The Paradise Trap

by Catherine Jinks

‘Mum? Hey, Mum.’ Before he did anything else, Marcus wanted to make absolutely sure that they weren’t being taken for a ride. ‘What does this place smell like to you?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ Holly stared at him as if he were mad. ‘For God’s sake Marcus!’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  Holly sniffed. ‘It smells like mouldy baked beans,’ she decided. And her son heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘Then we’re home,’ he said. ‘We really are back home.’

  56

  EXCESS BAGGAGE

  ‘WELL, OF COURSE WE’RE HOME!’ HOLLY DIDN’T SEEM TO have the slightest doubt about that. ‘If we weren’t, we’d be fending off the security guard, not to mention the little blonde girl.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Marcus couldn’t agree with her. He was about to point out that the siren could have dreamed up any number of fake caravans when Holly flapped an impatient hand at him.

  ‘Go on! Quick!’ she said. ‘I’ll be right behind you!’

  So Marcus retraced his steps – very, very carefully. With the bundle of blankets impeding his view, he couldn’t exactly rush. In fact, he was only halfway downstairs when he almost collided with Coco and Edison. Coco had used the hood of her robe to shield her head during their mad dash from the lift.

  ‘Oh my God! Are those blankets?’ Coco extended her arms towards Marcus. ‘I’ll take them! You take Eddie!’

  Marcus hesitated. ‘But—’

  ‘Hurry up!’ Coco pleaded. ‘Before the whole place burns down!’

  Sure enough, the cellar was already filling with smoke. And although none of the flaming brochures had ventured past Prot, Marcus could see that the doorjamb was beginning to smoulder.

  ‘Go on, Eddie!’ Coco urged. With one hand she gave her stepson a prod up the stairs; with the other she seized the untidy clump of blankets that Marcus was presenting to her. ‘You boys get out! Wait for us in the caravan!’

  ‘I have some water!’ Holly called from the topmost step. She tossed a plastic bottle into the cellar as Coco scampered back towards Prot. The bottle hit the floor and rolled, but didn’t break. Instead it came to rest against the side of Newt’s foot.

  Newt, by this time, had emerged from the office. She was coughing and looked flustered. When she saw the bottle, she bent down, picked it up and dumped its contents over her head.

  Her stepmother was hurling her blankets through the door. ‘Here!’ Coco screeched. ‘Put them on!’ Marcus could only assume that she was talking to Jake and Sterling.

  ‘Why don’t they come out?’ he asked no one in particular. ‘What are they waiting for?’

  ‘Nothing.’ It was Edison who replied, his voice thin and hoarse. ‘They’re just slow. That suitcase is really heavy.’

  ‘Stand aside, Marcus, I need to get past you!’ Holly interrupted. Then she threw another bottle onto the floor, screaming, ‘More water, Coco! Use the water!’

  At that point Jake began to shuffle backwards into the cellar. Though a blanket was draped over his head and shoulders, his bare calves were clearly visible (and easily identifiable). He seemed to be having trouble with his end of the suitcase, which he nearly dropped when Coco dumped half a litre of water onto his shrouded skull.

  ‘Aaagh!’ he spluttered. ‘Gerroff!’

  ‘Dad! Hey, Dad!’ Newt was still hovering near the door, coughing and choking and wiping her eyes. ‘What’s that – hack-hack – flight number for Lysitte Run?’

  ‘Huh?’ It took Sterling a moment to catch on. Though he’d flung a blanket across his bald spot, his face wasn’t covered – so it was easy to hear him, even from a distance. ‘Oh!’ he said breathlessly, adjusting his grip on his end of the suitcase. ‘It was eight-eight-two-three-zero-five-nine-eight . . .’

  All at once, a mighty, crackling roar nearly drowned out his voice. There was a crash and a shower of sparks just behind him. ‘It’s the shelves!’ cried Jake, who was face to face with Sterling and could see what Sterling couldn’t. ‘Move! Move! Get outta there, quick!’

  Holly didn’t want to wait any longer. She squeezed past her son, bumped into Edison and charged downstairs to join Coco. Luckily, Edison didn’t lose his balance. He clung to Marcus, who was hovering halfway up the staircase. Sterling, meanwhile, had just entered the cellar; his knuckles were almost dragging on the ground, thanks to the weight he was carrying. So when Coco darted forward to help him, he gladly surrendered one corner of his burden.

