The Dastardly Mr Winkle Meets His Match

by Rufus Offor

  “Here.” Shoop hurled the belt buckle that he’d stolen from the girl he’d half blown up at George. George fumbled trying to catch it and, once he’d finished being clumsy, examined it.

  “Hmm, this rings a bell, where did you get it?”

  “From a half dead girl.”

  “You really are a class act aren’t you, mugging half dead people.”

  “She was trying to slay a vampire, and doing a fine job too, which is why I felt the need to half blow her up. If she could kick a three hundred year old vamp’s arse then mine would’ve been a doddle, no matter how good I am.”

  “It does look a mite familiar.”

  “That’s what I said. Thought you might be able to figure it out.” Said Shoop grudgingly, reminded of his failure to make the girl talk. His eyes were becoming more and more bleary as he sank further into his chair.

  George emptied his brandy glass in an attempt to control his rasping throat and to make his brain function at its normal level. Then he refilled his glass just to be sure.

  Looking at the buckle he asked “POS? What do you suppose that means?”

  “You’re here to answer questions not asked them. I’ve done the legwork you do the brainwork, so get on with it. I’m bloody knackered.”

  “I’ll have a dig about, see what I can find. The triangle obviously has dozens of connotations, Masonic, Egyptian, South American, the list goes on, Meanwhile, why don’t you….” George’s voice trailed off as he looked at Shoop.

  Shoop was snoring loudly while slowly tipping his unfinished gin onto his groin. George chuckled as he helped the rest of the drink reach its destination by tipping the glass. He headed off into the mass of books and flotsam to figure out why the symbol on the buckle looked so very familiar.

  Chapter 3

  Jill finds out about Bunty

  A man walked down a very old stone corridor that had been panelled over with plasterboard. The corridor was in one of the oldest castles in Scotland and he wasn’t the type of character you’d expect to find casually ambling through its ghost ridden, history thick air. He wore a long sleeved, baggy hemp shirt with its fastenings unsnapped down to his amply muscled, tanned and subtly hair sprinkled chest. Around his neck were a surplus of ethnic beads and shark teeth and his skin was the colour of maple. His short ruffled hair was bleached blonde by the sun and he was far too attractive for his own good. The rough goat beard he sported only served to accentuate his full sensuous lips, his jeans were worn thin in all the right places to make them look good and his sandals were the kind that would more often be seen on the beaches of Australia than the clammy halls of ancient buildings. Over all, he wasn’t the usual upper class, big toothed, tweed-wearing twot you’d bump into in a Scottish castle.

  He strode through the halls with the kind of conviction that can be expected of a man who looked as though he said the word “Dude” an awful lot. In other words, not much conviction at all, but he was trying. He even tried furrowing his brow a little to appear more purposeful and serious, but it only served to make him giggle so he reverted back to his usual peaceful visage. Some people, upon seeing his facial expression, would think him gormless with his soft worry free eyes and permanent saintly smile, but they’d be wrong. This man had wisdom beyond his years.

  They say that the wiser a man becomes, he begins to realise just how much he really doesn’t know. If that is the case then this chap was beyond the Dali Llama in the wisdom stakes, as he didn’t look like he knew a damn thing about anything. He looked very wise indeed.

  His sandals padded past tapestries and wall mounted armour. History made him happy so he grinned a bit wider and dawdled on toward the grand hall.

  The hall was quite a sight to see. It was a vast circular room fifty feet in diameter with small, plush, curtained alcoves containing equally plush sofas and cushions dotted around the circular ancient stonewall. The wall was littered with a number of standards and flags and armour above which, over looking the hall, was a circular balcony that looked as though it had been designed for spectators. In the centre of the hall was a massive ornately carved and decorated round table with numerous wide, tall and expertly crafted chairs each of which was in direct alignment to the plush alcoves behind them. This was clearly a kingly room. Directly opposite the entrance to the hall, behind the grandest chair of them all was a small anti-chamber that had once housed its king and his chief advisors for more private discussions.

