‘So where are we going?’ Alex asked as they stepped out of the porch, drizzle instantly blurring his glasses.
Jonny was already striding down the potholed drive with his coat billowing behind him like the action figure of a cloaked wizard. He paused and looked back with a grin.
‘Remember that World War Two communications post? The key word is communications. I bet it’s still got equipment in there!’
‘That’s miles away!’ Zack protested.
Jonny was already walking again. ‘Then we’d better get a shift on, hadn’t we?’ he called, his voice trailing off with the wind.
‘Actually,’ Sophie called, ‘it’s about half a mile.’ Jonny paused and looked back. Sophie jerked a thumb in a completely different direction.
‘If we take the cliff path,’ she added with a smile.
16
MIDNIGHT!
CLIFF PATH
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS (OBVS!)
DO NOT PROCEED PAST THIS POINT (EVEN MORE OBVS!)
The Young Magicians paused at the edge of the hotel property, staring. There was just enough light from the hotel windows to make out the faded lettering.
‘I’m sure this sign’s out of date now,’ Jonny said, trying to sound hopeful. ‘They might have fixed it up by now.’
He strode forward in a desperate attempt to look confident as, one by one, the other Young Magicians put their heads down into the wind and rain, like Arctic explorers, though not suitably dressed, and traipsed towards the cliff edge.
The light from the hotel was soon gone. The path twisted and turned in the dark, over-soaked and spongy moorland, running between vast banks of heather and gorse bushes, the only things that were willing to grow and survive the cold, salty blasts from the sea. Everything was just lumps of grey in the dark of night, with the rain doing its best to further blind them. The only way to navigate was to listen to the sea on one side of them, roaring and raging against the foot of the cliffs, determined to wear them down molecule by molecule even if it took hundreds of thousands of years. (Which it would but the sea is patient. Always bet on the sea. It wins in the end.)
‘Whulp!’ (or a noise very like it) Jonny exclaimed, and his gangly grey shape suddenly vanished. The friends hurried forward, and quickly found out – each in their own way – that the ground was laced with roots and brambles that could trip you up at a moment’s notice.
‘Maybe I’ll take it a bit slower,’ Jonny muttered as he picked himself up off the soaking wet ground, feeling rather than seeing a long, wet muddy streak running from his knee and up his leg and waist and ribs along the side of his face to the top tips of his hair. The others mumbled their agreement as they picked their way through the saturated dark a bit more carefully than before.
They made a sort of diamond shape – Jonny still ahead, Zack and Sophie side by side and Alex bringing up the rear, grateful for his thick, heavy, oversized blazer, which gave pretty good protection to most of his body. It was just a shame that it didn’t include a hood: his vision through his glasses was just a blur. It was like his prescription had just doubled within the space of fifteen minutes. Thanks, wind and rain!
‘So how did you work out this way is better?’ Zack called to Sophie over the sound of the wind.
‘I looked at the map,’ she called back. ‘The road up from town curves round this area. The cliff path is more direct.’
Zack remembered Sophie’s memory-palace trick with the hotel map, and the promise to show him how it worked. So he trusted her memory. It was just, ‘I didn’t see any map,’ he said.
‘Oh, it was in this book in our room. You know, one of those tourist guides to the area, full of interesting folk tales and stuff. Did you know, this is where they had the most recent sighting of the Ribble Render?’
‘The Ribble what?’
‘No one knows!’ Sophie said cheerfully. ‘It’s this legendary animal, like the Beast of Bodmin and the Portishead Predator and the Fiend from Fangfoss. The guide says it’s probably an escaped wild cat from a circus. There’s a sighting every few years up and down this part of the coast and they always find the body of an eviscerated sheep lying around nearby.’
‘An eviscer-what?’
‘Eviscerated. It means all its guts scooped out.’
Zack tried to smile but his imagination was already running wild.
‘Ah. Heh. Right. Funny, I don’t remember seeing any sheep on the way up here.’
‘Maybe it was extra hungry. And then there’s the banshees.’
