Robin Jarvis-Jax 02 Freax And Rejex (53 page)

Lee was standing over him. Jangler sat up and fumbled for the gun. It wasn’t in the grass and the ground was wet and boggy. He stared around fearfully.

They were on a strip of spongy ground. Around them was a fetid swamp.

“Where…?” he spluttered.

“Don’t you recognise the neighbourhood?” the boy taunted. “Guess you castle guys don’t make it out this way too often.”

“I’m… in Mooncaster?”

Lee seized the collar of the Lockpick’s costume and hoisted him roughly to his feet.

“Yeah!” he roared right in his face. “I brought you home!”

Jangler blinked and shuddered. “It… cannot be,” he stammered. “How can I be here and know who you are – and know of that dream life in the camp? It’s… it’s not possible. I’m not still asleep. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Awww, shoulda brung your clipboard. You coulda worked it out on there.”

“I… I don’t understand this.”

“You won’t have to get used to it for long,” Lee told him, taking the phone from the old man’s pocket.

“That device!” Jangler cried. “It has no place here! It doesn’t belong!”

“Ain’t no coverage neither,” Lee remarked. “That’s OK. I weren’t gonna ring no one. Mmm… nice sealed unit, looks waterproof to me, does it to you? Let’s find out, yeah? Just setting the alarm to vibrate.”

He gave the old man a contemptuous shove that threw him off balance and sent him tumbling. His hands splashed into the brackish bog and he only just saved himself from tipping head first into the swamp.

“See,” Lee said, squatting on his haunches to stare him in the face. “Beating your brains in really weren’t enough. What you did to her – that deserves something a bit more special. A bit more off the hook.”

He tossed the phone in the air then jumped up and caught it. Reaching back, he threw it into the middle of the dark, sludgy water. The mobile floated on the thick slime for several moments then it sank slowly down into the cold darkness.

“Now get up and go fetch it.”

“What?”

“I said, GET UP!”

Lee hauled him to his feet again and pushed him into the slime. But the old man’s initial shock at being dragged here had faded and he refused to be pushed around. He was Austerly Fellows’ most trusted servant and had led the Inner Circle for many years in his absence.

Squelching back on to the bank, he raised his fists.

“Oh, you just made this so much more fun for me,” Lee said, grinning.

Jangler ran at him and Lee learned his appearance was deceptive. The old man was strong and solid. He dashed the lad’s hands aside like straws and came barrelling in to smash a punch on his jaw and follow it with an uppercut under the chin.

Lee reeled sideways, stepping into the mire. Jangler shrieked wildly and kicked out with his foot. Lee sprawled into the marsh, but he reached out and pulled the man with him. In the sucking mud, the pair of them slugged it out.

Down in the deep, the mobile began to flash and vibrate.

Caked in filth they battled. Hammering blows were dealt on both sides and blood mingled with the ooze. Jangler’s thumbs reached for Lee’s eyes and began to push them into the sockets. The boy bawled then slithered and slipped out of his hands. The marsh was pulling them further down. They were going to drown here.

“OK,” Lee accepted grimly. “Long as he goes down with me – I’m cool with that.”

He launched himself at the old man and tried to duck him under the surface.

In the centre of the wide swamp, large bubbles began to rise and break in the air.

A great disturbance was travelling up through the reeking mud. Lee and Jangler were lifted on the swell. The boy used it, thrashing his arms and legs to try and catch hold of the grassy clumps that grew around the edge of the bank. Clawing at the sod, it took every ounce of strength to trawl himself clear and he dropped, exhausted. Gripping one of Lee’s ankles, Jangler pulled himself out after and staggered upright.

The old man’s dripping face was plastered in scum and algae. He spat it from his mouth as he addressed the boy one last time.

“You want to know how she died?” he tormented him. “Screaming and slow, screaming and slow.” Throwing back his head, he laughed repulsively.

Lee pressed his face against the wet ground and his fingers raked
through the soft clay. He couldn’t go on. He couldn’t live with this. Tears fell from his eyes, but he knew he had to make one last effort. He raised himself on his elbows and started crawling away.

Jangler’s foul laughter reverberated over the swamp. Then his voice changed and the laugh became a strangled shriek. Lee didn’t turn round, he kept on moving.

