Ari had not come out of the conning tower structure that shielded the steps, and there was no sign at all of Kleo.
‘Down there,’ said Jaide, pointing into the yard of the abandoned house. ‘That’s where it’s coming from.’
‘But no one lives there,’ Jack said as he ran to see. ‘There are no cars.’
Two headlights suddenly flicked into life next door. The engine roared even louder and the stench of exhaust came up to the twins. Then a noise was added to the mix. A grinding, clanking rattle that got louder as the lights moved forward, toward them.
‘It’s not a car. It’s the bulldozer!’ Jack cried.
‘I guess The Evil isn’t going to wait for the storm to knock the house down,’ shouted Jaide over the racket. ‘Is that Rennie again?’
Jack peered out into the night as gears crunched. He couldn’t see the head of a driver in the cab. There was no one at the controls at all!
‘That’s impossible,’ said Jaide when he told her. ‘Although —’
‘What?’
‘Grandma did say that inanimate things become more lively when they’re around Wardens. Maybe when The Evil is strong enough, it’s the same!’
The bulldozer turned awkwardly on its tracks, shuffling backward like a bull backing up to make its charge. When it was lined up with Grandma X’s house, Jack was sure it would crash through the fence and keep on coming.
Jack grimaced as he saw that there was something in the driver’s seat. Hundreds of tiny shapes – crawling, linking limbs, straining to reach and pull at controls designed for humans —
Rats. Dozens of rats, forming the legs and arms of a human, without bothering to make a head.
‘It’s made a driver out of rats,’ said Jack.
Jaide shivered and with a trembling hand tried to shield her eyes against the glare of the dozer’s lights. But she still couldn’t see anything, and to her it looked like the bulldozer was moving of its own accord.
‘We have to stop it,’ yelled Jack. He had to talk close to Jaide’s ear so she could hear over the storm and the bulldozer. ‘If I can get behind it, I can climb on and into the cab. I’ll flame the rats with the cigarette lighter . . . and switch it off, or wreck something important.’
He swapped the artillery shell cigarette lighter to his left hand and scrabbled in the toolkit for a long screwdriver.
‘I can’t see anything,’ she said. ‘Those lights are too bright and everything else is too dark. There could be anything out there. Maybe you should stay inside – we could think of something else. . .’
Jack was watching the bulldozer carefully. Though it was frighteningly loud, it was also slow and ungainly and it wasn’t being driven very well. And if it took a lot of The Evil’s power to control the creatures driving it, then there was less chance of any nasty surprises in the dark nearby.
‘I can take care of it,’ said Jack firmly. He positioned his thumb ready to flip the top of the lighter and brandished the screwdriver like a sword in his other hand. ‘You get back to the blue room. Maybe there’s some other magic thing that will help. Ask the cats, wherever they’ve got to.’
‘But, Jack, I really don’t think —’
‘Go!’ said Jack. He ran to the front door, forcing himself to slow only minutely when his wet shoes slipped on the steps. Jaide hesitated, then ran back through the secret passage, into the relative safety of the blue room.
Jack hefted his two weapons and visualised himself cloaked in darkness. He imagined it wrapping around him, and after a moment, he felt a kind of soft, electric buzz along his exposed skin.
He opened the door and slid out into the night.
The roaring of the engine and the crunching of wood was horribly loud. The fence had resisted the bulldozer’s initial push, requiring two attempts. On the second, the curved steel blade successfully managed to sweep all obstacles aside, and the heavy, articulated tracks behind it crushed the wooden splinters into the ground.
Snorting and rumbling, the slow but fearsome machine crept onto Grandma X’s land and headed straight toward the house.
JAIDE COULD HEAR THE BULLDOZER clearly, even inside the blue room. She winced as she heard the fence get smashed to pieces and the grinding crunch as the machine’s metal tracks crushed the remnants flat.
‘There must be something here we can use against a bulldozer!’ she exclaimed. ‘Ari! Kleo! Think of something!’
‘Like what?’ asked Ari, peeking out from under the desk. ‘I don’t think Grandma X has a rocket launcher.’
‘Don’t grizzle, Aristotle,’ said Kleo. She was sitting in the middle of the room, slowly swivelling her head, bright blue eyes weighing up many possible things. ‘There are numerous defensive items here, but unfortunately we only know those devices Grandma X has employed in the past, and she hasn’t needed to use many. It has been very quiet in Portland since we were born.’
