Robin Jarvis-Jax 02 Freax And Rejex (52 page)

In a New York penthouse suite, the Ismus opened his eyes and called for a telephone. One of the Harlequin Priests bowed and went to attend to it.

Back in the camp, Alasdair and Maggie waited till Captain Swazzle disappeared beyond the main block. Then they crept out. Crouching in the shadows, they hurried in turn to the other cabins and roused everyone from sleep, then hurriedly explained what was happening.

The girls were frightened but excited. Some were reluctant and didn’t
want to take such a terrible risk. These were mainly in Esther’s cabin. Cracking her knuckles nervously, the thirteen-year-old refused to leave and said anyone who did was mad. They’d all be shot. Maggie and the others tried to tell her it was their only hope, but Esther was adamant. She was stopping.

In what had been Charm’s cabin, the girls there were only too eager to escape this horrendous place and listened carefully to what they had to do.

“If you’ve got dark clothes, put them on,” Maggie said in her own cabin. “But don’t bring anything. Leave your bags and the rest of your stuff behind. We’re going to have to run through the woods and can’t take anything that’ll slow us down.”

“Where will the lorry take us?” a girl asked.

“We don’t know, babes – but it’s got to be better than here.”

“Hey,” Alasdair said. “What happened to Marcus’s belongings? They still in the wreck of his hut?”

“No, Lee and Spencer collected most of it for me. In a bag over there. Why?”

“Och, he had a long-sleeved navy blue shirt. Would ye mind if I had a borrow of it? My gear’s no dark enough for slinkin’ aboot.”

“Sure.”

Alasdair opened the bag. He found what he was looking for and closed his eyes momentarily. Some lines from one of his favourite songs came whispering from his lips like a valediction.

“When darkness comes and pain is all around, like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.”

The significance of what he was about to do weighed heavily. Yet it was the only way – the others wouldn’t have time otherwise. One last hopeless chase and sacrifice, to try and atone for the mess he’d made.

“Great,” he told Maggie, making sure she didn’t suspect what he was up to. “We’re ready.”

I
N THE END
cabin, Jangler had fallen asleep in the armchair. The detailed report he’d been writing of the day’s events was on his lap, unfinished. His mobile phone was ringing fiercely on the desk, but he didn’t hear the Ismus’s urgent summons. The Punchinellos next door were so loud he had taken to wearing earplugs. He snored peacefully and dark, oily dreams dripped through his subconscious.

Almost sixty years peeled away and he was in flannel shorts, being led down a long, sickly-smelling corridor. Hushed, funereal voices spoke over him. He was shown into a large yet stuffy bedchamber where the curtains were drawn and black candles burned either side of the deathbed. His grandfather lay there, expiring, worn out in his Lord’s service – a parched husk waiting for the end to come.

The very first Jangler, who had been present at that fateful Beltane gathering in 1936, was too weak to rise. His failing eyes looked on the young boy who had been ushered in to see him, one final time.

“Initiate him into the faith,” he whispered in a phlegmy croak to the lad’s parents. “There must always be a Jangler. Mr Fellows will return. The world will ripen. The vigil must continue, unbroken. Jangler must be here, for him to depend on.”

“Rest easy, Father,” the younger man said. “Little Maynard is already one of us. I have shown him a photograph of the Grand Duke and he worshipped it. The legacy will endure.”

Old Mr Hankinson raised a trembling hand to the boy, who reached up and took it in his. The grandfather’s last breath wheezed out and the candle flames were extinguished. The boy turned to his solemn parents.
They were dressed in black robes, just like the other ten people in the room.

“Grand’da is lucky,” the boy said. “Now he is with the Dawn Prince.”

“Not until the rites are performed for him,” the new head of the family said.

“One day I shall be the Jangler,” the boy said precociously. “Hurry up and die, Daddy.”

In the cabin the mobile stopped ringing. Presently a text beeped in. And still he slept.

Alasdair’s cabin was crowded with everyone, except Esther. She had stayed resolute and remained in her own hut. No argument would budge her.

The girls were horribly afraid. Maggie tried to assure them it would be OK, but even she wasn’t a hundred per cent certain this would work. She just prayed that it would.

Alasdair’s plan was to cut two holes in the fence. One would be just behind the graves. The other would be closer to the opposite side of the camp. The hope was for Captain Swazzle to discover it on his way around and assume an escape had been made that way. This would give everyone time to make use of the first hole. It was going to be tight – there were only twenty-five minutes till eleven o’clock. They would have to race through the trees to reach the road and meet that lorry – if it was there.

They watched, hearts in mouths, as Captain Swazzle went stumbling past the gates.

“Get a move on,” Alasdair urged, under his breath.

Swazzle waddled further along until only his white fedora could be seen in the darkness. It drifted from side to side then turned.

Impatient, Alasdair opened the door before the Captain disappeared behind the main block, trusting to the drink to dull those sharp senses.

