EVERYONE GOGGLED AT JAKE.
‘It’s true!’ he insisted. ‘She’s a witch of some kind!’
Newt pulled a sceptical face. Edison uttered an awestruck ‘Wow!’ as Sterling’s forehead creased.
‘Are you sure you don’t mean “siren”?’ Marcus proposed, eliciting a snort from Newt.
‘I told you, sirens were made up by the ancient Greeks,’ Newt scoffed. ‘They don’t exist. They never existed.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Marcus. He couldn’t keep the scorn out of his voice. ‘So sirens don’t exist, but magic lifts do? This isn’t a computer game, in case you haven’t noticed.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Edison peered up at Sterling from beneath the rim of his pith helmet. ‘I thought you said it was.’
‘I’m pretty certain it is,’ his father assured him, then addressed Marcus in a sympathetic tone. ‘The trouble is, it’s such an advanced and complex computer game that it feels like magic.’
Marcus cast up his eyes. ‘You wish,’ he growled, before Jake suddenly hijacked the conversation.
‘Listen to me!’ he cried. ‘I know what I saw! You all think I’m crazy, but I’m not! She was going to build a beach house out of my bones – she said so!’
Everyone flinched.
‘Oh my God.’ Coco was horrified. ‘How sick. She actually told you that?’
Jake hesitated. ‘Well . . . no. Not exactly,’ he had to admit. Seeing his audience exchange doubtful glances, he erupted again. ‘She was singing to herself! I overheard her!’ He went on to explain how, upon first entering Miss Molpe’s caravan (‘the one out there, not the real one’), he’d been planning to ask her if she’d send him home after all. He’d even packed his suitcase for the trip back. ‘But she wasn’t in,’ he related, ‘so I had a look around. And I found all these . . . these bones.’ He had to swallow before continuing. A muscle began to quiver in his jaw. ‘They were stacked in cupboards,’ he said faintly. ‘Laid out in drawers. Like a collection.’
‘Maybe they were animal bones,’ Holly speculated.
Jake shook his head. ‘Not these ones,’ he growled. ‘And there were piles of old clothes, too. Kids’ clothes.’ Hearing a few indrawn breaths, he quickly explained, ‘She wasn’t collecting for charity, either, because all the clothes had bloodstains on them.’
Marcus didn’t like the sound of that. Neither did Holly, to judge from the look on her face.
But Coco wasn’t convinced.
‘Well, I used to go into Miss Molpe’s caravan all the time,’ she objected, ‘and I never saw anything weird.’
‘Because you were in the real caravan. Not the one over there.’ Jake gestured at the door. ‘The one over there is inside the real one – like the rest of this place. The real one wasn’t full of bones either. Not like the one over there. And do you know what I found under the seats of the fake one, when I was looking for another staircase? Photograph albums. There was no cellar, but there were loads and loads of photograph albums, full of really old travel snaps. Only they were pictures of bones. Charnel houses in France and crypts in Italy and piles of skulls in Cambodia . . .’ He shuddered. ‘I was looking at the pictures when I heard her coming,’ he continued. ‘So I hid under a seat. She was crooning to herself, saying she had to sharpen her knives. “He’s a big boy,” she kept singing. “He’s a big, juicy boy with great big bones.”’
‘E-e-ew. Gross,’ Edison murmured. Marcus swallowed; his skin was beginning to crawl.
‘And then she saw my suitcase.’ Jake paused for effect. ‘It was a big suitcase,’ he explained. ‘It belonged to my parents. I’d left it on the floor by accident, and when she saw it, she knew I was in her caravan. “So,” she sang, “you’ve come to visit me? Come out, come out, wherever you are.” She sounded so nice, but then her voice cracked. It was a real shock. Like if you were listening to a harp and it suddenly exploded.’
Newt laughed and said, ‘You’re making this up.’
‘I am not!’ Jake rounded on her, his dark eyes blazing. ‘If you don’t believe me, go and look! She’s over there right now! In the suitcase!’
Everybody gasped. There was a long, shocked silence.
Then Coco squeaked, ‘I beg your pardon?’
As Jake glanced from face to face, his own face slowly turned red.
‘What else could I do?’ he pleaded, in a strangled voice. ‘She’d picked up a knife and was searching for me. Under the bed. In the cupboards. I was watching her – I’d pushed open the seat and I was peeking out through the crack—’
‘So what did you do?’ Marcus broke in. He was anxious to hear the end of the story.
