Moon-Faced Ghoul-Thing (2 page)

Chapter Two

The Moon-Faced Ghoul-Thing, the witch and the bobble-hatted butterfly stepped out on to the darkened main street of the village of Lump. None of the lamps had been lit and it was only thanks to the faint moonlight that the children were able to see anything at all.

“Everyone got their bags?” Paradise asked.

Ben and Wesley held up two bulging cloth sacks and gave them a shake. “Got them.”

They strolled towards the closest house. Shapes moved somewhere along the street – other children out for Scarrabus’s feast, no doubt.

“I’ve worked out the best route so we can get
this done quickly,” Paradise said. “The sooner we can get finished, the sooner we can all go home.”

“Why the rush?” asked Ben, swinging his bag back and forth as he walked. “This is the first interesting thing to happen around here in months. The Feast of Scarrabus is supposed to be fun.”

Wesley whimpered. “Fun?” he said. “Trudging around in the dark, surrounded by monsters?”

“Kids dressed as monsters,” Ben pointed out.

“It’s the same thing!” Wesley yelped. “I mean, no, obviously it isn’t the same thing,” he admitted. “But it’s still pretty scary.”

They reached the first house. It was one of the new wooden huts that had been built after the neighbouring village of Loosh had been destroyed. Loosh was supposed to have been rebuilt months ago, but a mysterious fire had burned every one of the houses to the ground before they could be finished, destroying the village for the second time that year. Not wanting to chance things a third time, the Mayor of Loosh had decided they should all just stay in Lump permanently.

Above the door of the house was a carved wooden fish. At least, it was supposed to be
a fish, but the person who had carved it had either never seen a fish in their life, or had never had a go at carving before. Either way, it looked like a sort of melted slug with a very surprised expression on its face.

The hut was the home of pirate-turned-fishmonger Captain Swordbeard. From past experience, Paradise knew the captain had a fondness for kipper-flavoured fudge. She rummaged in her sack and pulled out a small parcel wrapped several times in thick brown paper. Despite the layers of wrapping, the whiff of sugary smoked fish was unmistakeable.

“I’m glad to get rid of this one,” she said, dropping the package on the doorstep. She wiped her hands on her tatty black dress
and all three children quickly backed away. Paradise began to march towards another house. “This way; keep up. You wouldn’t want the ghoul-faced thingummy to come and get you.”

She jabbed Wesley in the ribs. He let out a high-pitched squeak of fright. “It’s got me, it’s got me!”

Paradise and Ben both burst into fits of laughter.

“D-don’t do that!” Wes yelped. “I almost soiled my body stocking.”

Paradise slung her bag over her shoulder and hurried on ahead. “Come on, this is getting us nowhere,” she said. “Last one to give out their sweets is a Gruzzleslug’s mum.”

It took them almost forty minutes to stop by every house in the village. They left their little gifts of chocolate, fudge and other tasty stuff on every doorstep they stopped at. Some of the homes had already been visited by other children, and those steps were spilling over with stacks of sweet-smelling parcels.

Ben’s stomach rumbled as he balanced his last bundle of goodies on top of a teetering pile of packages.

The aroma of toffee apples and home baking made his mouth water.

“We could probably take one or two,” he said. “Nobody would notice.”

“Are you
mad
?” Wesley spluttered. “And risk angering Lord Scarrabus?”

“Grow up, Wesley,” said Paradise, rolling her eyes. “There is no Lord Scarrabus. If there was, why has nobody ever seen him?”

“Because we leave the sweets,” Wesley said. His antennae bobbed about frantically on top of his head. “We leave the sweets and keep him at bay. That’s the rule. Start messing with that and who knows what might happen?”

Paradise stooped and lifted a small paper bag from the pile. She fished inside it and pulled out a brightly coloured bonbon.

“Are you seriously telling me you believe all this stuff?” she asked. “You honestly think that some all-powerful evil warlord is held at bay by children leaving chocolate on doorsteps?”

“Yes! Why else would the tradition have started in the first place?”

“Well, let’s see,” said Paradise. “Maybe because adults wanted a load of free sweets?”

“Ha!” laughed Wesley. “That’s… That’s…” He considered it for a second. “That does make a lot of sense, actually.”

Ben eyed up the pile of packets. “So in other words, we should probably just help ourselves?”

Paradise shrugged. “Yeah, why not?” she said, tossing the bonbon towards her open mouth.

“N-no!” yelped Wesley. There was a brief flash and the sweet froze just millimetres from Paradise’s lips. It hung there, floating in the air, quietly minding its own business.

