Pure Dead Trouble Read online

  Her voice echoed back at her—eech, eech, eech —as she reached the high-tide mark and paused for breath, aware that she was standing surrounded by evidence of what she'd been trying to tell Ffup. In clots of darkness that speckled the loch shore with pockets of decay were the corpses of hundreds of white mice, mute witness to some vile corruption at work in the darkening waters of Lochnagargoyle.

  Toil and Trouble

  he following morning, in the absence of Latch, Pandora volunteered to cycle to the nearby town of Auchenlochtermuchty for breakfast essentials. Returning home laden with croissants, coffee beans, and enough breakfast cereals to remodel the south face of Bengormless Mountain in mushy wheat should the need occur, Pandora overtook a taxi negotiating the rutted track that led from the village to StregaSchloss. To her dismay, the hunched figure sitting in the rear of the taxi was that of the Strega-Borgias' very own Marie Bain, arguably the worst cook in the known universe. As she pedaled faster and faster to reach home first, Pandora realized that this was her last chance to eat a decent breakfast for the foreseeable future. Once Marie Bain took charge of the kitchen, such simple tasks as warming a croissant would become the culinary equivalent of rocket science; breakfast would turn into a tense and stressful state of affairs inevitably resulting in piles of inedible carbon, clouds of black smoke, and monumental tantrums thrown by the thwarted cook.

  Leaping off her bike and leaving it to crash onto the rosequartz drive in front of StregaSchloss, Pandora pounded up the steps and through the front door, arriving in the kitchen breathless and wild-eyed. Sitting at the kitchen table with headphones clamped to his ears, Titus was playing a particularly frenetic drumroll with two wooden spoons on a dishpan, his foot thumping the pedal of the trash can, causing the lid to bang up and down in a manner that he fondly imagined was similar to that of a set of cymbals.

  “TITUS!” Pandora bawled, ripping open the packet of croissants and hurling them into the roasting oven of the range. “Like, hello ? Listen up—Marie Bain's on her way here.”

  Tssss, sss, CLANGGGG, tacka tacka brrrrt, Titus replied, his eyes screwed up in an expression of extreme pain, his mouth opening to screech, “I'm drownin' in your venom, I guess I loved too much, your lovin' feels like poison, you've got the killer touch. …”

  “Nice…,” murmured Pandora, reaching out to replace Titus's cymbals with the compost bucket.

  “It's a kitchen confidential, it's a love cooked up in Hell…,” Titus continued, bringing his foot down into a rotting swamp of furry zucchini, slimy banana skins, and several past-theirsell-by-date eggs, their shells shattering under his sock-clad toes. His eyes flew open in shock, the wooden spoons falling from his hands as he leapt back from the table with a roar of disgust.

  “Whaaaa? Eurghhh, urk, eurchhhhh!” Hopping on one foot, he headed for the door to the kitchen garden, where he removed the offending sock and hurled it outside into the shrubbery.

  Pandora smiled sweetly at her furious brother, deftly avoided his windmilling arms, and declaimed, “Titus StregaBorgia, drummer with the amazingly talented Alien Brothers, welcome to breakfast television.” She stepped out of Titus's path, holding an imaginary video camera to her head and extending a balloon whisk in place of a microphone. “Tell the world, Mr. Borgia, just how did you feel when your sister told you the news about Marie Bain's return?”

  “WHAT?” Titus paused, a haunted expression crossing his face. “What news of Marie Ba—? Oh NO. She's not —?”

  The rattle of an approaching taxi caused his face to turn ashy gray. Pandora bent ovenward and retrieved her tray of hot croissants. “Quick. If we eat them all now, she'll never know.”

  Outside, the taxi door slammed and the familiar voice of the bane of the Strega-Borgia kitchen could be heard greeting Signora Strega-Borgia in pained tones.

  “What a pig,” Pandora observed as Titus crammed a fourth croissant into his mouth, wincing at the heat but nevertheless determined to consume as many as possible before—

  “No, he's not on holiday, Marie. I'm afraid poor Latch is unwell. Shocking news, yes. Terrible. No, we don't know yet. Come and have a coffee while you tell me all about your holiday.” Signora Strega-Borgia's voice echoed down the corridor, the volume increasing as she approached the kitchen.

