The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules

by Gerald Killingworth

  Please put a message up the chimney very, very soon.

  Your best friend,

  Lanthorne

  Although a large part of Edwin—in fact, all of him—still wanted nothing at all to do with strange letters blowing out of chimneys, accompanied by the smell of drains, he sympathized with Lanthorne’s comments about his difficult family. Here was someone he could talk to, even if it meant having their conversation by way of the chimney.

  It’s never a good idea to write a letter in haste, but Edwin needed to sound off.

  Dear Lanthorne, he wrote.

  I’m being kept prisoner in my bedroom. When my little baby sister, who was stupidly named after a musical instrument, learns to crawl, I expect she’ll come in here all the time, and then I’ll have to retreat into a cellar like you. Do you have a little baby sister too? Does she get you into trouble when she makes even the smallest sound? If you don’t have one, please feel free to take mine. I’ll even wrap her up for you. Let’s meet for a burger, or whatever, and have a good moan about our parents.

  Edwin

  It was a short reply and Edwin wasn’t happy with the way he ended; all the same, he marched defiantly downstairs and threw it up the chimney.

  “What are you doing, Edwin?” asked his mother, who came into the room just as he was delivering the letter.

  “I’ve written to Father Christmas, saying I don’t want any presents this year. He’s to give them all to Mandoline. That’s what you and Dad want, isn’t it?”

  Mrs Robbins was taken aback. “There’s no need for sarcasm, Edwin.” She went to give him a hug, but Edwin stomped off. He was beyond hugs, at that moment.

  Mr Robbins had obviously been told to have a word with his son during supper. He managed it very badly.

  As they finished their lemon meringue pie, he said, “Mum tells me you’re being difficult, Edwin.” The J word was used twice.

  “I didn’t say that at all,” said Mrs Robbins sharply.

  “I’m thinking of running away,” said Edwin. “Is it all right to leave the table to do that?”

  He spent the evening fairly contentedly in his room, playing a computer game and writing rude comments about his parents and sister in his diary. That day’s entry ran to two pages. His mother knocked on his door twice, once to ask if he wanted to watch a comedy programme on the television and the second time to say she had opened a tub of ice cream. Edwin was distant and negative each time. He felt he had the upper hand for once, and he was enjoying it.

  Edwin had been in bed for about an hour when his parents came upstairs. He was amused to hear that they were still bickering about what had been said to him.

  “You don’t know the meaning of tact.”

  “You said talk to him. It wasn’t necessary.”

  “He’s going through a stage.”

  “So are you.”

  Their bedroom door shut loudly, and Edwin fell asleep to the distant buzz of their continuing argument. He woke up sometime after midnight, thinking, They can’t still be at it. He could hear a tapping, whispering sort of noise. Perhaps his mother was knocking on his door, begging for forgiveness. Edwin sat up in bed and looked towards the bedroom door, but that wasn’t where the noise was coming from.

  The tapping and whispering hadn’t stopped, and Edwin realized he could distinguish words, his name.

  “Edwin, it’s me, Lanthorne. Let me through.”

  Edwin was suddenly cold from head to foot. Around the edge of the door to his bedroom cupboard was a faint light, and behind it, Lanthorne Ghules was tapping, perhaps with claws or extra-long teeth. Edwin’s temperature dropped another degree. The catch on the door was unreliable, and it sometimes swung open of its own accord. What if that happened now?

  “Edwin, I know you’re on the other side.”

  The light around the door didn’t grow any brighter, but a smell was seeping into his bedroom now, a drainy smell like the one that clung to Lanthorne’s letters. Edwin tried lying there with his fingers jammed into his ears and both pillows over his head, but each time he surfaced, the tapping and whispering was still going on. He felt invaded, cornered. Gathering an ounce of courage, he jumped out of bed and switched on his radio and computer. He found a music station on each of them and turned the volume up to maximum.

  Very soon, Mr Robbins burst into the room and stood there glaring at Edwin.

