Pure Dead Wicked (13 page)

Brief Encounter

S
heltered under a clump of Scots pines, the beasts gazed up at the moonlit sky in a state of utter contentment. Earlier, Ffup had lit a small fire and they had roasted their dinner over the flames. Sab idly scanned the loch shore for perfectly flat skimming stones. Tock grinned widely, unaware that his many teeth were speckled with the burnt remains of barbecued mutton. He patted his stomach, tossed a large bone into the fire, and flopped back against a tree trunk.

Ffup regarded him balefully. “I must say, for a reluctant convert to carnivorism, you choked down far more than your fair share. . . .”

The crocodile nodded in agreement. He had devoured the best part of one entire sheep, leaving only the back legs for his companions. Disgusted, Ffup stood up and turned round to warm his wings at the fire. Overhead, clouds scudded across the winter sky. The beasts shivered and drew closer to the flames. Far away, something howled.

“What was
that
?” Sab's voice shook.

Knot looked up from a half-gnawed leg bone. Grease had dribbled down his front, adding to his perpetually unsavory appearance, and clots of semi-masticated mutton dotted his tangled fur. “Maybe a wolf?” he mumbled hopefully. “D'you think they'd taste good?”

“I'll go and investigate,” said Ffup. “You guys stay here and keep the fire going. I'll be back in a moment.”

Stepping out from the shelter of the pines, he stretched his wings to their full span and, with a couple of languid flaps, disappeared over the treetops.

Sab looked around. Tock was sprawled beside the fire emitting a loud reptilian snore, punctuated with occasional belches as he digested his dinner. The griffin threw another log on the fire and stared into the flames.

“Reminds me of being a toddler,” he said, his eyes misting over with the effort of recalling events from four centuries past. “We were sharing a roost with Ffup's family in the Great Forest of Caledon. . . . Ffup's dad had been forcibly relocated there after a bit of an upset over exceeding his quota of edible maidens. . . . Ffup's mum had a broken wing. . . .” He paused to check that he had the yeti's undivided attention and continued. “Anyway, Malvolio di S'Enchantedino Borgia, who'd evicted some dodgy tenant from StregaSchloss, had installed his ancient grandmother in his wine cellar—and she was totally batty, gray hair down to her knees—called Strega-Nonna. . . . Stop me if you've heard this before, won't you?”

The yeti smiled politely and crammed another lump of sheepskin into his glistening maw. Knot had heard this story a thousand times or more, but in the absence of their beloved StregaSchloss, it was somehow comforting to recall the house, even if only in the form of legend. Knot settled down in the pine needles, his body language indicating his willingness to have the griffin continue. Sparks flew into the darkness, and above the hiss from the fire came the howl again, fainter now.

Much later, as Sab had reached the interesting bit about how Strega-Nonna had mended his mother's wing with a combination of magic and cobwebs, a leathery flapping sound alerted the beasts to the return of Ffup. The dragon swooped down onto the carpet of pine needles and stood, towering above them, wings slowly folding back against his spine, his scales in some disarray. “Heavens! Is that the time? I'd no idea I'd been away for so long.”

The beasts regarded their colleague in some confusion. Ffup babbled on, blissfully unaware. “Amazing how time flies when you're having fun. Who'd have thought it? After all these years of snorting and spitting and trying to be pure dead macho. . . . And then, tonight, on this gloriously romantic winter night, something . . .
something
showed me my true female nature. Guys, guess what, I'm a girl—” The dragon stopped in mid-babble, arrested by the faint but unmistakable sound of a distant howl.

“Ffup? FFUP!” Sab hugged the dragon and lifted up his . . . no—
her
chin in order to stare into her eyes. “Ffup? You're . . . you're . . .”

“WHAT?” squeaked the dragon, unaccustomed to being the center of attention and trying desperately to bury her head in her wings.

“You're
blushing
!”

The Guilt Trip

T
itus's feet were freezing. He'd donated every pair of socks that he possessed in the pursuit of clone clothing, and this left him with no other option but to wear wellies over his bare feet as he and his sister walked to their old home. And, he realized, he was developing blisters on both heels.

“Stop sulking, Titus,” said Pandora. “I did my bit to help with the clones; now it's your turn to reciprocate with finding Tarantella.”

Behind them, the lights of Auchenlochtermuchty suddenly came back on. They twinkled reassuringly in the dark, offering Titus and Pandora no comfort whatsoever.

“The
lift,
” moaned Pandora, struck by the implications of a full return to normal electric supplies. “It'll start working.”

“Just hurry up,” muttered Titus. “The sooner we get this over and done with, the sooner we can deal with the clones.”

