I opened my eyes. Caddie was standing above me. Raggy Maggie was perched on her shoulder. Both of them looked down, their faces wearing matching expressions of contempt.
‘Let him go.’ The girl and her doll both said the words at the same time. Two mouths. One voice.
At once I felt the pressure of a thousand tiny hands leave me. I moved to get up, but an icicle stabbed through my brain again and my whole body went limp. Without any effort, Caddie had pinned me down far more effectively than the dolls could ever have done.
‘There are people up the stairs,’ Caddie and Raggy Maggie told the chattering dolls. ‘Get them. Bring them down.’ Her narrow eyebrows crawled halfway up her forehead. ‘He’s going to watch them die.’
Chapter Eighteen
SUDDEN DEATH
The dolls of my classmates sniggered as they swarmed off up the stairs. I lay there, powerless to stop them. Powerless to protect my mum.
In just a few seconds, all the dolls that had come into the house had disappeared upstairs, leaving me alone with Caddie, Raggy Maggie…and the knife in Caddie’s hand.
The dolls’ heads had blocked the kitchen knife from my view, but now I could see it all too clearly. The blade was red with my blood. It dripped along the metal and sploshed on to the carpet beside my head. The wound in my gut throbbed sharply, as if remembering how the knife had felt.
‘Your daddy said you’d play rough.’ Caddie knelt next to me on the carpet. Raggy Maggie swung down from her shoulder and landed on my chest. Now it was half broken, I could see right inside the doll’s porcelain head. It was completely smooth and empty, with no brain or anything else to speak of.
But that didn’t make her any less alive. As Caddie continued speaking to me, the doll crawled down my chest to my stomach.
‘But I don’t think you’re so tough,’ Caddie said. She leaned in closer to me, so her face was almost touching mine. ‘I think you’re just a big baby,’ she whispered.
Agony went off like a bomb in my stomach, as Raggy Maggie wriggled an arm or a leg – I couldn’t tell which – into my stab wound. The coldness inside my head had my whole body frozen, so I couldn’t even open my mouth, couldn’t even scream.
Caddie put one hand on my forehead, steadying herself. She raised the knife, holding the point a few centimetres above my heart. She and Raggy Maggie giggled at the same time, but behind it I noticed another sound too. The fast thudding of hundreds of tiny footsteps running down the stairs.
I heard a woman’s voice cry out: ‘Get away from her. Leave us alone!’
Mum. The electrical power inside me buzzed furiously, but it was still disjointed and erratic. Too random and chaotic to harness.
Caddie’s head rotated like an owl’s, until it was completely facing the other way. We both watched as the dolls flooded down the stairs, their rigid hands carrying Mum, Ameena and a little girl I guessed was Lilly above their heads.
‘Oh, look,’ Caddie sang. ‘It’s Mummy. You’re just in time.’
‘Kyle!’ Mum yelped. She thrashed against the dolls, but every time she came close to getting up they dragged her back down.
Ameena too was lashing out. She was grabbing at the tiny figures, hurling any she caught across the room. Each one thudded against the wall, dropped to the floor, then scurried back over to rejoin the pack.
Only Lilly wasn’t fighting. She was holding herself still. Her mouth was open and her eyes were screwed shut. She was crying so hard no sound was coming out.
‘Put them down,’ Caddie commanded. The dolls immediately set their prisoners down on the floor. ‘Now go away. These are ours to play with.’
Like a shoal of fish, the dolls all turned in unison and made for the door. Mum jumped up even before Ameena did. I’d never in my life seen her looking as angry as she did when she threw herself towards Caddie.
Halfway there, a strange, shocked look flashed across my mum’s face. Her legs buckled under her and she dropped to the floor. She lay there, motionless, except for her eyes, which flicked helplessly around the room before settling on me. I could see the pain in them. The sorrow. The fear. And it nearly killed me.
‘Lilly, stay down,’ Ameena roared. She leapt over my Mum, drawing back a fist as she closed in on Caddie.
