The Caravan at the Edge of Doom

First published in Great Britain 2021 by Farshore

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

farshore.co.uk

HarperCollinsPublishers

1st Floor, Watermarque Building, Ringsend Road, Dublin 4, Ireland

Text copyright © Jim Beckett 2021

Illustrations copyright © Olia Muza 2021

Jim Beckett and Olia Muza have asserted their moral rights.

Text design by Janene Spencer

Source ISBN 978 1 4052 9828 5

eISBN 978 0 7555 0081 9

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

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For Nicola – JIM For Varvara, my beloved cat who has now gone Beyond – OLIA

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: Before

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part Two: Beyond

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part Three: The Back of Beyond

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part Four: Beyond the Back of Beyond

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Acknowledgements

1

3:57 a.m. THURSDAY

30 hours and 3 minutes until Eternal Damnation

I knew my grandparents had been ill, but I hadn’t expected them to explode. Not all on the same night anyway.

Pops went off first, with a bone-rattling blast that rocked the caravan and echoed across the moonlit moor. He was in the loo at the time – Boom! – right in the middle of a wee.

Gran blew up next, before I had a chance to rub the sleep out of my eyes. She went into the tiny toilet and did such a big BOOM that I fell out of my bunk bed.

Green smoke seeped round the edges of the bathroom door. When I saw Grandpa shuffling towards it, I leapt into action, determined to prevent any more grandparents from exploding.

‘Noooooo!!! Grandpa! Don’t GOOOO!!!’

Except I couldn’t actually leap because the zip on my sleeping bag was stuck, so I had to squirm to the loo like a desperate caterpillar – and as soon as Grandpa tinkled, I was thrown back by the biggest BOOM yet.

For a moment, the world was strangely silent. Apart from the smoke and the lack of grandparents, everything in the caravan looked normal. Neatly folded bedding, half-finished crossword, tea-stained mugs stacked by the sink …

‘Peepo!’

Malcolm’s grinning face popped out the top of Nana’s wheelie bag like a cheeky bargain from Meg’s Mini Mart. The first time he did this, we all thought it was hilarious – but he’d hidden in “Nana wee-wee gag” about a thousand times since Monday, and the joke had lost its edge. Still, it was a relief to see my little brother hadn’t exploded too. Mum and Dad would’ve been furious.

(‘Don’t get into trouble – and keep an eye on Malcolm!’ That was Mum when they dropped us off on Sunday night. ‘Be good for your grandparents, do your homework – and look after your little brother!’ That was Dad. No ‘Have fun!’ or ‘Enjoy your holiday!’ Not that there was much danger of that.)

‘Pop BAM! Gam BAM! Gampa BAM!’ said Malcolm, summarising the main events of the last twenty minutes as he hugged his Diddy Dino.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘They did.’

He’d had an eventful week for a sixteen-month-old. On Monday, a dog stole our picnic. On Tuesday, an ant crawled on to his knee. On Wednesday, he lost a sock. So far, Malcolm seemed to be coping pretty well with tonight’s exploding grandparents catastrophe. It had taken him much longer to get over the ‘woof-woof num-num nic-nic’ incident.

When I finally managed to escape from my sleeping bag, I tiptoed towards the toilet.

‘Grandpa?’ I whispered. ‘Gran? Pops? Nana?’

I gently pulled the door (the lock hadn’t worked for years) and peered in, afraid of the mess I might find. But the loo was empty. No splattered flesh, no smouldering slippers, no charred pyjamas. Nothing but hot smoke and a disturbing pong.

My grandparents had vanished.

Suddenly, I heard a rattling behind me. Someone – or something – was trying to break into the caravan! But what kind of maniac would be lurking on a lonely moor at midnight? What kind of monster would attack a child whose grandparents had just exploded?

I scrabbled about for a weapon, grabbing the first thing I could find. Whatever was jiggling that rusty door was about to get whacked with a rolled-up Risborough Gazette. Pops and Grandpa always complained the local newspaper was covered in adverts – it would soon be covered in blood and guts!

My heart was thumping. The longer I waited, the less confident I felt about the covered in blood and guts idea. Maybe a few nasty bruises would be enough to get the message across. Some stern words might even do the trick. After all, it was half-term. I was meant to be relaxing, not slaying Hell Beasts.

Also, I couldn’t help worrying that an epic battle would be quite noisy. Bloodcurdling screams risked drawing attention to the fact that I spent my holidays in the creepy abandoned caravan on the edge of the village – and then someone might find out that the creepy abandoned caravan wasn’t really abandoned at all. My grandparents lived here, all four of them squashed in together.

Well, they used to.

The door rattled violently. This Hell Beast wasn’t going away, so I’d have to wreak havoc whether I felt like it or not. I raised the rolled-up Risborough Gazette, ready to strike …

The door burst open, and moonlight flooded the caravan.

