The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  Des allowed himself to be led through the cavernous space. It was all wooden, all very dark. “Mind the steps down,” said his guide.

  “Could we, perhaps, turn the light on?” Des stepped down half a dozen steps, crossed a plane and then stepped up half a dozen steps. “I’ll need to have more light to work in, sir,” he said. “To see where to lay the traps. I’m right in thinking we’re dealing with rats?”

  “It’s out here,” said Wulf, pushing at a wooden door on the far side of the building. “In the garden?”

  “The garden?” repeated Des. “Really? We don’t usually deal with garden pests.”

  The door swung away and daylight fell on Des’s face again. Standing amongst the unmown grass was a huge creature, half as high again as a man; a beast of malign and potent hideousness. Its fatly muscled shoulders and arms were covered in tightly interlocking chainmail-like scales. Its hands were tipped with blood-red claws. Its head had the texture of a carved and sanded lump of gristle. Gleaming red eyes glinted beneath its snub-browed forehead. As it breathed its reptilian lips parted just enough to display catlike teeth, sharp as thorns.

  “Right,” said Des, apprising the situation. “Not rats, then?”

  “Did I say rats?” asked Wulf, nervously.

  The beast man looked at them both with malignant evil in its eyes.

  “You did, sir, yes. On the phone you said rats. Definitely rats you said.”

  “I’m not sure I did . . . I mean, it wasn’t a very good line . . . phone line I mean . . .”

  “To be precise,” said Des, “you said wasps first off. I distinctly remember. Wasps, you said. When I asked how many, you changed your mind and said rats.”

  “No, I’m sure I mentioned the huge scaly beast-man Grendel in the garden,” said Wulf, keeping the Pest Controller’s body between himself and the creature. “Didn’t I?”

  “No, sir,” said Des.

  “Must have slipped my . . .” said Wulf. “Slipped my . . . Look, I definitely meant to. I really did.” The beast man grunted, and his shoulders twitched. Wulf jumped and let out a little scream, half under his breath.

  “I came with my rats case,” said Des sternly. “You told me rats, and rats is what I’ve come prepared for.”

  “Well,” said Wulf, “there may well be some rats. In fact I’m pretty sure there are some rats – in the hall, somewhere. Nibbling at the sacks of grain. Squeaking. That sort of thing.”

  “And do you want me to exterminate these rats?” asked Des.

  “Well you could do that, you could do,” said Wulf. “Be nice to get rid of them, always scrabbling about. But, well, to be honest with you, Mr Hannigan, now that you’re here, I wonder if you couldn’t . . . you know . . .” He finished the sentence by nodding at the Grendel.

  “Well, I ain’t got the right equipment for Grendels,” said Hannigan. “I brought the rats case, and just to be on the safe side I brought an insect kit as well. But that’d hardly do for a Grendel, now, would it?”

  “Oh,” said Wulf, in a disappointed tone of voice.

  “A Grendel,” said Des, in a slow and determined voice, “not being a insect, do you see.”

  “I suppose not. I suppose it’s not. It’s just that – since you’re here, I thought that maybe . . . maybe you could just polish off the Grendel . . .”

  “I can definitely do yer rats for you,” said Des firmly.

  “Let me be absolutely honest, Mr, er, Mr Hannigan. The rats don’t bother me overmuch. They’re not nice, I don’t deny it. The squeaking and scrabbling about, that’s not nice. But, to speak frankly, the rats aren’t the ones bursting into my hall into the middle of the night, devouring my men in groups of three and running out leaving trails of blood all over the floor.”

  “Hhhrrrgg,” said the Grendel, shifting its weight from one hideously beclawed foot to another. Wulf flinched again, and pulled back to the doorframe.

  “You’re supposed to deal with these yerself,” said Des, tutting. “I mean, speaking strictly. Haven’t you a sword?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Wulf. “Sword, yes, right. Well obviously that’s a good idea. Only, well, you know. I may have strained my shoulder in the, well, mead-drinking competitions we have. In the hall.”

  “You’ve strained your shoulder,” repeated Des.

