An Act of Hodd

by Nic Saint

  But Jerry wasn’t listening. Instead, he took to pacing the office, feeling utterly dismayed. But then he reminded himself he was still the campaign manager. The captain of this ship. The man at the helm… Whoever came on board would have to work for him! This notion cheered him up considerably.

  Reece Hudson, Felicity Bell, Alice Whitehouse and Rick Hudson were all going to be laboring under his command! They would have to take his orders. Mollified, he stalked over to his longtime friend and partner and absentmindedly snatched Spot 2 from Johnny’s grasp. As a rule, he hated dogs, but for some reason he made an exception for Spot 2, who was, in his opinion, a prince amongst dogs, and perhaps the only canine who truly understood him. When he looked into the Pomeranian’s eyes, he thought he saw true intelligence staring back at him, and the keen look of a genuine friend. So he stroked the dog, not noticing Johnny’s look of distress.

  He grinned evilly. They were all going to do his bidding, he thought, and as so often happens with the elixir of power, it quickly rose to Jerry’s head and suddenly he was feeling dizzy with it. New vistas suddenly opened up before him. Not only would those four do his bidding, but his own candidate would be like wax in his hands. His recent success in convincing Ricky to play ball had intoxicated him, and the thought that soon he was going be the man behind the president had an even more powerful effect on him.

  Finally, his hand still idly stroking the white fur of the Pomeranian, he took a seat in his master’s chair and leaned back, placing his feet on Chazz’s desk. Then he threw his head back and laughed like a hyena.

  Too late he noticed that Johnny had walked up to him and now snatched Spot 2 from his arms with a hurt look on his mug. “You’re scaring him, Jerry!” he grumbled, and petted the little doggie consolingly.

  He pointed an admonishing finger at Johnny. “That is Mr. Vale to you!”

  “Mr. Vale my butt. You’re starting to act really weird, Jer.”

  “I am not!” he cried, denying the foul charge vehemently.

  “All this power is going to your head, I’m telling you.”

  “It is not!”

  But Johnny now wagged a sausage-sized finger in his face, and said, “Never forget we’re simply civil servants, Jer, in the service of the American people. And even if we win this election, we’re still going to be just that: serving this great nation of ours. We’re not in this for our own personal gain or to usurp these formidable powers for ourselves. Don’t you go getting above yourself, buddy, or there will be hell to pay. Karma is no joke.”

  Jerry stared at his friend and colleague, surprised that these words of wisdom should be rolling from the man’s lips like so many pearls, and finally he nodded, sobered and humbled. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right, Johnny. I was just getting carried away there for a moment.”

  “Well, don’t do it again. You scared me and you scared Spot 2.”

  With a groan he got up from his seat of power and walked over to the window of Chazz’s office. And when he saw the dark clouds gathering over New York, he suddenly got a very bad feeling about Chazz’s trip into Happy Bays. So he turned to Johnny, and muttered, “You were right about that rain. Looks like we’re getting into some seriously nasty weather.”

  Johnny directed an anxious look at the heavens. “I don’t think Chazz should be out there in this weather, Jer. You know what a lousy driver he is.”

  The two former crooks shared a look of understanding, and then, without uttering a single word, they were out of there, following in Chazz’s footsteps.

  Chapter 25

  As it was, Chazz was having a lot of trouble locating Ricky and the rest of the gang. He knew where they lived, of course, but when he got there, he found that the street had been blocked by a police car, and there was that silly yellow tape stretching from one streetlamp to another, indicating Stanwyck Street was off-limits today. First he thought maybe some party was going on, but then he saw that neighbors were chatting animatedly and with grave expressions on their face. As if some terrible accident had taken place. And then he saw a bunch of wrecked police cars, as if a giant wrecking ball had struck down from the sky.

  So he got out of his car and walked up to Stanwyck Street 41. Only when he got there the door was open and there was no one around! Perplexed to a degree, he first made sure to close the door, and then collared the first neighbor he saw, a middle-aged man with a black turtleneck and Calvin Klein tortoiseshell glasses. “They all went off with the man in the gold suit.”