All three children stared in silence at the sweet for what felt like a very long time. Ben
eventually glanced sideways at Wes. “Did you do that?” he asked.

Wesley held up his hands and studied them front and back. He was technically a wizard, but every spell he’d ever attempted had either failed to work or gone spectacularly wrong. In the end he had been kicked out of wizard school after tests revealed he had less magical ability than the average door knob.

He hadn’t been trying to do a spell, but he had nevertheless felt … something.

When Paradise had tossed the
bonbon towards her mouth he’d felt a tingle of energy tickle along his fingertips. It was like nothing Wesley had ever felt before, and – like wasps, sharp corners and certain colours of paint – it worried him.

Wes looked at the sweet. It was still hanging there like a tiny moon, defying the laws of gravity and common sense. Whatever the tests had found, Wesley reckoned there were very few door knobs that could have done something like that.

His jaw flapped open and closed. “I, uh … I just d-don’t think we should eat them,” he stammered. “Just in case the legend is true. We wouldn’t want to come face to face with Lord Scarrabus, would we?”

Slowly, his hand trembling, he reached
out and took hold of the bonbon. It vibrated briefly between his fingers, then seemed to relax. He placed it back in the bag, took the bag from Paradise then set it down on the step.

Wesley smoothed down his bodysuit and smiled shakily. “Right, that’s enough excitement for me. I think I’ll call it a night. See you both tomorrow.”

“You OK?” Ben asked.

“Cock-a-doodle-dandy!” Wesley said, forcing a smile. He winced. “Sorry, bit of a strange thing to say. Don’t know where that came from. Um … bye.”

He about-turned and took a few uncertain steps along the almost perfectly dark street.

“Wrong way,” said Paradise, who had a special ability that let her find anything she
decided to look for. Not that she needed magical powers to know where Wesley’s house was.

Wesley turned sharply left. Paradise shook her head. “Still the wrong way,” she said. “Would you like me to walk you—”

“Yes, please!”

Paradise smiled and turned to Ben. She punched him playfully on the arm. “See you later, moon-thing.”

“See you, tiny witch,” Ben said. He gave Wes a wave, then watched them walk away until they’d disappeared into the darkness.

Ben waited until they were gone, then looked down at the three bags of sweets they had left on the doorstep. Wesley’s words rang in his ears:
We wouldn’t want to come face to face
with Lord Scarrabus, would we?

“Actually,” Ben whispered, “who says I wouldn’t?”

And with that, he set to work.

Chapter Three

Ben stood in his bedroom looking at a large lump of rock. His uncle Tavish has moved it out of the basement and into Ben’s room when Ben was out, to allow Tavish to fix up the basement wall.

Embedded in the rock was a sword. Only the handle and a few centimetres of blade
stuck out from the stone. On the handle was a detailed carving of a terrifying-looking creature. Ben had searched every page of Lunt Bingwood’s
Who’s Who, What’s What and Why They Do Such Horrible Things to One Another
to try to find out what the creature was, but there was no reference to it anywhere in the book.

Beside the stone was a long wooden box. It was closed, but Ben knew that inside it was the magic metal gauntlet that had saved his life several times in the past. Both the gauntlet and the sword in the stone had been found in the wreckage of a wagon ten years ago. Ben had been found in the same wreckage as a baby and Tavish had taken him in, raising him like he was his own son.

Those two objects were the most important
things in Ben’s world. They were his only link to his past, and to the mystery of what had happened to his parents. As soon as Ben had first found out about the sword and the gauntlet, he knew he would guard them with his life.

It had been six months since he had last tried to pull the sword free, right before he and his friends had faced Dadsbutt the swivel-eyed ogre. Since then, life had been largely uneventful in Lump, and Ben hadn’t thought about trying the sword again.

Until now.

Ben removed his cloak, used it to wipe off his face paint then hung it over the end of his bed. The cloth sack he’d used to carry his delivery of sweets was slung over his shoulder.
With the robe on, the bag had been completely hidden, so no one could see the sack was fuller now than when he’d left the house.

Pushing the heavy bag under his bed, Ben turned to the sword and reached for the handle. As it always did, a faint buzz of power trembled up his arm the moment his fingers made contact with the sword’s hilt.

“This is my sword,” he whispered. “This is my sword, and I am ready.”

He pulled, then gasped. For the first time ever he felt movement, and for a glorious moment he thought the sword was finally going to pull free. Instead, the blade burrowed deeper into the stone, all the way up to the handle.

