by Heide Goody
“Jeez,” said the wolf. “You try to be civil to folk and you get a mouthful of abuse.”
“What do you want?” Ella was trying to be brave but she felt like jelly. She really wanted to be home, lying on the sofa with a bucket of tea, a packet of chocolate hobnobs and a fistful of painkillers. Definitely no wolf.
The wolf gave Ella a look. “You want to do the conversation now?” he asked incredulously.
“What?” she said.
“Well, I was going to say, ‘Hello, little girl’”
“Which is creepy.”
“Noted, princess. And then I was going to ask, ‘Where are you going in your pretty red hood and a basket full of —’. Where’s your basket?”
“I don’t have a basket.”
“What do you have?”
“Are you mugging me?”
“What?”
“You’re not having my phone,” said Ella.
“What would a wolf do with a phone?” He waved a paw at her. “No thumbs.”
“It’s voice activated.” She looked at the wolf’s nonplussed expression. “M&M?” she offered.
“You trying to poison me now?”
“The chocolate. Sorry.” She threw the M&M down. “I was following the trail.”
“To grandma’s house?”
“I’m going to visit a client.”
“Grandma?”
“What? No.”
“I know a short cut,” said the wolf. “Through the wood.”
“Good for you,” said Ella peering at the unappealing, crowded mass of trees, slick with green moss.
“I could show you.”
“No thanks.”
“Is it because you’re afraid to take a walk on the wild side, sister?”
“No, it’s because you’re a talking wolf.”
“That’s offensive,” said the wolf.
“I’m sure you’ll survive.”
“I bet I’ll get there before you.”
“Where?”
“Grandma’s house.”
“I’m not —.” She stopped. “Sure. Let’s see who gets to ‘grandma’s house’ first.”
“A race,” said the wolf and smiled. Ella was sure wolves didn’t possess the muscles for smiling but he smiled nonetheless, a roguish lopsided smile. “And if I beat you there…”
“You can have my phone,” said Ella.
“Thumbs,” said the wolf, turned tail and loped off.
Ella watched him go and continued to scan the woods as she continued up the track. She held tight to her makeshift club.
The increasingly rough path and trail of M&Ms led on for another half mile up to the front door of Mrs Jubert’s cottage. Or, at least, to the place where Mrs Jubert’s cottage had definitely been and to a building that might have once been Mrs Jubert’s cottage, although it was hard to tell.
Ayleen Jubert, a former harp teacher and academic expert on medieval musical instruments, had retired to Little Wangford and sought Ella’s help with refurbishing her new home according to her carbon-neutral sensibilities. The cottage that Ella had worked on and visited as recently as two weeks ago had been a plain, almost brutalist, renovation in reclaimed timber, natural building materials and, in the absence of sufficient sunlight for solar panels, two small wind turbines on tall poles.
The cottage before her now, whilst being essentially the same structure, was a work of chaos. The ramshackle roof was covered in glistening caramel-coloured tiles. The windows were ill-fitting frosted Georgian panes held in with a ridiculous excess of white putty. The door, the window sills and the rest of the dark wood sagged and bowed as though it were melting. And the walls… that fine sandy render she had sourced and even helped apply was now a cracked, clay-like mass and, indeed, had peeled away in fat doughy slabs here and there.
Ella clenched her club tightly. She wasn’t merely shocked; she was furious.
“Time and energy I’ve put in,” she muttered as she stomped to the door. “Not easy to get hold of either.” She rapped sharply on the door. It was sticky to the touch. “If I find out this was bloody dwarfs, I’m going to throttle them.”
A pink blob of a face appeared at a frosted window.
“Is it the wag man?” called a muffled child’s voice. “Or the cops?”
“It’s a woman,” replied another child’s voice.
The letterbox flipped open. A pair of eyes peeped out.
“Piss off,” said the pair of eyes and the letterbox snapped shut.
There was further muffled talking, the sound of giggling and then silence.
“What the…?” said Ella, huffed a couple of times to show the world that she was not best pleased and then knocked even louder on the door. The door cracked under her knuckles and finger-sized splinters of dark chocolate came away.
A chocolate door. And those windows were spun sugar. The putty was fondant icing.
Ella was unimpressed, not primarily by the confectionery building materials but the shoddy workmanship on display.
“Open up!” she yelled.
“We’re not in!” yelled back one of the children.
Ella looked around. “There’s never a wolf to huff and puff when you need one,” she said. “Right!” she shouted. “You asked for it!”
The children’s response was laughter.
“Gonna open a can of Jackie Chan on you,” muttered Ella.
She took a step back and kicked the door squarely in the centre. The door buckled but remained in place. A second kick smashed it from its hinges.
“Stranger danger!” yelled a voice from the kitchen.
Ella strode in. The smell of sugary treats was overwhelming. She kicked aside a marshmallow footstool, pushed past a giant rich tea biscuit coffee table, and stormed through the strawberry lace bead curtain into the kitchen. Two filthy pre-teens with food-smeared faces glared at her, poised in the act of trying to light the enormous wall-filling aga.
“Assault! Assault!” shouted the girl and pointed at Ella.
