Pure Dead Batty Read online

  “There,” growled Titus. For the first time since the onset of his acanthoid-accelerated manhood he was delighted to have the extra muscle power that it had bestowed upon him. No way, he decided, could he have hauled that lot into the house yesterday. But, more important, what on earth did the new nanny need all those cases for? Pandora’s thoughts were running along similar lines. She was remembering the day Mrs. McLachlan first came to StregaSchloss to be their nanny. She’d arrived in the clothes she stood up in, carrying nothing more than a battered plastic handbag.… And now Pandora’s nose was prickling and her eyes were filling up—bother, bother, bother—

  “Oh, look.” Minty gasped. “This must be Dump.”

  Hurling herself downstairs under Vesper’s guidance, Damp was too absorbed in trying to achieve liftoff to notice the presence of a stranger in the hall. Vesper, however, had spotted Minty, and decided to make himself scarce, incorrectly putting her down as the type who’d throw a hissy fit followed by anything else within reach upon sighting a bat. Unaware that her tutor had vanished, Damp came to a halt on the bottom step of the main staircase, folded her arms against her chest in the manner Vesper had shown her and was about to demonstrate her newfound talent for hanging upside down from the banisters when she caught sight of Minty.

  Minty beamed and clapped both her hands together in a display of barely contained enthusiasm. Pandora groaned. She’d always loathed anything that smacked of organized “fun,” and here was the new nanny acting like a bouncy combination of gym mistress, nursery nurse, and children’s TV presenter. Oh, sigh, she thought, watching in dismay as Minty breezed onward.

  “Hello, Dump,” she said softly, walking toward the child. “I’m Minty. Gosh, I do hope we’re going to become the best of friends—”

  Gosh, thought Damp. I don’t think so; not if you can’t say my name prop’ly.

  “I’m so looking forward to playing lots and lots of games with you—and meeting all your lovely toys and dollies and teddies.”

  Don’t let me hold you back, Damp decided, wondering why it was that strange grown-ups always spoke to her as if she were slightly dim and profoundly deaf.

  “And do you know what, Dump? Ever since your mummy asked me to come and be your nanny, I’ve just been so exci—”

  “Nanny?” Damp’s brows plunged.

  Oh, heck, thought Titus. I was supposed to tell Damp, too. And I forgot. Something to do with hiding in my room and hoping I could stay hidden until the acanthoid wax wore off. Oh, triple heck, he amended, catching sight of Damp’s expression.

  “Not nanny,” Damp stated. “Got nanny. Don’t want ‘nother one. Thank you. Go ’way. Go ’way. Not want nanny.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, don’t worry.…” Minty breathed, aghast at having unwittingly caused such distress, and trying to draw Damp into her arms for a consoling hug.

  “GO ’WAY. GO ’WAY. GO ’WAY!” Damp sobbed, flapping her arms like a demented windmill. “OUT, OUT. GO ’WAY. NOT WANT YOU, LADY.”

  Pandora looked down at the floor and observed that Damp’s feet were hovering several centimeters above the bottom step. Suspecting that the new nanny would pass out in terror if she saw that her youngest client was able to levitate, she wrapped her arms round her little sister and hauled her off toward the kitchen.

  “Damp, come on. It’s okay. Let’s go and make some pudding for supper. I’ll look after you till Mum gets back.” Smiling insincerely at Minty, Pandora turned to her brother. “Titus? Why don’t you introduce Mini—Oh, sorry, Ninny to the beasts? Or vice versa. I’m sure they’ll be far more scared of her than she’ll be of them.” She left this veiled threat a-dangle and bore Damp off.

  Seeing Minty’s eyes widen as several possible meanings of Pandora’s words occurred to her, Titus attempted to be hospitable. “Let me take your stuff upstairs,” he suggested, hauling a rucksack onto his back and hefting a suitcase in each hand. “Follow me,” he gasped, and praying he wouldn’t fall to his knees under the combined weight of all three items of luggage, Titus made a run for the stairs. Halfway to the first landing he knew he had to stop before his arms fell off. Pretending he was merely stopping to brush a stray hair from his eyes, he turned round to see that the new nanny hadn’t even made it to the first step. Indeed, she was standing in the middle of the hall, exactly where he’d left her, transfixed with terror as Ffup came lumbering along the corridor toward her. The dragon carried her baby son Nestor under one arm, her voice raised in loud dismay.

