The Dreables, A Merryweathers Mystery Read online

  Way down below he could see Gran’s bungalow with Troop barking. Slowly he made his way down the mountain towards it. But when he was halfway down, a mist came down out of nowhere and engulfed him. It was a cold and damp mist that seemed to suck the heat out of his bones and he began to shiver. Worse, inside the mist he had no idea of direction or time and all he could do was wander around the mountainside. From somewhere a long way away he thought he could hear Troop barking. But there were other things in the mist too. Whispering things that came and went and sometimes he thought he could feel the touch of very cold fingers on his face. He was very tired but he knew that sleeping on the mountainside in the mist wasn’t a good idea. He tried to listen for Troop’s bark and walked towards it. He seemed to walk for ages. Finally, he got too tired and sat down on the cold mountainside. Maybe it would be okay for him to close his eyes and rest for a moment or two.

  Then he felt something warm and wet touch his hand. He leapt up. A big furry head nudged his leg and something wet flicked at his fingers...and, as was the way with dreams, Sam woke up. He was in his bed at Gran’s bungalow and Troop was there licking his outstretched hand. Sam didn’t know quite why but he was suddenly really glad that Troop had come to wake him up. He got up and dressed and looked out of the window.

  It wasn’t raining.

  But it was Wednesday.

  Sam groaned.

  Chapter 2

  The Cat Sanctuary

  The cat sanctuary was, as usual, full of cats. It was run by Mrs Walpole, who wore a fur-splattered pink sweatshirt and jeans even on the hottest summer day, and had wispy hair that was always falling into her eyes. Sam couldn’t decide if the lipstick she wore was an even brighter shade than her sweatshirt.

  “Hello Sam,” she said as he opened the door of Gran’s battered estate car. “How lovely to see you again. Did I ever tell you that your eyes are exactly the same shade as Bugle’s? He was one of my favourite Siamese. And your hair is still as black as Ginger’s.” She beamed at Sam, who pretended his seat belt was stuck to avoid being hugged by Mrs Walpole. But he managed to compress his lips into a toothless smile in return. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he could see Gran watching him.

  “Oh Gwladys,” Mrs Walpole fussed. “There was no need for you to have come in today. Not when you have guests.” She sent a second beaming smile towards Sam. He slitted his eyes to deflect it.

  “Nonsense,” said Gran, already rolling up her sleeves. “Sam loves it here, don’t you, Sam?”

  “Well, actually – ” Sam began to say. He was cut off in mid-reply by Mrs Walpole.

  “The cats certainly seem to like him, I know that.” She put her hands on her hips and snorted. “Always a good sign in my book.” She snorted again. It sounded like a horse whinnying.

  “Now then, Alicia,” Gran said, “let’s get on with the muckings.”

  Sam watched as Mrs Walpole led Gran up a paved area between the cattery cages. There were a hundred cats at the sanctuary and that meant a hundred cats to clean up after every day. Sam had once been to see the muckings and had absolutely no wish to see them ever again. He certainly had no desire to watch someone shovelling them into bags for disposal.

  He shuddered at the memory and proceeded to head in the opposite direction towards a meadow at the side of the cattery. The first of the cats started to follow him after he’d gone perhaps ten yards. Others joined from all over the cattery. By the time he’d reached the edge of the meadow, there were thirty cats following him. When he got to the old threshing machine that sat rusting like the brown skeleton of some ancient dinosaur in one corner of the field, there were at least fifty cats behind him. Sam stopped and turned to confront them. When he stopped walking so did they. He had no idea what they wanted and it had been the same last year and the year before. A plague of cats wherever he went.

  “Shoo,” Sam said, waving his arms about. The cats watched his arms but didn’t move. Instead they meowed and swished their tails.

  “Go away,” Sam ordered.

  The cats ignored him.

  Sighing and shaking his head, Sam sat with his back towards the wheel rim of the old threshing machine and began plucking at blades of grass and daisies, one eye on the cat entourage. One by one, realizing that Sam was not on the move any more, they sat and began preening themselves or licking their paws as cats do.