  “Some of the jugs of foaming mead are terribly, well, big. Heavy. The constant lifting of jug from table to mouth . . .” He mimed the action. At the motion of his arm the Grendel grunted and shifted its weight back from foot to foot. Wulf yelped and shrank further back. “Besides,” Wulf continued, his voice more high-pitched and his delivery more gabbly, “besides my sword has got a bit rusty, a tad rusty . . .”

  “You’re supposed to oil it and wrap it in a rag, like,” said Des, schoolma’amishly.

  “I know, and I feel simply terrible, I can assure you . . . it’s frankly negligent, I know . . . but, under the circumstances . . . isn’t there anything you can do?”

  Des sighed. “You called the council?”

  “They refused to come. Said it wasn’t their responsibility. Refused flat out.”

  Des sighed again. “Look,” he said. “Tell you what I’ll do. I can leave a couple of my traps about. Only don’t tell my supervisor I done this, or he’ll have my guts for garters and no mistake.”

  “Thank you,” Wulf gushed. “Thank you, thank you so much. So these traps – they’ll . . . um . . . How do they work?”

  Des unbuckled his bag and went into his spiel. “I’d advise you to keep all domestic pets, cats and other animals, out of the house for at least forty-eight hours. King and Kegan can accept no liability for death of same, should they ingest any of the arsenic patty.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” said Wulf, keeping a wary eye on the beast. The sun was sinking slowly down over the grassy downs beyond the hall; shadows were thickening and lengthening; a ruddy tint was creeping into the green of leaf and blade. Soon it would be dark, and then the Grendel would wake from its torpor, and become a nightmare of pouncing claws and fangs and an anaconda grip of steely musculature. “And this arsenic will . . . will kill it?”

  “Oooo, shouldn’t think so,” said Des. “Big strong Grendel like this? Nah. No, what would be good is if you could, you know, persuade it to stick its head in – you know, tempt it, taunt it, something like that – persuade it to stick its head in one of them. Then when it’s stuck in there, just –” he made a chopping gesture with his free hand “– just chop it off with a axe.”

  “Axe,” said Wulf, backing away through the door into the darkness of the hall. “Excellent. Thank you so much, Mr – Mr – Mr Hannigan. You’ve been – eek!” This last noise was occasioned by the Grendel shaking itself suddenly, growling and taking a step forward. Des shook his head. Good half hour before dusk; nothing to worry about just yet. Some people get so jittery.

  2

  Des was halfway through the crossword and thinking of an anagram for “what” when the phone rang. He picked it up and cradled it between his left ear and shoulder. “Thaw” wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t fit with the “horrible” of seven across.

  “King and Kegan Pest Control,” he said. “How can I help?”

  “Mr Hannigan?” came the squeaky voice. “Is that you? This is Wulf here. Do you remember, you were round ours yesterday? Laid some traps down for me?”

  “I remember,” said Des. “Rats, wasn’t it?”

  “It was more along the lines of,” said Wulf in his jittery voice, “a Grendel. We had a slight Grendel problem. If you remember, I explained it to you. A certain amount of slaying, a touch of devouring and running out leaving blood spatters everywhere. Just a bit, at night only.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Did you get the little critter?”

  “He stuck his arm in, is what he did,” said Wulf. “Not his head like you said. An arm. Still, we managed, six of us together, to chop it off. Then he ran away.”

  “That’ll do for him,” said Des with authority. “They’r
e rubbish without their arms, those Grendels. He’ll probably lie down in a field somewhere and bleed to death.”

  “We were rather hoping something like that has happened. But since then we’ve another problem.”

  Des’s heart sank. “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “It’s a Grendel’s-mother.”

  “Oh blimey.”

  “I know. I know, it’s awful. She’s much bigger than her son, and she’s active in daytime and nightime both. The slaying is much worse than it used to be. The body count is more than twice what it was before. Morale is fairly low, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “I’m sorry Mr Wulf, there’s really not much I can do. For Grendel’s-mothers you need heavy lifting gear, and we ain’t licensed. You could call the council . . .”

  “Please, Mr Hannigan. You’ve got to help us.”

  “My hands,” said Des, stretching in his chair, “are tied, Mr Wulf.”

  “But your guarantee . . .”

