by Pete Kahle
Scathach stepped forward, the point of the Gae Bolg aimed directly at the Pumpkin King’s rotund belly. She had him at her mercy. I couldn’t see how he was going to hold her off. One strike and he’d be boiled alive. I started to duck, expecting a hailstorm of fleshy pumpkin parts.
She went right to the edge of his muddy pool and the Gae Bolg couldn’t have been more than a few inches from his face.
Amazingly, he just grinned. He said something to her and for a moment neither Ariadne nor I could see his face, our vision blocked by Scathach’s form. She acted as if she was the one who’d been punctured by a spear, lurching back, almost falling. And, as if that didn’t take the goddam biscuit, she dropped the Gae Bolg. I got a look at her face and it was ashen with horror, her body shaking. Hell knows what he said, but we’d gone from triumph to disaster in a few syllables.
To confirm that we were all properly in the soup, a number of large shapes loomed over the standing stones, one of them squeezing between them to tower over us, bulbous but blind eyes gazing emptily on the scene below it – a Blind Gardener. It reached out with one of those absurdly elongated arms and flicked the Gae Bolg across the slabs, out of harm’s way. Ariadne eyed it as if she would make a play for it, but I whispered a warning to her not to touch it.
“What’s wrong with her?” she whispered back.
The Pumpkin King laughed, a sound like someone gargling phlegm. “It seems my little trap has well and truly been sprung. Nice to have Miss Carnadine and Mr Nightmare in my clutches, but dear Scathach was the prize I most coveted. I felt sure the romantic in her would respond to the call for help from two such star-crossed lovers. That is the expression, isn’t it? I know how much Scathach loves the Bard. And now I have three of you. Almost the full set.”
Ariadne and I glanced briefly at one another. We knew only too well what he was getting at. I had no time to puzzle out the how.
“I’ve long been an admirer of dear Molly Malloy, I admit it. Even someone as physically unique as I am has emotions, you know. Quite powerful desires. And a king should have a queen, don’t you think? Dear Molly, you would suit me so well. Your powers and mine, well, such an addition to the forces that arraign themselves against mankind. What a combination we will make.”
Scathach didn’t seem inclined to argue, still numbed by whatever he had said to her.
“We can make Samhain a really joyous occasion. Blood sacrifices and a wonderful wedding.”
A new sound broke out among the Boneless Men by the stones. It was a kind of hissing, high pitched and weird and it suggested pain. Something was among them, doing something very nasty to them. Ariadne and I watched the chaos unfold as a large black shape burst out from the collapsing ranks and leapt at the exposed upper thigh of the central Blind Gardener.
“Am I going crazy, or is that a panther?” said Ariadne.
I grinned. “Yeah. I’ll introduce you later. Unless I’m wide of the mark, that’s Caliban. Scathach’s familiar.” My eyes were glued to the muscular black beast as it ripped and clawed open the vegetable flesh of the Gardner. The Pumpkin King may have been smug about luring Scathach here, but he hadn’t bargained on Caliban joining the fun in extreme mode. The Blind Gardener opened its mouth soundlessly like a fish out of water and toppled over, shouldering into one of the tall stones, which itself collapsed under the impact like it had been hit by an express train, throwing the whole darn place into further utter confusion.
At least it had dragged Scathach out of her mental cave. She sprang back and retrieved the Gae Bolg. I gave Ariadne the other sword and pulled out my Berettas. The three former bodyguards looked bemused by all the sudden noise and movement, their guns wavering. It was all I needed - I let them have it, blowing all three of their grotesquely transformed heads into a pink mist. Ariadne used the twin blades to carve up a bunch of Boneless goons who’d woken up, rushed us and tried to pin us down.
The fallen Blind Gardner was thrashing about with its long limbs, doing more damage to the bunched Boneless Men than Ariadne and me combined. We’d have gone for the Pumpkin King, but he’d seen the way the wind was blowing and had started to submerge himself in his bed of mud, double quick time. I fired off a couple of rounds at him, but the bullets just whanged off his thick hide like golf balls off a rubber wall. For some reason, Scathach would not close in and use the Gae Bolg on him. My guess was he’d used some kind of hocus-pocus on her that had frozen her will to kill him.
