The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules

by Gerald Killingworth

  “I’m making sure you’re safe. Keep quiet!”

  Edwin nursed his hand. He had skinned several knuckles.

  “Trunke’s right, Edwin. No one can hurt us in here, and no one can see you shining.”

  Lanthorne snuggled down and sighed. It was a comfortable sigh, a Believe it or not, I’m quite looking forward to this adventure kind of sigh. Edwin snorted and pressed his face into his hood and prepared to be very miserable. He was trying hard not to think that the passenger box of a hansomme resembled a coffin.

  Eventually he did fall into a half-doze, which was spoilt by Lanthorne poking him and saying, “Edwin, I’m thirsty. Have you got any of those fizzy cans in your pack?”

  “I’ve brought two. If we drink them now, we’ll end up having to wee in here or burst. Let’s wait until we stop.”

  “I’m really, really thirsty.”

  “Wait!”

  They settled back into their respective dozes. There was a half-smile on Lanthorne’s lips, but Edwin twitched uneasily from time to time.

  Finally, the hansomme came to a stop. Trunke folded back the flaps and said, “Short rest.”

  The cleaner air and daylight were very welcome even though, to Edwin, the air had a mouldy edge to it and the daylight was very subdued.

  The boys climbed down from the hansomme and took in their surroundings. Well, they were certainly on a country road and a long way from Landarn. The road had a scruffy verge on either side and then the hedges started—tall, dark, thorny and overhanging the road as if they intended to meet and make a tunnel. It wasn’t the location you would choose for a pleasant country drive. Lanthorne was far more taken with it than Edwin.

  “So many trees and bushes,” he said. “It’s like a giant garden.”

  Edwin rolled his eyes. He remembered autumn and winter walks in the countryside with his parents; clean, sharp air to breathe and multicoloured leaves to scuff underfoot. Here, there was a strong sense of permanent dampness, of vegetation rotting as soon as it put out leaves, and of mildew clinging to it. The relief of being outside began to wear off. He looked up at the heavy sky, dirty as a puddle. The sun, barely visible, reminded him of a watery blister you didn’t dare burst.

  Edwin looked at his watch. Noon. How many hours, or even days, of travelling were left? He would have felt more comfortable if Trunke had told them how long the journey was likely to last. One fewer unknown to worry about. His staring at the watch drew Trunke’s attention.

  “Better I take care of that horlogge.”

  Edwin didn’t understand.

  “He means the horlogge on your arm,” said Lanthorne. “It’s only the third one I’ve ever seen.”

  Trunke wanted his watch. Didn’t Lanthorne realize “take care of it” meant steal? Who cared how many he had seen before?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Edwin.

  “Give me the horlogge. It’ll be safer with me.”

  “Better let Trunke take care of it,” said Lanthorne quietly. “You might lose it.”

  Edwin felt his eyes prickle. At that moment, the nagge turned its head to see what was going on. Edwin looked straight into malevolent, bloodshot yellow eyes and saw its leathery lips retract in what could be taken as a sneer or threat. The beast stamped one of its hoofed feet so heavily all three felt the ground vibrate.

  “The nagge’s hungry,” said Trunke. “She’s even more bad-tempered when her belly’s empty.”

  Edwin was reminded that if Trunke took against him and left him by the roadside, he wouldn’t survive. The nagge was a domesticated animal yet she looked ready to devour him, so what would one of their wild animals do? Anything wild in this country was bound to enjoy ripping a twelve-year-old Shiner to shreds.

  “I expect you’re right about the horlogge,” Edwin said as unresentfully as he could manage. “You have it for safekeeping. I thought I might be able to use it like a compass, but I don’t remember how to do it exactly.”

  He slid the watch from his wrist and dropped it onto Trunke’s outstretched palm.

  At least when the battery died Trunke wouldn’t be able to replace it.

  “You can take the hood right down if you like,” said Trunke, as if this made up for robbing Edwin. “We’re not expecting visitors. If you brought any food, eat it now.”