  Titus reached out for the last croissant and, at a nod from his sister, wedged it into his already overloaded mouth just as the kitchen door swung open to reveal his mother and the unbecomingly suntanned Marie Bain.

  Not so much a suntan, Titus thought unkindly, as a major brush with an overheated grill. He stood up politely, just as a stray croissant flake lodged irritatingly in his throat.

  “Arrrghhhruff,” he growled, hoping to dislodge the offending morsel, but only succeeding in causing the blockage to embed itself still further in his trachea.

  “Rrrghurk?” he managed, turning to Pandora and wildly gesticulating at his throat.

  “Oh, for heaven's sake, Titus.” She crossed the room to grab her brother from behind and, with a practiced grip, executed a perfect Heimlich maneuver, which caused the entire contents of Titus's mouth to eject themselves and land with impeccable accuracy on the floor between Marie Bain's feet.

  “Oh lord, no. I'm so sorry,” Titus blurted, horrified for once at his own excesses. “Look, don't move, I'll get a mop—I… um, ah…”

  With a stifled wail, the cook fled upstairs to the comforts of her bedroom, where, if previous tantrums were anything to go by, she would remain for the next week until, wooed downstairs with flowers, apologies, and promises of salary increases, she would once more resume the mantle of bane of the Strega-Borgia digestion: Marie Bain, the enteric entity.

  “That's the amnesiac's family on the phone for you again, Sister.” The staff nurse's voice had a soft Highland burr somewhat at odds with her perpetual air of bristling efficiency and her tendency to reduce even the most arrogant of consultants to meek little lambs after one of her legendary tongue-lashings in the rinsing room.

  “Sister?” she said, with quiet menace. “Shall I tell them you're chust too busy?”

  Halfway through her only cup of coffee in the previous eight hours, the harassed ward sister leapt to her feet with a guilty start. “No, Nurse. I'll take it. Thank you. …” Stifling an exhausted yawn, the ward sister picked up the phone.

  “Good morning. Ward Two, Sister Fraser speaking. Is that you, Mrs. McLachlan?”

  Across the room, the staff nurse checked her watch, tutted impatiently, and, grabbing a long rubber hose with a rubber bulb attached to one end, set off to inflict terror on her patients.

  “No. Not a lot to report, really. He appears to be quite comfortable…. Well, as far as we can tell, everything appears to be working normally. No sign of any visible trauma…. ”

  From down the corridor came a quavering voice raised in supplication. “No, no please, no. Not that thing. Get away from me, woman. I don't need an anemone…an enemy… an enema aaargh.”

  “Could you hold on a moment?” Sister Fraser dropped the phone into an overflowing laundry bin and bolted down the corridor.

  “Mr. Latch?” she gasped.

  Latch stood in a corner of the ward, holding a brimming bedpan at arm's length, his skinny legs quivering beneath a hospital gown of spectacular brevity. Tethered by various tubes and wires to several items of medical impedimenta, he was hampered in his attempts to evade the ministrations of the staff nurse, who was steadily advancing on him, holding an extended enema tube like an offensive weapon.

  This drama had engulfed the entire ward, and indeed, appeared to have its own healing effect, for several of Latch's more moribund fellow patients were standing on their beds and joining in the rebellion by waving their bedpans in sympathy.

  “Not another step closer,” Latch advised, “or I won't be responsible for the consequences…. ”

  “Mr. Latch,” the staff nurse said, “would you chust behave yourself. What a carry-on. Such foolish behavior…. Chust who do you think you arrre?�
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  An abrupt change came over Latch's features. His face crumpled, his eyes filled with tears, and his mouth opened to howl, “That's it ! That's the problem, don't you see? I don't know who I am. Help me…oh God, help me please. WHO AM I?” He slid down the wall, oblivious to the fact that his hospital gown was failing utterly to preserve his modesty, and, curling himself into a ball, began to sob in a truly abandoned fashion.

  In the great hall at StregaSchloss, Mrs. McLachlan stood keeping a watchful eye on Damp while she waited for the ward sister to return to the phone. Damp was deep in conversation with a wood louse she'd spotted crawling across the baseboard below the main stairs. The wood louse, in the way of such creatures, was politely ignoring the hot-breathed attentions of the two-year-old, and was waiting for an opportune moment to make its escape.

