Attica

by Kilworth, Garry

  Now he was going through a strange place full of strange wooden faces, following two of his human family. Suddenly a creature popped out of the mouth of one of the masks and stood before him. The creature was human shaped, but about the size of a large rat. It showed its teeth to Nelson, who had never liked this gesture, even in his own family of humans.

  ‘Gaaaah!’ cried the creature before him. ‘Eeech!’

  Nelson had no comprehension of these sounds and actually was now quite irritated by this strange thing which smelled of candles.

  ‘Urchhg. Aaaaach.’

  It did a little dance before him, then took out some sharp needles and pricked Nelson’s nose with one of them. The sound that came from the small figure’s mouth sounded like triumph to Nelson. Nelson hated birds that crowed over him: and any other creature for that matter.

  Another little dance and a stab with the needles.

  Nelson had taken enough. He bit its head off.

  The body ran away.

  The head tasted just like candle. Nelson chewed it into a shapeless wad then spat it out in disgust. He loped on in as dignified a fashion as his missing leg would allow, thoroughly disgusted at the delay.

  Jordy had not climbed Jagged Mountain, but had taken the long way round, skirting the foothills, never going higher than necessary. It was a long and tedious journey but once he had reached the other side he felt briefly invigorated and elated. Here he was, on his own, trekking where no man had been before. Or if they had, there was no sign of him in the dust, for Jordy’s were the only footprints. When he looked back there was a long line of them, stretching as far as he could see.

  The only drawback was that he felt very, very lonely. Jordy liked company. He liked encouragement when things were going bad and he liked praise when things were going good. He did not like having to fall on his own resources the whole time, with no one to share in the glory or the defeat. The problem was Jordy was more lost than ever and had no hope of returning to the other two as he had promised.

  ‘Well,’ he said, divesting himself of the pack he now carried, ‘here I am on the other side of Attica.’

  He sat down, took out some dried vegetables and crunched on them, studying what lay around him. Jordy too had been visited by a talkative bat in the middle of the night and told of a golden bureau if he would just keep his eyes skinned for soapstone carvings. But there were no hostile ink imps to be seen, nor any other kind of super-natural creature. An area covered with scattered tea chests lay ahead. Jordy stared hard at the nearest chest. He got up and went to inspect it. Tapping the plywood case he found it was hollow. The box was not only empty, it was upside-down. Looking around him he could see that all the tea chests were the wrong way up. Not only that, they were not placed at random. There was a roughly equal gap between each of them, as if they had been placed for a purpose.

  Jordy looked up at the tangle of rafters overhead. No clues up there. Nothing but cobwebs and darkness.

  Why would anyone place wooden boxes in a definite pattern?

  Maybe, he thought, this is the work of an artist?

  He wished Chloe were there so that she could argue with him.

  Jordy sighed. It was no fun being brilliant on your own.

  ‘Time to get on,’ he told himself. ‘See if I can find that watch by myself.’

  If Jordy had not believed in ‘ink imps’ before, he did now. Unlike the other two, he had extremely sharp eyes and had already caught full glimpses of ephemeral beings. Since they did him no harm he took little notice of them. These little figures formed out of the dust, travelled swiftly for a short distance, then disintegrated into a dust cloud again. Like small whirlwinds, or dust devils, but with definite human shape. Spirits of the attic, he decided, which should be ignored since they were unnatural beings. Jordy wanted no truck with things he couldn’t control or fully understand. He let them get on with their short lives and he would get on with his.

  He hefted on the backpack and continued out on to the plain of tea chests. Under the chests the yellow boards stretched far away, becoming old gold in the distance. He could see something happening out there. Birds, surely? Like a flock of rooks rising and falling gently on a field of corn stubble. Were they birds? They looked just like rooks.

  A short time later he stopped again, puzzled. There was a strange sound in the air. A sort of snicking noise. It seemed sinister and Jordy was worried by it, especially when it multiplied and rose in volume.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he mused.

