Moving pictures

'Get going!' shouted Ginger, white-faced. 'Lights! Pic­ture box! Action! And stuff like that!'

Victor gritted his teeth and ran for it. There was enough light to give the darkness a shape, and he leapt from stair to stair with the magic of Holy Wood reciting its litany in his head.

'There has to be enough light', he panted, 'to see the darkness.'

He staggered onwards.

'And in Holy Wood I never run out of strength,' he added, hoping his legs would believe him.

That took care of the next turn.

'And in Holy Wood I have to be in the nick of time,' he shouted. He leaned against the wall for a moment and fought for breath.

'Always in the nick of time,' he muttered.

He started to run upwards again.

The slabs passed under his feet like a dream, like squares of movie clicking through the picture box.

And he'd arrive in the nick of time. Thousands of people knew he would.

If heroes didn't arrive in the nick of time, where was the sense in anything? And?

There was no slab in front of his falling foot.

His other foot was already arching to leave the step.

He focused every ounce of energy into one tendon­twanging push, felt his toes hit the edge of the next slab up, flung himself forward and then jumped again because it was that or snap a leg.

'This is nuts.'

He ran onward, straining to look for more missing slabs.

'Always in the nick of time,' he muttered.

So maybe he could stop and have a rest? He could

still make it in the nick of time. That's what the nick of time meant . . .

No. You had to play fair.

There was another missing slab ahead.

He stared blankly at the space.

There was going to be a whole tower of this.

He concentrated briefly and jumped on to nothing. The nothing became a slab for the fraction of a second he needed to jump off on to the next one.

He grinned in the dark, and a sparkle of light twin­kled on a tooth.

Nothing created by Holy Wood magic was real for long.

But you could make it real for long enough.

Hooray for Holy Wood.

The Thing was flickering more slowly now, spending less time looking like a giant version of Ginger and more looking like the contents of a taxidermist's sink trap. It pulled its dripping bulk over the top of the tower and lay there. Air whistled through its breathing tubes. Under its tentacles the rock crumbled, as the magic