Читать книгу Mr Humperdinck's Mysterious Manuscript - Wynand Louw - Страница 7

Sticks Goes Clubbing

Pete and Squeak fled from the shop for fear of the shadows returning. They found Freddy in his office, which was little more than a platform made of steel grating in the pipe shaft of the building where he lived with his family.

Pete was worried. “I really need my skateboard now. If monsters like that are around, I have to be able to move fast.”

Freddy aimed the lamp at his notebook. “This is what I have on Rose so far: her daily routine after work.” He poked at the first line of scribble on the dirty page.

16:00 Leaves her room at the school.

16:19 Boards a bus at the bus stop near the grocery.

“We could highjack the bus,” said Squeak from his perch on top of the ancient computer monitor.

Freddy ignored him.

16:39 Gets off at the 2nd Street stop.

16:46 Draws money at the ATM at the corner of Main and 2nd.

17:00 Happy hour at the Gravedigger’s Inn.

“The Gravedigger’s Inn! What sort of a place is that?” asked Pete.

“Some theme bar. Terrible décor. And don’t sit on those computer books, you’re ruining them.”

18:00 Wanders down 4th, killing time. Smokes a few cigarettes.

19:10 …

Squeak eyed Freddy’s schedule suspiciously. “She does nothing for more than an hour?”

“Happy hour at the Putrid Poulet only starts at 19:30,” explained Freddy. “That’s French for ‘chicken’.”

“I knew that,” said Pete.

19:10 Starts walking to the Putrid Poulet.

“And she stays there until?” asked Pete.

Freddy tapped his finger on his notebook. “Not so fast!”

19:19 Enters the bus station on 7th.

Squeak sighed. “I thought you said she went to get some chicken feed.”

“Has to answer the call of nature,” said Freddy. “The Digger’s brew. It’s our only opportunity to get the key off her neck.”

“The ladies’ toilet at the bus station? No way!” Pete shook his head. “And remember, we have to get the key back on her neck. All that in a toilet?”

“Well, after that it’s the Putrid Poulet until past midnight.” Freddy drew his finger a line down:

19:30 Enters the Putrid Poulet.

“Loud music, headbanging and vodka. No kids allowed.”

“And after that?” asked Pete.

Freddy’s finger slipped down another line:

01:00 Closing time. Staggers back to the school.

Pete looked at Squeak. “If kids can’t get in …”

Squeak stepped back. “Don’t even think it!”

“He’ll get trampled,” said Freddy. “It’s a pretty wild place.”

Pete and Squeak stared at Freddy.

“So I’m told, okay?”

“Okay,” said Pete. “No sweat. All we need is an adult accomplice.”

Squeak thought for a moment. “Vusi may help.”

“Cousin’s getting married,” said Pete.

“Morris?”

“He’s the cousin who’s getting married.”

Freddy had a sudden inspiration. “We could hypnotise some unsuspecting adult, like I did with Pete the …” He cut his sentence short when he saw Pete’s green eyes flashing. “He could act as a kind of remote agent,” he added lamely.

Pete looked at Squeak.

Squeak looked at Pete.

“Sticks!” said Pete.

“The Snowman will eat me alive.” The little mouse’s whiskers trembled.

“We’ll be back in less than an hour. He won’t even notice,” said Pete. “And tomorrow’s Saturday, the shop’ll be closed.”

When Pete and Squeak returned to Paradise Mansions later that night, the light was on in the bicycle shop. They entered, and the doorbell played a silly tune.

“Good thing you came, guys,” the Snowman said from the countertop. “Percy wants to see you.”

Sir Percival Potts (Esq) was a VID (Very Important Dwarf), Knight of the Order of the Blind Cow in the service of Her Royal Highness, the Queen. The dwarf was on all fours, hunting for clues. When he heard Pete entering, he wiggled from under a fallen shelf and stood up. His grey beard was covered with dust and ash, and there was an oil stain on his round belly. He put his magnifying glass in his pocket. “We have something of a situation on our hands. Take a look at this, young man.” He took a weird-looking brass device from his trench coat, placed it on a chair and turned a little crank on the side. It made a jarring sound for a few seconds, then it pinged, and a small dial popped up from the top.

The dwarf examined it. “Have you ever seen a reading this high?” he asked Pete.

Pete had never seen anything like it in his life. “What is it?”

“It measures rancorous residues,” said the Snowman, obviously proud of his superior knowledge.

“Oh!” said Pete, and Squeak did an exaggerated impersonation of the cat.

