The Charlie Moon Collection

by Shirley Hughes

  “They weren’t real burglars, anyway, because they didn’t take anything,” she says. “And if it’s those Morgan boys, which it probably is, you won’t want to catch them because they’re much bigger than you. It would be completely pathetic.”

  “I could get the police to send them to prison.”

  “No, you couldn’t. Policemen don’t send children to prison.”

  Charlie is thoroughly irritated.

  “Well, I’ll do something to them. Give them a terrible fright.”

  “Don’t be pathetic, Charlie. What sort of fright?”

  “I don’t know. I’m thinking,” is all Charlie can answer. Ariadne returns to her book.

  Later, she says:

  “I heard Mrs Cadwallader and Mr Cornetto arranging to go for a walk on the pier this evening. He’s going to leave Lordy behind as a watch-dog.”

  “That’s silly,” says Charlie crossly. “Lordy’s not much good at that kind of thing if you ask me. What do they want to go on the pier for in the evening anyway? They’re neither of them interested in fishing.”

  “Perhaps they’re going out together—you know.”

  “Don’t be stupid. They’re old. Anyway she’s always talking and telling people what to do, and all. Nobody could want to go out with her.”

  “She’s got lots of money and jewels and things, even if she is always losing them. Perhaps Mr Cornetto doesn’t mind her going on at him. Perhaps it’ll be good for him.”

  “Well, somebody ought to warn him,” says Charlie bitterly.

  “Perhaps we could make out he’s got a wife already, that nobody knows about, like the man in my book. He’s got one that’s mad, and he keeps her locked up in the attic.”

  “Go on. How could Mr Cornetto have a mad wife at the Crazy Castle? There isn’t room for one. He’s packed out with stuff already.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” admits Ariadne reluctantly. “Well, they’re going out tonight anyway, so if you want to give the burglars a fright, Charlie Moon, this could be your big chance.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Well they’re bound to come back. I read somewhere that criminals always return to the scene of their crime. So you could jump out on them wearing a mask and say ‘Boo!’, or whatever pathetic thing you’re thinking of.”

  There is a short silence while Charlie considers this.

  “All right, I will then.”

  “What, jump out at them?”

  “No, something better. Give them a fright so they won’t ever come back.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Wouldn’t. What could you do, anyway?”

  “I’m not telling yet. But you’ll have to help me.”

  “Typical! Why should I?”

  “Cause I can’t manage it on my own.”

  “What if they don’t come?”

  “You said they would,” says Charlie, turning on her. “You keep talking about all those things you’ve read about so you can show off. So now we’ll see!”

  “All right, then. We will. Now will you get on with your pathetic plan, whatever it is, and let me get on with this story?”

  8

  All the houses on Penwyn Bay front, from Auntie Jean’s shop on the corner up to the Crazy Castle, have back yards giving on to a connecting alley-way, which is full of old cartons, broken milk-bottles and other dubious rubbish. It’s a cat’s kingdom, where Einstein haunts the dustbins at night, competing noisily with his enemies for tit-bits. But this evening, at dusk, all is quiet. Not a cat to be seen. The television sets are glowing blue-white against tightly drawn curtains, and only bursts of recorded studio laughter break the silence.

  Auntie Jean, after evening Chapel, emerges from the front door of her shop and hurries away up the prom in the direction of the all-night launderette in Market Street, pushing the huge pramful of dirty washing which has been lying in wait for her all week. Soon after she has departed, Ariadne puts her head round the back gate which leads into the alley. Then she creeps out, leading the shuffling hairy figure of a gorilla. It is wearing a long mackintosh and floral headscarf. Almost immediately it trips on a squashed orange, falls down on its face, and has to be helped up and dusted off.

  “I tell you, I can’t see properly,” says Charlie’s voice crossly from somewhere inside the gorilla’s mouth. “You’re supposed to be leading me, aren’t you?”

  “All right. You’ll get used to it soon. Hang on to me and try not to make such a row.”

  “It’s too hot in here.”

  “Well!” says Ariadne, pulling him along. “That’s typical! It was your great idea to dress up in that suit, left over from some pathetic panto at the old Royalty, and now you’re grumbling about it already. I had enough trouble getting you into it.”

