The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules

by Gerald Killingworth

  The shriek dragged Edwin from his sleep, but he didn’t straight away understand what his mother was saying. It was only when she burst into his bedroom and shouted, “Is Mandoline with you?” that he realized what had happened.

  “What do you mean, Mum? No, I…” he struggled to reply.

  Mandoline gone? At six months old, she obviously wasn’t strong enough to climb out of her cot and wander down to the kitchen for a midnight snack.

  Mrs Robbins ran back into her own room shouting, “Ed hasn’t got her,” while Edwin stumbled out of bed rubbing his eyes.

  Next Mr Robbins called out, “Oh Christ, it smells as if a tramp’s been in here,” and shot downstairs.

  Edwin came out onto the landing, not sure what to do or where to go. It was the middle of the night, and his head was still fuzzy.

  Mrs Robbins was hovering uncertainly in the doorway of her bedroom, crying. “If I wake up during the night, I always check on Mandoline,” she mumbled. “But she wasn’t there. Edwin, who could have taken her?” She wrapped her arms around herself, gripping the sleeves of her nightie tightly.

  Mr Robbins rushed back upstairs, his face so wretched it made Edwin gasp. He was speaking into his mobile phone, jumbling the information he was giving the police with words directed to his son: “The kitchen window’s open. No, I haven’t touched it. What do you mean ‘signs of violence’? Edwin, get dressed NOW. My son and I are going to help you search for her. Surely you can get here sooner than that. EDWIN, what did I just say?”

  Edwin returned to his bedroom to put on some outdoor clothes. As he was fastening his jeans, someone began to pound on the back door and he heard his father hurtling downstairs for a second time.

  Very soon the house echoed to Mr Robbins’s angry voice asking, “What the hell do you want?” There was a pause as whoever had been banging on the door muttered something, and then Mr Robbins yelled, “Edwin, get down here!”

  Still only half-dressed, Edwin hurried downstairs, his mother following.

  When they entered the kitchen, Edwin’s father had his back to them, hiding the short figure who had come in from outside.

  “Where did she go? Why didn’t you try and stop her?” Mr Robbins demanded. His voice was loud and sharp, and the movements of his arms were threatening.

  Edwin peeped around his father. “Lanthorne!”

  The grey boy looked even smaller and frailer than before with Mr Robbins looming over him. The bright lights in the kitchen were making his eyes water in streams.

  “This is my new friend, Lanthorne,” said Edwin. “What’s happened, Dad?”

  Mr Robbins stepped away and took a deep breath. “He says he saw a woman carrying a shiny baby. What I want to know is what was he doing in our garden at three o’clock in the morning?”

  With the three members of the Robbins family now staring expectantly at him, Lanthorne stared back, his eyes very wide. He pulled his hood down against the light and was clearly thinking of running out of the door. Mr Robbins nudged him to one side, locked the door and kept hold of the key. Lanthorne shrank away, as if he was about to be struck.

  He said, in a quiet voice, “I needed to see Edwin. She came through the door after him.”

  Edwin’s head was swirling with thoughts and emotions. Mandoline had disappeared and Lanthorne had appeared unexpectedly. A woman had been seen with a shiny baby. How much of this would his parents believe?

  “Lanthorne looked after me,” he said.

  “Well, he’s our key witness, and a very peculiar one. Unless it’s an act and he’s part of some kidnapping plot. Are you?”

  Lanthorne jumped back a couple of paces and blinked. “I was trying to help,” he replied in an almost inaudible voice. “You’re very frightening.”

  “I’ll take Lanthorne upstairs while I finish getting dressed,” Edwin told his parents. He and Lanthorne urgently needed to talk.

  “I need to get some clothes on as well,” said Mr Robbins. With all his running about and phoning, he hadn’t had time to change out of his pyjamas.

  Mrs Robbins, who had been too upset to join in the conversation, slumped onto a chair. “Why aren’t the police here?” she asked her husband. “Did you give them our address?”

  As the two boys entered his bedroom, Edwin heard his father say, “I’m still suspicious of that so-called friend.”

