Gabriel and the Phantom Sleepers

Gabriel laid the cloak carefully in his bag and followed Sadie up the narrow staircase. At the top she led him along a corridor and into the low-ceilinged room he remembered so well. He was unprepared for all the glitter inside, however. Fairy lights hung from the wide oak beams, tinsel decorated the window frames and holly had been slung across the bed’s headboard.

‘Wow!’ said Gabriel.

‘It’s still Christmas,’ Sadie explained.

‘It looks great.’ Gabriel put his bag on the bed.

Sadie grinned and flicked her long pigtail over her shoulder. ‘I’ll go and warm up the casserole.’

‘Can you wait a minute?’ Gabriel drew the cloak out of his bag. ‘Something’s not right.’

Sadie hovered in the doorway. ‘Not right?’

‘Sometimes, when I’m feeling a bit down,’ said Gabriel, ‘I put the cloak on. Dad doesn’t mind. And the cloak always changes my mood.’

‘Do you feel like the king is there, with you?’ Sadie hesitated. ‘I know you can sometimes become other people when you put on their clothes. But the king? That would be amazing.’

‘Sometimes I see him, but mostly I just feel a great happiness. Not an ordinary happiness, but something very, very powerful.’ As he said this Gabriel drew the cloak around his shoulders. ‘Oh, Sadie,’ he groaned, ‘it’s gone. There’s nothing – nothing.’

Sadie pulled back her pigtail and regarded it with a thoughtful expression, almost as though it were giving her ideas. ‘Maybe it was the journey,’ she suggested. ‘All that shaking about and travelling so far from where the cloak has been living.’

‘But I don’t feel anything, Sadie. The cloak looks just the same but . . .’ he hesitated. ‘I can’t reach its power. I . . . I can’t sense anything.’

‘Then perhaps it’s you,’ Sadie suggested.

Gabriel was silent. Not once, since he was four years old, had he ever lost his seventh sense. He had often wished to be free of it, but now, when it was so vital to know what had happened to the cloak, had his seventh sense abandoned him?

‘To tell the truth, it does seem a bit – not quite itself, if you know what I mean,’ Sadie admitted.

Gabriel nodded dumbly.

‘Come and have some supper,’ Sadie suggested. ‘You’ll feel better after you’ve had some food, and then you can try again.’

‘OK,’ Gabriel said uneasily. He laid the cloak carefully on his bed

‘By the way, if you think Dad’s a bit down, it’s Cecily, the sorceress. She swooped in on us at dawn this morning.’

‘Not the awful stepmother?’ said Gabriel, deeply sympathetic. ‘And was Septimus the septic mouse with her?’

Sadie nodded. ‘And brother dog. Come on, let’s forget them.’

Mr Silk had returned to his workroom, but when he smelled cooking he came back into the kitchen. ‘Cold weather always makes you extra hungry,’ he said.

Sadie’s casserole was as delicious as usual, but Gabriel couldn’t enjoy it because of a nagging worry about the cloak. Halfway through the meal he decided to try to contact his parents.

‘Bad signal here,’ said his uncle. ‘Try the landline when you’ve finished your supper.’

Gabriel bolted down the last chunk of chicken and then phoned his father’s mobile. No answer. He tried his aunt’s house and one of his cousins picked up the receiver – the youngest, by the sound of it. When Gabriel asked to speak to his mother the little voice chirped, ‘Your mum is having a crisis!’

‘Crisis?’ Gabriel said hoarsely. ‘What d’you mean crisis?’

‘It’s bad,’ said the squeaky voice.

Gabriel’s stomach lurched. ‘I want to speak to my mum, Annie!’

‘I’m Alice.’ She sounded offended.

‘Well, Alice, PLEASE can you get –’

The receiver must have been snatched out of Alice’s hand, because, to Gabriel’s great relief, his mother said, ‘Gabriel, love, are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes. I got here, Mum. Why are you having a crisis?’

‘Oh, Gabriel, it’s dreadful. We’ve only just heard about poor Albert. They rang us from the hospital. And you went all that way alone.’ Mrs Silk spoke very fast, on she went, and Gabriel could only stand there, listening to his mother’s jerky sentences in bewilderment. ‘Oh, Gabriel, love, are you all right? And the – you-know-what? Dad is so concerned. He’s already in Belgium, but he wants to get back as soon as he can.’

Gabriel shook his head and turned a frowning face to Sadie and his uncle.

‘Gabe, what’s wrong?’ Sadie jumped up and came over to him.

Mrs Silk was still rattling on, and Gabriel had to speak over her to say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mum. Albert was on the train.’

This brought Mrs Silk to a dramatic halt. Gabriel heard a gasp, then silence. His troubled face brought his uncle to the phone. Taking the receiver from Gabriel, he said, ‘What’s up, Kate?’

More bubbling chatter from Mrs Silk. Gabriel and Sadie retreated to the table and sat down, but even at a distance Gabriel could hear the hysteria in his mother’s voice. At length, his uncle said, ‘That’s dreadful. A vicious attack, you say? Let us know if anything . . . you know. Yes, Gabriel is quite safe.’

There was another burst of sound from the phone, and Mr Silk said, ‘Calm down, Kate. We have the cloak. If this false Albert tried to take it, he didn’t succeed. Yes, yes. Goodbye, Kate.

‘Bad news,’ Mr Silk told the children. ‘The real Albert Blackstaff was found in the toilets at Euston Station. Unconscious, his hands tied, in a stall locked from the inside. So you were accompanied by an imposter, Gabriel.’

‘He’s not going to die, is he, the real Albert?’ cried Sadie.

‘No, no,’ said her father, ‘and the cloak is safe, so . . .’ He attempted a smile. ‘It is safe, isn’t it, Gabriel?’

Gabriel stared grimly at his uncle. ‘No, it’s not safe,’ he said. He ran up to his room and lifted the cloak into his arms. It looked so familiar, so very like the one he knew, and yet, now, when he held it, the velvet gave him nothing, no warmth, no comfort. This cloak was cold and heavy, as though it had been made by someone without a heart. Holding it as far from his body as he could, he went back to the kitchen. ‘It’s the wrong one,’ he said. ‘I knew it.’

‘Looks like the cloak I remember,’ said his uncle.

‘Well, someone has made another one, just like the original. Someone who knew exactly what it looked like.’ Gabriel tried not to sound panicky, but he couldn’t stop his voice from rising like the whine of an anguished dog. ‘The false Albert must have swapped the cloaks while I was getting tea. And then he got off the train.’ Gabriel threw the loathsome garment on the floor and sank into a chair.

They all stared at the cloak, twinkling deceptively, even in shadow. Mr Silk picked it up. ‘If this isn’t the real thing, someone’s done an incredible job.’

Gabriel shook his head, and went on shaking it, until Sadie told him it might fall off.

‘I lost it,’ Gabriel said dismally. ‘The king’s cloak. What happens now, Uncle Jack? I mean, you’re from the family of Keepers, too.’

Gabriel’s uncle looked worried, and it was Sadie who said they would just have to find the cloak, wouldn’t they. ‘Where did the false Albert leave the train?’ she asked.

Gabriel screwed up his eyes, trying to remember. But he hadn’t noticed the name of the station, only that it had been the last stop before they got off at Humbledown.

‘Hmm,’ Sadie said thoughtfully. ‘The one before Humbledown is Howgrave. That doesn’t help much, I suppose. It’s a big town. So he could be anywhere by now.’ She glanced at her father. He looked utterly downcast.

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