Percy nodded. “It measures the tracks left by malignant magical creatures. Oogieboogies, warfs, woggles and the like. Of course, woggles are far worse than anything else.”

An icy chill shot through Pete’s bones. He had had a close encounter with a woggle before. An encounter he almost did not survive. “It was a woggle?”

“If it were a woggle, you’d jolly well be dead now, old chap. No, these were shadows, according to what Mr Snowman and this little dial here tell me.”

“But you said the reading was so high …” said Squeak. He crawled into Pete’s top pocket just to be safe.

The dwarf pushed the dial back into the contraption and stuffed it somewhere in his coat. “It’s high because there were many of them.”

Pete looked over his shoulder. Suddenly the deep shadows in the shop harboured all sorts of imagined terrors. “Shadows?”

“Have you ever wondered what happens to your shadow when it’s completely dark?”

A few weeks before, Freddy had gone through a philosophical phase and kept asking questions exactly like that. Pete answered, “When there is no light I can’t cast a shadow, so I don’t have one. Right?” knowing in his guts that mere science wouldn’t satisfy the dwarf.

“What do they teach in Physics these days?” Percy shook his head in pity for his poor uneducated friend. “In complete darkness, your shadow just crawls into some handy corner until there is light again and it has something to do. That is, unless someone summons it to do something else … Of course, it could never do something its owner wouldn’t.”

Squeak peeked over the edge of Pete’s pocket. “I’ve never seen a shadow that could blow things up.”

“It depends on whose shadow it is,” explained the dwarf.

“So who did the summoning?” asked Pete.

“Someone powerful. Someone who wants something in this shop.”

“Greenback?”

Greenback, a very rich industrialist, was the mastermind behind Mr Humperdinck’s murder. He had also robbed a bank and planned the computer crime of the century. But Pete and his friends had foiled his plan.

Percy shook his head. “The blighter’s in prison, and we have our eyes on him. This must be a new sorcerer in the neighbourhood.”

The Snowman marched to and fro on the counter. “We need to find out who did this to my shop, and why. This can ruin my business!”

“Relax, old fellow,” said the dwarf. “We’ll apply every resource available to us to this problem. In the meantime, I’ll have an alarm system installed in the shop, and we’ll have someone on standby twenty-six hours a day.” He took out his cellphone and made a call. After a short conversation, he said, “Everything’s organised, old chap. We’ll have a brownie regiment here by thirteen o’clock tonight.”

The doorbell rang and Pete’s father came in. The Snowman disappeared behind the counter, and a few moments later Sticks made his appearance from behind a shelf.

“Pete, it’s almost eleven. You should be in bed,” said Peter Smith after greeting Percy and Sticks.

Pete pulled a face but followed his father out. They climbed the stairs to the third floor in silence.

“I was worried when I came home from the AA meeting and you weren’t at home,” Peter Smith said as they entered their dingy little one-roomed flat. “Next time I want you to tell me where you’re going and to be home by nine.”

It was as if Pete were locked in the bank’s vault again. Trapped. Smothered. “Nine o’clock! Dad, I’m not a baby any more.” He said it much too loud.

“Exactly! You are old enough to take responsibility. You have to get up early in the morning to go to school.”

Pete said nothing and glared at his father. Peter Smith looked prematurely old: tired green eyes, face lined like tanned leather from too much drinking, and streaks of grey in his dark hair. But it was evident that he had been quite handsome when he was younger.

“I worry about you, Pete!”

Something, maybe the tone of his father’s voice, irritated him. He almost said, Why? You never cared before!

The gargoyle outside their window glowed red in the neon light from the bar across the road. A police car drove by, siren wailing.

“I know I haven’t been much of a father, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t try to be a good one now,” Smith said at last, his shoulders sagging.

“Ten?”

“Nine.”

Pete sighed as he went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. It was going to be difficult to be back by nine on Friday evening. They would have to work fast.

“He looks quite handsome in black.” Freddy inspected Sticks’s limp frame after they had shaken him from the black plastic bag in which they had carried him. “Pity it’s not leathers, though. It would be more suitable for this dump. And a few piercings would be nice.”

“Now to get this contraption going.” Pete strapped the whatsit to his forehead. For a brief moment nothing seemed to happen, and then the vertigo hit him. Things went black. It was as if his eyeballs were sucked from his head and thrown on the ground.

His vision came back slowly. He saw himself standing among the garbage cans and dirt in the dark alley behind the Putrid Poulet with the green-lit, whirring whatsit on his head. He was seeing through Sticks’s eyes.