  Trunke appeared to think that Edwin’s backpack only contained unripe food he himself would find unpalatable. This suited Edwin, who was careful not to let the backpack jingle or clunk whenever he moved it or put it on. Their present safety and his and Mandoline’s escape from this world might depend on what he had managed to throw into the backpack during those few moments in his parents’ kitchen. He couldn’t have Trunke poking about in it and helping himself to anything that took his fancy.

  Edwin squatted down and noiselessly unzipped his bag. He handed Lanthorne a can of lemonade and opened the other for himself.

  “Goody. I like this,” said Lanthorne.

  “He just stole my watch, and all you can say is ‘Goody’?”

  “He left us the money. He knows we’ve each got a purse.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Trunke led the nagge to the thorn hedge where she tucked into the spiky twigs, crunching them noisily. He returned just when Edwin was taking a box of cheese triangles and some biscuits from his pack.

  “What have you got there?”

  As the top of the backpack was gaping open, Edwin unobtrusively rezipped it and waved the box of cheese triangles in the air as a distraction. He peeled away the foil wrapping from one of the triangles and held it out for Trunke to inspect.

  “It’s unripe. Don’t be disgusting.”

  Edwin popped the whole triangle into his mouth and moved it around like the contents of a washing machine.

  Trunke pulled a face and looked away.

  Edwin was pleased with his small triumph but Lanthorne suddenly put everything at risk.

  “It’s not just horrible unripe Shiner food that Edwin’s got in his pack,” he said, with the brightness of a five-year-old who doesn’t know he’s revealing an important secret. “He’s got lots of other really interesting things too. He told me.”

  “He means I’ve got these,” Edwin said, almost shouting as he waved a packet of biscuits under Trunke’s nose.

  “No, I mean—”

  “You’ll like these, Trunke!” Edwin really was shouting now.

  “Squashed-fly biscuits,” said Lanthorne, who was still not aware of what had happened.

  Trunke looked at the biscuits with interest.

  “They’re actually called Garibaldis,” said Edwin.

  “That’s a long name for flies, dead or alive,” said Trunke. “I’ll take one.”

  Edwin handed him half the packet. Trunke nibbled one of the biscuits, decided he liked it and polished off the rest very quickly. “Good quality flies,” he said. “At least you lot got something right.”

  “They’re currants,” said Edwin firmly.

  “Don’t you believe it. I know a decent fly when I taste one.”

  He went back to attend to the nagge.

  Edwin was now free to turn on Lanthorne and stun him with the full force of his anger.

  “Don’t you ever do something as stupid as that again,” he hissed.

  “I thought you didn’t mind sharing your biscuits.”

  “I’m not talking about the biscuits. I mean telling him there are all those other things in my pack. I’ll probably need every single one of them to get home.”

  Lanthorne realized his mistake and hung his head. “I just wanted him to know how you think of everything.” To placate his friend, he put half a cheese triangle in his mouth and pretended to enjoy it. This proved impossible and he spat it out.

  “You’re too picky,” Edwin told him coldly. “You gobble up the biscuits and the lemonade and then waste the cheese by spitting it out. There’s no difference.”

  “Yes, there is a difference,” Lanthorne said firm
ly. “I like sweet things. And in any case, cheese should be green.”

  It had been a very small breakfast, too fizzy and cheesy, and would probably all come back up again when they started bouncing about once more in the hansomme. Edwin longed for a boiled egg and toast. “How far do you think Morting is?”

  “My mum always says, ‘Thank goodness Out There is too far away to measure,’ which doesn’t tell us anything.”

  “We could ask Trunke to keep the hansomme open for some of the time. I was finding it difficult to breathe.”

  Lanthorne welcomed the suggestion. “Let’s enjoy ourselves looking at the countryside,” he said, hoping Edwin’s bad temper was passing.

  Edwin shrugged. “It’ll be fresher,” he replied meaningfully. “Stop trying to squash your empty can, and give it to me. At some point we might need to fill these cans with dirt and knock people out with them. I saw it done in a film.”

