The Monster Hunter

by Guy Bass

  “Arabella…!” Stitch Head cried.

  “‘Stitch Head’? The name doesn’t suit you at all! Still, a bet’s a bet,” Dotty scoffed. She took off her hat and dropped it on to Arabella’s head. Then she inspected Stitch Head closely. “So, you’re saying little Scamp is the work of Mad Professor Erasmus? Well, he won’t do at all. Great thunder, no!”

  “You – you know my master?” Stitch Head asked. Fear gripped him tighter – was Dotty here for the professor?

  “I do not – but he is the reason I am here,” she said, her eyes flashing with excitement. “Or rather, his monsters.”

  “M-monsters?” repeated Stitch Head.

  “But first things first!” cried Dotty, clapping her hands together. “What’s for dinner?”

  Stitch Head felt his chest tighten as he tried to think of a way to rid the castle of Dotty Dauntless. Dotty, meanwhile, clearly had no intention of leaving.

  “An adventurer cannot live on exploits alone!” she cried, taking long, deliberate sniffs of air. “I must eat.”

  “Ain’t no one eats nothin’ around here except me,” said Arabella, adjusting her new, thoroughly oversized safari hat.

  “Then you hold the key to my survival, my mad moppet!” replied Dotty. “An empty gut is a feeble mind, and I’m hungrier than the time I was stranded for a month in the Lost Dunes of Mowadeeb with nothing for sustenance but the suspect secretions of sand scorpions. I’ll tell you what, let’s make a wager. I bet I can find your food before you. If I do, you must share it with me. If not, I shall give you … my boots.”

  “Boots?” repeated Arabella. She glanced down and her jaw fell open – Dotty Dauntless wore the most impressive pair of boots she had ever seen. Sturdy, rust-brown leather polished to perfection, with burnished steel buckles and toe caps that looked like they could knock down a wall.

  They were the boots Arabella kicked with in her dreams.

  “Deal,” she said.

  “What?” blurted Stitch Head. “You can’t! I mean, you can’t go into the castle! The professor doesn’t like— My master would never allow— No visitors!”

  “Yeah? What about all them orphans you let through the Great Door last month?” tutted Arabella, still staring at Dotty’s boots.

  “But that was – I mean there was no other – I mean—” Stitch Head began awkwardly.

  “Details! A bet is a bet, little Scamp!” interrupted Dotty Dauntless. Then she took another sniff of air and began striding down toward the nearest stairwell into the castle.

  “No, wait!” cried Stitch Head, as Dotty disappeared through the door. “We have to—”

  “Beat her to my room? Too right we do,” grinned Arabella, a peculiarly intense look in her eyes. “Let’s not take any chances. You know every shortcut and hidden passage in this place, Stitch Head. Get us there, double quick!”

  “But – but—” Stitch Head stuttered.

  “But nothing!” Arabella shrieked, grabbing Stitch Head by the shoulders. “I need them boots!”

  Stitch Head reluctantly led Arabella through a maze of secret doors and concealed ink-black passageways – passageways he had spent an almost-lifetime memorizing (and had often used to escape his master’s mad monsters). Before long they emerged from behind a tattered curtain into the familiar main hall. At the far end of the hall was a corridor leading to a wooden door. Upon it were written the words:

  “Nice one, Stitch Head! Them boots are mine!” Arabella cried. She pressed her hat on to her head and made a dash for the door…

  But it was already open.

  “Come in, come in!” said a voice. “You’re just in time to be slightly too late.”

  Arabella and Stitch Head skidded to a horrified halt. Lying on Arabella’s bed, holding a plate piled high with pies, fruit and bread, was Dotty Dauntless. Arabella’s pet monkey-bat Pox (half-monkey, half-bat, generally savage) was flitting around the room, barking and snarling at the intruder.

  “GruKK! YaBBit!”

  “Turns out there’s plenty of grub to go round!” Dotty continued, tossing a piece of pie into her mouth. “Help yourself!”

  “How did you know where to find my stash?” growled Arabella.

