Belinda heaved on the handlebars and the motorbike spun round ninety degrees, leaning over dangerously and only staying upright under the weight of Eric Diva – no offence, Eric. It lurched up on to the veranda of the ghost train, where the carriages usually waited for sugar-fuelled kiddies to get on board, and smashed through the double doors into the depths of the ride. The engine popped and gargled and then died entirely.
Alex peered over the top of the ice-cream cart that he had managed to push into Belinda’s path, the bulk of the freezer compartment evidently blocking her view of him. Nice work, Alex!
‘Crikey! Do you think they’re all right?’
‘Let’s go and see,’ Jonny said grimly. They hurried towards the shattered doors. The remains of the peeling paintwork – grinning skulls and constipated ghosts – peered sadly back at them as though they blamed the four friends for what had just happened to their fine looks. We used to look great before this!
The Young Magicians peered into the dark.
Just inside the doors the tunnel split in two and headed off in different directions. The motorbike had crashed into the back end of an abandoned carriage, the front wheel now buckled back on itself like the claw of a crow. One thing was for sure: Belinda and Eric wouldn’t be going anywhere soon on that.
There was no sign of either culprit.
‘Which way do you think they went?’ whispered Alex, hoping Jonny wasn’t about to suggest that they should –
‘Let’s split up,’ said Jonny. ‘This ride is probably a loop that starts and finishes here. If we go both ways, we’ll have them cornered and can regroup back here.’
‘It’s kind of … dark …’ Alex pointed out.
Jonny reached into his pockets, and suddenly a soft green glow filled the space as he removed two glowsticks.
‘I’ve only got two, so one per pair?’ he added, his teeth shining green in the strange chemical light.
‘OK, this way.’ Zack grabbed Jonny and the two of them marched down the left-hand tunnel. Alex and Sophie gripped hands and headed to the right.
It wasn’t totally dark. There were wormy holes in the sides of the wooden tunnel that let in pinprick beams of light, egging them on. Skeletons, ghouls, witches and Frankenstein’s monsters loomed out of the dark, glowing with luminous paint and almost appearing half alive in the strange light of the glowsticks. Sophie and Alex made their way cautiously down their tunnel, keeping either side of the rails.
‘I wonder what this does?’ Alex said, bumping into something at the level of his knees. It looked like a lever, the kind that might be used to shift the points on a real railway. He gave it a small, thudding kick.
‘Look out!’ Sophie shouted as two glowing skeletons came hurtling at them, flying through the air without any apparent support. The skeletons jerked to an abrupt halt just in front of them, juddering and jiggling in delight – like they were thrilled to be finally scaring some punters again after such a long period of unemployment.
Alex and Sophie had both dropped into a crouch, covering their heads with their hands. They straightened up slowly and Alex held the glowstick up to look at the dangling skeletons more closely, which still twitched like they were involved in some nervous dance. With the light up close, you could see that each of them was hanging from a chain, painted black to merge into the darkness, connected to a runner on a rail fixed to the ceiling.
Sophie gave the lever a second kick and the skeletons slowly trundled back the way they had come, pulled back into hidden recesses on either side of the tunnel.
‘I guess the front of the train hits the lever on its way through, sending the skeletons out, then something on the back of the train hits the lever the other way and they reset themselves until next time,’ Sophie mused, ever the one to know the mechanics behind a good trick, regardless of the circumstances. ‘Kind of neat.’
They moved on down the tunnel and it widened out into a large graveyard. The train tracks ran between rows of crooked gravestones, with hungry-looking zombies poised on hidden rollers that would lumber about, arms akimbo, the moment the power was switched back on.
Sophie whispered in Alex’s ear. ‘We should check behind the graves.’
Alex swallowed and nodded. He didn’t like the idea of going up against either of the fugitives in broad daylight, let alone in a shadowy, papier-mâché graveyard!
