Candy-Sticks, Chapter Four

“Pair of prissy little kill-buzz gatecrashers,” Lasser went on. “Striding into our party uninvited and flaunting it off like you don't even know. Oh, but of course, no-one else is allowed to have any fun. Want to guess what happens to stuck-up kids who ask for it? Round here, they get it.”

He and the others were starting to rise. Juniper was shaking badly beneath Robin’s palms, and in the air was a nasty feeling that this party might be over.

Then the door flew open with a bang.

It was Joe.

He thrust out his hand, and golden fire tore across the bar-room. Robin gaped as these tongues of flame shot within a hair’s breadth of the boys at their table, for under that raging effulgent light they were suddenly good-looking boys no longer. Rather, they were writhing spitting things, the comeliest of which Robin wouldn’t have wished to survey any more closely than he had to. This foul collection scrambled back as one, each gaunt of body and huge of head, and after them Joe threw torrents anew once their horrid hides were clear of slumberous Pseudangelos. Amid a din of jabber our hero hastened to his trembling friends.

“How are you doing that?” cried Robin.

“It cannot harm them,” Joe panted in reply. “They fear it, but I know not how long that will be so!”

Juniper hurriedly poured out what she’d deduced, that the creatures were exploiting some power of Pseudangelos’s which rendered her too valuable for them to mistreat. At this, Joe nodded once.

“Run,” was his word.

Outside, what little light the day had boasted was all but gone. Brownish twilight fog neared dominion, and no more than ghostly corners swam from the landscape as three pelted pell-mell. Already, clamorous yammering shadows were beginning to mass on their tail. To the Mini-Flashes Joe looked as if he had some idea where he was going, but the brow beneath the brim of his hat was furrowed.

A gate stood ahead, not the same one Robin and Juniper had entered by. Beyond it however lay a road, and that was reason enough for the trio to make all deliberate speed.

Robin however thought he heard Joe murmur: “No.”

Bare feet and boots hit wet tarmac. Visibility in either direction was down to a yard or two.

“No,” Joe whispered again. He sounded helpless.

“Which way now?” demanded Mini-Flash Juniper.

“It is the southbound exit!” our hero cried in reply. “We never departed by these means!”

“Then we’ll take a chance on getting lost,” decided Juniper, and strode briskly for the borders of the mist.

This for Robin was terror, as stark and sharp as it was nameless. He sprang after Juniper and snagged her by the elastic leg-hole, so startling her that she stopped.

“We can’t!” he blurted. “It isn’t fog!”

What was advancing with howls and gibbers from the other side of the fence, meanwhile, wasn’t human. Joe and his young companions, hemmed in on every other side, stared at bulbous blank eyes and flapping fish-maws and talons which tapered to needle-tips.

No way forward, no way back.

No escape.

Then out of the north wall’s vaporous opacity burst a great square shape, which landed on the road with a crash and a squeal of rubber.

It was a school minibus.

Someone within threw the side-door rumbling open. The hand that did this could not be seen, and the bus interior was black.

Nevertheless, there were no-brainers, and there were no-brainers.

Joe as good as slung girl and boy onboard pants-first, then followed suit and slammed the hatch behind him. Tyres screeched again as the minibus plunged headlong into nothingness.

TO BE CONTINUED