  “I sniffed it out, of course,” explained Dotty Dauntless. “I spent more than a year learning Pong-fu with the blindfolded monks of Lobandanna. They rely purely on their sense of smell! In fairness they spend a lot of time bumping into things, but they can smell a fly’s flatulence from fifty paces.” Dotty took another victorious bite from the pie. “I simply followed the smell of horse meat through the castle.”

  “Horse meat?” Arabella grunted. “Blinkin’ stinkin’ orphans! They told me that pie was pork!”

  Despite being forced to share her food with Dotty Dauntless, Arabella was clearly impressed by the explorer’s talents. She watched with awe as Dotty threw her apple into the air and sliced it into segments with her knife before catching them in her mouth.

  Stitch Head, meanwhile, felt altogether more anxious. How did Dotty Dauntless know about the professor? How did she know about the creations? And, crucially, what did she want with them?

  “Well, I’m fuller than the time I was guest of gustation at the Sultan of Satsumia’s Festival of Fruit!” declared Dotty, leaping to her feet.

  “Does – does that mean you’re leaving?” asked Stitch Head hopefully.

  “Not until I get what I came for!” replied Dotty matter-of-factly. She strode out of Arabella’s room into the corridor. “Now, tell me, where are all your monsters? I couldn’t help but notice I didn’t spot any on my way down here.”

  “M-monsters? What monsters?” cried Stitch Head. “There are no monsters!”

  “Are they caged in your dungeon, perhaps?” mused Dotty, emerging into the castle’s cavernous main hall. “Or trapped in your moat, clawing at the walls, desperate to savage all those they encounter? Or lurking in the shadows, ready to leap out and maul us to meatballs with feral ferocity? To bite off our noses and beat us to death with our own legs?”

  “No monsters!” cried Stitch Head, glancing around the hall. “No … monsters … anywhere.”

  Dotty was right – there wasn’t a creation in sight. The castle seemed deserted. Stitch Head breathed a sigh of relief. If Dotty Dauntless was here for monsters, it was better she didn’t see any. But where were they?

  “You’ve probably gone and scared ’em off … all that crashing and banging,” explained Arabella, jabbing her finger at Dotty as Pox the monkey-bat landed on her shoulder. “Most of ’em are scared of their own shadow.”

  “Even though there aren’t any!” added Stitch Head quickly.

  “Did you say ‘scared’, moppet?” Dotty Dauntless eyeballed Arabella. “Unthinkable! Monsters are fearsome and rampant and dreadful and terrible and wild!”

  “Not these ones, they ain’t. Pox is our most monstrous monster by a million,” Arabella tutted, pointing to her monkey-bat. “And he’s just misunderstood, ain’tcha, boy?”

  “YaBBit!” added Pox.

  “You call this delightful little thing a monster?” Dotty retorted, patting Pox on the head as he snapped at her. “No, no, I will need something much more impressive for my purposes. Huge, hulking, savage, but most of all monstrous!”

  “But they’re not like that,” said Stitch Head. “I mean, even if there were monsters here, they’d – they’d be gentle and kind, not monstrous at all.”

  “Not monstrous? Absurd!” scoffed Dotty. “What kind of mad professor would create monsters that weren’t even monstrous?”

  Arabella shot Stitch Head a look. He instinctively placed a hand on his bag of potions.

  “Well, uh, they’re not – that is to say – the thing is…” Stitch Head mumbled. He was quite sure the last thing he should do was admit how monstrous the creations were before he cured them. “The point is, there’s nothing even slightly monstrous about—”

  The Creature leaped out from behind a pillar, roaring madly and flailing all thre
e of its arms.

  “Oh no,” said Stitch Head. “Creature, this isn’t really a good time for—”

  “Great thunder! At last!” cried Dotty. “Stand back! I’ll handle this!”

  “No, wait!” cried Stitch Head, but it was too late – in a flash Dotty Dauntless had drawn her pistol. Before anyone could move, she pulled the trigger. Set type as image

  Two feather-tipped darts shot out of her pistol and landed in the Creature’s neck. The Creature stopped dead, its single eye tracking slowly down to the darts.

  “GUHH?” it groaned, stumbling back into the middle of the hall.