‘Aaaaaggghhhh!!!!’ I yelled, lunging at the vicious fiend in its dressing gown and slippers … ‘Nana?’

‘Hello, Harley,’ said Nana. ‘Did I wake you? Sorry. This door keeps sticking – needs a drop of oil.’

I caught my breath and lowered my weapon. THREE explosions, FOUR grandparents: I still had one left! What a relief! And what terrible counting! Must’ve been the adrenaline.

‘I popped out to get a closer look at the moon,’ said Nana, stepping into the caravan. ‘One last look at the beautiful night sky before … Oh!’

Her voice cracked as she noticed the empty beds.

‘They went without me!’

2

4:34 a.m. THURSDAY

29 hours and 26 minutes until Eternal Damnation

‘Pop BAM! Gam BAM! Gampa BAM!’ said Malcolm, updating Nana on what she’d missed.

‘That wasn’t your grandparents going BAM,’ said Nana, as we sat down on her creaky bed. ‘That BAM was the sound of the Portal of Doom slamming shut behind them. Grandpa and Gran and Pops have passed through, that’s all. Gone Beyond. It was their time.’

Nana stared at the smoking toilet.

‘It’ll be mine soon,’ she said, gripping my hand as Malcolm curled up between us. ‘But before I go, I have one final story to tell you.’

I shuffled into a comfortable position. My grandparents always did this – told one of their stories instead of just saying what they meant. Once upon a time, I used to love their crazy tales of Legendary Heroes and Mythical Monsters. But I’d heard them all about a zillion times now, and I couldn’t help feeling they were slightly pointless. We lived in Kesmitherly! The closest anyone round here had come to Legendary Heroism was the time when Billy Jessop got his foot stuck in a drain and Janet the Lollipop Lady poked him free with her stripy stick.

Besides, the Legendary Heroes and Mythical Monsters in my grandparents’ stories weren’t even proper ones anyone had heard of. None of them were in that book Mum and Dad bought me – The Big Book of Legendary Heroes and Mythical Monsters from All Myths and Legends All Over the World Ever. And when I checked online, they weren’t there either – not one, on the whole of the internet. They were fake myths!

‘No road led to the caravan, and no one could remember how it got there,’ Nana whispered, dramatically.

‘Caravan?’ I said, sitting up. ‘You mean this caravan?’

Nana nodded.

Okay – this was something new. Maybe this story was going to be useful, after all.

‘From a distance,’ Nana continued, ‘the caravan looked like it was growing out of the ground. Weeds overwhelmed the wheels and coiled round the axle, tethering it to the heath. But the raging winds fought to uproot it and set it free! Undergrowth and elements were locked in an eternal battle that neither could win, for the grasping grasses had no more hope of dragging the caravan into the bowels of the earth than the gusts and gales had of launching it to the heavens!’

This was classic Nana. She loved setting the scene and building suspense. Usually, I didn’t mind her long descriptions of gloomy landscapes full of mist and shadow because I knew that soon enough Grandpa would jump in, getting way too excited about some Legendary Hero’s peculiar childhood and enchanted weapons. Then Pops would pick up the tale, snarling and roaring and terrifying me with monsters that got bigger and scarier every time until I had to hide, giggling, behind a cushion (when I was little, I mean). But the more menacing Pops made the monsters, the tougher Gran would make the Legendary Hero! She’d get that fire in her eyes, and the Hero would come back fighting, summoning up strength from hidden depths … And on they’d go, all four of them weaving in and out of each other’s stories, like they were separate parts of the same mad adventure.

But this wasn’t that kind of story – and Pops and Gran and Grandpa were gone – and right now, I didn’t have time for Nana’s poetical scene-setting. I needed to know what was happening right here, right now, in real life. I needed facts. What was a Portal of Doom? Where was Beyond …?

But Nana was on one of her Epic Pauses now, staring out of the window at the moonlit moor, while Malcolm slept peacefully between us. I turned my phone on to check the time – 04:55 – then turned it off again to save the battery. (There was no electricity in the caravan.) The moon tiptoed away; the sun peeped over the horizon …

Suddenly, Nana leapt off the bed, opened a cupboard, and rummaged. At last, some action! I tried to see past her, eager to get a glimpse of whatever magical heirloom she was searching for. A mystical pendant? An ancient scroll? An enchanted talisman?

‘Teabags, good, plenty of teabags,’ she muttered. ‘Tea, tea, tea and … biscuits!’ She bent down and opened the icebox. ‘Milk – oh! Look at that!’ she said, thrusting a nearly empty bottle into my face. ‘There’s only enough for one cup of tea, Harley! One cup!’

