Fiend of the Seven Sewers

by Steven Butler

  ‘What is it, Frankie?’ Gully asked. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Get on with it!’ Impya grunted. ‘I travelled for moons and noons to see you.’

  This was it. I could feel a great big sob heaving its way into my chest. I was going to burst out crying and embarrass myself in three… two…

  ‘BANISTER BOY!’

  I looked up, surprised to see that Viscera Von Tangle had wriggled her way out of the lantern on the wall and was perched on the edge of an uneven brick. It had been days since she’d shown her face and my heart jumped into my throat at the sight of the piskie princess giving me a nod and a little smile.

  ‘Oh, how jibbly!’ Morkie sighed when she saw Viscera. ‘The little’un’s come to have a listen too. There she is, Impya. Look!’

  ‘Greetings, Piskie Princess,’ Impya said.

  ‘Not interested!’ Viscera replied, refusing to acknowledge anyone but me.

  ‘Oh, come and join us, Victor… Visscee… Vitsy…’ Mrs Morkie continued, but the princess wasn’t listening. Instead, the pouting piskie glared at me then pointed to something near Mrs Morkie’s enormous furry bottom.

  ‘What?’ I asked as Viscera continued to jab her finger towards it.

  ‘Use your eyes, quarterling!’ she snapped.

  I looked closer at where Morkie was sitting and spotted the corner of something purple sticking out from beneath her.

  ‘What is it, dear?’ the cuddlump asked, shifting about. ‘Have I squashed something?’

  ‘It’s… It’s…’ I squinted my eyes and tried to figure out what I was looking at. ‘It’s my jacket!’

  After all this time, I’d completely forgotten about my bell-hop uniform. I’d folded it up as a pillow on my first night in the cage and hadn’t seen it since.

  ‘Oh, good gracicles!’ Mrs Morkie chuckled. ‘I do apologise, Frankie. I must have shuffled my bottlies on top of it by mistake.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, as Morkie heaved herself up for a moment.

  Yanking the jacket out from beneath the cuddlump, I lifted it and turned back to Viscera. ‘Is this what you meant, Princess?’

  ‘Your top pocket!’ the piskie squeaked at me, and my jaw nearly fell off and clattered across the floor.

  In a fraction of a second, I realised what Viscera was talking about.

  My fingers wriggled into the folds of the purple uniform pocket and grazed the hard corner of a creased photograph. I plucked it out and unfolded it with a rush of happiness. In all the craziness, I’d completely forgotten that it was even there.

  ‘MY FAMILY!’ I blurted, grinning through my tears.

  I don’t know how to describe the feeling, my reader friend. Seeing Mum, Dad, Nancy and Maudlin smiling back at me almost made it feel as if they were here with me in the cage. Suddenly my need to sob was replaced with the urge to jabber on about these BRILLIANT people and our hotel home for hours. I could have talked all night. Just saying their names gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling in my belly, and it was HUMDEFFEROUS!

  ‘I’m ready to tell my story.’ I beamed to my captive audience.

  ‘Oh, wait one minkly-moment!’ Impya interrupted. She fumbled with a tiny glass vial that hung from the end of her staff, cracked it in her palm and we all watched as a purple cloud of shimmering mist rose into the air between us.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked as the old familiar smell of magic filled my nostrils.

  ‘A chronicloud,’ Impya answered. ‘Used by magical minstrels from here to the earthly ends. Make sure you speak directly into it…’

  ‘Go on, Frankie,’ said Gully with a grin. ‘I’ve seen one of these before. It’s fun!’

  Taking another look at my family’s photograph in my hand, I stepped closer to the purple smoke and…

  ‘Well, I should begin with The Nothing To See Here Hotel,’ I said, then gasped in amazement as a sparkling vision of my fabulous home appeared inside the chronicloud.

  ‘Isn’t it grumptious!’ Morkie cooed.

  ‘It’s beamly,’ I laughed. ‘I live there with…’

  In no time wispy images of Mum and Dad and everyone I could think of to describe were dancing through the air before us.

  I explained to Morkie, Gully and Impya how it had all started way back on the night of the storm, telling them about Muggerty Manglejaw, and Grogbah’s dramatic entrance through the grumbling lawn. I detailed how the goblins had taken over the hotel, and the surprise arrival of Captain Calamitus Plank and his daughter, Tempestra, on board their ship, the BLISTERED BARNACLE.

