Attica (21 page)

As they ran Chloe kept looking at the ubiquitous piles of junk that they passed lying on the boards. Finally she saw something.

‘Clogs,’ she yelled. ‘Quick. Put a pair on over your shoes.’

‘But they’ll
slow us up,’ complained Alex.

‘Yes, maybe – but they’ll destroy the trail. Be careful how you put them on. Don’t touch the bottoms. Then our smell won’t be on the trail we leave behind. It’ll just be old clogs against wooden boards. Wood on wood. The dolls won’t be able to follow us then.’

Alex saw the sense in this and found a large pair of clogs that would go over his shoes. Soon the pair of them were clumping along, making the most fearful racket, but hopeful that their trick would work.

However, when they stopped to rest and Alex used the binoculars again, he informed his sister that the dolls were still coming.

‘They’re gaining on us,’ he said. ‘What about doubling back and hiding somewhere?’

‘I don’t like that idea. If they can sniff our trail while we’re wearing clogs, they can certainly find hiding places.’

The wooden clogs were abandoned. The pair raced for their lives over the boards, hoping to come across some sort of habitation full of creatures who might help them. Nothing appeared on the horizon though and now the voodoo dolls were visible without the glasses. A dust cloud told of their coming. There were swarms of them, some dark, some pale, scurrying over piles of junk: a horde of warriors. The children tried to throw things in the dolls’ path, like old chairs and boxes, but nothing seemed to deter their pursuers. The glitter of long needles was visible now, as the small hunters ran through shafts of sunlight, their beady eyes intent upon their prey.

‘We’re not going to get away,’ gasped Alex. ‘They’re going to catch us, Clo.’

‘You go on,’ said his sister. ‘I’ll stay here and see if I can stop them.’

‘Not a chance.’

‘I’m the
eldest. You should do as I say.’ Her tone was desperate. ‘You
have
to do what I say.’

‘No way. We stick together.’

Chloe said, ‘If we split up, one of us might make it.’

‘Don’t care. Don’t want to split up. Nelson could arrive. He’d make mincemeat of those dolls.’

‘No he wouldn’t. They’d get him too. Look, there are hundreds of them. He wouldn’t have a chance.’

There was a pile of hockey sticks in the next junk heap. Alex stopped and grabbed one, turning to face the enemy.

‘I’ve had it, Clo. I’m going down fighting.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she cried. ‘Come on. We can still run.’

‘Nope.’

Alex stood there, waiting, swinging the hockey stick.

Chloe knew they had run themselves out. She grabbed one of the old hockey sticks and stood by her brother. The dolls were triumphant, now having their quarry in their sight. They streamed towards the two children, jabbing the air with their nasty steel weapons.

Alex realised at the last minute that he could protect his face from those needles. He put Makishi on. Then he turned towards the dolls, swinging his club. The little fiends were almost on them now, only metres away. This was it, this was where the children’s journey through Attica ended. They had been hunted down and trapped by these awful effigies of man, and were about to die.

‘Stop. I command you to stop. You will obey.’

Makishi had spoken in a powerful voice.

The voodoo dolls skidded to a halt.

Makishi’s expression was severe.

‘Why do you attack us?’

Just metres from the children, the voodoo dolls fell on their little knees and bowed in reverence to Makishi. There were rows and rows of them, some still coming, who halted and bowed down low. Finally, all was so quiet you could almost hear the dust settling on the boards. Alex and Chloe waited breathlessly, wondering what would come next.

A shimmering went through
the dolls as they stuck their needles back into their wax bodies. They knew there would be no sacrifice here. Makishi was one of their lords. They could do nothing more than sheath their weapons and wait for Makishi’s reprimand.

‘These are my friends,’ Makishi said at last in deep tones. ‘You will respect the carriers of Makishi or shame will fall on your heads. The masks have provided homes for the voodoo dolls since our Collector went the way of all Collectors. You are our tenants, our subjects.’

‘Yes, lord,’ incanted the voodoo dolls. ‘We are your subjects.’

‘Leave us alone then, with our friends, our carriers.’

One voodoo doll looked up, with the sharp words, ‘But, master, we have hunted long and hard—’

A strong baleful stare from Makishi was enough to silence this audacious creature. The dolls gradually got to their feet, looking sheepish. They ambled away, in ones, twos, groups of three or four, heading back in the direction they had come. The audacious one was pricked in the buttocks by those who walked behind him in an attempt to curry favour with Makishi. One of their landlords had spoken and the humans were under his protection.

