The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules

by Gerald Killingworth

  “Tell your friend he’s wrong. We live for ages. I’ve got a great-grandmother who’s eighty-five.”

  “I’ll pass on the information to my friend. He likes to get things right. It’s time I was getting back. But don’t worry, I’ll stay for hours next time.”

  “How will you get home?” There was panic in Edwin’s voice.

  “My friend said I’d be able to use the same door, if I didn’t stay very long.”

  “You mean the door of this shed?”

  “Yes. I need to go outside, and when I come back in I’ll be home.”

  “If I try to enter the shed later this afternoon, will I walk straight into your world as well?” There was no way Edwin wanted that.

  “No. That can’t happen. The door only opened for me. But, Edwin, I’m afraid to go into the light again.”

  Edwin needed to think clearly. He couldn’t have a boy from another world setting up home in his shed for ever. “Put your jumper over your head to protect your eyes, and I’ll guide you to the door handle,” he said.

  “I think you’re even wiser than my other friend, Edwin.”

  No, I’m not, thought Edwin. I just want this to be over. “Put the biscuits in your pocket,” he suggested, and he had to turn away when Lanthorne took off his jumper because a lot more of the stale smell was set free.

  Hoping that his parents were nowhere near, Edwin took Lanthorne by the arm and led him out of the shed. Then he turned Lanthorne round and placed the grey boy’s fingers on the door handle. He was surprised how distinctly cool Lanthorne’s skin felt.

  “Quickly, before my parents see you.”

  “I’ve had a lovely time, Edwin. Thank you.”

  Lanthorne opened the shed door and stepped through. An intense smell of drains wafted over Edwin, who slammed the door shut, hoping he hadn’t sent Lanthorne flying as he did so.

  “Who was that boy?” asked Mrs Robbins as Edwin hurried into the house.

  Yet again, Edwin had to come up with a story instantly.

  “He’s new at school.”

  “Why did he have his jumper over his head?” Mrs Robbins didn’t miss much.

  “We’re starting a secret society. You shouldn’t be watching. That was our special sign, and now we’ll have to think of another one.”

  “He isn’t still in the shed, is he?”

  “No. He had to get home… I think I can hear Mandoline crying.”

  “Have a quick look at her for me, will you?”

  “I’m too dirty. I might leave a black handprint on her.”

  Edwin was annoyed that his mother had spotted Lanthorne. At least she hadn’t noticed how grey he was. She would make an excellent spy, watching people’s every move and then asking questions that threw them off balance. He would need to be as careful as possible if Lanthorne tried to visit him again. Please let him not find another door.

  Later that afternoon as it was getting dark, Edwin revisited the shed. His parents were watching an antiques programme on the television, and he was sure his movements weren’t followed. He dreaded finding Lanthorne still in the shed and, even more, he dreaded opening the door and walking into Lanthorne’s smelly world. Gingerly, inch by inch, he pulled the shed door open and peeped through the crack. It was still their shed and there was no grey boy hiding inside.

  Phew! That’s all over and done with, Edwin thought.

  But of course it wasn’t.

  4

  What Am I Doing Here?

  The Christmas holidays came. Edwin always spent the first day of every school holiday as lazily as he could, just to make the point that lessons were over. He didn’t even bother to call Joe or Dom. He came downstairs for a late breakfast—three bowls of cereal and more orange juice than was comfortable—then went straight back to his room, where he turned on the radio (not too loud to disturb Mandoline, naturally) and got back under the duvet. The best part of this lazy day was that he could lie there wearing only T shirt, underpants and socks, and doze and think about nothing in particular. His time was completely his own. Unusually, he skipped lunch because he was too comfortable to get out of bed.

  At half past two, his mother knocked and called softly, “You’re not feeling unhappy are you, Edwin?”

  “No, Mum. I’m relaxing and deciding what to buy people for Christmas.”