“Okay, it’s working!” shouted Squeak from his shoulder.

Freddy jumped with excitement. “Get up and go for it!”

Pete tried moving his hand. He saw himself moving his hand. Then he turned Sticks’s head and looked down. The automaton’s hand was also moving. He concentrated. Sticks slowly stood up from the cardboard box on which they’d seated him.

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” said Sticks in Pete’s voice and walked a few steps. Then the automaton lost its balance and fell in a tangle of broomsticks and black jeans.

“Now look what you’ve done,” said Freddy. “He’s lost an arm!”

Pete took the whatsit off. He reeled as his point of vision was flung back into his own head. Nausea rose in his chest. He sat down on a dustbin. When he felt better, he bent down and examined Sticks. The automaton had indeed lost an arm: The wing nut joint of the right elbow had come loose.

Pete fumbled in the sleeve of the jacket and fixed it. He took a deep breath. “Here goes!” he said as he strapped the contraption to his head again. The vertigo struck, but he was ready for it this time.

The Putrid Poulet was everything Freddy had said, and more. Dark, with flashing coloured lights illuminating hordes on the dance floor and at the bar. Laser beams cut through clouds of cigarette smoke. The music was deafening.

Pete could feel Sticks’s wooden frame vibrate with every beat of the bass. It gave him a headache.

He manoeuvred the automaton around the dance floor and through the sweating throng to the bar. Maybe the barman knew Rose. In the movies they always knew everybody. This particular barman had a huge copper ring in his tattooed nose.

Pete tried to attract his attention. “Excuse me …”

The next moment the nose-ringed barman thrust a paper cup into the automaton’s hand.

“I did not …” began Pete.

The man held out his right hand and showed four fingers with the left.

“Pay him!” Squeak shouted from inside Sticks’s cardboard chest.

Pete panicked. Nobody had thought about bringing money. Nobody had any money anyway. He looked around for an escape route. Then someone next to Sticks handed the barman some money. Pete turned Sticks’s head to his benefactor.

It was a woman. Black-and-white make-up with a shade of green around the eyes. There was a safety pin in her left cheek. She winked, leaned over to Sticks and shouted in his ear, “It’s on me, Elvis!”

Pete moved Sticks’s lips into a smile. He had no idea what to do, so he lifted the cup and emptied it into the wax mouth. A wet sensation spread across his chest. He looked down. The wax head had no throat, and all the liquid just ran over his chin and onto his jacket. He felt the woman sidling up to Sticks.

She smiled sweetly, wiggling her safety pin. “Like to dance?” she shouted.

Pete was at a loss. He would never find Rose. The club was too dark and crowded. He could bump right into her without seeing her. He steered Sticks after the safety pin lady into the mob on the dance floor.

Dancing was the one thing that was easy. No co-ordination required. Just concentrate on keeping the automaton upright, and shake your body. Piece of cake.

“There she is!” shouted Squeak. He was peeking through a hole in the back of Sticks’s jacket.

Pete scanned the crowd on the dance floor. “Where?”

“Behind you!”

Pete turned the automaton’s head a hundred and eighty degrees. “Where?”

Somebody screamed. He turned the head another hundred and eighty degrees to see what had happened. It was his dancing partner. When she saw Sticks turning his head a full circle, she fainted.

Pete bent the broomstick body to help the safety pin girl.

Squeak scrambled inside the automaton’s chest to get a better view. “Purple make-up and spikes on the head. Quick, she’s moving away!”

Pete turned the wax head again, and this time he recognised the school’s caretaker. Then he moved the automaton’s body, but in trying to do too many things at the same time, he lost control. Sticks crashed into the crowd, and when his head hit the ground, it came loose and rolled a few paces away from the body. Pete stared up from the dance floor at a circle of shocked faces. He saw Squeak emerging from Sticks’s chest where the neck should have been.

The little mouse grasped the bracket at the end of the wax neck. “Help me, dammit!”

Pete moved the automaton’s right hand. He grabbed at the head and missed.

“More to the left,” yelled Squeak.

He concentrated and got the head by the black acrylic hair. With Squeak guiding, he shoved it back onto the shoulders. Then he made the automaton stand up.

The dance floor was in total chaos, screaming faces and milling bodies everywhere. A few people had seen what had happened and believed their eyes. They tried to escape from Sticks as quickly as possible. More people knew that they had seen something terrible, but did not quite know what. They stood around dazed. And the rest of the people in the club tried to get closer to see exactly what was going on.