  Jake wasn’t quite as eager to admit that he was struggling. But after a brief, scrappy exchange, he let Holly take another corner – and with four people supporting it, the suitcase was soon at the bottom of the stairs.

  Newt didn’t even try to lend a hand. She was too busy talking to Prot.

  ‘Hey, Newt!’ Marcus yelled, from his elevated vantage point. It was hard to see through all the billowing smoke, but Newt’s dark silhouette stood out quite cleanly against a red-hot backdrop. Though most of the dive-bombing brochures had already turned to ash, they’d been replaced by clouds of glowing embers that were starting to drift into the cellar. Ripples of flame were also lapping around the lintel.

  ‘Coming!’ cried Newt. She suddenly bolted across the cellar floor, swerved around her coughing, labouring stepmother, and pounded up the staircase.

  Prot set off in the opposite direction.

  ‘Prot!’ Marcus bawled, as Newt brushed past him. ‘Come back!’ But apparently the robot couldn’t hear; it forged ahead implacably, into the heart of the inferno, letting the cellar door swing shut behind it.

  ‘I’ve sent him to save the dog,’ Newt explained, upon being asked by her wild-eyed father what the hell she thought she was up to. ‘He’s made of metal – he won’t get hurt.’ The words had barely left her mouth when one panel of the door collapsed into a blazing heap, scorching the cellar floor and sending up another flurry of sparks. ‘Oh, no!’ she wailed. ‘That poor dog!’

  ‘Poor dog?’ Sterling croaked. ‘What about my poor robot?’

  ‘Newt! Marcus! Move!’ snarled Jake, who was at the lower – and heavier – end of the suitcase. By now he and all the other adults were bent double; the suitcase was such a dead weight that they were finding it hard to lift their feet. Holly, in particular, was flagging. Her face was bright red and the veins stood out on her forehead like pieces of spaghetti.

  Marcus began to retreat. He didn’t want to get in the way. But since Newt was still climbing out of the high-walled seat above him, he had to halt a few steps from the top.

  As he stood waiting, he glanced down at his mother. And that was when Holly lost her grip on the suitcase.

  CRASH! It fell onto the stairs. It fell through the stairs.

  Then it kept falling.

  57

  ‘IS THIS THE REAL THING?’

  CRASH . . . CRASH . . . CRASH . . . CRASH . . .

  The suitcase plummeted through the cellar floor – and through the floor beneath that. Marcus found himself staring down into a hole that grew deeper and deeper, like a tunnel. Punching its way through floor after floor, towing bits of debris with it, the suitcase finally became a speck in the distance before it was swallowed up by shadow.

  Marcus could barely hear the faint and faraway splash that it made upon hitting unseen water.

  Meanwhile, other things were falling into the hole as well: furniture, snow, fish, cakes, trees, tiles, chunks of footpath. Every punctured floor underneath the cellar seemed to have its own landscape, climate and ecology. And as oceans drained into go-kart tracks that collapsed onto herds of dinosaurs, the chaos spread like a virus. Buildings swayed and sagged and toppled into the hole. Rivers of chocolate poured over its edge. Ice shelves crumbled away as the hole sent cracks shooting across them.

  For Marcus, it was like watching the apocalypse from the top of a very tall skyscraper – or through the wrong end of a telescope. He wasn’t too worried about the possible destruction of a hundred fake dream-worlds, especially when most of it was happening so far away. He was mu
ch more concerned about the state of the cellar floor, which was shedding more and more of its paving stones. As each stone peeled off, pulled down by the force of gravity (or by a peculiar wind-tunnel effect created by the hurtling suitcase), the hole in the floor grew wider and wider.

  And all this was happening right underneath the damaged stairs.

  ‘Mum!’ he bellowed. But his voice was drowned out by Coco’s piercing shrieks; she was teetering on the very edge of the jagged gap that now separated her from Jake and Holly.

  Sterling pulled her back. ‘Get out!’ he exclaimed, then turned to address Marcus, who was just behind him. ‘Both of you!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Go!’

  Marcus didn’t want to go. He was afraid for his mother, who was on the wrong side of a bottomless pit. Below them, the bisected staircase was creaking and wobbling. Around them, the air was full of drifting embers. Above them, Newt was screaming hysterically. ‘Run! Jump! Quick!’