  This information meant nothing to Lanthorne, who got up to deal with the effects of drinking so much lemonade. Edwin copied him further down the hedge, and then they climbed back into the hansomme. Trunke agreed to let them ride with the flaps half-open. Edwin was told to keep his face mostly hidden, which he didn’t mind because soon both boys began to feel cold. The increasing chill of the afternoon didn’t seem to bother Trunke. From time to time he was willing to join in conversation of a straightforward, never really friendly, kind.

  “It’s thorn trees all the way,” he said. “You’ll soon get fed up with looking at it.”

  Edwin’s interest was much shorter-lived than Lanthorne’s. He began to slump more and more in his seat. As he looked down, he noticed that stowed behind Trunke was a piece of wood the length of a broom handle and tipped with a piece of sharp metal.

  “What’s this pole for, Trunke?” he asked.

  “It’s in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “You know what these woods are like. The nagge can take a big piece out of anything, but I like to have a weapon myself.”

  “Have you been on this road lots of times before?”

  “I might have. I think it’s time I closed you down. When it begins to get dark you’ll shine like a candle, and we can’t have that.”

  They weren’t sorry to be in the shelter of a closed passenger compartment once again, and, against his better judgement, Trunke promised not to lock it.

  “I’d love to know what time it is,” Edwin said after a while. He hoped Lanthorne felt guilty about going along so readily with the theft of his watch.

  “It’s late afternoon,” said Lanthorne. “And soon it’ll be night. I wouldn’t want to be out in these woods on my own at night.”

  It might come to that, when I’ve recaptured Mandoline, Edwin thought with a shiver, and the prospect was so frightening he needed a change of topic to put it out of his mind.

  “Tell me about the olden days,” he said. “Why were they so different?”

  “Because they weren’t the same at all,” Lanthorne said vaguely. “People didn’t believe what we believe now.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know.”

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  “I need another nap.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “We could look in our purses.”

  Edwin allowed himself to be distracted. “All right. Mine first.”

  He hoped they weren’t going to find that Jugge had tricked them with a collection of jingly rubbish. The purse certainly felt as if it contained coins, so he hoped for the best.

  Unknotting the strings of the purse proved difficult in the dark. When Edwin had accomplished this and poured a few of the contents into the palm of his hand, he had no idea what they looked like.

  “Even I can’t see them properly in this dark,” Lanthorne said disappointedly. “And if we open a flap, Trunke will know what we’re doing. He might take them off us.”

  Edwin put his hand in his backpack and rummaged about. “Voilà! I was saving this for a real emergency.”

  “What’s a voilà?”

  “This voilà is the slimline screwdriver and torch my dad uses when he has to change plugs in the kichen. Voilà!”

  He switched on the torch and Lanthorne’s eyes widened with delight as its narrow beam picked out the coins which lay in the palm of Edwin’s hand. They were two shades of brown, yellowish brown and greyish brown, and large and heavy like old-fashioned pennies.

  “Ooh,” said Lanthorne. “Doubla and florines. We could buy a lot with these.”

  “Thank you, Jugge,” said Edwin. He was very relieved. “What are the pictures on them? Do you have a king or queen’s head?”

  “These are buildings in Landarn and that’s someone important in the Governa. I don’t know his name. It’s a long time since we had a king or queen. The Governa tell us what to do now. I’ve never had florines of my own.”

  Lanthorne’s hoard of coins was identical. They had eight coins each.

  “What are you up to in there?”

  Perhaps Trunke had heard the chink of coins above the clopping of the nagge’s hooves. They would have to be very careful what they said, if his hearing were so acute.

  “We’re playing a guessing game,” Edwin called out. “Sorry if we upset the nagge.”

  “Just watch yourselves.”

  They silently repocketed the coins. Suddenly the torch went out, although Edwin hadn’t switched it off. He shook it and was rewarded with a brief goodbye flicker.

  “My dad never checks the batteries in things,” he said. Just as they started dozing off again, Edwin whispered, “I haven’t forgotten about the olden days.” Something told him this would be important knowledge to have in Morting.

