Codename: The Tickler

by Tommy Donbavand

  Tyres screeching, the car swung up the car-park ramp and out of the exit. Not slowing down for a second, it smashed through the barrier and disappeared onto the street outside, sounding its horn.

  AWOO-GAH!

  “Fangs!” I yelled.

  “I’m fine,” my boss said, wiping his face. “Although I’d be better if it was the bad guys in custard-y instead of me. Go and check on Holly!”

  I ran as fast as I could down the slope to the spot at the back of the car park where the deal had been taking place.

  “Holly!” I shouted, my heart thumping. “Are you OK?”

  There was no reply.

  I looked around, but I was still half-blinded from the flash of light and it was very dark beneath the apartment building. I pulled a flare from my utility belt and tore off its top. The entire car park was lit up by a harsh, white light.

  Agent Holly Delta was gone.

  Monday 1304 hours: Caramel Cole’s Circus, Somerville, USA

  I took my seat beside Fangs on the bench and handed him a toffee apple. “Sorry,” I said. “This was all they had. I guess Caramel Cole really likes these things.”

  Fangs took one look at the toffee apple and turned up his nose. “Yuck! I’d rather eat the bench. I bet it wooden taste as bad!”

  The terrible food and Fangs’s awful jokes weren’t the only reasons I wasn’t relishing our trip to the circus, but this place was the only lead we had. MP1 staff had sealed off the car park in New York and scoured every inch of it, looking for clues – but they’d found nothing. The Will Pill, it seemed, had disappeared, along with Holly.

  The only good news was that the tests for gunshot residue had come back negative. That meant the bang hadn’t been made by a gun, so the chances were, Holly was still alive, and the noise had been a diversion tactic while they grabbed her and the pill.

  I looked around the big top. My parents had taken me to the circus in my pre-werewolf days, and I recalled the glamour and the glitz. This place couldn’t have been more different.

  The tent was faded and torn, and a cold wind blew through the holes in the canvas. The handful of audience members sat shivering in their coats. In the ring below us, aged horses wheezed as bored-looking girls in leotards danced next to them.

  The acts didn’t get any better. Over the next hour we sat through a juggler who kept dropping his clubs, a trapeze artist whose weight threatened to bring the entire tent down around us with each swing, and a fire-eater who set his own hair ablaze and then ran away screaming.

  The only act that interested Fangs in the slightest was Wanda Howe, the sword-swallower. Despite her tatty costume, Wanda was stunning. Long, dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, and her pale skin shimmered under the spotlight. White wings fluttered out from her shoulder blades. (She was a fairy!) The audience held their breath as she threw her head back and plunged a silver sabre down her throat.

  “Impressive,” said Fangs, “but I bet even she couldn’t eat one of Cole’s rotten toffee apples.”

  Finally, as the lights dimmed, Caramel Cole himself appeared in the ring. “Now, ladies and gentlemen – the highlight of tonight’s show… Bring on the Cannon of Doom!”

  Cole’s two henchmen clowns pushed an enormous cannon into the ring.

  “You may think that being fired from a cannon is dangerous enough,” Caramel Cole continued, “but what if I were to tell you that our human cannonball is to land in here?”

  The trapeze artist and juggler both shouted “Oooooh!” and pulled the cover off a large cage. Inside was a scrawny tiger.

  One by one, the audience members began to sit up and pay attention. This was starting to get interesting.

  The ringmaster beamed. “And what if we added some bees?”

  “Whooooooh!” exclaimed the fire-eater as he opened a box, releasing hundreds of bees into the air. Some of the audience members shrieked in alarm at the sight of the buzzing swarm.

  “But that’s not all!” announced the ringmaster. “What if we covered our human cannonball in pieces of raw meat for the tiger to enjoy and honey to please these bees?”

  Two showgirls, each carrying a bucket, then stepped up to the cannon and took turns pouring sticky honey and lumps of meat into the barrel.

  A hush, punctuated only by the buzzing of the bees and the growls of the tiger, fell over the crowd in the big top.

