The Beasts of Upton Puddle

by Simon West-Bulford

  Directly behind her, Flarp bobbed, his euphoric stare directly upon the seraph.

  “Danariel! Flarp!” Joe beamed.

  “Hello, Joe. Can’t stop, I’m afraid. There’s mischief afoot in the mansion that Mrs. Merrynether needs to know about.” And with a brief smile, Danariel flitted past him and out through the door to the glasshouse, pursued by the eager globble.

  Heinrich slammed the phone onto its hook and stared at the floor, balling his fists, breathing hard.

  Joe backed away and resisted the urge to run.

  “Why won’t they leave her alone?” Heinrich ranted.

  “Who?”

  Heinrich looked up, shocked, as if he’d forgotten Joe was there. With a disgruntled sigh, he frowned back at the stone floor. Again Joe noticed a slight unsteadiness in his posture.

  “Redwar’s people. They still want to buy the mansion from her.”

  “But surely they can’t force—”

  “Why won’t they leave us alone?” Heinrich groaned, apparently distracted by a number of worrying thoughts. He rattled his head for a second time, as if trying to flush a foreign object from his ear.

  “Are you all right, Heinrich?”

  “I feel a little . . . tired.” Then with a sheepish glance at Joe, he said, “I did not mean to hurt you. I’m sorry if I did.”

  “It’s okay. I honestly wasn’t trying to take your diamonds, you know.”

  Danariel’s blue aura returned through the glasshouse door, trailed as before by the indomitable Flarp and hotly followed by a furious Mrs. Merrynether. She glared at Heinrich as she stomped past, and Joe heard the cellar door slam after she exited the other side of the vault.

  Heinrich’s eyes widened, and he nodded slowly. “I think she is angry.”

  “With you?”

  “It certainly looks that way, but I do not—” His mouth twisted into the horrified expression of a man who sneezed into a vicar’s dinner. “Cornelius. I don’t hear Cornelius,” he said with a gulp.

  Joe took a step back.

  Heinrich spun on his heels, almost falling over. Like a man with his feet on fire, he staggered around the other side of the enclosure, dropping to examine a large iron ring fastened to a concrete slab. “Oh no!”

  “What is it?” Joe asked, almost afraid of the answer.

  “There was a rope tied to this. And tied to the rope was . . .”

  “Cornelius?”

  Heinrich nodded grimly.

  “Where is he?” Joe glanced tentatively around the vault. “He couldn’t have got outside, could he?”

  The befuddled keeper stared at Joe with his lips flapping, but all he could do was shrug.

  “How could you have slept through—?” Joe almost choked on the end of his sentence.

  The door to the vault smashed open and shuddered against the wall. Danariel and Flarp shot through the opening, and Joe saw for the first time a look of alarm on the seraph’s face. She sped in several tight circles like a burst balloon and darted all the way to the other end of the vault, apparently trying to hide. It was then that Joe noticed at least three of the previously occupied enclosures were empty, their doors wide open. Flarp decided to make one of them his own hideout and flopped his shaking amorphous form under a pile of straw.

  The source of their panic became apparent as the sound of Mrs. Merrynether’s stamping feet and furious shouting echoed down the stairs. “Heinrich Krieger! You have gone much too far this time. Have you seen what that maddening midget has done?”

  Despite her size, she seemed to fill the entire door frame as she entered. In one hand she held a coiled rope and in the other an empty wine bottle, which she wielded by its neck like a mace. “Have you, Heinrich?” her screeching reached an entirely new octave.

  “I—”

  “Lilly has not only constructed an entire drinking bar in room sixteen under your very nose, using every last bottle of our vintage collection, but he has done so using items from inside this very vault!” Her tone sank into a dangerous whisper. “Do you recognize this, Heinrich?”

  Heinrich stared at the rope. “Yes,” he mumbled.

  “Lilly used it to construct a pulley system with which to haul heavy crates of alcohol. The fact that he managed to untie the manticore without being maimed is beyond belief, but what is even more remarkable is that you didn’t even notice.” She paused for effect, then continued very slowly. “Do you, by some random stroke of luck, happen to know where Cornelius might actually be at this precise moment in time?”

