Mrs. Merrynether reached in and gently patted Cornelius’s side. He lifted his head to look at her. A moment later, Joe saw the barbed tail suspended just behind the bars. The spikes jutted out in complicated clumps pointing in all directions.
“How old did you say Cornelius is?”
“Sixteen.”
“And how many quills are they born with?”
“Six hundred.”
“He has five hundred ninety-eight. That would make him six months old.”
“That’s not possible. Manticores don’t have any black markings on their hide until a year. And anyway, how could you know that? You looked at his tail for only a few seconds.”
“I have a way with numbers. I can see things quicker and work things out in my head faster than most people.” Joe looked at the floor. “It gets me in trouble at school sometimes.”
“The boy could be right, Ronnie. Those barbs are poisonous. What if Cornelius is sick because he has not fired enough of his quills?”
“My goodness,” said Mrs. Merrynether, snapping her fingers and jumping out of the chair. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
She stared again into the manticore’s eyes. “Don’t worry, Cornelius. I know just what to do. Heinrich? Bring me my notepad. It’s time for Joseph’s next shopping list.”
FIVE
Reginald Bacon forced a smile that was more like a grimace, as though he’d just eaten a slug and pretended to like it. He spoke with a hoarse voice as he leaned over the counter. “I’m very sorry, Joe, but we’re all out of meat today. There’s no steak, no beef, no lamb, no chicken, no pork, not even any fish. It’s all gone.”
Joe smiled back at the shopkeeper, unable to keep himself from counting how many unshaved follicles greyed his haggard face.
“Mr. Bacon?” yelled a girl from the stockroom behind him. “Angus won’t help me with the eggs.”
“Not touchin’ no eggs, sir,” squawked a boy. “They gots spit on ’em.”
Mr. Bacon sucked in a long breath as if through a straw and clamped his eyes shut. Joe guessed he was counting to ten. “Excuse me a moment, would you, Joe? We’ve had a . . . disturbance this morning, and those two are about as much use as a pair of solar-powered foghorns.”
Mr. Bacon turned to exit through the back door and collided with a spiky-haired teen in dark blue overalls.
“Sorry, sir,” said the boy, clutching a hair dryer and a soggy black book. “I found this under the fridge. Soaked in milk, it was. Tried to dry it out with this hair dryer, but it’s gone a bit—”
“Oh, for the love of . . . Put it down, Angus, and help Jennie with those eggs, would you? We’ve got a customer, and I need to get everything in order before the next delivery. And don’t forget the police will be here in half an hour too.”
“Told you, sir. Ain’t touching them eggs.” Angus leaned closer. “We reckons that monster licked ’em.”
“I don’t care if the thing laid them, boy. Just put them in the larder, sweep the yard, and get that stock check done.”
“But—”
“No buts, Angus. Just get back in there and earn your pay.”
Angus slumped and shuffled back through the door.
Mr. Bacon drew another labored breath, turned to Joe, and opened his mouth. A cacophony of clattering pans, accompanied by a thunder of falling boxes, stopped him. He shut his eyes again as twin screams followed.
“Sunday staff,” he whispered apologetically to Joe. “I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t go anywhere. I’m sure there’s—”
Crash!
“Some other—”
Boom!
“Items on—”
More screams.
“That list I can help you with.”
Mr. Bacon rushed out the back, yelling as he went.
Joe took another look at the crumpled paper in his hand.
3 bottles of Irish whiskey
4 bottles of red wine (preferably Chilean)
3 kilograms of finest steak
1 bag of sugar
1 large church candle
1 lightbulb (filament removed)
1 pocket mirror
“A lightbulb without a filament?” Joe mused. “Why?”
Mr. Bacon’s voice exploded from the stockroom. “Are you holding what I think you’re holding? Because if you are, Angus, you’d better get rid of it right now before I—”
“Don’t shout at him,” protested the girl’s voice. “You know how it affects his acne.”
“Not there, boy! In the bin outside!”
Joe flinched as the sound of smashing crockery drowned out the boy’s whining response.