Jake shrugged and spread his hands.
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he replied. ‘When she stopped in front of the suitcase, she had her back to me. And she was still singing, so she didn’t hear me climb out from under the seat. She was too busy opening my suitcase. I guess she thought I might be hiding in there.’ He cracked a sour little smile. ‘That’s how she ended up in there herself,’ he finished. ‘I came up behind her and gave her a shove.’
For a moment no one said anything. Holly sat down abruptly, putting her head in her hands. ‘Wow,’ Edison marvelled. Marcus licked his dry lips.
‘And you locked her in your suitcase?’ Sterling demanded, sounding shaken. ‘That’s really what you did?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jake. ‘Then I piled a whole bunch of photograph albums on top, so she couldn’t get out.’
‘Oh my God. Jake . . .’ Holly looked as if she were about to vomit. Even Marcus felt a little queasy.
‘Did you give her any airholes?’ he wanted to know.
‘She doesn’t need airholes. She’s a witch.’ Once again Jake reddened as his audience grimaced. ‘She told me! I mean, she as good as told me, when I wouldn’t let her out and she was trying to make me feel sorry for her.’ He scowled. ‘She told me she used to have four sisters,’ he continued, ‘and they used to sing so beautifully that no one could resist them, but one day someone finally did—’
‘Odysseus,’ Holly interrupted. ‘It was in Homer’s Odyssey. He tied himself to the mast.’
‘Whatever. And when that happened, she and her sisters all had to throw themselves into the sea. I don’t know why.’ And I don’t care either, his tone seemed to indicate. ‘But she didn’t drown, like her sisters did – she just got a really, really bad cold that ruined her voice. She sounded pretty upset about that. I was supposed to think it was okay for her to lure people in with tricks and scams because she’d lost this mighty, beautiful voice that was a gift to the world for a thousand years, blah, blah, blah . . .’ He wrinkled his nose, then shrugged again. ‘So I figured: a thousand years? Only a witch would live that long.’
‘She’s not a witch,’ Marcus interrupted. ‘She’s a siren.’
‘If you say so. Anyway, she keeps scratching and singing to me whenever I go anywhere near the caravan, so I know she’s perfectly all right.’
‘But she can’t be. She must be dead by now,’ Newt argued. ‘Are you sure that’s not a voice in your head?’
Jake’s thick black eyebrows snapped together. He opened his mouth. Before he could speak, however, Edison cried, ‘Let’s go and look! Can we go and look?’
‘No.’ Holly stood up. ‘No. We’re leaving right now.’
‘Oh, please?’ Edison implored, jigging from foot to foot. ‘Can’t we—?’
‘No!’ Holly was adamant. ‘Come on. We have to leave. We have to get to the lift.’
‘And then what?’ said Marcus. He was already thinking ahead, even if his mother wasn’t.
‘Then we take a ride up to the office,’ she rejoined. ‘And from there we go back to the cellar.’
‘How?’ As she stared at him, he elaborated. ‘We don’t know what buttons to push. We don’t have a code number for the office, so how can we get back there?’
Holly blinked. Then she swallowed. Then she gave herself a brisk little shake. ‘We’ll figure somethin
g out,’ she declared, before leading Jake to the door.
34
THE LAST RESORT
NOBODY TRIED TO STOP THEM AS THEY MADE THEIR WAY FROM Jake’s caravan to the public toilets. Though Marcus spied several groups of children huddled behind cars and trees and bushes, he quickly concluded that none of these children posed any kind of threat – not while Jake was around, anyway. Every time Jake even glanced in their direction, the kids would cringe and scatter.
At one point, when a snot-nosed toddler began to trail after Newt (who was last in line), Jake lunged at the poor little boy like a guard dog, yelling, ‘Get lost or I’ll punch your head in!’
Coco was scandalised. ‘For God’s sake!’ she scolded. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘They’re just children, Jake,’ Holly gently reminded him.
‘No, they’re not,’ Jake growled.
Marcus had to agree. ‘They can’t be real kids, Mum,’ he pointed out, ‘because one of them is you, remember?’
‘I used to let them push me around, but not anymore,’ Jake said, on his way into the ladies’ room. ‘They don’t exist. They’re nothing. They make me sick.’
