‘Mr Grip,’ Nedly breathed.
Very slowly they stepped backwards, through the scattered toys, past the broken jars until they hit the the workbench. From there Lil ducked round the shelves and then ran quickly down the stairs to the door to the furnace room and rapped urgently on it.
‘Mum?’ she whispered as loudly as she dared.
‘Lil! Naomi gasped. ‘What are you doing still there? Are you OK? Is that man still here? Why aren’t you?’
‘Shhhh!’ whispered Lil. ‘Tell Abe that Mr Grip is about so you need to be really quiet, OK? Or he’ll come down here after you.’
‘Who’s Mr –’ Naomi started to ask but Lil interrupted her.
‘You don’t know him. Abe will explain. Trust me. Just don’t make a sound. Please.’
‘I –’ Naomi started and then she stopped and was silent. Finally she whispered, ‘Be careful.’
Lil held her hand against the door for a moment and then crept back up to the workshop where Nedly was standing by the shelves, his eyes still fixed on the road. Lil whispered as quietly as she could manage, ‘What’s he doing?’
Nedly shrugged and whispered back, ‘He’s just standing there in the snow, looking at the stars. Or a really tall building. Maybe he’s waiting for an instruction?’
They both looked down at Mr Grip’s poppet, which was now lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling with its crazed bead eyes and expressionless mouth. Lil tucked her hair behind her ears in a way that meant business. ‘Nedly, I’m going to go for the poppet, real slow.’
Nedly looked panicked for a second but Lil continued. ‘I think that might be our only shot. Agreed?’ He nodded reluctantly. ‘All right then.’
Trying to stay as small and quiet as possible, she crept out into the workshop, rolling her feet across the boards so they didn’t creak. She reached the poppet and bent down, taking hold of the little bell between her finger and thumb, and very slowly lifted it off the ground by its topknot. She held it dangling at arm’s length, like a bewitched and filthy sock, then carefully started to retrace her steps backwards to the shelves.
Then she froze. Underfoot was something soft, something that had gasped when she trod on it. Lil knew with a terrible sense of foreboding what it was – she remembered seeing it there; she used to have one herself. Froggy the Gremlin, a smiling rubber frog in a dinner suit with a squeaker in its belly. Trapped where she stood, Lil tried in vain to lift her foot slowly from the toy without letting the squeak out too, but there it was, a tiny whining cry that cut through the air like a siren.
Lil cut her losses, shot back to the shelves as quickly as possible, and joined Nedly by the paint pots.
‘He heard you!’
Lil puffed out her cheeks. ‘I didn’t squeak him on purpose!’
Neither of them took their eyes off the empty black doorway, but only Nedly could see what stepped into it.
‘He’s here.’
Lil’s pulse started hammering her throat. ‘It’s OK,’ she said, gulping. ‘I’ve got the poppet.’ She gave it a quick shake and the bell sounded through the silence, sharp as a knife blade. ‘Grip,’ she said in her firmest voice. ‘Get back to bed.’
She gave Nedly a sideways glance but he just shrugged fearfully. ‘Do you hear me?’ She shook the poppet again, more viciously this time. Its horrible head lolled about on its shoulders as the little bell tolled. ‘Go to sleep!’ Lil shouted.
The front door slammed shut and then opened supernaturally fast and then slammed again over and over. Its glass window cracked and then it smashed and the shop bell tolled like a maniacal alarm. On the sixth time the door stayed open.
Lil hunkered down behind the bench. Nedly joined her.
‘Why isn’t it working?’ She glared at the bead-eyed poppet, at its horrible straight slash of a mouth, and then shook it again.
‘Something’s changed.’ Nedly peered round the side of the workbench at the ghoul in the workshop and then he looked back at the poppet in Lil’s hands and turned as white as a sheet. ‘It’s the poppet,’ he whispered. ‘It’s not controlling him any more. He’s free.’
It took Lil a minute to fully understand. ‘But … but if he’s not bound to the poppet, then how do we stop him?’
Nedly blinked at her. ‘I don’t think we can.’
Without warning the workbench shot away from them and then came back at triple speed. Lil folded her arms over her head, braced for impact but Nedly managed to flip it at the last minute so instead it came at them legs first, creating a shield for them to cower behind.
It was just in time. Grip began firing all he could at them; spectral winds whipped around carrying everything that had once been on the walls and pelting them with it, but the bench held strong.
The banging from downstairs started up again and went on and on, growing faster like a racing heartbeat, and joining it were shouts and yells. Lil’s heart swelled at the sound. She knew that her mum and Abe were trying to draw Mr Grip away from her, to divert his attention. But it was too late for that.
The workbench strained away from them, juddering, but Nedly held it fast, his hands glowing fiercely, fingers splayed and trembling with the effort. Lil yelped as a cuddly teddy bear clambered over the wooden barricade, its features twisted into an angry scowl. She grabbed it by the paw and hurled it back over.
‘Why doesn’t he come nearer?’
