earth is going on, Jim?” Eric asked, following him down the dark passageway, away from the cell. “How can we be at the top of the world, but also here?”
“Shush!” Jimmy chided. “We don’t want the Madam or the Mr to hear us!”
Confused, Eric whispered, “If they’re here, we can’t be at the top of the world, can we?”
Slapping himself on the forehead, Jimmy hissed, “LISTEN, will you? I will say this only once!”
After Jimmy had finished explaining, telling Eric what Mr Smith had told him about the Stars of Transition (an ethereal place of solitude witches go to, to find inspiration and comfort at times of great need), he felt no more enlightened. “Can you run that past me again?” he asked.
“Once means once,” Jimmy snapped. “I told you so!”
“But…”
“No ifs of buts, remember?”
“But…”
After giving his friend a look that would have curdled butter, Jimmy, by way of pacification, said, “It’s witch stuff. Just believe what I have told you, and leave the worrying to me.” Leading the way down the dark passageway, ignoring Eric’s unhappy grumblings as to what he actually meant by witch stuff, Jimmy said no more on the subject.
After several minutes of dark progress, Jimmy stopped in front of a door blocking their progress. It was wooden, old and terribly damp.
Still hoping for enlightenment, Eric asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Shush…” Jimmy replied, resting an ear against the door, listening.
“Is there someone there?” Eric asked, also placing an ear against it.
“Horses…”
“Horses? They are alive!” Eric gasped excitedly.
“Shush!”
“Sorry.”
Despite continuing to listen, their ears stuck hard against the damp wood of the door, neither boy heard any more sounds from the horses.
“I don’t like it, Jim,” Eric grumbled, pressing his ear even harder against the door, “I don’t like it one bit.”
Jimmy wanted to reply, to tell Eric that he agreed with him, but he never got a chance, as the door suddenly came crashing down. Amidst a haze of powdery splinters, studs and rusty old nails, the Madam and the Mr reappeared. “So, we meet again,” said the Mr, his voice cold, hard and animalistic.
“You two are right little Houdinis,” said the Madam, her voice creaky and crabby, like broken glass, “escaping your cell, so.”
Edging closer, the Mr said, “Mr Viscous will not be pleased.”
Also edging closer, the Madam concurred, “No, not all.”
His mood lightening, the Mr said, “Though, he will be pleased we apprehended you.”
Smiling grotesquely, the Madam concurred, “Yes, very pleased indeed…”
With absolutely no warning, the Madam and the Mr lunged at the boys, each with a particular child in mind.
“RUN!” Jimmy hollered. “Run for your life!”
“I’m onto it!” Eric answered, dunking and diving around the Madam and the Mr, like there was no tomorrow.
If the Madam and the Mr had caught them, Jimmy and Eric would most surely have found it impossible to escape, but the boys, acutely aware of the danger they were in, ran like the wind, evading their dangerous clutches with surprising ease.
“Where to, now?” Eric asked, puffing and panting, his eyes scanning the passageway, behind, for signs of pursuit.
“This way,” Jimmy replied, marching away at a pace.
“Running, trying to keep up with him, Eric despaired he might ever understand the strange goings on. “Wait for me!” he called out, trotting after him.
“Quick! In here,” Jimmy ordered.
Seeing nothing but the dismally lit passageway beyond and behind them, Eric, thinking his friend was perhaps losing the plot, asked, “In where?”
“In here,” Jimmy replied, pulling a door open.
“H, how did you do that?” Eric asked, for he was sure it had not been there a moment earlier
Tapping the side of his nose, Jimmy said, “Let’s just say a man named Horatio might have had something to do with it.”
“Oh, him again,” Eric replied.
Pointing, Jimmy motioned for Eric to go through the doorway.
Although he was puzzled, Eric did not intend to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially so with the Madam and the Mr in hot pursuit. Stepping through it, he disappeared from sight. Following his friend, Jimmy also disappeared from sight.
Facing yet another door, Eric bemoaned, “Not another one! There are more doors in here than in Buckingham Palace!” Noticing Jimmy buttoning his duffle coat, he asked, “What are you doing that for?”
“You’ll see…” he replied. With that, he grabbed hold of the door handle, pulling is hard. However, he was unable to open it.
“Do you want a hand?” Eric asked.
“I do,” Jimmy replied. “It seems to be stuck. But first button your coat!”
