Von Gobstopper's Arcade (2 page)

If you are wondering why these parents placed the blame squarely on Milli’s and Ernest’s shoulders when they had in fact saved their children’s lives, there is a simple explanation. Whenever anything goes seriously wrong, it is human nature to want to point the finger at someone. Somehow this makes people feel better. Once a culprit has been identified, people feel more in control and, better still, not at all responsible themselves. There are many cases in history of individuals being made into scapegoats to carry the responsibility for some catastrophic event. In 1692 in Salem,
Massachusetts for example, the townsfolk could not find explanations for various events such as illness or strange behaviour and therefore concluded that Satan was loose in Salem. They branded certain people as witches and believed that if they executed every accused witch in the village then all strangeness would cease.

It was very simple to accuse somebody back in 1692. Nowadays you need
evidence
to convict a person in court and send them to prison. In Salem, all you needed to do was visit the magistrate and say, ‘That girl mutters under her breath’ or ‘I’ve seen her chanting in the forest’, and it was enough to have a person convicted and hanged at Gallows Hill. If someone fell ill and suffered spasms or convulsions, or talked in their sleep, they were immediately assumed to be under the enchantment of a witch. Anyone known to be on bad terms with the afflicted became a suspect and was put on trial. Often, young girls would pretend to be possessed; they’d go limp, roll back their eyes and writhe and scream on the ground, making peculiar animal noises. When asked to name her tormentor, the girl would go rigid and point her
finger at someone in the room. Let me tell you now, if you were that person, you were more or less DONE FOR. There was nothing you could do to defend yourself if someone claimed you were making them intentionally ill through the use of black magic. Of course, you could always drop to the ground, start writhing and screaming yourself, and accuse somebody else of bewitching you.

Luckily, the mothers of Drabville were too enlightened for lynching or stoning people and contented themselves with malicious gossip and sidelong glances to liven up their coffee mornings.

Some people went so far as to suggest that Lord Aldor’s hatred of Milli and Ernest was the main reason he persisted in terrorising the town. It was vengeance against
them
that had drawn him back a second time. Even though Drabvillians were far too polite to ever express these ideas openly, there are, as we know, more subtle ways of making people feel excluded. The occasional comment picked up at the dinner table found its way into the schoolyard, and Milli and Ernest noticed they received fewer
invitations to birthday parties and the like these days. It made them feel a little unsettled and more than a little bit lonely. They compensated by devoting more time to their studies (harder for Milli than for Ernest) and by relying on each other for entertainment.

T
heir adventures in the Conjurors’ Realm had had very different effects on Milli and Ernest.

Ernest’s entire belief system had been called into question and he found himself thinking about the world and his place in it. He pondered ideas like the purpose of his own life and the concept of contentment. If evil was such a powerful force in the world, what could one do to ensure one’s immunity against it? Could one individual really change things for the better? What avenues were available to a child who wanted to improve the world? These were the burning questions that consumed Ernest’s free
time. One morning the answer presented itself. What the world needed more of, Ernest decided, was not politicians but poets! Poets, as a rule, were not short-term thinkers and therefore could really make a difference. He knew from his classical studies that the ancient poets had done more than construct pretty verse; they were highly regarded and could be instrumental in shaping public opinion. Some, admittedly, had ended their days in exile but the power of their words lived on to shape modern civilisation.

Ernest padded down to breakfast, still in slippers and a dressing gown, to share his epiphany with the people he held most dear.

‘I want you to be the first to know that from this day forward I go out into the world as a sonneteer!’

His father barely looked up from his morning paper as he muttered, ‘Good for you, son.’ His mother seemed more concerned with making sure his siblings ate over their plates so as to minimise the crumbs she would need to sweep up later. His siblings (even though their mouths were full) showed enough interest to ask whether
a sonneteer was related to a musketeer and what worldly goods Ernest might part with in order to follow this new direction. All in all, the reaction could hardly be described as enthusiastic.

That same afternoon, at the Drabville Baths (a dome-shaped building made up almost entirely of mosaic tiles in various shades of blue and green) Ernest broke the news to his best friend. The response he received from her was certainly less dispassionate.