‘I could go to the shop?’ I suggested.

‘Yes! Yes!’ said Nana. ‘Please. As soon as it opens, you must go.’

She took a chocolate biscuit from the cupboard and held it out to me.

‘Harley, please take this biscuit. Consider it … a goodbye gift.’

‘Because you’re going Beyond too?’ I asked.

Nana nodded, smiling sadly as I took the biscuit.

‘Could you at least finish the story?’ I asked, desperate to hold on to my last grandparent for as long as possible. ‘It’s only just begun.’

‘Yours has, Harley,’ she said, gazing wistfully out of the window. ‘But mine …’

‘Please, Nana?’ I begged.

Nana turned to me decisively.

‘I will finish my story. But first, there are things you must understand.’ She brushed a crumb off the bed and shuffled up next to me. ‘We are Visionaries, Harley. You, me, Pops, Malcolm, Gran, Grandpa. Even your parents. We can all see dead people.’

I stopped nibbling and lowered my biscuit.

‘I can’t see dead people,’ I said.

‘Harley, listen to me. This is important.’ Nana gripped my hands in hers. ‘Did you ever think it was strange that all your grandparents chose to live together in an old caravan upon the heath, so far from another Living Soul?’

I didn’t know what to say to that. Everything my grandparents did was strange, and the caravan wasn’t far enough from other Living Souls. It was only ten minutes outside the village. Half the kids at my school went past it on the bus.

‘We live here,’ said Nana, ‘to help Restless Souls pass Beyond – from this life to the next! Some call us the Gatekeepers of North-East Biddumshire … But that’s mainly them lot over in Risborough. Round here, we’re more often known as the Gatekeepers of Kesmitherly.’

‘Woof-woof! Nic-nic!’ squealed Malcolm, kicking wildly in his sleep.

Nana ignored him. She was very excitable.

‘Our Duty,’ she declared, ‘is to protect and serve …’

She gestured towards the toilet.

‘… this Portal of Doom!’

3

5:46 a.m. THURSDAY

28 hours and 14 minutes until Eternal Damnation

‘My parents were Gatekeepers,’ said Nana, ‘as their parents had been Gatekeepers before them, and their parents before them – back and back into the distant past. From the day I was born, I knew that I too would become a Gatekeeper, guiding Restless Souls Beyond. But when I was seventeen, something happened which would change the course of my destiny. Our Portal became automated!’

‘Autom—?’

‘We were replaced, Harley – by a machine. Our Gatekeeping Duties were no longer required.’

Malcolm flapped and burbled and said, ‘Diddy.’

‘My parents retired, and my brothers got normal jobs,’ Nana continued. ‘But I didn’t want any of that. So I left home, and I walked the earth. For I had a calling – to seek out other Portals and fulfil my destiny as a Visionary Gatekeeper.’

‘In a caravan outside Kesmitherly?’ I asked.

‘I crossed oceans and deserts,’ said Nana. ‘Rivers and mountains. I visited many, many Portals. Some were hidden in mysterious caves overlooking the wild ocean; some were buried beneath ancient ruins, choked by creepers in the depths of the jungle; some were locked away in lavishly ornate shrines in forgotten cemeteries. I searched, and I searched. But none of these Portals required a new Gatekeeper. Many had become automated, like ours. Some had even been decommissioned.’

‘Decom—?’

‘Closed down, Harley! Automation was making the movement of Restless Souls so efficient that these Portals were considered unnecessary. But it’s not right, if you ask me – passing Beyond without any human contact …’

‘Didn’t you miss home?’

‘I did miss home! So much! So many times, I was ready to give up and go back. Then I met your grandpa.’ Nana smiled a great big smile. ‘I’d been so lonely, floating about on the endless ocean on my little raft. Then one day, another little raft bumped into mine, and the handsome young man on board got his paddle tangled up in my fishing net. He apologised, but I was glad of the company – and as we drifted along, we chatted away in the Language of the Dead.’

‘The Language of the Dead?’

Nana nodded. ‘It’s how all Souls communicate – down there. But Visionaries can speak it too, even before we go Beyond. Like you and me are doing now.’

‘I’m not speaking the Language of the De— Whoa!’ I gasped, as I heard the strange sounds coming out of my mouth. ‘I did not know I could do that.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Nana. ‘Non-Visionaries don’t even notice you’re doing it. Anyway, we chatted, your grandpa and I, and it turned out he also came from a family of Visionary Gatekeepers, just like me. And he’d left his home to seek out a Portal of Doom, just like me! As we talked, our thoughts turned away from the past, towards the future – and we decided to continue our search together. A few months later, we found our new home, right here.’

‘In Kesmitherly?!’ I said. ‘When you had the whole world to choose from? Ornate palaces with ocean views and mermaid lagoons and all that?’