‘The who?’
‘No, the banshees. The book said they’ve definitely been seen –’
‘And banshees are what exactly?’
‘They’re spirits that come and perch on the roof of a house where someone’s going to die, and scream,’ said Alex behind them, nervously glancing left and right.
Well, he thought, if the Ribble Render is some kind of cat, it’ll be indoors. Cats hate the wet. But then again maybe the Ribble Render was different to other cats. A cat that liked to EVISCERATE livestock.
‘What do they scream?’ Zack asked nervously.
‘The book didn’t say,’ Sophie admitted.
‘I suppose, if someone’s going to die, then screaming “call an ambulance!” would be a good idea,’ Jonny joked from up ahead.
The friends trudged on behind Jonny, with Alex and Zack trying to put the folk tales of predatory wild cats and screaming banshees to the back of their mind. They had a mission – contact Alf – and it was better to focus on that than fall prey to some monstrous … COME ON NOW, FOCUS!
‘Whoa!’
Alex stumbled blindly down the slope for a second, arms waving madly to keep his balance. Something caught his foot and he toppled – splat! – face forward into cold, slick, liquid mud that immediately started to close over him.
‘Ach!’
Alex spat out a mouthful of bitter, brown, grainy goo – hoping beyond hope that this was purely decomposed plant matter and not something that originated from the back end of the Ribble Render. He tried to stand up, but his legs were now held firm, floating inside the sticky, swampy mess.
‘Help!’ he shouted. ‘I think I’m in a bog!’
Even though Alex had read that the worst thing to do when trapped in a bog was to kick and scream, it was all he could manage. Even when he began to sink further and further down into the smelly slime, like he was slowly being absorbed into the earth, like he was melting into it, he did not stop kicking and screaming. Because what else was there to do? Sing? Have a bite to eat? Do the morning crossword? No, if there were ever a time to kick and scream, it was when being eaten alive by the ground. And, if this was the way Alex was going to go, he sure as hell wanted people to know about it.
‘HELP!’
And then Jonny was there, crouched in front of him, holding out a long arm, like a superhero.
‘Here! Hold on!’
Jonny and Alex closed their hands round each other’s wrists as if they were forming a pact. Sophie wrapped her arms round Jonny’s waist, Zack wrapped his round Sophie’s, and together they hauled Alex back on to dry – well, as dry as could be expected – land, like he was some enormous turnip.
‘Are you OK?’ Jonny asked anxiously.
Alex could now feel the cold mud soaking into his shoes, clogging up the fibres of his socks and trousers. But it was the tricks inside his blazer that he was more concerned about. He pulled out a dripping brown deck of cards from his pocket – like he was about to advertise a brand of washing powder. ‘I’ll live,’ he said, smiling back up at them. He had to admit, sodden magic props aside, that things could have gone a lot worse.
‘Still, if you hadn’t nearly died, we might have walked straight past it – look!’ said Sophie. Alex turned to where Sophie was pointing. It hardly seemed like the cosiest of places, but the communications post was a damn sight better than the boggy home Alex had last resided in. They had made it!
They all squelched their way over,
Alex moving a little slower than the rest, now carrying over half his weight in mud and water trapped inside his blousy blazer.
It wasn’t raining inside, fortunately, and it did offer some respite from the wind, but other than that it was as bleak as one might expect an ageing, concrete World War Two communications post on a blustery Lancastrian night should be. Still, minus a slight detour, they were here, and they had a job to do!
‘Hello, what’s this?’ said Jonny in the dark. They heard him grunt with effort. Then there was a metallic click and a snap and a clunk, and a dim light from an old-style incandescent bulb flooded the interior. Jonny’s hand was on a large circuit-breaker switch that he had just pulled down.
‘And there,’ he exclaimed happily, ‘is the phone! Told you!’
Sophie, Alex and Zack had almost forgotten what they had come here for. Wasn’t their Lord of the Rings style epic trek along a cliff face enough?
