Spellbinder (12 page)

“Where have they gone?” asked Belladonna in what she hoped was a conciliatory manner.

“I don’t know,” said Elsie. “They were the last ones, though. Everyone else went at almost the same time, two days ago.”

“Six o’clock,” said Belladonna, remembering her parents’ sudden disappearance.

“Yes, I suppose it was. Not that time means anything much here. The little ones went sooner, of course.”

“Like Lady Mary’s baby.”

“Who? Probably. Anyway, there was a herd of elephant-type things in the park. Massive. Very hairy.”

“Mammoths?” asked Steve, suddenly impressed.

“I should say so,” said Elsie, missing the point, “absolutely gigantic. They went right before the things in the tree. So now everyone’s gone.”

“Everyone?”

Elsie nodded, “Except the squirrel. So I thought maybe the tree was safe.”

“Safe from what?” asked Steve.

“From whatever’s . . . from . . .”

Belladonna sighed. “There isn’t anyone here? Not a single person?”

Elsie shook her head and twirled the twig. “There’s him,” she said, nodding in the direction of the shops.

“Who? You said everyone had gone.”

“They have.”

Steve looked at her skeptically. “But you’re still here,” he observed. “Maybe you’re in on it.”

“In on what?” asked Belladonna.

“It. I don’t know.” He shrugged, then glared at Elsie again. “But if there’s only one person left, I’d guess it was probably them that did it . . . whatever it is.”

Elsie stared at him for a moment. Belladonna could see she was used to being in charge of things and didn’t cotton to this boy one bit. Elsie fingered her tie and kicked at a loose cobble.

“Well, everyone except him,” she said finally, “but I don’t like him. He’s in the apothecary shop.”

“Mr. Baxter!” said Belladonna.

“Who?” said Steve and Elsie in unison.

“Oh, I know his name isn’t really Mr. Baxter,” said Belladonna, “but I used to see him on my way home from school. In the old launderette. He always seemed so friendly.”

Steve and Elsie looked at her. Belladonna felt the wind go out of her sails.

“His name isn’t Baxter,” said Elsie, “it’s Ashe, Dr. Ashe.”

“He’s a doctor?”

“I don’t think so. I think he just calls himself that because it makes him feel superior.” Elsie reached up and began swinging on a low branch. “Some people need titles to feel comfortable in their own skin. That’s what my mother used to say anyway.”

Steve rolled his eyes and nudged Belladonna.

“Yes, well, perhaps we should go over there anyhow,” she said. “He might know something.”

Elsie considered this for a moment, then nodded.

“Righty-ho,” she said finally. “I don’t suppose there’s much point sitting in a tree with a squirrel. Not really my companion of choice for eternity.”

Belladonna smiled.

“Besides,” continued Elsie, marching purposefully down the High Street, “maybe we can get some barley sugars. They’re in a jar on the counter. I really like barley sugars.”

Belladonna glanced at Steve.

“She’s a loony,” remarked Steve.

Belladonna ignored him as they followed Elsie down the slight incline from the tree into the main part of the High Street. It was strange to see everything so clean and bright and yet so empty. It reminded her of pictures of film sets that she’d seen in magazines, as if someone was just about to shout “Action!” and fill the road with shoppers and browsers. But of course, they didn’t.

“Why is everything so new?” she asked as they caught up with Elsie.

“What do you mean?”

“Everything looks . . . well, back in the real world—”

“This is a real world,” interrupted Elsie, sounding a little irritated.

“Yes, I know but . . . take the theatre. In our world
it’s old and the seats are gone and it’s falling to bits, but here it’s brand-new.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” asked Elsie. “In your world I’m a jumble of bones in a grave everyone’s forgotten about. Things don’t decay and die here, they just sort of go on.”

Belladonna thought about this. It made sense, really. After all, strictly speaking, Elsie was well over a hundred years old, but she looked the same as when she’d died.

“So the people and buildings are sort of frozen in time?”

“No,” said Elsie, rolling her eyes as if Belladonna was the worst kind of dunce. “The people can be any age. Well, we can’t be older than when we died, obviously, but we can be younger. I could be five if I wanted. See?”

And suddenly Elsie was gone and a small curly-headed child, decked out in white lace and a giant pale blue ribbon, was toddling beside them.

