THE EYEBAT

Jack was pouring powder of sulphur into the top of the alembic. Robert and Crispis were stuffing pieces of lead into the bottom of the alembic. Poor Crispis was so small that he could hardly lift the lead from the bucket. His curly hair was damp with sweat.

‘I wish I was a rabbit,’ he said, ‘then I could live in a field and eat grass.’

Jack was up on the ladder. He came down. ‘Crispis, go and give all the boys some water. Robert and I will manage the lead.’

‘Every boy must perform his allotted task,’ shouted William.

‘Not if a friend will do it for him,’ said Jack. ‘Go on, Crispis.’

The tiny boy smiled with happiness. William scowled.

‘Do not provoke William,’ said Robert. ‘I do not trust him.’

‘There’s no one watching us,’ said Jack.

‘The Eyebat is always watching us,’ said Peter, coming across with a pile of wood for the furnace.

From across the room the Eyebat was gleaming evilly from its jar. Crispis came trotting back with two brimming wooden cups of water. He looked at Jack the way a sunflower looks at the sun.

‘Thank you, Crispis,’ said Jack, and gently turned the little boy round and sent him off. ‘Don’t forget the others.’

Robert splashed some of his water on his face and neck.

‘Have you always been an orphan, Robert?’ asked Jack.

‘I must have had a mother once, for I wasn’t made in a bottle like the Creature,’ said Robert. ‘But I came here from a ship where I was a cabin boy.’

‘A ship!’ said Jack. ‘Did you fight any pirates?’

‘Yes, and we did,’ replied Robert. ‘Sailing off Cadiz the Spaniards attacked us, but we fought them off, and when our guns and our ammunition and our men were exhausted, a pirate ship came and plundered us. Pirates are clever. I’d rather be a pirate than anything.’

‘When we escape, let’s be pirates,’ said Jack.

‘And get a ship and go to sea!’

‘And find the treasure . . .’

‘And I’ll have a parrot and a pair of pistols.’

‘And we won’t have to turn lead into gold because we’ll find all the gold in the world . . . when we escape.’

Jack was laughing, but now Robert had stopped laughing, and his face was serious and sad. ‘Not anything can escape, Jack. There is no escape, that’s what you don’t understand. This place, the Dark House, it’s not just a house like other houses are houses. It’s as if . . . it’s like living inside a person – the Magus is this house, Jack, we are living inside him.’

Jack was silent. He thought back to when he had woken up in the well and wondered if he were inside a whale.

‘How are we living inside him, Robert?’

Robert looked around, nervous, but the other boys were all busy at their work, except for Peter, who came closer. Robert said, ‘I am the eldest here, nearly thirteen, and I have been here the longest. When I came, I was brought off the ship because my master had sold me, and I didn’t think much of it, but when the cart brought me to this house, the man driving the cart, all fearful and watchful, said to me, “Boy, they have sold you to the Devil. I tell you true, this house does not exist! Look for it and it does not exist.” ’

‘But it does exist,’ protested Jack, ‘we are in it, and we have both been outside it, and there is a courtyard, and last night the Magus came and went. How could he come and go if there was nothing here but a phantom?’

‘It exists in his mind,’ said Robert, ‘and so do we.’

‘I am Jack!’ said Jack out loud, and William looked round.

‘You are Robert! There’s Peter.’

‘But he is the Magus,’ said Robert. ‘I can think of a house, but not so that you can go inside it. He can think of a house, and we are inside it – all of us.’

‘Even if that is true,’ said Jack, ‘and I don’t believe it is true, we have a life that is not his life.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Robert. ‘What life do we have that is not his life?’

Jack shook Robert by the shoulders. ‘Stop it! Whatever this house is, we will escape. Now tell me something I want to know.

Is there such a thing as, well, something like a dragon in here?’

Robert’s face went white with fear. ‘Who told you there was a dragon?’

‘I know there aren’t any dragons,’ said Jack, ‘but I am looking for one.’

‘That’s easy!’ said Crispis. ‘Whatever doesn’t exist is nearby.’

Robert sighed and Peter cuffed the child on the head, but gently, and in play.

‘As it happens,’ said Robert, ‘yes, we do have a dragon.’

‘Where?’

‘Sometimes you can see it in the dry moat that lies lower than the house, as though the house rose out of the moat and will one day fall back there. It is all wrapped around the house.’

The boys were crowding round now.

‘Tell me where the dry moat is!’ said Jack. ‘Can we see it from here? What if we climb up to the skylight and look down?’

‘It is forbidden to climb up to the skylight,’ said William.

‘Everything is forbidden!’ said Jack. ‘I don’t care. Come on! Who’s going to help me? I need help with the ladder!’

‘We’ll be punished!’ said Peter.

‘This is being punished!’ said Jack. ‘This is the worst punishment I ever had, worse than being locked in the cellar for stealing apples, worse than being beaten with a stick for breaking a window, worse than being made to row up and down the Thames all day because I stole a boat – I didn’t steal it really, I just borrowed it.’

‘I’m too frightened,’ said Roderick.

‘That’s because you’ve all been here a long time. He’s broken your spirit. You have to fight back – we can beat him.’

‘You’ll kill us all!’ shouted William, and he rushed at Jack, but the other boys pulled him off.