  “Don’t apply in this case, Mr Wulf,” said Des smoothly. ‘It only covers the removal of the pest specified on the contract. The Grendel’s-mother is a totally different . . .”

  “I’m begging you, Mr Hannigan.”

  Des paused. He was too soft hearted. He knew it. “Well, Mr Wulf,” he said. “I’m afraid my hands really are tied. I’m not able to tell you – you got a pen there?”

  “Pen?” Wulf sounded confused.

  “Yes, sir, I cannot advise you to pick up a pen, even to write down a hypothetical set of instructions, of the sort I’m not allowed to pass on to you regarding the extermination of a Grendel’s-mother infestation.”

  “I don’t understand, Mr Hannigan.”

  Des sighed. “Pick up a pen, Mr Wulf.”

  There was a pause. “Right, yes,” said Wulf. “I’ve got a pen.”

  “Now, I didn’t tell you to do that.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Des looked at the office door. His supervisor, Mr Alfred, was out on a job – the burial of four horses and a chariot under a patio feature – but he could be back any time. He really didn’t want to get into hot water with Alf. He should have just turned this Wulf down flat, washed his hands of the whole affair.

  “You really did,” Wulf was saying, earnestly. “I heard you say quite distinctly . . .”

  “I’m also not telling you,” said Des, “to chase the Grendel’s-mother back to the nearby lake in which it lives.”

  “Does it live in a lake?”

  “Nine times out of ten, if you trace an infestation of Grendel’s-mothers back to their nests you’ll find them at the bottoms of lakes,” said Des. “Now, I didn’t just tell you that.”

  “Mr Hannigan,” said Wulf, rather primly. “I don’t know if you think you’re playing some sort of game with me, but I’ll tell you straight out I’m finding it rather confusing. You did just tell me that.”

  “I think you’re misunderstanding, sir,” said Des. He could hear the sound of a van pulling up in the drive outside the main portacabin. It was probably Alf. Des dropped his voice and cradled the telephone receiver closer to his mouth. “When I say I didn’t tell you that,” he hissed, “I don’t mean that I literally didn’t tell you. It’s my way of informing you that I’m passing on information regarded as illicit by my employers, and for which therefore I require a plausible deniability. In effect I am saying that, in the event that my supervisor calls you and asks you, ‘Did Mr Hannigan tell you such-and-such,’ you can reply, ‘No, he didn’t’.”

  “But you have been telling me such-and-such,” pointed out Wulf.

  “I may have been, I concede that, but immediately afterwards I have said that I haven’t just told you that.”

  It took Wulf long moments to digest and decipher this. “So the fact that you say ‘I didn’t just tell you x’ is supposed to make it legitimate to repeat that you didn’t tell me x, even if you did tell me x?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you see,” said Wulf, warming to his topic, “this is my problem: your supervisor is unlikely to ask me, ‘Did Mr Hannigan tell you that he had told you about x?’ He’s much more likely to ask, more simply, ‘Did Hannigan tell you about x?’ In the case of the former interrogative, the fact that you had appended a ‘I didn’t tell you x’ to your previous telling me of x might indeed give me the sophistical loophole of denial. But in the latter case . . .”

  “I think we’re getting bogged down here,” interrupted Des. “Do you want me to tell you how to get rid of your Grendel’s-mother or not?”

  “Aren’t you going to come round and sort it yourself, Mr Hannigan?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  The pause that followed lasted exactly long enough for a man to give up a fondly held hope. “Oh,” said Wulf. “That’s a disappointment.”

  “Now, do you want me to tell you how to get rid of the infestation yourself? I have to tell you, Mr Wulf, that when my supervisor comes through the door here in the office I’m putting the phone down, because I’m not supposed to be talking to you about this. We’re not licensed, you see?”

  “Go on then,” said Wulf, in a defeated voice.

  “Trace the Grendel’s-mother back to its lake. It’ll probably be the one nearest your domicile. Then you need to follow it under the water, and on the lakebed . . .”

  “What – sorry? I’m to go underwater?”

  “Yes. Take your sword. Don’t forget it, or you’ll be well jiggered.”

  “How long will I be down there?”

  “Ooh, half an hour minimum. Depends on your swordarm. The problem is swinging the sword under water. It’s a pig swinging a sword under water.”