  Heinrich squinted, as if he had been asked a trick question, then shook his head nervously.

  “He’s in the driveway of the mansion in plain view with one leg in the air cleaning his . . . his . . .” She waved the bottle in the air. “And the whole wide world could watch if they wanted to.”

  Joe stifled a laugh with a snort. Whether it was out of hilarity or fear, Joe was uncertain, but the urge to chuckle fell away instantly as Mrs. Merrynether lanced him with a withering look.

  He avoided her glare and turned quickly to look at Heinrich, who was shrinking away. To Joe he looked like an old tortoise who had made a tentative attempt to come out of hibernation, only to be beaten back into his shell by an icy wind. If he could have retracted his entire head below his shoulders and left only a shell, Heinrich surely would have tried.

  Mrs. Merrynether was not about to let Heinrich off so easily. “Do you know what else I found up there?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  “Cage locks.”

  “Cage locks?”

  “Yes, cage locks,” she snapped.

  Moving nothing but his eyes, which slowly looked toward the open enclosures, Heinrich breathed out a short gasp.

  “That impudent cluricaun took at least four cage locks from our enclosures and fitted them to his own crates full of our wine.”

  Heinrich groaned as she continued.

  “None of this would ever have happened if you hadn’t let him escape in the first place.” She threw the rope at him. “You can start by bringing that manticore back into the vault. Then you can go and find the other five creatures, and you’d better not come back until you’ve rounded up each and every one of them.”

  “Other five?” Heinrich asked. “I thought there were only four others.”

  “Not if you include that meddlesome Irish nightmare. I want him back here and locked up too. Am I clear?”

  Heinrich nodded ruefully and scooped up the rope from the floor, casting Joe a fearful look as he coiled it. At first Joe thought the look was just part of his reaction to Mrs. Merrynether’s verbal hammering, but then he saw the pleading expression showing through and knew that, even in the midst of this emergency, Heinrich was still thinking of the letters.

  “And where is Kiyoshi?” Mrs. Merrynether looked around and scowled. “If you’ve lost him too, I’ll—”

  “He is safe,” said Heinrich, nodding toward his desk.

  Mrs. Merrynether walked to the desk, then looked at the floor into an antique mahogany box that appeared to be about the right size to hold a person’s head. Joe watched, eager to see what kind of creature it was. How could he have missed it earlier?

  Mrs. Merrynether sighed with relief after looking inside and was just about to turn away from the desk when she caught sight of something. Both Joe and Heinrich held their breath, wondering if any evidence of secret letter writing was visible. Fortunately for Heinrich, she picked up his mug of tea instead and held it under her nose. “How was it that Lilly was able to get away with all of this?” she asked, dipping her little finger into the cold beverage.

  “I fell asleep, Ronnie.” He shook his head, as if he knew it was not a good enough reason.

  “A cluricaun enters the vault, steals a manticore, frees several more creatures, and you slept through that?”

  She sucked her wet finger and smacked her lips several times, testing the tea. “I knew it. I can taste a hint of St. Martha’s lullaby. I thought some of it had gone m
issing from my crop. Lilly drugged you.”

  Heinrich straightened, apparently hoping to be exonerated. “I do feel very tired.”

  “No excuse,” she barked. “Lilly should not still be running free.”

  A little deflated, Heinrich tried something else. “Redwar Industries called trying to make an appointment with you. I told them you are unavailable.”

  “Redwar? Calling here again?” She waved the wine bottle. “Oh, I’m in the perfect mood to be dealing with him.”

  She marched toward the phone, then paused. “Why are you still here?” she shouted. “Get outside and bring in those animals. Now!”

  Heinrich almost dropped the rope as he muddled his way out of the vault in a panic.

  “Should I come back later?” offered Joe.

  Mrs. Merrynether hesitated again as she picked up the receiver and glanced at the open box. “I’m afraid you will have to wait until another time before you can meet Kiyoshi. Would you be so kind as to run upstairs to room sixteen? I’m afraid Lilly has made a terrible mess in a very short space of time. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve had a word with this fat buffoon. It’s up the stairs, last door on the right.”

