The Midnight Children: Chapters 36–59

The slaughterhouse loomed and then receded as he passed it.

In addition to the various tools and implements he had packed inside, it now also held paperwork.

It could have been described as an eerie silence, but that would have been redundant. Any true silence in a forest is an eerie silence.

The oldest boy—the one who had eluded the Hunter the last time—seethed and growled and tried to kick, but the Hunter was unsurprised and unbothered but not at all unprepared.

He had spent an inordinately large share of his life scared, but he’d never been as scared as he was walking with that man, in those handcuffs.

The Hunter swung open the back doors of the truck, revealing an interior completely devoid of ice cream.

He was sure that the truck had plenty of oil. The Hunter was very meticulous about vehicle maintenance.

Was there a panel that could be removed, perhaps, or a vent, or something, anything? But his hands felt only smooth, unyielding metal.

Annabel stuck her tongue out in concentration and wielded her hairpin with magical quickness, clicking one side of each of their handcuffs open.

With heaving lungs but tiptoeing feet they all crept into the copse.
They cowered there, peeking out through the limbs and leaves.

Ravani forced down the frantic freakout that flared inside him. Slowly, painstakingly, he raised his hand to his forehead. Flicked the eight-legged tickle away.

A warm breath huffed on his face, enough to ruffle his hair.
Then something big, and tender, and moist slurped up the whole side of his face.

“You didn't die after all,” he said, which was a rather obvious thing to say but also very true, and fairly relevant.

Her large bovine head looked from the man (lurking in the night), then to Ravani (crouching in fear), then back to the man, then back to Ravani.

Lucky made a deep, guttural sound in her throat.

The Hunter tripped and fell and flopped once or twice and crawled for a bit and scrabbled his feet in the dirt and crashed his head into a tree and clawed at the ground and pulled himself to his feet and tripped once again and slithered over a log and lurched into a thorny blackberry bush and dragged his way through it and then got tangled in a vine and spun himself free and broke into a limping, staggering run.

Ravani knew what was inside the slaughterhouse. Blood and bones and entrails and blades and hoists and bolt guns and meat hooks and nightmares, yes.

“NO!” Ravani screeched again.
“Don’t worry!” Winnie declared, stepping forward. “We won't leave you, Rav!”
It was a steadfast, if mistaken, interpretation of Ravani’s shriek.

He’d had to contend with a larger share of the animal kingdom than he’d bargained for on this hunt.

And, sniffing warily, he was also very sure that what he was lying in was not, in fact, mud.

His lip was flickering in a bit of a snarl, but that was more of an involuntary twitch.

The Hunter had always been very proud of his composure. But he was, perhaps, beginning to lose his grip.

Ravani was just pulling himself up onto the metal grate landing at the top of the ladder.

The Hunter leaped.
And fell promptly onto his face on the concrete floor.

Tristan raised his shackled hand and tossed the dangling end of the handcuffs over the steel cable, then grabbed the empty end with his other hand.

He gave Virginia a shove and jumped up on the rail. Whirled his handcuff chain over the cable. Grabbed the end. Nearly swooned when he saw how far down the concrete floor was.

His manic eyes widened farther.
“Don’t,” he grunted, “you,” he seethed, “dare,” he finished.

Annabel was tinkering with the office doorknob when Ravani saw, yet again, the man approaching.

"Undo my cuff, sister.” He held his manacled wrist toward Annabel.

He turned and took hold of the monstrous apparatus he was shackled to.

He shouted and jumped back in his desk chair, knocking the needle of the record player out of its groove with a scratching snarl.

He did not like people who handcuffed children, and he did not like people who threw children in trucks, and he outright loathed people who lied about having ice cream.

While Colt rifled like a savant through the official forms and documents in Judge Skinister's file cabinets, Ravani made the phone call.

"Listen,” Colt cut in briskly, "none of these forms are actually what we need, but put together in the right way they do grant us temporary clerical legitimacy in the eyes of the law until we get our hands on the proper forms.”

"Listen,” Colt cut in briskly, "none of these forms are actually what we need, but put together in the right way they do grant us temporary clerical legitimacy in the eyes of the law until we get our hands on the proper forms.”

Besides the children and the man and the woman and the jovial judge, two other people were in the room.

"Good evening, sir,” the police officer said in a thick Irish brogue.

The uniform was, in fact, from the local high school’s drama department. And the person in the uniform was more of a local café owner with a theatrical flair for performance than a legal officer of the law.

He wanted to drive away with an ice cream truck full of firmly—but legally—restrained children.

There was, after all, fireworks. And a boat race. And a car chase of sorts, and some sabotage, and a bovine rescue, and a slaughterhouse showdown, and a fraudulent phone call, and some dramatic paperwork.