  He stared about. He could see nothing ahead or behind, nor even to the sides. Then he realised the noise was indeed coming from the front, but high up, in the apex of the roof. What was that? Glinting things. Little flashes of light: the sun’s rays caught on glass? No, not glass, he decided, metal. Metal objects flying through the air. What the hell were they? Snick, snick, snick, snick, snick. Hundreds of them. These were his rooks, clacking, clicking, snicking, snacking. There were some very large dark ones, some a little smaller but red and green like parrots, the smallest of them pure silver with the sun flashing from their wings. Incredible. Just like birds …

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he cried, throwing off his pack as a giant swarm of scissors, garden shears, secateurs and clippers descended from the rafters. They swooped down towards him, snicking furiously at the air a dozen times a second. Their intent was obvious: to snip pieces from the intruder. Their blades flashed back and forth, forming the double purpose of wings for flying and beaks for biting. The finger-holes of the scissors were like baleful eyes, leading the rest of the raptors in their descent on the foe.

  Jordy went for the nearest hiding place, under a tea chest. Several sets of nail scissors, those fastest in flight, managed to snip locks of precious hair from his head and bits out of his clothes before he was safely under. Then the rest of the flock attacked the tea chest, going at it in a most alarming manner, like a thousand woodpeckers. The noise inside the chest was loud and terrifying. Jordy was curled up inside, his feet on the rim to keep the box from tipping over, wondering how he was going to get out of this terrible situation without injury.

  When the metal birds had ceased their hammering on the box, Jordy quickly leapt out from underneath and ran back to the area where he’d stood before venturing out into tea chest country.

  Of course, he thought, once he’d reached it and was looking back at the tattered remains of his rucksack, that’s what the tea chests were for. Whoever had placed them out there had done so in order that people – Atticans probably – could use them to cross the wasteland. They were to protect travellers from the savage scissor-birds.

  ‘If I’m going to get across,’ he told himself, ‘I’ll have to nip from one to the other – or maybe just use them when I hear the flocks coming in?’

  He needed a weapon though, in case he got caught out in the middle. Something to whack them with. Jordy back-tracked a little to where there were piles of attic junk and found himself a job lot of cricket gear lying in a heap. The bat was old and the willow was dented in places, but it would do. He made a few practice swipes with it, through the air.

  ‘A six or a four, or even a single, I don’t mind,’ he muttered at the rafters. ‘You’re the balls, not me.’

  He also discovered a batsman’s helmet which he put on to protect his head from the scissor-beaks. On his arms and legs he put batsman’s pads. Several jumpers were worn to protect his chest and a good thick pair of wicketkeeper’s gloves went on his hands. There were still vulnerable spots, still chinks in his armour, but for the most part he was covered. He took a cricket bag to replace the rucksack the scissor-birds had ruined.

  Thus armed and attired he set out again, thinking: The deeper we go into Attica, the more hostile it becomes.

  He dashed from box to box at first, but this became tire-some and eventually he strolled along, though ever watchful.

  Indeed, he did get caught between boxes once. They came in as a swarm and Jordy stood ready at the crease as
the first pair of scissors swooped on him. He swiped at the pair and caught them full on the blade. The scissors flew off the bat and hit a beam, one of its points sticking into the wood. They struggled, snicking and snacking back and forth, trying to release themselves, eventually breaking off the point and gaining freedom.

  In the meantime, Jordy was fighting for his life, slashing other metal birds as they swooped on him. They went flying everywhere. Jordy did not escape completely. They attacked his armpads like demented hawks, ripping and tearing, until the stuffing came out. There was a hammering on his helmet and they tried to peck into his wicketkeeper’s gloves to get at flesh. But all the while he fought valiantly, making steady progress to the next tea chest, until he was safely underneath again and protected.

  ‘Bugger off!’ he yelled at them, as they rat-a-tat-tatted with fierceness on the outside of the chest. ‘Go and find a needlework box!’