  ‘Well, I never!’ Morkie hooted as the glowing mirage of Captain Plank’s galleon glided across our cage on a magical wave.

  When I got to the part about Maudlin Maloney crashing through the sky-door in her chicken-powered lepre-caravan, and the ferocious blizzard that engulfed the hotel, and our yeti friends’ arrival, everyone was laughing and cheering with wonder.

  ‘All that happened this summer!?’ asked Gully, scratching his head. ‘Incrudible!’

  ‘That’s not all!’ I went on. ‘At the same time as the yetis, a gnomad arrived with a talking magpie called Jindabim.’

  It was at that moment that Impya jerked and sat up straighter, leaning in like she didn’t want to miss a single word of my story. Well, who could blame her? It is a whoppsy good one, after all. Especially with the use of her handy chronicloud.

  ‘Go on, boy,’ she rasped. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Dark and weirdly things started happening around the hotel,’ I said. ‘Thorn tendrils grew all over reception from a dead plant, and Maudlin’s collection of shrunken heads came to life, ruining our Trogmanay feast!’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘At first, we all thought Maloney had done it to punish us for all the snow, but it turned out to be the gnomad and his flea-bitten bird. It was really my great-great-uncle in disguise!’

  ‘This is better than any of the Greek myths my clan used to tell,’ Gully laughed.

  ‘Why was your great-great-uncle in disguise?’ asked Morkie. ‘Don’t stop now, dear! It’s exciterous!’

  ‘It’s mega long and confusing,’ I said. ‘But it turns out my great-great-uncle was cursed by a DISGUSTING graveghast when he was a kid and he’s loop-de-loop crazy with anger about it. He wanted to have revenge on my family by breaking the invisibility spells and exposing the hotel to the human world.’

  ‘The little rottler!’ Morkie scoffed. ‘You could have ended up in a zoo! Oh… umm… well, another zoo!’

  ‘And what was his name?’ Impya asked. She was barely blinking.

  I reached back inside my jacket pocket and plucked out a second photograph. It was the portrait of my great-great-uncle and his mother, Olympia Nocturne, from Grandad Abe’s office in the Briny Ballroom.

  ‘His name was Oculus,’ I said, and felt my spine tingle as his ghostly apparition appeared in the magical cloud.

  ‘Here – this is him, and his mum. She was cursed by the graveghast too, but was never seen again. No one knows what happened to her. I’ve kept their photo ever since I found it. Sort of felt sorry for them, I suppose. Imagine stumbling across a gut-grunching death fairy!’

  ‘Show me the real photograph!’ Impya ordered.

  I handed it to her and she snatched it, staring at it thoughtfully.

  ‘This is a horrible story,’ she mumbled, her wide eyes darting over the grim faces.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said, suddenly worrying that I might have insulted Impya. Who knows? With the scent of magic so strong around her, maybe she was part-graveghast, just like I’m part-troll.

  ‘Horrible and sad,’ Impya hissed.

  ‘You’ll NEVER guess what happened next!’ I whooped, waving my arms for dramatic effect. I decided it was probably a good idea to hurry on with the story before the frog-lady cursed me too. ‘My family defeated Oculus good and proper, and now his body is frozen in a block of ice in the Himalayas and his spectril is safely hidden away on the highest shelf of the hotel�
��s library in a jar!’

  ‘AMAZING!’ Gully cried, clapping his hands.

  ‘We’d never have survived without the help of my great-great-great-grandad, Abraham Banister!’

  Impya suddenly grunted and the photograph in her slimy fingers exploded in a tiny burst of flames.

  ‘My photo!’ I yelped as it crumbled into an instant snowfall of ash.

  ‘Oops!’ Impya replied with a muddled expression on her face. It was somewhere between scared and completely shocked. ‘My mistake.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I snapped. ‘It’s the only picture I have of Oculus!’

  ‘Magical hiccup,’ Impya answered quickly. She was leaning so far forwards, I thought she might topple onto the floor. ‘Don’t stop now, boy. You were talking about Abraham Banister!’

  ‘Have you heard of him?’ I asked. Something about the way Impya was staring at me told me not to grumble too much about the destroyed picture. She was tricksy for certain. ‘Grandad Abe is pretty famous. He was an explorer back in his day.’