  “Huh? Come again?”

  “He arrived in some spaceship and the whole lot went after him.”

  He stared at the man for a moment, wondering if the world had suddenly gone crazy. But then this was Happy Bays, of course. Crazy things happened down here all the time. “Where? Where did they go with this golden… guy?”

  “Marcel Le Corbusier’s,” said a woman who seemed to be in the know.

  He thought for a moment. He himself owned a house in Happy Bays, and like any Happy Baysian he knew who Marcel Le Corbusier was. But why would his son go and visit him, along with a golden man in a spaceship? But then he figured this was simply par for the course for a town where at any moment ghosts could pop from the wallpaper or taxidermists could murder with impunity for years.

  So after obtaining the address of this Marcel Le Corbusier, he quickly got into his car again, a sturdy GMC Yukon, and fed the directions to his GPS. Moments later he was on the road again, and not a moment too soon, for suddenly the heavens darkened and rain started slashing his windscreen. And when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, his windshield wipers stopped functioning properly and he could hardly see where he was going! Not that that stopped him from trying to get there, of course.

  Little did he know that while he was approaching the house that Marcel Le Corbusier had built from the South, Jerry and Johnny were approaching the same house from the North. They had arrived at Stanwyck Street only a minute or so after Chazz, but their GMC Yukon, a model just as sturdy as their boss’s, with just as massive a snout, had a differently programmed GPS, apparently, for it sent them along a different route than Chazz’s. Zooming in from the North, both vehicles were quickly set on a collision course…

  Chazz, his face plastered to the window, was vaguely aware that he was traveling in the eye of a serious storm. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed even as rain lashed his windscreen. “Christ,” he muttered, and decided to step on it. The sooner he got where he was going, the better. Regular people would have pulled over and waited out the storm on the shoulder but not Chazz Falcone. He’d weathered worse conditions than this when trying to make it in the New York world of real estate, where men are men and things can get pretty damn rough. A little storm like this was hardly the kind of thing that blew him off course.

  He was on a mission to recruit fresh members for his team, which was critical, so a little bit of rain didn’t give him pause. And as he drove along at breakneck speed, he remembered that Alice, Felicity’s little friend, was the leader of the Neighborhood Watch Committee, and he quickly added the other members to his roster of volunteers. Three women like that could muscle up quite some support for his candidacy, and appeal to women all across the country. They could start organizing his support committees, and what a great job they would do. And it was with a light heart and a heavy foot that he hurtled along through the driving rain, barely seeing where he was going but knowing in his heart of hearts that he needed to get there fast.

  And then, suddenly, he was at journey’s end, the robotic voice of his GPS announcing that he had reached his destination. And even as he grimaced with satisfaction, he saw a dark figure looming up before him, and a set of headlights approaching from behind this dark figure and approaching fast.

  He stomped down on the brakes but it was too late. There was a terrible shock as he hit the other car head-on, the dark man evenly squashed between the two cars’ huge chrome grilles, and then his airbag exploded and his features, never the most attract
ive to begin with, were marred even more by the smash his nose received, blood quickly pouring from the projecting part.

  The collision was so forceful that both cars were briefly lifted from the road, then settled back with a terrible sound of crunching metal and whining engines, and then all was silent once more, but for the rain still pounding down mercilessly on the two wrecked cars, their passengers, and the man in black, who was now as flat as a pancake.

  And as Chazz staggered from his car, the blood on his face quickly wiped away by the driving rain, which drenched him in seconds, he saw that Jerry and Johnny were also staggering from their vehicle, with which he’d collided, and to his horror he saw that between their two vehicles the dark-clad man was squashed, like a bug on his windshield, and from his lips rose an agonized wail. Not because he was responsible for the loss of a human life, but because he suddenly saw that his chances to become the next president had, with this one act of reckless driving, been rendered null and void.