They moved off in different directions with Alex clutching the glowstick like it was a magic wand as he slowly worked his way round the gravestones, before lunging across to the other side, glowstick now held out like a sword – en garde! Its light disturbed several surprised spiders and a couple of centipedes whose body language Alex couldn’t really read due to the number of legs getting in the way – but they were undoubtedly annoyed. (Centipedes are almost always annoyed.) But there were no hidden humans here. Not yet at least.
Suddenly Alex’s heart pounded faster as he realized a figure was moving along the wall a couple of metres away, just beyond the circle of green light cast by the glowstick.
‘Sophie? Is that you?’ Alex asked, his voice trembling.
‘Look out, he’s right behind you!’ shouted Sophie’s voice suddenly.
Alex spun round as a figure came pelting out of the dark towards him. Alex felt his stomach turn to water and readied himself.
‘Take that!’ he howled bravely, putting his head down and charging right into the stomach of …
‘O-oo-oo-oo-f!’ Sophie wheezed, collapsing to the ground, all the wind knocked out of her. She heaved for breath. ‘What did you do that for?’
Alex climbed on to all fours. ‘But you said he was behind me.’
They both understood what had happened at the same time. Alex leaped to his feet and jerked round, just in time to see a square of daylight open up in the ceiling above and the silhouetted frame of Eric Diva as he clambered out, giving them a cheerful wave, before slamming the hatch shut behind him.
‘He was throwing his voice again!’ Alex realized. ‘He was pretending to be you!’
‘Well, he’s not getting away with it this time,’ Sophie vowed fiercely, keen for both Eric and Belinda to face justice. She grabbed a ring set into the wall that led up towards the hatch. They both quickly scrabbled up to the roof and emerged, blinking, into the daylight.
Jonny and Zack advanced cautiously down the tunnel, walking on either side of the railway as Alex and Sophie had done. Zack bit his lip, aware that the daylight was slowly receding behind them; plus, he had no idea how Belinda or Eric would react if cornered. At one point, it had looked like Belinda was more than happy to mow them down with a motorbike, so that didn’t quite fill him with confidence!
The tunnel was well soundproofed, so that when punters were on the ride there would be no light-hearted distraction from the music and laughter outside. Just the ominous music and sound effects and the noise of their own screams instead. Nice. And now it meant that all the two boys could hear were their own footsteps and breathing and heartbeats and – was that more footsteps?
Zack’s heart rate went up abruptly as something soft and slimy slid across his face.
‘Oh, that is so old,’ Jonny muttered nonchalantly. He brushed whatever it was away from his own face. ‘I mean, fake webs? Who is actually scared of this kind of stuff?’
‘Beats me,’ Zack agreed, grateful that Jonny couldn’t see his deep blush.
Light glimmered ahead and the tunnel widened out. The railway ran past what might have been a pleasant picnic scene, if your idea of a pleasant picnic scene included a group of hideous, warty witches and a steaming, glowing cauldron. A sign hung above it in glowing red letters: BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BOIL AND TROUBLE.
‘Well, they’ve got that wrong too,’ said Jonny. ‘It should say double, double toil and trouble. We did Macbeth in English last term. It’s from the bit where he meets three witches.’
Zack’s eyes narrowed.
‘Three witches?’ he whispered.
‘Yup.’
&nb
sp; ‘There’s … four!’
One of the witches suddenly lunged towards them. A high-pitched scream filled the air – possibly Zack’s – as Belinda fled back the way they had come, towards the entrance, in her borrowed witch’s robes.
They both leaped after her as Jonny reached out with long arms, desperately trying to grab a handful of the rotting robe now flapping wildly in front of them. Jonny yanked a handful of it back, causing Belinda to decelerate abruptly and Jonny to tumble into her. Zack careened off course, stumbling into the legs of a waxwork mummy, which now slowly fell towards Belinda, arms held out, as if trying to embrace her as it toppled, finally pinning her to the ground.
‘Get it off! Get it off!’ Belinda shrieked.
Zack grabbed the end of the mummy’s bandages and yanked hard. They started to unravel as Zack wrapped them tightly round Belinda’s heels.