  “Edwin, what is going on?”

  “I had a nightmare. Music frightens it away.”

  Little did his father know just how real the nightmare was, and how near. The bogeyman—the bogeyboy actually—really was hiding in the cupboard.

  “Well, it’s a shame about the nightmare, Edwin, but you can’t keep the whole house awake.” Mr Robbins gave several long sniffs and looked quizzical.

  “I wouldn’t want to disturb Mandoline,” Edwin said pointedly.

  “Keep your light on for a bit and play the radio quietly. That should do the trick.” Mr Robbins sniffed again, thought about saying something more, decided not to, ruffled his son’s hair, said, “See you in the morning” and left.

  Edwin switched off his computer and sat on the edge of his bed, praying that the only sound he would hear would be that stupid song on the radio.

  Prayers have a habit of not being answered.

  Tap, tap. “Edwin, I’m still here.”

  “Armpits off!” Edwin growled. He wanted to run up and shout it through the crack in the cupboard door, but he remembered that if you trod on a certain part of the carpet in front of the door, it affected the loose catch. Also, if he started shouting, it would bring his father back.

  The tapping and whispering finally stopped. After twenty minutes, Edwin turned off the bedroom light and saw that the light around the cupboard door had also gone. It might be a trick, of course. He turned his light to half brightness and opened the bedroom door a little way, in case he had to make his escape. Then he tried to get back to sleep, not an easy thing in the circumstances.

  3

  A Visitor

  The next morning was Sunday and the Robbinses always took their time over a big breakfast. No one mentioned loud music in the night, and the J word didn’t pop up once. Mandoline was fed and tidied and left to gurgle in a world of her own, while her family enjoyed their breakfast. Edwin noticed that he was given twice his normal serving of scrambled eggs.

  “Look at those pigeons,” said Mrs Robbins. “I gave them a plateful of scraps first thing and now they’re practically banging on the window for more.”

  She got up from the table and shooed the birds away, but they were soon back.

  “I was thinking Edwin could help me clean the garden furniture and put it in the shed for the winter,” said Mr Robbins.

  “Don’t mind,” said Edwin. He thought of adding, in his most cutting voice, Why not ask Mandoline to do it? She is Superbaby, after all. Instead, he poured himself the last of the orange juice.

  Outside, on the patio, there was a round white table and a set of chairs, which they used for meals whenever it was warm enough. The furniture should have been put away two weeks ago, because there had been no Bonfire Night party in case the noise frightened Mandoline. Edwin was convinced Mandoline would have slept through the loudest bangers just to prove them wrong. He missed having their own fireworks party.

  Edwin and his father wiped down and dried the table and chairs, while regularly having to shoo away the determined pigeons. Then the furniture needed to be folded up and stacked in the shed. Edwin didn’t mind helping. It delayed the moment when he had to sit down with his maths homework. He had copied the answers from Dom, who was a maths genius, but he still had to make the working fit. Poor working and correct answers pointed to only one thing: cheating. Edwin had been caught out like that before.

  Another reason he was happy to be outside was because it kept him away from the discussion about “feelings” that he sensed his mother wanted to have with him. He couldn’t cope with feelings, on top of there being
a weird boy in his bedroom cupboard. That was asking too much of anybody, surely?

  “Work done,” said Mr Robbins as they stacked the last of the chairs. “No thanks to those pigeons. What’s got into them? Fancy a beer, Edwin?”

  “Not just now, thanks. I’m driving.”

  They often shared this joke, although Edwin was beginning to think it was about time his father actually allowed him a taste of beer rather than just laughing about it.

  Mr Robbins went inside, leaving Edwin alone in the garden. He mooched about, out of sight of the kitchen window, and took swipes at the dried heads which still lingered on a number of the flowers. He felt that events were closing in on him. True, no one had made him write that first letter and put it up the chimney in the Beanery, but it was a bit much to now have a strange boy trying to get out of his bedroom cupboard. He picked up a bedraggled tennis ball, which had got itself lost in the summer, and threw it half-heartedly at the pigeons.

