by RA Jones
“Let’s go and check on Gran,” he said to Troop wearily. The dog wagged his tail in approval.
~~~~~
They met no one and saw nothing on the way back to the cottage. But there was one difference from the way things had been when they’d left that morning. Directly overhead, the sun still shone down through a pale blue sky, but there was no doubt that the Nule was creeping ever lower and had reached almost the very bottom of the hills now.
“I think we made it mad,” Sam said as he glanced up. Troop and Ginger looked at him in sympathy.
At the cottage, Sam found the key and let himself in. He fed Troop and Ginger and drank some water. Then he sat on the floor next to his gran’s pale and unconscious form and took her hand.
“Gran,” Sam said, “I’m sorry.”
Her hand felt cool and lifeless.
“I’m sorry for not staying at Mrs Walpole’s and for sneaking into the car and for not listening to what you said to me.”
Gwladys Merryweather slept on.
“But I’m not sorry I’m here now to look after you.”
From the other side of the kitchen, Troop wagged an approving tail.
“The thing is,” Sam added, “everything’s a mess and Poppy’s been taken and I don’t know what to do.”
But Gwladys Merryweather said nothing.
What made him remember her ancient mobile, Sam had no idea. He got up and found Gran’s handbag on the drainer where she’d left it. He rummaged around and soon put his hand on the chunky phone. His dad had a sleek black mobile which could email and had a dozen games and did just about everything except wash the dishes. Sam’s mother had a tiny silver flip phone which was almost constantly stuck to her ear. Gran’s phone, on the other hand, was the size of a small shoe and had a scratched and battered grey screen with black letters. He had never seen her text on it and all she ever used it for was to phone Mrs Walpole to tell her when she was coming to help out with the cats. Sam took the phone out and switched it on. It took an age to boot up but when it eventually did and despite Sam’s encouraging urgings, there was not one bar of signal showing.
“Sugar,” said Sam. “Sugary shining Shadwell’s shadow.”
Of course, he meant to say something else altogether but he never would in Gran’s presence. Really speaking, he hadn’t expected it to be that easy, but a tiny little part of him had wanted to try. Sighing, he switched off the phone and put it back into Gran’s handbag.
It was while he was doing that he noticed her notebook. No more than three inches tall, it was bright red and the covers were worn. Gran used it to write notes to herself. Notes like who she needed to contact about the stuck window in the kitchen or what food to buy that week.
Sam thumbed through it idly, hoping to catch a glimpse of something that might help, although having no real clue about what that something might be. There didn’t seem to be anything at all about Dreables, but there was quite a bit about dry cleaning, the different prices of bags of manure from various sources, and tea bags. Worming tablets for Ginger got a mention several times until at last a big tick was placed next to WORMAWAY £4.59 – Ellisons. Sam quickly realised that they were sort of to-do lists since most of them had dates written in the top left-hand corner of the pages. He was at the point of losing interest when he caught sight of his own name. The date on the page was 5th August – the day before he’d arrived at Gran’s for his week’s holidays. Gran had written:
Sam arriving.
That in itself was hardly surprising especially as it was followed with, “buy crunchy nut flakes” and “sardines” – though why on earth his imminent arrival had triggered a need to get sardines he would never know. Especially since Sam hated the things.
But underneath, Gran had written something that made Sam’s eyes narrow in concentration.
Sam – Wihtlea?
Will he be ready yet?
Too stubborn still?
Not ready to listen?
Stubborn? Sam thought, I’m not stubborn.
But then he remembered refusing to tidy his room the day before his mum and dad had left for Peru. And he remembered refusing to go to the museum with Gran. And then there was refusing to give her a goodnight kiss.
But what about listening? He was always having to listen to what adults had to say, wasn’t he? That was what being ten was all about. Sam’s shoulders fell. She was right. He hardly ever listened to what Gran said really. Mainly because it had always sounded so weird and unnecessary.