Jangler howled. A pale, mottled tongue, as thick as his arm, was coiled about his middle. It tightened and squeezed the old man’s stomach then pulled and tugged him around. Jangler’s spectacles were lost in the mire, but he could still see the immense horror of the Marsh King. The tawny eyes bulged out at him and the tongue began to tow him back into the mud.

The third generation of Janglers screeched in terror.

Lee stumbled to his feet and forced himself to look, for her sake.

The massive jaws opened and Jangler was drawn out, across the bog – towards those needle-like teeth.

“Screamin’ an’ slow,” Lee uttered bitterly.

The boy stared into the bloated frog’s speckled eyes.

“Make sure you chew that proper,” he told it. “No gulping it down. Make it last.”

Jangler’s frantic screams intensified. Lee lingered a few moments more, just to make certain.

“Bon appétit,” he said.

Spencer knelt over Lee’s unconscious form and looked around in bewilderment. Where did Jangler vanish to? He had seen Lee charge at him and saw them both fall together, but the old man had simply disappeared.

Spencer shook his friend urgently. They couldn’t stay here. It was eleven o’clock. The lorry would be leaving.

It was no use. It was as if Lee was dead. Spencer didn’t know what to
do. Should he abandon him and run for the road, in the hope the lorry was still there? He couldn’t do that. Seeing the stick with the unicorn’s skull, lying close by, he reached for it. Then he saw Jangler’s gun.

Across the world something remarkable was happening. The hundreds of millions of copies of
Dancing Jax
were smouldering. In people’s homes, in their bags, in their hands as they were reading, in huge container crates awaiting distribution, the pages in which the Lockpick of the White Castle was mentioned began to burn. Every reference to Jangler, the gaoler of Mooncaster, glowed with scarlet fire. The ink was scorched clean off the paper, leaving blank spaces behind. The line illustrations depicting him as a portly man, with a waxed moustache and pointed beard, sizzled and flared, leaving no trace on the page.

In New York, the Ismus felt the old man’s death, like a knife in his own heart. Letting out an agonised yell, he collapsed into the arms of the Black Face Dames.

“Jangler!” he wept.

This was the power of the Castle Creeper. There was no character called Jangler in the book any more and none of the others would remember there ever being one.

Surging through the woods, chasing after the guards, the splinter of Austerly Fellows also felt the old man’s death. The frothing mould crackled and juddered. Rearing up, it shook, weeping in sync with the Ismus in New York. Then, when that man collapsed, the splinter exploded.

“Please wake up!” Spencer called to Lee. “Please come back!”

Growing more and more fretful, he decided to drag Lee over to the fence and pull him through the breach. He didn’t think he was strong enough to lug him through the trees to the road, but he’d try his damnedest.

And then he heard a sound that turned his blood to water.

A pair of spurs came clinking between the cabins and Garrugaska turned a delighted face upon him.

The silver-nosed Punchinello removed the cheroot from his mouth and spat on the ground.

“Get ready, little lady,” he drawled, quoting the Outlaw Josey Wales. “Hell is coming to breakfast.”

He nudged the Stetson on his head, and licked his lips. Then his large hand moved to the holster at his side.

“Prepare to do a whole lot of dying,” he snickered.

Spencer couldn’t breathe. A shot rang out across the camp and he was thrown back.

Garrugaska grinned widely. Then a trickle of dark blood dribbled down the silver nose and the beady eyes swivelled round.

“Awww… darn it…” he groaned as he crashed into the grass.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Spencer yelped, astonished by the recoil of Jangler’s gun. He waggled his hand and shook his arm. Then he ran over and tentatively touched the guard with his foot. He was undeniably dead.

Spencer grimaced and took the Stetson from him.

“Mine,” he said, wiping the hat on his trousers.

At that moment, Lee’s legs started to kick. He let out a woeful cry and snapped back into his body. Suddenly he was covered in stinking mud, his eyebrow was bleeding and he was choked with emotion.

Spencer hurried back to him.

“We’ve got to go!” he said. “Before it’s too late!”

Lee shook his head. He’d done what he wanted. He didn’t have anything left. This was it for him.

“You go,” he said in a hollow voice. “Leave me here.”

Spencer thrust his hand under Lee’s slimy arm and heaved. “Shift yourself!” he ordered.

