by Debi Gliori
“Blue. Yes, his mouth is still blue,” she said, a discernible note of panic creeping into her voice. “No. We’re not sure what he’s taken. Might just be the alcohol—I’m pretty positive he’s had most of a bottle of whisky, but I think that’s pretty normal for him. . . .”
Under the assault of Signor Strega-Borgia’s vigorous chest massage, Mortimer’s inert body flopped like a landed fish. Grimacing at the prospect ahead, Signor Strega-Borgia ceased his efforts at kick-starting Morty’s heart and turned his attention to administering the kiss of life. He pinched the landlord’s red nose between finger and thumb, waved away Latch and Mrs. McLachlan’s offers of help, and bent down to perform his lifesaving duty.
As they tiptoed backward out of the lounge bar, they heard Signora Strega-Borgia yell, “Get a move on. Send an ambulance, a helicopter, whatever you can. This man is dying and you’re doing nothing to help.”
They closed the door behind them. Damp’s eyes were round pools of terror. Seeing Dada hitting the smelly man and then kiss him was so outside Damp’s range of experience that she involuntarily slipped into the chorus of Grade Three.
“Hush, hush, there, now,” soothed Mrs. McLachlan, carrying the whimpering baby into the residents’ lounge and sinking into an armchair by the fireplace. “It’s all right, pet. Daddy and Mummy are a bit too busy right now to help us find your big brother and sister, so we’ll just have to manage by ourselves.”
Ten minutes later, somber-faced and giving the thumbs-down signal behind Damp’s back, Latch entered the lounge. At a loss for words, he pulled his dressing gown tighter round his lanky body and busied himself with trying to revive the fire. “Awful business,” he muttered. “And there’s no sign of those children. I’ve tried the kitchen, had a quick check round the pool—I even tried the stable block, but. . . .”
“They’ll have gone back to StregaSchloss,” said Mrs. McLachlan grimly. “Despite being expressly forbidden to do so. I thought something was going on this evening—did you notice how preoccupied they were over dinner?”
“To be honest, no,” admitted Latch. “I was more concerned with why my wardrobe door was broken, why the floor was covered in wee things like rabbit droppings—and, talking of droppings, the beasts are on the loose.”
“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. McLachlan stared at the butler.
“I kid you not—there’s a tunnel dug through the stable-block floor, and not a trace of them to be seen. Plus—and this one completely defies understanding—I seem to have lost every single pair of socks that I possess, all the towels have disappeared, and I can’t find my toenail clippers anywhere. . . .”
“What in heaven’s name have socks and toenail clippers got to do with StregaSchloss? And where have those beasts gone?” sighed Mrs. McLachlan. “I think we’re going to have to find Titus and Pandora for the answer. I’m going to dress the baby and myself and you call a taxi. We’re going to StregaSchloss.”
Thinking wistfully of his warm bed, Latch heaved a sigh. Maybe there was a simple explanation that didn’t involve heading out into a December night. Maybe the children had decided to give the beasts a pedicure and take them for a walk? Maybe they’d been breeding rabbits in the wardrobe? Latch’s frown deepened. His imagination failed him totally when it came to the missing socks. Eleven pairs? What on earth could Titus want with them? And the broken door—what of that? With a furrowed brow, Latch followed Mrs. McLachlan upstairs.
The Road Less Traveled
In their tropically overheated living room, Vincent Bella-Vista and Vadette were having a row. On the glass-topped table separating them, a pile of Styrofoam beefburger cartons, overflowing ashtrays, and toppled beer cans bore witness to an evening of overindulgence that had rendered the builder and his girlfriend bloated, tipsy, and spoiling for a fight.
Pausing in her attempt to remove her engagement ring and hurl it across the room at her fiancé, Vadette was struck by a thought: “THISH ISHN’T EVEN A DESHENT RING!” she bawled, lowering her voice to a sob. “Jusht a poxshy wee ring for your poxshy wee girlfriend—eh, Vinnie?” Beyond reason and consumed by drunken outrage, she hauled herself to her feet and lurched through to the kitchen, continuing over her shoulder, “And I know where I’ll find a proper diamond, shince you’re too cheap to buy me one. . . .”