  One of the daft creatures must have sneaked into the shed when they were putting the garden furniture away. Edwin could hear it fluttering madly against the door. He had a good mind to let it stay there all day, but he wasn’t a spiteful boy and so he sauntered over to the shed and pulled the door open. He was about to say, “Come out, you stupid bird”, but the words died in his mouth. In front of him, stood a small, grey boy several inches shorter than himself, with his hands over his eyes and crying in pain.

  “It’s so bright! It’s so bright!” the boy kept saying.

  Edwin knew at once this was Lanthorne Ghules, and his first thoughts were ones of sheer relief—He’s only a boy, after all, He’s shorter than I am and He doesn’t have claws or fangs!

  There was real distress in Lanthorne’s voice, so Edwin pushed him into the shed and banged the door shut behind them. Even in the gloomy interior, Lanthorne continued to stand with his hands over his eyes and seemed hardly aware of Edwin. He repeated, “It’s so bright!” over and over again, as if there were no other words in his vocabulary. Edwin began to worry that Lanthorne had been blinded or lost his mind.

  “If it hurts your eyes, try peeping through a couple of your fingers,” Edwin suggested. Most of the shed’s single window was covered by some lengths of wood standing on end, so he couldn’t understand why Lanthorne was so uncomfortable.

  Lanthorne said, “It’s so bright” a few times more, then followed Edwin’s advice. “I can see you,” he said eventually.

  Edwin was relieved. No blindness. Perhaps this story wasn’t going to have a terrible ending.

  Lanthorne peeped through a few more fingers, before finally taking his hands away altogether. “I’m Lanthorne.”

  “I know. And I’m Edwin.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s sit down,” said Edwin.

  He quickly unstacked two of the chairs, and they sat down opposite each other and stared. And stared. It wasn’t a very big shed, so they really were almost eyeball to eyeball.

  “Sorry about last night,” Edwin said at last. He wasn’t sure how truthful he could be. “I thought you might be a werewolf or an arachnid. You know, dangerous. Bloodsucking. Fangs.” He hoped that Lanthorne would laugh at this description of himself, but there wasn’t even the beginning of a smile.

  “Is everything here on fire?” Lanthorne asked. He moved his chair so that he now had his back to the window. Edwin didn’t switch on the light.

  The conversation lapsed into more staring. Edwin wondered how rude it would sound if he pointed out how grey Lanthorne was. It wasn’t just that the shed was gloomy; Lanthorne really was a pale grey colour. Not dirty, but a genuine puddle-water grey. He had all the features of a normal, if small, boy—untidy, spiky hair; eyes, nose, ears and mouth in the correct places; arms and legs the length you would expect; ten fingers—but grey skin. His hair was grey too, and his eyes, Edwin noticed uneasily, had hardly any colour at all.

  Edwin was fairly sure Lanthorne was wearing a jumper and shorts, but his clothes were so shapeless and so dark they made him look like a charcoal smudge with a head and limbs attached to it. In the stuffiness of the shed, Edwin was also aware of something else—a whiff of drains.

  “Excuse me, but you’re very big,” said Lanthorne.

  “Am I?” replied Edwin, who knew he wasn’t. Everything about Lanthorne was dainty, pinched, as if he had left part of himself behind.

  “And you’re shinier than I expected. We call you people ‘Shiners’. Your hair looks as if it’s going to catch fire.”

  “My hair’s dark brown. Pretty dull, when you think about it.”

  Edwin’s hair wasn’t glossy chestnut or ginger, and yet Lanthorne called it shiny. No wonder his visitor couldn’t take the light outside.

  “I thought I was going blind. Have you got special eyes?”

  “Not really,” said Edwin. “Mum says I might need glasses eventually.”

  There followed more staring and a lot of awkward fidgeting. Lanthorne looked more and more uncomfortable, as if he was sorry for finding a way into Edwin’s world. Edwin still hadn’t asked his two big questions, and now they both burst out of him.