“I haven’t touched you,” said Ella.
“But you looked at her!” the boy accused.
“Yeah, with your eyes,” agreed the girl.
“What are you doing in here?” said Ella.
“You can’t ask us that,” said the girl.
“That’s invasion of privacy,” said the boy. “We have rights.”
“I’m just asking a question,” said Ella.
“Yeah, that’s how Hitler started,” said the girl.
“By asking questions?” said Ella.
“Are you saying I’m wrong?” said the girl.
“That’s bullying, that is,” added the boy.
“I haven’t even begun to bully you yet.” Ella thumped the giant rich tea biscuit table for emphasis.
“You threatening me?” said the boy.
“I could suffer post-traumatic stress because of you,” said the girl.
“Flashbacks.”
“Whiplash.”
“I could be on the news because of you.”
“Shut up,” said Ella.
“That’s swearing, that is,” said the girl.
“What? ‘Shut up’?”
“It’s abuse. You can’t tell us what to do. It’s a free country.”
“Is it?”
“We got rights,” said the boy.
“The United Nations says so,” said the girl.
“European Court of Human Rights,” said the boy. “They could send you to prison for telling us to shut up.”
“I’ve got low self-esteem. Which is medical.”
“We’ve got conditions.”
“So if you’re horrible to us, it’s like racism.”
“It’s discrimination.”
“We should call the cops on you,” said the girl.
“Good idea!” said Ella loudly. “Either of you got a phone?”
That shut them up for a moment.
“I’m looking for Mrs Jubert,” said Ella.
“W
ho?”
“The woman who lives here.”
The children simply stared at her. The boy licked a crumb of cake from his lip.
“Where is she?” said Ella.
The pair of them looked worriedly at each other.
“I take the fifth,” said girl.
“This is Britain, you twerp.”
“You can’t talk to me like —”
A chocolate teapot smashed on the floor where Ella had thrown it. The smell of chocolate made her lick her lips, somewhat reducing the drama of the moment. “I’m losing my patience.”
The boy began to sniff repeatedly, tears welling up in his eyes.
“You did that to him,” said the girl. “It’s like you hit him. With words. Abuser.”
A shelf of glassware made from boiled sweets exploded beneath Ella’s club. “Tell me!” Ella growled.
“It was her idea!” squealed the boy, pointing at the girl. “She told me to do it!”
“I did not!” cried the girl. “You were the first one to push her!”
“She shouted at us!”
“It was self-defence!”
“She wanted to cook us and eat us!”
Ella’s eyes went to the vast cooking range. “Oh, hell!”
She pushed the children aside and pulled open the largest door. It’s rare in life that one gets to find an old lady, folded up like a circus contortionist and stuffed into an oven.
“Mrs Jubert!”
“I don’t like this,” trembled a tiny, squashed voice from within.
Ella hooked her hand into the rag-covered folds and tried to ease the older woman out. She was wedged tightly and it was slow work.
“I can’t believe you did this,” she hissed at the children.
“You can’t blame us,” argued the girl.
“No one told us we couldn’t do it,” added the boy.
“We just copy things we see on TV, products of our environment.”
A foot and a leg popped out of the oven.
“Where are your family?”
“Not telling,” said the boy.
“Data protection,” said the girl.
“We’ll refuse to go back.”
“Yeah. Serve them right for turning off the wifi at night.”
The second leg came free and Ella was able to slide Mrs Jubert out. The older woman gasped painfully as she came free and Ella brought her up to her feet.
“Monsters!” she groaned as she squinted at the irritating youngsters.
“You hit us!” shouted the girl.
“You were eating my walls!”
“You tried to cook us!”
Mrs Jubert gave Ella a guilty look. “Perhaps,” she said and then said to the children, “But you should respect your elders.”
“Children are the future,” said the boy.
“Yeah,” said the girl, “and thanks for screwing up the planet before we even got our hands on it. I bet global warming was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“Give it a rest,” said Ella and helped Mrs Jubert over to a toffee dining chair.
Mrs Jubert’s clothes, which she had initially taken to be sooty and torn from her oven ordeal, were a ragged mass of skirts, shawls and cloaks, all black. The only things the outfit was missing was a pointy black hat and a broomstick.
Ella stepped back.
“Mrs Jubert. You stay there, rest up. Don’t go anywhere and don’t try to eat any children.”
“Abuser!” sneered the girl.
“And you two!” snapped Ella. “Shut your traps and wait there while I phone the police or social services or… or whatever.”
She took out her phone and prayed that she had some sort of signal. The little icon flickered between one bar and none.
“With me,” she said to the children and waved for them to follow her outside. She stepped over the smashed chocolate door and into the wild garden.
One bar. One bar of signal.
As Ella began to dial 999, the screen switched to an incoming call from Tilly Chapel, the builder’s merchant, and with a careless tap of her finger she answered it. Ella silently cursed herself and put the phone to her ear.
“Hello, Tilly.”
“Hi Ella. Replying to your text reply to my text reply. Good to finally speak.”
“Thanks for calling back. Sorry, it’s probably a moot point now. Things have… um, moved on. There are other issues here.”