“You wouldn’t know a proper diamond if it bit you on the bum,” Vinnie muttered, lighting his forty-seventh cigarette of the evening and dropping its smoldering predecessor in his empty beer can.
“I’m talking about the diamond you told me about—I’m going to find the one in the chandelier at ShtregaSchloshhh,” said Vadette, her words accompanied by the crashing sound of cupboards being opened and slammed shut again.
“StregaSchloss? Now? You want to go out there right now? It’s . . .” Vincent gazed in disbelief at his watch.
“Yesh. I know it’sh three o’clock. I’m going to help myshelf to a deshent diamond.” Vadette raked through the cutlery drawer till she found what she was looking for.
With a disgusted snort, Vincent Bella-Vista dragged himself out of his chair and stomped into the kitchen. In the pitiless fluorescent lighting Vadette looked like a demented doughboy. Furthermore, she was brandishing a rolling pin in a distinctly threatening fashion.
“Aww, come on, Vadette.” Vincent took a step backward. “You’ll never find that diamond in a million years, even if it does exist. There are thousands of crystals in that chandelier. . . .”
“I’m going to shmash it to pieshes,” Vadette declared. “That way I’ll find the diamond, cosh real diamonds don’t shmash.”
There was a perverted logic to this, Vincent realized, watching as Vadette grabbed her coat and van keys and staggered out of the front door. The vision of her descending on StregaSchloss intent on an orgy of drunken violence was too horrible to contemplate, and he called after her retreating form, “Look. Can’t we talk about this? I’ll buy you a proper diamond. I’m going to make so much money on this deal that I promise I’ll find you one as big as the Koh-i-noor—”
His words were cut off in a roar from an engine, as Vadette gunned the accelerator and took off down the drive in her van.
Carrying bramble thorns sheared from the bushes with the aid of Latch’s toenail clippers, the clones were now armed and dangerous. Intent on following Beelzebub and exacting their revenge, they emerged from the thicket and assembled in the middle of the track leading to StregaSchloss. Twin circles of light heading in their direction failed to alert them to the dangers of loitering in the middle of a highway. The clones simply did not have the experience to understand what approaching headlights signified. Dazzled, blinded, and dimly aware that this might not be A Good Thing, they turned to face the source of light. Gravel peppered the roadside as a taxi bearing Mrs. McLachlan, Latch, and Damp swept past on its way to StregaSchloss.
In the ensuing dust and blood and chaos, the clones reeled, horrified by yet another attempt to consign them to oblivion. What use were bramble thorns against such a vast enemy? But, just as they turned the thorns of their entanglement into weapons for their defense, they conceived a plan to turn the dazzling gravel demon into something they could use to their advantage in the pursuit of Beelzebub. When the next set of headlights appeared in the distance, they were ready. Their plan took nerves of steel. It involved a lot of hitching up of socks round waists, of bunching ponchos under armpits to free up their limbs. Closer now, headlights bouncing as the gravel demon negotiated the pockmarked track. The clones tensed and held their thorns pointed outward. . . .
As Vadette drove past in the white van, the clones leapt forward. With a howl composed in equal parts of terror and effort, they flung themselves onto the spinning rubber rims of the tires. With a massed scream, they clung wailing to their thorns as they spun, over and over, round and round, in a dizzying, thundering orbit, their tiny knuckles bone white with the supreme effort of hanging on.
Gagged, bound, and bundled into the dungeon at StregaSchloss at gu
npoint, Titus and Pandora had never been so frightened in their lives. After what felt like hours spent weeping in the darkness of the dungeon, they heard a taxi pull up, then the sound of footsteps crossing the rose quartz, and for one glorious moment, hearing the voices of their nanny and butler, they thought that rescue was at hand. Overhead, filtering down to the dungeon and echoing off its dank stone walls, came the welcome voice of Mrs. McLachlan inquiring as to their whereabouts.
“Oh, heavens, no . . . ,” said Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell. “How awful. Vanished, have they? I don’t think they’d be stupid enough to come here—we haven’t seen them at all, have we, Hugh?”
“Children?” said the roofing contractor, rolling the word around his mouth with the kind of disdain normally used for words like “cockroaches.” He waved his arm around, indicating the great hall surrounding them. “I hope they wouldn’t be so misguided as to come here. . . . Far too dangerous. . . . This house could collapse at any time.” Seeing the blank expression of Mrs. McLachlan’s face, he elaborated, “Just got here ourselves. Ffion here gave me a lift, since my car was destroyed by your dragon thing.”