  “I promise I’ll tell you soon, Edwin,” Lanthorne replied.

  And, for the moment, they left it at that.

  10

  Lovely Lodgings

  Eventually the clip-clopping stopped. Edwin had grown used to the steady bouncing up and down and the occasional crack as a pebble was flicked against the underside of the hansomme. He held his breath as he listened to make sure that the journey to Out There really had come to an end.

  “Where are we?” Lanthorne asked, sleepily rubbing his eyes.

  Trunke folded back the hansomme flaps.

  “Is this Morting?” Edwin asked eagerly.

  “That’s another day’s journey up the road.”

  Edwin’s face fell. Another day!

  “I’ve told you I’ll get you there, and I will. For now, it’s supper and bed.” Trunke’s manner was less abrupt, if not exactly friendly, which made Edwin think a little better of him.

  When the boys stumbled onto the ground beside the hansomme, their legs were so stiff they moved as if they were only just learning to walk.

  It was possible to make out the shape of a large building set back from the road. Not a single ray of light escaped from it, which might mean the shutters were tightly closed against things out here in the dark. It might even be a ruin. He thought it would be in character for Trunke to expect them to sleep in a roofless shell of a building. In this country, it was probably impossible to tell what was a home and what was an abandoned dump. Bright lights and a cheerful voice saying, “Come in, your rooms are ready,” would have been lovely.

  Edwin stood close to Lanthorne in case he lost him in the darkness. Above their heads—in a sky that felt heavy, as if gloominess were an actual thing that draped itself over this whole world—not a single star shone.

  “Is this really an inne?” Lanthorne asked excitedly.

  If he says it’s the first one he’s ever stayed in, I shall scream, Edwin thought. We’re not on a school outing.

  “Now listen very carefully,” said Trunke, bringing his face to within a few inches of theirs.

  Edwin couldn’t help flinching. Up close, the man looked even more as if he had just returned from a holiday in the grave.

  “This place is dangerous,” Trunke said quietly
and slowly. “Not risky, not unsafe. It’s very, very dangerous. You can never tell who’s passing through and what they might like to do to you.”

  Edwin felt cold fingers grip his stomach. His relief that he’d moved a whole day nearer to finding his sister was swept away by this news.

  Trunke prodded him sharply in his chest. “You keep quiet and cover every part of yourself, all the time. There’s no way I can explain a Shiner out here. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” said Edwin, resenting the prodding finger and wanting to prod Trunke back very hard.

  “You’ll be sharing a room, but I’ll be on my own. I’m not having you shining at me all night long. Now, what are you not going to do?” He pushed Edwin backwards with another hard prod.

  “Not show any part of me and not speak,” Edwin muttered. And to think he believed that Trunke was becoming friendlier. He hadn’t disliked anyone so much for a long time. Well, Auntie Necra was miles clear at the top of his unpopularity list, but Trunke was definitely in second place.

  “By the way, you two are footing the bill.”

  He directed the boys towards the door of the inne. “Hand over one of the purses Jugge gave you.”

  Edwin poked Lanthorne’s arm. It was his friend’s turn to be robbed. Let him see how he liked it.

  “Shall I give you three florines?” Lanthorne asked sweetly. It didn’t work.

  “I’ll take the whole purse,” said Trunke. And he did.

  Once he had pocketed the money, Trunke conducted a quick inspection of both boys. He drew their hoods so far down over their faces they could barely see their shoes and pulled the sleeves of their coats well beyond their wrists, even though Edwin had put Swarme’s gloves back on.

  “We’re still taking a risk with those shoes, though,” Trunke said. “Nobody here wears shoes like that.”

  “They’re really old and scruffy,” Edwin said. First Jugge and now Trunke going on about a pair of knocked-about shoes. Anyone would think he was wearing those little-girly ones with flashing coloured lights.

  As he was about to open the front door, Trunke suddenly blurted out, “What am I thinking of! You can’t go inside with that on your back.”