Witching Hour
Calling
=+13+=
Toby nosed his head round the kitchen door, to find his older sister still eating a peach painfully slowly.
"How long can you take?" he asked incredulously, entering the danger zone and sitting down opposite her.
Completely preoccupied, she didn't even spare him a glance. "You know you'd be paranoid too if you'd ever found a maggot in your food," replied the young woman absently, nibbling it atom by atom.
"Could be worse."
"How?"
"Could be half a maggot," he chirped. She hissed and lashed out at him with a sticky hand, thankfully missing.
"Grow up!"
"I will when you do!" Needless to say, this didn't go down awfully well. Judging by all the family photos on the walls, Sarah had barely progressed though puberty since he was a baby. And people could tell her she'd be glad of that when she was older all they liked – it still didn't help her to convince policemen she wasn't drinking, clubbing or driving underage.
He was fourteen, she was twenty-seven. Yet despite their thirteen year age gap, anyone who didn't know them would swear blind that there was only a year or two between them. And their behaviour in each other's presence did nothing to dissuade the notion.
Sneaking behind her as she focussed on the peach, he attacked. "Pinch and a punch first day of the month!"
Her retaliation was swift and painful. "You're such a loser, Toby! It's not even March yet! Retard!"
Wincing, he pointed out that yesterday had been the twenty-eighth. She gave him a Look. "This is a leap year, genius. It's the twenty-ninth today."
"A magical day for monsters…!" he cackled in a hollow voice, running from the room.
"I wish the goblins would come and take you away right now, Toby!" yelled Sarah at his retreating back. It was an empty threat, and in the back of her mind she imagined Jareth the Goblin King whispering that game is over, my dear. I know your wishes are false now; I will not obey a second time.
Then she imagined Ludo jumping on her brother's head, just for good measure.
But he had said enough to get her agile mind whirling. It didn't take much. She'd never needed encouragement to start spinning stories and homemade legends. Following him out of the room and abandoning her half-eaten peach, she began to foreshadow in soft tones. There was a hint of danger underlying her words.
"This isn't a day for humans, Toby. It's a day outside of time, reserved for goblins and ghouls and the highest of magical royalty. On the leap day it is a time for dangers drumming, lords-a-leaping and elfin trickery."
Laughing, her brother began to dance up the stairs and shadowbox with invisible demons on each step. As she continued to weave her leap year myth, they pretended they could hear the distant singing of disjointed fire-birds, that the steps up to the landing were a giant's staircase carved from stone and the banisters hung with creepers.
As they conquered the plateau, wiping the sweat of a long hard trek from their brows, Sarah flung out a hand and cried "Look! The Gateway of Atlantis!"
He stared blankly at the door to the bathroom. "This is where you make me put a load of washing on, isn't it?" She smiled innocently.
"No…I would call it where you, O Atlas, shoulder the weight of the world of the laundry basket and carry to a new resting place in the heavens…also known as the utility room." Her polite suggestion quickly dissolved into yet another sibling wrestling match. Though she stopped when she kicked something that went flying away from her foot.
"Oh crap," blurted Sarah, pinning her opponent down so that she could see the carpet. "That better not have been an ornament! The wicked stepmother will kill me!"
She caught sight of the object and froze.
"Did you put that there?"
"What?" he asked, straining to see from his forced yoga knot on the floor.
"That's not funny, Toby! Get up, quick, there's a snake!" It had moved, coiling back on itself to stare at her, and now she knew it wasn't one of his fake rubber specimens she wanted very much to get out of its path. A forked tongue flickered at her.
He glanced around frantically; then relaxed. "Nice try. The only thing on the landing is a glass ball."
Somehow that made her even more scared. "Let's stop playing now. Go and finish your chores, I've got paperwork to do for my job. No more stories." Standing up abruptly, she started to march towards her bedroom, taking great care to flick the crystal sphere off the balcony without looking deeply into it.
"The lady she goin' loco," teased Toby. Her door slammed in his face, and he grinned. Because now she wouldn't check on him, he could go on his new Playstation instead of perform common household drudgery. "Aah, sweet Nineties…an excellent decade for games."