  And then all hell broke loose as Felicity Bell and the others all came running up and they all started yelling and talking simultaneously. And then he saw that Ricky was there, as well, and Reece Hudson, and then, to his shocked horror, dozens upon dozens of police officers, all dressed in the uniform of their trade, and they all descended on the scene of the crash.

  And then Fee Bell did the most amazing thing. She grabbed him by the lapels and pressed a kiss on his lips! And then Alice did exactly the same, and even Ricky took his hand and pumped it eagerly, congratulating him on such great timing, and then Jerry and Johnny were included in this sudden crazy festival of joy that had broken out, and even the coppers seemed to rejoice and to celebrate the fact that a human being had just been brutally slain!

  It was as if he’d landed in an episode of Game of Thrones, where death and horror always lurked around the corner. And then, as he watched in astonishment, he saw that Fee knelt down next to what was left over of the man in black, and slipped a ring from his lifeless fingers! Then she walked over to a figure which lay in a puddle. He saw this fellow, presumably a sportsman because he was dressed in gold lycra, looked pretty busted up.

  And for a brief, horrific moment, he feared that he’d killed this man as well. He might have been catapulted away when the two cars smashed into one another—flung him into this puddle. He looked very much the part of the accident victim, even more so than the other fellow, who was practically fully obscured from sight by the steam billowing from two busted radiators.

  But then before his eyes, a second miracle took place. The first one had been the joyous response of this small band of onlookers to his heinous act of vehicular homicide, the second one that the gold-clad man suddenly opened his eyes and blinked long lashes against the falling rain. Then, as if touched by a magic hand—and not the chrome grille of a GMC Yukon—he reared himself up, and Chazz’s jaw dropped when he saw that the gold lycra was now mending itself, the holes in the suit closing up, as did the cuts and bruises the man had sustained. His leg, which had been lying at an odd angle, straightened itself, and his face was soon as radiant as a swimsuit model’s.

  In fact he looked so handsome now that even Reece Hudson’s classically handsome features simply paled in comparison.

  It was all a little bit too much for Chazz, and as he and Jerry and Johnny naturally flocked together, he muttered, “Have I just lost my mind, boys?”

  “I think the whole world has gone completely nuts, boss,” said Johnny, and truer words were never spoken.

  Chapter 26

  Felicity watched the scene before her shocked eyes. First Severin Lobb had fallen from the sky like an angel crushed down by a demon, and then Mortdecai had descended, slowly and gracefully, and now stood gloating over the mangled body of his nemesis, a wicked and evil smile on his thin pale face, his black eyes gleaming.

  “You can see for yourself,” he now thundered, “how I’ve defeated the Allardian guardian once and for all.” He heaved his face and his hands heavenward, and bellowed, “From now on I’m the ruler of Allard and this realm alike! The one and only true dictator.”

  And only now did Felicity see that the man was carrying the Ring of Hodd on his finger. So that’s what had happened to the ring: this evil fiend had been wearing it ever since Marcel stole it from her grandfather! He had used it not only to set up his stooge Marcel as a baker but to establish his own realm as well, until he had gathered enough power so he could take over Allard itself, which had probably been his ultimate plan all along.

  “He’s going to take over our realm?” Alice asked.

  “That’s how I understood him,” said Felicity.

  “Oh, yes, he’s going to rule our realm as well,” Marcel’s croaky voice came from behind them. “And trust me, he’s going to do a much better job than the bozos who are now in charge over here.”

  “I’ll have you know,” said Mabel in clipped tones, “that Mayor MacDonald is the best mayor this town has ever had!”

  Forgotten, apparently, were the secretary’s critical remarks on the state of the mayor’s pavements. In a crisis closing ranks is a natural inclination.

  “The mayor’s an idiot,” Marcel growled. “Mortdecai will crush him!”

  “But he can’t!” said Felicity. “He’s going to turn Happy Bays into some sort of wasteland.” And already, she felt, with the day having turned as dark as night, it looked as if they were inhabiting a darker, more scary world.

