That’s right- it’s a double-whammy!

***

Just past Paul’s house, there was a fork in the road.  Another one.

On the left, there was a bunch of trees clustered together so that it looked like you were about to walk into a pitch-black tunnel.  On the right, there was a bunch of houses with some shops in the distance.  Natalie stared until her head ached, but she didn’t recognise either of them.

She looked left, just to make sure, and saw that there was a sign saying “Glamis Road.”  But Natalie had seen Glamis Road millions of times, and the street on the left looked nothing like it.  Glamis Road was made up of weird old shops, not a dark tunnel through some creepy trees.

Natalie thought of a song she used to listen to in the car.  I think a goblin has been here, taking the signposts away.  Maybe Mr Miacca was a bit like a goblin.  Maybe he’d swapped the street signs around so that they’d go the wrong way and walk right into his trap.

Natalie still didn’t recognise either of the forks in the road, but at least now she knew which way she was going to go.  She went right, because it wasn’t as dark and at least it wasn’t lying to her.

All the fence posts creaked as they went by.  It was probably just the wind, but Natalie thought about something inside, trying to break the fences down so that it could get at them.  She walked faster, even though it made her legs hurt more.

Andrea would have let us in by now, she thought, but she didn’t really know that, did she?  And what if she hadn’t?  They’d have been stuck out there for ages now.  At least here, they were closer to their house.

Just past a sign that said Double Glazing Specialist, Stephanie stopped walking.  She just stood still and waited for Natalie to notice.  “I want to sit down!”

Natalie went cold.  She’d been so stupid- she hadn’t even thought about this happening.  Stephanie was a little kid, and she’d been walking for ages and ages now.  Of course she was getting tired.  But they couldn’t stop here, not where Mr Miacca could get them.  “Steph, we can’t right now.  We’ve got to get home.”

Steph scowled.  “My legs are aching!”

“So are mine.”  It was true.  Natalie hadn’t noticed until they’d had to leave Paul’s house, but her legs felt as if they were going to fall to pieces.  “But we’ve got to get…”

“I want to sit down!” screamed Steph, and her legs folded up under her so that she was sitting on the pavement.

Natalie’s heart was pounding.  If Mr Miacca came along right now…  “Steph!” she yelled.

“No!”  Stephanie folded her arms.

For a second- just for a second- Natalie wondered what would happen if she left Stephanie behind.  She’d get home quicker… but then she’d be on her own while she waited for Mum to get back from work, and she’d have to tell her why Stephanie wasn’t there.  And every day after that, she’d have to walk past Steph’s empty room, and think about what had happened to her.  There would be no-one to wake her up on Saturday mornings so they could go downstairs and watch Live and Kicking.  There would be no-one to spot her in the crowd in school assemblies and give her a wave (then get told off by the teacher for doing it).  There would be no-one to play Sylvanian Families with now that Andrea was too old.  And it would all be her fault.

There was only one option. Natalie went up to Steph, hooked her arms under her armpits, and pulled her to her feet.

Part of her hoped that Steph would start walking again when she saw how serious Natalie was, but that didn’t happen.  Natalie had to walk backwards, dragging Steph down the street as she wriggled and thrashed about.  She fought for every step, feeling her arms straining like a couple of rubber bands about to snap, and the whole time Steph screamed, “No!  Let me go!  Let me GO!”  Somebody was going to come and get them.  If it wasn’t Mr Miacca, it would be someone who thought she was kidnapping Stephanie and called the police to come and arrest her.  But no-one did.  They didn’t pass anyone until they got to the video shop.

Natalie had always been… not exactly scared of the video shop, but not completely willing to trust it, either.  It was dark inside, with murals on the walls where everyone glared down at you with bright eyes and sinister grins.  The three boys outside the video shop, hanging around on their bikes, looked like one of those murals come to life.  They looked about Andrea’s age, maybe a bit older, and they watched with open mouths as Natalie and Steph came down the street towards them.

One of them nudged another one.  “Oi, Kyle, it’s your new girlfriend.”

“Fuck off!” spluttered his friend, and the other two laughed.

Natalie had heard that word before- it was the one the Year Six boys yelled when they wanted to sound hard.  It sounded different when you heard it at night, though, as if it was a sign that things were about to go horribly wrong.  And sure enough, as Natalie passed, one of the boys stuck out a foot and tripped her over.

