LITMIR.BIZ

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as he glanced up the stairs.

      “Aunt Jen?” he cried. “It’s me – it’s Reggie.”

      “Oh, Reggie!” the voice answered faintly. “I knew you’d make it.”

      The boy ran up the stairs. His aunt sounded tired. What had his uncle done to her? Had she been locked in a room? Perhaps she was tied up.

      “Why didn’t you come to the park?” he called when he reached the landing. “Why didn’t you meet me? What’s happening here?”

      He looked quickly into the bathroom, then in his cousins’ bedrooms. They were all empty.

      At the end of the landing his aunt and uncle’s bedroom door was half open. It was dark inside.

      “I couldn’t, Reggie,” his aunt answered from the darkness. Reggie’s relief and joy disappeared. Dread and fear took their place.

      “Why?” he asked.

      “It’s no use, Reggie,” Aunt Jen replied.

      The boy took a step closer. “Why didn’t you text me?”

      “I couldn’t.”

      “Why not? What did Uncle Jason do? Where is everyone?”

      There was no answer. Reggie put his head round the door. The curtains were drawn, but the light of the April afternoon leaked in at the edges. At first he thought someone was slumped on the bed then he realised it was only a mound of clothes. The drawers and wardrobes had been ransacked, their contents strewn about the room. Then he saw, in front of the curtains, a figure sitting before a dressing table mirror, gazing at her reflection in the gloom.

      “Aunt Jen?” he ventured. The person didn’t move.

      “Jen?” he said again.

      Reggie didn’t want to go any closer. He shouldn’t have come here. He could just make out that the woman’s head was covered by a veil of black lace.

      “I expected you here hours ago,” she said, still staring into the mirror.

      Reggie took a step back. The figure did not move.

      “I thought something had happened to you,” the boy muttered. “Something bad.”

      “Something did, Reggie,” she said softly. “But it was good not bad – so very, very good.” The woman rose from the chair and turned, lifting the veil from her face.

      Reggie let out a sob of dismay and stumbled out of the room. Aunt Jen came striding after. Leaving the darkness, she stepped on to the landing. Reggie blundered backwards, retreating to the top of the stairs.

      His aunt was wearing a long gown of black tulle and taffeta that rustled like dead grass when she moved. Long gloves of black silk reached to her elbows and a necklace of jet beads glittered about her neck. Her once friendly face was now set in a scowl. Raven-black lips made her mouth ugly and her eyebrows looked like they had been inscribed with coal. At her bosom she had pinned a playing card and upon her cheek she had painted a large black spade.

      “Not you!” Reggie cried. “Not you!”

      “I am the Queen of Spades,” she told him. “Last night it happened. At long last the way opened for me. I was drawn beyond the Silvering Sea and awoke in the great castle of Mooncaster and finally knew this grey world for what it was, a flat dream. I am one of the four Under Queens. That is my true life.”

      The boy shook his head. “No, it isn’t!” he shouted, but he knew it was no use arguing. He had lost her, just like he had lost his sister then his parents. He had to get out of there.

      “It is not too late for you, Reggie,” she said as he hurried down the stairs. “The woman Jennifer was fond of you, her nephew. I will entreat the Holy Enchanter. He may be able to help. You cannot remain an aberrant. Join us.”

      “Not on your life!” he spat as he raced through the hall and into the kitchen to retrieve his rucksack. “You and the rest of them can stick it.”

      “Aberrants will not be tolerated,” she said as she came swishing down the stairs.

      Reggie closed his eyes tightly and drew a deep breath. He had to control himself. There wasn’t time to grieve for her. That could happen later, when he was safe, if he could ever be safe. Right now he had to run.

      He rushed back into the hallway. The woman he had known as Aunt Jen was standing on the bottom stair, a black-feathered fan in her hand.

      “You cannot leave,” she said, tapping it lightly against her gloved palm.

      “Watch me,” he growled.

      Reggie barged out of the front door then staggered to a halt. With despair and defeat in his eyes, he gazed around and a deathly cold clasped him. The street was filled with people. A crowd of several hundred residents and neighbours had gathered silently in front of the house. They were all dressed as some medieval fairy-tale character and every one of them wore a playing card on their home-made costume. Close by, on the lawn, stood his uncle and his cousins.

      Uncle Jason was wearing a smock and apron. Pewter tankards were hooked to his belt. He was supposed to be an innkeeper, but he merely looked ridiculous. His sons, Tim and Ryan, were also dressed up. One was a page, the other a kitchen boy.

      Reggie felt his courage disappear. He was trapped.

      “Aberrant,” his cousins said.

      “Aberrant,” his uncle repeated.

      “Aberrant,” spat the voice of Aunt Jen in the doorway behind him.

      The word spread through the large crowd until everyone was chanting it like a mantra, their faces twisted and angry.

      “We must not suffer an aberrant to live!” Uncle Jason shouted.

      “Burn him!” Ryan called out.

      “Burn him!” echoed the crowd.

      Reggie stared at them in horror. Yes, they would do it. They would burn him alive. The madness had gone that far.

      “Lock him in the shed and set light to it!” Uncle Jason cried.

      “No,” Aunt Jen commanded. “It must be done properly, as we would burn the Bad Shepherd in Mooncaster. Build a bonfire. Bring wood and fuel.”

      The crowd gave a mighty cheer. Many went running to their homes to fetch anything that would burn. The rest came surging towards Reggie and closed in around him. There was nothing he could do, no chance of escape. Strong hands grabbed at him. He was hitched high off the ground and carried to the road.

      The beginning of a bonfire was swiftly thrown on the tarmac. Chairs, tables, empty bookcases, shelves ripped from walls, tied towers of newspaper from recycling bins, anything that a flame could bite was brought there in euphoric haste. A man emerged from his house with a chainsaw and immediately set to work, carving the furniture into useful, stackable pieces.

      Reggie was paraded around the mounting timber pyramid like a living guy. He saw a pensioner gleefully throw his walking stick into the midst of the growing pyre and watched a woman come laughing from her garage carrying a can of paraffin. She looked up at Reggie and he saw the joyous expectation on her face. Dancing around the woodpile she sloshed the paraffin over it with carefree abandon.

      Reggie was held so tight he could not even struggle. He knew there was no way out of this. He tried to shout, to tell them they were insane, that the book had possessed them – that they were about to commit murder. But nobody listened and they sang the stupid songs from those evil pages all the louder. This was it. He was going to be burned to death.

      And then, suddenly, a siren cut through the excited babble of voices and, to Reggie’s overwhelming relief, two police cars came roaring down the street, screeching to a stop in front of the bonfire.

      “Oh, thank you, thank you!” Reggie yelled.

      “Break

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