Maybe amidst all the silly stuff like “Don’t cross your eyes or they might stay like that,” and “Make sure you crush the shell of your boiled egg after eating it,” she’d said something like, “And if you ever see a Dreable, throw a Smartie at it.”
He didn’t think she had, but he couldn’t be sure because the truth was he had never really listened. And now that he was in Wihtlea, he really wished he really had.
Sam closed the notebook and put it back in Gran’s handbag. He should have listened better. He should not have wanted everything to be the way he wanted it to be. Sam went to the bedroom and lay on the bed with his arm behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He let his mind wander, let his brain do a bit of thinking. After a very long time, something Gran said, one of her many throwaway rebukes, suddenly seemed much more important than it had at the time. For a while, Sam steered his thinking away from it, because when he thought about it, the consequences of behaving the way Gran wanted him to didn’t seem very pleasant. In fact, it was scarily awful. But no matter how hard he tried to come up with an alternative, there didn’t seem to be any other way Sam could think of to get them out of the fix they were in.
There was nothing for it. He simply had to be polite.
Chapter 8
The Barrows
It was by now afternoon and Sam’s mind was made up. He gave Troop a final hug and gave Ginger’s head one last rub. For the hundredth time he wished he could take them with him, but he knew it would not be fair on either of them.
He gazed at them both earnestly and said, “There’s water and biscuits for you in the kitchen. Your job is to look after Gran and Libby Brown until I come back. That’s your duty. Now, I have to go and do mine.”
Sam adjusted his backpack and checked his pockets one last time. Finally, without another backward glance, he walked to the front door and let himself out. Directly above him the sky was still a clear pale blue but the creeping Nule was now kissing the tops of the barrow mounds and the afternoon sun could find no way through the mist’s thick canopy. Sam could feel its chill breath on his skin and he shuddered at the memory of their fateful trip into the hills that morning. He hurried along the way that Troop had led him earlier, his breathing already loud in his throat, magnified by the deathly hush that hung over Wihtlea. Every instinct told him to turn around and go back, but Sam felt that this was the only way. Doubt dragged at his feet, but locking the doors and burying his head under a pillow while Gran lay unrousable under some sort of Dreable spell would not solve anything, of that he was absolutely certain. He wished he felt braver but more than anything he wished he’d listened to his grandmother.
Just because she was old and didn’t like iPods and had an ancient mobile phone didn’t mean that she was stupid. Nor that what she knew was completely useless, even if it sometimes felt that way. Sam had thought that the way Gran had always insisted on never crossing on the stairs was just barmy. Or the way she always got Troop to lick Sam’s arm if he ever fell over and cut his knee because it made the cut “heal quicker” was just her being a bit mad. But now that he knew she was “Mother Merryweather” he wasn’t so sure at all.
Sam trudged along the fields, crossed the road, and made his way to the edge of the park where he’d seen the little boy and his mother. This time he didn’t try and hide. What was the point? Several times he became aware of shapes moving in the shadows. Hunched over shapes with long arms that loped, but whenever he looked directly at them, there was nothing the
re. Nothing tried to stop him as he crossed the small playground. He walked around the roundabout and tried to slow his beating heart. He tried to tell himself that it was best to just grit his teeth and do this and not think about it too much. But it was hard. Probably the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Once, a girl in his class had come back from holiday with some sort of weird flu. It meant that everyone in his class needed an injection to stop them from getting the same illness. Their teacher, Mr Mumford, explained it all and drew diagrams of viruses and told them that they’d be called out of the class four at a time. Sam remembered waiting for his turn. Mr Mumford had decided to read them a story while they all waited. It had been a story about a woman who liked tortoises, but Sam could barely remember the details and he’d found it hard to concentrate. After the inoculation, there was tea and biscuits in the canteen so no one who’d already had the injection came back to the classroom and somehow that made it worse.