  Impya didn’t say anything.

  ‘Mrs Morkie has heard of him, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes! He was a marvellous chap, your great-great-great-grandad,’ Morkie replied. ‘Lovely!’

  We all looked at Impya and waited for her answer. She ignored us and glared at Abe’s face in the chronicloud for what felt like far too long.

  ‘Bah!’ she finally snorted with a shrug, before wafting her hand and making the purple smoke disappear. ‘Human names all sound the same to me. My mucus-memories aren’t what they used to be.’

  With that, Impya picked up her wooden stick and clambered to her feet.

  ‘I’m leaving now,’ she said. ‘I came here for exciting stories from the human world, and instead I get this sad tearmongering.’

  ‘But you didn’t get to the part with me!’ Viscera Von Tangle squeaked from her perch on the wall. ‘That’s the best bit!’

  ‘I don’t have time,’ Impya replied flatly.

  ‘How dare you, you sluggerous skrunt?’ Viscera balked. ‘I’m royalty, I’ll have you know! You should make time!’

  ‘The Slime Wife has listened to enough for one night,’ Impya shot back, shaking her head. ‘These old ears wanted to hear about the boy – not useless piskies and cursed families.’

  ‘USELESS? HOW RUDE!’ Princess Von Tangle looked like someone had smacked her round her tiny face.

  ‘Off so soon?’ Morkie asked sadly. ‘You’ve only just got here.’

  ‘The Slime Wife never stays in one place too long,’ Impya croaked. ‘It’s time to be off.’

  ‘Are you going home?’ I asked, still concerned about why she hadn’t liked my story. I’d hoped she would stick around for longer. That way I could try and steer the conversation towards plans for escaping.

  ‘I don’t have a home,’ Impya scoffed. ‘I’m going back to my wandering. There’s no home for a creature like me. I’m one of the broken things of the world. Thrown away and forgotten, I just keep going…’

  I watched as Impya hobbled over to the cage bars on her long froggy-feet and I could feel panic spreading through my veins. If she left, I’d probably never have the opportunity to ask her again. That was the moment, right then, before the thought had even turned into a proper idea in my head, I opened my mouth and I shouted…

  VERY DEEP POCKETS

  ‘WAIT!’ I yelled.

  Impya stopped in her tracks, then turned and studied me with her large orange eyes.

  ‘Are you all right, Frankie?’ Mrs Morkie asked. ‘I’m not sure shouting is very sensible, dear. You’ll alert the goblin guards.’

  ‘Impya!’ I walked right up to the frog-thing and didn’t even care when I felt my shoes slip in the slime that was pooling around her feet.

  ‘What?’ she asked suspiciously, looking at me in a way that told me she already knew what I was going to say.

  ‘Take us with you!’

  There was a second of silence as the Slime Wife mulled over my request, then she laughed in my face.

  ‘You’ve gone stuperish!’

  ‘I mean it!’ I snapped. ‘Help us to get out of here. Let us come with you.’

  ‘I can’t!’ Impya replied.

  ‘But you can squeeze through the bars! We all saw you do it. Show us the spell and we’ll be able to leave this place with you,’ I begged. ‘Please!’

  ‘Don’t be so brain-bungled,’ Impya said. ‘It isn’t a spell. It’s just something I can do.’

  ‘I don’t believe you!’ My heart pounded in my chest. If there was a moment to escape Grimegorn, this was it. It wasn’t every day a magical creature who could slip through the bars showed up in your prison cell. This was our chance, I just knew it. ‘I smelled magic on you as soon as you were near. You can help us, I know you can.’

  ‘I’m not that kind of magical,’ Impya grunted. ‘I’m enchanted, not an enchanter. I can’t just put a spell on you to squish your way out of here.’

  ‘Please, Impya!’ I pleaded as a horrible sinking feeling crept over me. ‘You’ve got to help us. Please… PLEASE!!!’

  ‘Frankie.’ Gully placed a hand on my shoulder and looked at me with sad eyes. ‘It’s no use. Impya can’t do it.’

  I stared at the frog-woman and knew from the unexpected sorrowful expression on her face that she was telling the truth.

  ‘I’m sorry, boy,’ she muttered. ‘The only way of getting out of this cage is with the keys, and they’ll be jangling about on Captain Grumpwhistle’s belt as we speak. There’s nothing I can do.’

