Mr Mumbles (18 page)

Or is it just that you’re too afraid to turn the light off, and you’re hoping these last pages might contain some nice, comforting words?

Well, they don’t. But if you do want more chills, then feel free to read on for a sneak peek at the blood-curdling action in the second INVISIBLE FIENDS book,
Raggy Maggie
…

I
was in the school canteen. I was tied to a chair, and the bruising on my face hurt like hell.

I looked around at the room. It was bright and clean. Daylight shone through the windows. As I studied my surroundings, I noticed my chair was now positioned right next to one of the canteen’s big round dining tables. Small, floral-patterned cups and saucers had been laid out in three places – one in front of me, one directly across the table, and the third halfway between those two. Another chair had been positioned at the placing across from me, but not at the one on my right.

A sugar bowl and a milk jug sat on the table too. Like the cups, both of these were empty.

From over my left shoulder I heard a whimper. By craning my neck as far as it would go, I could make out the shape of someone lying on the floor.

Mrs Milton was curled up into a ball, her knees almost to her chest, her arms clutching her head. Her whole body was shaking. Every few seconds it would twitch wildly, forcing another whimper from her trembling lips.

‘Mrs Milton?’ I said. Although I spoke softly, the sound still made my skull throb. She didn’t respond, so I tried again. ‘Mrs Milton, are you OK?’

‘She doesn’t want to play with us any more.’

I froze. The voice was the same one the headmistress had used – or maybe
it
had been using
her
– but it hadn’t come out of her mouth. It had come from somewhere further behind me, beyond my line of sight.

I recognised the voice right away as the one I’d heard during my first visit to the Darkest Corners.

‘Caddie.’

The little girl in the dirty white dress stepped into my line of sight. ‘Oh, you remembered,’ she beamed. As she did, the bright line of lipstick across her mouth curved into an exaggerated smile, like the grin of some demented clown.

‘What did you do to her?’ I demanded.

Caddie’s face fell. Her wide, dark eyes blinked rapidly, as if fighting back tears. ‘She won’t play any more,’ she said. ‘We were having so much fun, but then she just wouldn’t play.’

Down on my left, the headmistress gave another low sob. ‘S’not fair,’ Caddie sulked. ‘Every time I find a new friend to play with they get broken.’

I twisted in my seat and looked down at Mrs Milton. She was rocking back and forth, weeping, shaking – a shadow of the woman she had been. Bruised. Battered.

Broken.

When I turned back, Caddie was standing by the table. Her back was to me and she was fiddling with something on the tabletop. The way she was bending her body made it impossible for me to see what.

‘Where’s Billy?’ I asked.

‘Not telling.’

‘What have you done with him?’

‘I told you, silly,’ she giggled, turning back to face me. ‘I’m not telling!’

She skipped past and disappeared behind me, leaving me alone with the thing she’d been positioning on the table.

The porcelain face of the doll was slumped sideways on the bundle of grubby material that made up its body. A long dark crack ran from the top of its head and down the left side of its face, completely obscuring one eye. The other eye squinted across the table at me, painted on, but eerily lifelike.

Raggy Maggie had seemed disturbing enough in the Darkest Corners, but here in the school the doll was somehow even more chilling.

‘Tea?’

I jumped in my seat as Caddie appeared beside me. She was holding a small plastic teapot. Her wide eyes looked at me, expectantly.

‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘No.’

Immediately her face darkened, as if a shadow had crawled across it. ‘But it’s a tea party,’ she glowered. ‘Why would you come to a tea party if you weren’t going to have tea?’

I glanced from Caddie to the doll on the table. Its single eye bored into me, as if waiting for my answer.

‘Go on then,’ I croaked, turning back to the little girl. Her face brightened at once. ‘Just a small one.’

‘Oh, goody,’ she trilled. ‘Maybe if you’re
extra
good you might even get a cake.’

I nodded nervously. ‘Yum.’

Maybe you’re wondering why I was so scared of a girl with a doll. If so then you’ve obviously never met Caddie. If you had, you’d know
exactly
why I was playing along with her little tea party scene.

As soon as I’d set eyes on her in the Darkest Corners, I could tell there was something ‘wrong’ about Caddie. At first glance she looked more or less like any other five-year-old girl, but it didn’t take long to realise she was something much more sinister than that.

Partly it was her eyes – the irises almost filled them, so dark as to be virtually black, like two gaping holes in her head. The make-up didn’t help, either: dark blue circles ringing the eyes, a crimson smear across the lips, and a smudge of red on each pale cheek.

The words she said could have been those of any other kid her age, but the way she spoke implied a deeper, darker meaning behind them that only she was aware of. She also had a strange intensity about her, as if she were three wrong words away from becoming very, very angry. Somehow I knew that making her very, very angry would be a very, very stupid thing to do.

Caddie was, in short, more frightening than any little girl had any right to be. And as for the doll…Don’t get me started on the doll.

Caddie hummed below her breath as she tipped the spout of her teapot over my cup. Nothing came out, but this didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest.

‘Sugar?’ she asked, when she’d finished pouring.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

She frowned briefly, but said nothing, and carried on round the table to where Raggy Maggie was slumped. Once again she tipped the contents of her toy teapot into the waiting cup. ‘Raggy Maggie likes sugar, don’t you, Raggy Maggie?’

The doll, as expected, didn’t reply.

After spooning some invisible sugar and pouring some imaginary milk into her doll’s cup, Caddie moved around to the opposite side of the table and took her seat. She was so short she had to stretch up in the chair to pour her own pretend tea. Milk. Eight sugars.