The phone looked more like a prop than something that had insides and actually worked. A big black box clamped to the wall, with a handset connected to it by a curly cable, so massive that you needed to practise with weights to lift it, and a rotary dial, and a couple of other knobs and wheels and switches.
Jonny lifted the handset and held it to his ear.
‘Completely dead …’ he said thoughtfully. He studied the rest of the equipment. ‘I mean, at this point in films someone usually just turns a wheel to generate enough charge for a connection and they’re away …’ Jonny matched his words with actions and spun the nearest metal wheel near the circuit breaker. He tentatively held the phone back up to his ear and his face split into a massive grin.
‘You’re kidding!’ said Zack, his smile mirroring Jonny’s.
‘And we have a dialling tone! Wow, I love being me sometimes!’ The others laughed out loud … Jonny’s bonhomie was infectious.
He reached out for the rotary dial with a finger, and paused.
‘Oh cripes. Anyone know the number for the Magic Circle?’ One look from Sophie told Jonny he needn’t worry. ‘Course you do!’ he beamed.
Sophie began reciting the number digit by digit from memory, as Jonny dialled it in. For every digit he had to stick his finger into the right hole on the dial, move the dial round as far as it would go clockwise and release it. The dial clicked its way back to its starting point, and then you repeated the next digit, and so on. SHOUT OUT TO ANY ADULT READING THIS AND NOW GETTING SHIVERS DOWN THEIR SPINE!
‘Wow, how did anyone even make calls back then? It must have taken them ages!’ Zack wondered.
‘Yeah, and no video, only audio … Forget things like FaceTime!’
At last the dial spun itself back to zero as the final digit was entered. The friends gathered round the handset, each of them straining an ear to catch what was going on down the line.
Buzz.
Click.
Buzz-zzz-zzz …
Whir.
Squawk!
And then, finally, no, it can’t be …
Ring!
17
1 A.M.
If you’ve ever seen The Phantom of the Opera, then you might have some definite ideas about theatre ghosts.
In particular you might have decided that:
every theatre should have one, and
they hang out in a vast underground lair mostly filled with a subterranean lake and thus are at HUGE risk of contracting legionnaire’s disease.
Only one of these is, in fact, true.
And that was why the Magic Circle’s theatre ghost – or Alf as he was known to his friends – did the exact opposite of live in a damp subterranean lair.
In the five years since he had moved down south, Alf had kitted out a space in one of the attics of the Magic Circle’s London HQ as his own private apartment. He had a bed, a chair, a small bathroom and a little kitchenette. He had lined the roof above him with pillows and cushions, so that when warm air rose (mostly from the nostrils of magicians) through every floor of the building below, it pooled in the attic and gave Alf free, cosy central heating. It was snug and dry and it was all his own. And he was at ZERO risk of contracting legionnaire’s disease.
Alf had led a mixed life, and had undoubtedly made sacrifices, some because he wanted to, some because they were forced on him. For the last five years, though, Alf had finally felt he was somewhere he belonged. He was the happiest man in London.
And, because he had never felt the need for one, Alf had never got round to installing a phone. Which was why it took a long time for the distant ringing from five floors below to penetrate his sleeping subconscious.
(Two hundred and fifty miles away, Jonny was starting to grow anxious.
‘Come on, come on …’
‘How long does a charge last on that thing?’ Zack whispered, so as not to wake the banshees.fn1
‘Dunno. Give it another spin. C’mon, Alf, pick up!’)
First Alf dreamed he was awake, which didn’t help as he lay there sleepily, eyes open, and waited for the ringing to stop. Except that the ringing wasn’t going to stop, and his eyes weren’t open – they were shut tight, as he was still fast asleep. WAKE UP, ALF!
Slowly, eventually, Alf forced his eyes open, one at a time, then his ears, and finally his brain as he finally admitted to himself that – yes – someone really was ringing the Magic Circle at –
‘Oh, good grief,’ he mumbled, glancing at the illuminated face of his traditional wind-up alarm clock and throwing back the bedclothes.
