Dancing Jax Read online

  The boy frowned at them. What were they staring at? He glanced up.

  What he had taken to be drying washing was nothing of the sort. Suspended from those branches were scores of dolls, or puppets, he couldn’t tell which. The oak was crowded with them. They were all shapes and sizes, but they were crudely made, with large stitches and deformed faces and misshapen limbs that didn’t match or line up with one another. Several held musical instruments; most of them were supposed to be children or odd, gnomish folk with long beards, but there were also rabbits and dogs, squirrels and badgers, and the occasional maiden with long golden tresses and painted red lips.

  “I never even liked the Muppets,” Lee said. “But them things is ugly as.”

  The way they twirled and twisted in the slightest breath of wind was creepy. They looked like they’d been hanged and the tree was an enormous gallows. Turning away, he spat on the grass.

  “I don’t think no one’s home,” he said, nodding at the cottage. “And we ain’t gonna find out squat stood here. Dammit.”

  He led the guards to the wicker door and pushed it warily.

  The interior was snug and cosy and cluttered. Just inside the entrance was a cloak rack, with upturned hooves for hooks and a different hooded cape on each one. The floor of the main room was bare earth, strewn with rosemary and rushes and circular rag rugs. Scraps of fabric of various colours and quality were scattered all over and tucked into every corner. Patchwork quilts covered the walls and kept out the draughts, and a pair of embroidered portraits of two elderly goblins hung above the stone fireplace in oval frames. The brass coal scuttle by the hearth contained balls of wool instead of fuel, and oversized knitting needles, one of them made of gold, were in place of fire irons.

  The room was dominated by the three toadstool stalks, rising from the soil like stout woody pillars. A great worktable took up half the space, on which the latest puppet was being made. The half-finished, understuffed head was waiting to be completed and the cut-out panels to make its arms, legs and body were in a neat pile close by. Next to them was a large glass jar brimming with beads and buttons, ready to provide the eyes, and a sack of hay and straw was there to fill it all out.

  Lee’s eyes fell on the gleaming array of tools that had been ranged with obsessive precision along the table’s front edge. There were three pairs of scissors of different sizes, four silver knives with bone handles, a golden buttonhook, a piece of blue chalk and a row of thimbles.

  Beside the table was a strange chair. It was crafted from a honey-hued wood, but the turned struts that supported the arms ran through a collection of reels holding rainbows of coloured cotton. Attached to the back was a spinning wheel, worked by a treadle beneath the foot rail, and a spindle holding a tall bobbin of pink wool spiked up at one of the corner stiles. Set into the arms were little drawers with brass handles. Lee pulled one open. It contained rolled-up ribbon and the next held brass buckles and tiny bells. He closed it with a tinkling jingle.

  “Explains why no one’s home,” he said. “This crib belonged to that tailor guy you dumb ladies gunned down back there. Poor sucker.”

  The guards didn’t understand. They were fascinated yet still half afraid of this place. It smelled strange. Beyond the logs that crackled in the grate, giving off the green, scented smoke, there was a sickly, rotten musk on the air that increased their fear.

  Then Baby held up one hand and shushed the others.

  A slow, steady dripping could be heard somewhere nearby. It wasn’t outside, it was in here, but where and what was it? They looked under the table and up at the rafters, but couldn’t locate the source. Finally Scary moved closer to one of the quilted wall hangings and gave a hiss. It was behind there.

  The Kalashnikovs came jabbing forward and Scary drew the hanging aside.

  An instant later, Lee was yelling in shock with them and they all jumped back at what had been revealed.

  “Hell!” the boy yelled. “That is hardcore sick!”

  Behind the quilt was a second smaller room. Large iron meathooks were fastened to the ceiling beams and knives and saws were ranged across two walls. It was a slaughterhouse.

  A hoard of bones, not quite picked clean, was stacked to one side like a gruesome log pile and, suspended from one of the hooks, was a little wizened creature with a long grizzled beard. He was a gnome from the copper mine in the neighbouring hill. His face was grey and drained. His throat had been cut and the blood was collecting in a large earthenware basin below, with drips as regular as the ticking of a clock. A watering can, also filled with blood, was beside it.