  “Kneel before me, you mortals!” now bellowed Mortdecai, holding up his ring hand. “Kneel before me in the dirt and kiss my ring! My ring!”

  One by one, as if forced by a power stronger than themselves, all Happy Baysians present descended from the porch and approached their new ruler. And even though she didn’t want to, Felicity found herself kneeling in the muck, right next to the mangled body of what once had been Severin Lobb. The guardian who’d lost the war and sealed Allard’s fate and theirs.

  “Before long, you’ll be joined by the rest of this measly little town,” sneered Mortdecai, “and before long I’ll subdue the rest of this country, and then the world! You will all be my vassals, my serfs, my slaves! And you will worship your new king—your new immortal ruler!”

  His voice rolled over them in waves, even as the rain lashed their faces, and when Felicity looked to her left, she saw her mother kneeling in the dirt, and her father and her friends, and when she glanced to her right, she saw the gathered police force of Happy Bays, and Mabel, Bettina and Marjorie. Their faces mirrored her own horrified shock as they found themselves having fallen prey to the kind of terror one usually only experiences when leafing through the National Enquirer while waiting in the checkout line.

  Mortdecai now raised his hands again, and ordered, “Kiss my ring! Subject yourselves to me. Swear your allegiance to your new king!”

  And Felicity was about to do just that, when suddenly a loud roaring sound reached her ears, homing in on them at a rapid pace. And then she saw headlights piercing the gloom, and then, even before Mortdecai became aware of the impending doom, two huge cars emerged from the curtain of rain and smashed into Mortdecai, effectively flattening him between their colliding bumpers.

  The crash was enormous, the force of the collision thus that both cars were lifted up from their rears and then crashed down again like the huge metal beasts they were, and when they rolled apart again, she saw that Mortdecai had been squashed and was now hanging from the grille of one of the two SUVs, pretty much out for the count.

  Whether he was dead remained to be seen, as this was no ordinary man, she knew. Still, it appeared as if the new ruler of Happy Bays, the US and by extension the world, would have to postpone his inauguration ball.

  And as she saw first Chazz Falcone, and then Jerry and Johnny crawl from the wreckage, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. As if by divine intervention, they’d effectively vanquished the biggest threat Happy Bays had ever faced. Now freed from the power of Mortdecai’s command, she ran up to Chazz, and
pressed a wet kiss to his lips. Then, without waiting a beat, she dashed over to Mortdecai, wrenched the Ring of Hodd from his finger and hurried over to where Severin lay slain. She slipped the ring on the Allardian’s finger and waited with bated breath, hoping her hunch was right.

  To her extreme elation, it was! The man who been lying there dead suddenly opened his blue eyes, and before her surprised gaze his costume began to mend itself, as of its own accord, and so did his mangled body.

  Broken bones were healed, cuts and bruises disappeared from his skin like breath from a razor blade, and soon animation and color returned to his handsome features. He got up, first a little gingerly, then more lithely, and gave her a look of appreciation. She had to suppress a sudden inclination to laugh hysterically. Had things righted themselves again after having gone so horribly, terribly wrong? Or was this simply another episode in a never-ending nightmare?

  But then Severin walked over to the fallen body of his mortal enemy, and touched it with his hand. Suddenly, the ground opened up beneath the two cars, and the body of Mortdecai was swallowed up by a crack in the earth.

  And as he plummeted down into the abyss, Mortdecai let out an agonized, “Nooo!” But then the earth closed over him, and the sound was cut off.

  “One-way ticket to Allard’s dungeons,” Severin muttered with a satisfied nod of the head. Then he turned to Felicity and took her hands in his. “Thank you, Felicity Bell,” he said warmly. “Thank you for righting a wrong that was wrought not by your hand but by another.”

  At this, he directed a keen glance at the porch, where now only Marcel and Lucien were still seated, looking on in anguish mingled with barely concealed rage. There was a silent gesture of Severin’s head and suddenly the porch cracked, and with cries of anguish both men disappeared from view.

  “Let me guess,” said Felicity. “The dungeons of Allard?”