  “The beast still stands!” boomed an incredulous Dotty Dauntless. “Why, that dose would take down a relentlessly raging rhinoceros!”

  Two more darts landed in the Creature’s chest. It let out a longer, “GUUUHH…” Its eye rolled back in its head, and it toppled backwards on to the ground with a KRUDD.

  “Great thunder, I knew monsters were real!” declared Dotty Dauntless, as the Creature lay unconscious in the middle of the hall. “And this savage beast is perfect for my needs!”

  “Creature!” cried Stitch Head. He spun round to face Dotty. “What did you do?”

  “’Tis only dazed – I have no use for a dead monster! But my tranquilizer darts will wear off in a few hours,” said Dotty Dauntless. She quickly took the rope from around her shoulder and began binding the Creature’s claws and feet, looping and knotting with breathtaking speed. “This rope is as strong as my smile is winning – it should hold the monster until my entourage arrives!”

  “Entourage?” said Stitch Head, panic heaping upon panic. “M-more humans are coming?”

  “Oh, not just humans,” said Dotty with a wink. She tied the last of a dozen knots and stood back, inspecting the Creature from every angle. “I knew it! I knew I was right! All these years of searching, I knew in my bones that monsters were real. And what a glorious specimen of unadulterated beastliness it is!”

  “But the Creature isn’t like this – I mean, like that!” said a desperate Stitch Head. “It was just pretending!”

  “GRuKK!” Pox grunted.

  “I think I know unbridled savagery when I see it,” scoffed Dotty. “And this wondrous brute has it in spades – I must deliver it to the Venture Club post haste!”

  “V-Venture Club?” repeated Stitch Head.

  “The greatest collective of explorers the world has ever known!” boomed Dotty Dauntless. “The Venture Club comprises an esteemed group of ye olde school adventurers like myself. Between us, we have explored every corner of every continent!”

  “What’s that got to do with the Creature?” began Arabella, her oversized hat slumping over her eyes.

  “Everything and then some, my mad moppet,” Dotty replied. “I have two obsessions – monsters and wagers. Great thunder, I have never been able to turn down a bet, especially if the odds are stacked against me, and the boys at the Venture Club know it. Their wager was thus – if I could find a monster before my sixtieth birthday I would be named The Most Adventurous Explorer in the History of Adventuresome Exploration!”

  “Th-this is all for a bet?” said Stitch Head.

  “You bet it is!” replied Dotty with a grin. “My sixtieth birthday is two days away – the Venture Club must be certain of their victory. I cannot wait to see their faces when I return with this behemoth and win my wager!”

  “But you – you can’t take the Creature!” cried Stitch Head. “You can’t!”

  “Anyone would think you wanted this brutal beast wandering the halls. You should be grateful I’m ridding the castle of— Great thunder, is that the time?” Dotty said, taking a fob watch from her pocket. “I haven’t slept in three days – it is only the meditation techniques of the Cult of Kaffeen that have kept me awake this long, and tomorrow is going to be a big day.”

  With that, Dotty made a beeline back down the corridor to Arabella’s room. Before they knew it she’d kicked off her boots and leaped on to the bed.

  “Oi!” snapped Arabella. “Get your own bed, you blinkin’—”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stay on my side – and if it seems as though the sky is falling in the night, it is merely my snoring,” said Dotty. “Dawn will be upon us in a scant few hours. Then I shall remove my monster to the Venture Club, and my reputation will be assured!”

  With that, Dotty Dauntless lay down and immediately started snoring like a cart rolling over rough cobbles.

  “Arabella, she’s going to take the Creature!” whispered Stitch Head. He grabbed her arm and dragged her back into the hall where the Creature lay, unmoving. “We have to do something! We have to get it out of—!”

  “Boo!” came a cry. A moment later, Ivo popped his head out of the back pocket of the Creature’s trousers. “I am winning again! I am best at game! I am…”

  Ivo scratched his head, looking down at the captured Creature. “I am confused,” he said. “Are we playing a different game now?”

  As Dotty Dauntless slept, her snores echoing through the castle, Stitch Head, Arabella and Ivo set about trying to find somewhere to conceal the sleeping Creature. They dragged its hulking bulk through the castle, with Pox flittering above them.