The shopkeeper returned to the counter, shaking his head. “So sorry. Been a bit of a stressful morning, and Angus has a habit of bringing out the worst in me at times like this.”
“Should I come back a bit later?”
“No, no! There’s not much more they can break out back, so it’ll probably all calm down in a couple of minutes anyway.”
“So what happened? Was there an accident or something? Angus was talking about a monster.”
“Monster, me granny!” Mr. Bacon scoffed. “Everyone’s been blaming the Beast of Upton Puddle for everything these past few weeks. Nope, I reckon it was a breakin—a rather bad one too. We got here this morning to open up shop, and the stockroom was a right mess—like a tornado had hit the place. Door was ripped clean off its hinges.”
“They must have been pretty strong to do that.”
“Well, Angus swears blind he saw the Beast. Says a huge hairy man or a bear was running up the path toward the forest with a big lamb chop in its mouth, and then it jumped into a big hole. Got a big imagination, that boy, and he’s as thick as a duck plucker’s wick. Last summer he thought he saw aliens in the oven, until he remembered he was baking gingerbread men in there.”
“Easy mistake to make.” Joe chuckled.
Mr. Bacon rolled his eyes. “Well, let’s take another look at that list of yours, shall we? I’m sure you don’t want to hear me jabbering on all day.”
Joe passed the list to Mr. Bacon.
The shopkeeper flattened out the creases and examined the words. “The sugar, wine, whiskey, and mirror are no problem, and I have one candle left in stock, but what the devil does she want with a lightbulb that doesn’t have a filament?”
“Search me.”
“Well, I can sell you a lightbulb, but good luck with getting the workings out of it without breaking it.”
“I’ll figure something out.”
Mr. Bacon nodded thoughtfully. “I bet you will too. You’re a bright little spark, aren’t you?”
With the commotion in the stockroom and the arrival of the police ten minutes early, Mr. Bacon took quite a while to work his way through the list, so Joe returned to Merrynether Mansion much later than he expected.
Back in the vault, he found Mrs. Merrynether inside the manticore’s enclosure. She was stroking the creature gently along its side. A purr gargled from its cavernous chest.
“Is he any better?” asked Joe, struggling with several carrier bags.
“No change, I’m afraid. Did you manage to get everything?”
“Mr. Bacon’s totally out of meat. I got everything else, though. Not sure where else we can get steak on a Sunday unless we go outside the village.”
Heinrich emerged from one of the other enclosures, hiding his features with the hood of his coat. “Here. Let me help you with those.”
The giant man relieved Joe of his bags and skulked away.
“Be sure to bring the candle with you,” Mrs. Merrynether called.
“Of course.”
“He has no meat at all?” Mrs. Merrynether asked Joe, leaving the manticore and stepping out of the enclosure. “He’s running a supermarket, and he doesn’t have any meat?”
“He had a break-in. The whole place is upside down.”
She tapped a finger against her lips and scanned the floor as if the answer might pres
ent itself in the concrete.
Joe watched her, considering whether this was the right opportunity to pursue one of his suspicions. “One of his Sunday staff thinks the Beast of Upton Puddle did it.”
Mrs. Merrynether’s gaze flicked upward to meet Joe’s for an instant before she returned her attention to the floor.
“Do you think there are apes or bears in Ringwood Forest, Mrs. Merrynether?”
“Hmm, perhaps I could call Derek Sunderland over at Oakridge Farm. He might have some fresh meat.”
“It’s just that I saw something in the woods last week. I couldn’t see it very well, but it looked too big to be even a bear. And bears don’t live in England, do they? Except maybe in zoos or . . . or places like this.”
The tiny woman placed her hands on her hips. “I beg your pardon. Are you fishing, young man?”
“Well, I . . .”
“If you have something to say, say it. Let’s see if you’ve got the gumption.”
He could almost feel himself shrinking to the size of a gnome. “It’s just that . . . you said yourself Cornelius was very dangerous, and for all I know, you could have other creatures in here that are even worse. What if . . . what if one of them—?”
“Escaped?”
“Yes.” Joe gulped.