Confused, Ben pulled harder, but the sword remained fixed firmly in place. No matter how much he tugged, the blade wouldn’t slide back out.

Ben’s shoulders sagged. “Fine. See if I care,” he whispered. He gave the boulder a kick, which he realised immediately was a bad idea. He jammed his hand in his mouth and hopped around the room for a few moments, trying not
to yelp in pain.

Then, with a quick stop at the bathroom, Ben got into his two-sizes-too-big nightshirt, slid under his rough woollen blankets and lay on his back staring up at the thatched roof above his bed.

He thought about the sword. Why had it buried itself deeper into the rock? It had never done anything like that before.

He thought about the bag of treats stuffed under his bed but quickly began to feel guilty, so switched his attention to something else.

He tried to think about his parents, but he had no memory of them, so that wasn’t easy. He spent a while rummaging around at the very back of his brain, in case that brought up any clues, but with no luck. The gauntlet
and the sword were the key. He was sure of it. They’d help him discover the truth one day.

Slowly, gradually, Ben’s eyelids began to get heavy. He did his best to fight it, but after just a few short minutes he drifted off to sleep.

Ben woke up. His candle had burned down almost all the way, and now only a tiny flame danced above a pool of liquid wax. From elsewhere in the house he could hear the rasping of Uncle Tavish’s snoring.

There had been another sound too, Ben was sure of it. Something had woken him up. Something that—

BLOOP
.

Ben sat up in bed.

BLOOP
.

There it was again. The sound seemed to be coming from the wooden trunk at the foot of the bed.

BLOOP
.

Ben threw back the covers, crossed to the trunk and lifted the lid. Inside the trunk was a graveyard of old shoes, broken toys, interesting bits of wood and various other things he’d collected over the years.

BLOOP
.

He dug around until he found a small rectangular metal box, then balanced it on the palm of his hand. After a moment, a small wooden bird popped out on a spring and said:

“
BLOOP
.”

Uncle Tavish had invented the little gadget to detect magic. He’d named it the Automated Magic Detecting Device, because interesting names weren’t really his strong point.

The bird popped back inside the box. Half a second later, it popped back out again.

“
BLOOP-BLOOP
.”

Ben looked around. The bird was only supposed to pop out when there was something magical around. One
bloop
meant it had detected magic. Two
bloops
meant it had
detected vast quantities of magic.

So what was it picking up on now? The sword had magical properties, and the gauntlet was a rare double-blooper. But they’d been up here all night; why had the device chosen now to—

“
BLOOP-BLOOP-BLOOP
.”

Ben jolted in shock. The Automated Magic Detecting Device had never given three
bloops
before. Ben had a vague memory of his uncle telling him that three
bloops
were very bad news indeed.

“BLOOP-BLOOP-BLOOP-BLOOP-BLOOP!”

The device began to vibrate violently. There was a faint
hiss
from Ben’s hand as the metal suddenly became too hot to touch. He dropped it just as the spring went rigid and the frantic
bloop
ing turned into one long
blooooooooooop
.

There was a sudden knocking, like somebody rapping their knuckles on the door. The knocking wasn’t coming from downstairs though. It was coming from inside his bedroom.

It was coming from the wooden box with the gauntlet inside.

There were no windows in Ben’s room, but a chill draught made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. The candle’s flame spluttered and flickered, plunging the room into darkness for a few moments.

The sound from the Automated Magic Detecting Device rose, becoming an ear-splitting squeal that quickly became too high-pitched for Ben to hear. He could feel it though, like a drill at the base of his skull, making his head ache.

The light returned, and Ben knew right away that something in the room was different. The knocking from the wooden chest grew louder and more frantic, the box itself hopping about in time with each violent
thud
.

There was the sound of rustling velvet from above. Ben’s eyes crept towards the ceiling. The knocking from the box became the splintering
of breaking wood as the gauntlet smashed its way free.

Ben tried to cry out but his throat had gone tight. There, half hidden in the shadows on the ceiling, was a white-faced figure in a flowing black robe.

Diving off the bed, Ben grabbed for the gauntlet. At the same time, the glove seemed to leap towards him. His fingers found the metal just as six huge spider-like legs snapped around him and dragged him, kicking and squirming, into the pitch-black folds of the Moon-Faced Ghoul-Thing’s cloak.

The inside of the cloak was lit by a tornado of swirling purple sparks. Ben felt a prickling pass through him, as if every atom of his body were shooting off in different directions.