23
Your Terror Has Made Me Stronger
Edwin sat up, and tried to work out how he wasn’t squashed flat.
The room rang with cheers and squeaks, but a familiar voice cut through the din.
“Bryony! Jane!”
It was Bill, shouting and gesturing wildly at something high above him.
Edwin followed his stepfather’s gaze, and saw Dawes zooming through the opened door, leaving a trail of black feathers and smoke in his wake.
“Mum?” Edwin got awkwardly to his feet and staggered towards Bill. “Where’s Mum gone? What’s happened to her?”
“She is finished,” growled a voice. “As you soon will be.”
A shadow fell across the floor, and Edwin looked up to see every face in the room leering down at him.
“What do we have here?” asked a creature that looked a cross between a monkey and a bat. “Surely this feeble little worm isn’t a Guardian?”
“No wonder it was so easy to take the power from them,” cackled a green-faced crone with a wart the size of a golf ball on her nose. Or was it, Edwin wondered, a golf ball sized nose on her wart?
“Indeed,” sneered a three horned goat in an ill fitting woolly cardigan. “He’s just a pathetic little boy.”
“That’s right,” hissed a voice from behind him. “A pathetic little boy who’s scared of the dark.”
Edwin wheeled round to see a black hooded figure hovering over him. The Dark One himself!
“I’m not scared,” Edwin bleated unconvincingly.
“Oh yes you are,” said the Dark One. “You have been ever since the night I took your father from you.”
“You?” Edwin gasped.
“I take many lives that way,” hissed the Dark One. “And feed off the fear left in my wake. And you, little boy, have sustained me greatly these past few years. Your terror has made me stronger than ever.”
The Dark One hovered closer, so close that Edwin could see right inside the hood. There was no face visible within the folds of cloak, nothing but darkness. And that was far scarier than any of the ugly faces in the room.
“And now I claim you,” said the Dark One. “Now you will be consumed by the night.”
“Leave him alone!” Bill shielded Edwin from the towering hooded wraith. “He’s just a kid. Pick on someone your own size!”
The Dark One hissed angrily. “Your bravery is matched only by your stupidity, little man. How dare you resist the Dark One.”
Bill shook a fist at the Dark One. “Go to hell!”
“What a good idea,” said the Dark One. “I could do with a nice relaxing holiday when all this is over. Now will someone please dispose of this interfering pest?”
The green-faced crone with the golf ball wart on her nose (or was it vice versa, Edwin still wasn’t sure) picked Bill up.
“You’re a pretty little thing,” she crooned, holding Bill close to her face. “I shall take you home, and dress you in fine clothes, and make for you a little house in which you shall live with all my other pretty dollies.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Bill. “But I don’t think my wife would be too keen on such an arrangement.”
“As you wish,” cackled the crone. “Instead I shall boil you alive in melted cheese, and feed you to my slugs.”
Bill nodded. “I think she’d be OK with that.”
“You may do with him as you please,” said the Dark One. “After I have feasted on the boy.”
The Dark One leaned closer, and the darkness seemed to leak out from his hood, curling round Edwin and dragging him in.
Edwin tried to scream, but somehow the darkness seeped into his mouth and stopped the sound. He could hardly breathe, and felt like he was suffocating…