Lizard's Leap: Chapter Thirty Four: The Death of the Frame.

There were no nurses in the ward and everybody was asleep. It was risky. Any of the mothers could have been feeding their babies at this time, a thought that hadn’t previously occurred to them. But all was quiet.

They crept down the ward, looking at the large bulges of the sleeping mothers, and the smaller bulges in the various cots that were the sleeping babies. They stopped by the bed with two cots beside it. The babies were wrapped in pink blankets with a little card that said, ‘Babies Taylor.’

Very, very gently, Kerry pulled Amy’s blanket back slightly to reveal her face. She stroked the baby’s cheek with the back of her finger, and Amy moaned slightly in her sleep, but didn’t stir.

Emma was transfixed and stared at her little sister. A big tear rolled down her cheek, and Vicki put her arm round her cousin’s shoulder.
‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ Vicki said, simply. Emma was so overcome with emotion that she couldn’t speak, but she nodded her head in total agreement. Next they looked at Eve. Two perfect babies, they still couldn’t believe it.

‘Wow, chocolates,’ whispered Mark, staring at Debbies bedside cabinet with widening eyes. ‘The babies are great, but just look at all those chocolates! Auntie Debbie wouldn’t mind if I had just one or two.’ He homed in on the nearest box.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Vicki whispered. ‘She might wake up.’

‘We’d better be going before we get caught,’ Kerry said, moving away from the cot.

Emma stepped forward and placed a little yellow duck that she’d brought for the twins at the bottom of Eve’s cot, well away from her face. ‘Don’t worry darling,’ she whispered quietly to Amy, ‘it’s for both of you. Let’s go,’ she said, wiping her cheek and leaving a big tearstain across her face.

They joined hands and whispered the chant. Just as they were about to leap, a figure rose to an upright position in the bed opposite to the one that Debbie was in. As they left the hospital, the children just heard the start of a long, ear-splitting scream…

The scream reached the three night duty nurses in the staff room, where they were putting their feet up with a cup of coffee. They leapt from their seats and ran down the corridor to see what the commotion was. Something must have happened to one of the babies.

They hurried into the ward to find all the new mothers sitting up in bed. Several of the babies were awake, joining in the general cacophony. Mrs Collins was screaming her head off.

‘Ghosts,’ she managed to stutter as a nurse went to her side to try and calm her. ‘Four of them. Children. Standing right there in their nightclothes. Vanished right before my eyes, they did.’ The woman was distraught.

Sister ordered that Mrs Collins’ night-time medication be changed. The sleeping pills she had been given obviously didn’t agree with her.

Mrs Taylor rolled over and tried to get back to sleep. Amy and Eve had snoozed right through the incident, but would no doubt be waking up shortly for another feed. They were very hungry babies

’That woman’s nuts,’ Debbie whispered to herself, looking forward to telling the family about her the next day when they visited. Strange about the duck though, she thought.

*

‘Phew, that was a close one,’ giggled Vicki as they all climbed onto Mark and Kerry’s beds. ‘I wonder what she said to the nurses?’

They chatted for a few minutes about the twins. The only reason that Mark didn’t tease Emma about crying that he’d had to wipe away a tear, too. He was just grateful that they were all too taken up with the babies to notice.

Plink!

‘They are lovely though, aren’t they?’ Kerry said. ‘Those tiny little hands. So perfect. Do you think they look more like me, or more like Emma?’

Plink!

‘Well, personally, I think they look more like Gizmo the Gremlin,’ Emma commented. They all attacked her with pillows until she blurted out; ‘so cute, though. In fact, they’re adorable.’

Plink!

‘Bagsee, I get to feed Amy first,’ Emma said, forgetting for a moment that there were two of them. The other’s all laughed at her and Emma pouted.

Plink!

‘What’s that noise?’ Mark was the first to take notice of the odd plinking noise that was sounding every few seconds.

They turned the light on and looked around.
Kerry gasped in horror.

The berries were falling off the frame, one by one.

The vines were withered and looked thirsty within the carved frame, and the lizards were lying on their sides with their tongues lolling out of their mouths.

Plink!

Another berry fell from the frame onto the mantelpiece. Vicki picked up the tiny piece of polished wood. It turned into a desiccated berry in her fingers, all the juice and life long since sucked from it.

‘I told you. I told you we shouldn’t have gone to the hospital.’ Kerry cried. ‘Now look, we haven’t just lost one berry, what we did was so bad that the frame is literally dying!’ Kerry burst into tears.

The frame was dying before their eyes.

Plink!

The very last berry fell from the frame. The vines that had been so expertly carved to look alive and succulent had withered to nothing and the lizards now resembled dead lizards. The gloss was gone from their wooden eyes and the sheen had gone from their highly polished skin.

‘What are we going to do? Surely, we must be able to do something?’ Vicki asked no one in particular. ‘We can’t just let it die.’

‘Let’s go and see Sylvia. Maybe if we apologise she’ll give us another chance,’ Mark suggested.

‘Okay,’ agreed Emma. ‘We’ll go first thing in the morning.

‘No!’ shouted Vicki and Kerry in unison. Both of them had the same feeling of dread.

‘There isn’t time to wait,’ Vicki continued. ‘If we leave it until the morning, it’ll be too late.’ She didn’t know how she knew this; she just knew that something was terribly wrong and that it was true.

The children dressed hurriedly in warm clothes. It was early January and it was freezing cold outside. They were scared as they snuck down the stairs. What if they got caught sneaking out in the middle of the night? Being up at three o’clock in the morning would take some explaining.

They could hear Granddad’s loud, rumbling snore all the way down the stairs. The front door clicked loudly as they shut it behind them. They were sure it would be flung open again at any second and an angry grandparent would demand to know where they thought they were going in the middle of the night…

They didn’t meet anyone on the way to Brampton Hall. In the freezing dark, everything was still and quiet.

As they let themselves in through the side gate and began the long, spooky walk up the pitch-black driveway, an owl hooted. He was annoyed to find these intruders on his hunting ground. Somewhere in the distance, his mate answered. They drew closer together, keeping to the middle of the path so that the bony hands of the dark trees couldn’t grab them and carry them away to some night-time world of horror.

Soon they were grateful to round the last bend and see the house in sight, looming out of the darkness it was nothing more than a murky black shape. Sylvia would soon be lecturing them for their foolishness and misuse of the frame, while stirring chocolate sprinkles into her excellent cocoa. Sylvia would make everything right.

‘Help me.’

‘What was that?’ Mark asked, terrified. He grabbed hold of his sister in fear.

‘What was what?’ Vicki replied, shaking his arm loose but feeling spooked herself, nonetheless; she also thought she had heard something. ‘It’s only the wind. Come on, we’re letting our imaginations run away with us. There’s nothing there.’

‘Please.’