Lucy gave Sergeant Rowan her best glare of rage.
“I shall tell my father what you said. He’ll have your job!”
“He can have it if he wants it, miss, although why he would, I don’t know. Constable Peel, are you crying?”
“No, Sarge. Why do you ask?”
“Because I heard crying and simply assumed it was you.”
“Not me, Sarge. I can’t say that I’m not tempted, but I’m holding it in.”
“Very brave of you, Constable.”
“Thank you, Sarge.”
“That said, I can still hear someone crying for mummy. I think there may be a child in here with us.”
Constable Peel listened.
“More than one, Sarge. I can hear lots of them.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” said Lucy. “They’re dolls! We’re in a toy shop. They’re probably demonstration models left out for children to play with.”
To their left was the entrance to the doll section of the store. It was clear that the sounds were coming from there.
“That’s a relief,” said Constable Peel just as a doll waddled into view and blinked at them. It was about eighteen inches tall, with dark hair. It wore a blue dress and blue shoes. Its eyes were entirely black.
“Mummy,” said the doll, its lips moving to form the word.
“That’s very impressive,” said Constable Peel. “In a creepy way. And it has quite big teeth for a doll.”
“It has quite big teeth for a
Constable Peel didn’t need to be told twice. More dolls were joining the first. Some walked and some crawled. One doll pushed another doll in a pram. A number of them were armed with knives. The ones that couldn’t talk just cried, but the ones that could talk said things like “Mummy,” and “Bottle,” and “Change me.”
And “Kill!”
• • •
Mr. Karloff had managed to stop running for long enough to call the police. Constables Wayne and Hay, who were out in a patrol car, were now aware that Biddlecombe was in trouble again. There were rumors of eerie noises from the old prison, and strange lights in the abandoned asylum. They had tried to contact Sergeant Rowan and Constable Peel, with no result, so they had locked up the police station and headed out to investigate.
As it happened, their route back to the center of town took them by the battlefield. They paused for a moment and took in the sight of dozens of undead Vikings and Saxons merrily attempting to kill one another and, when that didn’t work due to the fact that they were already dead, contenting themselves with lopping off limbs and heads.
“Let’s just leave them to it, shall we?” said Constable Hay.
“That seems like the best thing,” said Constable Wayne.
They drove away, and did not look back.
XXIV
In Which Nurd and Wormwood Plan a Great Escape
NURD AND WORMWOOD CROUCHED in the darkness of Samuel’s bedroom, watching the activity below. Nurd turned to Wormwood and examined him critically, which wasn’t difficult where Wormwood was concerned. He straightened Wormwood’s costume, and adjusted his hat.
“This plan will never work,” said Wormwood.
“It might,” said Nurd.
“I look ridiculous.”
“Wormwood, you always look ridiculous. Admittedly, you now look slightly more ridiculous, if such a thing were possible. I did not believe it was, but it seems you have just proved me wrong. How do I look?”
“You look ridiculous, too. And it still won’t work.”
“Do you have a better plan?” asked Nurd.
“I have never had a plan in my life,” admitted Wormwood, although he was tempted to add that he was currently trying to come up with his first, because whatever he thought of, it couldn’t be worse than this one.
They were under a state of siege. The elves had surrounded the house, but so far had failed to enter it. They had found the double glazing on Mrs. Johnson’s windows harder to break than expected, mostly because their little arms weren’t strong enough to hurl stones at the glass with sufficient force to do any damage, while attempts to squeeze through the spring-loaded letter box had resulted only in severe injury to the elves involved.
In desperation, the elves had resorted to fire.
Nurd and Wormwood had looked on as a gang of elves struggled under the weight of a can of petrol, along with some matches and various rags, all stolen from the shed of Mr. Jarvis, who lived next door to the Johnsons and was currently away on business.40
“Mr. Jarvis won’t like that,” said Nurd. “He doesn’t even allow people to borrow his lawn mower.”
This was true. Mr. Jarvis was very mean. If Mr. Jarvis had been a ghost, he would have charged people for frights.
“What are they going to do with that petrol?” said Wormwood.
“I’m not certain, but I suspect that they’re going to try to burn us out.”
“They do know that we’re demons, right?” said Wormwood. “Demons don’t burn very well.”
“No,” said Nurd, “but this house will burn nicely, whether we’re in it or not. What do you think Samuel’s mum will say if she comes home from bingo and finds her house on fire?”
“She won’t be happy,” said Wormwood.
“She won’t be happy at all.”
“Will she blame us?”
“She might, unless we can show her some elves with matches in their hands, but I’d prefer it if the house didn’t burn to begin with.”
“I’ll start filling buckets with water,” said Wormwood.
“That would be helpful,” said Nurd.
He continued to watch the elves. Even by the standards of not-very-bright creatures, the elves were spectacularly unintelligent. Perhaps it was because they were made from supernaturally animated wood. Say what you like about wood, but if you’re on a quiz team and one of your team members is made from birch, or if you and your fellow prisoners are trying to come up with a cunning plan to escape from prison and one of you is carved out of oak, there’s a limit to how much help the wooden representatives are going to be. Animated entities made from wood are usually not clever. So it was that the elves were splashing petrol around, and failing to light matches, and getting themselves wrapped up in bits of rag like small wooden mummies. More and more elves arrived to help, adding a second can of petrol to the first, and more matches, and even more confusion. They began carrying everything to the front door, spilling more petrol as they went.
“Tut-tut,” said Nurd.
“What?” said Wormwood, who had arrived with a bucket of water.
“Very dangerous, mucking about with fire. Someone could do himself an injury, and I think a lot of wooden someones are about to do just that.”
It’s a funny thing about fire, but it burns very well when there is wood involved. It burns even better when there is wood and petrol involved, and better still if a little paint is added to the mix for good measure. Basically, Mrs. Johnson’s garden was now full of small, painted, petrol-soaked pieces of wood.
Suddenly one of the elves finally managed to get a match lit.
“Weeeee!” it said with delight, holding the match above its head like a small, and not very impressive, Olympic torch.
“Weeeee!” said the other elves.
