Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors

  I.eo answered his unspoken question. "The Red King's strength, Billy"

  When they began the steep climb up to the Heights, they passed a redbrick house with a high wall and tall, barred gate. " LOOM VILLA " said the sign on the gate. Billy was only a few yards away from the house when the gate burst open, and four black dogs erupted onto the road. Instead of running faster, Billy stopped, too terrified to move. The dogs' savage black eyes were fixed on him and their great jaws gaped, revealing long, murderous teeth.

  The Flames surrounded Billy hissing dangerously The dogs lowered their heads and snarled.

  "Keep moving, Billy" said Aries.

  Billy shuffled backward, his trembling knees hardly supporting him. Just when he thought they might give way completely, a violent crack of thunder stopped the dogs in their tracks. A bolt of lightning lit the sky, and the black dogs raced for home, howling in terror.

  "Now, Billy Run for your life!" said Leo.

  Billy could see headlights creeping through the fog, and clutching the bag of oaths, he ran. The road became steeper, but he didn't slacken his pace. His heart thumped, his head spun, and his legs shook but he was running for his life, and this time he couldn't stop. The car kept coming, closer and closer through the fog. Soon it would be upon them.

  Rain splashed onto the road. Thunder rumbled overhead, and Billy's tears mingled with the raindrops coursing down his face. "I can't go faster than a car," he sobbed. "I can't. I can't. They're going to get me."

  "No," growled Leo. He looked up as a ball of fire came hurtling out of the thundery sky It hit the hood of the gray car with an earsplitting crack. The engine burst into flames.

  Scarcely able to believe what he saw, Billy turned and sped up the hill. "It was Tancred, wasn't it?" he panted. "Tancred and his storms."

  "The very same," Leo agreed.

  The road curved sharply and to Billy hunched over the bag of oaths, it seemed like a spiral up into the sky. The rain was falling in sheets now, and borne on a sudden gust of wind, came a dreadful, threatening shriek. "You can't win, Billy Raven. Never, never, never." Florence de Grey was still on his trail. But without a car, the race was even.

  With a burst of defiance, Billy bounded on up the hill, and as the wind intensified, he opened the gray bag and pulled out a handful of oaths. Holding them into the wind he let them fly away Never had he felt as jubilant as he did now He put his hand in the bag and released another sheaf of papers. Another and another, until the bag was empty and the air was full of fluttering, windblown papers. And Billy was sure he could hear the hopeful whispers of the tricked, dispossessed, and penniless people whose names were now being washed away by the rain.

  “Good! Good!" the cats cheered.

  With a big grin, Billy flung the gray bag into the storm, and a distant voice called, "Foolish boy! You'll be punished for that! Just you wait!"

  * * *

  It wasn't often that Charlie woke up as early as six o'clock on a Sunday morning. In fact, he couldn't remember a single instance when he had. So he had to bring his watch right up close to his sleepy eyes. The chestnut tree outside his window was thrashing about in the wind and thunder rumbled in the distance. And then the doorbell rang.

  Swinging his feet to the floor, Charlie dragged himself over to the window and looked out. He was very surprised to see a familiar SUV parked outside number nine. There, on the doorstep, stood a rather wet and impatient-looking man. It was Mr. Silk, Gabriel's father

  "Hello, Mr. Silk!" called Charlie.

  “Ah, Charlie." Mr. Silk scratched the back of his neck as if he were not sure that he wanted to be doing what he was doing. "I've come to fetch you," he said.

  "Fetch me?" Charlie was even more surprised.

  "It seems —" began Mr. Silk.

  He got no farther because the door was abruptly flung open by Grandma Bone. "What?" she said in her rude manner. Today it sounded even ruder than usual.

  "I've come —"Mr. Silk tried again.

  Again he was cut short. "What time of day do you think this is?" demanded Grandma Bone.

  Fully awake now, Charlie began to throw on various items of clothing. Maybe something had happened to Gabriel or another friend who lived on the Heights. Tancred or Lysander.

  Charlie ran down to the hall where Grandma Bone was still lecturing Mr. Silk on the selfishness of waking people on Sunday morning. Mr. Silk was now completely soaked and looking very depressed.

  "Ah, Charlie, let's go," he said, turning away from the tyrannical woman.