  “I told you to let me know when you need a poo. Not after you’ve done one. Then it’s too late. Then poor Mummy has to go and find the shovel, the scrubbing brush, the disinfectant, the rubber gloves, three rolls of toilet paper, and a clothespin for Mummy’s no—” Ffup came to an abrupt halt in front of Minty. Her vast yellow eyes widened in alarm. “Oh, dear,” she quavered, clutching Nestor tightly and pointing at the new nanny with a vibrating talon. “Look, pet. It’s a golden-hair. Our horoscope said to beware of them. Specially ones with canned boyfriends called George. Let’s not panic, will we?” The pitch of Ffup’s voice was creeping upward as the dragon began to hyperventilate. “We’ll just tiptoe past it, pretending it’s not there—try not to attract its attention. Slowly, that’s it—oh, no. It’s—it’s—it’s staring straight at us. Aaaaaaaargh—RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!”

  And dropping Nestor on the floor, Ffup leaped for the front door and struggled hysterically with the latch, little jets of flame escaping from her nostrils and vent in her haste to put as much distance as possible between herself and the unspecified threat of Minty the golden-hair.

  Titus rushed back downstairs just in time to witness the new nanny’s eyes roll backward in her head as she crumpled to the floor in a faint.

  “Oh, no!” Titus roared in dismay. “No. No. NO! Not all the suitcases and her too. Pandora! Pan! Help! HELP!”

  “You … still … haven’t … explained … what’s happened to you.” Pandora’s words were punctuated by gasps of effort as together she and Titus dragged the final cabin trunk upstairs to Minty’s room.

  “Phew—what a beast. What on earth was in that one? Bricks? Weights? Maybe she’s a secret body builder—talking of which, come on, Titus, what’s happened to you? Yesterday you looked like a scrawny twig and today …” Pandora blushed. Suddenly she’d run out of words.

  “Today?” Titus raised his eyebrows. “Oh—you know. Mum’s been on at us for years to eat our greens, and I guess finally the broccoli worked and made me grow up stron—Ow! Don’t. That hurt.”

  “Well, you deserve it, you lying toad. Come on, Titus. Those muscles aren’t due to eating broccoli. And your voice has gone all growly.…” Pandora trailed off: she didn’t think she could mention Titus’s incipient five o’clock shadow or his six-pack or the gruesome fact that even his toes appeared to have sprouted little puffs of fur. She could see all these changes, but she knew she’d spontaneously self-combust if she had to voice them. Fortunately Titus had no such qualms.

  “You mean the fact I’ve turned into a grown-up?” he muttered, heaving Minty’s biggest cabin trunk across the floor and dropping it with a crash beside the bed. “I guess I’d hoped you wouldn’t notice. Or something. You know. Like, because I’m your brother I’m sort of invisible kind of thing. Oh, God, Pandora, can’t you tell? This is another one of Mum’s dodgy spells. Some stupid stuff she calls acanthoid wax. She put it in our dinner by mistake—”

  “WHAAAAAT?” Pandora yelped. “You mean I ate it too? I’m going to go all hairy? Oh, no. No! Tell me it’s not—”

  “You didn’t eat it, remember?” Titus sighed. “None of us did. Not even Mum, and she cooked it. I ate one mouthful, but you took one sniff and dumped the lot into Knot’s bowl when Mum’s back was turned. So don’t worry. You’re safe. Even Knot didn’t eat it—though he’s a bloke already and he couldn’t get any hairier. Now come on and help me drag Minty onto a sofa or something.”

  “She sounds like a toothpaste,” Pandora grumbled, followin
g Titus out into the corridor. “How long will it last then, Titus? Your—er … furriness?”

  “Two days to a week, Mum said.” Titus tried to smile, but failed utterly. “I tried to use Dad’s electric razor this morning, and it bit me. And I don’t fit my own clothes, either. I’m wearing Dad’s stuff, which feels seriously weird, not to mention deeply sad. I mean, Dad’s clothes are just so … boring. Shirts and trousers. Not a single pair of jeans. No T-shirts. God. I feel like an accountant or something. Stop laughing, Pan. It’s not funny.” And turning his back on her, he fled downstairs, feeling more like a toddler having a tantrum than the grown man reflected back at him in the hall mirror.

  Gagged with a Spoon

  Damp stood on a chair at the kitchen table, counting frozen raspberries into a bowl under Latch’s supervision.