  Pushing aside his frustration at not seeing the new creature, but relieved to escape the charged atmosphere, Joe nodded and left the vault to head upstairs.

  Finding room sixteen was a simple matter; the task of clearing up the mess was not. Joe stared at the aftermath of a drunken marathon. Smashed beer glasses littered the stained wooden floor, the unidentifiable remains of various fruit adorned the walls in the form of smeared graffiti, and every piece of furniture had been either dismantled or smashed. Various sharp objects dangled from the ceiling as if some bizarre dare game had been played, and across the length of the walls, Joe could see the remnants of an intricate pulley system which looked like it had been used as some sort of alcohol delivery system. A few broken bottles were still attached to frayed bits of rope.

  “Where on earth do I start?” Joe said to himself.

  Picking a path through the debris, he made his way to the back of the room where a splintered bookcase leaned precariously against an equally abused crate. One nudge and there would be an avalanche of planks.

  Joe decided his first job would be to rescue the bookcase. He slipped on something hideous and pushed his arm toward an overturned table to steady himself. His fingers connected with something soft, whose scream was drowned out by the clatter of collapsing furniture.

  The flash of a pale green waistcoat told Joe that he’d almost bagged the infamous cluricaun. Joe clambered across the wreckage to shut the door and prevent any chance of Lilly’s escape. The door’s slam preceded a silence that only the drip-drip-drip of a half-empty beer bottle dared to interrupt. Joe scanned the room, hunting for any sign of the elusive party animal, but as usual, the only clue to his existence came in the form of an Irish voice.

  “A hangorver loike ya wouldn’t believe, and den some idjit sticks his hand in ya gonads! Well, if it’s a foight ya want, it’s a foight ya’ll get, boy.”

  The sting of something wet and rotten bit into Joe’s cheek as a series of items flew at him from a variety of directions.

  “Victory or death!” yelled the tiny man.

  The sound of at least a dozen chuckles followed Lilly’s war cry. The cluricaun was not alone.

  SIXTEEN

  Joe looked around the room, surveying the broken furniture, beer stains, and sliding remains of a food fight on the walls.

  “There’s more than one of you?” he asked, hoping for a glimpse of another cluricaun.

  “He’s broight, dis one,” came a voice near the bookcase.

  “And ogly too,” said another.

  “Hey! I’m not ugly.”

  “Are too! I bet you were even oglier as a baby. I bet ya mammy had to pull the covers up orver ya head at noight so dat sleep would have da courage ta creep up on yaz,” came Lilly’s voice.

  “Well, at least I don’t have a girl’s name . . . Lilly!”

  Joe’s comeback provoked some hearty laughter from one of the corners.

  “What loike . . . Josephine, ya mean.”

  “It’s Joseph.”

  The laughing from the corner hadn’t stopped, and more cackling came from the other side.

  “Heh . . . Lilly? He torld us his name was Maximus.”

  “Shot ya face!”

  “Don’t tell me ta shot me face, ya fat tart.”

  “How dares ya! And may the devil swallow me soideways if oi ever invoites ya ta me house again.”

  An uproar of swearing and shouting, punctuated by the crash of flying bottles, soon escalated into a full-scale riot. Joe imagined there had been a continuous cycle of drinking, fighting, and passing out like this for the last several hours while Heinrich had been drugged and Mrs. Merrynether labored in the garden. Ducking below an expensive-looking bottle as it exploded into the door, Joe reached for a chair, fumbled to open the door, and fell into the corridor, dragging the chair with him. He slammed the door and wedged the chair underneath the handle. With a little luck, Joe could get either Heinrich or Mrs. Merrynether upstairs before the fight had finished and the cluricauns realized they had been trapped inside.

  Joe saw a window at the end of the corridor and ran to it, knowing Heinrich had been sent outside to catch the escaped animals. Perhaps if he saw Heinrich, Joe could shout down to him to come up while he guarded room sixteen. Breathless from his narrow escape, Joe undid the latch and lifted the window to look outside.