Stumbling and moaning, they half-ran, half-walked till they reached the main gate to StregaSchloss. The sign that warned trespassers that they would be eaten for breakfast/turned into frogs/forced to eat Brussels sprouts was completely obscured by a police notice that read:

WARNING—HAZARDOUS BUILDING
no entry except by authorized personnel

Disregarding this, the children scrambled over the gate and stopped for a moment, drinking in the sight of their old home. Silhouetted in the moonlight, StregaSchloss stood before them, its exposed roof timbers skeletal and derelict against the night sky.

“Oh, poor
house,
” whispered Pandora, horrified at the extent of the damage.

Titus groaned in agreement. “They'll
never
fix it now. It's a wreck.”

As they ran toward home, they couldn't fail to notice further signs of dilapidation. Tock's moat had overflowed its boundaries, spilling mud across the rose-quartz courtyard. An overturned wheelie bin had vomited its contents across the kitchen garden and shredded plastic bags had wrapped themselves round an ancient wisteria, flapping and rattling in the wind that scoured the south-facing wall.

Something was wrong with the drains as well. . . . When Titus and Pandora lifted the stone griffin that both guarded the front door and provided a handy stash for the key, their bent heads were brought into close proximity to a covered drain.

“Phwoarrr!”
Titus reeled back in disgust. “And I thought rancid goose was the pits. . . .” He pulled the collar of his fleece up over his nose and mouth and unlocked the front door. They pushed past a soggy pile of leaves that had gathered in the doorway in their absence and, at last, returned to their true home.

The sight that greeted them was the antithesis of a homecoming. Shining through the stained-glass windows of the first-floor landing, the moon illuminated a StregaSchloss abandoned, desolate, and, to the children's eyes, wounded beyond hope of recovery. The very air was damp with the kind of sepulchral chill that invited one not to linger overlong. Furthermore, it stank, as if some creature had crawled into the plumbing system to die.

Titus flicked a switch, with little hope. To his surprise, the lights came on overhead. “Right, Pan, where first?”

“Let's try the kitchen. Multitudina might be holed up in the pantry.”

Clutching each other for comfort, they crept along the passage to the kitchen, each of them secretly holding out little hope of finding anything left alive.

“Multitudina . . . ?” whispered Pandora, reaching out to turn on the light.

From the depths of the kitchen range came an exasperated “
Tchhhh.
Totally typical,” said a familiar voice. “She returns after an extended absence and her first words are not ‘Oh, Tarantella, oh, great mother-of-millions, oh, faithful, intelligent, beautiful Tarantella, how ever can I make it up to you?' Hah. NOT. ‘Oh, dear Tarantella—by the way, happy belated Christmas from your adoring Pandora.' Hah. NOT. ‘Oh, forgive me, faithless, heartless biped wretch that I am. . . .' ”

“Okay—
enough,
” sighed Pandora. “Sorry. I am sorry. Very.”

“That's simply not good enough.” Tarantella glared through the air vent at Pandora and folded all eight legs into a huffy bundle. “Come
on
. Increase the sincerity factor, up the emotional content, and SAY IT LIKE YOU REALLY MEAN IT!”

Pandora burst into tears. As if it wasn't bad enough returning to your wrecked home, being lectured by an invisible tarantula put the lid on it. “I'm really, really SORRY!” she bawled. “All RIGHT? I'm utterly miserable—you've no idea how horrible all this is. . . .” She became incoherent with grief, leaning on Titus for support.

“Awwwk. Don't
leak
like that, girl.” Tarantella slipped through the air vent and waved a hairy leg at the children. “Oh, lordy, I see you've brought your arachnophobic sibling, too. What joy. . . .”

In the harsh electric light, Titus saw that the whole kitchen was festooned with cobwebs. Seeing him gazing at her handiwork, Tarantella shrugged. “A girl has to keep busy, you know. Make some attempt to draft-proof this dingy hole. It was so gloomy here, as I'm
sure
you can imagine. . . . No lights, no crackling log fires, no Christmas tree, no—”

“Sultana,” came a hoarse whisper from the pantry.

“
Santa,
you moron,” Tarantella snapped, continuing, “Bleak and cheerless, no presents, no Christmas cards, no—”

“Dirty raisins,” added Multitudina, emerging from hiding.

“Oh, give me strength,” moaned Tarantella. “DECORATIONS, not ‘dirty raisins.' Are you completely illiterate or what?”

Multitudina sniffed huffily and scuttled down the stairs to the dungeons, yelling backward over her shoulder, “YES I AM! I'm an ILLITERAT! I was brought up to EAT books, not READ them. . . .”

The Unspeakable Pursue
the Inedible

L
oud clankings and rumbles woke the clones from their candlewick-entangled slumbers. As electricity surged round Auchenlochtermuchty, it caused the service lift to drop swiftly down the shaft and clang to a halt at kitchen level. The clones pressed forward, tripping over socks and ponchos and bruising several of their fellow incubatees in the process. The hatch opened and a reek of stale whisky breath washed over them. Mortimer stood before them, weaving slightly and muttering to himself.