He was still heaping abuse on the children when he suddenly spied Prot – and was startled into silence. The robot hadn’t moved. It was patiently holding the lift door, awaiting new instructions.
Sterling seemed pleased. ‘There. What did I tell you?’ he remarked to no one in particular. ‘It’s reliable enough.’
Coco gave a snort. She and her stepchildren piled into the lift, just ahead of Sterling and Marcus. When Holly stepped inside, tugging Jake along with her, the narrow box began to feel very cramped.
‘Right,’ said Coco. ‘So where to now?’
All eyes swivelled towards the panel of buttons, which were numbered zero to nine. There were also four control buttons: ‘open door’, ‘close door’, ‘alarm’ and ‘stop’. The alarm button was inscribed with an exclamation mark; the stop button bore a cross inside an octagon.
‘Press zero,’ Marcus suggested. ‘Prot? Push that button there.’
The robot obeyed, but nothing happened.
‘Okay.’ Sterling’s tone was thoughtful. ‘What about button number one?’
Again, nothing happened. Prot tried every single number, slowly and deliberately, without success.
‘We need a code,’ Sterling muttered. ‘There must be a code number for that travel agent’s office.’
‘What about the alarm button?’ Coco weighed in. ‘Maybe if we press that, someone will come and save us.’
When Prot pushed the alarm button, a high-pitched bell rang. But after a tense five-minute wait, everyone began to lose hope. ‘There would have been a response by now, if it was working at all,’ said Sterling.
‘I knew it!’ Newt broke into a wail of despair. ‘We’re stuck! We could be here forever!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ her stepmother snapped. ‘There has to be a way out . . .’
‘All we need is the code for that office,’ Sterling reiterated, much to Newt’s annoyance.
‘But we don’t have it, do we?’ Her tone was sullen. ‘And we don’t know how to get it, either!’
‘Yes, we do,’ said Marcus. When everyone turned to stare at him, he cleared his throat, took a deep breath and announced, ‘Miss Molpe can tell us the code number.’
Jake gave a hiss. ‘Oh, no.’ He shook his head. ‘No way. You can’t do that.’
‘Do what?’ asked Edison.
‘Are you proposing we lift the lid on that suitcase?’ Coco said to Marcus, wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Are you kidding me? Yuk!’ cried Newt. ‘She’ll be a gooey old skeleton by now! No thanks!’
Marcus stubbornly held his ground.
‘Jake says she’s still alive,’ he insisted. ‘We should at least try talking to her.’
‘But she’s a witch!’ Jake was raking his fingers through his hair. ‘You can’t trust her! She lies! This whole place is a lie, because it’s her creation! And she has special powers . . .’
‘I know. Magical powers.’ Marcus had no doubts on that score. He was a total convert when it came to magic. ‘The thing is, though, you locked her in a suitcase. So she can’t be that powerful, can she?’
It was a good point. It certainly had an impact on Jake, who looked briefly confused.
‘And if she really is a siren, but she’s lost her voice, then she can’t persuade us to stay here,’ Marcus went on, clinching the matter, as Holly caught Jake’s wrist.
‘I think we should do what Marcus said,’ she quietly recommended. ‘I think we should go and see if this . . . this Molpe creature is still alive. And if she is, we can ask her for a code number.’
‘Which you won’t get,’ Jake warned.
‘Then we won’t let her out.’ Coco’s tone was brisk. ‘And if we do let her out, we’ll keep her in a headlock or something. You can take care of that, Jake. I’m sure you’ve got the muscles for it.’
‘It’ll be all right, Jake,’ Holly promised. She took his hand and squeezed it in a gesture of reassurance. ‘You’re not a little boy, now – you’re a big, strong man. And we’re all here with you, backing you up.’ As he gazed down at her anxiously, she smiled and murmured, ‘You can take a few risks now. You can confront your old fears. Because you’re not alone anymore.’
35
INSIDE THE SUITCASE
JAKE WANTED TO TAKE A CRICKET BAT INTO MISS MOLPE’S caravan, but Holly wouldn’t let him. ‘If you think I’m going to stand by while you brain some little old lady with a piece of wood, then you don’t know me very well,’ she’d declared. So when he finally jerked open the caravan door and charged inside, he was wielding his clenched fist and nothing else.
