Robin Jarvis-Jax 02 Freax And Rejex (11 page)

“Hunting? What will it hunt?”

“One of those young aberrants. That fragment of me is going to wait, out of sight, and you, dear Lockpick, will drive them in here tomorrow evening. Make a game of it. Employ whatever ruse or method seems best to you. Just see that they are all roaming this woodland when darkness falls. I shall make my selection then.”

“Ho! What an amusing scheme. And what will you do with the filthy scum, once caught?”

The crooked smile appeared. “I shall hide within its body, possess it as I did the man Jezza – the previous owner of this host flesh.”

“But what if your choice is the Castle Creeper? The child will be dead and its skill with it.”

“One life out of thirty-one,” the Ismus said. “That is a gamble I am prepared to take. Have I ever baulked at risk?”

“No, my Lord. And after you have taken possession, how shall I know which of them you are? You must make yourself known to me in a manner that will not arouse the suspicions of the others. Young people are so distrustful.”

“Certainly not! I don’t want you treating that host any differently to the rest. The other aberrants will know for certain if you bow and scrape every time it walks by. Your devotion would give the game away in the first five minutes. Just forget I’m there. As soon as it becomes clear who the Creeper is, I’ll step forward and take command.”

“Whatever you say, my Lord.”

“But remember, it is only a splinter of myself which I shall view and operate remotely. I can channel no power through it. It will be no stronger than the body it animates. Do not think to call on it for help if you fail here. It is merely a direct link to me, nothing more.”

“I will not fail,” came the confident reply. “And I shall not even try to guess in which of them you are concealed.”

The Ismus clapped him on the back. “Then let us return to our unwary little rabbits and their hutches!” he announced. “My Black Face Dames will be getting anxious. For such burly bruisers, they really are the most terrible worrywarts.”

He led Jangler back towards the compound. At the edge of the wood he paused and glanced over his shoulder. High in the trees a patch of foliage rustled against the breeze. The breathing darkness within was trembling with anticipation. The hungry wait had begun.

T
HE FEAST WAS
an excessive, ostentatious display of a Mooncaster banquet. The refectory in the main block had been converted to a scaled-down facsimile of the Great Hall inside the White Castle. No expense had been spared. The walls had been faced with faux stone panels, but genuine medieval tapestries, requisitioned from stately homes and museums, had been hung across them. Four long oak tables were arranged in a rectangle and laden with even more food than had been on the stalls outside. Whole suckling pigs and roast fowl of various sizes, decorated with their former plumage, added to the pies of before.

The children were shown their places by the serving maids and minstrels played as they sat down. None of the young guests looked at the food; every eye was staring at the thing that dominated the central space. Within the rectangle of tables, on a large dais of its own, was a great model of the White Castle.

Painstakingly recreated by a team of special-effects craftsmen, it was perfect, down to the smallest detail, with three concentric walls and the five-storeyed keep in the middle. There were tiny lights in turret windows, banners of the Royal Houses flew from the four corner towers, the courtyards were cobbled, and white lead miniature guards were stationed on the battlements. There was even a moat, made of clear resin – and trees, with brass-etched leaves, grew from the flocked, grassy banks.

Alasdair stared at it intently. He couldn’t help admiring the workmanship and untold hours that had gone into its making, but he loathed everything the model represented.

The Ismus welcomed them with a speech about the hearty meals that would be lavished on them in here this weekend. The presence of the model was to focus their minds on their objective and to make the
transition from this world to that much easier.

“Now eat, most honoured guests,” he commanded, his eyes glinting in the light of the many candles burning on large iron stands around the room.

The wenches came forward bearing flagons of ale and filled the goblets on the table. The younger children were given a weak, watered-down version, but they still grimaced when they sampled it.

Marcus had changed into a Paul Smith shirt with thin vertical stripes and knew he was the sharpest dresser in the room, apart from the Ismus, but that black velvet ensemble was hardly the height of fashion. Not yet at any rate. Marcus was disgruntled not to have been seated anywhere near Charm. She was diagonally opposite him and his view of her was blocked by the castle. What was the point of looking so good if she couldn’t even see him? He had hoped he could win her over by playfully throwing a grape or a rolled-up bit of bread in her direction. He didn’t want to chance lobbing a missile over the castle, blind.

“I might get her in the face or in her eye,” he muttered to himself. “She’s not the sort to laugh at that. Probably cause a big stink about it. Does she find anything funny?” A smile tweaked the corners of his mouth briefly as he imagined getting a bullseye right down her cleavage.

He let his gaze roam over the castle in front of him. “So that’s what it’s all about then?” he said. “That’s where everyone thinks they are when they read
DJ
. Couldn’t they have just gone to Disneyland or Alton Towers?”

He jabbed his elbow in the ribs of Spencer who had the misfortune to have been placed next to him.

