The Hairy Hand Page 3

  Moments passed and Sept stayed very still. Cautiously, he looked up, spitting out a large, mouthful of sand and, as he did so, something caught his eye. Sept squinted. There was a darker patch against the howling grey of the storm. Whatever it was, now moved nearer. Sept shivered and the beginnings of a new kind of fear made his thin, bony body stiffen. A form, like a large sleek cat, was slinking into view between the swirling sands - and it was coming towards him.

  Sept felt fire in his veins, his fingers itched and burned - now, was that more fear or something else? Seeing something else alive out here, in the desert in this storm seemed so unlikely. Was the cat caught like him, fighting for its life or was it... a horrible thought occurred... was it hunting him? The feline shape moved out of sight for a moment, then back again.

  Even over the noise of the storm, Sept heard the whispering he’d heard before at his uncle’s study.

  The creature was very close now. Slitted eyes glowed through the murk, staring right at Sept, who felt a sudden jolt of connection, as if his new companion had just spoken. It’s trying to get me to follow it, he realised. Sept felt sure that the cat meant him no harm. Trust was a new feeling to him and, in spite of the storm and his fear, it felt good.

  With the remaining reserves of his strength, Sept picked himself up. He began to struggle after his new companion who slid through the storm, seeming utterly untroubled by the wind, its fur unruffled, its movement sinuous and fluid.

  After a few minutes, the cat form began to go further ahead, until Sept lost sight of it altogether. He stumbled forward, feeling lost again, beginning to panic. Until, suddenly, something else appeared up ahead, through the swirling vales of sand.

  It was too much to hope for, but it almost looked like a cave. Bears lived in caves - Sept had read that - but that was because they provided shelter and that’s what he needed most right now, wild animals or not.

  It hardly seemed possible - it seemed the cat had led him here, to safety, through the storm. But why?

  The wind now howled like legions of devils racing towards him. The sand burned his battered skin and he could no longer stay on his feet; so he crawled. Sept knew that if he did not get to the cave soon (if it really was a cave), he would die. But... choices, he told himself - choose to refuse to let that happen.

  Two thin boulders, shaped like curved knives, led to a crack in a small rock face and in that fissure was a tunnel and a spacious chamber.

  Having already crossed the desert and not found anything like this, Sept had a strong feeling that coming across any shelter in the howling sand storm must mean something, but he was too tired to try and work it out now. He laughed weakly with relief and felt the fear slide off him into the unknown, along with regrets for his lost book.

  He was alive.

  Inside the cave it was warmer, much quieter and safe. Outside the wind raged and the sands swirled as if possessed. The contrast with the sunny start of the day could not have been more apparent.

  The storm had made his throat dry as old paper. Luckily, he had filled his water bottle from a clear stream on the meadow, so he took a long drink and immediately felt much better. His tummy rumbled. He could smell the ham and bread in his full knapsack and his mouth started to water.

  Sept, whose eyes had become adjusted by now to the semi-dark of the cave, took a careful look around. The earth was almost bare, warm and dry with a few stones and small rocks lying at the base of the walls. In one corner, an old creeper had once grown, run out of water and died. What was left though was masses of spongy, moss-like leaves - he could make it into a comfy bed - and several thickish vine stems.

  These broke easily into a neat pile and, using some of the foliage as tinder, he soon had a fire going with the last match from the box Gertrude had given him. Warmth and light.

  Sept stood up and took another look around. There was a cactus growing at the entrance to the cave. He had read in one of Plog’s stolen books that they could be eaten. Taking a sharp stone, he went out and cut off a large juicy corner. Then, by the flickering light of the fire, he carefully sliced away the needles and the leathery flesh. The juicy inner flesh tasted of sweet cucumber and something slightly tangy.

  Next he took out the ham. Humming quietly to himself, he placed a large rock in the heart of the fire and waited until it glowed red-hot. He flipped the largest slice of ham onto the rock and watched it sizzle with satisfaction, giving off salty, hammy smells as the rind turned golden, crispy brown.

  When he couldn’t stand the wait any longer, he took out the bread and tore off a delicious doughy hunk.