For a moment I thought she was going to make it. But then the same expression of shock was on her face, and she was slumping on to the floor just a metre or two away from me.
Caddie’s head swivelled back until she was looking at me again. Her hand pressed down harder on my head. Raggy Maggie scuttled up Caddie’s arm and perched on her shoulder. What remained of the doll’s face was lit up with a barbaric glee.
‘You know what’s the tricky part?’ Caddie asked. ‘Picking who I’m going to kill first.’
She kept her eyes on me while she stood up. She raised the knife until it was pointing towards Ameena. I watched helplessly as she began to move the knife from Ameena to Lilly to Mum, then back to Ameena again.
‘My mummy and your mummy were hanging out the clothes,’ she sang, the knife switching target with every word. ‘My mummy gave your mummy a punch on the nose. What colour was the blood to be?’
The knife stopped. Caddie’s head twisted round to see who had been chosen to die first.
‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘It’s your mummy!’
I met Mum’s gaze with my own. Her eyes were shiny with tears. She didn’t look away from me, not even when Caddie’s shadow fell across her face.
‘After this it’s your girlfriend,’ Caddie told me through a giggle.
The power rushed through my body in every direction at once. The pain and the fear had shattered my control. There was no way I could make it do anything I wanted.
‘W-wait.’ The word came slurred from my mouth. Caddie’s eyes widened a little, as if surprised I’d managed to speak at all. ‘My dad,’ I murmured, ‘he…he’s using you.’
Caddie seemed to think about this for a second, then her shoulders raised in a shrug. ‘Oh well,’ she said, turning her attention back to my mum.
‘The Darkest Corners,’ I gasped. Caddie froze at the name. ‘He’ll…he’ll b-bring you back.’
‘No, he won’t!’ Caddie turned on me like a wild animal, her face contorted into a snarl. ‘I’m never going back to that place,’ she snapped. ‘Never ever.’
‘He w-will,’ I insisted. Just making my voice box work was agonisingly difficult, but I forced the words to come. ‘When he’s done w-with you he’ll take you back.’
‘Shut up,’ the girl hissed, the knife trembling in her hand as she pointed it at me. ‘Shut up right now.’
‘You’ll be stuck there,’ I told her. ‘Trapped. F-for ever.’
‘I said shut up!’ She flew at me, knife drawn back by her ear. Raggy Maggie clung on to her neck, her broken face fixed in a mask of hatred.
Caddie’s hand slapped down on my head. Her teeth were clenched tight, and flecks of spittle bubbled at the corners of her mouth. Her narrowed eyes fixed on the centre of my chest. I had a second – maybe two – before she plunged the knife into my heart. I couldn’t control the sparks colliding in my head. I couldn’t make my power work.
But I didn’t have to. All I had to do was concentrate. All I had to do was ignore the burning in my belly and the terror in my throat and trap one spark.
The knife and Caddie’s hand began to move.
I thought of Mum.
The rest was easy.
The carpet at my back went first, followed by the patterned paper on the walls. I watched the ceiling disappear. The bedroom above vanished too, followed by the attic. In the blink of an eye I was looking up at a sky full of black, swirling clouds.
In just a few seconds the whole room had changed into a dark mirror-image of itself. No, not just the whole room.
The whole world.
Caddie’s snarl caught in her throat and her hand stopped, mid-way to my chest. Terror lit up her eyes, and I felt the cold fog lift from inside my head.
My muscles relaxed. I could move again.
‘We’re…we’re…’ she stammered.
‘You’re home,’ I told her.
‘No,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s not fair. Take us back. Take us back!’
The hand holding the knife trembled, its knuckles bony white. She caught me by the hair and held the blade just a few centimetres from my eye.
‘Take us back,’ she hissed. ‘You’d better take us back right now.’
I didn’t answer. Instead, I put two fingers in my mouth and blew. A shrill whistle rose into the night.
ThuBOOM.
Caddie froze. Raggy Maggie’s grip tightened on the girl’s shoulder. ‘What was that?’ they whispered together.
ThuBOOM.
I shifted my weight and caught hold of the hand holding the knife.
