Jody Richards and The Secret Potion (9 page)

Augustine The Awful must have put a spell on the girl and The Bag Man a split second before Elsa could come up with her own spell.

‘Just my luck’ she thought. ‘Never mind. My main task is to find the ingredients for everlasting life in the castle storeroom and take samples of them back to my mistress. I’ll do that first and look for the girl later.’

She was still deep in thought when she flew straight into a tree branch.

“Ouch, that hurt” she shrieked.

Continuing her course, Elsa had another thought. ‘Perhaps it’s time to change myself into the size of a bee. Then I won’t keep flying into tree branches’.

But, as an apprentice witch, she wasn’t too confident about altering her shape while still invisible and trying to concentrate on her flying. So she made herself visible again before reducing her bulky frame to bee-like proportions.

‘Now I can fly through one of the castle windows and then change myself to my normal size when I get inside the storeroom’ she thought. ‘It won’t matter that I’ll no longer be invisible. I’ll just become my lovely self again.’

It was a decision she was to regret because it was to have tragic consequences.

Chapter Fourteen

IN Bromley on the fringe of the Kent countryside a distressed Herbert Richards had been searching through James’s possessions in a bid to find any clue there might be about his son’s disappearance.

He had spent hours looking and it was now well past midnight. But, undeterred at finding nothing, he carried on his search and suddenly spotted a floppy disc that had slipped down the side of the desk in James’s bedroom.

The police had already taken away the boy’s computer to look through the files, but had apparently missed this floppy disc. Herbert put it in his own computer and began browsing through the large number of items on it.

Finally, he stumbled upon a directory labelled ‘Special offers’. One stood out – it was about the Castle of Dreams, offering a free ‘adventure holiday of a lifetime’.

Herbert, a gruff, plain speaking accountant who was always suspicious of ‘special deals’, read his son’s notes about the Castle of Dreams with interest and dread.

James had obtained details about this ‘free holiday of a lifetime’. There was a questionnaire which James had answered, revealing that he was over 5ft tall, didn’t smoke or drink alcohol, was of excellent health and physically fit.

He had also been questioned about whether he could climb trees and swim over 10 lengths. James had said he could and had added that he was the freestyle champion in his age group at his local swimming club.

‘The police would be very interested in this – it might give them the lead they need,’ thought Herbert. ‘I’ll phone them first thing in the morning.’

But Herbert needed more information to give them. There was only an email address for the Castle of Dreams –- no word of where it was located.

So he sent a message of his own to the Castle of Dreams’ email address, asking for more details of the offer. It was a huge mistake because Herbert was merely alerting Augustine The Awful to the fact that someone using James’ information pack had traced him.

That night Herbert had no sooner fallen asleep than he was consumed by a terrifying dream. It was the worst nightmare he had ever had, an utterly awful experience that was so vivid it would haunt him all his life.

He found himself in a castle bedroom where he saw James asleep. He tried to wake the boy and urged him to come home with him. But James was in a deep slumber before Herbert could rouse his son he was promptly grabbed from behind by two guards – pixies of contrasting sizes – and coshed by the larger of them.

Herbert was then dragged down a seemingly never-ending series of stone steps into a damp, daunting cell. There he was tied to a large wooden chair by straps that cut into his wrists and ankles, and had a glass of ice-cold water thrown over his face to revive him. He looked up to see the menacing figure of Augustine The Awful towering over him.

This time Augustine was dressed in a black gown. But the only things Herbert took in were the evil wizard’s tufts of hair, glowering eyes and large pouting lips.

“Now, my friend,” said Augustine after introducing himself, his voice low and threatening. “You need to be taught a lesson. Your son logged on to my website of his own free will and signed up to take advantage of my offer of an adventure holiday. Yet you are now trying to get him to break our agreement by enticing him away.”

“My son is only 11 years old and you have no right to keep him here,” Herbert shouted, struggling in vain against the strapping that bound his wrists to the chair’s arms. “I’ve come to take him home with me – now let us both go. I won’t allow you to keep James here.”

“Oh, but you will” snapped Augustine. “Furthermore, you’ll go home and say nothing because I will erase your memory of this and of what you saw on the disc you found. I have already wiped James’s computer clean of his mail to me so nobody will know where he is. But you can be assured that he will be well fed and treated – providing he works hard.”

“You’re mad,” snapped Herbert with contempt. He had hardly got the words out than he felt a stinging slap across the face from the back of Augustine’s right hand. The ring the wizard was wearing cut into his flesh.

“Don’t you dare insult me,” Augustine hissed. “If I have any more trouble from you I’ll have to move James from his nice, comfortable room to this cell with some friends of mine. The sort of friends he won’t like.

“Let me introduce them to you.” He turned to one of the guards and ordered: “Pass me the boxes containing my pets.”

“Yes, master,” said the smaller guard, picking up six of the 12 wooden boxes he had brought into the cell earlier and left on the floor behind him. He passed the first box to Augustine.

“These boxes contain my collection of spiders and scorpions,” purred the evil wizard gleefully. “Now what have we here?” He inspected the box and then answered his own question: “Ah, it’s Trevor. He’s a tarantula. Let me show you.”

He opened the lid of the box and placed it on the lap of a trembling Herbert, who watched in horror as two large spider’s legs emerged from the front of the box, followed quickly by others. Herbert’s screams did not deter the two-inch hairy tarantula crawling out on to his heaving stomach, which was covered only by his shirt, and making its way cautiously towards his chest.

The spider’s eight eyes, the middle two of which stood out from its triangular head, seemed to be focused on Herbert’s face and its jaws opened in anticipation of food.