=+13+=
"Little lady, I need to talk to you…" came the croaky voice of Hoggle. He was standing behind her in the mirror, fingers wringing the plastic bracelet on his wrist round and round nervously. He was caked in dust and cobwebs as was fitting for the goblin who was caretaker for all the back corridors and oubliettes in the Labyrinth. The large nose, the short, skinny legs, the string of golden or at least glittering trinkets…
Sarah put down her pen and sighed, resting her head in her hands. "No," she muttered. "I'm not in the mood for this anymore. I'm just going to do some paperwork until my head calms down. And then I'll be fine." She held back from saying 'go away, Hoggle' because to admit his presence would be to play right into the hands of her imagination.
The goblin looked at her sadly, and faded from view.
She managed to concentrate for about ten minutes until she felt the cold nose of Ambrosius sniffing her leg. It was so tangible it sent a shiver up her spine, though she had thought of Merlin first. Alas, that would require Merlin to be a zombie.
Turning, she saw Sir Didymus at her elbow, head cocked cheerfully and eyes gleaming with zeal. "My Lady Sarah!" he announced. "I say! It's been a rather long time, wot?"
This time groaning, Sarah pushed his hat over his eyes and glared at her timesheet and requisition forms. "You have my permission to leave, sir knight!"
The fox vanished with a resounding cry of "How rude!"
Fifteen minutes later she shrieked as something huge and overbearing loomed behind her chair. "Ludo!"
"Fraaand Sa wah."
"I'm really flattered but I didn't call on any of you today!"
The shaggy-furred ginger monster grasped the back of her seat in its powerful hands, lifting her high in the air and shuffling slowly round to face the closet. "Sa wah in twubble. Got to go Laaabrynf."
She fell of the chair in her shock, and it was a long way down. Winded by the impact with the floor, she gasped for several seconds before screaming out for help. What the hell was going on? They weren't meant to be real, they were never real! It was a game!
"TOBY!! TOBY! GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW!"
"I was just about to do the chores alright? You don't have to nag. …Why are you lying on the floor – hey – your chair's all smashed up! What were you doing, tap-dancing on it?"
His sister rolled over and stared at the chair like she'd never seen one before. Rather, empirical evidence that the Labyrinth was more than a prolonged daydream…
"I think I'm going crazy."
"Uh-huh. What else is new?"
"I mean; it was all something I imagined and thoughts aren't real but if I was trapped in my thoughts then they might seem to be…and if he was messing with my head so that I couldn't snap out of it. But then Ludo, and the chair so that suggests… That I might be sane after all…"
Toby began to drag her unhelpfully off the carpet, choosing the most painful and uncomfortable method possible with cunning skill. Once she was deposited on her bed and recovered enough to start complaining about her aching back, he heard a clattering at the window. He looked out of it and laughed.
"Dude, some stupid owl just flew into the window and brained itself! Ha ha – oh wait it's back again, look-"
"OKAY, I GET THE MESSAGE! I'm GOING!" shrieked Sarah in his ear. What had he done to deserve that? Covering his ears, he went to flee the room but she had already latched onto his arm and dragged him away from safety. "Come on, Tobe. We're gonna play a game."
He sulked, slouching. "Not the Secret Dirty Laundry of Atlantis again, please."
"No," replied his half-sister, rifling hurriedly through her dresser drawers for a red book, an impressive-looking key she'd scrounged at a car boot sale and lots of glitzy plastic bangles. Mystified, he brightened when he saw her add a large bar of chocolate to her leather satchel. "This is going to be a maze."
Grasping his hand again, she pulled him over to her closet. Not quite sure where this was going, he opened his mouth to ask, but her next words silenced him.
"I wish the goblins would come and take us away right now."
Nothing happened.
As expected.
"You really have lost it, haven't you?"
Sarah frowned, thinking quickly. The wish had already been used up, and on a false alarm at that. But there had to be another way in, especially if the Underground was more than a fantasy. She tightened her grip on Toby and took a deep breath.
"I call upon the goblins to come and take us away, right now!"
The white door slammed open and a thousand blue hands clawed out of the long tunnel beyond to seize the humans and drag them into the darkness beyond amidst the roaring rush of screams.