  “But who would dare undertake such a dangerous task?” asked Cole. “One of us? Or one of you?”

  The crowd gasped. Surely no one from the audience would be crazy enough to do this…

  Fangs began to laugh. “Hee-hee-hee!”

  Caramel Cole looked right at him. “Do we have a volunteer?”

  Fangs’s laugh became a chuckle … “Ho-ho-ho!” …became a guffaw … “Ha-ha-ha!” … then as quickly as he’d started laughing, he stopped.

  “Fangs,” I hissed. “What’s the matter?”

  Slowly my boss got to his feet and, in a calm, clear voice, said, “I will be the human cannonball.”

  The audience leapt to their feet, applauding.

  I grabbed my boss’s cape. “What are you doing?”

  “I will be the human cannonball!” he repeated, trying to shake me off.

  I scrambled to my feet. “Fangs,” I begged. “Please stop this!” I pulled off his sunglasses and jumped back with fright. My boss’s eyes were completely glazed over.

  “I will be the human cannonball,” he said again, pushing me out of the way.

  “We have a volunteer,” cried Cole.

  The audience cheered as Fangs arrived in the ring. Wanda Howe helped him into the cannon. Once he was out of sight, the crowd fell silent. The ringmaster lit the fuse.

  My stomach flipped with terror, and I clamped my paws over my eyes, peeping between my claws. This couldn’t be happening!

  The bees buzzed furiously.

  The tiger roared hungrily.

  I crossed my claws and screwed my eyes shut.

  Then the cannon fired.

  BOOM!

  Monday 1950 hours: MP1 Safe House, Boston, USA

  “Ow!” yelled Fangs as I used tweezers to pluck the twenty-fifth bee sting from his forehead. “Can’t you be more careful?”

  “You want me to be careful?” I cried. “I’m not the one who volunteered to be dipped in honey and raw meat and then fired through bees into a tiger’s cage! That’s the very definition of not being careful.”

  After the stunt, I’d dragged Fangs away from the circus – all hope of interrogating Caramel Cole lost for the day. Luckily, MP1 has houses available in every major town and city, so we had somewhere to stay and tend to Fangs’s injuries.

  “I need a drink,” my boss groaned. “I don’t suppose there’s any blood in the kitchen?”

  I shook my head. “There’s milk, though.”

  “That’s something,” said Fangs, pulling his glittery remote control from inside his cloak. “I can find the blood myself…”

  “Oh no you don’t,” I said, taking the Bloodhound from him and putting it out of his reach. “I need my laptop in one piece, thank you. And I could do without the toothache. Now what can you remember about the cannon stunt?”

  “I’ve told you,” Fangs insisted, lying back on the settee and rubbing ointment into the stings on his arms. “I don’t remember any of it. I felt something tickle me and then everything went black.”

  “Maybe you don’t remember,” I said, opening my laptop. “But plenty of other people do. They’re already uploading video clips of the stunt to the Internet.”

  I turned the laptop round to show him, but he covered his face with his cloak and groaned. “We don’t have to watch it, do we?”

  “If we want to work out what happened to you, we do,” I said. “You went from being bored to stupid stuntman in less than a minute – and I need to know why.”

  “OK.” Fangs sat up as I clicked “Play”.

  Caramel Cole’s face filled the screen. “…Or one of you?” he crie
d. Then the camera picked up the sound of laughter and focused on Fangs, who was jiggling around and chuckling like a hyena.

  “This bit I do remember,” he said. “I thought it was you tickling me.”

  I glanced at my razor-sharp claws. If I’d been tickling my boss, I’d have scratched him to pieces.

  “I will be the human cannonball,” announced the Fangs on screen for the third time.

  “Do you remember saying that?” I asked.

  The real Fangs shook his head. “What’s wrong with my voice? It sounds like I’m half asleep.”

  We watched Fangs walk into the ring and climb into the cannon with a little help from Wanda Howe. A second later, he was shot, screaming, through a thick cloud of bees and into the tiger’s compound. Luckily, he landed on top of the tiger, temporarily stunning it and so giving himself enough time to scramble out of the cage.