“What does she take me for, eh? Bally laundry maid, what? Chap like me shouldn't have to do this. Women's work, what? Frightful inconvenience. . . .”

Grumbling drunkenly, he grabbed the candlewick bedspread and staggered across the kitchen to the laundry area. With a loud hiccup, he stuffed the bedspread, clones and all, into the hotel's colossal industrial washer-dryer. “Must lay off the sauce, Mortimer, old bean,” he advised himself. “Beginning to hear the voices again, what?”

He sprinkled the alarmed clones with washing powder, threw a jugful of fabric conditioner in for good measure, and then paused, his liver-spotted hands trembling over the
ON
switch. “Hands gone all wobbly, what?” he observed, holding them up to his face to inspect them. “All four of them, shaking like reeds. Come to think of it, Mortimer, old stick, what's the world coming to when a chap can't keep track of his own limbs, what? Myself, I blame the present government, actually. . . .”

Muttering incoherently, he spun round several times, reached into the depths of the broom cupboard, and produced a bottle of Old Liverot—a singularly foul malt whisky whose only virtue was its strength. Weaving more noticeably, Mortimer clutched this bottle to his chest and lurched out of the laundry area, fortunately forgetting to turn on the washer-dryer.

The brief shower of fabric conditioner had done nothing to improve the clones' tempers, and they swarmed out of the washing machine, sleep-deprived, speckled with washing powder, and intent on revenge. At that moment Beelzebub, resident cat of the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms, poked his scarred nose through his cat flap into the kitchen. Years of guerilla warfare in the village alleyways had taught him to be ever vigilant and, if in doubt, to turn tail and run. He spotted movement over by the washing machine and, whiskers twitching, crept silently through the cat flap in order to investigate. The sight of so many shrunken humans pouring across the tiles caused him to panic. Beelzebub instantly inflated himself into something akin to an orange toilet brush, flattened his ears back against his skull, and gave what he fervently hoped was a fearsome growl.

The clones were not impressed by this. However, bored by their sartorial range being confined to Latch and Titus's socks and towels, they were seriously impressed by the colorful nature of Beelzebub's fur. “Cool,” a Titus type yelled. “Hey, you guys, let's get ourselves some new orange threads.”

Beelzebub took one horrified look at the advancing hordes of tiny figures and, skidding inelegantly on the tiles, spun right round and bolted out of the cat flap.

The clones were not to be put off that easily. Brandishing Latch's toenail clippers like a battering ram, they didn't pause to draw up a battle plan. With the massed howl of hundreds of thwarted fashion victims, they set off in pursuit.

Beelzebub ran for his life. Whatever the mysteriously shrunken humans were, the cat was sure they didn't have his future welfare in mind. He paused for breath on the outskirts of the village, turning round to see how far behind his pursuers were.

Behind him, in a seething horde, the clones sprinted along the main road, their lamplit shadows forming and reforming as they crossed from one pool of light to the next. Wondering if the shrunken ones could climb trees, Beelzebub headed for the uncharted territory of the track to StregaSchloss, hoping to find shelter in the bramble jungle that arched over his head. Nearly prostrate with terror, the cat squeezed through a thicket and scrabbled up the trunk of an ivy-clad oak. Out of breath, he perched on a lofty branch and peered down into the darkness below to see what the clones would make of this new development.

He didn't have long to wait. Undaunted by the dangers of the bramble thorns, the clones clustered round the base of Beelzebub's tree. They spotted their prey instantly and began to climb up the ivy.

When the first wave of poncho-clad clones reached Beelzebub's perch, the cat edged backward till he was in danger of running out of branch. Beneath his weight the branch sagged ominously.

“Cool color,” remarked one Pandora type, imagining herself clad in Beelzebub's fur. “I want that bit with the white stripes. . . .”

Beelzebub sprang for safety, leaping across the gap into the branches of an adjoining oak. The effect of this was to make the branch he'd just vacated spring whippily into the air and dislodge all the clambering clones. A flock of ponchos billowed merrily into the night, and then, obeying the dictates of gravity, fluttered downward, coming to a jerky halt as the bramble thorns caught in the toweling fabric, leaving the clones dangling from the branches, arms and legs waving helplessly in the air.

Their companions regrouped at the foot of the tree in a state of shock. Above their heads, the night was rent with loud complaints.

“Aaaargh!” shrieked a Titus type. “Get me down! I'm freezing!”

Trying to stifle her giggles, a Pandora type pulled her sock up over her head to obliterate the vision of what hung dangling overhead.

“This is a grave offense against the dignity of clonehood!” screamed another Titus type, beating his tiny fists against the oak tree. “Orange Fur will pay dearly for this. REVENGE, my brothers and sisters, REVENGE. . . .”

Taking this as a perfect opportunity to escape, Beelzebub fled up the track, heading in the direction of StregaSchloss.