was in real trouble now. His breath was coming in ragged gasps and he was sitting on the ground, not even trying to get up. Trying to fight off these tendrils was like trying to shovel air, but Sam knew he had to do something. He turned back the way they’d come, but the Nule had closed in like a white wall and Sam couldn’t be sure anymore which was forward or back.

  Suddenly, he realized his mouth was still full of cherry bakewell. He’d been so shocked by the sight of the living Nule that he’d forgotten to swallow it. He took another chew and again the flavours exploded in his mouth. Clarity replaced mud. What would Gran do?

  The thought brought with it an instant memory of Gran’s car stopping in the mist on this very moor and he visualised exactly what Gran had done. He took a deep breath and blew out air as if he was trying to clear an unruly fringe from his forehead. The white tendrils writhed away like they’d been burned and i
nstantly, Sam found he could breath normally. He ran over to Troop and blew air all over him. The dog shook himself and immediately began to trot in a different direction from the way they’d been going. Sam grabbed Ginger and blew all over him too.

  “Lead on, boy,” Sam said to Troop and grabbed the dog’s furry mane with his other hand. Sam blew hard into the air in front of them, and just like had happened with Gran, the mist parted.

  From high above in the hills, there came a muted roar of rage.

  Something wasn’t going to get a boy, a dog, and a cat for supper tonight, thought Sam with satisfaction. When the three of them were able to breathe quite easily again, Sam set Ginger down and they broke into a trot. They dropped back down the hill and when they were a half a mile from the valley floor, the mist finally gave way and Sam stopped, hands on knees, breathing hard.

  “No way out,” he gasped to the animals, who both turned to look at him sadly. Troop’s tongue was lolling and Ginger simply began licking his fur.

  “Okay, plan B,” Sam said eventually. “Back to Poppy and find out if we can do this another way.”

  ~~~~~

  They backtracked, being careful to stay out of sight as much as they could. But when they got to the entrance to the market garden, there were no Dreables snoozing in the battered armchairs. Worse, the door to Poppy’s shed was open. With a moan, Sam abandoned stealth and ran towards the door. Inside, it was very warm and smelled of creosote and earth. Poppy’s meagre supplies were piled in one corner; a bottle of water, biscuits, some bread, and a jar of blackberry jam. Sam sat heavily on a rickety wooden chair and tried to stop the tears from coming. Troop and Ginger sniffed about, but they did so half-heartedly, their tails down as they shared in Sam’s misery.

  “But how did they get in? She was so sure she was safe.” He glanced at the door. A string of onions still hung there.

  Sam shook his head. Despite Troop and Ginger nearby, he felt alone and a little frightened. He couldn’t leave to get help and he had no idea how to help Poppy. But he couldn’t stay in that shed either.