Tomas Ingleby and the Tale of the Golden Fairy

7. Tamble Wood

"Look, Tommy! The lights! Aren't they fabulous?"

Silence. In the car, stuck in traffic.

Obstinate silence.

The town certainly looked beautiful all lit up: multicoloured lanterns, fairy-lights, clusters of bulbs like grapes or pineapples--frosted orbs of silver glittering, sparkling, twinkling, shining, flashing--festoons of holly and tinsel and golden bells--elfish-looking monkeys swinging from branches.

And of course toy stores. Toy stores everywhere. You can't go wrong with toy stores, not with forty pounds burning a hole in your pocket. But no, Mother'd have to do better than that. Flames of that sort blaze out of control and the whole Christmas goes up in smoke. From now on until the end of the holiday, LBWBP: Little Boy with Big Problems. Pity those kids back there in the waiting-room stuck their oars in when they did, making him sulky and unstable. Mindless louts with nothing better to do than cause trouble.

Get out of the way, idiot! screamed Mrs Ingleby noiselessly, yanking the wheel to avoid the oncoming police car.

Armed robbery in progress: Tambleton's Best Jewellers. Santa on a last minute shopping spree--with a semi-automatic pistol!

"This is the police," squawked a loud hailer. "You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up!"

Kerpop!

Bullet pings off something metallic, ricochets off a lamppost, shattering the bulb, glances off the Inglebys' windscreen, leaving a small crack in the upper left corner, spins a wing mirror, hits three walls like pinball bumpers, strikes a hanging bell, twice--skewering Rudolf's red nose, snapping it right off--bounces like a bearing on a bagatelle board before skimming away harmlessly into the dark. First, no doubt, in a series of Single Magic Bullet theories, starting in next morning's newspapers!

"So the boy was right all along," thought Veronica, ducking.

Lights flash blue, yellow, red, scene decreases further into the mirror, fading behind into obscurity.

Good. She needed time to think. The last thing she needed was noise. If she could just keep him calm, mother him a bit without overdoing it, maybe he'd come round. Funny thing was . . .

Green, amber, followed by yet more red, suddenly a dead stop. You could feel the tension in the air. A stampede of hoarding bodies hurtling towards the car zombie-apocalypse style, fleeing the gunfire; the sound of footsteps hammered on the roof briefly, before tearing off into the gloom after the bullet.

Funny thing was the more he was offered hope, freedom, escape, the more he resisted and the more he'd rather be the town leper than give up his imaginary friends. He'd rather do anything than do that. Didn't make sense. But then of course when it comes to Tomas and his "friends", whoever and whatever they turn out to be, rarely did anything make sense, other than to himself.

Mrs Ingleby tried again.

"Forty pounds, Tom? Surely you can think of something nice to buy for yourself with that sort of money?"

No answer. Scowl, but no answer. Very worrying . . .

Who's fault then? Grandma? God forbid. We can't have that.

Certainly not.

What about the town? What about Tambleton? Old town. Old and mysterious. History, plenty of it, colourful, not all of it good. The woods for instance, haunted, some say . . .

Perhaps not. Better not go there, Veronica. You know what he's like. That is the road to madness--for all of us.

Still. Ever since those days all those years ago when they'd moved in from the city, before Tomas had been born, she'd sensed it then: something in the atmosphere, something in the water--something not right. To this day, she'd never been able to put her finger on what it was ...