  Edwin shut the door and turned to face Lanthorne.

  “Auntie Necra’s kidnapped my sister, hasn’t she?”

  With shielded eyes, his grey friend was gawping at the softness and comfort of Edwin’s bedroom. He gave a little bounce on the bed where Edwin had seated him.

  “Lanthorne!”

  “She followed you through the same door, and I followed her. But you didn’t see her and she didn’t see me. She hid in your garden for hours, until all the lights went out and for a long time after that. I was watching her all the time, but I didn’t know she was going to steal your sister, I promise. I thought she was just curious. She’s always been interested in Shiners. I thought she’d walk around your home, looking at things, helping herself to the objects she liked. That’s what she does in our house when my dad’s not there. Then she came out again, holding a shiny baby.”

  “Mandoline.”

  “When I told her to put the baby back, she pushed me over. I tried, I really did, but her hands are like rock. I fell down and I was dizzy for ages. After my head cleared, I started banging on your door.”

  Edwin picked out a thick jumper and some shoes. “She’s a monster.”

  He paused to calm his breathing. The thought of a tiny baby in the clutches of someone like Auntie Necra was very difficult to deal with.

  “Once the police arrive, we’ll need to explain everything,” he told Lanthorne. “But what if they don’t believe us?”

  “What are the ‘police’? Do they look after babies?”

  “They help find missing people and lock us up if we break the law.”

  “We have Lawkeepers too. You won’t let them hurt me?”

  “Of course they won’t hurt you. You’re their key witness, not a criminal. You’ll have to guide the police when they cross into your world to get Mandoline back.”

  Lanthorne shrank into his hood. He said in a tiny, nervous voice, “I don’t think I can do that, Edwin.”

  Edwin waved the shoe he had just picked up. “You can’t refuse to help us, Lanthorne. She’s my sister!”

  “It’s not me, Edwin. It’s the doors. You know Jugge said they were cap… that word?”

  “What about that word? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think the doors ever let Lawkeepers through, even in the olden days when your people were chasing after us.”

  “They let three of us through tonight!”

  “Jugge believes that when they get a chance they can be mali… that other word.”

  “Malicious. Will they let us two back, do you think?”

  “They know us now. I think they might. I’m so sorry, Edwin. It’s my fault Auntie Necra stole your sister.”

  “How can it be your fault?” Edwin asked roughly. “I was the one who wrote all those childish letters and said I hated my sister. And I obviously didn’t shut the door behind me.”

  Suddenly Lanthorne doubled over and began to sob loudly.

  “I’ve already said it’s not your fault,” Edwin shouted.

  Lanthorne sat up again and put his fists inside his hood, so that he could wipe his eyes. “I don’t want to be stuck in your world,” he said. “Its brightness is really hurting me. What if Auntie Necra shut the door and locked us out?”

  Edwin went very cold. A kidnapper was bound to take precautions to ensure she wasn’t followed. Perhaps she was too excited to be careful. “We’ve got to hope the door remembers you and is staying open until you go back,” he said. “Do you really think it’s up to us?”

  Lanthorne nodded.

  Edwin was trying to make himself feel brave, but his determination was seep
ing away by the second. “If it turns out that other people can go through too, I’m definitely coming back for my dad,” he said. “He’ll pulverize your Auntie Necra when he catches up with her.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” Lanthorne asked.

  “It means there won’t be much left of her.” Edwin took a deep breath and picked up the backpack lying beside his desk. “Come on, Lanthorne,” he said without enthusiasm. “Time to leave my world behind. If we can.”

  Lanthorne jumped off the bed and joined Edwin by the bedroom door.

  “The plan is we sneak out of the back door. I need to get my anorak from the hall and then grab a few things from the kitchen first, though.”

  Mr and Mrs Robbins were standing outside their open front door, looking for the arrival of the police. Mr Robbins had put on a tracksuit so he was ready to help them search for his daughter. Mrs Robbins was beside him in a dressing gown, crying onto his shoulder. Edwin and Lanthorne crept downstairs into the kitchen unnoticed.