  “Where do you come from? And how did you get here?”

  “I’m ever so thirsty,” said Lanthorne. “Coming through has sort of dried me out. My friend said it might.”

  “I’ll go into the house and fetch you something.”

  It was frustrating not to have answers to these giant questions, but Edwin was glad to go out into the fresh air again. There was a staleness about Lanthorne, a lack of freshness which wasn’t exactly what Edwin’s mother called “high”, but he wasn’t the sort of person you wanted to sit close to in an enclosed space for any length of time.

  “Stay here quietly while I get us a drink and a snack. Try not to be seen, okay?”

  Lanthorne hunched down and clutched the edges of his chair. Edwin noticed how spindly his arms were.

  “What will your people do to me if they know I’m here?”

  “They won’t lock you in the cellar,” Edwin laughed. This was another joke that fell very flat on its face.

  “Shall I hide under something?”

  “Just don’t peep out of the window. My mum and dad are the sort who think it’s all right to ask lots of questions if friends come round. They don’t realize it drives people away.”

  “I think I’ll hide in that corner, anyway. It’s like our cellar at home, and I can curl up so you won’t notice I’m there.”

  When Edwin returned to the shed, he honestly hoped he would find it empty. He’d had enough of this adventure already. Once he was inside again and the door was closed, a grey head appeared from behind the pile of boxes in the corner.

  “Told you,” said Lanthorne. “It was just like home, but a bit more comfortable.”

  “I’ve got biscuits and lemonade,” said Edwin. He handed Lanthorne one of the chilled cans of drink and tore open the packets of biscuits.

  “Lovely and cold,” said Lanthorne, wrapping his thin fingers around the can with some difficulty. He then tried to bite it.

  “You open it like this.”

  Edwin tugged the ring pull and a spray of lemon-scented bubbles escaped. Lanthorne was enchanted.

  “Now what do I do?”

  Edwin drank from his own can, to show Lanthorne how it was done. After the first mouthful, Lanthorne’s eyes were wide with delight.

  “It’s all sweet and tingly,” he said and gulped down several more mouthfuls so quickly he couldn’t hold back a loud burp.

  “I’ve got some Iced Moments biscuits, and we call these ‘squashed-fly’ ones as a joke because of the black bits.”

  “I want those,” said Lanthorne and grabbed a strip of the garibaldi biscuits.

  “They’re currants, actually, not flies,” Edwin pointed out.

  Did Lanthorne really look disappointed on hearing this? Edwin hoped he was wrong.

  They settled themselves on their chairs. “I want to know all about you,” said Edwin.
To himself, silently, he added, And please don’t tell me you’re a ghost or a vampire. He noted some pieces of wood in the corner, which could serve as a makeshift cross or stake in case Lanthorne turned out to be either of these horrors.

  “I live in Landarn. It’s a bit different from here. Not many of us believe in you Shiners, but my friend has told me stories about you ever since I was little. Some of the stories say you catch fire and burn up as soon as we touch you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Lanthorne leant across and gave Edwin a delicate pinch. “There! I knew it wasn’t true,” he said. “Can I try those other ones?”

  Edwin handed over the entire packet of Iced Moments.

  “My friend says our two worlds are sort of back-to-back and if you look very carefully you can open doors between them. I needed his help to find this door, but I mustn’t stay long.”

  That’s a relief, thought Edwin. Lanthorne was going to have to leave soon, like Cinderella at the ball.

  “The problem is you can’t just go through a door when you feel like it. They’re funny things, with a will of their own.”

  At least that meant people in Edwin’s world were safe from grey people popping out every time they opened a cupboard!

  “Who is this friend of yours?” Edwin asked.

  “He’s wise and he’s read lots of old books, so he knows all about Shiners. He says you can’t live very long because the fire inside you burns you up. Sorry, it was a bit unkind to mention that.”