  The guards shook their heads and backed away, muttering in horror. They didn’t want to stay in here a moment longer. Outside the cottage, the shadows of night deepened and things began to awaken in the swelling dark.

  10

  ANY SORROW LEE had felt for that goblin tailor flipped 180 degrees.

  “That crazy wack-job!” he uttered, stumbling against the table. “What the actual hell? Was he some psycho-ass serial killer? Man! It never gets any better in this damn stinkin’ hole. They got every sort of Jack in this place, including their own Jack the Freakin’ Ripper!”

  Reeling from the harrowing sight of that corpse, he leaned on the table and caught his breath as the guards jabbered in shrill voices. Then Lee’s revulsion was swept away as a ghastly chill washed over him. He’d been staring down at the unfinished puppet and suddenly realised the carefully cut-out pieces were not made of cloth.

  It looked like thick parchment, but a glance at the half-stuffed head, with its sewn-up eyelids and real hair, told him the macabre and sinister truth. This wasn’t an ordinary home-made doll or a puppet in the normal sense. It was the skin of one of the goblin’s victims, preserved and tanned using bark from the huge oak tree. From the size, it looked like this victim had been a young one.

  What had that monster sung, just before the bullets cut him up?

  Each of you I shall make my friend…

  This is what he had intended to do to them: lure them to the cottage and kill them, then carve them up, flay their skins and make life-size dolls with the remnants. That’s what all those other things hanging in the branches outside were – the stuffed trophies of the people and creatures he had killed.

  “Sweet God,” Lee whispered in disbelief. “He musta been clean outta his dome.”

  Suddenly he clamped his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see any more. There was something about the face of that incomplete head lying there…

  In spite of the stitching that ran across the features, puckering one brow and part of the nose, and even though it was inadequately stuffed, and the skin was distorted, the face seemed familiar.

  Lee’s stomach churned and he began to breathe hard as he dared to open his eyes again. He had to be sure. Swallowing nervously, he directed his gaze towards the tidy stack of pieces waiting to be sewn up to create the body.

  One of the guards was shouting at him, urging him to follow them outside. He pulled on Lee’s chains and the boy roared back.

  “Gimme a minute! Just one goddamn minute – you hear?”

  Reaching out with trembling fingers, he touched the foul segments of skin and began sorting through them.

  The guards glared at him, impatient to leave. This was an accursed, evil place. They yelled at the English boy and Posh banged the table with his fist.

  Lee shuddered. He had found what he dreaded would be there. One of the largest pieces had a ragged hole in the middle, but around that tear he could still make out the silvery scarred lines that made up a capital letter J.

  Jim, the poor insane boy back in the camp, who had believed he was a superhero, and whom the Punchinellos had killed with a spear, had made it to Mooncaster after all – and Nimbelsewskin had found him.

  “Sleep in heavenly peace,” Lee muttered with rancour. “What a joke.”

  He had seen enough, too much. He needed to get outside – into the fresh air before he threw up – and he let the g
uards tow him towards the door. Before they reached it, they heard something thud on the roof overhead. There was a scuffling sound on the bark tiles, then there was another thump and another and another. A fine rain of dust came drizzling from the rafters. Lee and the guards halted and stared up. There was more scrabbling and more bumps. What was happening?

  Then shapes began dropping past the windows.

  The North Koreans shouted in alarm and gripped their rifles in readiness.

  “You gotta be kiddin’ me!” Lee snapped. “Don’t it ever let up? What now, huh?”

  They edged warily to the door.

  Beyond the windows, more shapes fell.

  Scary was the closest to the doorway. He leaned out and his mouth gaped wide. Then he began shooting wildly. The others heard a clamour of dismayed cries, followed by an almighty, rumbling din as if an avalanche was thundering against the roof. The cottage quaked and the two framed portraits fell into the hearth. Thimbles went rattling along the table and the dead gnome swung on its hook. Scary was bawling defiantly, blasting whatever was out there.

  Then the ammunition ran out.

  He stared down at the AK-47 in shock. Panicking, he tried to snatch Posh’s rifle off him. Posh refused and the two wrangled and argued over it as a crowd of deformed hands came reaching over the threshold. Strong fingers clutched the ankle of Scary’s right boot. The man shrieked and tried to kick them away, but their grip was too strong. He hit them with his rifle butt, but that only maddened them. There were savage snarls and they pulled hard.