Natalie, who’d been leaning back anyway so she could pull Steph along, went flying.  The boys let out loud, howling laughs that echoed all around the empty street.  Anxious, Natalie checked on Steph, but she seemed fine- a bit surprised, that was all.  Natalie must have cushioned her fall.

“You fell over,” said Steph matter-of-factly, and she stood up.

The boys laughed again.  “‘You fell over’!” imitated one boy.

“‘You fell over’!”

Natalie got to her feet.  “Why did you do that, you idiot?” she snapped.  It did no good.  The boys just started laughing again.  Natalie’s face was burning.  She didn’t know whether she wanted to burst into tears or punch the boys in the face, but she knew that trying to do either would be a really, really bad idea.  They’d never leave them alone then.

One of the boys- wearing a white cap, with hair so blond he looked bald in the glare of the streetlamps- smiled cruelly.  “Oi, listen, we’ve got some sweeties in our bags.”  He patted his own backpack, hanging off his handlebars.  “You can have some if you’re nice to us.”

“Stuart, don’t,” said one of his friends.  It was the one who’d said the F-word earlier.

The first boy ignored him.  “All you need to do is…”

“Don’t!”  The other boy’s voice lowered to a hum, and he said, through gritted teeth, something that ended with, “…probably got their mum and dad right behind them…”

And Natalie felt more like crying than ever, because they didn’t have their mum and dad with them.  They didn’t even have Andrea anymore.

If they’d been at school, on the playground, Natalie would have gone to tell the teachers.  But they were alone.  All she could do was try and get away.  “We don’t want any ‘sweeties’,” she told them.  Out of all the more important things she had to be angry about, there was still room to be angry that the boy had assumed she still called them “sweeties” instead of “sweets.”  As if she was Stephanie’s age.  Natalie took Steph’s hand, and tried to walk off.

The third boy (the one with the freckles and the big, horsey teeth) blocked their path with his bike.  “Yeah, you do.  You want these ones.”

The boy in the white cap chuckled.  “They’re lovely sweeties.  We got them just for you.”

Natalie was sick of this.  They didn’t have time to talk to a bunch of stupid boys; couldn’t they see that?  What if she and Steph got past them and then ran right into Mr Miacca, having used up all their energy?  Just the thought of that was like a roaring fire in her chest.  How dare these boys make something like that happen?  “We need to get home!  Let us go!”  She tried to walk past the boy with the freckles… who held out a cigarette lighter and aimed the flame at her face.

Natalie jumped back, and the boys laughed again.  “Aah, look at her flinch!” yelled the boy who’d said the F-word (not worried about their mum and dad anymore, then).  The boy with the freckles thrust out his hand and aimed the lighter at her again.

Fire, thought Natalie, It could burn my hair and my scalp so I’d be bald forever.  It could burn my clothes off.  It could burn my eyes out.  It could melt the skin off my face. And as she backed away, she saw the first boy on his bike, with his bag hanging off the handlebars.

They’d closed in.  Natalie could reach it.  He might have been lying about the “sweeties” (whatever they actually were), but there was probably something in there he wouldn’t want to lose.

The boy moved his hands off the handlebars, just for a second, and Natalie seized her chance.  She snatched the bag and threw it out into the traffic.

“You little bitch!” screamed the boy, diving after it, and Natalie ran through the gap he’d left, up streets that looked familiar, along small, hidden roads that the boys might not see to follow them down, through tiny gaps that she and Steph were small enough to fit through and the boys weren’t.  They were getting close to home, Natalie could tell by the buildings and the street signs, but that wouldn’t do them any good if the boys caught them and did whatever they’d been planning to do.  There was a gap in the fence up ahead, and Natalie pulled Steph through it and round a dark corner, then further and further for good measure.

Finally, after five or six dark corners, Natalie stopped running.  They’d lost them, if they’d even been chasing them in the first place.  She couldn’t actually remember.  She thought she’d heard the sound of pounding feet and shouts behind her, but how could she have heard anything above the sound of her own heartbeat?  It seemed like the only sound in the world.

Stephanie gave her a worried look, and Natalie looked up.  They were in a big, dark stone building, a bit like the multi-storey car park in town but with winding corridors instead of big open spaces full of parking bays.  The only light came from gaps in the wall above Natalie’s head- not windows, just gaps.  And every doorway she could see had a big X-shaped chain across it, along with a sign saying KEEP OUT.

In an instant, Natalie knew that they were in Mr Miacca’s house.

(To Be Concluded)