  “I do beg your pardon, but is it safe to come out?” whispered a voice from the darkness.

  They turned to see half a dozen creations slink out of the shadows. Clover, a mass of colourful wings, long legs and a brush-like tail, was the first to flap into view. “We heard the most terrible racket and all decided to make ourselves scarce,” she said. “I didn’t even have time to finish my dusting…”

  “So, what is it this time?” asked Marjory, a six-armed brain-spider. “Another angry mob? A vengeful spirit? More orphans, perhaps?”

  “Nah, it’s some old lady,” said Arabella, “who’s really good at smelling stuff.”

  “Then … are we safe to come out of hiding?” said Philius, a fish with clockwork feet.

  “No!” said Stitch Head with uncharacteristic firmness. “Dotty Dauntless is looking for a monster! If she finds out we have a whole castle full of them, we’ll never get rid of her! P-please stay out of sight until we can convince her to leave. Please stay in the shadows. And tell everyone … Dotty Dauntless is dangerous.”

  Stitch Head was right to be cautious about visitors to the castle – especially humans. Apart from Arabella, it had never turned out well. A year earlier, a twisted circus ringmaster named Fulbert Freakfinder had come knocking on the Great Door of Castle Grotteskew. He was the first human being Stitch Head had ever met (other than the professor, who barely qualified) and had promised Stitch Head fame and fortune beyond the castle, as the star of his Carnival of Unnatural Wonders. Stitch Head had let his dreams of a new almost-life blind him to Freakfinder’s true scheme – to force the professor to create made-to-order monsters for his freak show. And though Stitch Head had managed to foil Freakfinder’s schemes, he had never forgiven himself for putting the professor and his creations in jeopardy.

  “Oi! Stitch Head!” yelled Arabella, snapping Stitch Head out of his dreadful daydreams. “Couldn’t you have at least got the creations to help us move the Creature before you sent ’em packing? I’m breaking my back here!”

  Stitch Head looked around. The castle’s creations had already returned to the shadows, leaving him, Arabella and Ivo to continue heaving the Creature to a hiding place. But even with their combined strength, it took them hours to drag their friend to the nearest staircase. Before they knew it, dawn light was starting to seep through cracks in the walls.

  “Pulling with only one arm is two times as hard…” puffed Ivo, collapsing to the ground as they balanced the Creature precariously at the top of the stairs.

  “We – we can’t stop now,” wheezed Stitch Head. “Time’s running out – we have to hide the Creature before Dotty Dauntless wakes up!”

  “Right, get out the way, I’ll speed things up,” panted Arabella, clambering over the top of the Creature and sliding
down its rump. “Speed things— No, wait!” said Stitch Head, grabbing Ivo and scrambling out of the way as Arabella swung her foot hard at the Creature’s backside. It teetered on the edge of the steps for a moment – and then toppled down the spiralling stairs.

  “Arabella!” shrieked Stitch Head. “Why did you do—?”

  “You just said time was running out!” she growled. “Anyway, I’ve seen the Creature hit itself over the head with a dining table – it’ll be fine.”

  Stitch Head tore down the stairs as fast as his mismatched legs could carry him.

  “Creature! Creature, are you all right?” Stitch Head called, racing to the Creature’s side, with Arabella, Ivo and the yapping Pox hot on his heels. “Crea—”

  “MORNING!” came a cry. “At least I THINK it’s morning, because I just WOKE up, which is STRANGE, because I don’t even SLEEP…”

  The Creature was sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, still tethered, with a wide grin on its face.

  “I JUST had the most WONDERFUL dream,” it continued. The Creature clambered to its feet, effortlessly (though unwittingly) snapping Dotty Dauntless’s “unbreakable” rope. “I was OUT in the big, WILD world and YOU were there, Stitch Head, and YOU and YOU and I kept saying I want to go HOME, and now I AM and you’re all HERE and I’m not going to leave this place ever, EVER ag— Hey, WHY am I at the BOTTOM of the STAIRS?”

  “You were shot!” replied Stitch Head. “There’s this explorer called Dotty Dauntless and she thought you were monstrous and she tranquilized you and—”