  “Eleventy, twelveteen, sixty, a hundered.”

  “Who on earth is this now?” Latch muttered to himself, hearing a vehicle approaching outside.

  “Twelveteen, seventyleven, a thousand.”

  Wiping his hands on a dishcloth, Latch hurried into the hall. He saw a black Range Rover crawling along the track to StregaSchloss. Blacked-out windows too, he observed, wondering if Baci had decided to come home early. He’d found her note half-hidden under the fridge, but by then the new nanny had not only arrived, she’d been introduced to the children, the beasts, and the rats—with predictable results. Plus she’d been given the Ancestors’ Room, not the Lilac Room, which was always a mistake, even for the psychically lumpen guest—which, he suspected, Miss Minty was not.

  “Six thousand million squillion and one,” Damp said loudly, trying to impress Latch with her precocious grasp of numbers. She poked the mound of frozen raspberries in the bowl in front of her and sighed. Latch was busy, Mummy had gone to see Daddy, Pandora and Titus were looking after the not-nanny, and of Vesper there was no sign save for a little offering of bat-poo on top of a wizened apple in the fruit bowl. Damp prodded the raspberries again and then paused, her attention caught by something in amongst the frosty berries. She could see a thread buried under the top layer of raspberries. A silver thread. Had Latch found it in the freezer along with the fruit? Damp reached out to touch it just as the doorbell rang three times.

  Luciano sat handcuffed to a bench in the rear of a windowless police van, miserably contemplating the miles now dividing him from his beloved family back at StregaSchloss. He was stunned by the day’s events, unable to grasp just how desperate a position he now found himself in. It was unbearable. He was going to die—he couldn’t—

  Beside him, a youth who appeared to have been marinaded in essence of rancid ashtray stirred himself and gave a series of fruity bubbling coughs while gasping out, “Was. That. Hack, cough, wheeze. Your. Missus?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Back there. In court? The one all in black? Hair, hat, dress. Nice legs, if you don’t mind my saying—”

  “I do, actually,” Luciano muttered. “I mind a lot. That lady is my wife. I’d be very grateful if you refrained from making personal remar—”

  “Hold it, hold it. Calm down, Jimmy.” The wheezing youth held up his hands in surrender. “No offense meant, pal. I’m sure she’s very ladylike. Very. That is, when your fancy lawyer isn’t patting her on the bu—”

  “Listen,” Luciano hissed, “one more remark like that, signore, and I’ll find a way to ram these handcuffs right down your insolent lying throat. Shut up. Capisce?” Had he really just said that? His eyes were hot and dry, his jaw rigid, teeth clenched; he was horribly aware that he had just been consumed by a red tide of rage.

  “Jeeez—no need for that,” whined the wheezy one. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Jimmy. Aw right?” He moved away, rattling his chains till his handcuffs brought him to an abrupt halt. Coughing revoltingly, he subsided into a sullen silence.

  Luciano stared at him, trying to drag his thoughts away from the memory of Baci. Baci in deepest black. Baci in mourning. For him? For their marriage? He felt sick. The deathly reek of stale cigarettes coming from his fellow prisoner coupled with the police van’s reek of industrial-strength disinfectant were conspiring to make him feel horribly nauseated. He tried to think of something else; his eyes roamed desperately over the graffitied metal walls surrounding him. Regrettably, these were decorated with words which alone would have made his gorge rise. Luciano closed his eyes. He was in hell, he decided. He’d been in hell for approximately three hours now, ever since the judge had peered down at him with an expression of utter disgust, spitting out the words as if he grudged even the tiny effort required in pronouncing them.

  “Trial is fixed for December the twenty-first. Take the prisoner down.”

  That was when Luciano had howled out loud. Like a dog. He hadn’t realized he was capable of producing such a noise, but he was incapable of stopping himself.

  “Aowwwwwwwoooooooooooooo.”

  The judge glared and banged his gavel, but Luciano didn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t hear. He was staring transfixed at Baci. Poor Baci, crying as they led him away from her; back to those filthy cells; back to Malky and Man-Mountain; back to that unspeakable coffee dreck. And as he turned round to gaze at her one last time before they hauled him off, he saw his fancy new lawyer was leading her away, one proprietorial arm around her shoulders, smirking at Luciano with an expression on his face that clearly said, This one’s mine, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.

