The Battle for Christmas Page 4

  ‘What about me?’ asked Max.

  ‘How about a crook from one of the shepherds in the nativity set?’ Aysha suggested.

  Max sighed and took the crook, glancing longingly back at the tank. It was time to go. There was no more to be said, just a few quick hugs and some more flipper shaking. The door opened. Max and Ellie stepped out into the dark and silent Empty Room beyond. The door behind them slid shut. For a brief second the faulty Christmas lights sparked up and illuminated the No Man’s Land ahead of them with an eerie mix of red, green, blue and yellow. They gave one last pathetic buzz and went off.

  Ellie and Max were alone in the silent dark.

  8 An Electrifying Task

  ‘I don’t like those pyjamas,’ whispered Max as they skirted round the edge of the Empty Room. ‘We’re trapped in this stupid place and we might get killed by stupid angels with stupid wooden wings and nothing is real and we’re titchy tiny and I look like a stupid girl and it’s all the fault of those stupid pyjamas that Great-Aunt Stupid sent you.’

  ‘I know,’ admitted Ellie, who was feeling much the same herself.

  ‘We’ve been shrunk, Ellie. We can’t go back to our own world like this. We’ll get trodden on by Dad for a start. His feet are as big as pizzas. And if Dad doesn’t flatten us we’ll be eaten by a spider or squeezed to death by a worm. We don’t even know how to get back, do you?’

  Ellie couldn’t help noticing how Max had started with ‘we’ but finished it with ‘you’, as if it was all her fault. She swallowed an uncomfortable sense of guilt. She knew it wasn’t like that really, but that was how she felt.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, squeezing Max’s hand. ‘I promise we will get back and we will be the right size when we get home. After all, we didn’t have to make ourselves shrink to get here, did we?’

  Max stopped in his tracks. Even in the dark Ellie could see the smile creep on to his face. ‘No! We didn’t! It was like magic, wasn’t it? That’s what will happen when we go back!’

  Now it was Max leading Ellie, as he happily marched forward. He even began to whistle until Ellie quickly told him to stop. They had reached enemy territory, on the far side of the Empty Room.

  Blondie had pointed out an old electric plug socket, just above the skirting board. Plaster had crumbled away round one edge of the plastic plate and there was a big enough gap to wriggle through and get into the wall cavity. Once there they should find a crack they could squeeze through into the enemy camp next door.

  However, nothing was going to be easy. They stood beneath the plastic socket, gazing up at it. Ellie nervously chewed her lower lip.

  ‘There’s no way to switch it off,’ she confided, watching Max anxiously.

  ‘Do you mean that everything inside is still electrified?’ His sister nodded. ‘So if it touches us,’ Max went on, ‘we will probably go BANG! and just be a puff of smoke?’ Ellie nodded again. ‘So we might DIE?’ Max loved being dramatic.

  Ellie held his hands. ‘We are not going to die, Max. All we have to do is crawl past the wiring. I’ll go first and you follow. If anything happens to me then you must go straight back to the others. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Max, suddenly becoming rather matter-of-fact about it all. ‘But it won’t do me any good if you get blown up because you’re wearing the Cosmic Pyjamas, and if they get exploded all over the place I shall be stuck here for ever. In fact,’ said Max emphatically, ‘I’m going first.’

  ‘But, Max –’ Ellie began, only to be firmly interrupted.

  ‘Crouch down so I can stand on your back,’ Max ordered. Ellie dropped to her hands and knees while Max hauled himself up to the thin top of the skirting board and stood there balancing like a mountaineer on a narrow ledge. He carefully lay down and reached towards his sister. She grabbed his hand, swung her legs on to the ledge and pulled herself up.

  Max turned to the dark, jagged gap and without glancing back at Ellie he shouldered his way in. Crumbly lumps of plaster lay everywhere and soon their journey became a caving expedition. There was no room to stand and they were forced to crawl across scattered bits of brick and plaster which dug painfully into their knees.

  They pressed forward and shortly they could see a writhing nest of thick coloured cables of wire curling in all directions, and an array of shiny brass screws, bars and plates. It was like being deep inside the belly of some fantastical beast.

  They could also hear it. A low, growling hum made everything seem to vibrate. Now and then something would crackle noisily, sending sparks snapping through the air like miniature lightning.