  The fat from the ham and the crisp cactus juice mixed with the bread, making the most mouth-watering sandwich Sept had tasted in his whole life.

  He rested his back against the smooth rock of the cave, warming his face and toes by the fire and listened to the storm as he chomped through six large squares of his uncle’s chocolate.

  ‘Ahhh!’ he sighed contentedly.

  ‘Ahhh!’ his echo, higher up the walls, agreed right back. He could stay here forever, become a hermit maybe.

  The crying of the storm outside and the warm fire really did make things feel cosier. He plumped up his springy leaf mattresses until it was just right and lay down.

  It had been a busy day but his mind still raced. He thought about the mysterious gift. Turning his head, he studied the box; wondering what lay inside its smooth, polished surface. Earlier, when he had been wading through the sand storm, he had thought he felt something move inside the box, stowed in the bottom of the bag. Now he stretched out his hand to touch it... but drew it back sharply. Did something inside the box just make a scratching sound? Sept looked hard at the box. He wasn’t so tempted to open it now - something told him it would be best to heed his uncle’s words and wait until he was home. Instead, he lay there, simply staring at it for a long time in the flickering firelight, but nothing inside made a noise or moved again.

  Just to be on the safe side, Sept picked the box up and placed it the other end of the cave from his bed.

  Soon the noise of the wind began to lull him to sleep.

  As the fire died down to embers, Sept eventually closed his eyes, feeling warm, safe and content for perhaps the first time in his whole life.

  Chapter 5

  Sept meets an old man wearing what looks like a nappy who tells him his surprising future

  That same night, the old man who had once lived in the cave, visited Sept in a dream.

  Sept’s sleep was disturbed by the smell of rotting leaves and grubby human being. He stirred but did not wake. ‘Are you a ghost?’

  ‘S’pose I am. S’pose I’m not. It was my cave, this... and you’re lying down in me toilet.’ Sept shifted uncomfortably in his sleep. This was getting to be a habit; the only people he spoke to these days were dead.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’

  ‘Sorright, most times I just went outside. Very liberatin’ peeing in the fresh air when you know there’s no-one about for one hunner and thirty mile or more... weird though, at first, when you can’t find a tree... and I don’t recommend doing it anywhere near those prickerley bushes you gets round here.’

  Sept really had no answer to this. ‘Right.’

  The apparition began to solidify, becoming more than just a smell with a voice.

  By and by, a skinny old man stood before him wearing a sort of turban of dirty grey cloth wrapped around his head, something similar wrapped around his middle, and not a lot else. Unless you counted his eyebrows. Whilst his beard was thin and as indeterminate in colour as his clothes, the hair growing from his eyebrows was the purest white: silken and long - like two miniature avalanches of snow that arched around his eyes and then fell in a cascade all the way to his knees.

  One of his eyes was green, the other pale golden, like the sun in winter.

&nbs
p; Sept stared. He was sure he was still asleep but the old man looked very real.

  ‘What?’ The wizened old man looked uncomfortable. ‘Have I got something stuck in me beard?’

  ‘Your eye,’ Sept blurted.

  ‘Oh, that!’ the old man looked proud. ‘Forty-six year I was out here on me own... first twenty years the eyebrows sprouted like wings, next twenty me peeper went funny.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Who knows... to peer round corners, count the colours in a shadow, watch people backwards, see inside out... m’bee to spy on what’s the other side of the Moon. Never found out. It’s probably what occurs when you’ve got all this magic slopping about inside of you and it’s got nowhere to go.’ A longish pause followed. ‘So yer thinking about stopping here, in this cave of mine, boy? Tell us the truth now.’

  It was true, before he went to sleep Sept thought about going back to his life in Nowhere, with its rain and dirt, his mum and dad shouting at each other all the time. At him. Then he thought about staying here in the desert with the clean, dry sands, the safe, cosy cave. ‘Well...’

  ‘...well don’t... well nothing, three wells in a row, all dried up...’

  ‘I just don’t feel... right at home... I don’t feel right, or like I belong.’ There, he’d finally said it out loud.

