“…a truly nasty child, so don’t take any nonsense,” Auntie Necra was saying.
There was more than nonsense in Edwin’s mind as he tried to push past Swarme and do whatever damage he could to the man who had come to take him away from his own world for ever.
Swarme kept his promise and cracked Edwin neatly over the back of his head. Edwin dropped where he stood, feeling blurry but not unconscious.
Three pairs of tatty, smelly shoes planted themselves too close to Edwin’s face. Their owners stared down at him dismissively. Edwin glared dizzily back. He made his eyes focus on the stranger, noting the grubby bandages which had been wound many times around his right leg below the knee. In places, blood was seeping through. Long, talon-like fingers grasped the top of the walking stick extremely tightly, witness to the pain pulsing through the man’s wound. Limbe’s face was narrow and a sickly grey, with tiny, fierce eyes and a mouth turned down so sharply it could never, ever have smiled.
“Not much of him, is there?” remarked Limbe. “You led me to expect more.”
“Too much attitude, though,” said Swarme. “I should know.”
“He’ll need to get used to hard work,” said Limbe, wincing. “My wife can’t put up with slackers. I’ve lost count of how many serving brats she’s worn out.”
Edwin tried to lash out with his foot, but Swarme knocked it back.
“What’s wrong round here?” Limbe asked. “Is there something in the water? I’m set on by a fangy thing, right on your doorstep, and now this Shiner boy wants to have a go at me. He won’t last five minutes if he carries on like that.”
“Quite right,” said Auntie Necra. “Do whatever you need.”
“The sooner the better,” added Swarme. “Those shiny eyes of his give me the creeps.”
“Make ’em or bake ’em, that’s our motto,” said Limbe. “So he’ll come in useful, one way or another.”
“Exactly,” said Auntie Necra. “It breaks my heart to think I treated him like a prince.”
Edwin had heard enough. He brought his knees slowly up to his chest and then uncurled suddenly like a spring. His legs knocked Swarme backwards into Auntie Necra while he tried to use his upper body to attack the man who was planning to become his master. He got no further than Limbe’s knees but at least he had the satisfaction of hearing Limbe cry out in pain before Swarme and Auntie Necra bundled him across the room and threw him onto the bed.
“I’ll kill you all!” he shouted as the door was slammed shut on him.
“No, you won’t,” said Swarme through the door. “What’s going to happen first thing tomorrow morning is that Mister Limbe, who is now in a worse mood than ever, is going to harness up his nagge. At the same time, I’ll be tying you up so tightly you’ll hardly be able to breathe and then I’ll drop you head-first in the back of his hansomme. We’ll take our fond farewell and you’ll be driven off to your new for-ever home, for ever in your case being extremely short.”
Swarme sauntered off down the passage humming and accompanied by every swear word Edwin had ever heard.
A little later, as Edwin was sitting with his head in his hands letting the echoes of another scream of frustration die away, he heard a crash followed by a long scraping sound. It seemed to come from outside rather than inside. A small part of him hoped it might be the fangy thing which had bitten a chunk out of Limbe’s leg. With any luck it would squeeze through the window and quickly put him out of his misery. Most of him hoped it wasn’t the fangy thing, though, and he was frantically thinking of how he could block the window and stop it getting in. He had already lit the lanthorne. If the creature was afraid of flames, he had the lighter as well, and the very small blade of the penknife. He gathered up his blankets, rolled them into a ball and then dropped them back on the bed. He couldn’t reach the window, so why was he bothering?
There was more noise from outside. Edwin imagined the fangy thing getting very excited, with the smell of a Shiner in its nostrils. The scraping sounds had to be made by claws.
“Edwin, it’s me. I’m up a ladder.”
Edwin felt his chest expand with relief. He sped across the room and stood beneath the window.
“Lanthorne, get me out of here! Limbe’s taking me away in a few hours.”
“I know. I’ve got the key. Be ready. See you later.”
More scrabbling and scratching and then a sharp cry of pain followed by silence.
“Lanthorne!”
Still silence.
