Authors: Catherine Jinks
The Paradise Trap (15 page)
‘Are
you
real?’ he interrupted, then frowned and glanced away, murmuring, ‘You must be. You must. I never could have imagined this . . .’
‘Of course I’m real!’ Holly seized his hand. ‘There! See? Feel that! I’m as real as you are.’
‘We’re from the outside world,’ said Marcus, who felt that the time had come to supply Jake with a clear and precise explanation. ‘Me and Mum bought Miss Molpe’s old caravan to go camping in. We didn’t know it was hers when we bought it. We didn’t know about the cellar. But we found the office, and then we got on the lift—’
‘The lift?’ Jake cut him off. ‘You came in the
lift
?’
‘Yes.’ Marcus was surprised. ‘You know about that?’
‘Of course. I know about everything here.’ Jake’s tone was flat and bitter. ‘I’ve been in this place so long, I know every rock. Every tree. Every blade of grass. But the lift doesn’t work. Nothing happens when I push the button.’
‘That’s because you need a robot,’ Edison weighed in. And when Jake’s jaw dropped, Holly added gently, ‘Things have changed since we were kids. There are robots and . . . and other things . . .’
‘Like computers!’ Edison supplied, much to Coco’s disgust.
‘We’re not
that
old!’ she snapped. ‘There were computers around when we were your age – they just weren’t as good as they are now!’
‘Yeah. Well, I guess a lot of things have changed while you’ve been down here,’ Marcus said to Jake, steering the conversation back towards more urgent matters. ‘But the important thing is that we’re all trying to get out now. And since we found your brochure in the office—’
‘This brochure,’ Holly interjected, producing the crumpled Diamond Beach Paradise pamphlet and passing it to Jake. It was a clumsy gesture because of her false fingernails, several of which still hadn’t broken off.
Jake didn’t take the brochure. He simply stared at it dumbly.
‘When we found that,’ Marcus continued, ‘we thought we’d come and get you before we tried to go home. Just in case you wanted to leave.’
‘Because you
should
leave,’ advised Edison, who must have thought that Jake needed persuading. ‘I didn’t want to leave my dream holiday either, but I’m glad I did. You’ll be glad too. It’s nice to visit, but you have to go home some time.’
Jake’s lips began to tremble as he gazed at Edison in wide-eyed disbelief.
‘You think I don’t want to go home?’ Jake rasped. ‘Are you
crazy
?’
‘Shhh.’ Holly tried to calm him down – worrying, perhaps, that someone as big as Jake could do a lot of damage if he became overwrought. ‘Edison’s so young, he doesn’t understand how hard it can be when you’re away from your family—’
But Jake didn’t let her finish.
‘Of course I want to go home!’ he cried. ‘I’ve been trying to leave since day one! The minute I got here, I wanted to leave!’
‘Really?’ Marcus was puzzled. ‘That’s weird.’
His mother was also confused. ‘But wasn’t this your dream holiday?’ she asked Jake, whose shoulders slumped as he became more subdued.
‘Yeah,’ he confessed. ‘It was. Until I realised that you weren’t here with me.’
Holly frowned. So did Marcus. Coco said, ‘But Holly
is
here. I saw her. She’s just outside.’ Then, as Edison opened his mouth to correct her, she quickly forestalled him. ‘I mean, obviously the one outside is a younger version, but—’
‘I knew that kid out there wasn’t you,’ Jake cut in, as if Coco hadn’t spoken. He was talking to Holly. ‘As soon as I saw her diary, I realised I’d made a mistake. Remember how you used to keep a diary? You were always scribbling away.’
Once again, Holly flushed. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I remember.’
‘You’d never let me look at it,’ Jake went on. ‘So when I got here, that’s the first thing I did. I asked to see your diary – and you gave it to me.
That
Holly gave it to me. The fake one.’ He pointed at the door. ‘But then I opened it up and there was nothing. Blank pages. Because I couldn’t fill it up myself, you see. I didn’t really know what was going on inside your head. That’s when I realised that all of this . . . this whole set-up . . . it was all my own creation, somehow. It wasn’t a copy of the real thing; it was just a dream of mine. And people in dreams are never any good. They’re like fairy floss – they just melt away. I wanted the
real
you. I wanted to know what you’d written in your diary.’
Holly was gulping and sniffing. ‘I wrote about
you
, Jake,’ she whispered. By this time Coco was wiping tears from her eyes (and dried goo from her face) with the sleeve of her bathrobe. Even Newt wore a slightly soppy expression.