  He’d really been trying to work out how much he could persuade his parents and grandparents to buy him, but there was the other side of the coin to think about as well. He amused himself dreaming up joke presents. Mandoline was queen of their family and would probably go on to rule the world, so he could buy her a brightly coloured plastic crown, with huge jewels set in it. For his mother, a pair of boxing gloves, because she kept “having words” with the neighbours whose cat was using the Robbinses’ garden as its litter tray. His father was planning some very ambitious DIY, and Edwin thought he needed a swear box for when it all fell apart—a china pig or Tardis money-box that gave you chocolate buttons every time you inserted a coin. A swear box would soon fill up, if past DIY disasters were anything to go by.

  Mrs Robbins knocked on the bedroom door again a little later, and this time she came in. Edwin put on his most smiley face and pretended he was singing along to the song playing on the radio. On the first day of the holiday, he wasn’t prepared to have an “Are you sure you’re not unhappy?” conversation. His mother put six five-pound notes on his bedside table and turned down the radio.

  “This is to help with your Christmas shopping. I don’t believe Santa takes plastic.”

  Edwin was thrilled. He’d been saving up for presents for two months, but an extra thirty pounds was perfect! Once his mother left, he got out of bed and looked over to the cupboard where he kept his cash box hidden.

  It was a rather obvious place to hide his special possessions, but modern houses don’t go in for spaces under loose floorboards or behind removable bricks, where you can secrete things you don’t want other people to see. The cash box was an inspired present, last Christmas, from his grandparents. It looked like a treasure chest and had a huge key. He kept it at the bottom of a holdall packed with archaeology magazines, while its key was sellotaped to the underside of the lowest shelf in the cupboard. Looking at the cupboard door brought Lanthorne Ghules to mind, naturally, but Edwin had opened the door loads of times in the weeks since Lanthorne’s frantic banging from the other side, so the sight of it no longer caused him even the slightest shiver.

  His mind full of what he could now afford to buy with this extra money, Edwin opened the cupboard door quite casually. As he started to bend down towards the holdall with the cash box, he felt himself propelled violently forwards. There was barely time for him to cry out in surprise as he passed straight into the dead, grey world of Lanthorne Ghules, which he’d hoped he would never see.

  It felt as if he had walked into an explosion, not the kind that hurls you backwards for hundreds of feet, but the sort that, like the flat of an enormous hand, smacks every part of you very hard, from your forehead down to your ankles. He rocked backwards and then pitched forwards onto his knees, so shocked by what had happened he could hardly breathe. There was much less light now and the air all around him was clingy in a damp, unpleasant way. He didn’t want to take it down into his lungs. Eventually he was forced to, and his gasp was so powerful it hurt his windpipe.

  A small hand touched his shoulder. “Hello, Edwin. Are you all right?”

  Edwin was in no way all right. He had just crossed over into a badly lit, smelly room in another world, in his underpants. Not being all right couldn’t get much worse than this. He struggled to his feet and glared at Lanthorne, who was obviously thrilled to have this unexpected visitor in his bedroom. As much as a grey face and dull teeth can manage it, he beamed.

  “Send me home, right away,” Edwin said angrily. He embarrassed himself by stamping his foot. “You shouldn’t have brought me here.”

  “I didn’t bring you here. And the connecting doorway’s g
one.”

  There was only one word Edwin knew which could express his outrage at the situation he found himself in. As he prepared to yell it at the absolute top of his voice, Lanthorne’s delicate but strong hand stifled him.

  “You mustn’t let anyone hear you. It isn’t safe.”

  “What will they do? Eat me?” Edwin snapped.

  Lanthorne’s strange expression made Edwin regret his question immediately. His legs wobbled and he allowed himself to be led across the room to Lanthorne’s bed, where he could sit down.

  For a few moments, Edwin sat with his head in his hands, refusing to look around him or to take notice of Lanthorne repeatedly tapping him on the arm and speaking his name. He felt as if all the worst moments in his life—every terror, every disappointment—had been rolled into a hard ball which was being banged up and down on his head by someone extremely nasty. At last, he opened his eyes and brushed away Lanthorne’s hand. If he inhaled in shallow breaths, the “off” smell wasn’t so bad, which meant he was growing used to it. Edwin allowed himself to take in the details of Lanthorne’s bedroom.