  Sam wasn’t scared of cats; in fact, he quite liked them. Not as much as dogs, which were his favourite animal, but even Ginger, who was a pretty independent cat who didn’t like a lot of fondling, would rub against him at the breakfast table every morning and that was okay. At home the Joneses didn’t have any pets. It decreased the chances of “catching parasites,” or so Sam’s mum said.

  Sam turned his eyes up towards the sky. The sun was warm and mellow on his face and the aroma of new-mown hay drifted over in wafts from the farm next door. Insects buzzed between the buttercups and campions, and barely moving cotton wool clouds hung high overhead. Sam made himself comfortable and tried to see what shapes the clouds were making. He saw a hen’s head and a cricket bat and an eagle’s wing. He made chains out of the daisies and played a game of throwing pebbles into an old bucket as the cats watched lazily. At midday, he and the cats plodded back to the reception office, where Gran and Mrs Walpole were waiting. Mrs Walpole was grinning.

  “Did you have a nice time with the cats, Sam?” she asked.

  “They keep spying on me,” Sam said.

  “Yes. Quite extraordinary that. They don’t bother with anyone else.”

  “Hmph,” Sam grunted.

  Mrs Walpole beamed. “You’re like your gran. She has a way with animals too and she’s so kind and generous with her time. I expect you two get up to all sorts.”

  Sam thought about harrumphing again, but decided against it.

  ~~~~~

  “Why do those cats keep following me every time I go there?” Sam asked as they set off in Gran’s car.

  “Perhaps it’s because they like you,” Gran said.

  “Well, I don’t like it when they follow me.”

  “Now why doesn’t that surprise me,” Gran said, her eyes narrowing in a dangerous way. “You know what, Samuel? Animals don’t need your approval to admire and like you.”

  “I didn’t ask them to like me,” Sam said. “That’s not fair.”

  “Fair doesn’t come into it. Unconditional love, it’s called. Dogs and cats and mums and dads and grandparents have it by the bucket load.”

  “Sounds pants to me,” Sam mumbled. He didn’t like it when Gran was like this. The things she said made him think too much.

  “Yes, well,” Gran said, “pants it may be to you, but not to the cats. In fact, I’ve noticed that quite a few things are pants to you these days. Especially when it comes to doing things you don’t want to do. You know, most people have things they don’t really want to do but they end up doing them anyway because they’re necessary. Duty, it’s called. And doing it with good grace is the trick. But I expect you’re a bit too young to know that, even if you are old enough to not let people kiss you goodnight because it makes you feel uncomfortable.” Gran shifted in her seat and sighed. “Now then, what do you want to do? The museum has a new exhibition of volcanic rocks. Or there’s the garden centre.”

  “Do we have to?” Sam protested.

  Gran shot him a withering glance. When she spoke it was in a slow and deliberate voice. “No, we don’t have to. But we need to do something because you have a face like a slapped bottom and I don’t think I can stand a week of looking at it.”

  “But it’s so boring, Gran.”

  “How can you say that? The sun is shining, we’re free to go wherever we like. Use your imagination.”

  “Can’t we do something else, like go to the pictures? There’s a new scary one out about a secret castle and an ogre and…”

  “That’ll be quite enough of that,” Gran said, pursing her lips. “I have no control over what your mother and fath
er let you watch but here, with me, there’ll be none of that.”

  “But why?” Sam asked.

  “Because,” Gran said, and Sam could see that her knuckles had turned white on the steering wheel. “That’s why.”

  Sam turned his face away and slumped in the passenger seat. He looked out of the window at all the boring fields and the cows and the sheep. Where were the ghouls and the monsters and the fantastic castles of his dreams when he needed them?

  But he had no time to dwell on those thoughts. Suddenly, the car started to sputter and start like a stuttering kangaroo. Sam heard Gran sigh.

  “That’s just what we don’t need,” she said and pulled over into a convenient lay-by.

  “What is it?” Sam asked. The car was making strange hissing noises. Gran leaned forward with her glasses on her nose and tapped a dial on the dashboard.

  “Engine temperature’s in the red. Looks like we’ve got a leaky radiator.”

  She got out of the car and Sam followed. Instantly, Sam felt the sun bake through his T-shirt. Gran fiddled with the bonnet and in a jiffy had it held open on a metal strut. A low whistling sound emerged from a thin, square block of metal at the front of the car.

  “Stand back,” Gran ordered. She took out a handkerchief and used it to grab hold of the radiator cap and slowly unscrewed it. The hissing noise got louder until eventually, steam started pouring out.

  “There,” said Gran, “that should stop it from blowing up at least…”

  She got no further. As Sam and his grandmother watched the steam got thicker and started to billow out, not in a thin stream, but in great thick folding clouds. Within half a minute, they were completely enveloped. The steam, if that is what it was, was so thick, they couldn’t even see the car.

  It was then that Sam heard the voice. It sounded like it was coming from behind them. They both turned and looked. It was like staring at a miniature film screen. The image distorted and shifted in the steam, but it was clear enough to make out that the voice belonged to a girl. She stood near some trees and looked to be no more than eight or nine. Long plaits hung down her back and she kept glancing nervously over her shoulder. She rubbed her palm over a pebble held in her other hand as she spoke.