At least she was otherwise mobile. “We must get away,” she called, pointing to the path I had climbed to get here and neither Ariadne nor I wasted any time in following her. With their King ducking for cover, the Boneless mob were about as coordinated as a bunch of chickens in a thunderstorm, getting tangled up with themselves rather than making a play to recover us. Behind us, evidently enjoying himself, Caliban ripped and tore a whole bunch of Boneless Men apart. It was no contest, like a ton of vegetables being run through the granddaddy of food processors. The whole place was a mess, but we had no time to watch it. We raced down the path and into the shadowed declivity.
“Would I be right in thinking you’ve got something in my bag for me? You have? Good. So, cover me for a moment,” said Ariadne, grabbing the bag off me and pulling out her Ninja gear. I grinned, but looked back to see Caliban slowly coming down the path, pausing only to slice up another Boneless Man or six. We had the upper hand, but there were a lot of those guys and hell knew what would be waiting for us down in the fields. Sooner or later they’d get their act together and likely bury us under sheer numbers.
Ariadne did a quick change, complete with mask and we followed Scathach down and beyond the narrow walls of the hill, surprised to find no reception committee waiting for us. Moments later, Caliban, still in his muck-spattered black panther form, joined us. The pursuit appeared to have thrown the towel in. Yeah, right.
“I don’t like it,” I said. “I mean, I do like it, but I smell a whole pack of rats. Why have they cried off?”
Scathach spat, and coming from her, even in warrior mode, it looked kinda out of character. Maybe the spell that had held her was properly snapped. “He won’t let us go, not without a fight. But he is afraid of the Gae Bolg.”
I wanted to ask her why the heck she hadn’t used the goddam thing and skewered him, but Caliban nudged me and I almost toppled over. He was urging us to follow him. Must be he knew a way out of here. I didn’t think heading back through the fields of pumpkin things was a good idea, so I was happy enough to comply with Caliban. We all were, so let him lead us around the base of the hill to another overgrown path.
We followed it, listening out for sounds of pursuit, but the entire place had fallen very silent, unnaturally so. It stayed that way as we went further and further away from the hill and reached the reed-choked banks of a river. It was no more than a few yards wide and on its far side the undergrowth was so rampant that it would have been impossible to penetrate it if we’d gone across. I wondered why Caliban had brought us to what looked like a dead end.
He was way ahead of me, though. He went along the bank and stood above something in the reeds. I checked it out and grinned back at the two women. “It’s a boat. Hell knows how it got here, but it’s usable. No oars, but we can use our hands.”
Scathach and Ariadne initially looked dubious, but I held the low craft steady and they got in it. Caliban sprang off into the undergrowth and moved along the bank in his own way. I got on board, a mite shakily, and pushed us off. Pretty soon we were drifting down the river, paddling the boat carefully. On the opposite bank, we could sense things in the tangled mass of overhanging greenery, but we went on unmolested.
“Where are we headed?” I said.
Scathach was nodding, as if reading some invisible signs. “This river runs into the bigger marsh and leads to the place where we entered this realm. We should reach it before the sun sets. Then I can open the gate back to our own world. However, we must expect the Pumpkin King to be waiting for us. He’ll not let
us slip through his grasp so easily. We have no more surprises for him. I was a fool to think he wasn’t expecting me.”
I could see to our left the rising slope of the endless fields of pumpkin plants and once more the distant shape of a slow lumbering Blind Gardener. If any of them were aware of us, they made no show of it. I still felt like a rat running along a pipe towards the rat catchers. The sky was darkening, even more moody and brooding than the landscape.
The river widened slightly. Scathach had us paddle the boat in to the shore and we found an area of more solid ground to disembark. I say solid, but it wobbled disconcertingly underneath us. Caliban emerged from a clump of reeds and led us in a zigzag towards an open expanse, beyond which we could see the river and what I took to be the place where we had first crossed it. I couldn’t see the stones below the surface, but I guess we needed the sunset for that. It seemed like we had maybe about an hour to kick our heels before that happened. I didn’t think we would get bored.