  “I remember that bit.” My boss shuddered.

  “From before or after you started crying?”

  “I wasn’t crying!” Fangs snapped. “Some of the honey had got into my eyes, and they were watering!”

  “So that’s the only thing you remember after you started laughing for no reason?”

  “It wasn’t for no reason. Someone was tickling me.”

  “Someone, or something.”

  “Something?”

  I scrolled back to the beginning of the video. “Look,” I said, pointing at the screen. “There’s no one sitting near enough to reach you.”

  “Well, something was tickling me.”

  “I’m not saying it wasn’t, but why can’t we see it?”

  I loaded the footage into the MP1 video-scanning software on my laptop. It allowed me to run the film in slow motion and strip away any extra elements. Then I played the clip again. Fangs was just beginning to giggle when I saw it.

  “There!” I cried, freezing the image. “That’s what was tickling you.”

  On the screen, hovering beside Fangs, was a creature about the same size as a book. It was wearing a green dress and cap, and tiny green shoes that curled up at the toes.

  “It’s a pixie,” I exclaimed.

  “It can’t be,” said Fangs. “She’s got…” He paused to count. “Eight arms!”

  “That would explain why she was so good at tickling you. Do you think it’s possible she tickled you into a trance?”

  “A trance?”

  “A state of hypnosis, during which she was able to tell you what to do.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” scoffed Fangs. “I wouldn’t do something dangerous, just because some mutated pixie told me to.”

  “Unless she was using the Will Pill somehow,” I suggested. “Could it have been hidden inside your toffee apple?”

  Fangs shook his head. “I didn’t eat it, remember?”

  “There’s more to this than meets the eye.”

  “And we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” said Fangs. “Puppy, we’re running away to join the circus!”

  Wednesday 1234 hours: MP1 Caravan, Pittsburgh, USA

  As highly valued government agents, Fangs and I were able to ask MP1 for just about anything that would improve our chances of solving a case and bringing a villain to justice. Fast cars, jet planes, powerful computers – we’d used them all. But it was a bit of a surprise for Phlem when Fangs requested a battered old motor home.

  The slime beast was peering at us from the screen of my laptop, which sat on a small, stained table inside the caravan. Fangs and I were wedged onto a tiny sofa opposite. “You will rendezvous with Caramel Cole’s Circus when it arrives in Pittsburgh tomorrow morning,” said Phlem. “We’ve been monitoring the show since it left Somerville. Its reputation is growing fast, and the circus is becoming more popular with every performance. Ticket sales are through the roof. Cole is taking on new acts all the time, so we don’t think you’ll have too much trouble convincing him to let you join the company.”

  “Is his eight-armed pixie still tickling audience members, sir?” I asked.

  “She is, indeed, Agent Brown,” Phlem replied. “Take a look at this Internet footage.”

  The video showed various members of the public engaging in unusual stunts while the crowd watched in amazement. A young woman wobbled precariously as she rode a unicycle through a ring of fire. A pensioner hopped on one leg while juggling three live scorpions. And a teenager dangled upside down from the trapeze by his toes. Each volunteer wore the same glassy, wide-eyed stare.

  “How does the pixie gain control of them?” I asked. “She has to be using the Will Pill somehow.”

  “Precisely,” said Phlem, his slimy face returning to the screen.

  “We need answers quickly,” he continued. “In the bread bin behind you, you’ll find two pairs of contact lenses. While you’re wearing them, you’ll be able to see the pixie.”

  “Does Cube have any theories on how she manages to hide herself?” I asked.

  “Nothing solid,” Phlem replied. “We think it’s a similar technology to that used in the old MP1 disguise chips. She’s not invisible – merely shielded by a hologram that matches her surroundings exactly.”

  In the days before the supernatural equality laws were passed, humans would have panicked at the sight of a vampire or werewolf roaming the streets – even if they were on the side of law and order. So MP1 agents had tiny computer chips embedded under their skin that allowed orbiting satellites to beam down holographic disguises over them with pinpoint accuracy. To everyone around them, the MP1 agents looked like everyday humans.

