The Paradise Trap

The setting sun cast long shadows across the peaks of a distant mountain range.

  ‘Uh – you know what?’ said Marcus. ‘This is no good.’

  Heads jerked around. Jake blinked. Edison goggled.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Coco asked.

  ‘This is no good,’ Marcus repeated. ‘We should leave. Right now.’

  ‘Why?’ Newt spoke crossly. ‘It looks fine.’

  ‘It’s not,’ Marcus assured her. Holly, meanwhile, was carefully studying his face.

  ‘What’s wrong, Marcus?’ she said. ‘Do you know where we are?’

  ‘I sure do.’ Marcus swallowed before adding, ‘It’s my nightmare holiday.’

  ‘Your what?’ Holly was puzzled – but Edison wasn’t. His jaw dropped.

  ‘Camp is your nightmare holiday?’ he spluttered. ‘Boy, that’s weird. Don’t you like having fun?’

  ‘It’s not just any old camp,’ Marcus explained. ‘It’s Vampire Camp.’ He pointed at the closest log cabin. ‘See the way all those windows are boarded up on the inside?’ he continued. ‘See how there’s no dining hall? It’s Vampire Camp, all right. I used to dream about it a lot.’

  There followed a long, tense pause. Then Jake said tersely, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Luckily, he didn’t have to push any buttons. The lift door closed of its own accord, responding to some in-built timer.

  After which, once again, nothing happened.

  44

  ‘THIS IS A JOB FOR THE

  EMERGENCY SERVICES . . .’

  MARCUS WAS STUMPED. HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT. Clearly, things had changed since Miss Molpe’s escape. Her trap had once worked automatically, churning out dream holidays without her direct input. Now, however, she was back in the driver’s seat. Now the horror was becoming visible, like the piles of bones in the fake caravan. And her evil essence was beginning to taint the world of her creation, the way the bones of her victims had transformed the fake caravan from a cheerful haven into a charnel house.

  ‘Great. Terrific.’ There was a hint of panic in Newt’s voice. ‘As if our dream holidays weren’t bad enough, now we have nightmares!’

  ‘What’s your nightmare holiday, Newt?’ her brother asked. He seemed genuinely interested.

  ‘This is,’ she spat. ‘What’s yours? A giant brussels sprout?’

  Edison had to think for a moment before answering. ‘My fairground, I guess. Except that all the clowns and aliens and dodgem cars would have been tortured by Miss Molpe because they let me go.’

  Coco shuddered. ‘Well, we certainly won’t be going back to the fairground,’ she decreed. ‘I couldn’t cope with that.’

  ‘My nightmare holiday would probably be a skiing trip with my ex-wife,’ Sterling suddenly volunteered. ‘Last time I went on one of those, I had to be airlifted off a glacier.’ Seeing his son’s slightly hurt expression, Sterling hastened to add, ‘My ex-wife’s much braver than I am. And a lot fitter, too.’

  ‘Oh, no. No way. No ski trips with Janice.’ Though scared and bedraggled, Coco was still able to put her foot down with a fair degree of force. ‘I couldn’t cope with that, either.’

  ‘I could,’ growled Jake. ‘A ski trip sounds fine to me.’ He was hovering on the sidelines, looking sullen. Marcus was about to point out that a pair of shorts and a rope belt weren’t the right kind of clothes for a ski resort when Holly jumped in.

  ‘Before we do anything drastic,’ she declared, ‘I’ve had an idea.’ She then produced her mobile phone. ‘If Jake’s suitcase was more powerful than the witch, maybe my phone is too,’ she continued. ‘I mean, we haven’t tried it yet, have we? Maybe I should just call someone.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ breathed Newt. ‘Oh my God, you’re right!’ Her face lit up. Sterling, however, simply frowned.

  ‘Are you sure it’s working?’ he asked Holly.

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll soon find out.’ When Holly turned it on, the phone beeped in a reassuring kind of way. ‘Looks okay to me,’ she remarked. ‘And the reception’s pretty good.’

  ‘But who should we call?’ said Coco. ‘Who’s close enough to get us out of here?’ Without waiting for a reply, she offered to call her Diamond Beach massage therapist. ‘Except that I can’t remember her details . . .’

  ‘We’ll call the police,’ Holly interrupted. She was already tapping a three-digit number into her keypad. ‘This is a job for the emergency services.’