At first the air was pretty still, but after a while we heard a sound like the incoming waves of a tide, only this wasn’t the sea. The vegetable army was on the march, and we were surrounded on three sides as the pumpkin hordes moved in on us, this time with something more like a concerted effort. Our one advantage was that they wanted us alive, so my guess was they were going to close in and smother us to the point of unconsciousness and not beyond. Something to be thankful for. We arranged ourselves in an arc, backs to the river - Scathach, Ariadne, me and Caliban.
The lines of Boneless Men – thousands of them – drew up and halted no more than thirty yards from us. I tried not to think of the Alamo, Custer, General Gordon, that kind of inspiring scenario. It struck me that if this army did invade my world and start infesting the streets of New York, things were going to get very unpleasant indeed. I stopped thinking about Custer’s Last Stand and moved on to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I used to like that movie.
We waited, but things had gone very quiet. I could imagine what they were all waiting for. The Pumpkin King was about to make a grand entrance, although there was no sign of his coming among the massed ranks of his minions. That was because he was behind us.
Between us and the river, there was a muddy area with a narrow path running through it. The whole of it burst upwards like a small bomb had gone off underneath it, sending a rain of foul-smelling mud and twisted reed skywards. We just about ducked out of its way, turning to face whatever had caused the mess. No prizes for guessing it was the Big Pumpkin himself. His bloated body heaved itself up from the mire as though he had travelled here via some unwholesome underground system, a fat walrus emerging from a sea of mud.
He seemed even bigger than he had done on the hilltop, his gross arms steadying himself on a reed bank on either side, gently rocking like an overloaded barge. That grotesque face glared at us, lit from within by whatever weird magics sustained him.
“You left without even saying goodbye!” he called in that croaking voice, his thick tongue licking muck from his mouth.
Instinctively I aimed my two Berettas at him. I may not be able to blast him apart, but I was ready to try for an eye or two. He could go join his Blind Gardeners. Speaking of which, a few of them had added themselves to the ranks of the Boneless Men, just to even up the numbers.
Caliban snarled, claws revealed, scimitars in the fading light. I reminded myself not to call the guy ugly again. Most opponents would have shriveled up and crumpled when faced by the panther’s challenge, but the Pumpkin King completely ignored the big cat, moon-like eyes fixed on Scathach. Lust rippled and bubbled in those eyes in a way that made my flesh crawl, so I couldn’t imagine how she felt about it. She gripped the Gae Bolg and I was praying that this time she had a better hold of it. Maybe she’d had time to fortify her resolve. The way the King was drooling over her, she had enough incentive to do the deed. That or our bacon was cooked.
“There’s no need for unpleasantness,” said the Pumpkin King. “Let me suggest a compromise.”
Ariadne and I exchanged glances, although we were both coming from the same place. No compromises.
He turned to us. “Give me the witch, and you others can go back, unscathed. You came here to rescue Miss Carnadine,” he said to me. “So take her away in your shining armour. I’ll forget about the sacrifices. I’d be more than happy to make do with a royal wedding and its conjugal rights.” His eyes beamed even more brightly with lust and I could see Scathach shudder.
Okay, girl, I was thinking. You got a second bite of the cherry. Now would be a really good time to rush forward, get a firm grip on the killer lance and drive the goddam thing into the Pumpkin King’s overblown belly.
She did take a few steps towards that palpitating mound of vegetable flesh, but, just like before, she hesitated. Ariadne also edged forward and my guess was, she would use those twin blades of hers if Scathach wasn’t prepared to cut the mustard. Okay, so I’d go for the eyes. Between us we ought to do some serious damage, even if we couldn’t render the Pumpkin King into mash.
It was like something – a spell, a curse, whatever – had got to Scathach. Her face twisted with mixed emotions – horror, fear, pity maybe. She drew back and I was about to open fire, thinking maybe the least I could do was break this crippling spell, but Ariadne suddenly nudged my left arm. The gun went off but the bullet tore harmlessly into the upper atmosphere. I gaped at her.