ThuBOOM.
‘To be honest,’ I said, ‘I’m not sure what it’s called.’
An enormous shape appeared above the broken walls of my house, blocking out the sky. Clouds of hot air billowed from the dino-beast’s flared nostrils.
‘But it sure looks hungry.’
With a grunt I pushed Caddie away. She and the doll both screamed as they were thrown backwards on to the dirty wooden floorboards.
The monster lunged, its jaws open – wide enough to swallow all three of us. My focus slammed shut around another spark in my head.
In a heartbeat I flitted between the two worlds, and as I did Caddie’s scream echoed across them both.
The carpet felt soft against my back. I lay there, unmoving, eyes fixed on the ceiling above me. I could hear Ameena moving. Behind her, Mum was already getting to her feet.
‘Kyle!’ she cried. ‘What happened? Where did you go?’
She was by my side, arms over me, hugging me tight. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t ever want it to stop.
‘Long story,’ I wheezed. ‘Maybe…I can tell you about it later.’
She pulled away and looked at me. Her tears fell down on me like raindrops. ‘Everything,’ she nodded. ‘We’ll talk about everything.’
Her head came down as she hugged me again, and I saw Ameena standing behind her. A little girl with wispy blonde hair was in her arms. Lilly’s head was tucked in tight against Ameena’s neck, and her crystal blue eyes were wide with fear.
‘You did it then,’ Ameena said with a nod.
‘I did it.’
She gave my leg a friendly poke with her toe. ‘Nice going.’ Ameena glanced at the window, then back down at me. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘You know you’ve got about a thousand really confused school kids outside your house, right?’
I lifted my head and looked across to the window. I could make out a mass of red jumpers milling around in the garden. ‘Only about six hundred.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, then that’s not so bad…’
It took a lot to convince Mum not to take me to the hospital. In the end she agreed that they’d ask too many questions about how I’d come to have a four-centimetre stab wound in my stomach.
We decided she would clean it and dress it as best she could. If it got worse, she said, then she’d drag me to the hospital kicking and screaming if she had to. I agreed. It was the best deal I was going to get.
When we came to examine the wound, though, it didn’t look too bad. It felt a little better too, and it wasn’t long before I realised why.
Mesmerised, we watched the skin gradually knitting itself back together. It wasn’t happening fast, but it was definitely happening. The hole was closing over. The injury was mending itself right before our eyes.
‘How are you doing that?’ Mum asked in a hushed whisper.
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t think I am. Not on purpose, anyway.’
We were in the kitchen now – me standing by the table, Mum kneeling in front of me, studying the hole in my belly.
‘Incredible,’ Mum whispered. She gazed at the closing wound for a few more seconds, then gave her head a shake. ‘I’m going to put a dressing on it anyway,’ she said.
‘OK.’
She began wiping round the wound with a foul-smelling green liquid. It hurt almost as much as the knife had.
‘So,’ Mum said, dabbing at the dried blood, ‘your friend…’
‘What about her?’
‘She seems…nice.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend, if that’s what you’re going to ask,’ I said.
‘Perish the thought,’ Mum smiled. She finished wiping the blood away and began applying some gauze and cotton wool. ‘Where does she live? Your friend. What’s her name again?’
‘Ameena.’
‘That’s it. Where does she live?’
I shrugged, earning myself a ‘Keep still.’
‘Nowhere, really,’ I said. ‘She’s pretty much homeless.’
Mum nodded. The tape for the dressing felt sticky and tight as she pressed it to my skin.
‘You know,’ she said, not looking up at me, ‘Nan’s room isn’t doing anything at the minute.’
I glanced through to the living room. Ameena had moved the couch back into position and was now sitting on it, Lilly still nestled in her arms. I couldn’t have held my smile back if I’d tried.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I whispered. ‘You’re the best.’
I stood in the doorway of Nan’s old room, not quite sure what to say. Ameena was standing by the bed, looking at it as if it might explode at any minute. The light from the full moon outside illuminated the hideous flower pattern of the bedsheets.