  Ellie and Max had to find a path through all this. They took off their wings so they wouldn’t catch on anything. They moved silently and steadily among the deadly humming innards, ducking their heads and clambering over bits of cable. Sometimes they passed so close to a highly charged piece of metal that their hair stood on end. At last they dropped down into the wall cavity.

  ‘We did it!’ said Max, wearing a ridiculously large grin on his face.

  ‘Well done! Here, let’s get your wings back on. There’s a crack in the wall over there. Maybe we can squeeze through.’

  ‘What do we do when we get to the other side?’ asked Max. It was a good question. They could hardly walk up to the nearest enemy angel and demand to know what the Dead Secret Plan was.

  ‘We shall hang about,’ Ellie said, a trifle lamely. ‘We must keep our ears and eyes open and pick up any useful information.’

  ‘OK,’ Max said cheerfully. Hanging about would be a mere trifle after braving the perils of the plug socket.

  They carefully pushed through the crack and almost at once found themselves in a very different set-up to Blondie’s hideout. Bright lights and busy noise were everywhere. It reminded Ellie of being inside a factory. Angels of all shapes and sizes whizzed about on busy missions. Dozens of chubby little cherubs buzzed backwards and forwards carrying baskets.

  ‘They’re all coming and going from that room at the back,’ Ellie observed. ‘I’m sure they’re doing something in there. The baskets going in have got something inside them, but the baskets coming out are empty. We must get in there and see.’

  In one corner the Dove of Peace was surrounded by busy cherubs. Two donkeys, which Ellie immediately decided were the ones that had been kidnapped from the nativity sets, had been loaded up with what looked like small bombs. The donkeys carried their deadly cargo across to the Dove of Peace, where the cherubs busied themselves carefully loading the bombs into the Dove’s bomb bay.

  ‘That Christmas Fairy is totally twisted,’ said Ellie. ‘She is so evil. What kind of person would use a Dove of Peace to drop bombs?’

  Max kept quiet. He was thinking what a neat idea it was, and could just see himself as a bomber pilot, homing in on the enemy to drop his giant splatter bombs.

  Gangs of snowmen were toiling away on some kind of production line. At one end was a large, metal tower. Brightly coloured plastic containers, which Ellie quickly recognized as the plastic beakers that babies play with, were being piled high with a variety of ingredients. A toy crane hoisted the beakers to the top of the tower, where they were tipped inside. The tower throbbed and shook with a noisy chorus of gurgles, gulps, growls and the odd belch.

  At the bottom of the tower squodgy yellow dollops were emerging on to a conveyor belt. As they passed along they were cut into sections by the snowmen and patted into shape before being placed in a basket. This was whisked away by a cherub and taken through to the back room.

  No wonder this place reminded Ellie of a factory – it was a factory. But what was it making? A pungent smell hung in the air and it reminded Ellie of something. She kept thinking of nuts, but that didn’t make any sense. What would the angels want with nuts? Were they planning to mow down Blondie’s army of penguins by rolling hazelnuts at them? Were they building a giant cannon that fired pecans and brazils?

  A loud clatter came from above them and a large, rotund angel with
wooden wings landed right beside them, quickly followed by a second, even tubbier, one.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ demanded the first. The second had hardly folded her wings before she began picking her nose as if she’d just found gold up her nostril.

  Max and Ellie had been discovered.

  9 The Cupboard Under the Stairs

  ‘Pardon?’ answered Ellie, trying to gain some thinking time.

  ‘I said, what’s up with you? Why aren’t you flying?’

  ‘Um, I got a wing injury in the last battle,’ Ellie invented madly.

  The fatter angel pulled a face. ‘Ooh, painful. What you should do, love, is stay at the back. That’s what Flora here and I do when there’s an attack going on. We stay at the back and have a little chat. Hide behind the others, love, like we do. Then you don’t get hit, see?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ellie agreed.

  Flora was peering at Max. ‘What’s wrong with her then? She been hit too?’

  Max’s little face flushed angrily. ‘I’m not a gir–’ he began, as Ellie hastily clamped a hand over his mouth.

  ‘No, she’s all right,’ Ellie said quickly. ‘She’s looking after me.’