“Good luck,” Maggie told him.

“Aye,” he said, slipping out into the night.

Wearing black jeans, Marcus’s dark shirt and a torn length of black material tied round his head, to hide his sandy hair, the Scot flitted like a shadow past the two end cabins. Garrugaska and Bezuel were still boozing and watching their TVs and there wasn’t a sound from Jangler in his. Alasdair ran over the grass, towards the grave markers, and immediately set to work, snipping through the fence. It was tougher than he expected.

Presently Maggie joined him, with the first of the younger girls and carrying Malinda’s wand, in case they encountered one of the guards or Jangler.

“It’s taking too long,” she hissed, watching him struggle with the steel. “You can’t manage with that hand.”

“Yes, I can! There – it’s done. Get the lasses oot of here – I’ll go start on the other one.”

“Be quick!” she said. “You don’t have to make it as big as this. Just enough to make them think someone’s got out that way. Hurry back!”

“Dinnae worry about me,” he said with a mysterious, remote look on his face. “You guys be careful. I’m sorry – to all of ye, most of all to you. I was wrong, aboot so much, and made lives worse than they already were.”

Maggie stared at him, alarmed by his words. “What’s going on? Alasdair?”

The boy grinned. “Your pal, Marcus, wasnae such a choob after all,” he said, showing the can of body spray he had removed from the bag at the same time he took the navy shirt. “He’s going to give you time to get away. See – I was wrong aboot him too. I’m so sick of being wrong. Time to do something right. Something to make up for all them mistakes.”

“No!” she hissed.

“I’m doing this,” he said softly. “Just tell Lee, I was worth trusting.”

“The guards will slaughter you! It’s pointless! You won’t last a second when they catch you. Don’t do this!”

The Scot glanced at the board that marked Jim Parker’s grave. His eyes crinkled as he smiled.

“A hero never chooses his own battles,” he said, repeating words the dead boy had spoken to him so long ago now. “They choose him.”

He darted off down the fence, leaving Maggie distraught. But she couldn’t call after him and already the next pair of girls were running up, together with Drew and Nicholas. Pulling the wire back, she guided them through.

Alasdair followed the corner of the fence around and ran as far as he dared. Swazzle still hadn’t emerged from behind the main block.

“Probably fallen over,” the boy murmured to himself. “Hope he flattened that massive conk, the lightweight milk jockey.”

Even as he said it, the white fedora bobbed into view. Alasdair applied the cutters feverishly. It wouldn’t be long now. He wrenched at the steel mesh, making a hole just large enough to crawl through. Then he turned the aerosol on himself.

“Halt!” Captain Swazzle shrieked in the distance. “Stand and disclose!”

Alasdair was already on his stomach, worming through the fence. A strand of sharp steel he hadn’t bent properly ripped through the shirt and gouged along his back. He stifled a cry and hauled himself clear.

Squawking, the Captain came running. Alasdair scrambled to his feet and hared into the trees, squirting a trail of body spray as he ran, in the opposite direction to the one the others were going to take.

Swazzle halted in front of the damaged fence. The hideously wide mouth gibbered with rage. The Punchinello glared at the trees beyond, then let the machine gun do its screaming.

On the skelter tower, Yikker heard the weapon blasting into the night and lumbered to his feet. The great hooked nose trembled as the sensitive nostrils caught a familiar and much despised scent on the air – one that Yikker had thought never to smell again.

“Stinkboy!” the guard growled.

Yikker had been sorely disappointed not to have been the one to kill Marcus. The guard had always been suspicious that there had been no
corpse found and harboured a secret belief that he had somehow managed to escape during the appearance of the tentacled monster that rainy night.

Now the night air was giving proof to that belief. Stinkboy was back!

Whooping, Yikker turned the searchlight on, directing the beam towards the gunfire. Then the guard went clomping down the tower stairs, his own pistol in hand.

Lee and Spencer were still in the cabin with the last three girls when the shooting started.

“Could just be firing at nuthin’,” Lee said, trying to make the girls less terrified. “You know what them big-nosed goons is like.”

Suddenly the TVs were switched off next door and the abrupt silence was more frightening than the gunshots. Garrugaska and Bezuel came rushing out, eager to see what was going on. They scampered between the cabins and ran to the rear fence.

“Now!” Lee said. He opened the door and looked around. He saw the searchlight pointing towards the back of the camp and breathed a huge sigh of relief. He hoped Alasdair’s little diversion would detain those bloodthirsty monsters just long enough.

Behind them, the bedding stuffed under the bathroom door darkened and furred with mould as the splinter of Austerly Fellows emerged.

Lee and the others ran past the end cabins. There was more gunfire and the guards were quacking shrilly, revelling in every moment of the chase. Lee turned. That Scottish kid did all right and those Punchies were stupider than he imagined, if they were beyond the fence, chasing empty shadows in the woods.