  It was half the size of his own in Grindling Close; the layout, though, was similar. The bed, the chest of drawers and even the chairs were more or less in the same place. He found this unnerving, but there was no desk, with its computer, radio and assorted gadgets. Instead of a wardrobe, Lanthorne had a pair of large cupboards set side by side in a deep recess. Edwin’s arrival was so dramatic and confusing, he had no idea which of the cupboards he had come through.

  All Lanthorne’s furniture was roughly made and neither varnished nor painted, and the walls were so thinly splashed with whitewash, greywash really, that the stone showed through everywhere. There wasn’t a single picture—in contrast to Edwin’s bedroom, which looked like a poster gallery. The patch of rug only covered a fraction of the splintery floorboards. Edwin snagged his socks twice when he walked across them. The bed was hidden under blankets and Edwin imagined you had to burrow into them when you wanted to go to sleep.

  It was as if his own bedroom, with its soft carpet and cheerful paintwork, had been transformed, by some spiteful magic, into a smelly garden shed.

  The worst thing wasn’t the smell, though; it was all so drab. The two cushions on the chairs and the blankets on the bed were either black or such dark shades of green or blue that they might as well have been black. Elsewhere it was grey, grey and even more grey, everywhere—in the rug, the piece of clothing draped over the back of a chair, the corner of a pillow just visible at one end of the bed. It was this elimination of colour that made it so difficult for Edwin to meet Lanthorne’s gaze. You needed proper cheeks and lips and eyes to look at when you were talking to someone, not features that seemed to have been drawn on a sheet of grey paper with a light pencil.

  Edwin could see how much he himself stood out like a lightbulb, a genuine “Shiner”.

  His bare arms and legs were bright filaments in the gloom. His bare legs! Who ever heard of anyone starting an adventure in their underpants? But Edwin didn’t want this adventure; he wanted an immediate return to the world he knew, where the worst thing that happened was Mandoline bursting into tears the moment he walked into a room.

  “When can I go home?” he asked, in a sagging tone.

  “I really don’t know, Edwin. Soon, I expect. We’ll need to look for a door.”

  “What about your cupboard door? I came through it, didn’t I?”

  “You came through the left-hand door, but I heard it snap shut afterwards. It won’t let you back.”

  “I’ll go through the right-hand door, then,” said Edwin, brightening a little.

  Lanthorne became very agitated.

  “You can’t open the right-hand cupboard, Edwin. Please. I’m keeping a special pet I rescued in there. My family don’t know.” He swallowed nervously. “I don’t expect you have pets like it in your world. It’s—”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  Lanthorne tried to smile encouragingly, but, to be encouraging, smiles need to be bright and surrounded by pink lips. Lanthorne’s grey-lipped smile was neither of these, and Edwin wasn’t reassured in the least.

  Just at that moment, Edwin was convinced something wriggled against his behind, under the blanket. He jumped up. Lanthorne giggled.

  “They won’t hurt you.”

  They? “What are they?”

  “They’re very friendly. When I go to bed, they crawl about for a while and then they settle down.”

  “What are they?”

  “Beetles, mostly. I tried giving them names, but there are so many of them.”

  Edwin leapt away from the bed. He liked having the cat curled up on his duvet at home, but he drew the line at beetles.

  “I don’t believe you heard the cupboard door snap shut,” he said angrily. “I’m going to open it.”

  He rushed across the room to the left-hand cupboard and flung its door open. All that greeted him was assorted junk of an unidentifiable kind—not one of the cosy rooms in Grindling Close, which is what he’d been hoping. He slammed the door shut again.

  Then he turned towards Lanthorne and glared. “You’re lying about what’s in the other cupboard. I think it’s a door home, but you’re just trying to keep me prisoner here because you haven’t got any friends.” He reached for the right-hand door handle, but Lanthorne was too quick for him.

  “Edwin, don’t! It’s too dangerous.” He jumped in front of his friend, snatched hold of his extended arm and forced it downwards. “It’s a snarghe in there, Edwin. A snarghe. He’s used to me, but you’re different.”

  Edwin stormed across the room and threw himself heavily onto a chair. With the beetle-infested bed and the cupboard out of bounds, it was the only safe place left for him.