‘You idiots!’ she raged. ‘Don’t you know what you’ve done? Eric and I were poised to take over the Magic Circle and we’d have taken you with us! You dummies would have had a free ride straight to the top with us in charge!’
‘Thanks,’ Jonny said, sounding pleasantly upbeat, ‘but we don’t need a free ride to the top of your greasy pole. We’re getting where we’re going on our own merits, or not at all.’
Belinda screamed in frustration as Zack tied the final knot on her wrists and stood up.
‘Think she can do escapology as well?’ he grinned.
‘I wouldn’t put it past her, but not if we keep an eye on her,’ Jonny said as they helped Belinda to her feet. She was still cursing under her breath, her accent out in full force now, though not perhaps with the silky undertones it had had before.
‘Come on,’ said Zack, ‘let’s see how the others are doing.’
Sophie and Alex stood on the roof of the ghost train, blinking in the sunshine. There was another flat-topped building next to them, about a metre away, where they had just caught a glimpse of Eric Diva’s hand disappearing into a hatch below.
‘Which ride is it?’ Sophie asked. Alex squinted down, but the front of the building – the bit the paying public saw – was out of sight.
‘I can’t tell from here.’
‘Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.’
They both had to take a run-up to get over the gap between the roofs. Alex thought ruefully how Jonny could have done it without even breaking his normal stride! They reached the hatch and pulled it open. Sophie peered over the edge. Oh no, what new hell was this?!
She was looking out over a geometric pattern of triangles and squares and hexagons. The room appeared to be a maze of little cubicles, about two metres high, each one with three, four or six sides. Every hexagon had a square attached to one of its edges, and every square had a triangle between it and the next one. And the next one after that. Confused yet? Over on the other side, about twenty metres away, she could see daylight shining through the entrance.
‘It’s … some kind of maze, I think,’ Sophie reported. She stared at it for a bit longer, admiring the aerial view, before jumping down into the gloom, with Alex right behind her.
Their feet touched the ground and they turned round, suddenly startled. Half a dozen Alexes and Sophies stared, suddenly startled, back at them from a million different directions.
‘Ah, so it’s a mirror maze,’ Alex said.
‘We have to try to stop him reaching the exit,’ Sophie decided, hearing footsteps. ‘You go that way, I’ll go this.’
They carefully headed off into the most baffling maze either of them had ever set foot in. Most of the sides of each cubicle were formed entirely of mirror glass, but – crucially – others weren’t. So sometimes the only way out of a cubicle was the way you’d come in, and other times you could walk in one way and out the other. Yet all the time you were surrounded by an often distorted array of images of yourself, or whoever was in the next cubicle, or sometimes both!
It was confusing, but with a bit of effort Sophie could make herself see past the mirrors and spot the way through. It was actually easier to put the glowstick away, and be guided by the dim amount of daylight, than try to see through the glare of the glowstick, reflected multiple times.
At one point, Sophie looked herself in the eye and moved towards where she thought the exit must be. She froze in surprise and shock, heart pounding, as the reflection moved the other way.
Sophie realized she was looking at a reflection of a reflection: a reversed mirror image. In other words, she was seeing herself exactly as she actually appeared. This was the Sophie everyone else saw except her … It made her feel quite dizzy.
‘Sophie! Where are you?’ she heard Alex call. She was about to answer when she heard Alex again, more indignant and in a different direction.
‘That wasn’t me!’
‘OK,’ Sophie called back, ‘he’s doing his voice tricks again. But this is the real me.’
‘Oi! That’s my voice you’re stealing!’ she heard her own voice shout.
‘No, it isn’t!’
‘Sophie, where are you?’
Something moved in the corner of Sophie’s eye and she whirled round. Followed by a dozen other Sophies.
‘I think I saw him,’ Sophie called.
‘Don’t listen to him! That’s a lie!’ came back Sophie’s voice.
‘It’s OK, I can see him!’ said Alex.
‘No, I can’t!’ replied Alex again!
Sophie took a breath. One Alex on her left, one on her right.
‘Alex, on the train yesterday, what were the cake options?’ she called.
