The Paradise Trap (26 page)

It was Marcus who said, ‘Maybe the dangerous stuff always ends up here. So Miss Molpe can chuck it back into the real world.’ Adjusting his glasses, which had nearly been knocked off his face, he studied the closed door that stood a few metres away across the room. ‘Maybe this is where she normally hangs out,’ he concluded, ‘and the real world’s beyond that door at the top of the cellar stairs.’

‘God, I hope so,’ Newt whimpered. She had climbed stiffly to her feet. ‘But who’s going to open the damn door and find out?’

‘Prot will.’ Sterling was struggling to raise himself. ‘Not yet, though.’

‘No. Not yet,’ said Jake. ‘Before we do anything else, we need to lock up our
friend
here.’ He spat out the word ‘friend’ like a mouthful of sour milk. ‘Then we can take her with us and decide what to do with her later.’

Marcus had no objection to this plan. Even Holly didn’t kick up a fuss; on the contrary, she was eyeing the siren’s slightly flattened shape with the sort of nervous disgust she usually reserved for slugs and cockroaches.

Lying on the floor, all damp and bent and angular, with her scaly blue limbs and wisps of feathery hair, Miss Molpe looked like plucked roadkill.

‘Can’t we just leave her?’ Coco asked in a plaintive voice. But Jake shook his head.

‘Not until we’re
absolutely sure
that we’re home,’ he insisted. Then he turned to address Holly. ‘Can you go get my suitcase? I’d do it myself if I didn’t have to keep an eye on this sneaky pile of—
’

‘I’ll do it,’ Newt volunteered, cutting him off mid-insult. Before anyone could object, she stepped out of the lift and moved towards Jake’s suitcase.

That was when the brochures on the shelves began to rustle as if they were caught in a strong breeze. At the same time, the door to the cellar remained tightly shut. So where, Marcus wondered, could the breeze be coming from?

‘She’s moving, Jake!’ Holly spoke sharply, her gaze on Miss Molpe – who seemed to be shivering or clucking. It was hard to tell, because the siren’s face was hidden. By now almost everyone was upright, including Sterling.

Out in the office, brochures were fluttering from their shelves like butterflies, flapping and snapping their colourful pages.

‘Ow!’ yelped Newt. A flying brochure had just grazed her cheek. She slapped at it, then bent to pick up Jake’s suitcase. But more brochures were swooping from their perches like a flock of angry birds. ‘
Yeow!
’ she cried. ‘Get off!’

‘Oh, jeez,’ said Jake. He sounded distinctly rattled.

Marcus, however, was encouraged by the sight of so many whirling, spiralling paper aeroplanes. ‘This is good,’ was his view. ‘It means that someone’s protecting that door over there.’

‘Because it leads to the outside world?’ Holly inquired.

Marcus shrugged. Though he couldn’t be sure, it certainly looked that way.

‘
Ouch!
’ As Newt ran back towards the lift, suitcase in hand, she was pelted by dive-bombing brochures. When she swung at them with the suitcase, they swirled aside and attacked her from another angle.

But they didn’t follow her into the lift. The moment she crossed the threshold, nearly tripping over Prot as she did so, the brochures seemed to lose interest. They banked and turned and headed straight back into the room, where they tumbled about in mid-air, like a giant cloud of confetti.

‘Gimme that.’ Jake wrenched the suitcase from Newt and slammed it onto the floor. Then he flung it open, struggling with Miss Molpe at the same time. She was screeching like a banshee – like a circular saw – like a chorus of fire alarms – and the noise was excruciating. It was like a needle in the brain. Marcus had to clap his hands over his ears. Everyone else did the same thing, except Jake. Both of
his
hands were busy, so he had to grit his teeth, sweating and grimacing, as he turned his head away from her.

The gag wasn’t enough to stifle her wordless shriek.

‘Somebody take the stuff outta my case!’ Jake barked hoarsely. ‘Now! Quick!’ To Sterling he shouted, ‘We’ve gotta lift her! On the count of three . . .’

While Marcus and Edison squatted down to scoop all Jake’s old supplies out of the suitcase, Jake and Sterling tried to lift Miss Molpe. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t budge. No matter how much the straining men heaved and grunted – no matter how firmly they grasped her writhing, squirming, howling shape – she was too heavy for them. At last Jake called a halt to the attempt.

‘
What’s in that suitcase?
’ he roared over the noise.