Spencer and the girls ran on, to where Maggie was waiting. Lee was about to follow when he caught sight of Esther sobbing in fear on her step, too afraid to move. She had changed her mind. She didn’t want to be left here on her own. But now the guns petrified her.

“Hell,” Lee mumbled, doubling back to fetch the stupid girl.

“I can’t move, I can’t move!” she snivelled when he reached her.

“Now you can,” he said sternly, grabbing Esther’s arm and
frogmarching her towards the graves.

“We’re going to be killed!” she wept.

“Don’t tempt me,” he replied, brandishing the skull stick in his other hand.

They rushed to the fence. Maggie and everyone were now on the other side, waiting anxiously.

It was ten to eleven.

Lee pushed Esther through then stepped away and held up his hand in farewell.

“What are you doing?” Maggie asked. “There’s no time. Come on!”

“Ain’t comin’,” he answered. “Least, I got me summat to do first. You go find that truck and get the hell outta here. Look after my sweet’s girls for her.”

“Lee!” Spencer called. “Don’t do it!”

He was wasting his breath. Lee was already striding back over the grass, towards the end cabin. The unicorn club swung menacingly in his hand.

Spencer turned to Maggie. “You heard him,” he snapped. “Get going.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stop here till the guards come back – till he comes back – I don’t know. Now get lost – go on!”

Maggie hugged him quickly then ran into the trees with the rest, heading for the main road, the wand still in her grasp.

Lee’s brows hooded his eyes. His mind was calm. What he was about to do was going to be in cold blood. He’d enjoy it more that way.

“What anarchy is this?” a familiar, pompous voice spoke out. Jangler’s portly shape was standing outside his cabin, staring sleepily around at the camp and listening to the gunfire in the distance. In his hand he held his mobile and he adjusted his spectacles as he read the latest text.

“Old man!” Lee called out. “You an’ me got business.”

Jangler turned to him and put the phone into his pocket.

“So,” he declared. “You’re the one. I did wonder if the spotty cowboy
lad was the Creeper, or that Esther girl; they’re both skulkers by nature. What is that you have there? Been to a jumble sale, have you?”

Lee tapped the skull against the palm of his hand. “This is what I’m gonna beat your sick brains in with,” he promised.

“I think not,” Jangler said and he called for the guards.

Lee took a step nearer. “Oh, them’s way too busy chasing nuthin’, back there in the woods,” he said. “Jus’ you an’ me here.”

From Lee’s cabin, the splinter of Austerly Fellows came bubbling and seething. It pulsed on the doorstep, viewing the showdown between the gaoler and the Castle Creeper. It tensed, preparing to intervene and protect the Lockpick’s life.

The old man took his hand from the pocket. He had exchanged the mobile for a small pistol. He wasn’t stupid enough to arm the guards and not take precautions of his own.

“You, me and my gun,” he told the boy. “Now drop the white elephant.”

Lee hadn’t anticipated he’d be armed. It showed in his face and he let the skull club fall to the ground.

On the step the pulsating black mould quivered in amusement. The danger to Jangler was over. That wily old man was more than capable of looking after himself. But it was time the guards returned to hunt down the escaped aberrants. This camp had ceased to be of worth. New and larger camps in other countries would be opening soon. Spilling on to the ground, the mould streaked through the grass, rushing swiftly towards the back fence to summon the Punchinellos back. The woods were full of moving targets for them to gun down.

“You ain’t gonna pop that thing at me,” Lee said, eyeing the gun. “Your Ismus guy needs me alive.”

A callous smile tweaked Jangler’s moustache.

“I hold a different view,” he said. “The Creeper is far too dangerous to be allowed to live. You could wreak havoc in Mooncaster if unchecked. I suggested massacring the lot of you right at the start to be sure, but Mr Fellows disagreed. I would never presume to correct the Grand Duke,
but it would seem my opinion was the correct one. You should have been slaughtered then. That is an omission I shall now set right, and balance the account to my satisfaction.”

Holding the gun at arm’s length, he braced himself for the recoil.

“
Beyond the Silvering Sea…
” Lee said suddenly. “
Within thirteen green, girdling hills…
”

The old man started and gaped at the boy incredulously. What was he doing?

“…
lies the wondrous Kingdom of the Dawn Prince
…”

Jangler’s head began to nod and he started to rock backwards and forwards, slipping into that other existence. He felt a cold breath on the back of his neck and the will ebbing out of him. The gun fell from his fingers.

Lee came stampeding forward with his head down. Yelling ferociously, he dived at the old man, his hands grabbing the gaoler’s throat. Together they fell, but by the time Lee hit the ground, Jangler was nowhere to be seen and the boy was unconscious.

Jangler looked up. It was still night but it was cold. He saw the stars blazing brightly in the sky, the way they burned in…

“Get up, you lowlife. I wanna knock you down again.”