  “So,” Damp said to the wee bug, “wee bug, d'you want to be my friend?”

  And the wee bug said, “I don't know, Damp, maybe later. I'm a bit busy right now. Why don't you go ask Mummy?”

  But Damp said, “Mummy's busy being sick, wee bug…. ”

  “Oh, that's marvelous !” Mrs. McLachlan gasped. “I'm so relieved to hear that. Does that mean we could come in and visit him today?”

  Damp looked up at her beloved nanny and the wood louse took the opportunity to vanish into the woodwork.

  “Of course he's upset,” Mrs. McLachlan soothed. “But don't worry, we'll soon remind him who he is. I'm sure that once he sees us, his memory will come flooding back. …” She paused, listening very carefully, her smile fading, to be replaced with a frown. “No, he's a butler, he doesn't work with chemicals…. What is it you think he's been contaminated with?” There was a pause, then Mrs. McLachlan staggered, as if reeling from some invisible blow. “Sulfur?” she gasped. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  Sensing from Mrs. McLachlan's voice that something was wrong, Damp staggered across the hall and patted the nanny's knees consolingly. With the phone under her chin, Mrs. McLachlan reached down to scoop Damp up into her arms and hug her tight.

  “But it's passing out of his system, you say?” she continued, her voice trembling slightly. “Oh, well, that's a blessing. Who knows what happened? Nothing to worry about. No… Indeed. Give him our love then, and let him know we'll come in to see him this afternoon…. Marvelous… Thank you. Good-bye.” Mrs. McLachlan dropped the phone and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. Her mind launched into a freefall. Sulfur. The odor of Hades. Sulfur was the indelible mark of the Pit. It was the calling card of a demon. And Latch had been all alone at StregaSchloss…alone and very vulnerable….

  A small hand patted her face, drawing her back to the present. Mrs. McLachlan gazed into Damp's wide-open eyes. “Oh lord, child,” she whispered, “I think we're in deep trouble.”

  Damp's face fell and her bottom lip gave an exploratory wobble. “Hubble bubble?” she said in a small voice.

  “A wee bit more than that, pet,” Mrs. McLachlan muttered distractedly, as Titus emerged from the kitchen, tunelessly droning another lyric culled from his extensive repertoire.

  “By the PRICKING of my THUMBS,” he roared, unaware that Mrs. McLachlan also knew the words.

  “… something WICKED this way COMES,” she intoned, causing Damp to bury her head in the nanny's pillowy chest with a howl of terror.

  The Truth About Hell

  uciano Strega-Borgia threw open the library door and yelled down the hallway, “Titus! For Pete's sake. Turn that racket down ! Are you deaf, or what?” And with parental honor thus satisfied, he retreated to the seclusion of the library and waited for the din to cease.

  Three doors along, Titus rolled off his bed and pressed the pause button on his CD player, emitting a martyred sigh as he did so. Then he opened his wardrobe door: stuck to its reverse side was a length of computer paper on which he'd written several phrases in common usage. Producing a gnawed pencil from the interior of the wardrobe, Titus amended his hidden list, adding another tick to “Turn that racket down.”

  Titus smiled. Twenty-seven occurrences since May. Pretty good going. However, “Are you deaf, or what?” was a new entry and, in the interests of statistical accuracy, had to be included on the list. Laboriously, he wrote it down, after “For heaven's sake, this room's a complete pigsty” (19) and “What did your last slave die of?” (a staggering 42 occurrences).

  Smugly determined never to use such worn-out wrinkly phrases himself when he had the misfortune to become a parent, Titus plugged his headphones into the CD player, unpaused the current track, and fell back onto his bed, exhausted by the effort.

  In the library, Luciano too was feeling exhausted. Unable to stop worrying about Latch, he had lain awake all night. As dawn broke over Lochnagargoyle, he slid quietly out of bed and crept downstairs to the library, seeking comfort in the writings of long-dead Roman philosophers. Later, after breakfast, he returned to the library clutching a vast pot of coffee and spent the remainder of the morning on the telephone to various domestic staffing agencies in the hopes of temporarily employing a butler to stand in for Latch. By lunchtime he was sandy-eyeballed, awash in espresso, and thoroughly fed up. The agencies had furnished Luciano with lists of possibilities, e-mailed and faxed extensive butler résumés and butlering references, and generally buried Luciano under mounds of promotional literature, so much so that he was now close to giving up the search and doing without until Latch had recovered. Perhaps they didn't need a butler right now? Surely they could manage without—

  The telephone rang, jolting him back into interview mode.