  "What am I to tell his mother?" shouted Grandma Bone.

  "Tell her I'm at Gabriel's," said Charlie, rapidly following Mr. Silk. He had noticed a container of Uncle Paton's favorite peanut yogurt poking out of his grandmother's bathrobe pocket, and just to put her in her place, he added, "I bet you got up early so you could finish off Uncle P.'s yogurt."

  Grandma Bone shot Charlie a hateful look and slammed the door.

  Charlie scrambled into the car, and Mr. Silk drove off. Thunder and lightning accompanied them all the way to the Heights, and with the noise of the engine and the rain drumming on the roof, Charlie had to shout to make himself heard.

  "What's happened, Mr. Silk?" he asked.

  "Difficult to say." Mr. Silk was very vague for a thriller writer. He resembled Gabriel, with his long face and forlorn expression. They even had the same overlong, floppy hair, though Mr. Silk's was a bit threadbare. He made up for this with a thick, drooping mustache. After some thought, he said, "There's a boy in Gabriel's gerbil house."

  "What boy?"

  "Little fella, white hair, glasses."

  "Billy!" cried Charlie. "So he escaped!"

  "Says he's got to see you. Gabriel begged me to come. Well, we couldn't sleep anyway with that storm going on. The storm boy, Tancred, says it'll calm down soon. It takes time apparently once he's got full-blooded thunder on the go. Understandable, I suppose."

  "Yes." Charlie was impressed by Mr. Silk's understanding.

  Half a mile past the gates of Loom Villa (where four rottweilers were barking their heads off), the SUV passed a wrecked car cordoned off with police signs. The hood had caved in, the paint was scorched, the windshield smashed, and the tires were just charred bits of rubber.

  "Wow! That car looks as if it was struck by lightning!" said Charlie.

  "It was," said Mr. Silk. "The driver is in the hospital, but his wife was unharmed, except that she seems to have gone completely nuts."

  "Good idea for a thriller, huh, Mr. Silk?" Charlie asked.

  "Mmm!" the thriller writer pulled his mustache pensively

  Charlie got a brief glimpse of Lysander's house as they passed a pair of tall wrought-iron gates. Lysander's father was the famous Judge Sage and the house reflected his important position.

  "The boy is up at our place," Mr. Silk told Charlie. "And Tancred Torsson. We've never had so many visitors this early on a Sunday." He turned the SUV into an extremely muddy yard and pulled up before a dilapidated-looking house.

  Charlie jumped out of the SUV straight into a deep puddle. He wished he'd remembered his boots but it was too late now Mr. Silk pointed to the side of the house where a narrow path led to the field at the back. "They're all in the gerbil house," he said. "Don't ask me why"

  "OK." Charlie trudged through the mud toward a large shed where Gabriel spent a lot of his spare time, breeding gerbils. The words " SILK'S GERBILS " had been painted in red across the door. Charlie could hear a low murmur coming from inside the shed, but this stopped as soon as he tried the door, which was locked.

  "Who is it?" asked Gabriel.

  "Me," Charlie replied.

  After a moment's squeaking and shuffling, Gabriel opened the door and Charlie stepped into the shed. He found Tancred and Lysander sitting on a bench beneath a shelf of gerbil cages. The bench was one of the few places where there wasn't a cage, for they lined every wall from floor to ceiling. There were white, black, brown, long-haired, short-haired, large, and small ge
rbils. The smell was strong.

  Billy Raven sat cross-legged on the floor. He looked pleased with himself and when Charlie came in, he gave him an enormous grin.

  "Billy you're out!" Charlie exclaimed. "How did you do it?"

  "The Flames helped me. They broke the force field." Behind his smile, Charlie sensed that Billy was very nervous.

  "Thing is, what now?" said Lysander. "Billy said you would know. That's why you're here, Charlie."

  "He can't stay here for long," said Gabriel, bolting the door and squeezing in behind Charlie. "That de Grey woman is bound to guess where he's gone."

  "I meant to snuff her out!" Tancred smashed his fist into his palm, and a strong breeze swept through the shed, lifting everyone's hair and sending the gerbils squeaking for cover.

  Billy put his hands over his ears. "I can't think when they talk like that," he complained. "There are so many gerbils in here, they don't give me a minute's peace."