  “You wait outside,” Edwin said.

  “I can’t get out, Edwin. He locked the door.”

  “The window’s still half open. Climb up on the cabinet and jump through. Auntie Necra managed it with a baby.” Dad’s going to hate himself for not mending the broken catch.

  Lanthorne was quickly out in the darkness, waiting, as Edwin scrabbled about in the kitchen, filling his backpack with anything he thought might come in useful if you were trying to rescue a kidnapped baby.

  “That’ll have to do,” Edwin said as he also clambered out of the kitchen window. Once they heard the police cars arrive and Mrs and Mrs Robbins invite the officers in, the boys slipped down the side of the house.

  “We’ve got about a minute,” said Edwin. “They’ll call us downstairs, then come looking for us when we don’t reply.” He led Lanthorne towards a patch of grass, which would deaden their footsteps. Alert neighbourhood dogs were already barking themselves hoarse because the police had used their sirens. Dog owners would soon be up from their beds and looking out of their windows to catch the excitement, so the boys needed to be out of sight straight away. They ran across the grass and into the deep shade of a clump of trees between Grindling Close and the edge of the nearby school playing field. Edwin didn’t dare run along lit streets to the allotment, but he had never been too comfortable in the dark. He was no track athlete, and Lanthorne less so, so it wasn’t long before each boy had a stitch in his side, but there were overwhelming reasons not to rest.

  “I can’t see where I’m going, and Dad’s calling for me,” Edwin managed to gasp as they hurried along.

  Lanthorne put his arm through Edwin’s, which made running even more difficult.

  “We’re the only ones who can rescue her, Edwin. I’m sure of it. Come on. Not far now. I’m very good at finding my way in the dark.”

  8

  Know Your Friends

  When they reached the right patch on the allotment, the shed door was still partly open and they scrambled gratefully through. For a moment there was the light of Edwin’s world behind them—well, not exactly light, but less darkness than the pitch-black emptiness which lay ahead. Edwin was still thinking about going back for his father—and for the police too, despite what Lanthorne had said about the attitude of the doors to the Lawkeepers—but then the door of the allotment shed slammed shut with tremendous violence, and all contact with his own world was snuffed out.

  He turned round and extended his hand, anxious to know that the door was still there. His fingers were now the only source of light, five disembodied faintly glowing rods two feet from his body. They found nothing to touch.

  Edwin half expected his hand to float away and leave him completely at the mercy of the darkness. It was the deepest darkness he had ever known. Although the soles of his shoes were clearly resting on a rough surface, he had a horrible and growing sense of floating in the blackness, with no idea of direction or up and down. He felt he could easily have been in the depths of outer space, lost for all eternity in the nothingness where stars and planets can never form. Edwin began to feel sick, and he might have collapsed if he hadn’t suddenly focused on the sound of Lanthorne breathing heavily beside him.

  Edwin turned on his friend, angrily barking his words at the point in the darkness where Lanthorne’s head was most likely to be. “Why did you slam the shed door? I was planning to take Mandoline back through it.”

  “It closed itself,” Lanthorne replied. “I expected it would. I think we’re in the yard behind Jugge’s house.”

  Edwin desperately wanted to hear him say, We’ll soon find your sister and a door to take her through. Don’t worry. But “Jugge might know what to do,” was the best he got.

  Might? Jugge might be able to help them find his baby sister, the sister he had kept saying he never wanted. Edwin closed his eyes and immediately opened them again as the sensation of floating almost over-whelmed him.

  “We need to go inside,” he said. “Can you see Jugge’s back door?”

  “Just about.”

  Lanthorne took hold of Edwin’s sleeve and pulled him across the yard. He sniggered when Edwin banged his nose on the door he couldn’t see. The snigger turned into a gasp as Edwin fumbled for the door handle, found it, shook it, couldn’t turn it and then started shouting.

  “Jugge, we’re back. Let us in. Let us in. Jugge!”

  “Edwin, don’t. Auntie Necra could still be—”

  “Still be here? I’ll show her!”

