Magic Parcel (13 page)

Jimmy was knocked senseless momentarily, but on regaining consciousness, he found himself straddled by two enormous green and brown tree trunks. The only thought to find substance in his head was that these didn't look like tree trunks at all, more like...legs! On looking up to the topmost branches he found that they
were
legs - those of a Guard bracing himself for battle. There he stayed in the relative safety of his guardian, watching in awed amazement as the scene before him unravelled.

Stone upon stone, battlement upon impregnable battlement, a castle of immeasurable strength grew out of the bare treeless earth. In as little time as it takes to say it, the stronghold was completed, pinnacle-topped towers crowned with stiff breezeless black pennants and drawbridge firmly shut. Where there had been an uninterrupted view across open plain to the Craggs of Gotts Point, now menaced castle, stagnant moat and thickly wooded surrounds.

 

“That's it!” gasped Jimmy. “The tree! The split tree I put the parcel in! It's there by the moat!” His arm shook as he stabbed his finger into the gloom, towards the tree, and without hesitation, he scrambled to his feet and launched himself towards his goal. Had it not been for Por's restraining arm, he would have leaped forward into the jaws of hell.

“Not yet, my boy,” he whispered. “We go together.”

As one, warily in the eerie silence surrounding the castle, they moved forward a few paces into the undergrowth. Great stealth was needed to arouse as little commotion as possible. Moving from copse to copse, and thicket to thicket, they came to within twenty-five paces of the parcel's hiding place. Por made a sign for Jimmy and his brother to carry on to retrieve their parcel. As Uncle Reuben had entrusted it to him, Jimmy had felt it was his responsibility to get it back.

They hesitated, gulped twice and launched themselves forward, making sure no-one was watching.

“This is easy,” whispered Tommy as they neared the tree. “Go on, take it. I can see it sticking out by the base.”

As Jimmy reached out to take his prize, his ears were filled with that same dreaded rattle and high-pitched scream which had seemingly stabbed a cold blade through his heart previously. He swung around to find the surrounding area covered with their evil white sightless bodies.

The Senti were abroad, driven on by their merciless master. The boys, swinging left and right at them until their arms ached with the exertion, slowly succumbed to the sheer weight of numbers. They were about to submerge totally under the foul sea, when the welcome sound of ringing trumpets and the crack of blade against body surged to Jimmy's ears. The Guard were wading thigh deep through the ranks of Senti, tossing them aside like sheaves of corn at a harvest. Por's double-edged axe whistled and sang in its tireless quest to rid the world of its enemy.

Suddenly, the brothers were relieved of their irksome living blanket by two enormous hands plucking them from the masses.

“The parcel!” yelled Jimmy in terror. “It's gone! One of them has taken it!”

 

 

The Guardsman had set down its charge and it shot off in hot pursuit of a black-cloaked Senti that wore a grey circlet around its head. Fortunately for Jimmy, the creature didn't move very quickly, hampered as it was by its cloak and its lack of vision. He soon drew level with its shambling body, with Tommy only a stride behind, and despite the creature's shrieks for aid, he took it in the cleanest rugby tackle ever seen outside of Twickenham, with Tommy tumbling on top and grabbing the parcel at the same time. The last view he had of Omni was the Black Rider marshalling the forces of the river in row upon row of foam-capped wave riders, breaking on the disordered ranks of Senti and sweeping them away to their destruction. A split second afterwards, the lights went out as the Faceless Rider flung his cloak of darkness over the scene of battle.

 

 

 

“Tommy,” came a whispered voice somewhere nearby, “where are we? I can't see anything in this fog. It is foggy, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is foggy,” came the reply, “and I don't know where we are. Have you still got the parcel?”

“Yes, it's under my arm,” Jimmy said, after a moment or two's hesitation. “Which way do we go? I don't ... what was that?”

The younger boy stopped, his eyes peering into the clinging gloom, trying to put an object to the noise he had heard.

“There it goes again!” he continued.

“Yes, I heard it that time,” Tommy agreed. “It sounds like ... like ... voices, whispering.”

“Hello ... who's there?” Jimmy's voice quavered with more than a little fear. The whispers continued and grew gradually in number and intensity until they were surrounded by a constant wheezy, hissing noise like the air escaping from two or three dozen leaky bagpipes.

“I don't like this at all,” Tommy observed.

“I wish we were at home,” whined Jimmy, somewhat put off. “Tom, are you still there?”

Silence. No answer.

“Tom,” urged Jimmy, a note of panic rising in his throat. “Tom, answer me ...”

“Shut up a minute!” came Tommy's voice from the other side of his brother. “I'm trying to hear what they are saying.”

“You are in the Foggy Land of Four,” wheezed a voice almost inaudibly.

 

“Who are you?” Tommy asked, not really expecting to get a reply.

“We are the Long-undead,” came the whispered reply after a short pause. “We, like you, were caught in travel before the time strands parted to let us through. You will stay here.”

“Not on your life!” yelled Jimmy. “My mum's waiting and my tea'll be ready by now. I
can't
stay, thank you very much.”

With that, he struggled forward as well as he could, which wasn't very well. They seemed to be held by a thick blanket of foam, making walking rather like trying to swim through a lake of treacle. As the voices grew in volume and clarity, so too were the boys able to see what forms were making the sounds. The faces and forms closing in on them were those of old, grey and haggard people with grasping fingers, coming ever nearer. They tried to move but couldn't. They were trapped! They would become Whispering Voices like all the others!