“I’m concerned that someone has a problem with one of our products. And I’m not just concerned about our reputation.”
“I don’t think that’s at stake. No, the client —”
“Is the client’s grievance genuine? You know how funny some of these old biddies can get.”
Ella thought about Mrs Jubert, one-time harpist, now a grubby and mad-eyed witch.
“I do think Mrs Jubert’s been through a lot lately.”
“But the render. Tell me.”
Ella looked at the cracked and fragmenting layers on the exterior wall.
“It’s definitely coming away,” she said and dug her fingers in the golden-brown layers. A light slab, the size of a dinner plate, broke off effortlessly in her hand. She smelled faint wafts of ginger and treacle.
“That’s just no good,” said Tilly.
“I don’t think your product’s to blame. There are… additives.”
Tilly huffed audibly. “What have they added?”
Ella brought the gingerbread to her mouth. “Flour, treacle…”
She opened her mouth to take a bite. Out of nowhere, a green-hatted dwarf leapt up and smacked the gingerbread from her hand.
“No!” scolded OCD, landing at her feet.
“What?” gasped Ella.
“You were going to eat it!”
“So?”
“Dwarfs!” yelled the boy, although in joy or fear Ella couldn’t tell.
Diminutive beard-wearers closed in on the cottage at speed from all sides.
“I thought I’d lost you,” said Ella, disappointed.
“And who’s bloody fault is that, bab?” spat Psycho, red-faced, as he ran up to her.
“Trust a woman to get lost,” added Inappropriate.
“What are they?” squealed the girl.
“We’re the party crew!” yelled Shitfaced jubilantly from the spot at which he had fallen over in the vegetable garden.
“We’re here to save you,” said OCD. “From yourself.”
“Secure the bastard area,” Psycho ordered the others. “Shitfaced, you’re lookout on the roof. Passive Aggressive, check inside.”
“That’s right,” said the black-hatted dwarf. “Send me in alone. I’m expendable.”
Psycho growled. “Fuck’s sake. Inappropriate! Put that down and help him. I don’t care if it is an amusingly shaped vegetable, you juvenile cockwomble!”
OCD shook a wad of gingerbread in Ella’s face. “Did you not consider the dangers of this stuff?”
“Dangers?”
“One, this gingerbread has been stood outside for — well, I’ll need my field kit to determine specifics — but there’s clearly opportunity for dirt and bacteria to accumulate.”
“Our bodies can cope with a little dirt.”
OCD looked horrified. “And, two,” he squeaked indignantly, “what about an allergic reaction to ginger?”
“I’m not allergic to ginger. Is anyone allergic to ginger?”
“Three! Molasses.”
“What?”
“The treacle. Do you know how many people are killed each year by treacle?”
“Uh, no. No one does. No one would want to know that. It’s a pointless fact. Zero?”
OCD gave her a hard look.
“1919. Twenty-one people were killed and over a hundred and fifty were injured when a vat of molasses burst and swept through the streets of Boston, Massachusetts.”
“Not a common accident, though.”
“Like a shark, treacle is waiting for you to turn your back.”
Ella made a dismissive “pff!”
“You’re playing with fire, missy. When you’re up to your eyeballs in molasses, don’t come running to me.” OCD opened his Filofax. “A thorough site inspection is called for here. Wouldn’t be surprised if this whole place was a death-trap.”
Ella became aware of a strange rhythmic noise round the side of the building, a metronomic ‘nom, parp, nom, parp, nom, parp.’ She peered round to see Windy working his way along the lower wall chomping and farting his way through foot after foot of construction-grade gingerbread.
“He thinks it’s okay to eat,” she said, but OCD had gone, wandering off with an extendable tape measure and a critical eye.
Ella realised that her phone was still on and Tilly was on the line.
“So sorry, Tilly,” she said. “Something, some things, have just turned up.”
“Is everything all right there?” asked Tilly.
“Yes, well no, but I can sort it out. But I do need to get off the line to call the police.”
“The police?”
“It’s nothing critical. Two prepubescent delinquents have been making a nuisance of themselves.”
And, at that moment, Ella realised that the children were nowhere to be seen.
“Where have they…?”
“They ran off into the woods,” said Shitfaced from above.
The yellow-hatted dwarf hung from a caramel-covered gable end, waggling his feet.
“Any chance of a hand?” he slurred. “I can’t get up.”
Ella rolled her eyes.
There was a thump and a clatter from within the house and Ella immediately feared what the dwarfs might do upon finding a ‘witch.’ She ran inside, narrowly avoiding Windy as he munched his way along the front wall.
There was no one in the living room or kitchen but there were the shattered remains of a toffee dining chair on the floor.
“Mrs Jubert!”
Ella searched the rest of the house. There was no one in the bathroom, no one lurking behind the jellybean shower curtain. She opened the bedroom door. It was dark within, the window shutters closed. She flicked the glacé cherry light switch, on, off, on. Nothing.
Something dark shifted in the lumpy bed.
“Mrs Jubert?”
The something in the darkness cleared its throat.
“Who is that?” said Ella.
“It is I, your grandma,” said a manly voice in a strained falsetto.