  Edwin was now kicking the door as well as beating it with his fists. He shouted so loudly it hurt the back of his throat.

  In a normal world, when someone opens a door and looks out into the night he is silhouetted by the brightness escaping. This wasn’t a normal house in a normal world. When Jugge eventually opened his back door, all Edwin was aware of was a shift from pitch darkness to near-black grey, and an unidentifiable shape leaning towards him.

  The shape said, “You two again,” in an irritable voice Edwin recognized. It definitely wasn’t a Pleased to see you again. Drop in any time you’re passing kind of voice, and Edwin even thought Jugge might shut the door against them. He couldn’t allow that. He shoulder-barged Jugge and rushed past him into the kitchen, before blundering down the passage and into Jugge’s main room. If he found Auntie Necra, he wasn’t sure what he would do to her once he had snatched Mandoline back. The room was in darkness, so Edwin flailed about with his arms in case Auntie Necra was standing very still and holding her breath somewhere near him. He knew there was a danger that one of his flapping arms might smack Mandoline, but he was desperate. Inevitably, he crashed into a piece of furniture and, as it toppled over, so did he.

  “I was in bed,” Jugge said in a resentful voice, when he and Lanthorne entered the main room together. Edwin was still lying on the floor. There was a brief silence as Jugge created a spark from somewhere and lit a dirty end of candle. He placed it on a high shelf.

  Edwin hadn’t really expected Auntie Necra to be there and he could now see that she wasn’t. He sat up and stared miserably into the fireplace. Jugge had dampened down the fire for the night and Edwin knew exactly how it felt.

  Lanthorne found his usual chair and curled up there without saying a word.

  “Lanthorne’s Auntie Necra stole my baby sister Mandoline,” Edwin said loudly. He got up and dropped heavily into a chair.

  “And you’ve just knocked over my best table for no reason,” replied Jugge.

  He lit two more dim candles, moving slowly and deliberately as he placed them about the room. He also stood the table up again, with an irritated sigh.

  Edwin could see now that Jugge’s unusual outline was explained by the length of dull brown cloth he had wrapped around him. It might have been his idea of a dressing gown or simply a blanket off his bed. His bare toes were long and thin and almost as twitchy as the fingers he was using to stop the brown cloth falling down. His neck and head, with its stiff hair, sprouted from the blanket like a g
rey carrot with a topknot. Jugge’s eyes were expressionless black beads. Was he really the only person Lanthorne could have chosen as a best friend?

  “You obviously don’t care what’s happened,” said Edwin, not sure whether to scream at Jugge or to appeal to his softer side, just in case he had one.

  “I’m trying to think,” replied Jugge. He sat down and spent some time arranging the brown cloth so that it covered as much of him as possible, including the twitchy toes. Edwin was glad to see them disappear. “I can’t do my best thinking with a not-very-old Shiner snapping at me like a jiggle. You need to calm down, Edwin, while we come up with a plan.”

  Edwin started messing with the zip on his backpack.

  “Did Auntie Necra come back here with the baby?” Lanthorne asked.

  “That’s one of several possibilities,” said Jugge.

  “Don’t you know?” Edwin snapped.

  “I heard doors opening and shutting, which could have been her. Or it could have been some other nighttime event I’d rather not know about.”

  “If we heard mysterious noises in our house in the middle of the night,” Edwin told him contemptuously, “my dad would turn on every single light, call the police and rush downstairs with a couple of golf clubs. All at the same time.”

  “That’s not how it works here, Edwin,” said Lanthorne. “If there’s a strange noise in the middle of the night, we quietly lock the bedroom door and hide under the bed. It’s the safest way. My mum once stayed under her bed for three days, when she heard hissing she didn’t recognize.”

  “All the time we sit here talking and doing nothing, your evil Auntie Necra’s getting further and further away with my sister.”

  “Haven’t you got another sister?” Jugge asked.

  Edwin’s eyes widened with outrage that Jugge had just said this. He sounded as if he thought it was normal for parents to keep spare children handy in case of accidents like kidnapping. He needed shaking up.