Be ready, Lanthorne had said. So all he needed to do was sit on the bed and wait. But what if Lanthorne’s cry meant that the fangy thing had got him too?
“Edwin! Edwin!”
He had fallen back asleep as he waited, and it took two or three vigorous shakes from Lanthorne before he came to himself. It was still dark, still night-time. He picked up his lanthorne and jumped to his feet.
“Where are they keeping Mandoline?”
“In a little room next to Auntie Necra’s bedroom. We’ll need to be ever so quiet when we take her.”
They headed off through the house, Lanthorne tiptoeing ahead in the faint glow of the light he carried. Edwin’s own lanthorne had almost burnt down and he wasn’t sure how much light he had left. As they moved carefully along, Edwin noticed that his friend appeared to be limping. So Swarme was brutal enough to injure his own brother.
“Did he hurt your leg?” Edwin asked.
“I fell off the ladder, but it’s not that. My pockets are full of rocks. I have to walk like this to keep my trousers up.”
The rocks were a good idea. They might be the only effective weapon the boys had.
“I’ll unlock the back door first,” Lanthorne said. “We might have to run outside very quickly when we’ve got your sister. I couldn’t do it earlier, because I was afraid someone would feel the draught.”
Edwin’s hopes were unravelling. This was the plan B he had dreaded. Assuming they got away from Auntie Necra, Swarme and Limbe, once they were outside they needed to drag Trunke’s hansomme out of the stable and persuade the nagge to undertake yet another night-time journey. The creature would probably drive a very hard bargain.
I’m not bribing it with a bag of Special Menu, Edwin told himself. And I need to keep Mandoline well away from it.
Lanthorne carefully unlocked the back door and wedged it open with a chair.
“Now we can run straight out if we have to,” he said cheerfully.
The breeze which blew in refreshed the room but couldn’t disperse the background smell of the Special Menu, which had seeped into the very fabric of the building. They had passed through pockets of it on their way from Edwin’s cell.
As the back door was in the kitchen, Edwin was saved the trouble of looking for Mandoline’s tin of dried milk and her bottle. They were right in front of him on Buckette’s tray. Luckily his coat had pockets big enough to take them. Then Edwin looked around for something he could use to threaten Auntie Necra or anyone else who got in their way. The knife drawer was locked, so he had to be satisfied with a ladle that was hanging on the wall.
“You do know where to go, don’t you?” he asked.
“I kept offering to do jobs, so they let me out sometimes. I know where most of the rooms are. Follow me and don’t talk.”
They set off again. Every second or third step, there was a clunk as Lanthorne’s rocks banged together. From the way he was walking, you would have thought he was wearing half a rockery. Edwin swung the ladle experimentally. It was heavy and he liked the feel of the handle. He would have to drop it once they found Mandoline, but he was prepared to put it to good use if anyone tried to stop them before they reached her. He expected to encounter Auntie Necra, Limbe, Swarme and Buckette, but they didn’t know who else might be staying there. Lanthorne couldn’t possibly have learnt all the house’s secrets.
The boys crept up a staircase and along a passage, until Lanthorne stopped in front of a nondescript door. His collection of rocks clunked togeth
er again and Edwin accidentally let the ladle swing against the wall. It gave out a clear ringing sound which he made worse by trying to smother it and then banging the ladle against the wall a second time.
They would need to be very speedy.
“Hadn’t we better leave the lanthornes out here?” Edwin whispered.
“I think we’ll need them. I haven’t been inside. I only know what Buckette told me. I’m not exactly sure where to find your sister.”
Edwin’s hopes were dust in the air. He had practically beaten a gong to announce their arrival and now it turned out they had no idea where they were going, but standing there, dithering, wasted precious time.
He opened the door and they stepped inside.
They moved their lanthorne beams across the room, foot by foot.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The edge of a table. A basket on the table… Mandoline’s sleeping basket. They had found her!
As the boys stepped across the room to retrieve the baby, there was a disturbance in the half of the room which hadn’t been illuminated. If they had looked there first, they would have seen a bed and a figure climbing out of it. With a shriek, Buckette hurled herself at Lanthorne, the nearest target.