  “It’s this scarf on top of the mask. It’s suffocating me.”

  “You have to cover yourself up somehow until we get there, Charlie. Suppose we meet someone?”

  “I didn’t think this body part was going to be so uncomfortable. It must have been made for a dwarf.”

  “Hunch over a bit. It’ll make you look more realistic.”

  It had seemed like a good idea to Charlie that afternoon to dress up in a gorilla suit, but now he’s inside it he’s not so sure. He’s had his eye on it ever since he arrived at Auntie Jean’s and noticed it hanging behind the sitting-room door. The head part he found on a high shelf at the back of the shop. It has huge grinning teeth, flaring red nostrils, and deep eye-sockets under a shaggy fringe of hair. The body part is made of artificial fur, zips up the back, and is very dusty. Charlie thought he had managed to get rid of most of the dust by shaking the whole thing out of his bedroom window, but now he realizes he hasn’t been very successful. He seems to be hovering all the time on the edge of a sneeze. What’s more, it smells nasty inside, and the eye-holes are too wide apart, so he can only see out by squinting down one nostril.

  Of course Ariadne was all ready to be scathing when he explained his idea to her, how he meant to dress up and lie in wait at Mr Cornetto’s place while he was out, in case whoever-it-was came back again.

  “What do you want a disguise for?” she couldn’t resist asking. “It’d be easy enough without the mask.”

  But she’d helped him into it and zipped him up the back all the same. She’s even admitted that the effect was pretty good. They’d had to hide in the top bedroom until they’d seen Mrs Cadwallader and Mr Cornetto setting out, arm in arm in the summer dusk, for their walk on the pier. After that, it was an all too easy job to lure Lordy from his post as watch-dog with the help of a bowl of dog-meat. Ariadne has “borrowed” the spare key to Mr Cornetto’s back door from its usual place on Auntie Jean’s dresser. Lordy is, at this moment, very full and already dozing heavily in one of Auntie Jean’s armchairs.

  They creep along the alley-way and manage to reach the back door of the Crazy Castle without meeting a soul. Once again Ariadne puts the key into the lock, but she finds she has no need to turn it. She had forgotten to re-lock the door when she let Lordy out.

  “Hey, wait a minute while I get these clothes off,” says Charlie, struggling out of the headscarf and mackintosh. Together they fold and hide them behind Mr Cornetto’s dustbin, then they creep inside the house.

  At first it’s too dark to see anything. They grope their way through the rear door of the Waxworks Hall. The rows of figures stand in uncanny stillness, muffled in their elaborate costumes. A faint light filters through a little cracked glass dome overhead, catching a sharp beak of a black profile here and there, a towering wig, a glittering glass eye. Ariadne finds her throat is dry, clears it, and is appalled by the loud noise it makes. It is much too quiet in here. Her superior attitude to the whole plan drains away suddenly. It seems impossible to speak in the presence of these listening shapes, and even more impossible to walk up the room between them. She flattens herself against the wall.

  “Come on,” says
Charlie hoarsely, dragging her arm and shuffling forward. “You hide up here, behind the curtain over the archway. I’m going to be in the entrance hall.”

  “It isn’t worth it, Charlie. Nobody’s here. Nobody’s going to come . . . are they?” Her voice trails off into a squeak of fright.

  But Charlie is resolute. He pads off into the darkness. Unable to bear being left behind, Ariadne hurries after him, not daring to look on either side of her. She reaches the curtain and peers round it into the entrance hall beyond. She can make out only tables and chairs, neatly arranged after their labours that morning, ready for tomorrow. Charlie seems to have disappeared into thin air.

  “Charlie?” she croaks into the blackness.

  There is a muffled answer from the far corner. Charlie’s gorilla shape is standing against the wall between the big wooden bear and a suit of armour, looking as much as possible like another waxwork figure.

  “Hide behind the curtain,” he hisses across the room. “We’ve got to lie in wait.”

  “But Charlie . . .”

  “What?”

  “Let’s go home after all. I mean, nobody’s going to turn up. It’s all totally pathetically useless our being here.”