  ~~~~~

  Watcher, Watcher, wherever you be,

  Over land or over sea,

  As you are bound then so are we.

  ~~~~~

  Gran made a weird sort of choking noise in her throat. The girl looked up. She seemed to be looking directly at Sam and at Gran.

  “They’re loose, Mother Merryweather. The Dreables are loose and bad things are coming. Please help us. Please.”

  A sudden gust of arctic wind seemed to whip up from nowhere and Sam was sure he felt the sting of ice on his cheeks for a second. Then the steam was gone, ripped apart by the unnatural breeze.

  “Wow,” Sam said. “What was that?”

  But his grandmother didn’t answer. Gwladys Merryweather was as white as sheet and was trembling.

  “Gran?” Sam asked. “Are you alright?”

  “No,” answered Gran in a shaky whisper. “I am not alright. I’m as not alright as I’ll ever be. I never thought it would happen after all this time, never.”

  “What would happen?”

  Gran seemed to come back to herself then. Her eyes refocused and her expression moulded itself into a normal looking Gran face.

  “That radiator. Never thought it would boil over like that,” she said unconvincingly.

  “But the girl. What about the girl?”

  “Come on, Samuel,” Gran said, screwing back the radiator cap. “Get back into the car. I have things to do.”

  Sam did as he was told, his brain on fire with questions. The car started first time. Gran turned on the radio really loudly and didn’t say anything on the way home and neither did Sam. He knew from the expression on her face that she wouldn’t tell him anything. So he sat and thought and tried to imagine just what exactly a Dreable might be.

  Use your imagination, his Gran was always saying. So he did, and it was almost making him burst with inquisitiveness.

  Chapter 3

  Mrs. Walpole's Cherry Bakewells

  Gran drove home at twice the speed she normally drove at. This was also extremely weird because Gran didn’t usually like to rush. Once before while driving home at Gran’s usual pace of twenty-nine miles an hour, Sam had looked around in response to a beeping horn to see a man in the car behind shaking his fist at him and pointing at his watch. When the man eventually overtook them, Gran smiled and waved at the man in her “be polite even when they’re nasty” way. The man had not waved back, but his face had been the colour of a ripe aubergine. He’d looked as if he’d wanted to shout something, and seeing Gran’s polite smile had made his eyes bulge and his face turn even more purple than it had been before. But in the end, the aubergine-faced man did nothing except speed off with an expression akin to someone that had just bitten into a sherbet lemon only to find that it was full of real lemon juice.

  When they arrived back at Gran’s bungalow, she took off her coat and turned to Sam. “Right, I’ve got some important things to do, so why don’t you watch TV and I’ll put a pizza in the oven for you.”

  Sam couldn’t believe his ears.

  “But it’s only one o’clock,” he spluttered.

  “And?” Gran said as if midday TV and pizza was a normal lunchtime offering.

  “But you never let me watch telly in the daytime,” persisted Sam.

  “Well, today is different,” Gran said.

  “What about the museum?”

  “You hate the museum.”

  “But you said pizza.”

  “Samuel, do you or don’t you want to watch TV and eat pizza?” Gran said, sounding exasperated.

  “Yes,” said Sam quickly before she could change her mind.

  He flicked through the channels on Gran’s ancient TV and managed to find a cartoon as he munched on the pizza. When the cartoon finished, all he could find was news so he turned the TV off. On the shelf next to the table with the reading lamp was an encyclopaedia. Sam had to stand on the chair to reach it, but he managed to get it down. Outside the window, thick grey clouds began to boil up from the west as Sam sat with the book on his knees thumbing through the pages. There was nothing about Dreables.