Pete steered Sticks towards the spot where he thought he had last seen Rose. The crowd parted to let him through.

My head! You hurt my head!

The thought shot through Pete’s mind like a flash. It wasn’t his. He dismissed it and focused on the job at hand. Rose was standing at the bar. He positioned Sticks to her left and tapped her on the shoulder. “Hello, Rose.”

“Drop dead,” said the old hag.

Pete was stunned. This was not the way it was supposed to go – he had the face of a famous rock and roll star, after all. He needed help. He removed the whatsit from his head, and was suddenly back in the alley.

“What’s going on in there?” asked Freddy.

“She told me to drop dead!”

Freddy closed his eyes for a second. “Say, ‘I’ll die like a flower deprived of the sun if you deny me the ecstasy of looking at your beautiful face’.”

“Okay!” Pete slapped the whatsit on and was hurled back into the club.

Rose was waving her hand in front of Sticks’s face. “Just seemed to black out,” she said.

“I’ll die like a flower deprived of the sun if you deny me the ecstasy of looking at your beautiful face,” said Pete.

Rose’s face contorted in disgust, multiplying her wrinkles by ten. “What a sicko!” She turned her back on Sticks.

Pete pulled the whatsit off. “She called me a sicko!”

“I’m sick with love for you!” shouted Freddy.

Whatsit back on.

“I’m sick with love for you!” shouted Pete.

No!

Another thought from nowhere.

“He’s kinda cute, don’t you think?” said a large woman next to Rose at the bar. “If you don’t want him, I’ll have him!”

Rose glared at her friend. “Who says I don’t want him? Who says he’d want you to have him?”

Pete saw the opportunity, and placed the automaton’s hand on the old woman’s bony shoulder. Squeak jumped from the sleeve onto her shoulder and disappeared under the strands of dyed black hair that covered her neck.

She turned to Sticks and commanded, “Kiss me!”

Pete tore the whatsit off. “Now she wants me to kiss her!”

“Women!” exclaimed Freddy. “Do it!”

Pete hesitated.

“It is just a wax head!”

“Right!” Pete put the whatsit on. He tried to remember the last kissing scene he had seen on television, and moved Sticks’s head closer to Rose’s upturned face.

No!

The automaton’s neck got stuck. Pete could not get the wax face closer to Rose’s wrinkled, puckering lips. He grabbed the head with Sticks’s right hand to get it unstuck.

Sticks’s left hand swung up and grabbed the other side of his head, holding it in position.

I won’t kiss her!

The thought bulldozed through Pete’s consciousness. Astonished, he withdrew his mind from the automaton.

Sticks straightened and adjusted his jacket. “I won’t kiss you. I love someone else,” he said in a smooth, rock star voice. “This whole situation is disgusting.”

He turned. A crowd of people stood around them.

“That’s him!” shouted a woman, pointing. “He’s a zombie!”

Two bouncers moved in to grab Sticks. The poor broomstick man stood petrified.

“Hey, it’s Elvis! It’s Elvis Presley!” someone else yelled, and the crowd went mad.

Pete realised he had to do something fast. “Stop right there or … I’ll blast your heads off!” he yelled. He moved Sticks’s right hand, grabbed the head and lifted it off the shoulders. “Like this!”

Everybody froze. The safety pin lady fainted again.

And then Rose screamed. She grabbed at her neck. “Mouse! My key! A mouse stole my key!”

Squeak tore across the countertop, ran up Sticks’s arm and dived across his collar into the cavernous chest. “I’ve got it. Let’s get out of here!”

Pete slammed the head back on and with superhuman effort made Sticks’s body vault across the counter. He made the broomstick man sprint through the kitchen and out into the alley.

Pete pulled the whatsit off, and he and Freddy grabbed Sticks and bundled him into the black plastic bag. Then they strolled out of the alley, carrying the bag between them, just as a gang of heavies came spilling out of the back door.

“The key. Did you get the key?” asked Freddy a block or so down the street.

Squeak grinned. “I dropped it down her blouse, and the chewing gum with the imprint is safely stuck to Sticks’s spine.”

Pete told Freddy about Sticks coming to life. “The Snowman’s going to skin Maggie alive when he finds out what effect her kiss had on Sticks.”

The mouse shook his head. “We’re not telling him. If we do, we’ll have to tell him we borrowed Sticks, and then there’ll be no end of trouble.”