THE MOON MADE THE GRAVESTONES AND the blue mist glow as Molly followed Carl through Howlfair New Cemetery.
“We’re lucky, you know,” Carl said. “If we’d waited another day, it would’ve been too late.”
Molly dodged a headstone. “What would’ve been too late, Carl? You need to fill me in.”
“I’ll tell you everything as soon as we get to Loonchance Manor.” They passed through the graveyard’s gate and emerged on the northernmost end of Squint-Eye Lane. The blue moon grinned overhead in a sky forlorn of clouds. All around the valley gleamed the glossy walls of night.
“Can’t you tell me anything now?”
“We’re going to break some evil spells,” said Carl. “We’re going to save the town and rescue your friend Lowry.”
“Lowry?”
Carl stopped and, momentarily silhouetted against a streetlight, looked back. “Mr Furlock cursed her family, Molly. He’s turning them into werewolves so he can control them.”
“What!” coughed Molly. “You mean Lowry was right?”
“I’ve found the hidden room where he’s doing his werewolf spell, and I know how to stop the curse from working. I even know how to make it rebound on him.”
“I don’t want to turn Furlock into a werewolf,” said Molly. “He’s ugly enough without a snout.”
“He’s got a whole lair underneath Loonchance Manor – with bubbling potions and runes and magic circles drawn with blood. Mainly they give him power over ghouls. If you can help me decipher the coded message around Furlock’s magic circles, we can send his ghouls back to Hell and stop his curses.”
“Really?”
Carl began to move up the street. “I’ve been pretty busy while you’ve been locked up, you know. Oh – by the way: the only reason Lowry hasn’t started turning into a wolf already is that potion you gave her. You did her a massive favour. I thought you might want to know.”
Molly felt a bit more at ease now. As at ease as anyone can feel when they’re on their way to break a werewolf curse in a secret chamber in a mansion famous for hosting a historic ghoul feast.
They slipped down a quiet narrow side street. Shadows and silent cats watched them. Molly felt a pang for Gabriel. What had happened to her guardian cat? Where had he gone? Had he run away? Or run out of lives?
“Molly, keep up,” Carl hissed. “Stop daydreaming.”
“I wasn’t daydreaming,” said Molly. “I was just wondering…”
“About what?”
She didn’t feel inclined to confess that she was thinking about her cat. “I was wondering what kind of scumbag tries to turn twelve-year-old girls into wolves.”
“The same kind that enslaves twelve-year-old boys and forces them to help him blackmail people,” said Carl, jumping over a pothole.
They headed down Witherway Street. Then up Lastmead Lane, past the pubs. The silhouettes of candle-lit revellers moved behind the drapes.
“The Last Drop,” said Molly.
“What?”
“That pub – The Last Drop. My dad ran a book club there. That’s where I met Lady Orgella in a dream.”
“A book club?” said Carl. “That was a smugglers’ pub. The people in there are dead dodgy.”
Dodgy. For some reason the word chimed in Molly’s mind. She remembered that dodgy was how Lowry had described Carl’s story about how he got marked with the symbol of Lady Orgella.
“My mum said he never had any trouble,” said Molly. “He knew how to make friends with all kinds of people. He smiled at them and slapped their backs and made them laugh with magic tricks.”
Carl said, “I don’t think magic tricks would work with Furlock’s ghouls.”
They didn’t speak again until they arrived at the roundabout where the hideous wooden house of horror, silver and slanted, stood beside its yew tree bride.
At the gate, Carl took something from his pocket, shoved it into the padlock and cursed under his breath as he struggled to open the lock.
“Aren’t we going through the secret back door?” Molly asked.
“I checked the back door – it looks like Mr Furlock’s booby-trapped it,” said Carl – and something fell to the cobbles with a chime. Molly saw it was a key. Hastily Carl scooped it up and reinserted it into the lock. “I’ve found out how to get in through the front door, though.”
“What was that?” asked Molly, wary.