  In the largest chair sat a small black woman. She was playing battleships with a man sitting next to her and she was winning. She had a calm and peaceful countenance and wore a long knitted waistcoat under which was a brightly embroidered red, blue, green and purple sari. Her full afro-hair was tied back with a headscarf of equal lustre and taste and her neck was decorated with a single gold necklace with a large, tasteful, bejewelled representation of Geb, the Egyptian God of the earth, hanging from it.

  The man from the corridor entered and strolled around the table, smiling at how old and groovy everything was.

  “Hey Jill,” He said

  “Hey Steve,“ replied the woman, ”How’s it going?”

  “Good yeah.” He looked around the room a bit more, grinning moronically. Then, as if he’d received a small shock through his brain, he started talking again, “ooh, I forgot, um, sorry to interrupt and everything but, um, I think I’ve got a bit of bad news.”

  “Don’t worry about it, why don’t you grab a seat there, I was just telling Bob about the time I had that chat with Moses on top of mount Sinai with a torch and a megaphone.” She said while gesturing to the other man seated next to her at the substantial table.

  “Dude, I love that story.” said Steve manoeuvring into a chair next to Jill.

  “Yeah me too.” said Bob, a pained expression on his face and his tongue dangling from the corner of his mouth as he considered his next battleships move.

  “Anyway, what’s the skinny there Steve?” asked Jill.

  “Well, sorry to have to tell you this dude, but, well, um, I just found out that, um, well, Bunty Autumn’s gone and shuffled off her mortal coil. She’s been killed man!”

  “Oh man that’s a shame, she was the only one that could really give me a run for my money at battleships, no offence there Bob.”

  “None taken,” said Bob in a chirpy voice and with very few boats left on his board, “I know I suck at this, I just play ‘cause I like the sound the ships make when they get hit. Fancy some jenga afterwards? The wood bricks make nice clunky noises when they fall over.”

  “Sounds good man. Anyhow, what happened to Bunty Steve?

  “Well dude, I’m sorry to say it man, but, um, it was Shoop Winkle.”

  “Blimey, that boy doesn’t half keep himself busy. Didn’t he get rid of a whole band of werewolves just last week?”

  “Yip,” Replied Steve, “tracked them for a while, found their little hide-out and fired a surface to surface missile in there.”

  “Quite a guy.”

  “Yeah, one thing is though.” Steve went on

  “Mmhhmm?” questioned Jill.

  “Well it seams Bunty’s seal is missing. She wore it on her belt; she thought it looked pretty funky as a buckle. I kept telling her to hide it but she thought it looked good, and you know how she loved to look good.”

  “Not wrong there, if I was so inclined I’d have gone for her myself.” Said Jill

  “Hhhmm, a nice little package she had going on, she’ll be missed.”

  “Yeah but don’t worry, she may be dead but I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  “You know it dude! But I think the point that should be focused on here is that Shoop Winkle may well be in possession of something that’ll make him aware of your existence.”

  “Dude!” Exclaimed Bob looking up from the game and appearing slightly worried, which was difficult for him as he was generally a very relaxed sort of guy. You could tell by the amount of ethnic beads he wore.

  Steve had been carrying a file
with a full report on the Bunty’s death and lobbed it over to Jill. It slapped on the table.

  “Easy there,” said Jill, “Merlyn gave me this table for my sixteenth birthday back when I was Artorius.”

  “Sorry dude. It’s just that Winkle guy gets me a bit jittery you know?”

  “Don’t sweat it, it’ll all come good in the end. So, Shoop’s gone be lookin’ us up soon is he?”

  “Looks likely.”

  “Bummer!”

  “Yeah, wadya wanna do?”

  “Well, I think someone should get over to Jeeves’ place and get him to safety. Once Shoop tracks Bunty down, Jeeves’ place will be the first place he goes. It might be a good idea to get some removal guys down there and clear out his vault as well. There’s a lot of telling stuff in there.”

  “Gotcha, I’ll get some guys onto it.”

  “Looks like we might have an eventful few weeks on our hands, if all goes well that is,” Jill turned to Bob, “is everyone ready for the unexpected?”