‘Why do you say something like this
now?
’ Milli said, clenching her fists and rolling her eyes dramatically.

‘What’s wrong with now?’ Ernest looked around furtively to check whether there was something else going on that he’d somehow missed.

‘The last thing we need right now is for you to go all funny.’

‘Well, I don’t think any humour will be immediately apparent,’ Ernest said, trying to sound appeasing.

‘Sonneteers can still play, right?’

‘Of course.’

Milli was sufficiently heartened by this to
share an announcement of her own. ‘I’ve decided something too,’ she said, her eyes shining.

‘Really?’ said Ernest, in a tone that meant:
this should be good.

‘I’ve decided not to grow up,’ Milli told him.

‘How interesting. And when did you come to this decision?’

‘Just this morning. I’m afraid you shall have to go on without me.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Ernest, trying his best to twist his amusement into a sympathetic smile.

‘You think I’m joking!’

‘Don’t be a twit, Milli—you can’t arrest your own growth. It’s a biological impossibility.’

‘I think I can, if I concentrate really hard.’

‘No, you can’t. It’s nothing to do with concentration. I assume you’ll continue your consumption of food and water during this period of non-development?’

‘Of course. I don’t plan to die of starvation.’

‘Then you’ll continue to grow,’ Ernest said plainly.

‘I could give up healthy foods like dairy, lean meat and leafy vegetables,’ Milli suggested.

‘That won’t stop you growing; it just means you’ll grow with bad skin and poor eyesight. Why would you want to stay a child forever anyway?’

Milli paused a moment before offering a reply. ‘Well, what attraction can you see in growing up?’

Ernest, who was sitting with his legs dangling over the pool’s edge, pensively rubbed his chin with his hand. ‘You have a point there,’ he said.

Milli had been making similarly ridiculous pronouncements at home. At first, the other Klompets had raised their eyebrows in amusement but it had now got to the point where her family felt as though they had to walk on eggshells around her.

‘Why does our house have to have such ugly windows?’ Milli demanded one day.

Sensing trouble, her parents exchanged cautionary glances and tried to defuse the mounting tension.

‘Ugly is such a relative term,’ said Mr Klompet, trying to sound light-hearted.

‘How does potato pizza for dinner sound?’
asked Milli’s mother, trying to change the subject.

But Milli wouldn’t be sidetracked.

‘I need my room to have casement windows. It’s not fair that it doesn’t. Can’t they be changed?’

‘Not without incurring considerable expense,’ said Rosie, quickly running out of patience.

‘Why, Capricious Daughter, this urgent need for casement windows?’ Milli’s father was foolish enough to ask.

‘Isn’t it obvious? I need windows that open outwards so Peter Pan can visit. He’s probably been trying for months but he can’t squeeze in!’

(For any of you unfamiliar with the story of
Peter Pan
, it is about a boy who lives in a magical place called Neverland where you never grow up. He visits a girl called Wendy Darling by climbing through her nursery window.)

‘Well then, I promise to give the installation of casement windows some quite serious consideration,’ Mr Klompet said.

Milli’s fractious mood continued. ‘Don’t you think this family needs a holiday after everything that’s happened?’ she said.

‘Now that isn’t such a bad idea,’ Rosie replied, ‘if Dorkus could be talked round. Where should we go, do you think?’

‘Wherever the Fountain of Youth is most likely to be located, of course. Somewhere in Europe, I imagine, but we need to find out and go straightaway. There isn’t a minute to lose.’

By now you may be raising your own eyebrows in disapproval and thinking, BRING BACK CORPORAL PUNISHMENT!, but Milli was not being difficult for the sake of it. In fact, in her own mind she could not see that she was being anything but reasonable. As often happens with children who are left to their own devices and end up relying mainly on the workings of their imagination for company, Milli continued to believe unequivocally that anything was possible.

Both the Klompets and the Perriclofs concluded that their children’s odd behaviour was the result of trauma and their current lack of popularity, and tried to be understanding. Milli and Ernest were encouraged to take Stench for long walks or given small errands to run to keep them from brooding.