  And he was right, Luciano thought wretchedly. There was nothing he could do about it. Not only had he lost his liberty and appeared to be in danger of losing his wife; if the signals now coming from his stomach were to be believed, he was about to lose his lunch as well (one ham sandwich with scant acquaintance with pigs or, indeed, wheat, followed by one carton of fruits of the forest drink, about which the best one could say was that it was wet).

  Oh, dear, thought Luciano as his stomach contents hurtled upward. Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.

  Hours later, showered and changed into an elegant aprèsvomit number in brown sacking with repeating arrow details, Luciano was dropped straight into the main prison population at Her Majesty’s concrete hotel for bad blokes in Glasgow. By then he was past caring. If a demon had appeared, impaled Luciano on the business end of a toasting fork, and slung him onto a barbecue, he couldn’t have felt any worse. Holding a plastic tray in both hands, he sleepwalked forward in a queue whose destination was a row of aluminum food vats of the kind popular in schools, hospitals, and other such institutions the world over. A dank miasma of massacred vegetables curled around the line of men, all of whom appeared to have experienced DIY plastic surgery to their faces. Edging closer to Luciano than was strictly necessary was a particularly fine example: a shrunken man, his mouth twisted out of shape by a fearsome pink scar which snaked down from his nose, bisected his upper lip, dimpled his chin, and vanished from sight below his Adam’s apple. Luciano blinked. Dear God, mustn’t stare. Mustn’t. Look into the middle distance, he commanded himself. Do not, repeat not, make eye contact.

  The edge of the man’s dinner tray pressed insistently into Luciano’s ribs, and to his horror he heard himself addressed thus:

  “Hey. Psssst. You. Yeah, you. Borgia, yeah.”

  With a supreme effort of will, Luciano forced himself not to react. He transformed his neck into a pillar of concrete laced with steel girders and his mouth clamped shut on a squeak of terror. Unfortunately, his stomach wasn’t quite so reticent. Recently evacuated, it let rip with an echoing, twanging arpeggio of digestive complaint that sounded as if it was being broadcast live from Coventry Cathedral. This appeared to mollify his tormentor.

  “Hungry, huh? I’ll let you eat, then,” and the dinner tray was removed from Luciano’s ribs as a meaty hand descended on his shoulder. “Buon giorno, signore.” The man’s voice was hoarse and urgent, as if he was talking against a ticking clock. “No, thassa right. Don’t turn round. Just keep looking straight ahead. Thassa good, capisce
?”

  Luciano grunted assent, amazed at how manly his grunt sounded.

  “I justa have to pass on my congratulations,” the voice continued, kneading Luciano’s shoulder with quite unnecessary enthusiasm. “Your brother Lucifer—what a guy. What an incredible guy. A giant amongst pygmies. You know, signore, your brother is my hero. Si. You musta be so proud to be related to him. And only lasta week—that bank? The airplane? All those dumb cops? What bravado. Sucha brilliance. He’s one in a million, don’tcha think?”

  Luciano assessed this. What on earth was the man on about? His brother Lucifer was bad news. He was scum. Last time he’d seen his wonderful brother, Lucifer had just shot Luciano’s lawyer and had been threatening to kill Baci—oh, my God, Baci.

  Luciano’s shoulder went another three rounds with the meat grinder as his fellow prisoner continued with his sycophantic ravings.

  “Those cops—puh. He blew them away, huh? Bam bam bam BAM! They hada no idea what kind of man they were dealing with.”

  Luciano drifted away inside his head. He had no wish to hear what kind of man his brother was. He knew exactly what kind of man Lucifer was. To his cost, he knew that Lucifer was the kind of man who grew out of a child whose mission statement appeared to have been to cause pain. Luciano shuddered. Thanks to his brother, he had no fingerprints left on either of his hands from the day when Lucifer had embedded Frosty, his pet mouse, inside a vast ball of dry ice. Although Luciano knew that his mouse was beyond saving, he had still tried to rescue it and had to be hospitalized afterward. Thanks to his brother, Luciano had a bald spot behind his left ear where Lucifer had branded him with a white-hot poker (“Let’s play cattle ranchers, Luce—I’ll be the rancher branding my herd, you’ll be the herd”). Thanks to his vile, corrupt, vicious brother, even now, thirty years later, he couldn’t eat anything with pastry around it, not since the awful time when Lucifer had told him exactly what kind of meat had been in the pie he’d so keenly devoured—Luciano had never kept a dog again, either.…