  “Talking of disguises,” said Fangs. “What will our cover story be?”

  “I’m emailing the files to you now,” said Phlem. “Agent Brown, you will work backstage as Trudy Haslingden. You grew up in a circus family, where you specialized in caring for the animals and preparing them for their time in the ring. You started work at Chipperfield’s Circus in the UK, but wanted to work abroad and so made your way to Moscow, where you joined the team of animal trainers at Circus Nikulin.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Trudy Haslingden.”

  “My turn,” said Fangs. “I was thinking something along the lines of a lion tamer, or maybe a strongman.”

  “Don’t worry, Agent Enigma,” Phlem went on. “We’ve chosen the perfect disguise for you. No one will ever suspect your true spy identity.” It could have been my imagination, but for a second, it looked as though Phlem was smiling.

  “Your back story, Agent Enigma,” said Phlem, “is that you trained as a clown at the Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris. You then moved to Russia to appear at the internationally renowned Moscow State Circus. That’s where you and Trudy met and became friends. Now, you have twenty-four hours before Caramel Cole’s Circus arrives in town, so I suggest you both spend that time studying your parts and getting used to your characters.”

  “We’ll do that, sir,” I said. “Won’t we, boss?”

  There was no reply.

  “Boss?”

  Fangs was staring into space. “A clown?”

  “Do you have a problem with your role in this assignment, Agent Enigma?” Phlem demanded.

  “No, sir,” said Fangs. “Of course not, sir. You just haven’t told me what my new name will be.”

  “Of course, Agent Enigma,” said Phlem. “How remiss of me.”

  Once again, I was sure the briefest of smiles played across Phlem’s rubbery lips.

  “You will be known by your professional clown name,” he said.

  Fangs took a deep breath. “Which is?”

  This time Phlem really did smile. “Wobblebottom.”

  Sunday 1348 hours: Caramel Cole’s Circus, Pittsburg, USA

  I swept up yet another mound of stinking elephant poo. The real stuff was a lot smellier than the fake dung we’d used to trap Snores in his car.

  I’d been mucking out various circus animals’ cages for the past few days. Caramel Cole had believed our circus cover story and hired us on the spot. Fangs had wanted to raid
his caravan to look for the Will Pill that night, but Phlem advised us to keep our heads down for a bit and get to know the rest of the travelling company. For me, that meant spending time with the various animal trainers and backstage crew, while Fangs hung out with the performers.

  Thanks to our contact lenses, Fangs and I could see the pixie clearly at every performance. She spent most of the show perched high up on one of the trapeze platforms. As the moment for the audience stunt grew near, she would flap her wings, then swoop down and hover silently around the crowd, searching for a victim to tickle. Once she had chosen a target, all eight of her tiny arms would go to work, squeezing and poking at the person’s sides. The result was always the same – the volunteer would giggle and squirm and then their eyes would glaze over and their pupils widen. At that point, the pixie would land on the person’s shoulder and whisper in their ear, presumably telling them to volunteer for the good of the show. We still hadn’t worked out how the Will Pill came into it.

  I heard the gate behind me creak open and the telltale jingle of bells tied to clown shoes. “Hello, Wobblebottom!” I said cheerily, without looking round.

  “You can drop the silly names,” said Fangs grumpily. “We’re alone.”

  My boss was dressed in his show costume: a large blue-and-green checked suit with a yellow shirt and bright pink tie. His face had been painted white, with black eyebrows and a huge red, smiling mouth drawn on. A large, red nose and multicoloured wig completed the outfit.

  “Finished your rehearsals?” I asked, trying not to smile.

  Fangs nodded. “Caramel Cole and his pixie pal are in the big top, planning this afternoon’s stunt. This is our chance to search his caravan for clues.”

  We dodged through the crowds that were queuing for tickets for that afternoon’s performance. Then we headed for the field behind the big top where the performers’ caravans were parked.