‘Um . . .’ Edison surveyed his booty, his little face creased with discomfort. ‘There’s Prot’s hand, and a fishing line, and pens, and a cigarette lighter, and a packet of chewing gum—’

‘Pass me the cigarette lighter,’ Jake interrupted grimly. ‘I’ll make her talk.’

Miss Molpe abruptly stopped screaming. In the sudden silence, Holly’s gasp of horror was clearly audible, but before she could protest Sterling exclaimed, ‘It’s all right! She’s losing weight! I can lift her now!’

Miss Molpe, in fact, had suddenly become so light that Sterling almost overbalanced as he yanked at her legs; he wasn’t expecting her to slide across the floor as easily as she did.

‘How are we going to get out of here, though?’ Holly demanded. She was peering at the flurry of brochures that hovered between the lift and the door to the cellar. ‘We’ll be cut to bits!’

‘A paper cut never killed anybody,’ Jake rejoined. He had stooped to pick up Miss Molpe’s shoulders, leaving her feet to Sterling. When the two men swung her towards Jake’s suitcase, however, her tongue whipped out like a long blue serpent.

Jake dropped his end. ‘
Jesus!
’ he squawked.

‘Get her in! Just get her in!’ cried Coco. She had flattened herself against a wall in abject terror. Marcus was also paralysed; like Edison, he stood rooted to the spot, spellbound at the siren’s transformation into a coiling, wriggling, hissing, boneless
thing.
Only Holly and Newt darted forward.

Miss Molpe tried to peck at them with her nose. She tried to cut them with her spurs. Thanks to the combined efforts of Newt, Holly, Jake and Sterling, however, she was finally overcome. They managed to thrust her into the suitcase.

Then Jake slammed the lid shut and Holly sat on it.

‘Okay!’ Jake was breathless and damp with sweat. ‘Now we send Prot ahead to open the other door. When he’s done that, we’ll make a run for it. Agreed?’

‘I don’t know.’ Marcus was dubious. ‘One paper cut can really hurt. Imagine having fifty of them!’

‘I don’t like paper cuts,’ Edison whined.

‘Okay, I tell you what.’ Jake tried again. ‘How about we get Prot to hold open that other door and then we send one person to fetch blankets or tarpaulins or something from the outside world, which the rest of us can use to shield ourselves when
we
leave. How about that?’

‘Sounds good,’ said Sterling. Marcus gave Jake a thumbs-up sign. His mother nodded. Coco made an approving noise as Edison relaxed against her.

Only Newt objected.

‘Wait!’ she shrilled. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ When everyone stared at her blankly, she added, ‘
What about the little white dog?
’

55

INFERNO

‘W
E
’
RE NOT GOING BACK FOR THAT DOG
,’ C
OCO DECLARED
.

‘But we have to!’ cried Newt. ‘It’s
our
fault the poor thing’s trapped!’

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘
No!
’

‘We could send Prot,’ Marcus meekly suggested. ‘We could give him the flight number for Lysitte Run, and he could key it into the lift.’

When Coco hesitated, Jake put his foot down. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘First things first. We need Prot to open that door.’ Stooping, he addressed the robot. ‘Open that door, Prot,’ he said, pointing through the snowstorm of brochures. ‘And hold it open. Understand?’

‘I understand,’ Prot droned in response. ‘I must open that door and hold it open.’

‘Correct.’ Jake turned to face the others as Prot trundled off to execute his command. ‘When the door’s open, I’m going out to get blankets.’

‘No. Not you.’ Holly grabbed Jake’s wrist. ‘You don’t even know where my blankets are.’

‘So why don’t you tell me?’ He sounded impatient. Holly wouldn’t yield, though; she shook her head.

‘With any luck, it’s my caravan out there,’ she replied. ‘And if it is, then I know just where to look for things. Wait here and let me do it. I’ll be back in three seconds.’

‘But Mum,’ Marcus protested, ‘have you
seen
what you’ll be walking into?’ He himself had been watching the robot plough through a whirlwind of bombarding brochures, which were hitting Prot’s metal hide with such force that they made clinking noises as they bounced off it. ‘Those things are really going to hurt!’

Holly simply smiled. ‘I’ve had a root canal, Marcus. Nothing else will ever come close to that,’ she assured him.

Prot, meanwhile, had reached the other side of the room – and had pulled open the door, as instructed. When a sudden gust of fresh air blew a path through the paper, Holly saw her chance. ‘Off I go!’ she cried, darting forward. But she was wasn’t quick enough. By the time she reached the desk, she was almost invisible; hundreds of brochures were swarming around her like bees. To protect her eyes, she had to fold her arms across her face.