“My lock-picking tool,” mumbled Carl, grunting as he worked on the lock. Suddenly the gate swung open.
It hadn’t looked like a lock-picking tool to Molly. It’d looked like Carl had a key to the gate. But there was no time to question him, for by now he’d run up the path and ascended the steps to the narrow front door of Loonchance Manor. And now Carl was using another key – or, rather, his lock-picking tool – to open the front door. He was holding the frame with his left hand and attacking the lock with his right, as though it was stuck. But it seemed to Molly that when the lock at last opened, it did so pretty smoothly.
Carl pushed the door open. A wedge of pure darkness appeared. Carl fumbled in his jacket for a torch, and beckoned Molly over.
She closed the gate behind her and trotted to the door, feeling dreadfully uneasy.
Molly didn’t know quite what inspired her, at that moment, to ask the question. Perhaps fear and curiosity had conspired to shove the question out of her mouth.
“Carl – can you show me how Furlock did it?”
Carl, already moving into the darkness, his torch not yet activated, turned. “How he did what?”
“How he put Lady Orgella’s mark on you with that metal quill.”
The boy narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What for?”
Molly scratched her curls. “If I’m going to go through with this, I need to make myself hate Furlock more than I’m afraid of this house.”
Carl pondered, then stepped out of the doorway. “He grabbed my arm with his hand, and he held the quill, um, like this…” He lifted the torch.
“Grabbed you how? Show me.”
“You want me to grab you?”
“Yes,” said Molly.
“Like this.” Carl took hold of Molly’s upper arm with his left hand. “And he pulled my arm. Like this…”
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Carl lurched back through the doorway, wrenching Molly into the mansion. A foreleg flicked past Molly – Carl had kicked the door shut. He switched his torch on. A dreadfully dreary cobwebbed hallway spread before them, populated by waxwork ghouls.
He still had hold of her arm. “You’re hurting me,” Molly said, scared.
“He waved the quill over my arm like this to make the mark.”
Molly flinched as the torch’s light danced across the sombre hallway and the waxy faces of the ghouls. Then Carl slipped past her. He locked the front door, no longer hiding the fact that he had a key.
“Carl, why are you locking it?” Molly said. “How did you get a key to Loonchance Manor?”
“I don’t want Furlock following us in here,” Carl mumbled, pocketing the key and pushing past Molly, striding towards the reception desk. “Let’s get this over with.”
Molly didn’t move.
“Come on, Molly! What are you waiting for?”
Molly said, “You’ve never seen Furlock’s other hand, have you?”
Carl’s face was scrunched up with annoyance now.
“His hand? Of course I’ve seen his hand.”
“The one he keeps stuffed in his coat,” said Molly. “It’s made of glass, or crystal, or something. It’s not real. He couldn’t have grabbed you with it the way you showed me.”
Carl stared, his torch beam stretching across the floorboards towards Molly. He had the look of a wild dog about to leap at a tasty throat.
“You didn’t bring me here to save Lowry, did you?” Molly said. “All that stuff about her really being a werewolf – I can’t believe I fell for it.”
Carl looked away.
“Mr Furlock’s the only person who’s ever given a damn about me,” he said, avoiding Molly’s eyes. “Did you honestly think I was going to betray him?”
A shudder of dread pulsed through Molly. “What?” she coughed. “Carl, I give a damn…”
“Yeah, right!” Carl laughed humourlessly. “You were just using me. You don’t care about me or anyone else. You don’t care about this town. Everyone knows that all Molly Thompson cares about is solving mysteries.”
“That’s not true! Anyway, Furlock hurt you, Carl!”
Now Carl was advancing. “I asked him to give me the mark of Orgella. I want to be a servant of Lady Orgella, just like Mr Furlock. The mark is her seal of ownership. When she sets up her kingdom on earth and Mr Furlock is her Prime Minister, I’m going to be a general, with an army of my own ghouls!”
“Carl, listen…”
He lifted the torch, blinding Molly.
Then the torch went off, and everything was abysmally black.