‘What about your course?’ cried Retch Wallmanner. ‘You’re supposed to serve a course with your story!’
The Dean waved him quiet. ‘Please, Retch, just listen to my story. All will become clear very soon.’
The Dean cleared his throat, and began his tale.
The Dean’s Tale
‘Once upon a time, there was a miserable old Dean of a miserable old College in a miserable old village. He hated his job, hated his life – but more than anything, he hated the filthy, foul-mouthed morons who he was forced to work with day in, day out!
‘The Dean suffered these dreadful people for one reason alone: he wanted to get his hands on the Dead Man’s Jabberers. Like the others, he longed to claim them for himself and become the Lord of Darkness; but he didn’t just want to use their evil power to bring down Christmas – oh no! The Dean was much more ambitious than that. He wanted to bring the whole world to its knees. He wanted nothing more than to rule all mankind with terror until the end of time – an immortal god of fear!
‘The desire consumed him night and day. He barely ate, he barely slept. All he did was read, read, read, hoping to find some way that he could claim the teeth for himself. But how? The Dean was no storyteller – he would never be chosen as a winner at the Christmas Dinner of Souls. And besides, what if he wasn’t worthy of the Dead Man’s Jabberers? The teeth would kill him the second he tried to wear them!
‘But one day – earlier this year, in fact – the Dean made an interesting discovery. He found out that before Lord Caverner left the College, he secretly filled the Catacombs with booby traps to stop anyone from finding Edgar’s body. That was the reason that no guests ever came back up from the Catacombs. They weren’t being killed by the Jabberers! They were dying while searching for Edgar’s tomb! Perhaps, thought the Dean, that whole part of the story was just a myth – perhaps anyone could take the Jabberers and wear them for themselves!
‘There was nothing to stop the Dean from claiming the teeth – except for one small problem. When the other guests found out what the Dean had done, they would hunt him down and kill him. So he decided to get rid of them, once and for all. That year, at the annual Christmas Dinner of Souls, he served them all poisoned gin.’
The guests’ eyes widened in horror. They stared down at their empty glasses. The Dean smiled.
‘Would anyone like to guess what my course is?’
The guests looked at him, then at each other – and slumped onto the table, dead.
Lewis stood frozen to the spot. All fifty guests were lying face down in the last of their Christmas pudding. The Dean picked up his glass, sniffed it absent-mindedly, and threw it at the fireplace. The fumes caught in the flames and lit up the room like a furnace. Without missing a beat he strolled calmly towards Lady Arabella’s dogs and expertly tied their leashes round a table leg.
‘Forty years, I’ve been holding these dreadful dinners. Thanks for your help, boy – I couldn’t have done it without you.’
Lewis flew towards the door. The Dean whipped a pistol from his jacket pocket.
‘Not so fast! Your night’s not over, boy – in fact, it’s only just beginning …!’
The kitchen door creaked open and the Cook wandered into the dining room, carrying a tray of coffee served in human skulls. He made it halfway to the table before noticing the dead guests. He looked at the Dean – who was still pointing a gun at Lewis – and started shuffling backwards.
‘Hold it right there!’ cried the Dean, aiming the pistol at him. ‘You’re coming with us, freak! We have a job to do!’
He unbolted the trapdoor marked CATACOMBS and threw it open. A low moan of wind blew from the world beneath them; the air filled with the stench of death.
‘The Dead Man’s Jabberers are somewhere below us,’ said the Dean. ‘And I intend to find them. Forty years I’ve waited for this moment – and you two are going to be with me every step of the way!’
He kicked Lewis through the trapdoor, and he hit the ground with a gasp. It was like being flung into an ice well. Lewis couldn’t see a thing in the pitch black – the air was heavy and stale.
‘Get down there, imbecile!’
There was the sound of a scuffle from above, and then the Cook slammed to the ground beside Lewis. He lay doubled up in pain, groaning weakly. The Dean landed nimbly beside them and held up a torch to the darkness.