“Do you make a habit of going out at three a.m. to check on the progress of your contracts?” Latch peered suspiciously into the sepulchral gloom of the great hall, turning back to Mrs. McLachlan for support. The nanny had unzipped Damp’s snowsuit and was engrossed in checking the status of the baby’s diaper. Damp submitted wearily to this indignity.
“Oh, Damp, not now. . . . Excuse us for one moment . . . ,” Mrs. McLachlan said, sweeping past Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell and opening the door into the tiny downstairs bathroom. She slammed the door behind her, locked it, placed the unjustly accused Damp on the floor, and, to the baby’s continuing mystification, took her powder compact out of her bag and flipped it open.
“Is that another car?” said Latch, unwisely turning his back on Hugh Pylum-Haight and crossing the hall to look out of the door. “What is going on?”
Behind him, the roofer exchanged a meaningful look with his partner-in-crime, pulled a walking stick out of a rack in the coat stand, and brought it down with an audible crack on Latch’s head. The butler staggered back from the front door and collapsed on the floor.
A nearby flushing sound signaled the imminent return of Mrs. McLachlan and Damp. Behind the bathroom door, Mrs. McLachlan snapped the i’mat shut and shuddered. In the swirling face powder and tiny mirror, she’d seen enough to know that they were all in immediate danger. Plucking Damp off the floor, she hugged the baby and considered what to do next.
“Go and check on those awful children, would you?” whispered Hugh Pylum-Haight. “And hurry up—we’ve got company. . . .”
Through the hall window, he saw the lights of Vadette’s white van swing across the drive. Huddled in her mink coat, clutching her crocodile-skin handbag, Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell ran along the corridor to the kitchen, carefully picked her way across the floor, and, in the feeble light from her flashlight, negotiated the slippery steps that led downstairs to the dungeons.
Vadette drew up outside StregaSchloss and parked at the front door. As soon as the vehicle stopped, the intrepid clones, all of whom had managed to hang on to their thorns, crumpled onto the rose-quartz gravel. Their simultaneous withdrawal of three hundred and eighty-two thorns caused all four tires on the van to collapse like deflated balloons. All thoughts of clone revenge had vanished in their short and brutal journey. All they wanted was for their world to stop spinning. Hissing faintly, they staggered dizzily into the shelter of a bush.
Inside the van, unaware that she’d been immobilized by the clones, Vadette switched on the inside light and peered at her reflection in the rearview mirror. In her haste to get to StregaSchloss, she hadn’t taken the time to apply any makeup. Being the kind of woman who would have bemoaned the loss of her lipstick as her lifeboat pulled away from the sinking Titanic, she rooted in her handbag and found an old tube of scarlet lipstick. She’d just applied the first coat of this when a voice in her ear whispered, “Oh, dear me, no. I don’t think so. Has anyone ever told you that particular shade of red makes you look ten years older?”
Vadette’s hand jerked, scrawling a line of red across her cheek as she searched in vain for the source of the voice.
“Try mine,” it advised. “So much more flattering to the aging complexion—and, believe me, I should know.”
Vadette’s heart hammered in her chest as a lipstick-wielding hairy leg appeared in her peripheral vision. “AUGHHH! A SPIDER!” she shrieked, attempting to beat Tarantella back with her handbag. Mumbling incoherently, “Spiders . . . aughhh, help, help . . . ,” Vadette toppled sideways and slid under the steering wheel in a faint.
The air was freezing in the dungeons. Water dripped down the walls, mist wove itself round the deserted beasts’ cages, and Ffion Fforbes-Campbell drew the collar of her fur coat round her neck with a shiver. The beam of her flashlight picked out a familiar shape huddled in a far corner. There they were, the Strega-Borgia brats, still tied up where she’d left them. . . . The flashlight fell with a clatter to the floor, its wildly swinging beam picking out the stuff of which nightmares were made. In a state of wide-eyed terror, unable for one frozen moment to move or even scream, Ffion Fforbes-Campbell dragged her gaze up from where Titus’s and Pandora’s feet were chained to rusting iron rings set in the mossy flagstones of the floor. Her eyes trawled onward, past the children’s bodies, roped and bound to the bars of Ffup’s old cage, over their hands, which waved and twitched in a parody of greeting, and up, up to the worst horror of all. For yes, the Borgia brats were still there, just as she’d left them, with the notable exception of their heads. Titus and Pandora were . . . headless.