  The old brown man stared at him through his extraordinary eyebrows for a long time. He spoke very softly now. ‘Sounds like you got it bad, my boy. I never fitted in either, till I turned twelve and things started to happen. I could do things, things that people didn’t understand, so they got even more unfriendly. You and me’s the same, you’ll see soon enough. Same reason I went away and never come back. The things I learned out here though, in all the time I sat in this cave and looked out at the sand slowly going up and down - all wavey and slow sea. What’s your name?’

  ‘Sept...,’ said Sept, ‘well, Septimus, actually.’

  ‘Oooh, good name that,’ the old man looked knowing, ‘strong name,’ he glared at Sept, ‘...magic name.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Sept.

  ‘Right, I’ve got two bits of advice for you. You’ll be needing it, soon enough since you lost that book of yours...’

  ‘How did you...?’

  ‘Firstly,’ he held up a long brown finger by way of interruption. ‘Locusts taste much better when you cook ’em, not bite the heads off raw. Second... go home! You n’ me are more alike than you realise... both of us gots something, I just never used mine... hid meself away. Some people are bad, somes good, mosts in between good and bad, but... and this comes from an old fool who sat in a cave for near fifty year... company’s better ’n being on your own!’

  ‘...but sometimes I think there’s something else, something I’m missing,’ Sept broke in.

  The old man gave him a hard stare.

  ‘Then it sounds like there’s something they’re not tellin’ you boy,’ he said harshly. ‘You’d best find out what it is or you’ll never settle, take that from me too.’

  With that he turned to go but, before he left Sept’s dream, he stared hard at the box. ‘M’bee the answer’s in that thing,’ he muttered.

  The next morning, when Sept woke, he was surprised to see the box was now lying right next to him.

  Chapter 6

  Plog gets a painful bottom

  The coming days saw a big difference in Sept. However, for now, only the vultures patrolling the skies high above the desert noticed the change in the scared and sunburned boy they saw passing in the other direction from a few days before.

  Sept was walking so fast and so confidently now it was almost a jog. The old man in the cave had convinced him: he had a mission. He’d been to a warlock’s house, talked to a ghost and discovered a box with a secret. In short, he was determined to find out the truth about the box. But something else niggled at the back of his mind: his uncle’s words: There is an unbreakable enchantment between you and me that makes it impossible. One day, I hope you will find a way to uncover the truth.

  Enchantment and truth. Sept knew nothing about either, but it didn’t stop him thinking about them.

  After two weeks, he was getting close to home. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing Nowhere again, but the thought of sleeping in a real bed did cheer him up, even if the thought right after - of what Gertrude Plog would make of his choices - made him feel a bit queasy.

  He was rather busy wondering if calling the box a treasure chest would make her happier, when he heard an angry buzzing sound above his head, in a tree. Looking up, he was surprised to see his father falling out of it.

  ‘It burns!’ Plog cried, clutching his very large bottom as he fell, ‘I’m dying, oh help!’

  Firestorm Wasps lived on the outskirts of the Lonely Wood in nests as large as a small car. Anyone with any sense would take care before climbing the trees but Plog had no time for the countryside, never went to the woods and so he had only heard about these terrible insects in stories. Plus, he didn’t have any common sense whatsoever.

  Firestorm Wasps were called that because they were bright red and black, which made them look like they had flames running down the length of their long, jagged bodies. Their sting also burned like molten lava being poured into your veins and the swelling would take weeks to go down, leaving a nasty scar - like a brand.

  They were also very, very bad tempered. Your average Firestorm Wasp made Mistress Plog look like a gentle lamb with a marvellously sunny disposition by comparison. They were well known to chase people they didn’t like for several weeks. Yes, Sept knew all about Firestorm Wasps. He immediately looked for cover, yet he needn’t have bothered.

  As more wasps stung him, Plog had decided to let go of the branch, presumably to escape the terrible stings, when Sept came along. Unfortunately, Plog missed the ground. He let out a small whimper as the knotted branch between his legs flexed and sprung him back, upwards. Directly towards the wasps’ nest.

  His head rocketed through the bottom of the nest and stuck there, amidst a cloud of very angry, then very surprised wasps, as they watched their prey disappear with their home stuck to his head.

  Sept’s eyes followed his father’s journey hurtling through the canopy of leaves towards a patch of nettles on the ground.