‘In Kesmitherly,’ said Nana, ‘we finally found what we’d been searching for. A Portal of Doom in need of Gatekeepers. Biddumshire was drizzly, and grey, and not always very welcoming. But we had each other, and we had our destiny. When we first arrived, the old Gatekeeper was still here. But he was very ancient, and he had no family. We just had to wait for him to pass Beyond and the Portal of Doom would be ours.

‘While we waited, we found work in the sauce factory just outside Risborough. Imagine our surprise at meeting another Visionary Couple on our first day there! Yes, your Gran and Pops had arrived only a week before us. Our destiny had summoned us here, all four of us – to become the new Gatekeepers of Kesmitherly together! Ah, such happy times we had, bottling Grimston’s Sweet Relish and swapping stories of the Dead we’d known.

‘The years passed, and the old Gatekeeper didn’t die. Your mother was born. Your father was born. As they grew to adulthood, they became closer and closer. Oh, they had so much in common, your mum and dad! They both worked in offices, they both loved DIY, they could both see dead people … They married at Risborough Town Hall, on a beautiful grey day in November. A few years later, they had a child. A daughter.’

At last, we’d got to the part where I was born. Only twelve more years to go.

‘Shortly after your birth, the old Gatekeeper passed Beyond. He was 116. Finally, we could retire from the sauce factory, and live together in this caravan – as the Gatekeepers of Kesmitherly!’

Nana took my hand and led me to the chemical toilet.

‘We’ve had a few good years as Gatekeepers of this Portal of Doom. But now our time has come. And soon, all this will be yours.’

Nana gestured towards the loo, as if she was showing me the family jewels.

‘So this is … not … a toilet?’ I asked.

‘This is a Portal of Doom. A gateway between this Life and Beyond. That which we call Death.’

‘But I’ve … I mean we’ve all, you know … This isn’t a campsite. There aren’t any other facilities …’

‘Oh, it’s a toilet as well. It has a double function.’

‘Right. And it’s … mine?’

Nana beamed proudly and nodded. ‘You are twelve years old, Harley. It is time.’

‘Okay. Thank you for the biscuit. I don’t think I want the spooky toilet though.’

‘It is your destiny.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t Mum and Dad take over?’

‘They’ve already got jobs. And you know what they’re like. They’re always so busy. You are the new Gatekeeper, Harley!’

It was a lot to take in. As I watched Nana folding her duvet, I tried to get everything straight in my head, but all the Souls and Visionaries kept swirling about like a ghostly whirlpool. Then Nana lifted Malcolm out of the way so we could rig up her creaky little bed into a creaky little table. As she placed him on a pillow in the corner, his eyelids flickered sleepily.

‘Arwee?’ he murmured.

‘I’m here, Maccy, it’s okay,’ I replied, and he rolled over and went back to sleep, squeezing Diddy Dino’s neck.

‘I’ll try to hold on to show you your Duties,’ said Nana, as we twisted and folded the bedtable. ‘Just don’t forget the biscuits. Also, they’re each allowed one item of hand luggage. For snacks, magazines, anything they like, really. Last week, a Restless Soul took his pet parrot through purgatory! Although it’s not a good idea for a living creature to pass through. Not good at all …’

Nana was full of nervous energy, like a queue for a zipwire. She fussed about, plumping up cushions and lining up the rug. Then she stood back and said: ‘It is time! Would you mind popping to the shop, Harley? We’ll need two large bottles of milk.’

My head was so full of questions, I didn’t know where to start. So I just got dressed, figuring the fresh air might do me good.

‘If you run like the wind, you’ll be there for when it opens,’ said Nana, handing me her purse. ‘I’ll hold on for as long as I can, but hurry back! Just in case.’

Then Nana gave me the biggest, squeeziest hug ever, and I jumped out of the caravan and ran across the heath.

4

7:18 a.m. THURSDAY

26 hours and 42 minutes until Eternal Damnation

Over the moor and down the road to Kesmitherly, I thought about everything Nana had told me. In the cold morning light, it all seemed very unlikely. If my grandparents really were the Gatekeepers of a Portal of Doom, why had they never mentioned it before? Why had Mum and Dad never brought it up? Then again, Pops, Gran and Grandpa had gone somewhere in a puff of smoke …

As I jogged into the village, the nagging sounds of reality barged their way into my earholes, pushing aside all thoughts of Portals and Visionary Destinies.

‘Hey! Harley! Harley!’

I hurried on with my head down, pretending not to notice the friendly girl shouting at me from the pub.

‘Harley! Hey, Harley!’ she called. ‘Harley!’ – getting louder – ‘HARLEY!’ – until she was too loud to ignore. I looked up at her smiling face, beaming at me through the open window of the Ragged Goose.