Lewis gazed at the Catacombs – and gasped. It was a network of tunnels that seemed to run on for miles, holding up the College with ornate stone pillars. But when you looked closer, you realised they weren’t pillars – they were cabinets for the dead. Each pillar held a dozen tombs, arranged in rows with their names carved into the stone.
‘A thousand corpses,’ said the Dean grimly. ‘The whole College is built on them – and in one of them lies the body of Edgar Caverner. When we find him, we find the Dead Man’s Jabberers. Then power and immortality are finally mine, all mine!’
The Dean’s eyes shone hungrily in the torchlight. Lewis got to his knees and begged.
‘Please, we won’t tell anyone what happened! Just let us go!’
The Dean laughed. ‘What – and let my two little canaries fly away? You heard what I said upstairs – these tunnels are filled with booby traps. I haven’t come this far to end up falling into a pit of spikes or get crushed by a boulder – you have!’ He aimed the gun at Lewis. ‘You’re going to walk ahead of me and set them off yourself!’
Lewis gasped. ‘N–no! You can’t do that!’
The Dean ignored him, and gave the Cook an almighty kick.
‘Up you get, freak! Your time has come, too – I doubt anyone will miss you!’
The Cook gazed into the torchlight. Lewis was once again struck by his face – the one that looked like cold, cooked meat packed against his skull. The one that had terrified him so much at the beginning of the night. Now, after everything that Lewis had seen and heard, he realised that the Cook was the person he was least afraid of.
Without warning, the Cook leapt to his feet and shot down the tunnels. Lewis was surprised by how quickly he moved – so was the Dean.
‘Hey, stop!’ snapped the Dean. ‘There’s nowhere you can run to – come back here!’
But the Cook didn’t stop. He threw his whole body forward, lurching with gasping breaths down the tunnels. He didn’t seem to be worried about setting off any booby traps – he wasn’t even limping any more. It was all Lewis and the Dean could do to keep up with him.
‘SLOW DOWN, YOU IDIOT!’ cried the Dean, dragging Lewis by the wrist. ‘You’ll set off the traps! We’re supposed to be checking every tomb as we go …’
The Cook kept running, twisting and turning through the labyrinth of pillars. He wasn’t just running – he knew where he was going. He was leading them somewhere.
And suddenly he stopped. The Dean and Lewis screeched to a halt beside him.
‘You moron! You could have gotten me killed!’ The Dean pointed the gun at the Cook’s head. ‘This is my one chance to find the body of Edgar Caverner, and I’m not going to let some pasty-faced troll …’
He trailed off. The Cook was leaning on a pillar, heaving with ragged breaths. His greasy fingers rested on the handle of a tomb:
EDGAR CAVERNER
The Dean’s mouth fell open – his eyes widened in disbelief. He gave a great yelp.
‘I … I did it!’ he cried, dancing for joy. ‘I found Edgar’s tomb! The Dead Man’s Jabberers are mine at long last!’
Lewis glared at him. ‘OK, you’ve found what you wanted. Now let us go!’
The Dean stopped dancing. ‘Oh, I can’t do that.’
He whipped back round with the pistol.
‘You see, I don’t plan on making the same mistake as Edgar. I’m going to make sure that once I have the Dead Man’s Jabberers, no one can take them away from me ever again. I’m not leaving behind a single trace of their existence – not even stories. I’ve already killed the only fifty people in the world w
ho know they exist. Well – make that fifty-two, once I’m done with the both of you.’
The Dean pulled back the hammer on the pistol and gave them another cold smile in the darkness.
‘Then I’m going to torch the whole College. The library is filled to the rafters with dynamite. In an hour’s time, it’ll all be gone. No one will miss it – least of all me. People will say that the College burned down tragically one Christmas morning – and there were no survivors. Not the Dean, not the staff, and certainly not one naughty, little boy.’
The Dean held the gun to Lewis’s head and smirked.
‘Tell me, boy, do you still wish you’d broken that window?’
The Dean stopped. There was a noise coming from behind him – the sound of muffled screams. The sound of someone pounding against a locked door.