“Don’t shoot him,” she said under her breath.
What the hell? Was this curse getting to her as well? “Hey, he’s the bad guy, right?”
“We have to let Scathach do it. I’ll explain later.” She said it with a sort of catch in her voice and I wondered what in blazes was going on here. It was a girl thing, obviously, and I was just the hired help. But we needed some action or Scathach was going to find herself up to her neck in not so wedded bliss. Mind you, some girls like that kind of thing.
Maybe the sound of the gunshot got through to Scathach as she was stepping forward again, the Gae Bolg held out in front of her. The Pumpkin King was unmoved, even swelling his breast as if to welcome a thrust. The weapon rose, drew back, but it still wavered. It was all I could do not to shout out encouragement.
The glee on the face of the Pumpkin King was almost more than I could bear, but that expanded face changed, as if the monster had already been stabbed. The features writhed – it was like someone, someone huge, was pulling the flesh this way and that, clawing at it. It seemed like there were two faces there, but I couldn’t make out the details because the whole body started to roll this way and that, like it was reacting to a whole series of electric shocks. It convulsed, thrashing about in the mud, which again spewed out of the bath, this way and that.
The Pumpkin King looked like he was fighting himself, clubbing at his own body, punching himself, rolling and writhing. It would have been a bundle of laughs if it hadn’t been horrifying. Scathach was staring in horror. This whole ludicrous performance obviously meant a whole lot more to her than it did to me.
“Do it! Do it now!” I heard the words, a voice a few octaves higher than the Pumpkin King’s, squeezed out of his mouth as his inner turmoil threatened to boil over. It was a plea to Scathach, but she was shaking her head.
Ariadne pointed across the river. The sunlight, such as it was, was starting to weaken noticeably. Sunset had crept up on us and I realised with a jolt that we didn’t have a lot of time to get out of here. Ariadne shouted to Scathach, who finally responded. She seemed almost relieved to have something else to do.
“Go!” called the voice from within the Pumpkin King. “I can’t hold him for much longer!”
Scathach wrenched herself away and was about to lead us to the river, when the Boneless Men abruptly burst into life, like they’d figured out we were going to make a break for it. As one, they surged in and within moments the four of us were engaged in a no-holds-barred, no rules battle, Caliban ripping and tearing into the enemy, Ariadne likewise using her swords. I was happ
y to blast away with the Berettas – and the spare Magnum I’d taken from one of the bodyguards I’d dispatched. I knew, though, that I only had so many bullets.
Ariadne was wise to it, too, and tossed me one of the swords. It wasn’t the first time we’d stood back to back, using them to dispatch an ugly mob with murder or worse on its mind. I was glad to see that Scathach had no problems using the Gae Bolg against the Boneless Men, who came at us with no regard for their own safety, and light blazed up as she burned a path through them. We had to fight for every last inch of ground, and as we did so, the frantic struggles in the mud pit reached some kind of crescendo, the details blotted out in a mud storm.
It was a long, bloody haul to the river bank, and as we got there the sun was about to disappear. Rays of waning light lanced across the river and picked out the underwater stones. Caliban led the way across, jumping lithely on to the other bank and slipping into the thick forest there. Ariadne pushed me over next and followed hot on my heels, with Scathach, now fully revived and handing out holy hell to the pursuing hordes, bringing up the rear. As we all reached the far bank, she bent down and plunged the Gae Bolg’s point into the water.
It churned and boiled, clouds of steam rising. The Boneless Men held back on the bank we’d left, some of them stumbling into the water, immediately fried alive. I couldn’t see what happened to the Pumpkin King – numerous mounds of gelatinous muck obscured everything. Maybe he sank back into his mud bath.
Once the four of us were in the forest, back on the winding path, the sudden silence closed in, like we’d slammed a great door shut. There was no indication of pursuit. If there was a gate back there, it had closed, at least for now. Sealed by the sunset, I guessed. We’d made it by the seat of our pants.
“It’s good to be back,” I said. “But I kind of get the feeling this isn’t over. That is one very big hornet’s nest we’ve just kicked over and man, those hornets are very pissed.”