What Sam did remember was the slow walk along the corridor with his other three classmates when they were finally called. One of them kept telling him and the others how “not” scared of needles he was and kept giggling nervously. Another went very, very quiet and pale – almost as pale as Libby Brown and Gran now were. The third, Madeline Allsop, one of the few girls Sam thought he actually liked, said that she’d heard a story that once the needle from an injection had broken off in someone’s arm and had travelled all the way to their heart and killed them. Sam remembered going off Madeline Allsop very quickly that afternoon. As it turned out, the needle was tiny and the way the nurse pinched the flesh of his skin together meant that he didn’t actually feel the prick one little bit. Afterwards, as he dunked a biscuit into his tea, he listened to the others comparing their flu jab technique.
“I closed my eyes and squeezed them really tight until I could see stars.” Or, “I put a pencil between my teeth and bit on it. Now I’ve got bits of wood in my mouth.”
But pretty soon, everyone quietened down and Sam realised that day that the fear of something happening is often quite a lot worse than the actual thing itself.
But then the Dreables knew that very well too.
Instead of walking around the edge of the park, Sam strode right through it. It was half past three, still quite early for a summer’s day, but already the light seemed to be fading as Sam walked under the stone archway and looked at the standing stones. He didn’t really know what was going to happen next, but he did have a plan of sorts. He thought of Troop and Ginger waiting for him and he thought of his mother and father so very far away, oblivious of Wihtlea and the mess he was in, and realised that he would miss them all if he never saw them again. But there was nowhere to go and no one to turn to.
Then he thought of Gran again. He knew exactly what she would have said. “Know your enemy, Sam. Know your enemy.”
When he got to the standing stones, Sam took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Here I am. Sam Jones, Mother Merryweather’s grandson. I want to speak to you, please.”
Nothing happened. Sam stood facing the stones and began to think that he’d made a big mistake. After all, he wasn’t from Wihtlea. Perhaps the Dreables didn’t want anything to do with him.
“Hello?” he said again.
He counted to thirty in his head and was about to turn around when he heard a noise. It was a deep rumbling, rolling noise. As if a very heavy stone was being moved somewhere beneath him. He looked up. The largest of the standing stones was beginning to tilt backwards, leaving a hole in the ground where it had stood. In the hole were some steps that led right down into the Barrow itself. It looked about as inviting as cold spaghetti hoops on toast. But then out of the hole there came a sound. In fact, it was one of Sam’s favourite sounds; Christmas bells jangling rhythmically and yes – a choir somewhere deep inside the tunnel singing “Jingle Bells”! As Sam peered down, he saw that the hole wasn’t a damp chasm into the earth but a brightly lit entrance to a magical Christmas grotto. Sam stepped forward. He could see right down into it. Inside, children were playing with toys and elves dressed in green were running around giving everyone chocolate and drinks in brightly coloured cups. One of the children looked up and saw Sam peering down. She had freckles and plaited hair.
“Sam?” said Poppy Stevens, sounding pleased. She ran up the stairs towards him. “We were wrong, Sam. We were all wrong. It’s lovely in here. It’s Christmas all the time.”
Sam heard the words and knew they were coming from Poppy’s mouth. A part of him, the part that loved Christmas, wanted to believe her. The smell of turkey and Christmas pudding and fruitcake and mince pies drifted up. Over Poppy’s shoulder, Sam could see a table groaning under the weight of an amazing banquet. Salivating madly, Sam remembered how hungry he was.
“Come on, Sam. It’s fine. Really it is.”
Sam looked at Poppy. She was smiling and there were two spots of bright colour in her cheeks. But there was something wrong with her eyes. They were a little too bright, a little too smiley, and in the whole time she spoke to him, she didn’t blink even once. Sam reached into his pocket for a bit of Mrs Walpole’s bakewell.
“I don’t believe you,” Sam said.
Instantly, the music died and the lights flicked off. Poppy disappeared and Sam was left staring into the black maw. He took another step forward and flicked on his torch. There was no Christmas grotto. There was just a cold, damp tunnel with a stony floor. Instead of laughing children, the walls of the tunnel were lined with silent, glaring Dreables. Sam began to walk down. They watched him, sniffing the air, whispering to each other as he passed them.