  ‘Oh? I thought Her Right Royal Pain-In-The-Bumtiddly-Diddly-Department, if you get my meaning, ordered everyone to work on the Dead Secret Plan?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Ellie. ‘But I can’t fly and to tell you the truth, my little friend here, Nettle, keeps dropping things. Christmas Fairy says she’s more of a nuisance than a help.’

  Flora and her friend sniggered. ‘That’s a good trick! We must try that one, love. That’d get us out of all this bloomin’ work. Treats us like slaves, she does.’ Flora lifted the corner of her dress to scratch a wooden leg. ‘Got a splinter,’ she confided.

  ‘Not nice,’ said Ellie. ‘Do you think you should get back before the Right Royal Pain notices?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so.’ Flora turned to Max and patted him on the head. ‘By the way, I love your dress.’

  ‘You can have it if you want,’ Max said, through gritted teeth.

  ‘So kind – a proper little angel, you are, but it’d be much too small for me.’

  Now it was the other angel’s turn to admire Max. ‘Bye, Nettle. I love your name, by the way. It’s got a nice ring to it.’

  ‘More like a nice sting to it!’ chortled Flora, and her shoulders began to heave with laughter. ‘Now then, time flies, and so must we. Cheery-bye!’

  Max and Ellie watched them climb slowly towards the ceiling to join the others, flapping their cumbersome wings. Ellie couldn’t help feeling pleased with herself and she grinned at her brother.

  ‘They thought we were proper angels,’ she said.

  ‘You called me Nettle,’ bristled Max.

  ‘And you nearly gave us away,’ Ellie retorted. ‘I had to think quickly.’ She glanced towards the room at the back. ‘We must get in there.’

  ‘How are we going to do that?’

  ‘Everyone thinks we’re angels. Maybe we can walk straight in. We’ll pick up a basket like the cherubs and carry that with us. Hopefully everyone will think we’re helping.’

  They walked calmly across to the end of the conveyor belt. They nodded towards the snowmen and each picked up a basket. Nobody questioned or stopped them. They headed for the room at the back, with Ellie whispering excitedly to Max. ‘Do you know what this stuff is that we’re carrying?’

  ‘Yes. It’s stinky-poo stuff.’ Max was holding his nose. ‘We should stick it in the nearest dustbin.’

  ‘The smell comes from almonds. I reckon they’re making marzipan.’

  ‘Urgh!’ choked Max, his nose wrinkling in disgust. ‘I knew it was something horrible.’ He gazed back at the tin tower. ‘You mean the angels are making marzipan in that tower? Why do they want so much of it?’

  Ellie shrugged and hoped that they would soon find out. They reached the entrance to the back room. It was heavily guarded by large, beefy snowmen wielding stiff brooms.

  ‘What have you got there?’ demanded one. As he spoke his plastic carrot nose fell off. He picked it up and stabbed it back into place the wrong way round, grumbling about the lack of quality control. Ellie held up her basket for the snowman to inspect.

  ‘All right, pass,’ ordered the snowman and the children walked through. It was that easy! They exchanged brief smiles and turned to study the mystery room.

  It was awesome. They were at the heart of the Dead Secret Plan. Angels and snowmen whizzed about attending to a hundred different jobs: fetching, carrying, building and moulding.

  Marzipan was everywhere, but even so, there was one thing that grabbed Ellie and Max’s attention more than anything else. A towering network of scaffolding made from a multicoloured plastic kit had been constructed to support the angels’ building work, and what they were building was a giant.

  A GIANT MAN, MADE OF MARZIPAN.

  ‘He’s huge!’ cried Max.

  ‘Yesss,’ hissed a familiar voice. ‘Marzipan Man is almost finished.’

  It was the Christmas Fairy herself, who hadn’t recognized them. She stood next to Ellie and Max, admiring the monster-man she had created and at the same time she twisted and jerked and scratched her rear with thin fingers.

  ‘Once we get Marzipan Man going nobody will be able to stop him – except me!’

  ‘Really?’ prompted Ellie.

  ‘Oh, yesss! Marzipan Man will crush everything in his path. Those ridiculous glamour-dolls will be able to do nothing.’ The Christmas Fairy suddenly did a surprisingly good imitation of Blondie. ‘Don’t you come no closer, Marzipan Man, or I shall paint your toenails red! Oh, oh, please don’t ’urt me, you might spoil my lipstick!’ The Christmas Fairy pulled such a disgusted smirk that her one eye almost fell out. ‘Pah! She is so pathetic! With his Mega-Marzipanator my monster creation will be able to sssmother everything with hundreds of tons of marzipan.’