  "What are they saying?" asked Gabriel. "I've always wanted to know"

  Billy stared at him, his hands clamped tight over his ears. Lysander lifted one of Billy's hands and shouted, "Gabriel wants to know what the gerbils are saying."

  "They say ‘Help! Whoops! Here we go again! Watch the kids! That's mine! Get off!'" Billy paused. "Boring stuff, really!"

  "Not to me," Gabriel said.

  Lysander held up his hand in a commanding manner. "Can we get back to the problem? It isn't going to be easy to find a safe place for Billy — a place where no one will think of looking. Obviously, all our houses will fall under suspicion because we're endowed. Unfortunately, the judge is away or I'd ask his advice."

  Gabriel suggested that breakfast would help everyone think, and he left the gerbil house, promising to return with eggs, bacon, and toast.

  Peering through a small window between the cages, Charlie watched Gabriel going into a door at the back of the house. "Why do we have to eat in here?" he said.

  "To protect Gabriel's family," said Lysander. "They can't defend themselves against — whatever those people are going to send after Billy. And they will send something, believe me. But at least we're all endowed. We stand a chance."

  Lysander's words were prophetic, for the morning light that had begun to filter through the small window was suddenly snuffed out, and they were plunged into a murky darkness. Even the gerbils fell silent as a soft tapping could be heard on the roof.

  "What on earth . . .," said Tancred.

  The sound intensified until it became a loud drumming. It seemed as though millions of tiny hands were striking every surface of the shed, and it began to groan and shake under the assault.

  Desperate to know what was going on outside, Charlie reached for the bolt on the door. He told himself that it might be unwise to open the door, but by then it was too late, and he found himself peeping out.

  A swirling cloud of paper rushed toward Charlie, and briefly he caught sight of Gabriel emerging from the house and then being engulfed by the flying paper. He fell to the ground and a breakfast tray slipped out of his hands. It crashed onto the cobblestoned yard, sending food in all directions.

  As the paper swept into the gerbil house, Billy Raven sprang up, screaming, "It's the oaths!"

  THE BATTLE OF OATHS AND SPIRITS

  Charlie slammed the door of the gerbil house, hut several oaths were already in. They made straight for Billy and clung to every part of him. Billy screamed, whether in pain or fear, Charlie couldn't tell. But when he attempted to pull the papers off Billy he saw that each one had a glowing green edge that bit into his flesh the moment he touched it.

  Tancred and Lysander were also plucking at the papers and they too were bitten by the vicious spirit, or whatever it was that possessed Florence de Grey's lethal oaths. Over and over, they would pull the papers away, only to have them zoom onto Billy again. They tried tearing the oaths, but each tiny piece would fly back and cling to Billy. They scrunched the paper into balls while it twisted in their hands, biting their fingers and burning their palms. But the crumpled paper always unfolded and returned to the attack.

  "We'll have to get them out!" shouted Lysander, as Billy spun around, screaming and tearing at his hair.

  "Open the door, Charlie, just a fraction," cried Tancred, "and I'll blast them out."

  "Suppose more come in," said Charlie breathlessly

  "We'll have to chance it," Tancred told him.

  "There are twelve of them, 1 counted," said Lysander. "So, come on, let's try it."

  Every oath that was torn away from Billy was subjected to a cold blast of air as it was thrust through the tiny gap that Charlie allowed. Charlie would then slam the door shut. This maneuver was not easy, as Tancred needed a lot of room to muster a strong blast, and when Charlie reached for the door, he had to keep well away from the storm boy's swinging arm.

  Progress was painfully slow, but at last every oath had been banished, and the four occupants of the gerbil house collapsed onto the bench, sale at least for a while. Their hands were covered in red welts, but Billy's face was worse than his hands. His pallor made the crimson streaks appear even more vivid. Burying his face in his hands, the small boy sank to the floor and began to sob.

  "Come on, Billy" said Lysander, patting the small boy's shoulder. "We're OK now"

  "We're not. We're not," cried Billy “And it's all my fault."

  "It's not your fault," Tancred declared. "You're right about one thing, though. We are certainly not OK. For a start, how are we going to get breakfast? I'm starving."

  Lysander shot him a warning look as Billy's expression began to crumble again.