‘What— what is that?’ said the Dean nervously. ‘Where’s that coming from?’
Lewis looked at the nearest pillar … and his stomach dropped. The sound was coming from the locked tombs. There were people inside them – they were kicking and screaming against the cabinet doors. The Dean’s mouth fell open in horror.
‘They … they’re alive!’ he cried. ‘But how—’
‘Oh, it’s really quite easy when you know how.’
The Dean swung round. The Cook was still gazing up at him, the grey lumpen skin on his face twisted into a smile.
‘That one beside you’s been down here since last year. Poor Umberto Skelliosis! He thought he was certain to find the teeth – but no such luck. The tomb above him? That’s Alopecia Hike – she’s been down here for at least twelve years now!’
The Dean stumbled back in terror as the drawers beside him shuddered and screamed. The torch in his hand shook, making the light dance across the Cook’s grey and greasy face.
‘Who— who are you …’
The Cook stood up to his full height, releasing his back in a series of cracks. Now you could see that he was actually very tall and very thin. He reached up to his face, dug his fingers into the skin … and pulled away the flesh. It came off in great clumps, scattering like mincemeat onto the floor. Lewis gasped – it was mincemeat. Cold, cooked mincemeat packed into clumps against his skull. It was a mask, covering the face beneath it.
The face of a man who’d lived in the darkness all his life. The pale mad eyes, the grey hair.
The rotting teeth.
‘Surprised?’ said Edgar Caverner.
The Dean trembled from head to toe. ‘B–but … you died! Your father found your body and—’
‘Dean, Dean.’ Edgar laughed. ‘Do you have any idea how easy it is to fake your own death? It was the only way to ensure no one would come looking for me – how else could I take part in these wonderful annual dinners for the rest of time?’
The Dean was speechless with fear. Edgar sighed.
‘I must say, that was a rather impressive trick you pulled off upstairs – but it does make next year’s dinner a bit of a problem. I’ll have to start over again, I guess – find somewhere new. Of course, you won’t be around to appreciate it …’
The Dean lifted his pistol, but Edgar was too quick for him. He tore the gun from his hands and in one great swoop threw open the cabinet marked EDGAR CAVERNER and thrust the Dean inside. The Dean had just enough time to give a final shriek of terror before the drawer slammed shut, the lock turned, and his cries became one more muffled scream in the darkness.
Edgar Caverner chuckled.
‘Wonderful night, wasn’t it, boy? I must say, those dinners get better every year …’
Lewis wasn’t there to hear him say it. He was flying back through the darkness of the Catacombs, back towards the trapdoor. He wouldn’t stop running until he was out of the dining room and through the black gates and Soul’s College was far behind him. On the far horizon the clock tower rang out the hour, seven chimes pounding out across the village rooftops. It was Christmas Day – darkness slipped away from the world once more, racing back to the secret corners of the earth, always waiting and always ready to return.
‘I’ll never be bad again!’ Lewis cried into the dawn. ‘I’ll be good every day of my life – I swear it!’
By the time Lewis reached the edge of the forest, flames had already started flickering in the windows of the library. Soon the Dean’s stashes of dynamite would explode, and Soul’s College would be razed to the ground. Lewis stopped at the village, watching as the fire rose higher and higher. Even from down here, he swore he could still hear a voice on the wind.
It was the same voice that had chased him out of the Catacombs, shrieking from the darkness beneath Soul’s College. The voice he would never forget until the day he died.
‘Merry Christmas, boy!’
About the Author
Ross Montgomery is a former primary school teacher and now full-time writer. Ross has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the Branford Boase Award. His picture book The Building Boy with David Litchfield was published to critical acclaim and sold around the world. Christmas Dinner of Souls is his fourth middle-grade novel. Ross lives in Brixton, London.
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Copyright
First published in 2017
by Faber & Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2017
All rights reserved
Text © Ross Montgomery, 2017
Illustrations © David Litchfield, 2017
The right of Ross Montgomery and David Litchfield to be identified as author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978–0571–31798–1
Christmas Dinner of Souls Page 10