‘Chocolate or carrot!’ shouted the Alex to her right, sounding very pleased. Well, there’s no way Eric Diva could have known about the cake, Sophie reckoned, so that meant he was standing … Sophie started heading left.
‘You ask me something,’ she called.
‘Um – OK,’ the real Alex answered. ‘What stopped you crash-landing over the wall at Buckingham Palace, when you jumped from the zipwire?’
‘A pile of compost!’ both Sophies suddenly shouted.
Eric Diva grinned to himself. The story of how the Young Magicians had got into Buckingham Palace was already a minor legend within the magic community. Alex himself had scraped the pile of compost together for the other three to land in safely. Oh, silly Alex, you should have asked the girl something else!
‘OK, let me try another – when did you last see an evil twin?’ Alex called.
Eh? a baffled Eric Diva thought.
‘Last night!’ Sophie laughed.
Now Sophie knew roughly where Alex was and where Eric Diva was, based on their joint shouts of ‘Compost!’; plus, she knew where she was. In her mind’s eye, she had put the pattern of mirror cubicles that she had seen from above into a memory palace. Now she was slowly working through it again, room by room, cubicle by cubicle. Sophie started to move, slowly and surely closing in on where she knew Eric Diva must be hiding.
On the other side of a mirror, Eric Diva froze. How had she got that close? It shouldn’t be possible! Was she navigating by radar, or something? He turned round, and froze as he found himself staring at Sophie.
Sophie was the first to unfreeze. She ran forward but went slap into a mirror.
‘Ow!’
She stumbled back, clutching her nose, her eyes streaming.
Eric Diva quickly ducked out of the cubicle before Sophie could get her bearings. No, no, no … that was close, he thought. Much too close.
‘How you doing, Sophie?’ Alex called anxiously.
Eric Diva didn’t bother imitating the littlest Young Magician again. He was close to the exit. Another couple of cubicles to go and he’d be free …
Suddenly he was facing the reflection of a man. He moved, but the man moved in a different way.
Not in the different, real-world way that a reflection, or even a reflection of a reflection, might move. This ghoulish man moved in a completely different way altogether, striding confidently towards him, arms o
utstretched. Eric Diva froze and screamed as he came face to face … with a real-life ghost.
‘What is it?’
‘What happened?’
Alex and Sophie stumbled in from opposite directions to find Eric Diva lying unconscious on the ground with the figure of another man crouched over him. The figure turned, looking up, and his lugubrious features split into a grin.
‘I believe that the showiest of showmen, Eric Diva … just fainted,’ said Alf.
Alf, Sophie and Alex escorted a recovered and squirming Eric Diva out of the Hall of Mirrors, Eric now having at least worked out that he wasn’t being manhandled by an actual ghost.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he gasped. ‘Do I know you? I’m sure we’ve met …’
The three friends smiled at each other. Alf’s portrait was on display back at Magic Circle headquarters – or at least the portrait of a man who looked very like him was, with the caption ALF RATTLEBAG, PATRON SAINT OF STAGEHANDS, 1892–1923. (It’s a long story. READ BOOK O– … Oh, I’m sure you’ve got the picture by now, haven’t you? Especially if you’ve got this far!) Eric Diva had probably walked past the painting a thousand times.
‘Let’s just say I know you, Mr Diva,’ Alf told him, straight-faced.
Out in the daylight they found Zack, Jonny and a truly trussed-up, balefully glaring Belinda waiting. Her eyes met Sophie’s. Sophie slowly smiled and Belinda looked away, scowling into the middle distance.
‘Alf! When did you get here?’ Jonny exclaimed in delight.
‘I couldn’t get back to sleep after your call last night,’ Alf said. ‘And I knew you were either getting into trouble or you could do with a hand – so either way I thought I could do more good up here than down there. So I got the Magic Circle van out and – well – here I am.’
He nodded over to a corner of the fairground where a very, very old, very battered, very Ford Transit was parked, with the words MAGIC CIRCLE in glowing, seventies-style letters on the side.
The Young Magicians and the 24-Hour Telepathy Plot Page 22