The Midnight Carnival (19 page)

‘Well, that’s rude! We went to all that trouble to get their doll back, and they went and scarpered.’

Grace stood in mud, clutching the doll to her belly, with the inexplicable sensation that she was holding a bag full of squirming worms.

‘Maybe the doctor and Drake did this,’ said Rachel. ‘Took over the carnival and forced them to leave.’

‘No-one forced them to leave,’ Grace whispered.

‘What?’

Grace spoke louder this time.

‘We have to get rid of the doll. Now.’

‘Okay, then just leave it here.’

‘No, not where someone else could find it.’

‘Why not?’ asked Una.

‘Because it’s not just a straw doll.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘Something bad. We need help.’

‘Ms Lemon’s place is that way,’ said Rachel.

‘No,’ replied Grace, ‘to Mrs Quinlan’s.’

She had a feeling that whatever badness the girls had landed themselves with, the Old Cat Lady would put up a good fight.

Adie and Delilah hurried through town.

‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Delilah said, breathless.

‘The creature is her pet,’ Adie replied. ‘It might be the only leverage we have.’

‘But you don’t know it’s safe to take it, just because it’s in a small box–’

‘She ordered it in, like it was supposed to stay there. I don’t think it can leave the box now. If we take it, hide it somewhere, we could use it against her.’

‘What if she doesn’t care about it? For all we know, it means nothing to her.’

‘She could have killed it, but she didn’t. She put it safe inside some box. Trust me, she feels something for it.’

‘Adie, last time we tried to do something on our own we
summoned that thing that took over your mother.’

Adie didn’t respond to this. It was getting harder and harder to think of her mother’s face without feeling afraid, and the urgency she felt now was more about seeing her mum’s jolly grin again and hearing her bad jokes than it was about saving the town.

Even before they reached Dunbridge Park, she saw it was empty. She had been watching for the great curve of the ferris wheel, the clashing of loud music and the lights flaring as evening fell. But it was quiet, the trees surrounding the park hid no lights behind, and the giant wheel was nowhere to be seen.

Adie sprinted ahead, leaving Delilah gasping behind her.

‘No!’ she said, tripping into one of the wide tracks left by the trucks. ‘It can’t be gone. It’s all we had!’

Delilah finally caught up and grasped Adie’s arm.

‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Why would they leave so suddenly?’

Adie just shook her head helplessly.

They stood there, alone in the park, for the longest time; Adie too crestfallen to go, and Delilah reluctant to leave her friend. The stars were coming out when they saw a figure in the gloom. It was rushing across the grass towards them. He was very close by the time Adie spotted his green skin. His hair was damp with sweat and he was nearly keeling over with exhaustion.

‘Where are your friends?’ he panted.

Still rude
, Adie thought.

‘They’re not with us,’ she answered dully.

‘Why?’ Delilah said in a much more accommodating tone. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘They were set up,’ Drake said, still gasping for breath, ‘by Justine. They were sent to take something from me and the doctor, a doll that Justine said we had stolen. But that’s not it at all…’

He bent over as if about to throw up and Delilah hurried to rub his back.

‘Just breathe,’ she said. ‘Calm down, or you’ll be sick.’

He shook off her arm, determined to continue.

‘We’re cursed,’ he said, ‘all of us, the whole carnival. By this sorceress, Murdrina. Grigori upset her and she hexed us, and the only way for us to be free is if someone takes the hex, willingly.’

‘How do you take a hex?’ Adie wondered aloud, and then caught herself. ‘I mean… What is a hex?’

Drake raised one eyebrow.

‘Don’t pretend. They know you’re witches, Grigori saw it in your cards. And hell, that only made ’em more determined for you to take on the curse. The hex is a doll, a simple, little straw doll. All they needed – Felix, Justine, all of them – was for someone to take it willingly. But that’s the kick. It looks harmless, but no-one would ever steal it. Felix tried to give it
away so many times; he’d hand it over, still inside this pretty wooden box, and people would tell him to go hang. It drove him crazy.’

Adie felt the strangest sensation of fear mixed with anger mixed with just a tinge of relief. She had not dragged the creature into this world. It had been nothing to do with her all along.

‘Why wouldn’t anyone take it?’ said Delilah.

‘Get close to the thing and you’ll know why. Inside a box or not, you can tell it ain’t right,’ Drake replied.