‘Drink up,’ she giggled. She took a sip from her own cup. The
shlurp
sound she made was surprisingly convincing. ‘Oh, I forgot,’ she said, smiling, ‘you can’t. You’re all tied up.’

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

Shlurp.
‘Mmm, a biscuit would be nice. A chocolate one. With sprinkles.’

‘No, I mean…
what do you want?’

She sat her cup down on the saucer. Those dark, empty eyes of hers fixed firmly on me. I could feel the doll staring
at me too, but I tried not to think about it.

‘Just to play,’ she said with an exaggerated shrug. ‘We just want to have fun, that’s all. Nothing’s fun where we live.’

‘The Darkest Corners.’

Her face changed in an instant. Her eyes narrowed, pushed down by her eyebrows as her mouth pulled into an angry snarl. ‘Don’t you say that,’ she cried. ‘Don’t say that place!’

She was on her feet before I knew it, snatching up her cup. She thrust it sharply forwards, as if throwing her imaginary tea. I almost smiled, before the pain hit me.

Nothing had been poured into the cup, and I saw nothing come out of it, but as soon as she’d chucked it towards me a blisteringly hot liquid hit the top of my school jumper and began to soak through my shirt.

I let out a hiss of shock as the skin on my chest began to burn. Caddie continued to glare. I knew she wasn’t going to help me. No one was. I had no choice but to screw my eyes shut, grit my teeth and wait for the pain to pass.

The worst of it probably faded in less than a minute,
although it felt like longer. In just a few minutes more I was left with merely a dull ache, although it was made worse by the fact my shirt was clinging to it.

Caddie was still standing up on the other side of the table, but her face was no longer twisted so fiercely. She gave a little cough as she lowered herself back into her seat and poured another cup of boiling hot nothing.

‘That was your fault,’ she explained. Her voice was back to normal again, all trace of the rage that had gripped her gone. ‘I didn’t want to do that, but you made…’

Her voice trailed off and she turned to look at her doll. ‘What’s that, Raggy Maggie?’ she asked, reaching over and carefully lifting the bundle of rags off the table.

She held the doll to her ear, moving its head up and down slightly, as if it was whispering to her. For a moment I almost wondered what it was saying, until I reminded myself it was only a toy.

‘Hmm, I don’t know, Raggy Maggie,’ Caddie murmured. Her eyes were still on me, not blinking. ‘You think we should do
what
to him?’

I watched the scene playing out before me, barely aware that I was holding my breath. My hands wriggled at my back as I struggled to free them from the rope or wire or whatever it was that was holding them together.

It was no use. The harder I struggled, the deeper my bonds dug into my wrists. All I could do was sit there. Sit there and wait to find out what Caddie had in store.

‘Oh, but he’s a
nice
boy,’ Caddie protested. ‘He might be our friend.’ The doll’s head waggled up and down more forcefully. ‘He didn’t know they were bad words,’ the girl continued. ‘It’s not fair!’

Raggy Maggie stopped moving – just for a moment – then gave a final few nods of her head.

‘OK,’ Caddie nodded, her face brightening. She turned her wrist so the doll’s solitary eye was looking towards me. ‘Raggy Maggie wants you to say sorry for saying the bad words,’ the girl explained. ‘I think you’d better. She’s very cross.’

My lips had gone dry. I licked them, but there was no saliva left in my mouth, so it didn’t help. ‘Sorry,’ I croaked.

‘Say it properly.’ Caddie stood up and stretched across the table, holding out the doll so its expressionless face was just a few centimetres from my own. Up close it smelled sour, like a carton of milk a month past its sell-by-date.

‘Sorry for saying the bad words,’ I said. I felt like an idiot, but more than anything I wanted the doll out of my face.

‘Thank you for being so nice, Raggy Maggie,’ prompted Caddie.

I hesitated, but then carried on. ‘Thanks for being so nice.’

Raggy Maggie’s porcelain head bobbed up and down. As it did, Caddie spoke in a harsh, scratchy voice. ‘You’re welcome,’ the voice said. ‘Don’t do it again.’

The doll was pulled back across the table, but wasn’t put down in its place. Instead Caddie held on to it, both of them facing me. We sat there in silence for a long time, the occasional whimper from Mrs Milton the only sound to be heard.

I was about to say something – anything – when Caddie spoke. ‘We’re going to play a game,’ she told me, her eyes sparkling with excitement. My heart sank. The groans from
the headmistress testified to the damage Caddie’s games could do.

‘What kind of game?’

‘A
fun
game. It’s like hide and seek, only
better!’
She was bouncing up and down in her seat now, barely containing her delight. ‘Me and Raggy Maggie will go and hide somewhere, and you’ve got to find us.’

‘OK…’ I said, hardly believing my luck. Once they were out of the way I could find a way to get free and escape. ‘Sounds good.’

‘I’m not finished yet, silly,’ Caddie giggled. ‘Because we’re not going to be hiding all by ourselves. We’re going to be hiding with our best friend in the whole wide world.’ She hugged Raggy Maggie tightly to her face. ‘Billy.’

That complicated things a bit, but not much. I would still go and get help. Yes, Billy might be stuck with Little Miss Crazy and her dolly for a while, but he’d made my life a misery for years, and I found it difficult to feel too bad for him.

‘And here’s the best part of all,’ Caddie gushed. ‘We’ll all
be hiding somewhere here in the school, and if you don’t find us in one hour…’ She glanced at her doll and giggled. ‘Billy
dies.’

From
Raggy Maggie.

Available July 2010 from Harpercollins
Children’s Books.

First published in paperback in Great Britain by
HarperCollins
Children’s Books
2010

HarperCollins
Children’s Books
is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Text copyright © Barry Hutchison 2009

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EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN: 978-0-00-735827-4

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