‘Peter! Anselm! Hold William,’ said Robert. ‘All right, Jack, we’ll help you. Roderick, get the ladder with me!’

Reluctantly Roderick helped Robert to steady the ladder for Jack and soon Jack had shinned up and was high as the skylight.

‘Robert,’ he called down, ‘if the house doesn’t really exist, then the Dragon can’t really be wrapped around it, so we’re safe aren’t we?’

Jack pushed open the skylight and eased his body half out on the roof. He looked out. His heart lifted; there was St Paul’s cathedral spire on the skyline. He was not so far away from home.

He looked down. There was the courtyard, and beyond the courtyard, yes, there was a moat, and the moat had no water in it. There was nothing in it at all; it was a deep dug ditch.

‘Get down!’ shouted William, struggling to break free, his face twisted with anger and upset. ‘Who do you think you are? You have no right! Get down!’

Suddenly Robert heard a noise. ‘Jack! Someone’s coming!’

Jack began to slide himself back through the skylight, and as he did so, he dislodged a piece of lead on the roof. There it went, bouncing and skimming down the steep pitch of the roof, off the edge, and down into the moat.

And Jack saw something very strange. As the sharp heavy bit of lead hit the moat, the moat moved – that is it rippled, the way the skin of an animal ripples, and Jack suddenly realised that he had been looking for a moat with a dragon in it, but the Dragon and the moat were the same thing . . . the Dragon was the moat and the moat was the Dragon. Whatever was wrapped around the house was alive.

But it was too late for all that now.

The metal door of the laboratory shot open like someone had fired it out of a gun. Wedge and Mistress Split were roaring on the threshold.

‘Eat! Eat! Eat! Meat! Meat! Meat!’

Then Wedge saw the ladder, and Jack at the top of it. He hopped straight over, kicked the ladder away, and Jack fell straight down with a crash.

And as he fell his arm knocked the Eyebat’s jar from the shelf.

There was a silence. A horrified silence. Jack lay on the floor, a bit dazed, seeing the faces above him, like in a dream.

For about a minute nothing happened. Then, like the slowest genie from the narrowest jar, green and black vapour began to swirl upwards and out into the room, with the smell of rotten eggs. William and Robert were coughing. Crispis had hidden under the table.

Up went the vapour, and as the noxious gas began to clear, there at the bottom of the broken jar, in among the jagged pieces, lying like a moth the size of a man’s hand, was the Eyebat.

Its two evil eyes swivelled round.

‘Catch it!’ yelled Wedge, lunging forward on his one leg, but at that split second, the Eyebat propelled itself upwards in a great whirr, and hurtled around the room so fast that no one could follow it.

Screaming with fright, Anselm and Peter hid under the table with Crispis. Robert grabbed a net and tried to grab at the thing, like a butterfly. Jack scrambled to his feet, and was at once knocked down again by a furious Wedge, purple in the face.

The Eyebat dipped, dived, then settled itself nastily in the rafters, its shining evil eyes looking down.

Wedge stared around the room, swiping randomly at the cowering boys. He pushed the broken pieces of the jar with his iron-booted toe. Then he put his half-face very close to Jack and snarled, ‘Oh, you are in trouble, oh, you are in trouble, my fine lad. Eyebat out, is he? Well indeed!’

Wedge looked up to the rafters. The Eyebat looked down from the rafters. Wedge laughed his horrid half-laugh with his horrid half-mouth.

‘What will the Magus say? This is thunder and strife.’

Mistress Split came forward. ‘The boy will pay with his life – ha ha ha ha.’

The Eyebat flapped a little on its beam.

‘Be gone, you boys!’ said Wedge. ‘The Magus must be brought here!’

‘Live in fear!’ said Mistress Split, laughing at the terror of the boys. ‘Live in fear!’

As the boys filed out, Wedge grabbed Jack by the shoulder and forced him round towards Mistress Split. ‘Here’s the trouble. Here’s all the trouble in one bag of skin and bones. Here’s the one that’s starving us, my dear!’

‘Then punish him, my dear!’ said Mistress Split.

‘If we shan’t eat, neither shall he!’

‘Let him see what it’s like to go hungry!’

Wedge let Jack go, and Jack ran, rubbing his shoulder, towards the refectory.

When he got there, the boys were eating in silence, but there was no place set for Jack. He reached for a mug of water and at that second Mistress Split’s sword cleaved the mug in two, and the water spilled out over the table and floor.

‘Not a drop!’ she said. ‘Not a drip!’

And then, she dropped her sword as fast as she dropped her evil expression. A little black dog came galloping through the door, paws underneath him, falling over. Jack nearly cried out with joy, and just managed to close his mouth, as Mistress Split intercepted the dog, and swooped him up on her arm, where he licked her half-face.

‘My love my dove, my love my dove, my love my dove,’ and on she went, loving and doving, until Wedge came in, furious and hot-faced.

‘Halves halves, halves!’ he shouted. ‘All is halves!’ and he tried to pull the dog from Mistress Split, who bared her teeth at him.

‘Shall not split him, he’s a Born not a Bottle, splitting it kills it, as well you know!’

‘As well YOU know,’ snarled Wedge in her face. ‘Dead or alive makes no odds, halves is halves to us.’

But Mistress Split held the dog up high on her one arm in her one hand, and Wedge stumped off, reeking rage.