She screamed and jumped back, banging into the others, who all started yelling too.
“What is it? What is it?” they cried.
“There’s something behind the wall!” Tess gasped.
As if to prove it, the sneeze came loudly once again.
“Atishoo!”
There was a scrabbling sound, as if whatever was back there had started to move. It was followed by a flurry of sneezes.
Tess was afraid it might be coming out to get them, so she started banging her mop handle on the wall as hard as she could.
“Get out of here!” she yelled. “Scram! And don’t come back or we’ll bash you with mops!”
The scurrying sound seemed to get lower, as if the thing was going down underneath the floor. Finally, there was silence and when Tess peered into the eye holes again there was nothing there.
“Is it gone?” Stacy asked, trembling as she gripped Tess’s hand.
“I think so,” Tess replied, wiping sweat from her brow.
“What was it?” Niles asked. “A teddy bear?”
“I’m not sure,” Tess said. “I couldn’t see it properly. All I know is it had big yellow eyes.”
The children gave each other dark looks.
Then Tess said sharply, “Where’s Oliver?”
CHAPTER 6The Rocking-Horse Room
Tess looked frantically up and down the corridor, but her youngest brother was nowhere to be seen.
Niles shook his head and said, “He got scared and ran in there.”
He pointed to the nearest door, which was now wide open. Tess scowled and stalked towards it.
“Stupid, stupid!” she muttered. “I told him not to go anywhere by himself. I told him!”
The sign on the door read: “Teddy-Bear Room”. Tess very much hoped that Oliver hadn’t gone inside. It would be just like him to make everything ten times worse.
Tess poked her head into the room and stared at the sight of dozens of teddies. Row upon row of them, all lined up neatly on shelves attached to the walls. They were all identical to Biffy, the bear that had tried to stab Mika – white and fluffy, with black noses and shiny, watchful eyes.
There was a big pile of rusted machinery in the centre of the room. Tess guessed it had been used to make teddy bears.
“Oliver!” Tess called. “Oliver, it’s all right! You can come out!”
But there was still no sign of him, and no reply.
“Perhaps he’s hiding behind the machinery,” Tess said, thinking out loud.
She strode into the room and poked around the machinery from every angle, as well as underneath, but there was no Oliver.
Tess looked back at Niles and said, “Are you sure he came into this room?”
“I don’t know,” Niles said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked unsure. “I thought it was this one. And the door was open …”
Niles trailed off and Tess groaned aloud. “I can’t believe he ran off like that!” she said. She suddenly felt both angry and worried at the same time.
“He can’t have gone far,” Tess said. She was trying to reassure herself as much as the other two. “We’ll just have to search for him.”
Tess walked back over to the twins, fighting to control the panic rising inside her. It was her fault that Oliver was lost. She was responsible for him and now he was gone.
“The bears,” Stacy said, pointing at them and staring. “They’re completely clean.”
Tess realised Stacy was right. The floor of the room was as dirty as the foyer had been, and the machinery was covered in rust. But the white bears were spotless, as if they’d been made yesterday.
“Perhaps Hoggle only just made these ones,” Tess said.
But it seemed like an awful lot of bears to have produced so fast. And the machine in the centre looked as if it hadn’t been used in years.
“Never mind about the bears,” Tess said, shaking her head. “The important thing right now is to find Oliver. He must have gone into one of the other rooms.”
They returned to the corridor and hurried back to the foyer to see if he had gone that way, but there was no sign of him.
“Perhaps he ran home?” Stacy suggested.
“But I really thought I saw him go into the Teddy-Bear Room,” Niles said.
Tess clenched her hands into fists and tried to think.
Maybe Oliver had simply run off home. It sounded like the sort of dumb thing he’d do. On the other hand, perhaps he was lost somewhere inside the factory. Teddy bears could be stabbing Oliver with forks at this very minute!
Finally, Tess looked at the twins and said, “Someone should run home to check if he’s there. Stacy, you’re the fastest. You go and then come back to tell us.”
Stacy nodded, her face serious. “I’ll run as fast as I can,” she promised.
Tess and Niles watched Stacy whizz out of the front doors. She sprinted down the drive and past the entrance gates, kicking up clouds of dust behind her. Then Niles and Tess returned to the corridor. They had put down most of their cleaning stuff, but Tess kept hold of the mop, as it was the closest thing they had to a weapon. They went to the next door in the corridor, which had a sign glued to it that read: “Rocking-Horse Room”.
Tess had never been too fussed about dolls and teddy bears, even when she was small. But she had always adored rocking horses. Her family had never been able to afford to buy her one, but whenever she’d seen a rocking horse in a toy shop, she’d pressed her nose up against the window longingly.
Tess opened the door and she and Niles walked into another large room, with grey light coming in through the dirty windows. Tess couldn’t prevent herself from gasping. Inside were some of the most beautiful rocking horses she’d ever seen. They were all different colours, with real hair for their manes and tails. Some of the horses leaned against the wall, half finished, while others were scattered around the floor. They all had proper saddles and reins