A smashing, tearing noise outside was a grim reminder that this was no longer the case.
‘What about you, then?’ Jaide asked the crocodile skull. ‘Is there something here that can stop that bulldozer?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,’ chattered the crocodile skull. Its eyes flashed with excitement.
‘Well, where – and what – is it?’ demanded Jaide.
The crocodile skull clapped its jaws together.
‘Num num num num num,’ it said in a rather horrible parody of someone eating something nice.
‘Uh, okay, then,’ said Jaide. The skull had only taken a sliver of Jack’s finger. She could bear the same kind of scratch, if it got them the information they so desperately needed.
She held out the little finger of her left hand cautiously and leaned toward the skull.
It lunged forward, using its chattering to move, and its sharp teeth shut on Jaide’s finger halfway down the fingernail, nearly cutting off the entire tip of her finger.
Jaide stared down at the wound, too shocked to cry out or move or do anything. Blood started to drip down into her hand and onto the floor.
The crocodile skull crunched happily, burped, and said, ‘Music box made by Favre, for the discombobulation of The Evil. Tea chest with the mark of the blue oryx.’
‘Th-thanks,’ said Jaide weakly. She sat down in an armchair and pinched the end of her finger hard and raised her hand above her head to slow the bleeding. Susan had always made sure they had first-aid lessons.
‘I’ll get the first-aid kit,’ said Ari, and was off.
‘I’ll find the tea chest,’ said Kleo. ‘I think it’s behind the walnut wardrobe.’
Both cats leaped away. Jaide kept pressing on her bleeding finger, and flinched again as she heard the bulldozer outside change gear and bellow even louder than before, followed immediately by the screech of its blade sliding over stone or concrete.
Jack saw the rats straight away. They stood on their hind legs like prairie dogs behind the bulldozer’s controls, milky-white eyes focused firmly forward. Their heads didn’t turn as he slowly moved along the front of the house. Either they couldn’t see him or The Evil was completely absorbed in driving the bulldozer.
Jack kept his eye on them as he rounded the corner and started to make his way around the edge of the garden, circling wide to come back behind the bulldozer, concentrating hard on being part of the darkness. The vehicle lurched forward as he stalked it. It was almost at the house now, but had been held up by the roots of the giant fir tree and the remnants of the fallen garden wall.
In fact, Jack saw that the tree roots were actively working against the bulldozer. There were far more of them out of the ground than when he and Jaide had run past on their first day, and the roots were much larger, some of them as thick as his body. The roots were slowly t
wining up out of the ground in front of the dozer, and carrying with them huge squares of sandstone that must have once been the foundation of the garden wall.
But even so, the bulldozer was winning. Its long, sharp blade was cutting through the roots, and pushing the rocks aside. It would only be a matter of minutes before it cleared a proper path of attack and smashed into the side of the actual house.
Jack steeled himself for what had to be done. Tucking the lighter under one arm and the screwdriver through his belt, he ran straight at the back of the bulldozer, through the acrid cloud of its diesel exhaust, and jumped up on the engine right between the clanking tracks. There were cooling slats on the engine, giving him somewhere to grip, but they were hot. Jack involuntarily cried out even as he swarmed up and over, and crouched behind the back of the cab.
The hideous, headless body made of rats stopped pulling levers and swung around toward him, dozens of white rat eyes focused on him.
Jack pulled the lighter from under his arm, flicked the lid open and directed a great gout of flame into the cab. Rats squealed, the headless body disintegrating as its smoking, burning parts fled in all directions.
The gas in the lighter suddenly ran out. It burped a few last flames, then Jack threw it aside, and edged into the cab.
The bulldozer continued its inexorable forward progress.
Jack reached out to take the control levers, not knowing whether to push or pull but willing to try everything until he made it stop.
+Yessss, Jackaran,++ said the familiar, hateful voice into his mind. ++Drive forward. Kill the witch!++
‘I’m not listening to you!’ Jack cried. Under his hands, the bulldozer stopped, turned, turned again, and started in reverse, heading once more for the house, only backward. ‘I don’t believe anything you tell me!’
+That is not true,++ said The Evil. ++We feel your doubt. We rejoice at your uncertainty. We know you will join us.++
There was power in The Evil’s voice. Jack felt it sliding into his brain, growing stronger and more convincing. It would be easy to give in. Maybe it would even be the right thing to do —