  “There’s a pig?”

  “There’s an expression, that’s what the pig is,” said Des, becoming more exasperated. “Is a way of saying it’s hard work swinging a sword under water.”

  “But how am I going to breathe?”

  Des paused. “You what?”

  “I mean – should I rent scuba gear, or . . .”

  “Hold your breath, I would. Or get an aqualung, if you really want to, but that’s only going to push the cost up.”

  “Get,” said Wulf, scribbling the words as he spoke them, “An. Aqualung. Right. Got that. What next?”

  “Next you chop its head off. Be sure’n carry it up out of the lake with you. Pin it over the mantelpiece, would be my advice.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Only I was wondering . . .”

  Wearily: “What, Mister Wulf?”

  “Well, I was wondering if it had to be the head? Having managed to cut off the Grendel’s arm – which amputation killed the monster, after all – I’m thinking, perhaps I might just cut off the Grendel’s-mother’s arm too. That might be the easier option.”

  “I’m sure that would work just fine too Mr Hannigan. I really have to go now. I can hear my Supervisor coming up the portacabin steps.”

  3

  Much later that day, in a slow half-hour between jobs, Des found his mind wandering back to the Grendel infestation. It was a rare enough call-out, that. When Alf stepped out for a crafty puff, Des picked up the phone and rang his friend Dave from X-Terminate Inc. They exchanged the long-time-no-see variety of pleasantry for a few minutes.

  “Dave,” he said. “I’ve a question. Grendels.”

  Dave sucked in a fierce breath over his teeth. It sounded like a slashed tyre deflating. “What about them?”

  “Had a client with a infestation of Grendels,” said Des.

  “Thought your firm didn’t have the licence?”

  “Well, strictly speaking, we don’t, no. Strictly speaking. Speaking strictly I’d have to say, no, the licence for Grendel extermination, we don’t have. But I didn’t want to leave this geezer in the lurch, did I? There he was with a steaming great Grendel standing on his back lawn.”

  “Ooh, you gotta be careful with Grendels,” said Dave, in a warning tone.

  “They
’re all right provided you cut their heads off, I thought.”

  “Yeah, granted, cut their head off, you deal with them. But you want to make sure it is the head. If it’s the arm, then you got problems.”

  “You have.”

  “Yep. Cut off an arm or a leg and you prompt a rapid cellular regeneration and they turn into Grendel’s-mothers.”

  Des swallowed. “You don’t say?” he replied.

  “And they’re buggers to get rid of, Grendel’s-mothers,” said Dave. “You got to track them down to the lakebed and everything.”

  “Yes, I heard that. Under the water. Still, a beheading will dispose of them, no?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s true. Provided you separate the head and body. But, eeesh,” (this last sound was an inexpressibly eloquent noise formed by drawing the mouth very widely and half-breathing, half-grunting through the slot). “If you chop an arm off of a Grende’s-mother, well, you don’t want to know.”

  “What happens then?”

  “Reduplicated rapid cellular regeneration. Before you know it the whole property will be absolutely over-run with galumphing great fire-breathing dragons. Very nasty. Very nasty indeed.”

  “Oh,” said Des.

  “Still,” said Dave. “You wouldn’t be so daft as to cut off a Grendel’s-mother’s arm, now would you?”

  “Course not,” said Des, weakly. “Thanks for that, Des. I’ll speak to you soon.” He hung up, sat back in his chair, and looked out the window, wondering whether he needed to worry. He’d definitely told Wulf to cut off the monster’s head. Definitely. And that, surely, is what he’d do. There’d be no further complications, that would end it. He smiled, and let a breath out. Des, he told himself, you worry too much. He got up, went over to the kettle, and set it boiling. Nice cup of tea, he thought. Draw a line under the whole business. After all, he thought, chuckling a little to himself, he wouldn’t want this case to drag on at all, would he? “You’re a droll cuss, Des Hannigan,” he told himself, as he popped a teabag into the cup. And just at that moment he heard, distant but clearly audible, carried on the cold breeze from the direction of the lake, the unmistakeable, tiger-roar-run-through-the-tape-player-backwards howl of a young dragon tasting the air for the first time.