and stuffed them into his bag, before dragging his two friends into the kitchen and its waiting full-length mirror. Both Gummy and Archie were now visibly shaken, though thankfully unaware of the enormous set of teeth approaching from the bottom of the stairs.
“Ned, what’s going on? How did you make your mouse’s eyes do that in the shed? And why is a nit inspector trying to break into your house?” clamoured Archie.
Ned cleared his throat as the bargeist prowled into the kitchen, its powerful body readying to pounce.
“I’m going to ask you to do something that you’re going to find a little bit odd,” he said. “Actually, you’re going to be freaked out as hell. I’m really sorry, but you see there’s a monster standing behind you, a really big nasty monster that you can’t see, and if we don’t walk through this mirror, I think it’s going to hurt you, or maybe just me.” As he spoke, he kept his eyes glued to the bargeist’s teeth.
“Have you lost your marbles?” spat Archie, now looking beyond freaked out.
“I promise you, Arch, I haven’t cracked, but you might well think you have in a minute. I don’t want you to worry – there are some nice people waiting for us on the other side and they’re going to take really good care of you.”
Ned could only hope that he was right. Gummy and Arch had nothing to do with the man outside or the creature in his kitchen. They were simply in the wrong place and at the wrong time and only because they’d wanted to help. If they could just get to the Circus, Benissimo and the others would be able to get Gummy and Archie back home again. Whether Ned would be so lucky was another thing entirely.
“Don’t be scared,” he said, before placing the One-Way Key in Archie’s hand and then quite forcibly pushing his two friends through the Armstrongs’ kitchen mirror … and, just like that, they were gone.
Ned had no idea where his parents were or what lay ahead, and yet somewhere deep down inside he felt a small pang of excitement – he was going back to the world of the Hidden.
He took a deep breath and stepped through his own reflection, till there was nothing left of him at all.
Shluup.
What had initially resisted now yanked him from his kitchen and through the mirror. In that brief instant between places, every fibre, every speck of dust had been removed from his body, his skin left as smooth as glass. A hand as large and strong as a metal spade now held him by the shoulder.
“Nied – Nied! De boy, da! De boy is comink!”
Ned stumbled through, on to grass, by a canvas wall. He didn’t understand. This couldn’t be a safe house. This … this was the Circus of Marvels.
Towering over his two friends and staring at him closely was a large ruddy-red face. Rocky, the Russian mountain troll, in his human form, was waiting to greet him. But Ned was not the last to step through the mirror.
There was a bone-shaking ROARR! behind him.
He felt a gust of wind as the two slobbering jaws of the bargeist snapped at his back. One of its front teeth grazed his shoulder just enough to draw blood with a fiery sharp sting of pain.
“Agh!” Ned yelled, and rolled to the floor.
The creature tried to follow through the portal, but its shoulders were now too bulky to edge their way along. The great Russian tank that was Rocky might not have been able to see the bargeist, but the size of his fists left little room for error.
“Niet, little monster!” bellowed Rocky, before dispatching the bargeist with a heavy crunch of his fist and sending the yelping creature back to the Armstrongs’ kitchen. A second later he whipped off his coat and threw it over the mirror, preventing anything else from coming through.
Ned exhaled with relief. An enlarged alpha male bargeist was one thing. Clearly, Rocky the Russian mountain troll was quite another.
Ned tried to get his bearings. He was in the Glimmerman’s hall of mirrors, he realised. Beside Rocky were the two shaking figures of Gummy Johnston and Archie Hinks – they had gone through the mirror first, and it looked very much to the wounded Ned as though their brains had somehow remained in his kitchen. It was Archie who spoke first.
“See, Gummy? I knew he was a blooming wizard.”
Which was when his two friends fainted into a pile of overwhelmed limbs.
With the creature dispatched and the Glimmerman’s mirror safely covered, Ned was hoisted on to the excitable troll’s shoulders. The graze that he’d been given would have felt like little more than a scratch from a normal dog, but the bargeist’s spit burned like a hot coal.
“Rocky?! Wait – Gummy and Arch, I need to look after them!”
“Niet, niet! Jossers stay sleep for moment, de troupe look after.”
“My mum and dad, Rocky, they’re gone!”
“Da, we know. But don’t worry – de boss, he always have plan and your parents are tough cookies.”
Ned could only hope he was right. The nit inspector – whoever he really was – had somehow managed to take them from their home, away from Christmas, away from their safe suburban hideaway; but more importantly than any of that – he’d taken them away from Ned.
A moment later both troll and wounded cargo were out of the Glimmerman’s tent and parading around the Circus of Marvels encampment.
“Come see, come see!” bellowed Rocky. “We have de boy and he brought little jossers with him!”
Ned didn’t understand how he’d wound up at the circus instead of the expected safe house, but he couldn’t have been more grateful. A blur of fairy lights and campfires, sawdust and bunting filled his eyes. The pain of his throbbing shoulder gave way to relief and no small amount of hope. He had been forced to leave one home and been transported to quite another. His parents might well be missing, but the circus would have answers and if Rocky was right, the ever-commanding Benissimo would have a plan.
At first sight the troupe were just how he remembered them. Some were wearing bowler hats with ruffled shirts, others resembled gypsies of old – no two were dressed the same or even in clothes from matching eras. But that wasn’t the wonder that was the Circus of Marvels. What set it apart, what made it a spectacle to behold, was that very few of them were actually human.
The dancing girls in their fur and feathers were cartwheeling towards him, and there was general whooping and hollering as the Tortellini brothers, with their satyr-horned heads and enthusiastic backslapping, spread the word. Several bearded gnomes from the kitchen ran to take care of Gummy and Arch, laden with oversized tubs of popcorn and hotdogs the size of ostriches. Everyone dropped everything, wet clothes were left unhung, a half-constructed tent left to topple, and through all the clamouring and colour Ned saw the unmistakable figure of Alice, the circus’s white winged elephant, in a full charge.
“Alice!” pleaded Norman, her ineffectual trainer, who was as ever chasing behind.