  “With you around baby, we couldn’t be anything else.”

  “Cool. Well let’s just roll with the punches and see what treats the universe has in store for us. Would you like a cup of tea Steve, you look parched.”

  “Well, I really should get these guys down to Jeeves’ place.”

  “Oh come on, stay, we’ve got plenty of time before Mr Winkle gets around to finding Jeeves’ vault. I can tell you that Moses story again.”

  “Where are you up to?” enquired Steve getting a little excited.

  “She was just about to shine her torch on the bush to catch Moses’ attention.” said Bob.

  “Oh all right, carry on with the yarn and I’ll put the kettle on.” Steve wondered over to a small table at the edge of the room on which rested a kettle, a large variety of herbal teas and some very big mugs. “Good thinking with the torch Jill, the bush burned but didn’t disintegrate, it’s genius for a last minute improv’.”

  “Oh please, you’ll make me blush.” Jill blushed a little under her dark skin then continued with her story, “So, as I was saying, all Moses’ people were getting well out of hand. They’d started off well but I felt that they needed a little nudge in the right direction. So I left a few hints that Moses should be going for a walk up a mountain, grabbed my megaphone and spotlight and waited for him on top of Mount Sinai…”

  Chapter 4

  The Dream and the Priory

  Shoop was looking at a room full of what he would call “Hippy crap”. There were tie-dyed batiks on the wall, an old knackered guitar resting precariously on a salvaged armchair, porcelain reconstructions of Jim Morrison and psychedelic posters involving hemp plants. All these were bound together with the sickeningly potent stench of too many cheap incense sticks, a bunch of which were sprouting from a clay model of a dragon like arrows in general Custer’s back. There was so many sticking out of the poor creature that it was almost completely hidden by the mounds of ash.

  The room was ill lit with a few candles and had a single ceiling light dangling over a small round table in the middle of the room. The lamp threw a soft, narrow field of light onto the dark red velvet tablecloth. Shoop found himself wondering why they would need a candle on the table as well as light from above, but then, he reasoned, hippies never made much sense at the best of times and he promptly filed it in the “weird things hippies do and shouldn’t be understood!” section of his brain. Three people sat around the table with hands linked, swaying with sickening ethereal conviction.

  “Is there anybody there?” asked one of the women at the table vacantly leaking the words into the air, apparently trying to push her voice past the dimensions between life and death. Shoop could tell that the “weird things that hippies do!” portion of his brain was going to be receiving an awful lot of information over the course of the farce he was watching.

  Before long Shoop got bored of watching the hippies and looked around the room a bit.

  He was slightly perturbed by how big everything appeared to be. The doors were the height of buildings and the hippies were giants, then it occurred to him that maybe it wasn’t that the room and everything in it was very big, but that perhaps he was just very small. He looked down at his hands and saw ten chubby little digits protruding from his normally bony hands. On further inspection of himself he was alarmed to find that he was wearing dungarees and small red patent leather buckled shoes.

  All of a sudden he understood what was going on. He was in the dream again. The same dream that had been haunting him for fifty years. Every time he fell asleep it would creep up on him. Every night it would confuse him. Every night he would be bemused by the huge room and the pointless candle on the red velvet table cloth, and every night he, after realising that he was dreaming, would wish that he was his normal size so that he could give the protagonists of the scene a good stiff kicking.

  He didn’t know exactly how old he was in the dream, maybe four or five years old at the most, but he remembered knowing, even at such a tender age, that hippies were morons, even if they were his parents, and that all they needed was a nice big fat wake-up call. As an adult he’d discovered that a severe pounding usually served amply as a wake up bell on these sorts of people, but he couldn’t affect his will in the dream, he couldn’t give them what he thought they deserved. He was too small and powerless, a feeling he absolutely despised

  Being in the dream was frustrating for Shoop. He had the mind to do what he wanted to do, but not the body. He had no control over anything other than his own sleeping brain. He was nothing more than a spectator inside the body of the boy and had no control over the wobbly, toddling, angry little creature. He looked on, through the eyes of a child, with a mix of bemusement and pity for all the poor deluded people in the room.