  ‘Hello Dad.’ Sept said, hurrying over to see if he could help. Seeing the state of his father, he added, ‘are you OK?’ shaking his head as he hauled Plog to his feet with some difficulty. ‘You really must learn to be more careful, this part of the wood is full of all sorts of surprises.’

  ‘Ah, Sept,’ Plog eventually managed to groan, ‘your mother sent me to keep a look out for you, that’s why I climbed the tree. She’ll be pleased you’re back, as long as you’ve got something for us... I ’ope for all our sakes. Oh, gawd, you aven’t got any ice ’av you?’

  Chapter 7

  Gertrude is more angry than disappointed

  Gertrude Plog wouldn’t stop talking and everything she said just made Sept more convinced by the minute she wasn’t going to be pleased with his choices. Not one bit. ‘Ooh, I’s just sure that knapsack is bursting with gold coins and rare antics!’

  ‘Once I’m richy and powerfully, no more selling stolen goods - Plog, are yous listenings? - we’s going to lend people money and expect everyone to pay uses back at least four times what we gives them. Or else. And I’ll build the hugiest mansion all in yellow, bright green and pink - just at the end of the village and have a big knobbly gate fixed across the road. Then we’s charging people money for travelling through. No-one would argue with us cos’ we’d get educated and That Book could be useful again.’ She stopped and looked slyly at Plog. ‘I’ll turnes their tongues into fat slugs or their heads into turnips!’

  She rubbed her fat hands together greedily and her eyes went piggy.

  ‘So, let’s sees it all t
hen.’

  Sept took a deep breath.

  Thirty-eight seconds later the Plog family were gathered around the kitchen table. Gertrude was the only one sitting - partly because there was only one chair and partly because, since his encounter with the Firestorm wasps, Plog wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month. Sept’s worst fears were being confirmed.

  His mother’s whole body was wobbling like a big, furious jelly. ‘IS... THIS... ALL... YOU... HAVE BRUNGED... YOU IMBY SEEL... YOU NERDY NINCOMPOOP...!’

  ‘Calm down, my mountain buttercup,’ Plog was feeling almost as nervous as Sept. It had been a very bad day, everything hurt and he didn’t care about the treasure anymore, he just wanted to lie down in a dark room.

  ‘DON’T YOU TELLS ME TO CALM DOWN... THE VILE SPLODGE HAS COME BACK WITH NUFFINK BUT A FEW CRUMBS IN HIS NAPSACK, A DOG BRUSH AND A MANKY OLD BOX I WOULDN’T PUT A DIRTY ’ANKY IN... OH, I SHOULDA GAWN MEESELF.

  ‘Now, you know that’s not poss...’ Plog started to say, before he snapped his mouth shut, as if he had a spider crawling about on his chin. ‘What’s in the box?’ he rattled off to change the subject. ‘Might be sumfin worth selling?’

  Gertrude Plog looked at the box doubtfully. Then a pudgy arm, like a boa constrictor making a grab for a rabbit, shot out and snatched it off the table. Dirty fingers, covered in cheap brass jewellery pulled this way and that. She went even redder in the face. ‘Won’t... open... ruddy fings locksied.’

  ‘No, wait!’ Sept had never dared tell his mother to do anything before. ‘Please don’t do that...’ he added.

  ‘Shuts it!’ she was too intent on breaking into the box to stop now, ‘there’s jewelsies inside, I knows it.’

  ‘But...’ Sept wanted to say it was his, except he couldn’t quite get the words out. Barely ten minutes being back home, he felt as if nothing had changed.

  Plog, expert Sneaker, breaker-into-things and lock pick, took a look. Trying to ignore the terrible stinging pain in his backside and a duller, deeper throb nearby, he turned the box over in his hands. ‘No lock ’ere,’ he said, squinting at it. ‘Hinges look shot... pass us a knife it’s probably just glued isself shut with grease and grime. I’ll ’av it open in a jiffy, then we’ll see if verruca face ’as brought us anyfink worthwhile, or if ’ees spending the next month sleeping in the outside toilet.’ Gertrude Plog cracked a gruesome leer for the first time in several minutes. She almost hoped the box was empty.