For someone who still needed to work hard on his tennis smash, Edwin showed the timing of a champion. He brought the ladle down as hard as he could on Buckette’s head. She was knocked unconscious in mid-hurl, and crashed onto the floor on the far side of Lanthorne. Her takeoff speed had been so great that she slid right across the floor when she landed, and came to rest in a disordered bundle by the wall.
Edwin put down the ladle and his lanthorne, and leant over Mandoline’s basket. There was no way Auntie Necra could have failed to hear the commotion, unless she were blind-drunk or dead. All the same, Edwin hoped Mandoline would behave herself and not struggle or cry when he picked her up.
“It’s me. It’s Edwin,” he said. “You’re going to be a good girl, Mandoline, aren’t you, because I’m taking you home.”
He was sure she’d recognize his voice and be calmed by his reassuring tone.
Mandoline had awoken to quick-moving lights and shadows, to figures appearing and disappearing, to loud noises and her basket shaking, so she did what any self-respecting baby would do in such circumstances—she took a very deep breath and screamed blue murder.
Edwin took Mandoline out of the basket, wrapped her and her squeaky mouse securely in the blankets and headed for the door.
“Put her down!”
Auntie Necra emerged from her bedroom and was immediately struck in the middle of her forehead by one of Lanthorne’s rocks. She fell backwards into the darkness.
“What’s this!”
Swarme was entering from the passage.
“Missed,” he scoffed, as Lanthorne’s first rock sailed by his ear. “Argh!” The second had scored a direct hit on his nose. Swarme doubled over, clutching his face, which gave Edwin and Lanthorne the opportunity to push him out of the way and start along the passage.
Edwin was horrified at how slowly he was obliged to move. He had never tried running with a wriggling baby before and it couldn’t be done safely in the dark. Lanthorne led the way with his light and kept urging Edwin to hurry, because the two victims of the rock attack had already cleared their heads and come out of Mandoline’s bedroom in pursuit.
In order to increase his speed, Lanthorne was shedding rocks as he moved along. Their pursuers were barefoot, so they might trip on them.
The boys were the full length of the passage ahead of their two pursuers when another bedroom door opened and Limbe came out to see what was going on. The look on his face showed that he summed up the situation immediately. He stretched out both arms to take hold of Edwin and the baby and discovered just how quickly a desperate Shiner boy can react. Edwin kicked Limbe’s injured leg with enough force to send the ball a long way out of a football ground. Before Limbe even hit the floor, howling, Lanthorne had shied his two remaining large rocks very accurately at the man’s head, knocking him senseless.
They were still in front of Necra and Swarme by the time they headed downstairs, but Edwin could feel Swarme’s fingers touching the back of his coat. They entered the kitchen first, by a whisker, but were outflanked as Swarme and Auntie Necra raced around the other side of the table and got to the open back door first.
“Gotcha,” said Swarme. There was a cut on his nose and blood was running into his mouth. “I think we’ll have our little princess back, if you don’t mind.”
“Get the baby, Swarmie!” yelled Auntie Necra. “Then we’ll eat the pair of them. I promised Buckette we’d have something tasty for Nollig dinner.”
The large kitchen table divided the pursuers from the pursued. Edwin knew he couldn’t fight while holding Mandoline. He would have to put her down on the table and then do whatever he could to overcome Auntie Necra. He’d leave Swarme to Lanthorne.
Swarme began to advance around one side of the table and Auntie Necra around the other. She was also cut and bleeding and very angry. The boys couldn’t see any chance of escape. Edwin delayed putting Mandoline down as Lanthorne started to fire off the few small rocks he had left. At such close range, they were bound to find their targets, but he had little more than pebbles left now and Auntie Necra and Swarme made light of them.
Their advance seemed unstoppable, until a ferocious snarl erupted from the darkness just beyond the kitchen door. All four people froze in their tracks and turned to look in the direction of the sound. Two snarling heads appeared. They were attached to one body.
“Yes!” shouted Lanthorne. “I thought it was following us.”