  ‘That’s revolting!’ groaned Max. He’d never liked marzipan in the first place.

  The Christmas Fairy rubbed her hands with glee. ‘And when Father Christmas walks in here, won’t he be sssurprised? He will be marzipanned from head to toe and that will be the end of him, and of Christmasss. For ever. Ha ha ha ha ha!’

  The Christmas Fairy chortled with glee and grinned fiercely at her two small companions. A tiny gleam of recognition crept into her eyes. A bony hand shot out and grasped Ellie’s shoulder.

  ‘Do I know you? Have we met before?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ replied Ellie as calmly as she could considering the Fairy’s sharp nails were beginning to claw her painfully.

  ‘Oh yesss, let me sssee, we’ll just wipe off some of this make-up and goodness me, if it isn’t my old friends, the mince ssspiesss!’

  The Christmas Fairy grabbed at Ellie’s angel dress and lifted it up. ‘Yesss! You’re ssstill wearing those peculiar pyjamas too. You can take off those ridiculous wingsss and that dress at once! And you too!’ ordered the Christmas Fairy, glaring at Max.

  Suddenly Max found himself in the wholly unexpected position of wanting to keep his awful nightie on. He clutched it to his chest and tried to pull it down to his knees. The Christmas Fairy broke into an hysterical cackle.

  ‘The boy wants his nightie! There, there, it’s all right, my little sssweety-pie, you can keep your precious pretty thing.’ Her beady eye spun round and fixed on Ellie’s recorder, tucked into her belt. ‘What’s that?’ she demanded suspiciously.

  ‘This?’ asked Ellie, seizing the opportunity for a bit of trickery. ‘It’s a very powerful weapon. You’d better watch out.’ Ellie reached for her recorder but the Christmas Fairy shot out a gnarled hand and gripped her wrist.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she hissed, giving Ellie a toothless grin. ‘I’ll take that.’ She pulled the recorder from Ellie’s belt and examined it. ‘There’s a sssimple way to deal with thisss,’ the Christmas Fairy went on, and before Ellie could say another word the wicked hag broke the
recorder across her knee, snapping it in half.

  Max goggled at the Christmas Fairy, horrified. ‘You are going to be in such big trouble with Mrs Tompkinson,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh, I am ssso ssscared,’ spat the Christmas Fairy, throwing away the broken instrument. Her wrinkled, grey hands darted out and she grabbed each of the children by one ear.

  ‘You have done well to get this far,’ she sneered unpleasantly, ‘but now you are my prisoners. Guardsss, take these mince ssspiesss away and put them in the dungeon.’

  A gasp of horror went through everyone. The angels stopped work, hovering in mid air. ‘The dungeon?’ they repeated. Even the guards were aghast.

  ‘Your Highness, do you really mean the dungeon?’

  ‘Yes! Of course I do!’ she snapped.

  ‘The one with the monster in it?’

  ‘Yesss, yesss, yesss!’ roared the Christmas Fairy. ‘Get on with it! Put them in THE CUPBOARD UNDER THE STAIRSSS!’

  The entire room looked on almost in pity as Max and Ellie were dragged away. Under a large guard of snowmen and heavily armed fairies the two children were marched out to the Empty Room and taken across to the stair cupboard. The door was briefly opened, the children were shoved into the darkness and the door slammed tight shut behind them. The sound of marching feet died away and they were left on their own.

  10 The Secret Pocket

  It was utterly dark at first. It seemed to take an age for their eyes to get used to it and all that time Ellie and Max hardly dared breathe, let alone move. They stood in silence, ears pricked, trying to pick out the sounds of any approaching beast.

  Max’s hand crept into Ellie’s, or maybe it was the other way round. At last the light seeping in beneath the door began to reveal the inside of the cupboard. They could make out some of the gigantic shapes around them, objects that both Max and Ellie quickly recognized from their own stair cupboard at home. Beside a mop and bucket, a vacuum cleaner stood tall and threatening. The machine loomed over them.