For a moment, Tess almost thought she could hear the roar of the surf and feel the warm sand against her toes.
“Can you smell it too?” Niles asked.
Before anyone could reply, one of the mermaids moved her painted lips and spoke.
“Will you help us?” the mermaid said in a soft voice. “Please?”
The children jumped. Tess grabbed her younger siblings by the arms and pulled them back a few steps. But the mermaids made no move towards them. In fact, they didn’t move at all, apart from their lips.
“Oh, please,” another mermaid whispered. “Please help us.”
This mermaid was still lying down and her face wasn’t pointed towards the children. Tess expected her to turn her head, but she stayed lying on the shelf.
“Can’t … can’t you move?” Tess asked. She took a cautious step forwards.
“Only the teddy bears can move,” the mermaid replied. “The rest of us can only talk.”
Tess slowly reached out and propped the mermaid up against the wall. The air still smelled of the sea, and Tess could almost taste salt on her lips.
“How can we help you?” Tess asked.
“Get rid of the teddy bears,” one of the mermaids said in a trembling voice. “They hate all the other toys. The first toy maker locked the teddy bears up in a box, but then this new one came and let them all out. They’ve already killed the baby dolls. They’ll come for the rest of us next.”
“Why are they so evil?” Stacy asked. “How did they get this way?”
“We don’t know,” the mermaid said. “One day we all just came to life. The teddies have been evil since then.”
“Have you seen our brother?” Tess asked. “He’s about this tall.” She held her hand out flat above the ground. “And his hair is as orange as a carrot. You can’t miss him.”
“We haven’t seen him,” the mermaids replied. “But if he’s lost in the factory, then the teddy bears have probably taken him.”
“Taken him where?” Tess demanded, feeling panic rise up inside her once again. “They won’t … they won’t turn him into a toy, will they?”
Tess couldn’t help thinking of that jack-in-the-box that had looked so much like Oliver.
“They’ll take him to the tunnels,” the mermaid said.
“What tunnels?”
“There’s a whole network of tunnels underneath the factory. It’s how the teddy bears move around.”
“How do we get to them?” Tess asked eagerly.
“You can’t. The entrance is behind a locked door. And only the toy maker has the key.”
CHAPTER 9The Secret Diary
The children promised to come back for the mermaids, but first they needed to find Oliver. They tore around the rest of the factory and finally found the locked door. It was big and heavy and made of wood, and there was no way they were getting past it without the key.
“The mermaids said Hoggle has it,” Tess said. “Perhaps it’s in his office.”
She glanced back down the hallway. A few minutes ago they had passed a door with a frosted glass window with gold words that read: “Toy Maker’s Office”.
They hurried back down the corridor only to find that this door was locked too.
“I bet Hoggle has the key on him somewhere,” Tess said. She turned to her siblings. “None of us are pickpockets – we’ll never be able to snatch it from him.” Tess looked back at the door. “So we’re just going to have to break the window.”
“I know!” Niles said. “There was a Noah’s Ark Room just down there. We can use one of the arks.”
They went back to fetch one of the large wooden boats and then Tess hurled it at the window with all her might.
Fortunately, the glass was old and delicate. It shattered immediately.
Being careful to avoid the broken shards, Tess reached in and twisted the door handle from the inside.
“We’ve got to be fast!” Tess whispered. “Hoggle might have heard the smash. Everyone look for a key.”
They slipped into the room, which had a great big desk in the middle and lots of bookcases lining the walls. Stacy and Niles went to the bookcases and Tess investigated the desk. She yanked open the drawers and rifled through them.
“What’s this?” Tess said, pulling out a big heavy book.
It was bound in red leather and had Caractacus Hoggle’s name on the front. When Tess opened it, she realised it was a diary. A page had been marked with a paperclip and the diary fell open to this.
Tess’s eyes went to a highlighted paragraph of small, neat handwriting. She skimmed over it and then gestured to the others.
“Listen to this,” Tess said, and then started to read aloud from the diary:
Today I ventured down into the tunnels once again and pleaded with the goblin, but he will not undo the magic spell placed on the toys. The teddy bears continue to rampage around the factory, destroying everything in their path. To my dismay, some of the bears had already been sold to families. I visited these homes and it was plain to me that the children were terrified of the teddies. But most of the adults seemed to think me perfectly mad when I tried to warn them about the toys. Oh, there were one or two adults who seemed to sense something was wrong and had already thrown the toys away, but their unease seemed vague – just that something wasn’t quite right.
Most of the adults had no idea at all. There was one mother who threatened to telephone the asylum when I tried to explain. And a father who seemed blind to one of the teddies running about his living room and brandishing a knife in the most savage manner. I can only assume it is part of the goblin’s magic that adults don’t see the toys come to life.
But when