The enraged snarghe sank a set of teeth into each of Swarme’s heels. These were warning nips and not meant to remove his feet, which the snarghe could have done if it had wanted to. It opened its two sets of jaws, releasing Swarme, who clambered onto the kitchen table, screaming. Auntie Necra joined him. Edwin was relieved he hadn’t laid Mandoline down on the table, because Auntie Necra and Swarme were dancing all over it and they would have trampled his sister flat. The more they shrieked, the more this encouraged the snarghe to jump up and snarl at them.
“My snarghe’s been following us all the time, Edwin. Swarme made the nagge kick it, so it remembers him. It must have sensed Limbe was up to no good too. They can work things out. Good boy.”
One of the heads stopped snarling and fixed Lanthorne with an unfriendly stare.
“Good girl, too. Good boy and girl.”
The two heads went back to snarling, as their single body jumped up to the height of the table top, making the figures on it scream each time the snarghe drew level with them.
Lanthorne turned to Auntie Necra. “I knew you’d be unkind to my snarghe when you found it in my room. Look where it’s got you.”
The relentless high-pitched sounds, screams, snarls and a baby howling, set off vibrations in every loose item in the kitchen. Edwin began to feel dizzy.
The snarghe hadn’t enjoyed itself so much for a long time. It now moved on to its favourite tongue trick. Alternating neatly, the two heads unrolled and shot out their tongues, catching the dancing feet of the terror-stricken pair on the table. The heads could wrap their tongues around ankles, they could lash with them like whips and they could skin toes with great precision. All of these happened to Auntie Necra in the space of a few minutes.
The animal was the size of an overfed bulldog, with an impressive set of razor-like fangs, and mostly dull brown in colour. It looked as if its creator wasn’t sure whether it was meant to terrify people or make them fall off their chairs laughing. Its two front feet had dangerous claws, but the rear pair were furry like a hare’s and meant for running. It had fluffy black feathers on its shoulders and hedgehog quills of various lengths on its heads. The eyes in both heads worked independently of each other so it could look in four directions at once. Edwin noticed this and couldn’t help staring as they zigzagged about. The effect was hypnotic, but he had to conce
ntrate on getting Mandoline away.
“We have to go,” he said. “Lanthorne, we have to go.”
This was the first time he’d spoken, and at the sound of his voice, the body of the snarghe stopped jumping. The two heads focused on him alone and he thought they might be about to attack, just when there was the possibility of escape. He was on the verge of handing Mandoline up to Auntie Necra for safekeeping. Lanthorne nudged him.
“Talk to it, Edwin. It licked you in the cupboard and I think it’s been following your smell because it loves you.”
Edwin wasn’t sure about that. He couldn’t afford to waste time sweet-talking a monstrosity.
“Good snarghe. Good boy. Good girl,” he said nervously.
The snarghe trotted over to him and sat down, with one of its paws resting on his left foot. He didn’t dare pull it free.
A slight movement from Swarme, as he prepared to jump off the table, brought the creature snarling to life again.
“I’d stay there, if I were you. It’s safer,” Edwin said. “Good snarghe. Keep the nasty people on the table.”
The room became much quieter. Mandoline was whining rather than howling and Auntie Necra and Swarme had started to whisper to each other. The snarghe moved back to the table and used a low growling sound to warn them not to try anything they might regret.
Swarme felt brave enough to say, “You won’t get away, Shiner boy.”
“Shut up,” said Lanthorne. “Just shut up!”
He knelt down beside the snarghe, and pointed to his aunt and brother.
“Remember how much they hurt you. Keep them here for us, because Edwin and I need to take his baby sister home.”
The two heads nodded.
“There’s no point in talking to it. It’s as stupid as you are,” Auntie Necra called out. “Two heads, and less than half a brain in each.”
She regretted her words at once. Both tongues shot out and completely skinned two more of her toes. Whimpering, she clung to Swarme. They were going to be stuck on top of that table for quite some time and they couldn’t expect any help from Limbe or Buckette because both were out for the count.
The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules Page 16