They could do no more than return to their homeland.

When the voodoo dolls had gone, Alex took off his mask and looked into its hollow eyes.

‘Thanks Makishi,’ he said. ‘You saved our lives.’

‘My pleasures!’ replied the mask.

CHAPTER 13

The Collector of Souls

After the incident with
the dolls Chloe and Alex continued on their journey. Chloe was despairing of ever finding Jordy. She wondered if her step-brother were still in the attic. Was he even still alive? She and Alex had come very close to death. Who was to say that Jordy had not encountered some terrible dangers and had not been so lucky?

When she spoke to Alex, he seemed astonishingly careless of Jordy’s fate. ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ Alex replied.

Chloe asked him how he could be so sure and Alex just shrugged and said, ‘I get feelings now, Clo. He’s not far away. Honestly, I can feel it.’

‘You’re beginning to frighten me, Alex.’

Alex said, ‘Sorry.’

‘No, you don’t have to say sorry. It’s not your fault, but you seem to have changed lately. I don’t know what to make of you.’

‘Sorry, Clo.’

She let this one pass. Indeed, walking behind her brother now she felt she hardly knew him. He appeared quite unconcerned by their plight. Here they were, lost in an unknown world, their parents completely ignorant of where they were or what they were doing, with the possibility of never finding home again, and Alex seemed carefree and content. It wasn’t that he was
happy
exactly, but he certainly wasn’t worried in any way. Chloe couldn’t pin it down exactly, but Alex apparently had a connection with the attic that she did not. He appeared to be at
home
here.

Passing through a dim
area, where the light clustered around a few peepholes in the roof, something happened.

‘Did you see that?’ cried Alex.

Chloe’s heart was beating fast. She had indeed seen it.

The dust was still settling from the sudden disturbance. It was difficult to believe. For many days now they had been wandering Attica without seeing another human being. Now one had popped up, just like that. A woman had unexpectedly opened a trapdoor from below.

The woman had lifted a box and pushed it along the boards as far as her arms could reach. Then she had vanished again, closing a trapdoor behind her. Another box of junk for the attic. To the woman’s eyes, unused to the dimness, the darkness had been impenetrable. Somewhat harassed, with fly-away hair, she had disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. Obviously to her this was not a vast continent whose guttered eaves were long journeys away, but simply her own small attic space.

‘Look, you can see the cracks now.’

Chloe looked down. There were faint lines in the dust forming a square. She stirred the dust with her toe, pushing it aside, and found underneath the unmistakable shape of a trapdoor. It was the first they had seen since leaving their own part of the attic. Perhaps there had been more which had gone unnoticed.

‘Oh, Alex,’ she said. ‘I wish this was our house.’

‘Well – well, it’s not.’

‘But it might be next door?’

Alex raised
his hands. ‘Is this our part of the attic? No. There’s none of our stuff here. That means we’re in another part. If you go down that trapdoor, Clo, you might never come back up again. Who’s to say where you’ll end up? Not just another house in another street in another town. Could even be in another part of the world. You wouldn’t want to go down and find yourself in Holloway Prison, would you? Or stuck in a hut in Alaska? I know I wouldn’t.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ she snapped, ‘but that’s just guessing. This is the first trapdoor we’ve come across …’

‘No it’s not,’ replied her brother calmly, staring at her from beneath the brim of his big floppy hat, ‘there have been lots more. You just haven’t seen them.
I
have.’

‘Stop being so know-it-all.’

‘Oh, I don’t know everything, but I know enough. I can’t help it, Clo, I
have
seen other trapdoors. I thought you had too. You mustn’t take any notice of them. We’ll know if ever we come across our own.’

If ever? Chloe’s heart pounded. He really didn’t care. You could hear it in his voice. It didn’t matter to Alex if he never went home again. She stared back into his deep brown eyes. There was no troubled look in them. They were calm and accepting. If she felt she had grown a lot in spirit since she’d been in the attic, Alex’s spirit had somehow been transformed. Chloe didn’t know him. He had turned away from her. It was not necessarily a
bad
change; Alex had not become some evil monster. He was simply very different. At least, part of him was.