“Can’t,” Lee answered. “I got things in my head I can’t get rid of. Don’t wanna live with them in there.”

Spencer pulled him to his feet. “I’ve just shot my first gunslinger!” he
yelled. “So don’t mess with me!” And he pushed him to the fence.

Alasdair couldn’t run much further. The camp’s rations didn’t furnish the energy for chasing around. He was out of breath and light-headed, but he could hear the Punchinellos crashing through the trees behind him. They were getting closer all the time.

Captain Swazzle moved swiftly. Bezuel had cast the cumbersome chinchilla coat aside, but Yikker had the lead. Stinkboy was close. The guard’s hooked nose could smell the sweat and the fear on the air.

Alasdair was almost spent. He hoped the others had managed to get away. But when he heard the distant shot as Spencer put a bullet in Garrugaska’s brain, he didn’t dare try and guess what that signified.

And then Yikker came springing out behind, hollering in his pinched voice, the cassock flapping round his stunted legs.

“Stinkboy!”

There was a crack like thunder and Alasdair’s right leg went from under him. The next moment he was rolling on the ground. His leg felt hot. He clutched it. Blood was soaking through his jeans. The hunt was over.

Lying there, he saw Yikker prowl closer, sniffing and eyeing him dubiously. He ripped the black material from the boy’s head and Alasdair’s sandy hair was shaken free. Yikker screamed and stamped his feet in a fury.

“You not Stinkboy!”

Captain Swazzle and Bezuel came scuttling to his side. Their savage eyes flashed at the wounded lad and they stroked their guns.

Alasdair glared back defiantly and, in a loud, undaunted, clear voice, he began to sing.

The woods flared and shook as the Punchinellos emptied their guns.

On the other side of the camp, on the main forest road, the lorry driver heard the crackling barrage of gunfire and threw his hands up.

“That’s it!” he barked. “I can’t stay any longer! They’ll be here next – and so will most of the nearest village. It’s twenty past. I’ve waited too long already. I’ve got to go! Get in the back with the rest.”

Maggie caught his arm. “Please!” she implored. “Just a few minutes more. They’ll be here, I know it!”

“Should never have believed it in the first place,” the driver blamed himself, pulling away and marching round the rear of the vehicle. “It was a stupid bloody risk. Do you know what it took to mobilise and set this up so fast? Do you know how far we’ve come? And for what?”

He peered into the darkness in the back of the lorry, where the escaped children were huddled together. The man softened.

“Least we got you out,” he said kindly. “That’s something.”

He gestured for Maggie to climb up with them.

The girl hesitated. She’d kept him waiting here far longer than he was supposed to. She had to face the truth. Spencer and Lee hadn’t made it.

Maggie nodded slowly and was about to climb up, when she heard the sound of someone running through the trees.

She turned apprehensively. It could be the guards. No – it was them!

“Lee! Spencer!” she cried, running to meet and hug them. “Oh, you’re filthy!”

The driver stared at the newcomers, intrigued. One of them was carrying a strange skull attached to a stick. He had thought Maggie’s wand was an unusual thing to bring out of an internment camp, but that was even more peculiar.

“Which one of you is the Castle Creeper?” he asked.

Lee frowned at him.

“You’re in the front with me,” the driver said. “You two, in here.”

Maggie and Spencer clambered into the back and he closed and locked the doors.

Lee got into the cab and the man started the engine. The lorry rumbled off. “We’re not going far in this,” the driver told him, keeping his eyes on the dark road ahead.

“Don’t mind where we’s going,” Lee muttered. He didn’t know why he’d let Spencer drag him to this. He was dead inside.

“There’s an army helicopter waiting for us, just under a mile away.”

Lee didn’t answer.

“Not our army,” the man explained, plugging the silence. “This country has had it. So has most of Europe. Any day now, America is going to follow.”

“You don’t say.”

The man’s gaze left the road a moment. “You can’t imagine how exciting this is for me,” he said.

“What?”

“Meeting you, the Castle Creeper. When they told me you were in that camp, I just wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t get over it. It’s an honour and a privilege!”

“Autographs later, yeah?”

“Sorry, it’s only – I never really thought you’d even exist. Just another false hope. But you’re the first genuine, tangible hope we’ve had so far.”