Then she veered off course because she couldn’t see where she was going.

‘Mum! No!’ Marcus shouted. Jake didn’t think twice. He plunged straight after her, with Marcus close behind him. There was an immediate reaction from the brochures, which descended on Marcus so thickly that he soon found it hard to breathe. They plastered themselves over his nose and mouth. They became tangled in his hair. No matter how many he pulled off or batted away, more and more kept coming.

‘
Newt! Stop!
’ Coco screamed. There was a flash of light and a smell of smoke. Jake gave Marcus a push, bawling, ‘Get out! That way! Quick!’

All at once Marcus found himself stumbling past Prot into a familiar, brick-walled, stone-floored cellar.

‘Oh!’ He turned around. ‘Mum! Look! We’re home!’

But Holly wasn’t listening. She was too busy dodging the brochures, some of which were now on fire. They careened over her head, singeing the paint and igniting other brochures, until they dropped, blackened and shrivelled, onto the office carpet. There they lay, smouldering like cigarette butts, while Coco shrieked and Prot made a high-pitched fire-alarm noise.

Squinting through the chaos, Marcus could just make out that Newt was holding the cigarette lighter.

‘Christ!’ Jake roared at her. ‘Did you set
fire
to the
pamphlets
?’

Holly, meanwhile, was crawling across the carpet, which had already begun to send up little plumes of smoke.

‘Well, somebody had to do
something
!’ Though Newt defended herself loudly and fervently, no one paid any attention. Her father was trying to lift Jake’s suitcase, which had suddenly become much heavier. Jake had doubled back to help him. Holly was now on her feet, staggering towards the exit with her head down.

‘Here, Mum!’ called Marcus. ‘It’s safe in here!’

He reached out and grabbed her sleeve, guiding her over the threshold. None of the burning brochures followed her; they seemed unable to. They were stuck inside the office, like fiery flecks inside a snow globe.

Beyond them, in the lift, Coco was hanging back. She’d wrapped a fold of her robe around Edison and was staring, aghast, at the flames that were licking along the carpet near one of the display shelves.

‘I’ll get water!’ Holly cried. ‘Water and blankets!’ She whirled around and raced up the cellar stairs, just ahead of Marcus.

‘Wait! Mum!’ he protested. ‘Be careful! It might not be our caravan!’

But it was. Marcus
knew
it was. Because on finally emerging from the open banquette seat, he found that he could smell sweaty gym clothes.

His mother was already pulling blankets out from under the bed. ‘Here!’ she exclaimed, throwing them at Marcus. ‘Take these down! I’ll get some water!’

‘Mum? Hey, Mum.’ Before he did anything else, Marcus wanted to make absolutely sure that they weren’t being taken for a ride. ‘What does this place smell like to you?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Holly stared at him as if he were mad. ‘For God’s sake Marcus!’

‘Just tell me.’

Holly sniffed. ‘It smells like mouldy baked beans,’ she decided. And her son heaved a sigh of relief.

‘Then we’re home,’ he said. ‘We really are back home.’

56

EXCESS BAGGAGE

‘W
ELL
,
OF COURSE WE
’
RE HOME
!’ H
OLLY DIDN
’
T SEEM TO
have the slightest doubt about
that
. ‘If we weren’t, we’d be fending off the security guard, not to mention the little blonde girl.’

‘Do you think so?’ Marcus couldn’t agree with her. He was about to point out that the siren could have dreamed up any number of fake caravans when Holly flapped an impatient hand at him.

‘Go on! Quick!’ she said. ‘I’ll be right behind you!’

So Marcus retraced his steps – very, very carefully. With the bundle of blankets impeding his view, he couldn’t exactly rush. In fact, he was only halfway downstairs when he almost collided with Coco and Edison. Coco had used the hood of her robe to shield her head during their mad dash from the lift.

‘Oh my God! Are those blankets?’ Coco extended her arms towards Marcus. ‘I’ll take them! You take Eddie!’

Marcus hesitated. ‘But—’

‘Hurry up!’ Coco pleaded. ‘Before the whole place burns down!’

Sure enough, the cellar was already filling with smoke. And although none of the flaming brochures had ventured past Prot, Marcus could see that the doorjamb was beginning to smoulder.

‘Go on, Eddie!’ Coco urged. With one hand she gave her stepson a prod up the stairs; with the other she seized the untidy clump of blankets that Marcus was presenting to her. ‘You boys get out! Wait for us in the caravan!’