slaves when they had been shop dummies. In those far-off days they had been forced to wear clothes they detested and made to stand in windows while they were ogled and gawped at by humans. Now when they caught one of those mortals they made them suffer the same kind of humiliation. They dressed them in hideous fashion garments, designed by people with flyaway minds, and made of uncomfortable fabrics. The colours were flamboyant, the buttons, zips, hooks and eyes, next to bare flesh. They put on them shoes that were either too big, or too small. They arranged them in unlikely groups, so they looked like a bunch of badly dressed fools on an outing.
Alex struggled wildly as they forced him into such clothes.
‘You – rotten – beggars!’ he yelled. ‘You wait until my sister gets here. She’ll kick your backsides for you, you – dummies.’
He grabbed an arm and, without meaning to, wrenched it from its socket. Everyone stopped, seemingly shocked by his action. Alex stood there in a floppy hat with a ribbon and wearing a loose ankle-length frock with a price tag dangling from the collar. He was holding the lone detached arm. After a few minutes of stunned silence he offered it to the owner, who snatched it back with their other limb. There were a few awkward moments while mannequins crowded round and assisted in getting the arm back into its owner’s socket, then they started on Alex once more.
Once he was dressed, Alex was again strapped to the support pillar in the middle of the village. The mannequins paraded round him, pointing and jeering silently. He could tell by their gestures that they were making fun of him, even though their expressions never changed and no sound came from them. There was something about their blank faces which was rather horrifying. They were in human form but did they have feelings? Alex decided that a creature without emotions was more dangerous than a creature full of hate and malice. Yet, he finally decided, if they wanted to humiliate him it was because they felt they had been mistreated themselves. Therefore they did feel.
‘You can laugh all you want,’ he said to them, as they walked around him, pointing at the price tags on his clothes and shaking their heads vigorously. ‘Well – actually you can’t laugh out loud, because you don’t have the equipment. But you’re laughing inside, I can tell. And I don’t care. I’ll stand here all you want for now. But you can’t keep me for ever.’
He said the last sentence with a conviction that he did not really feel inside. They continued to mock him with their presence, though Alex noticed that every so often the mannequins froze, as a group. Quite without warning they simply stopped in their tracks, remained motionless for about five seconds, then came to life again. It was as if they could not quite throw off their previous occupation when they had stood as still as statues. Locked within them was a remnant of their old existence: in those days the only time they altered their pose was when a human did it for them.
‘Must be in their genes,’ muttered Alex to himself, dismissing the laws of science and reason in this otherworld. ‘Next time they do it, I’ll undo this strap and make a dash for it.’
But it wasn’t long enough, five seconds, for him to get a head start. Especially all togged up in the clobber they’d dressed him in. They always managed to run him down. And when they did they poked him around, making his eyes water. Then they showed him a pair of barber’s scissors and pointed to his hair. They snipped the air in a taunting way with the scissors, making Alex quite aware what they intended to do.
‘You’ll be sorry if you do,’ he snarled at them after the third time. ‘I’ll knock your blocks off when I get help.’
But help, it seemed, was a long way away.
CHAPTER 7
On the Mountain of Shadows
Now Chloe was all alone. Alex was nowhere to be seen and her calls for him had gone unanswered. Jordy was somewhere out on or beyond the Jagged Mountain. It was as if the attic had a plan from the start, to divide the three children, to separate them, and then to deal with them in its own manner.
‘Alex?’ Chloe yelled, desperate for an answer. ‘Alex, where are you?’