  Sure enough, there was Heinrich in the garden, but the situation looked far from under control. Yowling and hissing coupled with excited cheering spoiled the otherwise peaceful atmosphere of the grounds as Cornelius the manticore leapt and bucked across the grass, contending with several little men clinging to his mane for dear life. The cheesy grins, distinctive clothes, and drunken laughter revealed them to be more of Lilly’s friends. Heinrich ran behind the panicked beast as he wailed at the cluricauns to get off, but it was clear they were having far too much fun to take any notice.

  Joe cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned out of the window. “Heinrich!”

  Heinrich looked up. “Joe?”

  “I’ve caught Lilly.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve caught the cluricaun.”

  A stray sprout hit Heinrich in the side of the head as one of the tiny men catapulted out from a bush and then dashed out of sight again.

  “I cannot hear you,” he shouted, rubbing his temple.

  “I’ll come down.”

  Joe took off along the corridor, down the stairs, into the hallway, out the main entrance, and around the back to the garden. The cluricauns’ cheers still echoed through the grounds as Joe approached.

  Heinrich stood by one of the statues, hands on knees, panting. “I . . . don’t know what . . . to do. Look.” He pointed and shook his head.

  Cornelius bucked and reared as he tore a muddy path through the grass. The curiously human face contorted in frustration as he beat his wings and thrashed his tail, but even as the manticore roared, the sound of Irish jeering drowned him out. At least six tiny men clung to the beast’s red fur, two of them swinging from his mane.

  “Apart from Lilly, Cornelius is the last. All the others were easy to catch . . . but him . . . them?”

  “I’ve got an idea. Play along, and this might work.” Joe winked, then spoke as loud as he could—enough that the cluricauns would hear. “I’ve got Maximus and some of his friends trapped in room sixteen. I think we’ve got plenty of time to get him, though, Heinrich. I heard him say they had all day to drink the whiskey because the lightweights had gone outside.”

  “Who’s Maximus?” whispered Heinrich.

  “Long story. I’ll tell you—”

  “Loightweights?” spluttered a furious voice. “Da swoine carled os loightweights! We’ll shor him who da loightweight is.”

  Joe suppressed a grin as a host of roaring cluricauns
jumped out from behind trees and bushes, led by the six who had leapt off the manticore in anger.

  Heinrich made an unsuccessful attempt to snatch some as they shot past and then threw himself to the ground with a shout, “Get down, Joe!”

  “What? What is—?” But Joe was too late. A pain like the thrust of a red-hot poker lanced his shoulder, and he staggered back, stunned by the blow. The next thing he felt as he turned to see where the attack had come from was a peculiar heat traveling from his shoulder, into his chest, and down his side. He slumped and, through blurred vision, saw Cornelius thrashing his tail, spraying spikes toward the fleeing cluricauns.

  Then came the numbness with nausea as Joe tried in vain to move his stiffening limbs. A cry from Heinrich echoed somewhere distant as another stray dart powered into his leg. The heavy blackness of unconsciousness sucked away his fading thoughts.

  Joe woke in a groggy stupor. A curious odor, like apples fermenting in a bucket of lavender, reached his nostrils as he breathed in, but it was not unpleasant. In fact, it was quite soothing. He felt soft bedcovers as the pins and needles subsided in his fingers and, through a watery haze, he saw deep blue walls and a collection of Victorian furniture, including an old grandfather clock that clunked its peaceful rhythm in the corner closest to him.

  Joe squinted at two blurry figures. One was Mrs. Merrynether, and the other was Danariel, whose ethereal light bathed the room in what looked like moonbeams. Their muffled voices discussed something in conspiracy at the end of the bed. He thought the splintering throbs in his head might drown out their whispers, but as the fog of sleep lifted, their words became clearer.

  “If you really are right about him, Danariel, then we must keep him safe. This cannot happen again.”

  “I understand your fear, but you should trust me, Veronica. I am rarely wrong about these things.”

  “Rarely wrong? So you have been wrong before, then.”

  A brief silence gave Joe the opportunity to test his voice.

  “Hello?” the word rasped through his throat as though he hadn’t drunk water for a month.