Alf wasn’t obliged to answer the Magic Circle’s phone – in fact, as a professional theatre ghost, he wasn’t obliged to do anything apart from vanish when he needed to vanish and, well, that was kind of it – but it was in his nature to do anything to help the society. And some gut instinct – probably based on the way the phone kept on ringing – told him that this wasn’t just a wrong-number call from an insomniac insurance salesperson. This kind of persistence in letting the phone ring at 1 a.m. told him it was urgent.
Alf yanked at the string that opened the hidden trapdoor and let the ladder down from his apartment. He was already sliding down it even before its feet touched the landing below.
(Jonny sighed.
‘Come ON, Alf!’
‘I mean, will Alf even remember who we are?’ Sophie asked.
‘Of course he will!’)
Alf hurried along towards the stairwell. No time for stairs. He swung his leg over the banister and started to slide. Face forward, because that was how he liked it, full throttle and barely touching the sides.
(‘I don’t think he’s going to answer.’
‘Sorry, Jonny. It was worth a try.’)
Alf leaned into the bends as they came up so that his gangly body whipped sharply round at ninety degrees before starting its next plunge – much like a Pendolino train, if trains could navigate stairs, that is. Third floor. Second floor …
Right at the end of the banisters, on the ground floor, was – for some inexplicable reason, known only to whoever decorated the Magic Circle back in the seventies (that is, the 1370s) when this kind of thing was acceptable – a large, knobbly, decorative, carved wooden thing that was probably some kind of fruit or vegetable, made by someone who had never seen a real whatever-it-was, but had heard a lot about them.
Towards which Alf is speeding at about thirty miles per hour.
In the dark.
Closer and closer Alf gets. First-floor bend, and then the final straight, down to ground level and the lurking, lethal legume (possibly a pineapple … possibly) that is now hurtling right towards Alf’s – well, don’t make me spell it out. (Just say that if I did, Sophie would roll her eyes, Alex would blush, and Zack and Jonny would snigger.)
(‘OK, five more rings and then I’m hanging up. One …’)
But this is not Alf’s first rodeo. He is already reaching out with both hands, wrists together and palms spread out, like a wicket keeper. His hands slap into the thing and in a flash he has vaulted over it, like the
leapfrog to end all leapfrogs, landed on the tiles of the ground floor, and is running to the ringing phone in the front office.
(‘Two, three, four, five. He’s not there. We’ll have to think up something else. Sorry, guys. Hanging up.’
Click.
‘Hello?’)
At the other end, Alf heard a sudden scrambling sound as four pairs of hands tried to reverse the inevitable fate of a phone that had commenced being hung up on its hook. They were too late. In the lonely, windswept communications post on a distant, damp clifftop, the receiver landed back on its stand.
And was immediately snatched up again.
‘Hello?’ Jonny shouted. ‘Alf? Are you there?’
‘Still here,’ Alf said calmly, smiling warmly.
Because Alf was old enough to remember how old-fashioned landlines worked. Unless both parties hung up their receivers, the call was still ALIVE. Do with this fact whatever you will. Or ignore it completely.
‘Is that … Jonny Haigh?’ said Alf, both startled and a tad delighted to hear the young lad’s voice coming through loud and clear, chocks away!
‘YES!’ Jonny shouted in relief. ‘I mean, yes, we’re all here. The Young Magicians,’ he added unnecessarily because Alf certainly couldn’t imagine him meaning the Pickles at 1 a.m. ‘How are you, what have you been up to?! Sorry, actually, don’t have a ton of time. We need to know something really urgently.’
Jonny quickly rattled off the details of their query.
‘Right. Yes. Vanished into thin air? OK … Oh, Ron and Nancy Spencer! Yes, absolutely, they’re one of the greats …’
Alf sounded like he was jotting all this down. In fact, he was just remembering it, storing it in cursive copperplate at the front of his brain.
The Young Magicians and the 24-Hour Telepathy Plot Page 16