As far as Eric was concerned, Jimmy was acting more like his mother than his best friend. Begrudgingly fastening his coat, he pulled hard on the door, opening it.
It was cold outside, so cold the thin, lazy wind passed effortlessly through the boys’ thick, winter coats. Moreover, it was snowing; it was snowing so hard Eric had difficulty seeing any more than a couple of yards in front of him. He had no idea where they might be, be it on top of the world, atop the world or somewhere entirely different. ”What do we do now?” he asked, shouting above the roar of the icy cold wind.
“To the horses, of course,” Jimmy answered.
“The horses? Are they here?”
“Come on,” Jimmy said, waving, gesturing for Eric to follow.
Steps: Eric watched as Jimmy began climbing a series of snow-covered steps. “Well,” he said, “we are certainly not at the North Pole. There are no steps, there.” With that, he ascended the steps, following Jimmy...
Machinery: Eric heard the sound of machinery, familiar sounding machinery, whirring, buzzing, slashing, chopping – and munching. “Jimmy!” he yelled. “I can hear the munching machine – I’m sure of it!” Jimmy, however, kept forging ahead, too caught up in his thoughts to answer.
A trapdoor: stopping, bending down, then rubbing away the accumulation of snow upon it, Jimmy exposed a trapdoor.
“How did you know that was there?” Eric asked. “Was it another one of those hunches of yours?
Hunkering down, inspecting the trapdoor, Jimmy said, “Yes. Come on, let’s open it.”
As they opened the trapdoor, gazing down onto the space below, the terrific sound emanating out of the munching machine accosted their ears. Ignoring the din, the boys were ecstatic to see the horses there. “It’s the horses!” Eric cried out. “They’re alive!” The space below the trapdoor, an indoor holding pen, was indeed crammed full with horses.
“Do you want to go first,” Jimmy asked, pointing, “or second?”
“In there?” Eric replied, staring into the room, uncertainly. “Where are we, anyhow?”
His eyes rolling towards the heavens, Jimmy replied, “We’re at the glue factory, you berk. Where did you think we were, the North Pole?”
“Then why did you say we were there?”
“I never did – nor did Mr Smith. If you happened to be listening, you would have known,” Jimmy snapped.
“I knew it wasn’t…when we opened the trapdoor – I did…” Eric answered, his words fading as fast as his conviction.
Moving on from such silliness, Jimmy asked, “Well? You first or me?”
In an effort to regain some of his lost decorum, Eric volunteered to be the first one through the trapdoor. Lowering himself carefully through the opening, he dropped to the floor below. The horses, recognising one of their would-be liberators, began whinnying excitedly. “Shush horses,” he whispered. “Shush…”
“Are you quite finished?” Jimmy asked, poking his head through the opening above, looking for a free space upon which he might land.<
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“They’re happy to see me,” Eric answered. “Give them a minute or two – they’ll settle.”
“A minute or two?” Jimmy barked. “Have you got no brain in that head of yours, be it German or otherwise?”
“There’s no need to be like that!”
“No need, you say! If I mentioned the Madam and the Mr, would that help, to jog your memory as to the seriousness of our situation?”
“The Madam, you say?”
“And the Mr!”
“Following us?”
“I am certain of it!”
“Look, there’s a free space,” he replied. “Jump down; I’ll keep the horses away from it…”
The instant Jimmy landed upon the floor, every horse within that space made a beeline for him. “Keep away, nice horses,” he said. “Let us be about our work. We’ll have you free – all of you –before you can say Jack Robinson.”
“Talking horses?”
Crumpling an eyebrow, Jimmy replied, “It’s a manner of speech!”
Laughing, Eric waded his way through the tightly packed animals, to an instrument panel he had spotted on the far side of the room. When he got there, he called out, “Jim, are you coming?”
From the other side, almost totally obscured by the curious equines, Jimmy replied, “I’ll be there in a jiff.” Lowering himself to the floor, Jimmy disappeared from sight, crawling on his hands and knees beneath the surprised animals.
It took Jimmy considerably more time than a jiff, to cross the room, in fact it took him so long Eric (with the threat of the Mr and the Madam still hanging over him), became decidedly jumpy. “What took you so long?” he asked, the moment Jimmy clambered out from beneath the last horse.
“Had a spot of bother, back there,” he explained. “I got trapped under a
Jimmy, The Glue Factory and Mad Mr Viscous Page 18