“Zo, vot do you zink, Herr Spenzer?” Marcus asked. “Zat ist der Colditzcaster, ja?”

Spencer ignored him and sipped at the ale as he chewed a mouthful of pie crust.

“All that lard is just going to feed those zits, dude,” Marcus commented with disgust.

Jody didn’t like the look of the model. To her the castle appeared grim and forbidding, a feudal fortress from which privileged nobles ruled the
downtrodden lower classes. She gave her attention to the food instead and was relieved to see bowls of fruit on the table. That minchet muck was there among the grapes, pears, pomegranates and apples, but she could easily wipe its acrid residue from them. There were small dishes of almonds and hazelnuts too. She tucked in hungrily.

Christina and the other small children were mesmerised by the castle. Part of them longed to play with it, but they also knew it was a bad thing. It had taken the love of their families away from them. It was fascinating and fearsome at the same time, in the same way that fire had been when they were much smaller.

Christina glanced over to where Jody was sitting and her face clouded with hurt and resentment. Then she picked up a skewer and banged her pewter plate with it. When she was sure she had Jody’s attention, the seven-year-old plunged the skewer deep into the snout of a suckling pig.

Jody started. Christina dug her nails into one of the pig’s glazed ears and tore it free. Jody looked away, wishing she hadn’t been so nasty earlier. She had tried to spare Christina from getting hurt, but perhaps she’d damaged her even more.

There was a remote expression on Jim Parker’s face. With that detailed model in front of him, he could imagine it was a real building and he was flying above it. Jim was a lover of comic books and, since the takeover of
Dancing Jax
, had immersed himself in them completely. DC, Marvel, he loved them all, but his favourite was the X-Men. If he was a mutant with the power of flight, or maybe even just Superman, he could look down on every building like this. He smiled secretively and pressed the tip of his knife into his thumb when he was sure no one was watching. A blob of blood popped out.

“Not yet then,” he murmured to himself with disappointment. “How much longer?”

Spencer felt another dig in the ribs.

“Wouldn’t it be awesome if a topless dancer jumped out of that castle right now, like it was a big cake?” Marcus laughed. “I would so love that!”

Spencer didn’t hear him. Something had been gnawing away at the back of his mind the whole afternoon. From the time they had been shown their cabins it had been there – a vague sense of wrongness. Of course there was the unease and dread that they all felt, knowing they were here to get brainwashed. But this was something else, something more tangible and immediate. Suddenly it struck him and he sat upright. He stared around at the other children and fizzed with the satisfaction of having worked it out.

He had to tell someone, but he didn’t want to speak to Marcus so he turned to the boy on his right.

“Thirty-one!” he blurted excitedly. “There’s supposed to be thirty-one of us! The Lockpick guy said so, didn’t he?”

Tommy Williams dropped his fork and cowered away from him. Cringing, he waited for the inevitable punch.

“I didn’t do nothing wrong!” he cried, covering his face.

Spencer was shocked at how scared he was. He couldn’t begin to imagine what cruelty the boy had endured since the publication of the book. Perhaps it went back even further than that? Only Tommy knew. Spencer simply understood that he had to make him feel better as soon and as best as he could. He was too hesitant, insecure and self-conscious to put his arm round the boy and cuddle him as Sam had done earlier, so he did the only thing he could think of. He tickled him. For the first time in months, Tommy Williams laughed and laughed.

“Stop! Stop!” he begged hysterically. “I’ll wee!”

It was Spencer’s turn to shrink away and he turned back to his food hastily. Tommy slid down in his chair, out of breath and giggling.

“What was you on about, Herr Spenzer?” Marcus demanded. “Thirty what?”

Spencer adjusted his spectacles and twitched his shoulders.

“The Lockpick said there’s eighteen girls and thirteen boys,” he began. “But there aren’t. Count them – there’s only seventeen girls.”

“So? The old git can’t add up.”

“Or one girl still hasn’t arrived yet.”

Marcus immediately became intensely interested. “Herr Spenzer!” he exclaimed, punching him on the arm. “If you’re right and if she’s a babe, I’ll buy you some spot cream!”

Lee Charles ate in silence. He watched everyone: the little groups who were tentatively getting along, the young kids slowly opening up to their neighbours, testing those strangers with small questions and giving timid answers. He saw the Indian boy, Rupesh, staring unhappily at the food before him. He didn’t touch any of the meat and pushed the watered-down ale away. Lee wondered what his home life was like now. All religions in the UK had been affected by
Dancing Jax
. Worshippers still attended the churches, mosques, temples and synagogues, but it was only through habit and the perceived need to continue acting out what they believed were their pretend lives here. How long would that continue, he wondered?