  Thus Jordy made slow progress across that part of Attica terrorised by scissors, secateurs, shears and clippers. They continued to harass him the whole way across, but Jordy had their measure now. He was not going to get caught out between boxes again. His progress between each tea chest was swift and calculated. The distances could not have been covered better had he been playing for England against the Aussies: one of his long-term dreams, after playing Premier League football and rugby against the Springboks.

  Finally he reached a valley draped with the flags of nations and saw that they were intact. If those same flags had been in scissor country they would have been shredded, so he knew he was out of danger. He divested himself of his cricket gear, keeping only the bag. There was a forest ahead and he walked towards it.

  *

  They got by Katerfelto. It was the boy who did it.

  ‘Yes,’ replies the bat, ‘but with matches.’

  A dangerous way to do it, I agree. But he hasn’t yet learned to use a mirror like us.

  The board-comber always carries a woman’s powder compact on his person. Alex had used matches to provide the light to drive away Katerfelto, but board-combers and other attic-dwellers used mirrors. They redirected the sunlight, reflecting it on to Katerfelto’s form, thus obliterating him. Katerfelto, after all, was but a bundle of shadows. And shadows are easily made to vanish in the blinding light of mirror-directed sunbeams.

  I still think it was very clever of him.

  ‘You won’t think it so clever of him when he burns down the attic.’

  We’re coming up to the Land of Masks. Is she still around? The mask collector?

  ‘No, you know she’s not. That board-comber has gone.’

  Where do board-combers go when they go?

  ‘Oh my,’ murmured the bat, folding and unfolding its wings, ‘here we go. A long philosophical debate that goes absolutely nowhere …’

  CHAPTER 9

  The Boy in the Wooden Mask

  The voodoo dolls are gathering – see!

  ‘They seem pretty mad, don’t they? I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.’

  I’m not my shoes – they belong to someone else.

  ‘That cat who bit the head off their chieftain belongs to the visitors. Now the voodoo dolls want revenge.’

  They’re after the humans, not me.

  ‘They’re after all of you.’

  The board-comber is scurrying across the attic in the wake of Chloe and Alex with the bat hanging from his earlobe, his Cocalino mask slightly askew. His collection of soapstone carvings bounce painfully on his back. It’s hot and stuffy inside the layers of clothing. He raises dust clouds as he runs, looking for hiding places, knowing that just falling down and pretending to be a pile of rags won’t work with the voodoo dolls. The whole nest of wax effigies has been roused by the lingering smell of humans and they have swarmed out of the mouths of the giant masks. The board-comber is almost surrounded, but he manages to outrun the voodoo dolls.

  ‘They know a live pile of old clothes when they see it. And we can’t go back. The mannequins are waiting for you. They know you got the boy away from them.’

  You’re a great help.

  The voodoo dolls have knife-long needles stuck in their soft little wax forms. Each doll has about twenty of these weapons, which it pulls from its own body and plunges into the bodies of its enemies. The board-comber knows that these dolls bear so much hatred for humans they won’t hesitate to drive their needles into flesh. In the attic they call it ‘the death of a thousand points’ and the victim bleeds to death slowly. The board-comber, who was once human and is still flesh and blood, is terrified. He has seen victims of the voodoo dolls staggering around, covered in needles. Living pin-cushions, helpless, blind and bleeding from a thousand tiny piercings.

  Are they still coming?

  ‘As relentless as a disturbed nest of hornets.’

  Their legs are short.

  ‘But they move faster than yours.’

  The voodoo dolls of the attic might well be likened to a nest of furious wild hornets, carrying multiple stings in their vicious little fingers. They bear a horrible but often only passing likeness to members of the human race: some very pale, some very dark, some the shades between. They have been made by voodoo priests out of raggle-taggle materials and the resemblance to the humans they represent is purely superficial. They are loose-limbed and mostly ugly, though one or two have features which make them appear benign. The mild-looking ones are the worst: they carry the dreadful curse of not being quite what they ought to be.

