Vile Visitors (7 page)

hair Person got his way over the new chair, more or less. The men carried it to the garden shed and shoved it inside. Then they left, looking almost as bewildered and angry as Dad.

Marcia, watching and listening, was quite sure now that Chair Person had been learning from Auntie Christa all these years. He knew just how to make people do what he wanted. But Auntie Christa did not live in the house. You could escape from her sometimes. Chair Person seemed to be here to stay.

“We'll have to get him turned back into a chair somehow,” she said to Simon. “He's not getting better. He's getting worse and worse.”

Simon found he agreed. He was not sorry for Chair Person at all now. “Yes, but
how
do we turn him back?” he said.

“We could ask old Mr Pennyfeather,” Marcia suggested. “The conjuring set came from his shop.”

So that afternoon they left Mum lying on her bed upstairs and Dad moodily picking up frost-bitten apples from the grass. Chair Person was still eating lunch in the kitchen.

“Where does he put it all?” Marcia wondered as they hurried down the road.

“He's a chair. He's got lots of room for stuffing,” Simon pointed out.

Then they both said, “Oh
no
!” Chair Person was blundering up the road after them, panting and snuffling and waving his arms. “Er, hn hm, wait for me!” he called out. “You appear to have snuffle left me behind.”

He tramped beside them, looking pleased with himself. When they got to the shops where all the people were, shoppers turned to stare as Chair Person clumped past in Dad's shoes. Their eyes went from the shoes, to the football socks, and then to the short, striped suit, and then on up to stare wonderingly at the smashed-hedgehog beard. More heads turned every time Chair Person's voice brayed out, and of course he talked a lot. There was something in every shop to set him going.

At the bread shop, he said, “Er, hn hm, those are Sam Browne's Homebaked loaves. I happen to know snuffle they are nutrition for the nation.”

Outside the supermarket, he said, “Cheese to please, you can snuffle freeze it squeeze it and – er, hn hm – there is Tackley's Tea which I happen to know has over a thousand holes to every bag. Flavour to snuffle savour.”

Outside the wine shop his voice went up to a high roar. “I – hn hm – see Sampa's Superb Sherry here which is for ladies who like everything silky snuffle smooth. And I happen to know that in the black bottle there is – hn hm – a taste of Olde England. There is a stagecoach on the – hn hm – label to prove it. And look, there is Bogan's – hn hm – Beer which is of course for Only The Best.”

By now it seemed to Simon and Marcia that everyone in the street was staring. “You don't want to believe everything the ads say,” Simon said uncomfortably.

“Er, hn hm, I appear to be making you feel embarrassed,” Chair Person brayed, louder than ever. “Just tell me snuffle if I am in your way and I will snuffle go home.”

“Yes, do,” they both said.

“I – er, hn hm – wouldn't dream of pushing in where I am snuffle not wanted,” Chair Person said. “I would – hn hm – count it a favour if you tell me snuffle truthfully every time you've had enough of me. I – er, hn hm – know I must bore you quite often.”

By the time he had finished saying this they had arrived at old Mr Pennyfeather's junk shop. Chair Person stared at it.

“We – er, hn hm – don't need to go in there,” he said. “Everything in it is old.”

“You can stay outside then,” said Marcia.

But Chair Person went into another long speech about not wanting to be – hn hm – a trouble to them and followed them into the shop. “I – er, hn hm – might get lost,” he said, “and then what would you do?”

He bumped into a cupboard.

Its doors opened with a
clap
and a stream of horse shoes poured out: clatter,
clatter
, CLATTER!

Chair Person lurched sideways from the horse shoes and walked into an umbrella stand made out of an elephant's foot, which fell over –
crash
, CLATTER – against a coffee table with a big jug on it, which tipped and slid the jug off – CRASH, splinter, splinter – and then fell against a rickety bookcase, which collapsed sideways, spilling books – thump, thump, thump-thump-thump – and hit another table loaded with old magazines and music, which all poured down around Chair Person.

It was like dominoes going down.

The bell at the shop door had not stopped ringing before Chair Person was surrounded by knocked-over furniture and knee-deep in old papers. He stood in the midst of them, waving his arms and looking injured.

By then, Mr Pennyfeather was on his way from the back of the shop, shouting, “Steady, steady, steady!”

“Er, hn hm – er, hn hm,” said Chair Person, “I appear to have knocked one or two things over.”

Mr Pennyfeather stopped and looked at him, in a knowing, measuring kind of way. Then he looked at Simon and Marcia. “He yours?” he said. They nodded. Mr Pennyfeather nodded too. “Don't move,” he said to Chair Person. “Stay just where you are.”