  The oaths covered the window Squinting through a tiny gap between the papers, Charlie got a narrow view of the yard. There was no sign of Gabriel, but he could see four fried eggs, several slices of toast, and some delicious crispy bacon, all lying in the mud. It was really depressing. He was about to turn away when he caught sight of Gabriel's face looking out from the kitchen window Gabriel gave a thumbs-up sign and Charlie had a wild hope that a plan to rescue them had been devised.

  A cloud of paper suddenly descended, dashing Charlie's hopes, as Gabriel's shocked face disappeared behind the clingy green-rimmed oaths. They covered the kitchen window like a crowd of squealing bats.

  "Gabriel can't reach us," Charlie said gloomily "But maybe those poisonous oaths will wear out after a while. Maybe they'll go to sleep — or die!"

  "They'll never die," Billy whispered.

  "If storms can't do it, I don't know what can," said Tancred dismally.

  A despondent silence settled on the four prisoners. Tancred's stomach rumbled, Billy wiped his tear-stained face with the back of his hand, and Charlie slumped to the floor, feeling helpless.

  All at once, Lysander announced, "They will have to be killed!"

  Everyone looked at him, and Charlie said, "How?"

  "My ancestors," said Lysander. "They are more powerful than those contemptible oaths. But to reach them I will have to go outside."

  Tancred leaped up. "You can't, Sander," he protested. "It would be suicide. There must be a thousand of those things out there. They'll eat you alive or . . . or batter you to death."

  "No." The boy smiled. "My African ancestors will protect me." He stepped up to the door. "Tancred, you'll have to help. If those devils try to get in when I open the door, a blast of air at my back should do it. Are you ready?"

  How could anyone ever be ready for such a drastic move? Once Lysander's mind was made up, however, he never hesitated. Before Charlie had time to collect his thoughts, the door was open and Lysander was out. Tancred brought his upheld arm swinging down in an arc toward the oaths that were attempting to dart inside. One got in before the door was slammed shut, but as the malicious thing shot toward Billy, Tancred caught it and, with Charlie's help, dispatched it through the door with another blast of air.

  "Ouch! Those things are getting stronger," said Tancred, examining his hands. "Look! The cuts are deeper."

/>   Charlie stared at the cuts lacerating Tancred's fingers. They were badly in need of a bandage.

  "Here. I've got a hanky" Billy pulled an exceptionally white handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to Tancred. "Florence said I must always have a handkerchief handy I suppose she was right."

  Charlie bound Tancred's hand, but blood began to seep through the hanky and Billy moaned, "Oh, no. I hope you won't bleed to death."

  '"Course I won't, silly" Tancred hid his hand behind him. "Think of Sander! He's far worse off than I am."

  "Sander!" cried Charlie.

  All three boys leaped to the window. A moment ago it had been covered in paper, but now it was clear and the horrified onlookers saw that the oaths had gathered into a vast army intent on attacking the motionless figure in their midst.

  The yard was so dark it was as though an early dusk had fallen. But they could see that Lysander had buried his face in his hands, while the green-edged leaves of paper swarmed around him, striking and cutting wherever they could. The mass of paper emitted an angry buzz that grew louder and louder until Billy Raven could stand it no longer.

  "They're going to kill him," Billy cried.

  "Shh!" hissed Charlie. "Listen."

  Very faint at first but getting stronger every second, the sound of drums came rolling through the air.

  "Lysander's ancestors are coming," said Charlie.

  A smile lit Tancred's face. "Hear that, Billy?"

  Billy nodded. Once before he'd seen Lysander's spirit ancestors do battle. He knew that now they stood a chance.

  When the sound of drums reverberated in the yard, the oaths appeared to lose their energy Some fluttered away from the group, as if they were confused. The sky became inky black, and Charlie wondered if the ancestors were bringing night with them to emphasize their radiance.

  The drumrolls increased, and the spectators pressed closer to the window, waiting for the spirits to appear. More of the oaths were losing their locus. They floated away from Lysander and drifted aimlessly into the sky

  A golden mist crept through the dark, and Lysander lifted his head as the last of the oaths broke off their assault and hovered uncertainly above him. Eerie forms began to take shape in the mist: tall figures, robed in white, their hands concealed, until on a sudden drumroll, every figure pulled out a gleaming weapon. Spears, swords, and axes were held aloft, and a mysterious hum rippled through the air.