  How did voodoo dolls get up here? Did the one who collected the masks collect voodoo dolls?

  ‘Who knows? He’s gone now. Dead or back to the world he came from. How’s a bat supposed to know? Like will find like up here, won’t it? Now they’re on our tail and won’t give up. We have to find some way of slowing them down.’

  Think of something then, I’m losing my breath. My legs are going all shaky. I don’t think I can run much further.

  ‘Oh, that’s right, leave the thinking up to me.’

  You’re a passenger. That’s what you do.

  ‘I suppose.’

  Over the boxes and old furniture to the rear of them the voodoo dolls come scuttling like crabs over seashore rocks. The needles in their small hands flash ominously as they cross areas of sharp light. The expressions on their tiny faces are intent. They were made purely to carry pain and pass it to another. Their hatred for humans surpasses even that of the mannequins.

  ‘They’re gaining on us.’

  You’re supposed to be thinking of something – I’ll keep tabs on where they are.

  ‘No need to get upset.’

  Yes, yes, there is a need. A great need.

  ‘There, up ahead! Low rafters.’

  Indeed, there is a canopy of low rafters ahead, one of those areas where the roof needs extra support and the timbers criss-cross in a network of beams. The board-comber runs for this area, his oversized boots slopping on its feet, his Venetian carnival mask bouncing up and down on his face. He leaps upwards, a supreme effort fuelled by terror, and grasps the lowest rafter. His broad-brimmed floppy hat is askew and his musty old clothes hang from his body like curtains from a rail. Splinters in his fingers are the least of his worries. He hauls itself up and climbs. One boot falls, dropping to the ground like a bomb from an aeroplane, to bounce on the boards below. However, his precious bag of Inuit carvings is safely strapped to his back. Nothing must happen to that or the board-comber would have no reason to save himself. The bat dangles outwards, his sensors tuned to the oncoming hordes. He is aware of hundreds of voodoo effigies swarming over the boards, looking up at the figure of the board-comber as he lodges himself in the sharp-angled crook of two rafters.

  ‘They’re trying to think of a way of getting up to us.’

  I can see that. No step-ladders around, are there? I hope not. I wish I had fire. I’d melt them voodoos to a puddle of wax.

  ‘Well, you haven’t and a good job too. You’d burn the place down, you would. Uh-oh, they’re g
oing to make a totem pole – they’re standing on each other’s shoulders.’

  After looking about for something to use as a ladder and finding nothing, the voodoo dolls are indeed hopping on each other’s shoulders. Poles of dolls begin forming and growing upwards. The voodoo dolls do not have enough knowledge of shapes to know to form a pyramid or some other more stable figure. They simply go one on top of the other until they are several figures high, swaying precariously, some of the towers falling and sending the voodoo dolls shooting across the boards.

  Serve you right, says the board-comber. Hope you break your nasty little backs.

  One or two of the fallers lie stuck to the floor by their own needles and thrash furiously until they release themselves. Once back on their feet they gather themselves and try again. Those towers which have not fallen come within range of the board-comber’s boot. He kicks out, toppling them, sending them flying. The towers hit the floor and explode into their separate parts, the voodoo dolls scattering everywhere. One or two dolls jump for the rafter, scramble up and manage to keep their footing. The board-comber kicks out at these, catches one and sends it hurtling downwards. The second doll stabs him viciously several times in the foot with no boot on it.

  Ow! Ow! Ow!

  ‘I’ll get him.’

  The bat flies into the face of the voodoo effigy, unbalancing it. The doll drops backwards off the rafter. Its snarling face is visible all the way down. It hits the boards and breaks into several bits, an arm going one way, its head going another, a foot flying into the face of a fellow doll. The other dolls kick the bits away into a dark area. The victim was only a warrior: no one of any importance. They now stand at the bottom staring up. Their faces are twisted in fury but they do not seem to be able to reason how to get up there. One or two of them try to launch their needles like spears, but the needles fall short and drop down among them again.