  Marcus wasn’t so sure. Wouldn’t his mother just be luring another set of victims into Miss Molpe’s trap? He was about to suggest that they call Directory Assistance to ask if there were any paranormal investigators living nearby when Holly caught her breath.

  Marcus saw her grim expression dissolve into one full of hope and excitement.

  ‘Oh – oh, yes!’ she cried into the phone, which was pressed to her ear. ‘Yes, we need help! It’s an emergency! We need to talk to the police!’ A pause. ‘What? You what? Oh . . .’

  Everyone stared at Holly as she listened to the voice at the other end of the line. Though Marcus couldn’t hear what was being said, he deduced that it was both puzzling and unexpected – because the light in her eyes was slowly replaced by a dazed, disappointed look. ‘Well, yes,’ she finally admitted, ‘we can’t get back. We’re stuck here and – what?’ Another pause. ‘I see. Well, yes, I suppose so. But how . . . ?’ She glanced towards the panel of buttons. ‘But there isn’t a minus one,’ she protested. ‘How can we . . . hello? Hello?’ She blinked and lowered the phone. ‘He hung up on me!’ she complained.

  ‘Who did?’ Newt seemed confused. ‘Was it the operator?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ Holly swallowed before reluctantly adding, ‘He told us to go to the embassy.’

  ‘The embassy?’ Coco’s tone was shrill with disbelief. ‘What embassy?’

  ‘Our embassy,’ Holly replied. ‘Because we’re stranded tourists.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ said Jake.

  ‘And where exactly is our so-called embassy?’ was Newt’s next question. ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘It’s on level minus one.’ Seeing the blank stares that greeted this news, Holly burst out, ‘I told him there wasn’t a level minus one, but he wouldn’t listen!’

  ‘There’s no minus-one button . . .’ Edison began.

  ‘I know!’

  ‘Maybe it was the siren,’ Marcus suggested. ‘Maybe she’s teasing us.’

  ‘It was a man. I told you. A man with a foreign accent.’

  ‘Wait a second!’ Sterling spoke so sharply that everybody else jumped. He put a hand to his forehead and stood for a moment, thinking hard. Then he whirled around and pointed at the panel of buttons. ‘That exclamation mark!’ he said. ‘It’s an upside-down i!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So the square root of i is negative one!’ Sterling paused, as if expecting an eager chorus of agreement. When no one reacted, he sighed and began to explain. ‘It’s an irrational number, like pi. If I press the alarm button, and then I press the emergency stop button, and then I press the alarm button again, it’s i x i – which equals minus one!’

  Newt wasn’t impressed. She just scowled at him.

  ‘Yuk! Algebra!’ was all she said.

  It was Jake who seemed to grasp the importance of Sterling’s brainwave. ‘Well? Go on,’ Jake urged, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. ‘Why don’t you push the buttons?’

  ‘With Prot’s hand,’ Marcus added quickly. ‘Don’t forget Prot’s hand.’

  He passed the hand back to Sterling, who promptly used it. Click. Click. Click. As soon as the last button was pushed, the lift responded. It jerked and clanged. Then it started to drop.

  ‘This is good,’ Coco said nervously. She appealed to her husband. ‘This is good, isn’t it? It’s never gone down before.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ he replied.

  ‘What’s an embassy, Dad?’ Edison asked. ‘Is it some kind of ship?’

  ‘It’s . .
. um . . .’ Sterling trailed off, scratching his head as he tried to think of a good definition.

  At last Holly supplied one for him.

  ‘It’s a little bit of your own country in a foreign place,’ she told Edison. ‘You go there when you want to be protected from the country you’re in.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Where’s my phone, by the way?’ Newt demanded, turning to Marcus. ‘You had it last.’

  ‘It broke,’ Marcus had to confess. ‘I dropped it.’

  Newt flushed – but before she could say anything, the lift stopped with a bounce. Ping! went the door. It trundled open.

  They found themselves staring at a dull, drab, stuffy, ill-lit, unoccupied, thoroughly dismal waiting room.

  45

  THE PERFECT ESCAPE

  THE ROOM WAS A PLAIN GREY BOX. IT HAD BEEN FITTED out with grey carpet, grey plastic seats and a drooping, greyish plant in a stainless-steel pot. The only splash of colour was a poster advertising ‘Getaway Island – the Perfect Escape’.

  Opposite the lift was a service window with a metal grille over it. The dark-grey door beside the window was firmly shut.