The ghostly forms, not a foot away from them, and now clearly defined, were about to grasp the hapless boys when they were blinded by the intensity of brilliant sunlight -
yellow
sunlight! The boys were relieved to feel gravel under their feet and the scent of lavender in their nostrils - Reuben's garden; they were in Reuben's garden!

Jimmy spun round on his heels to catch sight of a small, silver-handled door slowly closing in the fence, with a rapidly dispersing carpet of mist on the soil before it. Jimmy gulped, looked across at Tommy, then turned again to find the fence was just a fence, and they were home.

“Well now, old chaps,” came a deep, familiar voice from behind them. “Back I see.”

 

It was Uncle Reuben.

“Are we glad to see you, Uncle!” Tommy blurted out.

“We were nearly gonners in there!” Jimmy joined in.

“Did you ever doubt you'd get back?” Uncle Reuben asked, the same smile playing around his mouth. “Had an adventure or two, I'll be bound!”

“This parcel certainly...” Jimmy started, looking down at his hands.

“But it's not there!” he went on. “I could have sworn I brought it back! Did Seth...?”

Uncle Reuben shook his head slowly, smiled even more, and winked a long, slow wink which both silenced any further questions and told the boys all they wanted to know.

“Tea and ice cream are on the table,” he went on. “Come on, we can talk later.”

 

“That cherry cake was good,” said Tommy still mentally licking his lips on the top deck of the bus home.

“I wonder what mum'll say,” Jimmy mused. “Do you think she'll be cross?”

“She will to start with,” replied Tommy, “but she'll mellow. She always does.”

Silence fell over the two boys. They were alone on the top deck, with only the rattle of the engine and clanking of the cracked bell for company.

“What do you make of this?” Jimmy asked his brother after several minutes' fumbling in the inside pocket of his anorak. Slowly, and very gingerly, he pulled out a grey circlet, the circumference of which was a little greater than his two fists.

“Where on earth did you get that from?” Tommy gasped. “That's the head circlet of that boss Senti who nearly got your parcel!”

“Yes, I know,” sighed Jimmy. “I grabbed him as the time strands cracked, and he sort of seemed to come with me into the Foggy Land of Four, but then he disappeared. Shall I throw it away?”

“Not on your life!” exclaimed his brother. “Keep it. It might come in useful - one day.”

They had been so engrossed in their conversation that they didn't see their stop loom up and begin to recede until Tommy grabbed his brother and hurtled down the stairs and on to the pavement. They ambled along the pavement and up the front path of their house, not really wishing to be met by mum's initial outburst. It had been known to put out the fire across the room it was so violent.

Tommy, being the bigger of the two, pushed Jimmy through the front door ahead of him. He tried, in vain, to turn and regain the door, but the hall was too narrow and a shrill voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Hello, boys,” came the voice.

It was mum.

Both boys expected the usual “and where do you think you've been?”

Jimmy nudged Tommy to say something and he looked most uncomfortable whilst mumbling his apologies.

“Er, sorry we're a bit late mum,” he muttered, “but we sort of got held up. You see...”

“How do you mean ‘late'?” she asked, rather puzzled. “This is your usual time home from school.”

 

School? Tommy shot a profoundly puzzled look across at his brother who shrugged his shoulders and looked back at his mum.

 

“What's the matter with you two?” she asked again. “You should be happy. You're usually much more cheerful than this on the last day of a school term. Come on, brighten up, it's the first day of your holiday tomorrow.”

Jimmy's jaw slowly but surely sagged until it nearly ended in his coat top pocket. Had it all been one long fantastic dream?

He was beginning to doubt, when his fingers strayed onto the circlet, deep in his pocket...

 

Tea was something of a subdued and quiet affair with their mother enquiring after their health because of their silence. Jimmy didn't seem to have much time to reflect with his family constantly on top of him. Very quickly this little house had become so claustrophobic, shut in, and inert after the activity, excitement, and open space he had experienced in Omni. He still couldn't understand how they could have ‘lost' all that time whilst there; something to do with somebody called ‘Einstein' Tommy had mumbled through a mouthful of food once mum was out of the room. He'd no idea who
he
was at any rate, and conversation was so stilted and hurried as mum flitted in and out at crucial points of their discussion. So they drifted into an uneasy silence. Perhaps they might get the chance to talk at bed time.

“Well, what do you think about that?” Jimmy asked Tommy in a hushed whisper, in their shared room, that night.

“Think about what?” Tommy replied absent-mindedly once in their bedroom, genuinely seeming to be oblivious as to what he was talking about. Jimmy was surprised and annoyed that Tommy could put on this front of almost confused ignorance, when he knew full well what Jimmy was talking about.

“Why do you do that?” Jimmy asked, with barely suppressed annoyance. “You know what I mean! Omni; what do you make of what happened to us earlier today?”

“Oh, that!” Tommy answered, dismissively, whilst paying greater attention to his Gameboy than to what Jimmy wanted him to say. “Just another day out, really. I think you need to accept it for what it was – another day out – and move on. It's not going to happen again; it was a one off, and I'm not sure what happened at all. Now, if you don't mind ...”