‘Don’t keep looking at me like that, Clo. You’re scary.’ He nodded at her head and grinned. ‘You’re beginning to look like a witch. You need to wash your hair.’

Now this was more like the old Alex. She reached up and touched her hair. She had always been very proud of it. It was long, black and silky, like her mother’s. Very full, very thick. It had always shone with natural oils, but now it felt like straw. Horrible matted straw. She reached out, lifted Alex’s hat, and ruffled his straggly hair. ‘You too. You look like a tramp.’

‘Do you
think we could find some shampoo somewhere?’ He scratched. ‘I think I’m getting fleas.’

‘You can’t be
getting
them. You either have them or you don’t. Anyway, I’m not surprised. Anything could be in those old clothes you’ve taken to wearing. A colony of termites. In any case I don’t think you’ve got lice.’ Chloe always insisted on calling things by their proper names. ‘I think you’ve just got a head full of scurf. We’ll have to be on the look-out for some shampoo. Come on, let’s get on now. If Jordy’s not far away, as you think, we need to find him.’

‘They escaped from the voodoo dolls.’

Lucky for them
.

‘’Twasn’t luck, master, ’twas Makishi.’

I think we’re wasting our time with this bunch
.

‘Then let’s not bother with them.’

The board-comber is tempted to let the children go. He takes his bag of Inuit carvings out and feels the soapstone figures through the cloth. How he would love another one for his collection. Perhaps a wolf? Or an arctic fox? Or even another human: a shaman of the clan? What a delight that would be. New eyes. That was what the children represented. New eyes had always been better at spotting things than tired old ones. Old eyes that had travelled over the same piles of junk a thousand times. Maybe he’d better stick with them just a little while longer.

I’ve got nothing better to do.

‘That’s the spirit.’

Where are they heading at the moment?

‘Oh dear. Look.’

We may have to get them out of there
.

By the time
evening came Chloe and Alex were in a part of the attic which seemed darker and more eerie than anywhere they had been before. There was an atmosphere of unnatural calm about the place. Chloe sensed that no one had visited this region for a very long time. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed in this corner of thick dust and dead air. On the one hand this was good, for it meant there were no Atticans here or strange beings like the voodoo dolls, but on the other hand there might be a good reason for the lack of life.

‘Alex, what do you think?’ asked Chloe, shivering and hugging herself. ‘Should we stay here?’

‘I dunno,’ replied her brother, putting down his pack and sending up a grey cloud of dust. ‘Don’t feel right, does it?’

‘No.’

They stared about them, their eyes getting used to the dimness. This was an area of the attic where the roof was lower than usual. In fact there were places here where the children had to duck to prevent their heads banging against rafters. Crouching, they explored a little, finding not the usual piles of old clothes, but clusters of dulled brass crosses and chalices, with heaps of shabby hassocks between. Neither child was particularly religious. Their father had been a Hindu and while he was alive Dipa had followed that path, but neither parent had been particularly zealous. The children had been mildly interested, but they had also had influences of Christianity and Islam on their doorstep by way of school friends. Here, clearly, were the trappings of Christianity, but they had little idea what they meant and why they were here.

The children
moved forward.

‘It’s creepy, isn’t it?’ said Alex. ‘Spooky. Yuk, there’s a
huge
spider’s web here, blocking the way.’

Alex swept his hand through thick silken threads, breaking the snare of the absent spider.

‘You know I’m not scared of spiders,’ said Chloe. She tilted her chin in that typical pose of defiance she adopted when she was prepared to do battle against her fears. ‘And I’m not scared of spooks. People talk about ghosts being in graveyards, but if ghosts haunt old houses how can they be where their bodies are buried as well? This is just stuff from old churches. You’d expect an attic in England to have this sort of thing.’

‘I guess.’

Suddenly they came across a broken sign, held by a rusty nail to a low rafter. It read: DORM, but part of the sign was missing. Beyond this sign was a very low-roofed area – so low they would have to crawl to get in there – with mounds covered by dirty white sheets. At the head of each mound was an oil painting, leaning against the humped sheet. They were all portraits of smiling and unsmiling people, looking stiff and awkward in their poses. Some of the subjects in the paintings were dressed in historical costumes – dark old oil paintings with brown varnished surfaces – others were in more modern clothes, the colours a bit brighter and more vibrant.