  Marcus was reminded of the office where his mother sometimes went to pay her car insurance.

  ‘Is this the embassy?’ Edison queried.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Holly peered at the sign on the counter, which said ‘If unattended, please ring bell’. ‘We’d better ask.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Jake offered. He picked up his suitcase and strode across the room to the service window, where he vigorously rang a small silver bell. After about half a minute, someone answered his summons – but the grille over the window was so heavy, and the glass behind it was so thick and smeared, that Marcus could only make out a vague, dark silhouette hovering behind the counter.

  ‘Can I help you?’ a woman’s voice queried.

  ‘Yes,’ Jake replied, as Holly rushed to join him. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  ‘We need to go home!’ Holly interrupted. ‘We’re completely lost and looking for a way back to the real Diamond Beach, which is where we originally came from.’

  ‘We were kidnapped by Miss Molpe,’ Marcus added, from the lift. He had a feeling that the woman behind the counter might know Miss Molpe.

  And he was right.

  ‘Ah. Yes. Miss Molpe,’ the woman said. She had a young, gentle, heavily accented voice. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Can you help us?’ Holly implored. ‘Can you send us back home?’

  ‘You will need a visa for Getaway Island.’ The young woman pushed a bundle of paper through the narrow slot between the grille and the counter. ‘Just fill in these forms and we will process them for you.’

  ‘Forms?’ Holly echoed, as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘How do you mean, “process” them?’ Newt demanded, from the safety of the lift. ‘How long is that going to take?’

  ‘Who are you, please?’ asked Coco. When there was no response, she marched over to the service window – where she jostled Jake aside so she could rap on the grille. ‘Hello?’ she snapped. ‘I’d like to know exactly where we are and who’s in charge here.’

  But the young woman had already vanished back into the shadows from which she’d emerged. Jake, meanwhile, had picked up the topmost form.

  ‘Application for visa to Getaway Island,’ he read aloud, rather slowly and awkwardly. ‘Please complete questions one to thirteen in BLACK OR BLUE PEN ONLY and submit to embassy staff.’

  ‘How can we do that when we don’t have any pens?’ Coco exclaimed. She put her mouth to the slot under the grille. ‘Hey! Excuse me! We don’t have anything to write with!’

  ‘I do,’ Jake remarked. When Coco and Holly turned to stare at him, he patted his suitcase. ‘I packed a bunch of stuff in here when I first ran away – fishing line, and a torch, and some pens, and a cigarette lighter—’

  ‘How many pens?’ said Coco.

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ll have a look.’

  ‘Maybe we should try phoning someone else,’ Marcus suggested. He felt very uneasy. ‘Maybe this is just another nightmare holiday . . .’

  But Holly wasn’t convinced. ‘It’s not my nightmare,’ she informed him.

  ‘Or mine.’ Coco was watching Jake unload his few scrappy possessions from the suitcase. ‘One . . . two . . . three . . .’

  ‘Four pens,’ said Jake.

  ‘We can double up,’ Holly decided. ‘I’ll fill in both our forms, Marcus – and you can do the same for Newt, Coco.’

  ‘And I’ll do Edison’s,’ Sterling offered. He went to retrieve the piece of paper that Coco waved at him. ‘I hope they don’t ask for proof of identity . . .’

  Marcus was amazed. He couldn’t understand why the adults seemed so happy to fill in forms. They probably like it because it feels normal, he concluded, knowing that Holly’s life was always full of forms to lodge.

  ‘I’ll just stay here and hold the door open, shall I?’ he said.

  Holly gave a preoccupied grunt; she was already scribbling away. So was Coco, who stood at the counter beside her. Jake was using his suitcase to write on. He didn’t seem very confident, and kept looking sideways at Sterling’s answers.

  ‘Do you have any criminal convictions? No.’ Coco ticked a box. ‘Are you carrying goods received or purchased from Miss Molpe? No.’ She ticked another box.

  ‘Which false realities have you visited in the last two weeks? Please attach complete list . . .’ Holly chewed at her pen. ‘Well, let’s see now . . . there was Diamond Beach Paradise, and the Crystal Hibiscus Health Spa, and the sinking ship—’

  ‘And my fairground,’ Edison weighed in. He was helping Marcus to prop open the lift door. ‘And Newt’s dance club. And the fake caravan.’

  ‘Does the lift count as a false reality?’ wondered Sterling, who was sitting beside Jake with Prot’s hand on his lap.