  “Try to enjoy your visit. It’s lovely to have you here, Edwin.”

  “I’ve got no shoes on and I’m only wearing my underpants. This isn’t how we pay visits where I live.”

  “Wear some of my clothes. That’ll be fun. My best clothes are in the cupboard with the snarghe, but the ones in my chest of drawers are almost as good.”

  “I don’t think your clothes will be big enough for me,” Edwin said weakly.

  “I used to have an older brother,” Lanthorne told him. “I haven’t grown into his clothes yet. Try them.”

  Full of enthusiasm, Lanthorne busied himself pulling open drawers and rummaging through his shirts and pairs of trousers. He selected some and tried to hold them against Edwin, who refused to stand up and be measured. Agreeing to wear these dark, shapeless, hand-me-down clothes seemed like agreeing to take the place of Lanthorne’s brother, as if he intended to stay there.

  Suddenly Lanthorne dropped the shirt he was holding.

  “More beetles?” asked Edwin.

  Lanthorne put a finger to his lips.

  There was a sound outside. Someone had come upstairs.

  “You need to hide, Edwin. It might be my Auntie Necra. Perhaps she heard all the shouting and banging.”

  Edwin was about to argue that nobody’s auntie was ever someone to be frightened of, but Lanthorne had already seized him tightly by the wrist and pulled him across to the right-hand cupboard.

  “You’ll have to hide in here.” Lanthorne’s voice was shaking.

  “You mean the other cupboard.”

  “No, this one. The snarghe might protect you from Auntie Necra, if she finds you.”

  Edwin felt as if he had just been told that a crocodile was after him, so he needed to hide in a lion’s cage.

  “It won’t like her. You don’t know how terrifying she is. Once you’re inside, stand absolutely still and keep facing the door.” Lanthorne was gabbling his words extremely fast. “Don’t upset it. And whatever you do, don’t make the slightest noise.”

  In an instant, the cupboard door was opened. Edwin was somehow spun round and pushed in backwards by a hard little palm in his chest. He had never wanted to shout, “Arse and armpits!” so l
oudly in the whole of his life, but this wasn’t the time or place.

  When Lanthorne slammed the cupboard door shut, it almost hit Edwin in the face. He was in complete darkness and aware that it was a very deep cupboard with a lot of a space behind him. Somewhere in that space, something living made a rasping sound on the floor with its claws, and yawned. It sounded like the yawn from a very large mouth. Edwin inched forward and pressed his face against the door, but not hard enough to force it open. The creature behind him breathed out heavily, and Edwin felt puffs of air against the backs of his legs.

  As the cupboard door slammed shut, so the bedroom door was thrown open. Two voices began a conversation in the room, but Edwin had difficulty making out what they were saying, because the cupboard door was such a snug fit. He thought he heard Lanthorne say, “Hello, Auntie,” in a tone of false cheerfulness. The reply was sharp and more a collection of irritated sounds than actual words.

  Edwin forced himself to concentrate on the conversation taking place in Lanthorne’s bedroom. If he paid too much attention to what was happening behind him in the cupboard, he knew he would scream or faint. A large part of him was beginning to hope he would die of fright.

  The mouth, which was breathing heavily, moved a lot nearer. Concentrate, he told himself. Listen…

  Outside, Edwin could only pick out the odd word. The sharp voice said, “…you doing?” and Lanthorne said, “…tidying,” and, “No, Auntie,” several times.

  Something rough and dripping was pressed against the back of Edwin’s bare left leg. And then something equally rough and dripping made contact with the same spot on his bare right leg. They felt like tongues; scaly, mucousy tongues. What did this mean? Two heads? Two tongues in one head, or two snarghes? Edwin felt a scream building up in his throat. Very soon he wouldn’t be able to control it.

  Outside, someone whimpered in pain. Lanthorne. “No, I won’t, Auntie.” Then the whimpering again.

  The tongues explored Edwin’s legs slowly and carefully, peeling themselves away after each touch. They moved up to the hollows at the backs of his knees and then curled themselves around each knee, squeezing it tightly.