‘That creature?’ Adie exclaimed. ‘It’s been out, playing games, hurting people. And all this time I thought it was my fault.’

‘Out?’ Drake said. ‘You mean you saw it?’

‘We’ve been beaten up by it!’

‘I don’t get it, it’s just a doll. How could it–’

‘I don’t care how it happened, the point is I thought this whole time that I was to blame for all of this, but it’s you. It’s you people.’

‘We people?’
Drake’s expression hardened.

Adie looked as if she might cry.

‘Everything was great until your stupid carnival came here.’ She turned to leave. ‘Now I have to find my friends before it’s too late.’

‘It’s already too late, don’t you get it?’ Drake snapped. ‘The carnival was able to leave town the second somebody else
picked up that doll. The carnival is free because your friends have taken on the curse.’

‘And you just let it happen?!’

‘I’ve been locked up! They dragged me out of town with them. I had to dislocate both shoulders to escape the jailcart, and I ran the whole way back.’

There was a long pause as all of this sank in.

‘You stay here,’ Adie said finally, ‘in case Grace and the others come to the park looking for the carnival. Delilah and I will search for them outside.’

‘What are you going to do? There’s nothing you can do.’

‘Like you said, we’re witches. We’ll fix this.’

Adie marched out of the park with Delilah scurrying after her.

‘Are we?’ the small girl asked. ‘Going to fix this? Because I don’t know how, do you? And you didn’t tell him about Murdrina. That’s who we summoned, Adie.’

‘I know that.’

‘We couldn’t beat her pet, and we can’t beat her. If Grace and the others already have the doll, what can you do about it?’

‘I can take it from them.’

18

Too Many Doors

‘There they are,’ Adie said, spotting the girls on Mrs Quinlan’s porch in the distance. ‘Thank God for that.’

Adie and Delilah made their way into Wilton Place with relief. They saw Mrs Quinlan open the door and appear to speak gruffly to the girls. Then Delilah pointed.

‘What’s that?’ she said. ‘Grace is holding something.’

They started jogging towards the cul-de-sac, speeding up as panic gripped Adie’s heart.

‘It’s the doll!’

Both girls broke into a sprint, waving their hands and yelling. But Mrs Quinlan had already snatched the doll from Grace’s hands, let the girls in and shut the door.

‘No!’ Adie screamed.

They reached the dilapidated house and hammered on the
door. There was no answer. Adie pounded her fists on the frosted glass of the porch, half hoping it would shatter. But she stopped suddenly when she realised she could see nothing through it. It looked like glass, it sounded like glass when she knocked on it, but there was nothing visible through the transparent window. She could see no colour, no light, the glass just seemed to go on and on.

‘Don’t you have a key?’ she said, still smacking her hands on the frosted window.

‘I’m trying.’ Delilah already had the key and was trying to get it in the lock, but it wouldn’t go in. ‘There’s no hole for it. It looks like there is, but I can’t get the key in.’

Adie ran her nails around the door frame.

‘There’s no gap,’ she said. ‘It’s not a door anymore, it’s solid.’

The letterbox opened with a sudden clatter, and a violent gust of wind blew them off the porch onto the yellowed grass of the front garden. Adie rolled over and gazed at the door. The letterbox smiled, puckered itself to blow them a kiss, then flattened back against the sturdy wooden panel.

‘It’s too late,’ Adie whispered. ‘We’re too late.’

‘What the hell is that?’ Spittle flew from Mrs Quinlan’s lips as soon as she opened her door to the three girls stood on her porch.

‘A doll made of straw,’ replied Una.

‘Not just a doll,’ said Grace, nearly gagging. ‘It feels squirmy in my hands.’

The woman furrowed her brow at Grace’s pasty complexion.

‘A couple of carnival folk stole it from the other carnival folk, and then we got it back for the other carnival folk, but when we went to return it to the other carnival folk, they’d left,’ Una said.

‘What?’ the woman spat, still watching Grace.

‘The carnival’s gone. They just up and legged it. Without this doll.’

Mrs Quinlan snatched the doll and Grace felt the burden lift off her.

‘Come in,’ the woman said, suddenly pale in the face, and eyeing the doll with as much disgust as if it was a bag of cat poo.