“Do you really think I would be irresponsible enough to allow that to happen?” She folded her arms and lifted her chin. “Well, do you, Joseph?”
“Go easy on him, Ronnie,” Heinrich said, shuffling from the shadows with five empty wine bottles. “I for one can understand his suspicions. We already have an inebriated cluricaun on the loose, after all.”
Mrs. Merrynether drew a long breath, released it slowly, and offered Joe an apologetic smile. “Heinrich’s right, of course. I should apologize. I’m worried about Cornelius, and I took it out on you. Do forgive me.”
Joe smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”
She nodded and squeezed his shoulder. “If there is a creature stalking Ringwood Forest, I’m afraid I have no idea what it is or how it came to be here, but I will tell you this: I’m not unmindful of what’s been happening in Upton Puddle, and I intend to get to the bottom of it. Now, we need to do something about our manticore. Heinrich?”
Heinrich had set up a workbench near the enclosure. A Bunsen burner fired its flickering blue flame onto the underside of a black ceramic bowl, and Joe watched as the tall man placed the church candle on it.
“That’ll take a minute or two to melt,” Mrs. Merrynether said. “I have no idea if this will work, but I’m not sure what else to try at the moment.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
Joe looked at the huge red beast sleeping in the enclosure. His paws twitched, and every so often, the cactus-like end of his tail stirred, making thin lines in the soil.
“I still can’t believe what I’m looking at.”
“You’d better get used to it. You’re likely to see other creatures far stranger than Cornelius in the weeks and months to come.”
“Stranger than a giant red cat with wings and a spiked club for a tail?”
The old woman smiled wistfully. “There are beasts in this world so bizarre and so fantastic they defy reason. Some are so terrifying they’d turn every hair on your head white if you just looked at them. Others are too beautiful to describe.
“Did you know, for example, there are colonies of creatures alive today that hide themselves away in great underground caverns? Fearsome, black monsters that spit acid and can crush any intruder twenty times their own size with scissorlike mandibles.
“And still other creatures with two sets of wings as delicate as paper-thin glass that communicate with each other by dancing. And when they aren’t doing that, they spend a great deal of their time producing a substance I find rather delicious on toast . . . I have a few jars at the back of this vault.”
Joe’s jaw was dropping lower with each word Mrs. Merrynether spoke. “Will I ever get to see any of those?”
“What? You’ve never set eyes on a common garden ant or a honey bee, lad?” She winked. “My point is that every creature is amazing. We’re just so familiar with them that eventually we forget to appreciate how magnificent they are.”
Joe smiled and nodded. “I didn’t know bees talked to each other by dancing, though!”
“The wax is ready,” Heinrich called.
“Good! Be careful, Heinrich. Cornelius is asleep, but he might not take kindly to a dose of hot wax.”
The huge man stepped inside the enclosure, knelt beside the manticore’s tail, and with gentle precision, he grasped it just below the spikes. Glancing at the tail and the beast’s head, Heinrich poured the wax carefully over a portion of the quills.
They all watched as the wax hardened.
A few tense seconds passed before Heinrich started prying the wax free. There was a soft crackling noise as a cluster of quills popped out from the manticore’s tail. “It’s working, Ronnie. A lot of them are coming free.”
“That’s good news.”
Still watching the sleeping animal, Heinrich stepped out of the enclosure, holding a formidable lump of thorny wax.
Mrs. Merrynether sat in the chair and sighed as she looked mournfully at the sleeping beast. “All we can do now is wait. Hold on, Cornelius. Hold on.”
SIX
Joe was distracted when he arrived home. Thoughts of the manticore and how it was suffering squeezed everything else out of his mind, and he traipsed from the porch and into the living room with a distant expression that caught not only his mum’s eye but his aunt’s too. His mum sat in one armchair talking on the phone, and his aunt sat in another clasping a copy of Wrestling Today in her chubby fingers.
As Joe slumped loudly onto the sofa, the pages of his aunt’s magazine flicked up and launched crumbs into the air. Hardened cake debris pitter-pattered against the glossy paper.