Lee’s own grandmother had been a devout Christian her whole life. Her immaculate front room, which he had been forbidden to enter unaccompanied until the age of ten, was filled with her treasures such as the old radiogram as big as a sideboard, glass swans, photographs of the family and a framed print of a painting called
Christ at Heart’s Door
. Every Palm Sunday she would bring home the small cross she had been given at the service and tuck it behind the print where it would remain for twelve months. This year she hadn’t and the once beloved picture had been replaced with one of the many views of Mooncaster that were now in the shops. The last time Lee visited his grandmother he had discovered the print hidden down the side of the china cabinet.

He looked over to where the Ismus was sitting with the Jacks and Jills. Nothing about Lee’s face betrayed the anger and hatred he felt towards the Holy Enchanter. Under the table his fist closed slowly and he imagined the weight of a gun in his hand. In his mind’s eye he saw himself holding it sideways, like in the movies and music vids, and busting caps into that scrawny poser. That would be so sweet. He turned his head before the grin became too large and watched the wenches passing in and out of the kitchen. From the glimpses afforded through the swinging door, he saw that
no alterations had been made in there. It was electric lights, brushed steel surfaces and magnolia paintwork.

He placed a piece of pie on his trencher, smashed it flat with the heel of his hand then slapped it on to a slice of bread, folded it over and ate it. His mind ticked steadily.

Along the next table, Charm was making cooing noises as she drank in the castle model.

“I’m gonna hang pink curtains in one of them windows when it’s my turn,” she promised, with a big smile to the cameras she had gathered about her. “Whoever I turn out to be, I just know I’ll be painting everyfink pink. I loves it I do.”

She posed and performed for the lenses then carved a slice of pheasant for herself, declaring it to be “a ropy-looking chicken” but everything else was “carb city”.

“Bread, pies, beer and pasties!” she exclaimed, raising her hands in mock horror. “All the bad stuff! Go straight to my bum that would. Good job there’s no spuds or I’d make a pig of myself. I love spuds. There ain’t any in Mooncaster though, is there? Not invented yet or summink my ma says. God knows what I’ll do without my bit of mash and gravy on a Sunday when I’m there. Have you tried them purple spuds? They is gorge –and proper purple all the way through like beetroot, no word of a lie! I tried mashing them with ordinary to make pink, but they just went an ’orrible grey. It were revoltin’!”

Scrupulously removing the “killer fattening skin” from the meat, she put a morsel of pheasant into her mouth and chewed. The instant she tasted the gamey flavour her expression changed and her eyes popped wide. A moment later, she was spitting it out and retching. Seizing the ale, she downed 300 calories in one swig.

The feast continued until nine o’clock when there was one final reading for the night. Jody rested her forehead on the table. What was the point of going on with this charade? It wasn’t going to work on them now.

The other children watched in stony silence as the adults around them shivered with pleasure to be back in their other lives. Marcus folded his
arms and stared fixedly at the castle model, refusing to take any notice of their slack-jawed faces. He was sick to the back teeth of it. Charm clasped her hands in front of her as though in prayer and tried to imagine roaming around those battlements or gazing up at one of the towers, willing herself there. Under one table the youngest feet nudged and scuffled one another. The playful kicks travelled back and forth in a kinetic pulse. Christina was at one end and Alasdair formed the cut-off point at the other, until he started joining in as well. The adults were too absorbed in the world of Mooncaster to notice and the mind of the Ismus was on other matters.

When the reading was over, the children were allowed to return to their cabins with promises of an even better day tomorrow.

“Lucky us,” Jody mumbled to herself. “Can hardly wait.”

Alasdair rounded up his group. Most of them were half asleep. It had been one long, exhausting day for everyone and their feet were dragging. He led them out and was pleased to see Tommy Williams smiling at last.

Marcus made his way over to Charm, who was put out to have lost the interest of the cameras.

“How did you like the scoff then, gorgeous?” he asked.

“It were mingin’,” she answered, striding past him.

“So,” he called after her. “What you up to now? It’s still early! We should hang out and chillax.”

“Do you ever hear yourself?” Lee asked with a shake of his head as he left.

Marcus made a gesture behind him.

When the refectory was empty of children, the Ismus thanked the minstrels and the news teams. They bowed and followed the Jacks and Jills outside. Kate Kryzewski lingered and approached.

“I trust you now have enough for your report?” he asked.

The woman looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, my Lord,” she said. “It is strange for me to be out here in the Great Hall, when I know I should be in the kitchen. What will Mistress Slab say? She will cuff my head with the big spoon, I know it!”

“Peace,” he told her. “Remember that in this dream you are Miss Kryzewski; you have a report to make and send to America. You are only Columbine when you awaken back in the castle. Here, you must be the best Miss Kryzewski you can be, so that you are stronger in your real life – or else how will you ward off the Jockey’s advances?”