  “Hello. Strega-Borgias. Luciano speaking.”

  “Er. Aye. It's…it's about the job,” a stranger's voice said.

  “Yes?” Luciano sighed. Frankly, giving interviews by telephone was about as much fun as pulling teeth. “And you are…?”

  There was a long pause, followed by a deafening burst of static.

  “I'm sorry, you're breaking up. I can't hear you,” Luciano muttered as the static was replaced by crackling hisses, through which the mystery voice could barely be heard.

  “Cssssss agency this morning, pssst chhh shhwishhhh, ten years' experien shhhhh pssss, I'm on the train, CHHHSSSST …”

  Quietly, Luciano replaced the handset and groaned as it immediately rang again.

  “YES?” he barked.

  “Hello, ees that Herr Strega-Borgia? I haff a vish to spik pliss viss heem?”

  “Then you'd better go back to night school, hadn't you?” Luciano hissed, through teeth clenched so tight, his jaw ached.

  “I'm sorry? I am telephone about ze yob of butter?” the voice continued. “I am here telling about vy I am ze perfect vun for zis yob? I am Herr Meister Ludwig von Esterhaze…. I am being several years in ze yob of butter at VeingartenSchloss een Transylvania, unt I am now vishing to…how you say, improve my celery?”

  Luciano's hand stole across his desk until it reached the wall socket for the telephone. With a desperate snatch, he unplugged the phone and sighed with relief. A Transylvanian butler? He shook his head sadly. With a wife who fondly imagined herself to be a full-on witch, the last thing he needed was a butler with vampire potential.

  Across the desk, his computer emitted a discreet ping, alerting him to an incoming e-mail. Leaning forward, he pressed ENTER and a letter appeared on the screen.

  FROM: aimlach@domestic_angelic.co.uk

  TO: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: Temporary domestic staff needed in Argyll area

  Dear Luciano Strega-Borgia,

  The agency Domestic Angelic informed me this morning that you had an unforeseen vacancy for a butler/handyman in the Argyll region. I wonder if you might consider me for this position? My name is Alexander Imlach, I'm 28 years old, recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Ecology; prior to that I assisted my (now, sadly, deceased) parents in running a large country house hotel in Cornwall.

  Although I have never been employed as a butler before, I imag
ine that my experience as front-of-house manager at the Standing Stones in Port Isaac might have, in some way, qualified me to fill your temporary staffing vacancy? By chance, I happen to be visiting a friend who lives near Loch Lomond, and if you were interested in interviewing me today I could be on your doorstep in under an hour.

  Under an hour ? What on earth was the boy driving? Luciano wondered. A rocket? Intrigued, he read on:

  Lochnagargoyle and its environs have long been an area dear to my heart. As a child I had the great good fortune to spend a summer camping near the forest of Caledon. The memories I have of that enchanted time are of great comfort to me, all the more so since my parents are no longer in this world.

  Luciano retrieved the telephone cable and plugged it back into the wall socket. That poor boy, he thought, dabbing at his eyes as he scrolled down to find the telephone number at the end of Alexander Imlach's e-mail. All alone, orphaned, with only fading memories of a trip to Argyll for solace…. Luciano shuddered. The boy's parents, may they rest in peace, must have been quite insane. Camping on a loch shore in Argyll was the nearest thing to Hell that he could imagine. With rain, mist, freezing-cold water, and gnats in such quantities that they fearlessly invaded your eyeballs and nostrils, only holidaymakers of a masochistic disposition considered driving their tent pegs into Lochnagargoyle's infested foreshores. Suspecting that his search for a temporary Latch-substitute had struck pay dirt, Luciano dialed and sat back to wait.

  If Luciano could have seen what Hell was really like, he would have been forced to amend his incorrect comparison of its discomforts with those experienced under a tent in Argyll.