“Would you like to see another?” asked Augustine The Awful, as a second box was passed to him. “This one is called Roxanne and she’s a red-back. Just one bite from her and you’ll be in no state to attend to any demands Mrs. Richards may make of you. You’ll be in excruciating pain, sweating all over and vomiting like mad.”

He opened the lid slightly and pushed the box towards his victim so that the red-back’s eight long spindly legs could be seen making frantic movements in a bid to get free. A reddish-orange stripe down its back was plainly visible.

“No, no. Take it away from me,” shrieked a near demented Herbert, sweat dripping from his forehead and receding hair line.

“I take it she’s not your type,” taunted Augustine, putting Roxanne’s box to one side. “It’s just as well because she has this nasty habit of eating her partner after mating and spinning up to eight round balls of web containing hundreds of eggs. Never mind, I’ve plenty of others. How about Bobby the black widow?”

Herbert screamed again.

“No?” queried Augustine. “Well, there’s Michael the mantid or Hector the huntsman.” He peered into another box.

“Hector, like most of his family, comes from the tropics – I had him shipped over from the Caribbean. If he sinks his fangs into you you’ll suffer swelling, sickness, headaches and maybe palpitations.

“Oh, how disappointing. It looks as if Hector is asleep. He wouldn’t be in the mood for running about.”

As he spoke the tarantula continued to make slow but deliberate progress up Herbert’s chest within inches of his mouth which was now emitting bile as he retched in disgust.

“I know,” said Augustine, a sparkle coming briefly into the deep pools of black that were his eyes. “You and the tarantula would find it simply riveting to meet Ralph my red scorpion.”

Augustine The Awful opened a large box containing the red scorpion and tipped it upside down so that a reddish-brown creature measuring a full seven inches fell on Herbert’s lap. It’s abdomen plopped against Herbert’s shirt, which was now covered in sweat.

The scorpion raised itself on its eight stringy legs. Ralph’s upwardly curved tail – arched threateningly over its back, ready to sting – moved sharply from side to side in an agitated manner as it spotted the tarantula.

The tarantula stopped in its tracks and turned to face the scorpion, which was opening its two lobster-like claws in anticipation.

“When the scorpion captures a victim with its claws it inflicts a disabling string with its tail,” Augustine The Awful explained, grinning fiendishly. “The problem for you is that you are shaking so much you are upsetting Ralph even more than Trevor is. And Trevor doesn’t look very happy, either. I hope Ralph doesn’t bite you because he’s a special breed and can be deadly.”

Every nerve in Herbert’s body was on end as he tried to stop himself making a violent movement that would cause the two potential combatants to join forces in attacking him.

“It will be interesting to see whether one of them bites you first or each other,” mused Augustine. “Perhaps I should give them something to whet their appetites.”

With that, he took a jar from one of the pockets of his gown and held it in front of Herbert for him to see. It contained hundreds of smaller spiders all crawling over each other as they frantically tried to get out of their glass cage.

“These are not poisonous but they crawl literally everywhere,” said Augustine as he slowly opened the top of the jar and shook it so that the spiders tumbled out on to Herbert’s chest, some falling on to his skin where the top two buttons of his shirt were undone.

Herbert screamed hysterically but the wizard ignored his cries.

“They are frisky little fellows aren’t they?” he said. “Look at them. They’re running in all directions. Some down your chest towards your stomach and others towards your mouth. I’m sure no matter how tightly you close it that they’ll find a way in. Or maybe they will prefer to go up your nose and…”

Herbert let out three more ear-piecing shrieks before he finally passed out.

When Herbert awoke the spiders were gone. He blinked in disbelief at finding himself at home in his own bed and not in Augustine The Awful’s castle. But Herbert’s feeling of immense relief could not compensate for the state of shock he was still in.

He lay on the bed trembling and perspiring as his wife Marjorie wiped his forehead and arms to get rid of the sweat which had made the sheets quite damp.

“Thank goodness you’ve woken up at last,” his wife said, soothingly. “You’ve obviously had a dreadful nightmare.”

“Yes,” he muttered. “It was about spiders. They were crawling all over me.”

Marjorie’s lightly freckled face grimaced in disgust. “How awful,” she said.

Herbert was on the point of telling her about the wicked wizard. But then his mind went blank and he remembered nothing of Augustine The Awful, the castle – or the computer disc. Nor could he explain the cut on his cheek. But the shock to his nervous system left other unseen scars and a lifelong fear of spiders.

Chapter Fifteen

JODY’S shock at finding herself in a cell in the bleak east tower of Augustine The Awful’s castle was matched by her disgust at sharing such a confined space with several beetles and two rats.

The stone walls and floors of the small room were completely bare, apart from a bed covered by a single sheet on which the Bag Man had placed his carrier bags. He had already inspected the cell door, made of solid oak, which was securely locked, and found that the only ‘window’ was a narrow slit in the stone wall on the right, above the bed. By climbing on to the old fashioned wooden bed frame he could peer through the slit and see a sheer drop to the moat that surrounded the castle four floors below.

“I suppose there’s no chance of escaping,” Jody sighed, flopping dejectedly on to the edge of the bed.

“It would appear not,” the Bag Man agreed.

“When Augustine The Awful comes I’ll tell him James is my brother and demand he sets all three of us free,” she said defiantly.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” the Bag Man advised. “If Augustine The Awful has wiped out James’s memory and tricked him into working in the forest then he will hardly want to release him. And should the evil-minded Augustine find out you are James’s sister he’ll never let you go. But I doubt if he would release us anyway, now that you know he has found the formula for everlasting life.”

“What can we do, then?”