  ‘I’m going to include it,’ said Holly. ‘Along with the cellar.’

  Marcus sighed. ‘Don’t forget this place,’ he observed. ‘This is fake too.’

  ‘Yes, but it might be good fake, not bad fake,’ Edison pointed out. Marcus wasn’t convinced, though – and neither was Newt. She stomped over to the closed door, which she tried to open. When it wouldn’t budge, she gave it a sharp kick.

  ‘Oi!’ she shouted. ‘Let us out, or we’ll set fire to this place!’

  ‘Newt! Hush!’ Holly was scandalised. ‘You know very well we can’t do that!’

  ‘Yes, we can. Jake just said he had a cigarette lighter,’ Newt rejoined, as her stepmother rang the little silver bell.

  ‘I’m finished,’ Coco announced. ‘Hello! Are you there? I’m finished!’

  ‘Me too,’ said Sterling. He passed his completed forms to Coco, who pushed them under the metal grille. Holly’s forms soon followed, though there was a slight delay before Jake was ready to surrender his. ‘How do you spell “parallel universe”?’ he wanted to know.

  Only after his form had been signed, dated and returned to the pile were all seven forms suddenly whisked away by the faceless young woman, who had reappeared from some unseen back room. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Could you take a seat, please? We’ll be with you shortly.’

  ‘Who will?’ Coco snapped. ‘You and who else? Hello? Hello?’

  ‘It’s no good,’ said Jake. ‘She’s gone again.’

  ‘Hey!’ Newt banged on the door with her fist. ‘Hey! Open up!’

  ‘I hope this doesn’t take too long,’ Holly fretted. ‘I mean, it’s not as if there’s a queue . . .’

  Sterling shook his head. ‘In my experience, when people talk about “processing”, you should always be prepared for a bit of a wait,’ was his view. ‘An hour or two at least.’

  ‘I’m not waiting here for an hour!’ his wife protested. ‘They don’t even have any magazines!’

  Holly seemed resigned. ‘At least they didn’t tell us to go away and have a coffee. If they’d done that, we?
??d have been looking at half a day minimum.’

  ‘Half a day? Are you kidding?’ Marcus was beginning to lose patience. Didn’t they understand? This was magic, not red tape. ‘We could be here for days!’ he cried. ‘Weeks! Months! We could be here forever!’

  It was at this precise moment that the grey door opened, to reveal a beautiful, black-haired gypsy girl.

  ‘Will you come in, please?’ she said. ‘The ambassador will see you now.’

  46

  MARTIYA

  ‘THAT WAS QUICK,’ SAID STERLING.

  The gypsy girl smiled. She had a wonderful smile. Her eyes were big and brown and she wore colourful gypsy clothes: hoop earrings, a long skirt, a ruffled blouse, lots of scarves. She was the prettiest girl Marcus had ever seen.

  He still didn’t trust her, though. He suspected that she might be the siren in disguise – despite the fact that she wasn’t rhyming everything she said.

  ‘I don’t think we should all go and see the ambassador,’ he advised warily. ‘Maybe some of us should stay here, just in case.’

  ‘If you stay, you will never leave,’ warned the gypsy girl. ‘The only exit is through this door.’ She gestured gracefully at the long grey hallway behind her. ‘Come. Shibilis awaits.’

  ‘Shibilis?’ Coco had trouble pronouncing the word. ‘Is that the ambassador?’

  ‘Yes,’ the girl replied. ‘Shibilis is the Ambassador of Travellers and the King of the Gypsies – the Bulibasha, as we call him. He has much power. He can help you. Only he.’

  ‘Was he the one I spoke to?’ asked Holly.

  ‘You spoke to him,’ the girl confirmed. ‘He heard your plea from the shadows and summoned you into the half-light.’

  Holly blinked. Then she rephrased her question. ‘No – I mean, was he the one on the phone?’

  The girl cocked her head. ‘What is a “phone”?’ she inquired.

  ‘Oh, come on.’ Newt’s tone was a mixture of disgust and disbelief. ‘You don’t know what a phone is?’

  ‘Shibilis will know. He knows all. He sees all. He heard you in the whistling wind and saw you in the smoke from his fire.’ The girl laid a hand on her breast. ‘I am his martiya – his spirit of the night. I am his messenger, sent to find you. Without his help, you will never escape this curse.’