The girls stepped into the hall. For a split second Grace thought she heard yelling. She turned and saw Adie and Delilah racing up the road towards the house. They looked panicked. They looked
terrified
. The door swung shut, and they were gone.

The door to the kitchen slammed shut at the same time, with Mrs Quinlan on the other side.

‘Charming,’ Una said. ‘I take it we’re not getting any tea then. That is one rude lady.’

A little worm of worry wriggled in Grace’s chest. She
pulled at the latch on the front door. It wouldn’t open. She tried again, putting all her weight on it, eventually putting both feet on the wall next to it, but it wouldn’t budge.

‘Rachel,’ she said, ‘try and get into the kitchen.’

Rachel hurried down the hall and pushed on the door handle.

‘It’s stuck,’ she said.

‘Hold on,’ said Una. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘Something’s locked the doors,’ said Grace, trying to push her nails into the door jamb. ‘More than locked. It’s fused the front door to the frame.’

‘You mean, like, glued?’

‘Shh!’ Grace put her ear to the frosted glass. ‘Do you hear that?’

There were voices, shouting, yelling, but a million miles away.

‘This isn’t going to open,’ Rachel said, between bouts of slamming her shoulder against the kitchen door.

‘This one’s locked as well,’ Una said, leaning on the door handle of the front room.

Grace sprinted up the stairs but, three steps from the top, she bashed against something invisible and went tumbling back down.

‘Grace!’

Una and Rachel rushed to where she lay at the bottom the stairs. Her head was spinning and there was a trickle
of blood from her nose. As Una lifted her to her feet, she couldn’t feel anything broken.

‘I’m alright.’

‘What was that?’ said Rachel.

Una tentatively walked up the steps with one hand out in front. She stopped with her hand pushing against thin air.

‘It’s like a wall,’ she said. ‘What the hell is going on?’

Seconds later and the girls were banging and shoulder-slamming the kitchen door.

‘Mrs Quinlan! Mrs Quinlan!’

They went on until the heels of Grace’s hands were red and sore. Then, without warning, one of Una’s shoulder-slams flung the door wide open, and they fell over each other, hitting the linoleum with a
smack
.

But it wasn’t Mrs Quinlan’s kitchen anymore. The cooker was where the cooker normally was, the fridge and table were in place as usual, but everything was the wrong colour – the cupboard doors were fluorescent orange, the countertops a nasty pink – the floor and shelves and ceiling clashed in yellows, greens and blues. That, and there was a new door to the right. It was bright white and cleaner than anything in the Cat Lady’s run-down house. Grace placed her hands against it, and jumped when it shook.

‘Girls?’ Mrs Quinlan’s voice sounded from within. ‘Girls, is that you? What the hell is this? Get me out of here.’

‘Mrs Quinlan?’ Grace cried. ‘Mrs Quinlan, we’re here. Just
hold on.’

Una grabbed a puce-coloured broom and jabbed it next to the door handle, over and over.

‘We need something bigger,’ Grace said, pulling one of the benches from under the table.

Rachel held the other end, while Una grabbed the middle.

‘On three,’ said Grace. ‘One, two, three!’

The bench smashed into the wood, sending clumps of plaster and dust toppling to the ground. When the air cleared they could see that the door was gone. They had rammed the bench into the wall.

Grace stood back, then whirled around to see two new doors at the opposite end of the room. They were both shaking in their frames with thumps and shouts from inside. As she moved closer, Grace could also hear the scratching and mewing of cats. She put her ear to the door on the left.

‘She’s behind this one. I can hear her and the cats.’

‘No,’ said Una, with her ear to the door on the right. ‘It’s this one. I can hear her.’

Rachel dragged a second bench from under the table; it squeaked along the lino.

‘Try again,’ she said, lifting the back end.

Grace gripped the wooden bench with sweaty hands.

‘One, two, three!’

Plaster again. Both doors had disappeared. The hammering and meowing now came from above and behind them.
A door had appeared in the ceiling, another on the far wall again, but Grace could also hear Mrs Quinlan’s voice behind the door they had come in.

‘She’s in the hall,’ she cried.

Flinging the door open, she was met with the dark quiet of the corridor, and nothing more. White doors had matriculated along the right-hand side where there had only been one to the front room before. She listened in trepidation as the whining of cat miaows and the distant yelling of Mrs Quinlan began to reverberate through all of them.