  From somewhere in the bungalow, he could hear lots of mutterings and banging. Sam creaked the living room door open and peeked out. Gran was bustling about, carrying clothes into her bedroom and talking to herself.

  “Never thought…never thought it would happen….Dreables…after all this time, Dreables, I ask you…”

  Ginger walked past, hesitated, and looked at him.

  Sam whispered, “Go away,” and shut the door again quickly. He didn’t want Ginger purring and rubbing his back all over his legs just now. It was too distracting. He waited a few seconds for the cat to get fed up before opening the door once more. Gran was walking towards the box room. Sam crept out and went into his bedroom. From there, with the door ajar, he could see into the box room quite easily. What he saw now was Gran’s bottom as she leaned over and unlocked the cupboard. He couldn’t quite see around the expanse of flowery fabric, but he guessed that she was pulling something out. Sam heard the click of metal clasps. Gran muttered again as she rummaged. Something clattered to the floor and Gran said, “Damn and blast.”

  Then she was scooping things up and Sam heard the clasps click shut. Gran stood up and half turned. She was holding a small but battered leather suitcase. He saw a blur of flowery patterns as she hurried past. Sam waited and then crept across to the box room. He got down onto the floor and reached under the cupboard. His hand felt something cold and metallic and he brought it out into the light. It was a coin. But not like any he’d ever seen before. It was dull and worn and had a very small hole near one edge, like it might have been strung as a pendant. He could see the shape of someone’s head on one side, but it was indistinct. He went ba
ck into his bedroom and sat on his bed looking at the coin. He sat there for ages, lost in thought. But then he heard Gran approaching and had just about time to thrust the coin into his jeans pocket before she opened the door and came in looking harassed.

  “Right. Had enough to eat?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Good. Have to go back to Mrs Walpole’s. Come on.”

  The car was much fuller than usual, partly because Troop and Ginger were in the boot but also because the back seat had been piled up with things covered by an old blanket.

  “Where’s all this stuff going to, Gran?” Sam asked.

  “Business,” Gran said.

  “Has it got anything to do with what happened this afternoon?”

  Gran looked as if she’d just swallowed a snail.

  “What happened this afternoon?” Gran asked.

  “You know. The car and all that steam and that little g – ”

  “No,” Gran said hurriedly, “that was just a – ”

  “Really weird thing, wasn’t it?” Sam said, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.

  Gran opened her mouth and then shut it again, twice. She kept her eyes on the road and wouldn’t look at Sam. Finally she swallowed and said,

  “Because I’ve got some business to attend to out of town, Mrs Walpole has agreed to let you stay for a while.”

  “WHAT?” yelled Sam. “But Mrs Walpole doesn’t do anything except look after cats. She smells of cats. Her whole house smells of cats.”

  Gran was shaking her head. “It’s a cattery. Of course it’s going to smell of cats. But the last time I checked, a bit of cat smell never killed anyone. And for your information, Mrs Walpole was once a matron at one of the biggest children’s hospitals in the country. So I can’t think of anyone better qualified to look after a child, can you?”

  Sam slumped in his seat, stung by what Gran had said. He wanted to yell at her that he wasn’t a child and that he could look after himself, but he knew it would do no good. She’d never allow him to stay in the bungalow on his own for even an hour.