  Charlie doesn’t answer.

  “Mr Cornetto might come back and find us here, and we won’t know how to explain.”

  A pause. Then:

  “All right. Go, then. You go off home if you like. I’m staying.”

  “Don’t be silly. I won’t leave you on your own.”

  “Well, hide.”

  Ariadne retreats behind her curtain and hides. Charlie stands stiffly in his corner, as much to attention as his gorilla suit allows. Darkness. Silence. Minutes heavily passing. Voices and footsteps are heard faintly from time to time on the prom outside, but they walk on by, and fade away. In what seems like an endless tunnel of time, nothing at all happens. Every now and then Charlie can be heard snuffling inside his gorilla mask. But he is grimly determined not to give in—not for an hour at least. It was his idea, after all.

  After a very long time, Ariadne is suddenly aware of a faint thud. It comes not from outside on the prom but somewhere inside the building. She listens, straining. Then there is another noise, a slight scuffling. Then a door opens slowly. It’s the door behind her, right over the other side of the Waxworks Hall—the one she and Charlie came through themselves. Somebody is coming in the same way.

  Ariadne presses her hand over her mouth to stop herself from calling out. Has Charlie heard too? Moving the curtain very slightly, and putting her eye to the narrow gap, she can see him still standing in his corner, absolutely still. Behind her she can see nothing at all, only hear the footsteps, creaking up the hall towards her. Now a black shape blots out her line of vision, then another. Two figures pass by, only inches away from her. She sees a shoulder, a bit of anorak, a glimpse of an ear, someone about her own height. They pass through into the entrance hall. There is the sound of stumbling, of knocking into furniture. Then voices, suddenly loud.

  The Morgan boys, of course!

  “Watch where you’re stepping, boy. Want to get us nicked?”

  “I can’t see. Where’s the counter?”

  “Over here, where it was before, see? Come on.”

  “It’s breaking and entering, Dai.”

  “Not if they leave the door open it isn’t. That’s asking us in. They ought to know better after the last time, only they’re that daft.”

  “Where’s the dog, then?”

  “They haven’t no dog.”

  “I’ve seen one hanging about here.”

  “Aaaach, come on. Let’s get some grub. I fancy some crisps, anyway.”

  More clumsy stumbling against tables and chairs as they make their way across the hall in the dark. Then a sharp intake of breath. Slowly Charlie’s arms have started to move.

  “Whassat?”

  “What?”

  “Over there, in the corner. Something moved!”

  Silence. Then:

  “Getaway, it’s only one of them stuffed waxwork things. We’ll soon have that over.”

  “Not that one—the other! Hey, Dai, let’s get out of here . . . DAI! It’s walking! Aaaaaaaah!”

  Slowly Charlie moves forward, all hunched up and hairy, with his arms up and his great mask-jaw poking forward out of its fringe of hair—which is the only way, in fact, he can see where he’s going. He’s a terrifying sight in the shadowy dark.

  The two Morgan boys scramble and blunder against each other in their panic to get away from him. One knocks over a chair, nearly falls, staggers to his feet again, straight into the arms of the wooden bear which lurches forward on top of him. Letting out a yelping scream, he dodges away, so that it rocks and falls. Meanwhile Dai has bolted through the archway that leads to the other small lobby. His brother flees headlong after him. Charlie, arms clawing the air, follows relentlessly.

  The Morgan boys now have no idea where they are. They crash about against the wall, knocking into slot-machines, trying to find the other door. Some glass is smashed. Suddenly a blood-curdling disembodied voice speaks right into their ears, repeating the same phrase over and over again:

  “Only one person at a time, please . . . Only one person at a time, please . . .” Charlie stops short, momentarily off his guard. But then he recognizes the voice of the “Speak-Your-Weight” machine. Jolted into action, it can’t stop.

  “Only one person at a time, please . . . Only one person at a time, please . . .”

  The Morgan boys are now nearly demented with fear. Managing at last to wrench open the door that leads into the Hall of Mirrors, they hurl themselves through. Instantly they are confronted by an army of reflections, a forest of themselves, an endless moving mass of arms and legs.