  “Is there anybody there?” came the question again.

  She repeated the phrase again and again to no avail. No cold winds blew through the room, no furniture flew around, no voices whispered their way through from other realms. It was a shambles.

  This went on for a while and the boy Shoop became interested in a small piece of fluff that he’d found on the floor and began tasting it as Shoop the man watched on feeling a little queasy.

  “Is there anybody there?” The two people sitting with the woman were beginning to sway a little less and gave each other worried sideways glances. They’d stepped into this situation completely convinced that something would happen. They’d been told that if they had even the smallest of doubts then it wouldn’t work. They had been told that doubt tended to block the ether and that if they held any doubt in them, then the spirits wouldn’t be able to get through. Of course it was a little difficult not to doubt after thirty-seven unsuccessful attempts but then what could you do?

  The young couple were determined to find some meaning in the universe, especially since they’d done everything they thought that they should’ve done to raise a sweet, calm, well centred baby, so it was very disappointing to them to see him slowly grow into a sadistic little cretin. They needed answers.

  The boy Shoop didn’t care about meaning in the universe, he just cared about the fact that his piece of fluff tasted like courgette. Even at five or so years old, he knew that fluff didn’t usually taste like courgette. He’d tasted a lot of fluff in his time and it usually tasted like twiglets, not Courgette.

  The other thing that he cared about, when he wasn’t wondering about fluff, was his hamster. He loved his hamster more than anything in the world. His hamster made sense to him. His hamster didn’t smoke things from large cylindrical pipes like his mum and dad did. His hamster didn’t sit around tables for nights on end trying to contact things that couldn’t be seen and were most probably not being seen for a damn good reason. The way that Shoop saw it, either these things that couldn’t be seen were not being seen because they just weren’t there, or they weren’t being seen because they thought that his hippy dope-head parents weren’t worth the effort.

  Shoop believed
a little of both.

  His hamster didn’t try and make him act nice to people all the time and force him to try and see deeper meanings in the universe the way his parents did.

  He didn’t really get on with his parents. He thought they were a bit unhinged. They appeared to have one foot planted in some sort of imagined other realm where the wise and peaceful were said to hold their souls, and the other foot shakily wavering in the drug soaked mist of their version of the real world. It just wasn’t, to Shoop’s mind, the way things were supposed to be. He didn’t quite know how he was so sure that life wasn’t the way his parents said it was but he was sure none the less. At such a young age he should’ve been blindly adhering to his parent’s word as law, just like any other five year old but he could see through their daft hippy mist. Somehow Shoop had a will strong enough to know that the world with which he was presented was not, as most infants would believe, the absolute truth, but was in fact a stinking rancid pile of nonsensical hippy crap.

  Shoop was an exceptionally bright boy and went against everything that his parents wanted him to be from very early on. His parents saw his behaviour as rebellion for rebellions sake, which was something that they could understand because they had rebelled against their oppressive parents, but they didn’t know why they, as rebellious people, were being so vehemently rebelled against. They were of the opinion that “Surely they were the good guys?” and, as such, shouldn’t be experiencing any resistance.

  Shoop thought differently than his parents. He didn’t think that he was rebelling for the sake of it; in fact rebelling had absolutely nothing to do with it. He behaved the way he did because he thought his parents were pillocks. He thought everything they said and did was a pile of pretentious, self righteous, unrealistic, dribbling psychobabble and was not about to tow their line just because they wanted him to.

  For years they tried to lure him into the hippy fold, sometimes even angrily, which was always surprising because it took a hell of a lot for Shoop’s parents to loose their tempers. They thought that Shoop’s stubborn ability to disbelieve everything that they believed was downright stupidity on his behalf. They believed in freedom and love and above all the right for any man woman or child to be anything that they wanted to be, as long as it agreed with them. They absolutely believed that they were the good guys and that their way was the only way for human kind to be happy and peaceful.