Luckily, he met with no resistance. No lurking predator tried to ambush him. The caravan was tidy and peaceful, its floors neatly swept, its pillows plumped, its kitchenette spotless.
‘There isn’t a speck of dust,’ Coco whispered, as she followed Jake over the threshold. ‘I wonder who does the cleaning around here? I’d certainly hire them.’
But the pristine condition of the place didn’t interest Holly. She was more impressed by its layout and furnishings. ‘Look at this!’ she hissed at Marcus. ‘This is our caravan! Look at the curtains! Look at the stove!’
Marcus grunted. His gaze was fixed on the only grubby, dilapidated item in the whole room: Jake’s suitcase. It was big and brown and weighed down by dozens of heavy books. Its latches were rusty and its corners were dented.
Jake gave it a kick with his bare sole, which was hard and leathery.
‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Wake up!’
Marcus caught his breath. So did everyone else. There was a brief, agonised silence.
Then a muffled voice trilled, ‘Is that you, little Jake?’
Holly squeaked. Marcus felt sick.
‘Oh my God,’ said Coco. ‘That’s her! That’s Miss Molpe!’
‘It’s Big Jake now, you old bat,’ Jake snarled. He kicked the suitcase again. ‘So shut up and listen.’
‘Oh my God, she’s still alive!’ Coco was talking through both hands, which she’d clapped over her mouth. ‘How awful!’
‘She can’t be real,’ Newt argued, triggering a sudden, excited response from her brother.
‘Maybe she isn’t real!’ he cried. ‘Maybe she’s part of Jake’s dream holiday!’ Seizing Jake’s belt, he gabbled, ‘Isn’t your Diamond Beach supposed to be a copy of the real Diamond Beach? Well, maybe this Miss Molpe is just a copy of the real Miss Molpe!’
‘You’re right, you’re right, I’m just a creation. I sprang from Jake’s imagination,’ Miss Molpe carolled from inside the suitcase – which received yet another swift kick from Jake.
‘Shut up!’ he barked. ‘Stop lying!’ To Edison he said, ‘What do you think I am, a weirdo? Why the hell would I want a cannibal witch in my dream holiday?’
There was no arguing with
logic like that. Edison immediately subsided as Jake addressed Newt.
‘She’s as real as you are,’ Jake insisted. ‘And she’s still alive because she’s a witch. Now what do you want to ask her?’
Newt, however, was sulking. It was Marcus who replied.
‘We want to know the code for Siren Song Travel,’ he said. ‘So we can take that lift back to the office where we first started.’
‘Did you hear that?’ asked Jake, directing his raised voice at the suitcase. ‘We want the code for your office! Right now! Or we’ll set you on fire!’
There was a shifting, scraping noise. Then Miss Molpe warned sweetly, ‘You’ll be trapped here forever if you set me on fire. Let me out and you’ll have your heart’s desire.’
‘Oh, will you stop with the rhymes?’ Newt exploded. ‘They’re so irritating! God!’
‘We’re not going to let you out,’ Jake growled. ‘Why should we do that?’
‘To make sure that she gives us the right code,’ Marcus weighed in, before the siren could respond. Seeing Jake’s confusion, he quickly elaborated. ‘What if she lies to us? What if she deliberately sends us somewhere really dangerous? If we don’t bring her along, we won’t stand a chance.’ As Jake chewed at his bottom lip, pondering this advice, Marcus concluded glumly, ‘We shouldn’t let her out of our sight until we get home.’
‘Yes, and then we should call the police,’ Coco suggested. When everyone turned to stare at her, she exclaimed, ‘It’s a perfectly legitimate way of dealing with sociopaths!’
Newt gave a snort. ‘Yeah, right,’ she scoffed. ‘Like the police are going to believe a story like this one.’
‘If we tell the police, they’ll probably arrest us for unlawful restraint,’ Holly fretted, at which point Miss Molpe spoke up.
‘I’m old and I’m weak. I’m a friend, not a foe. It’s not vengeance I seek – won’t you please let me go?’ she begged.
‘Shut up,’ snapped Jake. Marcus, however, was more accommodating.
‘We’ll let you go once we’re back in the cellar,’ he promised Miss Molpe. ‘The sooner you tell us the right code, the sooner you’ll get out.’