“I just don’t want to,” she lisped, before returning to the older Elsie they knew.

“Does that mean the buildings are ghosts too?” asked Steve. “Because if that was the case, wouldn’t the only buildings be ones that had been demolished in the rea—in
our
world?”

“The buildings aren’t ghosts!” laughed Elsie. “They’re just the way we remembered them. Well, most
of us. They’re . . . I suppose they’re the way we like them. I never thought about it, really.”

“Okay,” said Steve, “I can understand that, but if you look over there, it seems sort of . . . dark.”

He was right. In the center of town and for a few streets back in every direction, everything looked bright and new, but beyond that, it was as if night had come early. The strangely dilapidated buildings seemed to loom over the streets, and the dull eyes of the empty windows stared down the sunshine. A shiver went through Belladonna’s body as her gaze followed the streets out past the edge of town and into the countryside beyond. She could just make out a winding road, but beyond that the darkness closed in and storm clouds lowered over the rolling hills.

“I know,” said Elsie, glancing up an alleyway nervously. “That’s new.”

“Well,” said Belladonna, trying to sound matter-of-fact and cheerful, “fortunately, we don’t have to go there. The launderette’s just behind the post office.”

She and Elsie sped up their walk, but Steve hung back, staring at the narrow backstreets, before running and catching up.

“Something’s going on here,” he said.

“Of course it is,” said Belladonna brightly. “That’s why we’ve come.”

She turned left just after the post office, which had acquired an old-fashioned red pillarbox marked “VR” that had been removed from the pavement in front of
the real post office years before. A brief walk down the unnaturally clean side street brought them into Umbra Avenue and the familiar landscape of Belladonna’s walk home from school.

Except that it wasn’t really familiar any more.

The shops were all still there, interrupted every now and then by doorways leading up to studios and flats. But the comforting predictability of the gently curving road had given way to an increasing feeling of dread as they made their way down toward the old launderette.

In their own world, the launderette took up quite a bit of the street but was somehow inconsequential. It was easy to walk right past it, with its run-down woodwork, faded sign, and curling “special offers.” Here, however, it dominated everything around it. The windows sparkled and a gleaming green-and-gold sign announced: “Apothecary. Dr. H. Ashe, prop.” The window itself was decorated with things that Belladonna had seen only translucently on her way home: brass containers, ranks of small bottles arranged in pyramids, and a huge white ceramic head with the bald pate divided into sections marked with words like “secretiveness,” “tune,” and “deceptiveness.” They peered inside. It was just as Belladonna remembered; there was a huge polished wood counter stretching from one side to the other with a gleaming brass urn sitting in state at one end while jars and tall bottles clustered around an oversized brass-and-steel cash
register at the other. Behind the counter were labeled drawers and hundreds of shelves of bottles and jars, extending from the floor to the ceiling.

“I’ll wait out here,” said Elsie, suddenly stepping back and fingering her tie.

“But—” began Belladonna.

“It gives me the willies. I don’t like it.”

Belladonna nodded, then glanced at Steve and pushed the door open. A distant bell tinkled as they stepped inside and into a dense miasma of aromas. The smells ranged from the delicate floral scents of roses and freesias through the earthy perfume of dried plants and tree bark, to the piercing chemical stink of sulfur and ammonia.

They paused in the doorway while their eyes became accustomed to the shadowy interior and their senses became at least somewhat used to the pong. Steve scowled into the dim recesses.

“This smell is giving me a headache,” he muttered.

Belladonna ignored him and marched confidently up to the counter.

“Hello?” she called, in what she hoped was a cheery and self-assured tone.

There was a noise from the back as a chair scraped away from a table, and a small, skinny man appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in clothes that seemed a size too small, revealing bony wrists and ankles, and his face seemed somehow pointed, like an inquisitive rodent.

“Yes?” he snapped.

“Is . . . umm . . . Dr. Ashe here?”

“No, he isn’t. What do you want him for?”

The man shuffled forward and pushed his face into Belladonna’s. She stepped back, alarmed. He was about to speak again, but the words seemed to freeze on his lips. He peered at Belladonna, then turned and examined Steve.

“Wait a minute,” he said, “you’re not dead!”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Brilliant,” he said.