‘I … I suppose … if he’s not bound to his poppet any more, then he’s vulnerable. He can’t be called back. If … if anything happens to him, that’s it.’ Nedly was thinking hard, still holding the bench. ‘He needs to be sure he can win.’
Lil’s eyes widened. ‘So, if you beat him, that’s it – he’s finished.’ She ducked out of the way of a china doll as it hurtled past.
A volley of miniature cars rained down on them like metal hailstones. Lil grabbed the lid from one of the nearby bins and held it over her head like an umbrella without a handle. ‘Listen, he’s not stronger than you, Nedly. He thinks he’s all-powerful because he frightens people to death, but I’m not scared of him, and neither are you.’
Nedly’s eyes gaped, wide and dark as manholes. ‘But I am.’
‘No, you’re not. He’s nothing. You’re a hero – you saved Abe from the fire, remember; you squished this guy into a ball last time. You can beat him. I know you can.’
‘Can I?’ He gulped uncertainly and then hardened his eyes as he added, ‘I’ll try.’
Lil’s leg had started shaking. ‘Even if we wanted to, have we got time to run?’
‘No.’
‘Anyway, we can’t; we couldn’t leave Mum and Abe.’
‘I won’t leave them,’ Nedly assured her. ‘I won’t let him past.’
He stood up and stepped forward through the bench, his slight figure burning brightly. He called back over his shoulder: ‘If you get the chance to get away – take it.’
‘I’m not leaving without you.’
‘You have to. It’s too late for me,’ Nedly yelled over the crashing and shouting from downstairs and the debris flying through the air.
‘Don’t!’ Lil yelled back at him. ‘Don’t ever say that.’
He looked back at her again and grinned sadly as the debris rained through him. ‘But it is. I’m already dead, remember.’
Lil squinted through the storm of sawdust and bear stuffing. She saw Nedly walk forward. As he moved he shook down his arms, like he was trying to get loose of something, and his hands started to glow more fiercely, the light growing until they sparked and shone like he was holding on to flares. He held them up in front of him, chin down, head low.
The image of Grip from the newspaper flashed uninvited before Lil’s eyes: the black hair dragged forward into a blunt short fringe, the flat lifeless eyes, the thin slash of a mouth. Sweat made her shiver. Peligan City’s most notorious serial killer going hand to hand with an eleven-year-old boy.
Nedly pulled his fists back and Lil saw him punch at something, one fist after the other, landing blow after blow and then one, an uppercut, hit the spot because the spectral wind dropped for a second and the toys that were held in it fell to the floor.
Nedly ran forward, his face screwed up and determined. He jumped, but hit something mid-air, as if an invisible brick wall had sprung up when he was already in flight. Lil watched him slide down it and crumple. Stunned and shaking his head, he scrambled backwards.
He’d almost made it to the workbench when he was yanked back and skidded across the floor, being dragged by something that suddenly whipped him into the air and shook him violently, and then it hurled him so fast and hard against the wall of shelves that all the jars on it exploded, raining glass, paintbrushes and dolls’ eyes all over Lil.
Nedly lay there, balled up on the ground beside her, while all around ice grew on the plastic hair of the dolls, frosting the fur on the teddy bears and stiffening the silk pyjamas of the harlequin clown. A drawer sprang open and a clutch of jack-in-the-boxes leapt out at Lil, who smashed them away with the bin lid. The banging and shouting from downstairs grew even more frantic, but it was almost drowned out by the terrible clashing of the monkey’s cymbals and the low whirr of clockwork limbs as they moved back and forth. The china-faced dolls’ heads all turned.
He’s stronger, Lil realised, without his poppet.
‘You can’t beat him,’ she yelled. ‘Stay down.’
Nedly, doubled up on the floor, held his hand out to Lil. Their fingertips touched, softly like snowflakes, and even though he was crumpled up his body began to glimmer.
Then there was a crash and scraping across the boards and a toppled cabinet hit the wall opposite. Grip was having fun.
‘He knows he’s got us trapped,’ Nedly whispered.
‘Not you,’ said Lil quietly. ‘Just me.’
‘What?’
‘You should go; you’re the only one who can get out. Go, and get help. He’s after you; maybe if you go he’ll leave.’
Nedly scrambled into a crouch beside her. ‘What if he doesn’t?’
‘Then we’re no worse off than we were.’
‘No!’ Nedly shook his head, panic crossing his face. ‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘You can’t stop him. He’s too strong.’
‘Neither can you.’
‘But you can get help.’
‘Who from?’
Lil shrugged helplessly. ‘You’ll think of something.’
Nedly shook his head. ‘Please don’t ask me to go.’ His eyes had teared up.
‘It’s OK,’ Lil said. ‘You did everything you could.’ Nedly’s body was trembling, flickering in protest, but Lil stood her ground. ‘Beat it, I said.’ She raised her voice into a shout, ‘Go on, get out of here!’
Nedly just had time to give her a furious look, and then he vanished.