Whether it was a monster which finally emerged depended upon your point of view. Certainly Chloe didn’t regard him as such, but a mouse or a sparrow might. Nelson’s gingery face appeared in the gap between the second and third button on the coat. He stared, gave an enormous yawn which not only showed his teeth but also the back of his throat, then he squeezed out, popping one of the buttons as he did so.
‘What’s Nelson doing in there?’ asked Chloe indignantly. ‘Has he been sleeping inside your coat all night?’
‘Yep.’
‘And I suppose he’s brought you another rat?’
‘Nope.’
‘In that case, it’s a veggy breakfast.’
Alex groaned. He stood up and went for a wash in the nearest water tank, which was about fifty metres away. When he got back he found Chloe had boiled the eggs given them by the puppets. Alex sat down and, full of gratitude for Punch and Judy, ate his fill.
‘Not too many of those,’ warned Chloe. ‘You’ll block up. Eggs do that to you.’
‘You sound like a mum.’
Chloe acknowledged this. She felt a bit like a mum sometimes. Boys needed to be told to wash, eat properly and to change their socks. Why they didn’t respect cleanliness or treat the food they threw down into their stomachs with caution she couldn’t imagine, but they started out life with a mum and most seemed to need one for ever.
Nelson didn’t appear to need anything to eat. He limped over to a spotlight thrown down from the roof, and stretched out again. There he lay in the warmth of the sun, gathering the energy necessary to go out and kill things by the dozen. It was he, however, who rolled over and was suddenly alert when a distant noise was heard.
‘What’s that?’ asked Chloe, a hard-boiled egg halfway to her mouth. ‘Did you hear that, Alex?’
Nelson was gone, slipping away into the shadows.
Alex took out his binoculars, looking through them.
‘Those doll things with the straggly hair and pins. Them that went for the villagers at that last collection of Attican wardrobes huts. They’re coming,’ he said. ‘D’you think they’ll attack us?’
Chloe was alarmed. ‘You’re sure they’re heading this way?’
‘Positive. They keep stopping and sniffing the ground before pointing at us. I think they’re tracking us.’ The glasses came down. ‘We’re being hunted.’
Chloe jumped to her feet, quickly followed by Alex. They gathered up their things, put them into packs, and began jogging away from the scene. Makishi, on Alex’s back, complained that he was being ‘bounced’. Alex said he couldn’t do anything about it. Things were looking desperate for the two children, who prior to this had no idea they had upset some of the attic’s most savage creatures.
As they ran Chloe kept looking at the ubiquitous piles of junk that they passed lying on the boards. Finally she saw something.
‘Clogs,’ she yelled. ‘Quick. Put a pair on over your shoes.’
‘But they’ll slow us up,’ complained Alex.
‘Yes, maybe – but they’ll destroy the trail. Be careful how you put them on. Don’t touch the bottoms. Then our smell won’t be on the trail we leave behind. It’ll just be old clogs against wooden boards. Wood on wood. The dolls won’t be able to follow us then.’
Alex saw the sense in this and found a large pair of clogs that would go over his shoes. Soon the pair of them were clumping along, making the most fearful racket, but hopeful that their trick would work.
However, when they stopped to rest and Alex used the binoculars again, he informed his sister that the dolls were still coming.
‘They’re gaining on us,’ he said. ‘What about doubling back and hiding somewhere?’
‘I don’t like that idea. If they can sniff our trail while we’re wearing clogs, they can certainly find hiding places.’
The wooden clogs were abandoned. The pair raced for their lives over the boards, hoping to come across some sort of habitation full of creatures who might help them. Nothing appeared on the horizon though and now the voodoo dolls were visible without the glasses. A dust cloud told of their coming. There were swarms of them, some dark, some pale, scurrying over piles of junk: a horde of warriors. The children tried to throw things in the dolls’ path, like old chairs and boxes, but nothing seemed to deter their pursuers. The glitter of long needles was visible now, as the small hunters ran through shafts of sunlight, their beady eyes intent upon their