Chair Person's arms waved as if he was conducting a very large orchestra, several massed choirs and probably a brass band or so as well. “I – er, hn hm, er, hn hm – I – er, hn hm –” he began.

Mr Pennyfeather shouted at him. “
Stand still! Don't move, or I'll have the springs out of you and straighten them for toasting forks
! It's the only language they understand,” he said to Simon and Marcia. “STAND STILL! YOU HEARD ME!” he shouted at Chair Person.

Chair Person stopped waving his arms and stood like a statue, looking quite frightened.

“You two come this way with me,” said Mr Pennyfeather, and he took Simon and Marcia down to the far end of his shop, between an old ship's wheel and a carved maypole, where there was an old radio balanced on a tea chest. He turned the radio up loud so that Chair Person could not hear them. “Now,” he said, “I see you two got problems to do with that old conjuring set. What happened?”

“It was Auntie Christa's fault,” said Marcia.

“She let the crystal ball drip on the chair,” said Simon.

“
And
tapped it with the magic wand,” said Marcia.

Mr Pennyfeather scratched his withered old cheek. “My fault, really,” he said. “I should never have let her have those conjuring things, only I'd got sick of the way the stuff in my shop would keep getting lively. Tables dancing and such. Mind you, most of my furniture only got a drip or so. They used to calm down after a couple of hours. That one of yours looks like he got a right old dousing – or maybe the wand helped. What was he to begin with, if you don't mind my asking?”

“Our old armchair,” said Simon.

“Really?” said Mr Pennyfeather. “I'd have said he was a sofa, from the looks of him. Maybe what you had was an armchair with a sofa opinion of itself. That happens.”

“Yes, but how can we turn him
back
?” said Marcia.

Mr Pennyfeather scratched his withered cheek again. “This is
it
,” he said. “Quite a problem. The answer must be in that conjuring set. It wouldn't make no sense to have that crystal ball full of stuff to make things lively without having the antidote close by. That top hat never got lively. You could try tapping him with the wand again. But you'd do well to sort through the box and see if you couldn't come up with whatever was put on the top hat to stop it getting lively at all.”

“But we haven't got the box,” said Simon. “Auntie Christa's got it.”

“Then you'd better borrow it back off her quick,” Mr Pennyfeather said, peering along his shop to where Chair Person was still standing like a statue. “Armchairs with big opinions of themselves aren't no good. That one could turn out a real menace.”

“He already
is
,” said Simon.

Marcia took a deep grateful breath and said, “Thanks awfully, Mr Pennyfeather. Do you want us to help you tidy up your shop?”

“No, you run along,” said Mr Pennyfeather. “I want him out of here before he does any worse.” And he shouted down the shop at Chair Person, “Right, you can move now! Out of my shop
at
the double and wait in the street!”

Chair Person nodded and bowed in his most crawlingly humble way and waded through the papers and out of the shop. Simon and Marcia followed, wishing they could manage to shout at Chair Person the way Mr Pennyfeather had. But maybe they had been brought up to be too polite. Or maybe it was Chair Person's sofa opinion of himself. Or maybe it was just that Chair Person was bigger than they were and had offered to eat them when he first came out of the shed. Whatever it was, all they seemed to be able to do was to let Chair Person clump along beside them, talking and talking, and try to think how to turn him into a chair again.

They were so busy thinking that they had turned into their own road before they heard one thing Chair Person said. And that was only because he said something new.

“
What
did you say?” said Marcia.

“I said,” said Chair Person, “I appear – er, hn hm, snuffle – to have set fire to your house.”

Both their heads went up with a jerk. Sure enough, there was a fire engine standing in the road by their gate. Firemen were dashing about unrolling hoses. Thick black smoke was rolling up from behind the house, darkening the sunlight and turning their roof black.

Simon and Marcia forgot about Chair Person and ran.

Mum and Dad, to their great relief, were standing in the road beside the fire engine, along with most of the neighbours. Mum saw them. She let go of Dad's arm and rushed up to Chair Person.

“All right. Let's have it,” she said. “What did you do
this
time?”

Chair Person made bowing and hand-waving movements, but he did not seem sorry or worried. In fact, he was looking up at the surging clouds of black smoke rather smugly. “I – er, hn hm – was thirsty,” he said. “I appear to have drunk all your orange juice and lemon squash and the stuff snuffle from the wine and whisky bottles, so I – hn hm – put the kettle on the gas for a cup of tea. I appear to have forgotten it when I went out.”