Her state of frozen disbelief shattered as Ffion Fforbes-Campbell opened her mouth and screamed blue murder.
Hugh Pylum-Haight was becoming distinctly twitchy, waiting upstairs in the complete silence of the great hall. Outside, Vadette’s van was parked in the drive. Its headlights had gone off and its interior light had gone on, but when Hugh looked outside, there appeared to be no one at the wheel. Furthermore, the nanny and baby still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom, despite his demands that they do so. With the situation rapidly slipping out of his control, Hugh Pylum-Haight decided to act. Banging once more on the bathroom door, he yelled, “OUT! Come on. I know you’re in there. Out, or I’ll shoot.”
Silence greeted him. His own words echoed in the vast stillness of StregaSchloss. There was not a sound from downstairs, utter silence from the partly lit van, not a squeak from the bathroom, and finally, when Ffion Fforbes-Campbell’s shrieks came howling up from the depths, Hugh Pylum-Haight lost what little nerve he had. Firing three times at the bathroom door, he bolted down the corridor to the dungeons.
Outside, waiting in the kitchen garden, the beasts took the three gunshots as their cue for action. Tock slid into the moat to guard his lily pad larder, Sab flew up to the roof to keep a lookout, Knot shuffled bravely into the kitchen, and Ffup excused herself with a pressing need for a pee in the parsley bed.
Hugh found Ffion Fforbes-Campbell backing up the dungeon stairs, gibbering incoherently. “HUGHHH . . . there’s something awful—just horrible happened down there. . . . We have to get out. . . . Those kids . . . No heads . . . There must be something down there—run, RUN!” She threw herself at the roofer, propelling him backward.
The dim light filtering down on them from the kitchen was suddenly blotted out by an enormous shadow. “OH, MY GOD!” Ffion Fforbes-Campbell screamed. “It’s here. BEHIND YOU!”
Hugh Pylum-Haight was knocked aside by something vast—something that stank to high heaven and mumbled to itself as it reached out to wrap the mink-draped Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell in its woolly arms.
Totally unnerved, Pylum-Haight fled for safety. Stumbling up the stairs, he found himself in the kitchen. A bitter wind blew through the open door leading to the kitchen garden, and across the floor a trail of muddy footprints led to the dungeons. Echoing
up from their depths, a series of slobbering gobbling sounds seemed to indicate that Ffion would not be following behind him. Cravenly, Hugh Pylum-Haight decided to take her Land Rover and escape by road.
Outside in the kitchen garden, Ffup was still squatting over the parsley, sighing mightily and hoping that her quick bathroom stop might relieve the strange feeling in her tummy. The dragon stood up, dabbing ineffectually at her bottom with what appeared, in the darkness, to be a small towel. Nope, that hasn’t done the trick, tummy still feels weird, thought Ffup, groaning miserably. She couldn’t work out what was wrong with her. She’d been feeling ravenous, off and on, all night, but now she just felt nauseous. Rubbing her tender stomach, she turned toward the house.
A figure bolted out of the kitchen and ran headlong into the dragon, its head making painful contact with Ffup’s abdomen. There was a shriek, a lethal blast of dragon flame, and Ffup ran screaming into the house. In the kitchen garden, drenched in dragon pee, the hapless towel-clad clone that Ffup had mistaken for toilet paper crept closer to the incinerated and still smoldering remains of Hugh Pylum-Haight and attempted to dry herself in the warmth.
“Ambulance! Help! I’ve crisped somebody!” wailed Ffup, skidding across the kitchen and into the corridor. The stench of burning roofer clung nauseatingly to her nostrils. “Urghhh, I’m going to be si—” Ffup hauled open the door to the downstairs bathroom, failing to notice the three bullet holes, or the fact that she’d wrenched the door off its hinges in her efforts to obtain access. Just in time, the dragon managed to get her head down the toilet and immediately emptied her insulted stomach of its cargo of half-digested seaweed and a few lumps of mutton.