The man stepped back and stared at them admiringly, as if he were looking at two particularly rare specimens in a zoo.

“Huh,” he mused, “the old man was right. Which one of you is . . .”

His eyes narrowed as he looked from Steve to Belladonna to Steve again. He scuttled over to Steve and examined him closely.

“Get away!” said Steve, backing into the counter.

“Are you the Paladin?” asked the man.

“The what?”

The skinny man seemed surprised, then a slow smile spread across his face like a crack in an eggshell. “You don’t know,” he smirked. “You got all this way and you don’t know. If that isn’t the most delicious—”

Just as Belladonna was sure that Steve was going to hit the creepy little man, the shop door tinkled and a deep voice boomed into the murk.

“Slackett,” it said, “what is going on here?”

A look of cringing dread appeared on the little man’s face and he seemed to shrivel away toward the cash register. Belladonna and Steve spun around. The newcomer was standing, silhouetted in the doorway, impossible to make out.

“Nothing, Sir,” simpered Slackett.

The man stepped inside and closed the door and now Belladonna recognized the familiar form of the man she’d been calling Mr. Baxter. There was something different about him here, though. He was still wearing the bright yellow waistcoat and the long red robe, but the red hat had gone and there was something not quite right about his face, as if he was wearing a mask.

“Explain yourselves,” he said as he dropped his silver-topped cane into a nearby stand.

“Mr. . . . I mean, Dr. Ashe,” stammered Belladonna, “we’ve come from—”

Ashe looked down at her and the light of recognition flickered across his face. He smiled indulgently and leaned over to examine her more closely. “You’re that little girl from the Other Side,” he said, his voice suddenly silky.

“Belladonna Johnson,” said Belladonna.

“Indeed. Indeed. Well, well, well,” he said in that annoying way that adults who seldom talk to children adopt, “and what are you doing here?”

“We came . . . um . . . through the door and—”

Dr. Ashe glanced at Slackett and scowled. “Get back to work!” he snapped.

Slackett glanced quickly out of the front window and for a moment his face seemed different, less servile, and Belladonna thought she could see Elsie peeking around the edge of the window. Was she waving? But even as the question formed in her mind, Elsie was gone and the look of the fawning toady quickly returned to Slackett’s face as he scrambled back behind the counter and into the back of the shop. Dr. Ashe turned back to Belladonna, the thin smile immediately in place.

“. . . and . . .” Belladonna tried to retrieve her train of thought. “And we wanted to know—”

“Did you now?” interrupted Dr. Ashe. “Through the door?” He took a small pair of pince-nez glasses from his pocket, positioned them on the end of his bony nose, and peered more closely at Belladonna. “How exceptionally clever of you.”

“Thank you. Well, um, all the ghosts have vanished . . . including my parents, and so I . . . that is, we were wondering if you knew why.”

Dr. Ashe looked at her for a moment, then at Steve, who was making little effort to conceal the instant dislike he had taken to the too-pale man. Ashe turned his attention back to Belladonna and leaned down in a way that he seemed to think was affable.

“I can understand your concern,” he said. “I’ve been
watching my friends vanish one by one. It’s awful, just awful. And I’ve been having no luck with my experiments at all.”

“Experiments?”

“Yes,” he straightened up. “Would you like to see? Come on back. You can bring your surly little friend with you.”

He turned and vanished into the shadows at the back of the shop. Belladonna beckoned to Steve, who shook his head. She tried it again, with a little more annoyed urgency in the gesture. He shambled over.

“I’m not going back there,” he hissed, “and neither should you! The guy’s positively reptilian.”

“Yes, but—”

“And don’t you think it’s odd that he’s the only person left?”

“We’ve got to try and find out what’s going on,” said Belladonna. “And anyway, he’s not the only one. What about Elsie? And . . . whatsisname . . .”

“Slackett,” said Steve, as if just saying the name produced a nasty taste in his mouth. “Yeah, he seems the trustworthy type. Just the sort of person I’d go running to in a crisis.”

“Yes, but—”

“Elsie’s a kid,” he continued, “and she isn’t creeping about a dark shop reeking of rotten eggs. And how do you know it’s safe to go back there? They could be baking children into pies, for all you know!”