  “. . . one person at a time, please . . . Only one person at a time, please . . .” mocks the hollow voice behind them. But as they run through the maze of mirrors, more and more grotesque versions of their own faces gibber and leer at them. Suddenly they are brought up short against what seems like a dead end, a huge mirror cutting off their escape. Now, over the shoulders of their reflections, they see the monster that pursues them, with sunken eyes, hairy arms upraised, and awful fixed grin. There’s a passage leading on to the left, but here more mirrors surround them, and now there seems to be not one monster but many, great gorilla shapes leaping up, with others crowding behind, all reaching out to grab them.

  “Only one person at a time, please . . . Only one person at a time, please . . .” insists the voice in the darkness.

  At last another door, and beyond it they see deliverance. The back door leading out into the yard. They see the evening sky, the ordinariness of the brick wall. With a great burst of speed, the Morgan boys are out of the door and over the wall in an instant, with Charlie still lumbering after them.

  Ariadne, left behind her curtain, listens transfixed to the voice of the “Speak-Your-Weight” machine, going on and on until at last it starts to slow down.

  “. . . person . . . at . . . time . . . please . . . only . . .”

  Then, abruptly, it stops altogether.

  Ariadne puts her head out and peers through the darkness of the entrance hall at the confusion left behind by the rout of the Morgan boys.

  “Charlie?” she calls quietly.

  No reply.

  She takes a few steps out from her hiding-place and calls again. Still no answer. Charlie has gone. She hesitates fearfully, trying to remember where the light-switch is. She starts to feel her way along the wall, searching desperately. No switch. She finds herself blundering back through the curtains of the archway into the Hall of Waxworks again. Here, at least, there is a little light. But now she is alone with those stiffly posed figures, they appear even more terrifying—Dick Turpin with his pistols raised, the Executioner with his evil axe. To get to the back door she must somehow walk the length of the room, exposed to all those glassy eyes. She measures the distance, trying to pluck up courage. She kno
ws that, besides the set-piece of Mary Queen of Scots, there are eight waxworks on each side of the aisle. Head down, eyes on the ground, she starts off. If you look at the feet, not the faces, it isn’t so frightening. What’s frightening about eight pairs of feet? She counts out of the corner of her eye. One, two, three, four, five . . . nearly there . . . six, seven . . . quick! quick! . . . eight, nine . . .

  Suddenly she stops dead, her hand actually on the door handle.

  Nine?

  That’s one pair extra.

  Slowly, slowly she turns, eyes still down, and counts again. Six, seven, eight . . . She raises her eyes. Far down at the end of the hall, the end she’s just come from, there is a faint rustle. The ninth waxwork is moving.

  Ariadne shapes her mouth to a wild scream of fright, but no sound comes out. Flinging open the door, she bolts into the gathering dusk.

  9

  The lights are on over at Penwyn. The Fun Fair throws up a harsh multicoloured glow into the sky, and snatches of pop music can be heard across the lapping water. Mrs Cadwallader and Mr Cornetto, strolling home along the prom in the dark, are taken unawares by Ariadne’s sudden hurtling approach. She seems to come on them from nowhere, blundering into them, hardly realizing who they are. Gulping and stuttering with fright, she tells them the whole story.

  “That’s all right, dear . . . you’re safe now . . . never you mind then . . .” murmurs Mrs Cadwallader, patting her comfortingly, though she finds all this muddled gibberish about gorillas, burglars and moving waxworks difficult to follow. “What have these children been up to?” her glance says to Mr Cornetto over the top of Ariadne’s head. They both hurry back with her to the Crazy Castle at once.

  Ariadne hangs back, clinging to Mrs Cadwallader, as they reach the front entrance. This being still locked, Mr Cornetto produces his key, opens up the portcullis, and strides in ahead of them. He goes from room to room, switching on all the lights. The signs of the Morgan boys’ headlong flight are there all right, but in the Hall of Waxworks all is in order. Nothing has moved. Eight figures stare down at them from each side of the aisle and Mary Queen of Scots bows her neck to the Executioner, just as though nothing had happened.