  The guard was flung off balance and he hit the ground. More hands came grabbing at his leg, squeezing and clawing as they tore at it. Howling, he was hauled through the doorway, his fingernails scoring the earthen floor.

  It happened so fast, the others couldn’t stop it, but they were still chained together and were dragged after. They slammed into the doorway and uttered horrified shouts at the scene that met their eyes.

  Scary’s howls turned to screams.

  Every one of Nimbelsewskin’s victims that had been hanging from the oak tree was there – moving and yet not alive. They were animated corpse shells, driven by unclean forces that made them so much more than poorly executed taxidermy. They had detached themselves from the branches and, if Lee thought they were ugly from a distance, up close they were terrifying.

  The goblin had set a devilish enchantment on them, embroidering a powerful necromancy with every stitch, singing an incantation with every fistful of straw. He reanimated them with his own malevolent will and was their master. Absolute obedience and devotion were at the very core of their unnatural being. They were his companions, his attendants, his accomplices, his servants, his slaves. There was always work for them to do. He made them toil in the garden, feeding the flowers with a mulch of their own blood and ground-up bones. They kept the windows gleaming and clipped the lawn velvety-smooth with the smallest scissors. They cured and cooked their own flesh for him and joined in the slaughter of fresh victims. In the evenings, he commanded them to play music, then he had his pick of partners to dance and cavort with.

  Their faces were nightmarish. Each one was fiendish and repulsive. Paint had been applied, post-mortem, to the maidens’ faces, giving them the seductive smiles of she-devils, or heart-shaped pouts, with splodges of rouge over their badly stuffed cheeks. Lashes of dark wool surrounded the glass beads and buttons of the eyes – and, due to the goblin’s dark crafts, those shiny embellishments were not sightless.

  All of them were attired in whatever grotesque whim had delighted him. Even the dead animals had been dressed up, decked out with bonnets and shawls and frilled aprons, which heightened the horror all the more.

  The people and gnomes were creeping abominations, and they had been furnished with the power of rudimentary speech. Threats and disgusting oaths came grunting from their mouths and their filleted bodies were unnaturally strong. Scary had shot holes through a dozen or more, but to no effect.

  Bawling through the gaps in their loosely sewn-up lips, they surged forward and Scary disappeared beneath them. Then they ripped and tore at his uniform.

  Ramming their heels in the dirt, Lee and the other guards tried to pull him back. Clinging to the chain, in a desperate tug o’ war, they trawled and strained, putting their backs into it, but they were no match for the goblin’s hideous servants.

  Scary’s screams changed to fitful gargles and, without warning, the chain came loose. Lee and the other three tumbled backwards, into the cottage. Posh was the first on his feet and stormed over to close the door.

  The others stared at the end of the aluminium chain. It had been bitten through, and was wet with blood. The sounds outside made their own blood run cold. Shaking, Sporty began to shuffle away from the entrance, throwing down his rifle, for what use was it against them? Posh thrust it back into his hands, but he pushed it away again and tears welled in his eyes. Posh shouted at him and slapped Sporty across the face, then hoisted him to his feet.

  Lee blew on his wrist. The steel cuff had scraped it worse than ever.

  “Hey!” he barked, holding his hands out. “Time to bust me free, yeah? We don’t stand no chance leashed up. C’mon! Get me outta these!”

  The guards needed no translation. They knew too well it was suicide staying like this. But there was one small problem.

  “You jerkin’ me?” Lee snapped when he realised what Baby’s flustered mime meant. “You tellin’ me the key to these is back in Korea? You dumb bitches! We is gonna die – you comprende that? We is gonna get our heads ripped off by them killer zombies out there!”

  He gave a shout of frustration and kicked the wool scuttle across the room.

  “No way!” he bawled. “I will not be totalled cos of you sorry-ass grunts.”

  Posh saw the solution and spoke rapidly to the others. Hurriedly, they unbuckled and removed their belts. The chains that looped through them dropped to the floor. Now they were free.

  “What?” Lee demanded, raising his fists, dragging the chains with him. “What about me? Is that it? You gonna leave me with these?”