  Coco began to nudge Marcus up the stairs as Sterling tossed his blanket at Jake. While Jake was tying the two blankets together, Newt leaned down to clutch at Marcus’s T-shirt. And by the time Marcus had climbed out of the banquette seat into the caravan, one end of Jake’s makeshift rope had been attached to Holly’s midriff.

  Peering over the rim of the seat, Marcus had a bird’s-eye view of Holly’s leap across the yawning chasm in front of her. Jake was holding one end of her tether, just in case she missed her footing. But she didn’t. She cleared the gap. And she landed right on top of Coco in the process.

  Marcus cheered.

  ‘Okay, you hold on to that end!’ cried Jake, who was already winding the rope around his own waist. Seeing this, Holly began to pick at the knots in her end of the crude safety harness. But then, suddenly, the stair beneath Jake gave way.

  He dropped like a concrete slab.

  ‘No!’ bawled Marcus. His mother didn’t have time to scream. She was too busy sliding towards the precipice, pulled along by knotted blankets. It was like a tug-of-war, with Jake clinging desperately to one end of the rope while Holly scrabbled for a foothold at the other end.

  Sterling grabbed the rope. Coco grabbed Holly. ‘Climb!’ Sterling shouted. Slowly he began to haul at the overstretched fabric, which kept jerking and vibrating as Jake struggled like a fish on a line. Marcus could have sworn he heard a tearing sound; luckily, however, Jake’s fingertips appeared at the edge of the hole before anything could rip or unravel.

  Three pairs of hands reached out to help him, lugging him to safety just ahead of a sharp snap. The staircase shuddered. Coco screamed again. ‘The floor’s caving in!’ Jake yelled.

  There was a mad dash up the steps. When Coco pushed her raised arms through the seat, Marcus seized one wrist and Newt the other. Coco was then yanked out of the narrow slot like a cork out of a bottle, closely followed by Holly, who was shoved from behind by Jake.

  Jake practically vaulted into the caravan. But he immediately whirled around and leaned down to help Sterling, who had gripped the edge of the seat just in time. Below him, the staircase had begun to sway, pulling away from the brick wall that supported it.

  ‘Hold on, sweetie!’ Coco cried. She and Jake both heaved and grunted until Sterling had enough elbow room to manoeuvre himself into the real world.

  As he rolled onto the floor of the caravan, gasping and sweating, the lid of the seat slammed shut.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Holly hugged Marcus. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Coco asked Sterling, then glanced around. ‘Is everyone all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Sterling replied breathlessly. ‘What about you, Eddie? Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edison, who was already gnawing on a chocolate bar that he’d found in one of the kitchen cupboards. Marcus recognised this chocolate bar. He also recognised the curtains and the cushions and the clock on the wall. Everything around him was comfortingly familiar, though none of it was quite as reassuring as the smell of sweaty gym clothes.

  ‘What do you think?’ Jake muttered. ‘Is this the real thing?’

  ‘I think so.’ Marcus turned to his mother. ‘But I guess there’s only one way to find out. Why don’t you try to make a call, Mum?’

  Watching Holly punch a number into her phone, Marcus tensed. So did Jake, who licked his lips nervously. Coco crossed her fingers. Edison stopped chewing.

  ‘Oh – hello? Rebecca?’ A smile began to spread across Holly’s face. ‘Yes, it’s me,’ she continued, making a thumbs-up sign. ‘Yes, I’m calling from Diamond Beach. Oh, are you? That’s good . . .’

  Coco threw her arms joyously around Sterling’s neck. Jake sagged against the wall, limp with relief. Edison started chewing again and Marcus felt his heart return to its normal rhythm.

  But Newt didn’t cheer up. Her face was as long as ever. And when Holly finally finished her call, breaking the connection to announce, ‘We must be back home because I just talked to our next-door neighbour!’, Newt didn’t join in the applause that erupted.

  ‘What’s the matter, Newt?’ Edison wanted to know. ‘Why aren’t you happy?’

  Newt sniffed. ‘Because we didn’t save the little white dog,’ she quavered, her voice cracking. ‘Why do you think?’

  Everyone else exchanged guilty glances. ‘I’m sure the dog will be all right, Newt,’ Holly said at last. ‘It’s in its dream holiday, remember?’

  ‘Which has probably gone up in flames!’ Newt tearfully retorted. ‘Or collapsed into a black hole or something!’

  ‘We can’t be sure of that, Newt,’

  ‘Yes, we can! The whole place was trashed! Didn’t you see? Have a look, why don’t you?’ Newt then pointed at the closed seat – just as something knocked against its lid from the inside.