The stairs on the left had vanished, replaced by a smooth white travelator, which revolved from the first floor to the ground floor with absurd speed.

‘I take it we’re not supposed to get up there,’ said Rachel.

‘Then let’s go up there,’ said Grace.

Mumbling under her breath, she rose half a metre into the air, and sailed upwards keeping her feet above the travelator. She lowered herself gently when she reached the next floor. She looked up, expecting to see the square opening to Mrs Quinlan’s attic and the rickety ladder below, but there was only a big, red X where the entrance should have been.

Rachel landed gracefully behind her, Una with a thump. She steadied herself with a hand on Grace’s shoulder.

‘Tell me you know what this is, and how we get out of here.’

Grace scanned the landing, shaking her head.

‘Oh, fudgeballs,’ Una whined.

‘I saw Adie and Delilah in the street,’ said Grace, ‘before the door shut. And I’m sure I heard them yelling outside. They knew something we didn’t.’

‘About what?’ said Rachel.

‘About the straw doll.’

‘You think the doll is doing this?’

‘Yes,’ said Grace. ‘And I think Justine knew this would happen when she asked us to steal it. She and the ringmaster weren’t forced to leave. They planned it.’

Grace felt Una’s head land against her back, and heard her muffled voice,

‘Why are half the people we meet pure evil? Seriously. Like, statistics-wise, that can’t be right.’

‘That door’s open a crack,’ said Grace, pointing at one of the bedrooms.

‘Are we going to search each room?’ asked Rachel.

‘Mrs Quinlan’s here somewhere.’

‘Alright,’ said Una, grabbing the back of Grace’s jumper, ‘but nobody leave me alone in here. I don’t want some evil spirit pushing me down the stairs… or the travelator.’

‘You can fly, Una,’ Grace reminded her, ‘and much more. Remember your training, and stay on your toes.’

‘I don’t like being on my toes.’ Una followed the other two to the open door. ‘I fall over.’

Grace ignored this last comment and pushed on the open
door. It swung out to reveal a huge, well-lit room. The polished wood floor was bathed in light from three large skylights, and the ceiling was impossibly high. Stone statues were dotted all around the place, elegant and beautifully carved. There were men, women and children, and they all reached for the sky with joyful expressions.

The girls strolled between them, looking for anything that stood out, any kind of clue. When Grace reached the back of the large room, she sighed. Nothing. Then one of the statues caught her eye. It was a boy, stood on a small platform of stone, and he wasn’t looking up. He was looking right at her. Had he been that way before?

‘This one’s different,’ she called to the others as they roamed throughout the room. ‘He’s…’

She trailed off as she gazed into his blue glassy eyes. They seemed to be marble, rather than grey stone. She didn’t like his expression. Backing away she felt a tug on her hair.

She whipped around and saw a woman of stone with her hand out. Grace’s hair had caught on the outstretched fingers. The statue’s eyes were blue glass too.

‘She wasn’t like that before,’ Grace said to herself. ‘I’m sure of it.’

When she turned again the boy’s arms were splayed out in front of him, still frozen, but as if he had tried to catch her while her back was turned.

‘Rachel,’ she cried, ‘Una, be careful. I think these statues
are moving.’

‘Really?’ she heard Rachel reply. ‘I hadn’t… Ow!’

‘What was that? Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, but… I think I’m stuck.’

‘Hang on, I’m coming.’

But Grace tripped and went sprawling to the ground. Getting to her feet, she was suddenly in a forest of outstretched, stone limbs. She wove between them and felt a clamp above her elbow. One of the men had fastened his stone hand around her arm. She didn’t see him move; it was like he had always been there. Then,
clamp
. She felt the same on her ankle. A little girl, her glassy eyes fixed, gazed up from the ground, her hands clasped around Grace’s leg. Grace never saw any of them move; everything in her sightline was fixed, motionless, and then she felt another grab. Her waist this time. A woman’s stone arm was closed around her belly like it had been carved there.

‘Rachel, Una!’

‘One of them’s got me, Grace,’ Una yelled from somewhere amongst the stone bodies. ‘I can’t get out. Ah! There’s one on my arm as well!’

‘I can’t move either,’ screamed Rachel. ‘Three of them have got me. Grace, help!’