Marcus scowled. He didn’t much care for the way his mother was holding Jake’s hand. ‘So if you wanted to leave, why didn’t you?’ he said sharply, causing Jake to snap out of his momentary daze.
‘I tried. I went to see if Miss Molpe would send me back,’ Jake revealed. ‘She was the one who conjured up this place when I complained that I didn’t want to leave Diamond Beach. She told me I’d never have to go away. So I packed a suitcase with things like a towel and a sleeping bag, snuck back to her place one night, and when she sent me down into her cellar—’
‘—you opened a door!’ Edison concluded. ‘And you stepped into your dream holiday!’
‘Yeah.’ Jake gave a nod. ‘But when I looked for the door again, it had disappeared. That’s why I went to her caravan. Her fake caravan, I mean. I went there and I found out what Miss Molpe
really
wanted.’
He paused, as if expecting instant and total comprehension from his audience. Instead, all he got was a series of blank looks.
‘Oh yeah?’ Newt said at last. ‘And what was that?’
‘You mean you don’t know?’ Jake sounded genuinely taken aback. When no one answered him, however, he took a deep breath and said, ‘She wanted to kill me. That’s what she does. She kills children.’
E
VERYONE GOGGLED AT
J
AKE
.
‘It’s true!’ he insisted. ‘She’s a witch of some kind!’
Newt pulled a sceptical face. Edison uttered an awestruck ‘Wow!’ as Sterling’s forehead creased.
‘Are you sure you don’t mean “siren”?’ Marcus proposed, eliciting a snort from Newt.
‘I told you, sirens were made up by the ancient Greeks,’ Newt scoffed. ‘They don’t exist. They never existed.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Marcus. He couldn’t keep the scorn out of his voice. ‘So sirens don’t exist, but magic lifts do? This isn’t a computer game, in case you haven’t noticed.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Edison peered up at Sterling from beneath the rim of his pith helmet. ‘I thought you said it was.’
‘I’m pretty certain it is,’ his father assured him, then addressed Marcus in a sympathetic tone. ‘The trouble is, it’s such an advanced and complex computer game that it
feels
like magic.’
Marcus cast up his eyes. ‘You wish,’ he growled, before Jake suddenly hijacked the conversation.
‘Listen to me!’ he cried. ‘I know what I saw! You all think I’m crazy, but I’m not! She was going to build a beach house out of my bones – she said so!’
Everyone flinched.
‘Oh my God.’ Coco was horrified. ‘How sick. She actually
told
you that?’
Jake hesitated. ‘Well . . . no. Not exactly,’ he had to admit. Seeing his audience exchange doubtful glances, he erupted again. ‘She was singing to herself! I overheard her!’ He went on to explain how, upon first entering Miss Molpe’s caravan (‘the one out there, not the real one’), he’d been planning to ask her if she’d send him home after all. He’d even packed his suitcase for the trip back. ‘But she wasn’t in,’ he related, ‘so I had a look around. And I found all these . . . these bones.’ He had to swallow before continuing. A muscle began to quiver in his jaw. ‘They were stacked in cupboards,’ he said faintly. ‘Laid out in drawers. Like a collection.’
‘Maybe they were animal bones,’ Holly speculated.
Jake shook his head. ‘Not these ones,’ he growled. ‘And there were piles of old clothes, too. Kids’ clothes.’ Hearing a few indrawn breaths, he quickly explained, ‘She wasn’t collecting for charity, either, because all the clothes had bloodstains on them.’
Marcus didn’t like the sound of that. Neither did Holly, to judge from the look on her face.
But Coco wasn’t convinced.
‘Well,
I
used to go into Miss Molpe’s caravan all the time,’ she objected, ‘and
I
never saw anything weird.’
‘Because you were in the real caravan. Not the one over there.’ Jake gestured at the door. ‘The one over there is inside the real one – like the rest of this place. The real one wasn’t full of bones either. Not like the one over there. And do you know what I found under the seats of the fake one, when I was looking for another staircase? Photograph albums. There was no cellar, but there were loads and loads of photograph albums, full of really old travel snaps. Only they were pictures of bones. Charnel houses in France and crypts in Italy and piles of skulls in Cambodia . . .’ He shuddered. ‘I was looking at the pictures when I heard her coming,’ he continued. ‘So I hid under a seat. She was crooning to herself, saying she had to sharpen her knives. “
He’s a big boy
,” she kept singing. “
He’s a big, juicy boy with great big bones.
”’
‘E-e-ew. Gross,’ Edison murmured. Marcus swallowed; his skin was beginning to crawl.