Joe smiled for an instant, mostly because of Aunt Rose’s look of surprise.
She licked one of her thumbs and set to work jabbing at each morsel so she could have another taste. “Waste not, want not,” she said with a sunshine grin taking over her podgy face.
Joe liked Aunt Rose. In truth, she wasn’t actually his aunt but such a close friend of the family that Joe’s mum had always called her that, and so had Joe. She was like a nightclub bouncer squashed into the body of a Victorian cook who had helped herself to a few too many currant buns over the years.
For as long as he could remember, Aunt Rose had always been around, looking out for him. When he was five years old, Aunt Rose took him to Mr. Bacon’s petting farm every Thursday afternoon. Joe would drive his toy tractor about the grassy mounds, pretending to be a farmer rounding up livestock. But one particular Thursday, Mr. Bacon had hired a new farmhand—a man in his early thirties, built like a bulldozer and with a temperament to match. New to the job, the man had forgotten to close one of the chicken hutches, and Joe found himself rounding up livestock for real. It was something of a shock when the farmhand, not knowing his mistake, came running and shouting at Joe to stop frightening the chickens. Aunt Rose had shouted back, telling the man exactly where he could put his chickens, if he were even capable of catching them. Two abusive words from the man ensured he’d never work for Mr. Bacon again—or wake up for the next thirty minutes. Aunt Rose had planted a perfect uppercut to his chin.
Yet, despite her formidable powers among humans, a spider had to merely poke its spindly leg from a gap in the skirting board to send Aunt Rose into hysteria. On those occasions, it would be Joe jumping to her rescue for a change.
Joe smiled at her briefly again but found his mind wandering back and forth to Merrynether Mansion and the mysterious creatures it housed.
His distraction was not lost on either of the two adults.
Aunt Rose’s smile gave way to pouting lips and squinting eyes.
Joe’s mum leaned toward the phone cradle, trying to break off a conv
ersation. “Sorry, Mum, I have to go. Joe’s just got back,” she said, casting a concerned look at her son. “Yes, I’ll give him your love. Yes, I’ll call you tomorrow . . . Sure . . . Okay . . . Yes, have a great time . . . Bye.” She placed the handset on the receiver.
Joe stared into space, chewing the inside of his mouth.
“You’re home late again, Joe. Is everything okay?”
“Girls . . . I’ll bet he’s got himself a girlfriend,” Aunt Rose said.
Joe stared, only half aware of their chatter.
“Earth to Joe. Is anybody there?” his mum said.
Joe snapped from his thoughts, looked at them, and smiled again. “Sorry, Mum. Yeah, everything’s all right. I was miles away.”
“And where exactly was that?” she asked, getting out of the armchair and picking up a pair of oven gloves she’d left hanging by the mantelpiece.
It was then that Joe noticed the aroma wafting from the kitchen. “Are you making cakes?”
“Aunt Rose has made coffee walnut muffins. They’ll be ready in about ten minutes,” she said, walking out of eyeshot into the kitchen.
“And they’ll be eaten in five.” Aunt Rose winked.
Joe licked his lips. “Awesome!”
“So where have you been?” his mum called. “Usually it takes you two and a half hours to deliver those papers, but you came back well after eleven last week, and this week . . . well, look at the time.”
Joe had been so consumed by the events at Merrynether Mansion during the week that he hadn’t even considered how to reply to such an obvious question. But what would he say? If he told them the truth, neither of them would believe him. On the other hand, lying didn’t sit comfortably with him either.
“D’you know who Mrs. Merrynether is?” he blurted.
His mum came out from the kitchen and leaned against the wall.
“I know of her, but I’ve never actually met her. Doesn’t she live in that big mansion somewhere in Ringwood Forest?” she said, directing the question to Aunt Rose.
“Merrynether Mansion,” Aunt Rose confirmed. “She’s a recluse, she is. Hardly ever sets foot outside her door.”
“That’s her,” said Joe. “She hurt her arm last week, so I’ve been helping her with some shopping.”
The Beasts of Upton Puddle Page 5