  Impya turned to leave again and I racked my brain, trying to think of something to say that might change her mind. I opened my mouth to call after her, but it was Viscera Von Tangle who broke the silence before I could utter a word.

  ‘Is that all you need?’ she peeped. ‘Just a stupidous key? Why didn’t you say so?’

  We all turned to look at the princess as she dug one of her matchstick-sized arms into the folds of her frilly caterpillar-silk dress and started rummaging in a pocket.

  ‘GOT IT!’ Viscera cheered, as she pulled out a large brass key. It was twice as long as she was tall. ‘I’m not so useless now, am I, Slime Wife? Haha!’

  I walked over to where the piskie was standing on the uneven brickwork and took the key from her. It was… it was… I recognised it immediately.

  ‘This is the key to Ooof’s cellar,’ I said, turning it over in my hand. ‘It went missing just after we got back from the bottom of the sea.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Viscera laughed. ‘And now we will use it to escape. Princess Von Tangle has saved everything.’

  ‘Oh, Princess,’ I said. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. ‘You don’t understand. This isn’t the right one.’

  ‘Not right?’ she barked, then shoved her hand back into the frilly petticoats of her ballgown. ‘How about this?’

  Viscera brandished the ink pen that Mum used to sign guests into the hotel at the reception desk. She was furious when it went missing and had blamed the home-sweet-home hobs for over-tidying.

  ‘This is the answer to all our problems!’

  ‘No…’ I felt mean, letting the princess down again. ‘That won’t work either.’

  ‘Peskie piskies and their bottomless pockets,’ Impya grumbled. ‘Always stealing things that don’t belong to them.’

  ‘This? Or this?’ Viscera went on. ‘How about this?’ In only a few seconds the princess had yanked a bent teaspoon, half a pencil, the little whisk that Nancy used to froth the mugs of hot chunklet, a rusty nail, a blue toothbrush that Dentina Molar had reported missing, and one of Hoggit’s dragon chew-sticks from the folds of her sparkly dress.

  ‘Goodness,’ Mrs Morkie chuckled. ‘You’ve quite the collection there, dear. We’ve got a thumb-sized thief on our hands.’

  ‘I know!’ Viscera cooed. She reached into her pocket again and pulled out a twisted piece of metal with a small skull-shaped bead at one end. ‘This is the one!’
r />   ‘That’s…’ I took the strange object from her and examined it. ‘That’s the skell-a-phone key!!’

  Viscera stared at me blankly.

  ‘We never found it again after Grandad Abe’s ghost arrived in the kitchen! Maudlin was SO cross!’

  The piskie princess shrugged.

  ‘Well, now we can use it to get out of here!’ she said. ‘LET’S GO, BANISTER BOY!’

  ‘The poor little thing,’ Mrs Morkie sighed. ‘When you’re that small, I don’t suppose you ever really need to grasp the way locks and keys work.’

  ‘No good?’ Viscera asked. ‘I have more!’

  Next the tiny princess pulled out a stripy drinking straw, an old twig and a chopstick.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked optimistically.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I answered.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense,’ Impya croaked. ‘Goodbye to you all. May you fare well in this muck-dump.’

  It felt like our last shred of a chance was leaving with the Slime Wife and I barely noticed when Viscera yanked out one last object from her pocket.

  ‘This is the one!’

  If what the princess was clutching hadn’t glinted brilliant green in the candlelight and caught our attention, I think I would have ignored her and curled up for a cry on the cage floor.

  ‘What was that?’ Gully gasped.

  We all turned back to face Viscera. I looked at what the little figure was holding and my neck prickled with goosebumps.

  ‘What was that?’ Impya echoed. Even she seemed intrigued by the thin sliver of jade in the piskie’s hands.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Viscera replied. ‘Found it in a pile of dirt sweepings outside the hotel dining room. I like shiny things. Saved it before those yucksome dust pooks ate it.’

  The green object glinted again and I thought I might burst into happy tears for a change.

  There, clutched in her tiny arms, was one of the jade handles from the magical knife and fork set we used on special occasions. They were bewitched with the power to shrink any guest down to the size of a minklemeat nugget. We thought they’d been lost after Nancy snapped them to save us all from the marauding shrunken heads at our disastrous Trogmanay feast!