“ – he coming in…”
“ – scrawny looking…”
“ – a Merryweather supposed to be…”
Sam ignored them as best he could. He kept thinking about the little boy in the park that morning and how the Dreables had used his mother to trick him. Remembering that still made him full of a cold sort of anger. Ahead of him the tunnel forked. Which way?
Sam turned the torch beam onto a particularly ugly-looking Dreable perched on a boulder. “Which way to the king?” Sam demanded.
The Dreable laughed out loud. “The king, is it?” He got up off the boulder and shambled over to Sam and then turned to the other Dreables like it was all a big joke. “He wants to see the king, does this one.”
Dreable laughter echoed in the tunnel.
“Want to get it over with quick, do you?” The Dreable bared its fangs at Sam.
“Which way to the king?” Sam said.
The Dreable seemed to think for a moment. Its eyes rolled up in its head and it became particularly gormless. Sam could almost see the cogs going round. Finally, the eyes rolled back down. “He’s waiting for you,” it said. “But he wants me to show you the sights on the way.” The Dreable chuckled malevolently.
“Just take me to the king,” Sam repeated.
“Oh, I will. I will. Follow me.”
The Dreable took the left fork. As they descended, it got colder and damper and Sam was glad he’d decided to wear a sweatshirt over his T-shirt. After thirty or so steps, Sam felt the air change. He shone his torch upwards. The tunnel had given way to a huge chamber. The Dreable had stopped. In the stark light of Sam’s torch, it waved its arm and smirked.
“This is where we keep the monkeys,” it said in a cackle.
Sam swung the torch beam. The walls were lined with cages three stories high with bars running from floor to roof. At first, Sam thought they were empty, but then the light reflected off a face which quickly hid itself. Sam took a step closer. There were shapes in the cages. Huddled, miserable shapes cowering in the corners. One or two risked a glimpse of the light and Sam saw instantly that they were terrified. More than that, they had hopeless expressions, beyond despair, as if seeing the torchlight was nothing more than a dread Dreable trick.
“This is the cave of misery,” said the Dreable. “This is where we do our best work.”
“What work?” Sam asked
.
“This,” the Dreable said. Without warning it launched itself at the cages with a terrifying roar. It hit the bars with a shuddering clatter, one arm reaching in for whatever it could grasp. From within the cage, Sam heard at least a dozen screams which were echoed by other voices all around him. They were high pitched, those screams. The sort of noise a terrified child made. He tried to imagine being locked away in one of these cages in the dark, waiting for that roaring noise, waiting for a grasping hand to reach in through the bars.
“Why did you do that?” Sam asked. He could feel his face burning.
“Keeps ’em quiet, it does. We don’t always bellow at them like that though. Oh, no. Sometimes we just tells ’em stories in whispers about how we’re going to eat their parents or their dog. Funny thing is they cry more when we tell ’em about the dog,” The Dreable cackled again. The screams, which had died to muted sobs, rose again in isolated pockets at the sound of that cackle. Sam had seen and heard enough.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said.
But the Dreable didn’t seem to be in any hurry. “What’s the matter? Getting a bit twitchy, are we? Looking forward to joining your little monkey friends?” The Dreable had a malicious, confident leer in its eye. “Want me to try out me best scarifying on you?” It drew itself up onto its hind legs and began to bare its teeth.
“Mantelpiece,” said Sam.
Instantly, the Dreable fell back onto its haunches with its knuckles on the floor. The leer had become a look of surprised confusion. “What did you say that for?”
“Say what?”
“Mantel – ahhh.” The Dreable clamped one hand over its mouth and the other over an ear.
“What’s wrong with saying mantelpiece? Is it because I’m a Merryweather?” Sam asked.
The Dreable was shaking its head, now with both its hands over its ears. It was rocking back and forth looking very unhappy. “Shan’t. Won’t.”