Attica - By Garry Kilworth Page 0,54

mentioned board-combers a little while ago. What are they?’

‘Oh,’ Punch laughed, wooden head dipping in mirth, ‘yes, of course, you probably haven’t seen anything of them, though they’re bound to have been around. They’re masters at camouflage, the board-combers. They melt into the environment. It’s more than a disguise – they’re chameleons, those board-combers. And they often follow newcomers around, hoping they’ll lead them to whatever it is they’re collecting. Board-combers are collectors, you see. They collect the thing that interests them most.’

‘Why board-combers?’

Judy explained. ‘Rather like beach-combers, only they search the attic strand. It’s like a fever, an obsession. Collecting sometimes can be. With some of them it’s mirrors, with others it’s masks, or toy cars, or watches. Once they’ve got too many to carry, they gather them in one place and go out on forays, searching for more. The melancholic board-comber who collected the weapons, God rest his morbid soul’ – the puppets crossed themselves, producing that drumming noise again – ‘succumbed in the end to his very own collection. I believe he was frightened to death by Katerfelto. Very tragic, but I wonder what he expected?’

‘How dreadful,’ agreed Chloe. ‘And are these board-combers native to the attic?’

‘No,’ replied Punch gravely, ‘they’re from down below. They often carry a friend with them. An attic creature of some kind. A mouse. A bird. A very large hairy spider with long front legs.’ He shuddered a little, before continuing with, ‘You know the way pirates always have a parrot on their shoulder? Board-combers carry live creatures much in the same way, for company.’

Chloe suddenly felt overwhelmed by it all.

‘If you don’t mind,’ she said, ‘I’d like to get a little rest now. I’m exhausted. What about you, Alex?’

Alex shrugged inside his greatcoat. ‘Yeah – if you like.’ He got to his feet.

‘Where are you staying?’ asked Punch.

Chloe was still unsure about the situation and remained a little suspicious of the puppets’ intentions, so she waved vaguely at the gloaming beyond.

‘Oh – out there.’ She got to her feet. ‘Thank you for your kindness, and your explanations. We hope to see you again.’

‘We hope so too, don’t we my dear?’ said Punch, nodding at Judy.

‘Yes we do, and you’d be most welcome any time,’ said Judy, making Chloe feel guilty for harbouring doubt about them. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony.’

Alex and Chloe gathered up their backpacks and went on their way.

Once the children had disappeared into the twilight zone, Punch turned to his two companions and said, ‘That boy is turning.’

‘You noticed then?’ replied the policeman. ‘I did too.’

‘I hope he doesn’t,’ sighed Judy, ‘for his sister’s sake. She’ll miss him, she surely will. You can see she’s fond of him.’

‘Well,’ finished Punch, ‘maybe something will happen to stop him. You never know. Miracles do occur, occasionally. Now, my dear, what shall we do with the rest of the afternoon? There’s still a lot of light left in those high windows. Let’s have a game of cards. I miss my cards. Who’s got that pack of Happy Families we found the other day?’

CHAPTER 11

Dancing Rats in the Moonlight

Having fought his way across the region of the scissor-birds Jordy had settled for a while in a forest of tall clocks. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to leave it. He did. For one thing, the grandfather clocks were all set to different times, which meant there wasn’t an hour in the day when all of them were silent. At least one of them was chiming. And the ticking drove him crazy. He wondered who it was who wound them up.

And of course, the hands were all going backwards, which meant that an hour after a clock had chimed six times, it chimed five.

‘Have to clear myself an area,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’ll never get any sleep.’

And this he did, by opening the fronts to the grandfather and other clocks and stopping the pendulums. Those with weights and chains, he unhooked and let fall to the bottom of their cases. With others he simply jammed pieces of paper in the works to stop the wheels from moving. Thus he managed, after a day, to make himself a silent vale in the forest of tall clocks, where he could wait for his step-sib-lings. He had seen them coming over the plain behind him: vague misty shapes warped by the moted sunbeam shafts that criss-crossed the space between.

Chloe he had recognised by her posture: Jordy had always admired the straightness of her back when she walked.