It was on one of these walks with Stench that they found something interesting happening right under their noses. Change was something towards which Drabville had recently developed a reactionary attitude, but Milli and Ernest wandered into one part of town where change seemed to be taking place relatively unobstructed. This change had to do with construction, and although Milli and Ernest were the first to stumble upon it, any family taking a Sunday morning stroll through Poxxley Gardens could not have missed it. The old ruin, Hog House, which had once served as the town mayor’s private residence, appeared to be undergoing extensive renovation.

Hog House was, of course, the site of the children’s incarceration by the mad Mr and Mrs Mayor. Their adventures there now seemed so long ago. They both shuddered at the memory of what had gone on behind those doors.

But despite their unease, Milli and Ernest had not outgrown the lure of detective work and were intrigued. They observed the work in silence for some time before deciding there was something not quite right about it.

‘How strange that someone should want to rebuild on this site,’ Milli said. ‘No one’s been near it since we left and some people even say it’s haunted.’

‘Haunted or not, it was bound to happen,’ Ernest said, trying to sound practical. ‘The real question is, what are they building?’

Stench, excited by the possibility of new smells, strained on his leash, but when they got closer the children saw that wire fencing had been erected around the building site, both as a safety precaution and to keep inquisitive intruders out.

The mystery surrounding the new building was fuelled in subsequent days by the mumbled answers children received whenever they quizzed their parents about what was happening at the big old place behind the park. Their parents wouldn’t give an immediate reply; and when they did it was far from satisfactory, with responses along the lines of
community centre
or
residential development.
There were serious inconsistencies in the range of explanations given. But as building sites are generally not
that exciting to children unless they are permitted to fossick amongst the rubble, the matter was gradually dropped and the construction carried on in the background, given no more than a cursory glance by those who happened to be walking by.

Milli and Ernest, of course, did not lose interest. Hog House remained, in their minds a place of mystery and adventure. They tried on several occasions to get a closer look but were prevented by barricades and workmen in yellow safety helmets jumping out at them. They had to confine their investigation to keeping a close eye on the flurry of activity—scaffolding being erected, barricades shifted to allow access to bobcats and trucks, workmen pushing wheelbarrows filled with all manner of building materials. But if they lingered too long they were promptly told to ‘Skedaddle’. Although the building itself was too far away for them to make out any detail, one thing they did notice each time they were drawn to the site was the rapidity of progress. As for the workers, they didn’t recognise a single face amongst them. Obviously they had all been brought in from
other villages specially for the project. That, too, was very interesting.

One afternoon, when the children’s interest was finally starting to wane, Stench broke free of their hold and crashed through an opening in the fence, eager to chase down something that had caught his eye. Fortunately, the workmen were at a safe distance packing up for the day, so the children were able to scramble through after Stench. When they finally retrieved the panting dog, they found the object that had drawn his attention was a silver bell, no bigger than a thumbnail, glittering in the afternoon sun. It was an incongruous object to find amidst building rubble and plaster dust. Milli bent to retrieve it, but the bell slipped continually from her fingers and could not be grasped. They made a hasty retreat when Stench began to bark in mounting frustration.

‘What do you make of that?’ Milli asked.

Ernest shook his head. ‘Must be a relic from Hog House.’

‘Wherever it’s from, that’s no ordinary bell,’ said Milli. ‘Should we report it?’

Ernest rolled his eyes at her. ‘And risk mass
hysteria, not to mention losing the freedom we’ve only just started to enjoy? I don’t think so.’

When Milli and Ernest and the children of Drabville returned from the Conjurors’ Realm, they did not return alone. With them came two freckled twins with limbs the width of matchsticks and a weather-beaten old woman wearing a hairnet and lugging a suitcase stuffed full of cooking utensils. The arrival of Finn and Fennel and Nonna Luna in Drabville generated considerable interest amongst the townsfolk. Who were these elastic acrobatic twins who wore far-away expressions and insisted on sewing sequins on their school uniforms so as to feel more at home? Who was this old woman as gnarled as an ancient tree whose dishes could persuade even the most lethargic of men to mow the lawn? Could these visitors be trusted if they came from a world once overseen by Lord Aldor? But it did not take long for the good nature of the new arrivals to become obvious and all suspicion vanished. After all, how could Drabville not welcome with open arms
individuals who had been so pivotal in their children’s escape?