‘And then she saw my suitcase.’ Jake paused for effect. ‘It was a big suitcase,’ he explained. ‘It belonged to my parents. I’d left it on the floor by accident, and when she saw it, she knew I was in her caravan. “
So
,” she sang, “
you’ve come to visit me? Come out, come out,
wherever you are.
” She sounded so nice, but then her voice cracked. It was a real shock. Like if you were listening to a harp and it suddenly exploded.’
Newt laughed and said, ‘You’re making this up.’
‘I am
not!
’ Jake rounded on her, his dark eyes blazing. ‘If you don’t believe me, go and look! She’s over there right now! In the suitcase!’
Everybody gasped. There was a long, shocked silence.
Then Coco squeaked, ‘I
beg
your pardon?’
As Jake glanced from face to face, his own face slowly turned red.
‘What else could I do?’ he pleaded, in a strangled voice. ‘She’d picked up a knife and was searching for me. Under the bed. In the cupboards. I was watching her – I’d pushed open the seat and I was peeking out through the crack—’
‘So what did you do?’ Marcus broke in. He was anxious to hear the end of the story.
Jake shrugged and spread his hands.
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he replied. ‘When she stopped in front of the suitcase, she had her back to me. And she was still singing, so she didn’t hear me climb out from under the seat. She was too busy opening my suitcase. I guess she thought I might be hiding in there.’ He cracked a sour little smile. ‘That’s how she ended up in there herself,’ he finished. ‘I came up behind her and gave her a shove.’
For a moment no one said anything. Holly sat down abruptly, putting her head in her hands. ‘Wow,’ Edison marvelled. Marcus licked his dry lips.
‘And you locked her in your suitcase?’ Sterling demanded, sounding shaken. ‘That’s really what you did?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jake. ‘Then I piled a whole bunch of photograph albums on top, so she couldn’t get out.’
‘Oh my God. Jake . . .’ Holly looked as if she were about to vomit. Even Marcus felt a little queasy.
‘Did you give her any airholes?’ he wanted to know.
‘She doesn’t need airholes. She’s a witch.’ Once again Jake reddened as his audience grimaced. ‘She told me! I mean, she
as good as
told me, when I wouldn’t let her out and she was trying to make me feel sorry for her.’ He scowled. ‘She told me she used to have four sisters,’ he continued, ‘and they used to sing so beautifully that no one could resist them, but one day someone finally did—’
‘Odysseus,’ Holly interrupted. ‘It was in Homer’s
Odyssey.
He tied himself to the mast.’
‘Whatever. And when that happened, she and her sisters all had to throw themselves into the sea. I don’t know why.’
And I don’t care either,
his tone seemed to indicate. ‘But she didn’t drown, like her sisters did – she just got a really, really bad cold that ruined her voice. She sounded pretty upset about that. I was supposed to think it was okay for her to lure people in with tricks and scams because she’d lost this mighty, beautiful voice that was a gift to the world for a thousand years, blah, blah, blah . . .’ He wrinkled his nose, then shrugged again. ‘So I figured: a thousand years? Only a witch would live that long.’
‘She’s not a witch,’ Marcus interrupted. ‘She’s a siren.’
‘If you say so. Anyway, she keeps scratching and singing to me whenever I go anywhere near the caravan, so I know she’s perfectly all right.’
‘But she can’t be. She must be dead by now,’ Newt argued. ‘Are you sure that’s not a voice in your head?’
Jake’s thick black eyebrows snapped together. He opened his mouth. Before he could speak, however, Edison cried, ‘Let’s go and look! Can we go and look?’
‘No.’ Holly stood up. ‘No. We’re leaving right now.’
‘Oh,
please
?’ Edison implored, jigging from foot to foot. ‘Can’t we—?’
‘
No!
’ Holly was adamant. ‘Come on. We have to leave. We have to get to the lift.’
‘And then what?’ said Marcus. He was already thinking ahead, even if his mother wasn’t.
‘Then we take a ride up to the office,’ she rejoined. ‘And from there we go back to the cellar.’
‘How?’ As she stared at him, he elaborated. ‘We don’t know what buttons to push. We don’t have a code number for the office, so how can we get back there?’
Holly blinked. Then she swallowed. Then she gave herself a brisk little shake. ‘We’ll figure something out,’ she declared, before leading Jake to the door.
N
OBODY TRIED TO STOP THEM AS THEY MADE THEIR WAY FROM
Jake’s caravan to the public toilets. Though Marcus spied several groups of children huddled behind cars and trees and bushes, he quickly concluded that none of these children posed any kind of threat – not while Jake was around, anyway. Every time Jake even glanced in their direction, the kids would cringe and scatter.