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

  For an instant nobody moved. It was Jake who finally stepped forward; he flung the lid open before Marcus could cry, ‘No!’

  Luckily, however, Miss Molpe didn’t spring out of the seat. There were no giant pink cats or burning brochures lurking at the top of a newly formed staircase, poised to attack him.

  Instead, Prot and the little white dog were sitting there, in a plain, rectangular wooden box, slightly singed but otherwise unharmed.

  58

  THE END OF THE HOLIDAY

  MARCUS SPENT THE REST OF HIS BEACH HOLIDAY IN THE Huckstepps’ caravan, talking.

  He and his mother didn’t want to stay in their own caravan, even though Sterling had examined it from top to bottom without finding a trace of Miss Molpe. The cellar had vanished; the staircase had vanished; there wasn’t a pink cat hair or a flake of ash anywhere. Even the brochure in Sterling’s pocket had either fallen out or evaporated. And when Coco went to retrieve her Crystal Hibiscus bathrobe from the wash, her robe couldn’t be found. Though Sterling tore apart their washing machine, he came away empty-handed.

  Everything was gone – except Jake.

  Without Jake, it would have been impossible to prove that the whole adventure had happened at all. And Jake didn’t look as if he’d just stepped out of a Greek myth. With his hair cut and a proper set of clothes, he looked more like a normal guy than someone who’d been rescued from an updated version of Homer’s Odyssey.

  ‘So no one will ever believe you when you try to explain why you didn’t go home all those years ago,’ Holly assured him sadly. ‘If you tell the truth, people will think you’re mad. That’s why you can’t tell the truth, Jake.’

  ‘You’ll just have to say that you lost your memory,’ Coco advised.

  ‘Or that you stowed away on a ship,’ Edison suggested.

  ‘The important thing is that the newspapers don’t find out,’ Holly finished. ‘So we’ll all have to keep our mouths shut and hope that your parents don’t make a big fuss when you contact them. Otherwise the police might get involved.’

  But the police didn’t get involved, because Jake’s parents were already dead. Sterling discovered this wh
en he ran an internet search; Mr and Mrs Borazio had died in a car accident ten years earlier, leaving a sizeable fortune to Jake’s older brothers. And when Sterling finally tracked these brothers down, none of them would acknowledge Jake. They called him an impostor.

  ‘That’s because they don’t want to share,’ Marcus deduced. ‘I bet they’d be nicer to you if they weren’t so greedy.’

  ‘And if you tell them the truth, they’ll say you’re a mad imposter,’ Holly lamented. ‘I’m sorry, Jake. This is going to be harder than I thought – unless you fight them with a DNA test, and that will mean police involvement . . .’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Jake. And he really seemed to mean it. His brothers’ rejection didn’t appear to bother him. Neither did his epic struggle to prove who he was. Marcus found out why much later, after Jake had given up his job as the Huckstepps’ gardener and moved out of the furnished loft that had been built over their six-car garage. Though his new boss didn’t pay as well as the Huckstepps had – and his new digs were only half the size of his former residence – Jake was adamant that he preferred it that way.

  ‘If things were too easy, I’d be back in fantasy land,’ he pointed out. ‘All these tough breaks prove that I’m in the real world. It’s such a relief not being stuck in an endless loop where you always know what’s going to happen next!’

  According to Jake, the setbacks of his everyday life were good for him. He certainly thrived on challenge; even Marcus could see that. Upon first emerging from Miss Molpe’s caravan, Jake had been unable to drive a car, use a computer, or identify an eggplant. Within six months he had mastered all these skills and more. It was like watching someone grow up in fast-forward mode. Soon Marcus wasn’t showing Jake what to do anymore. Soon it was Jake giving advice to Marcus.

  There was only one challenge that Jake wouldn’t face. Though he cheerfully wrestled with unfamiliar technology, hostile lawyers and grudging government departments, he wanted nothing to do with Miss Molpe. He wouldn’t even discuss her – unlike the Huckstepps, who were always asking each other questions about every aspect of her existence. Had she really been a siren, or had some weird, bird-like being (an alien, perhaps) chosen to disguise itself as a mythological monster? And if she really had been a siren, why had she felt compelled to keep killing travellers? Could it have been because she missed the cadaver-strewn shores of her youth, where her voice had once ruled the waves and won every heart?