‘Mum says she’ll get you other covers,’ I said, seeing Ameena’s expression. ‘They’re a bit…old-fashioned.’
‘What? No, they’re fine, they’re great, it’s just…’
‘Just what?’ I asked, my hands wringing nervously together. ‘Is it the curtains? We can probably change them too if you don’t—’
‘Calm down, it’s not the curtains, either.’
‘Well…what then?’
‘It’s just been a long time since I slept in a bed,’ she said. ‘A proper actual bed.’
She lowered herself down on to it and sighed. But it was a sigh of happiness and contentment.
‘Goodnight then,’ I said, watching her lie back and slowly close her eyes.
‘Night, kiddo,’ she said.
‘Sleep tight.’
She opened one eye. ‘I will if you shut up for five minutes.’
We both smiled, and I closed the door, leaving her to her dreams.
Her room was directly across the landing from mine. Mum had gone to bed over an hour ago – just before midnight – so I tiptoed to my own room and quietly closed the door.
I slid the curtains closed, blocking out the view of the Keller House, where I’d faced off against Mr Mumbles just two weeks ago. My encounter with him had seemed like a nightmare at the time, but I’d take him over Caddie, Raggy Maggie and an army of evil dolls any day.
As I pulled back my covers I found myself wondering what the kids and teachers from my school must be thinking right now. From what I could gather none of them had the foggiest idea how they’d arrived in my garden. As far as they were concerned they were in school one moment, and milling around outside my house the next. Their collective amnesia would no doubt make the papers, but hopefully the finger of suspicion wouldn’t end up pointing back at me.
Mrs Milton was fine too, if the mystery man was to be believed. I wasn’t sure what to make of him yet, and I hoped I’d get a chance to ask him some questions. I didn’t think he was lying to me, though, and even though she was a bit of a battleaxe, it was good to know the headmistress was safe.
So that left only Billy. When we’d taken Lilly home I’d asked her mum if Billy was in. She said he wasn’t, but as we walked away I spotted his bedroom curtains twitch. For just a moment I saw him there through the gap, glaring down at me. The curtains shifted again, and Billy vanished behind them once more.
I knew he was in bad shape physically,
and probably worse shape mentally. He needed help. Despite everything that had happened between us, I hoped he’d be OK.
My sheets felt cold as I slipped under my duvet. I tucked my knees up near my chest and snuggled in. There was no pain in my stomach now. I’d peeked beneath the dressing an hour or so after Mum had put it on, and the wound just wasn’t there any more. The power inside me felt back under control now. I could feel it buzzing inside me, eager to be put to use.
Too eager. My abilities may have repaired my injuries, but they were dangerous. For a short while today they had turned me into someone else. Someone I didn’t like. I decided there and then I would never use them again.
‘I’m going to offer you one last chance.’ The voice came from over near my door. I sat up in bed and saw my dad standing in the corner of the room. ‘Join me and all this can stop.’ He walked over and sat on the end of the bed. I watched him, too shocked to speak.
‘You nearly died today,’ he continued. ‘Your mother nearly died.’
‘And whose fault was that?’ I spat.
‘I never wanted you or your mother hurt,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to live up to your potential. Caddie strayed from the plan. Don’t blame me.’
‘None of this would have happened if you hadn’t sent her.’
My dad sighed. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this, Kyle,’ he said, his voice soft and soothing. ‘We can all be together. Working together. Side by side.’
‘Working together to take over the world,’ I pointed out.
‘Not taking over the world,’ he said. ‘Reshaping it. Making it new. Making it better.’ He reached over and stroked my hair. His hand felt warm. It felt good. I hated him for it. ‘We’d be a family,’ he smiled. ‘Isn’t that what you always wanted? You’d have a mum and a dad.’
‘I’ve got a family,’ I said, not even bothering to disguise the croak in my voice. I shuffled back in my bed and his hand fell away from me. ‘It’s single-parent.’
His face darkened and for a moment I thought he was going to make a lunge for me. Instead he just nodded.
Raggy Maggie Page 13