  There wasn’t time to answer. Already the disgusting rending noises had ceased outside and gore-soaked fingers were pushing against the wicker door. Posh took command. He ordered Sporty and Baby to drag the worktable over, to use as a barricade. Then he dashed into the other room and grabbed the knives and saws from the walls. If bullets were no good against those devils then perhaps old-fashioned steel would prevail. He threw the weapons down and told his men to take one in each hand. Then he turned a determined face to Lee and nodded for him to do the same.

  Lee had wrapped the chains round his arms to stop them trailing and being snatched at. Seizing two vicious-looking knives, he threw his weight against the table with the guards and they waited.

  The door was bowing inwards as many dead fists beat upon it. The hazel withies were snapping and the heavy table juddered.

  In a small voice, Baby began to sing ‘No Motherland Without You’, but his two compatriots didn’t join in and the words faded. Any moment now the wicker door would split apart and the goblin’s reanimated victims would come bursting through. Sporty bowed his head and offered up a prayer so that the spirits of the dead would not harm them. Posh regarded him with disdain; he had always suspected that one to be tainted by the old Korean belief in shamanism. The whole family was questionable. If they ever got back home, he would report him.

  Something smacked against the nearest window and Lee saw a horrendous face pressed against it. The button eyes were leering in at him and the stitched lips uttered threatening growls. The face was smeared with Scary’s blood and it rubbed a scarlet streak across the leaded glass. Eager fingers started to claw and scrape at the woven walls. Animal carcasses that had kept their teeth were chewing their way in and more were pulling at the bark tiles on the roof. They were going to rip the cottage apart.

  “This is so not what I had planned for my first night back here,” Lee said bitterly.<
br />
  With a splintering crash, the top half of the door came smashing in and Nimbelsewskin’s slaves swarmed through the breach, in a murderous, unstoppable tide.

  The guards sprang back and the knives slashed and stabbed. In an instant the cottage was a seething mass of flailing arms and ferocious shrieks. A knight, whose legs were too long for the armour he had worn in life, led the attack. The sword he wielded was rusted but lethal enough and it bit deep into the table, missing Baby by a fraction. As the knight wrenched the blade free, three fearsome and repellent hounds leaped in and launched themselves at Lee and Posh.

  The boy swung out with his arm, and the teeth that had been left inside the dog’s harrowing snout clamped ferociously about the wound chain. Lee yelled in pain. He couldn’t believe the power of those dead jaws. Staggering sideways, he drove the dog against the stone fireplace. But the vice-like grip remained and it hung on. Though Lee hacked and chopped at its neck, he could not shake it loose. Another of the hounds came snapping for his legs, its mummified ears flattened against the mottled and threadbare fur of its head.

  Posh was fitter and better trained than the lad from Peckham. Within minutes, the hellish dog that came ravening for him was on the ground, in twitching segments. But they were swiftly trampled as other larger things came rampaging. Roaring, Posh cut through seams and stitches, severing limbs and tearing off heads. Such was his ferocity, he drew the main force of the onslaught to him. When the knight came bearing down, sword raised, Posh’s wild blows were no match for that tarnished armour. The knives glanced off and one of them twisted out of his hand. He was driven back, through the hanging quilt – into the other room, where the dead gnome was swinging on the hook. Posh dodged round it. The sword came sweeping across and the gnome was sliced in two. The knight advanced, kicking the basin of blood aside. Braced against the wall, clutching his one remaining blade, Posh tensed for a last frenzied defence.

  By the toadstool stalks, Sporty had cut through half a dozen marauding corpse skins, when he was confronted by one of the dead maidens. The apparition tilted its revolting face, causing the flaxen tresses to fall across its blue bead eyes. The painted mouth buckled and issued a dismal, wretched howl. It was like a tormented plea for mercy and the Korean guard hesitated in striking out. Seeing his indecision, the maiden lunged forward and caught hold of his throat, shaking and throttling him. More of Nimbelsewskin’s slaves came piling in. Holes were torn in the ceiling and smaller horrors dropped down. A freakish rabbit, wearing a little doublet and feathered cap, dived on to Baby’s head and swiped at his eyes with a tiny knife sewn to its paw. The man cried out as it missed and sliced his cheek. He grabbed at the thing and hurled it away, only for it to come bounding back and leap on to his thigh.