by Heide Goody
Thankfully (for Newton at least), Mrs Scruples was swiftly hidden from view by the tide of elves pouring on to stick the spoon in. “That’s horrible,” he said.
Guin was looking at the workstations around the cavern. “I don’t think it’s over yet,” she said slowly
Elves were rushing over with big copper pots balanced on their heads. Out of the scrum of spoon-wielding elves, gobbets of red wet flesh were passed and dumped into the pots.
“Thought they tasted funny,” said Guin.
“Hmmm?”
She pointed. At the butchering elves. At the metal pots. At a crank-handled mincing machine in a work station. At the strings and strings of sausages hanging overhead. She looked meaningfully at Newton’s empty bowl.
“Oh, God,” he murmured and put his hand to his mouth. He didn’t feel sick. He felt disgusted, but he didn’t feel physically sick. He should have done, shouldn’t he? But he didn’t. He found himself wondering if this made him a bad person.
***
62
Esther blinked and looked up at Dave.
“You’re coming round,” he said. He pricked her thumb.
“Ow!”
“Just running another blood test.”. The tester beeped and Dave nodded with evident relief.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, rubbing her hand.
“Pretty good,” she said. “That was … weird.” Her fingers explored the dressing that now adorned her arm.
“It certainly was,” said Dave. “Candy Cane Venom.”
“Hmmm?”
“Those elves seem to run on pure sugar. One bite sent you into hyperglycaemic shock.”
“Like diabetes?”
“Right. One to be avoided, definitely. These little bastards are toxic in more ways than one.”
“Yes” said Esther. “What are they doing?”
Dave rolled his eyes. “Wish I knew. I had to drag you out of sight of the window. They were marching around with flaming torches. I mean, where do they even get flaming torches from? It’s gone properly medieval out there.”
Esther raised herself up cautiously. They were behind the counter of the charity shop. She risked a peek over the top. Dave was right: outside elves were everywhere.
She sat up uncomfortably, wondering what she was leaning against. It was a stack of ancient board games and jigsaws. She remembered they were in a charity shop. “We must put something in the till as a thank you,” she said.
“Sure, maybe.”
“And, I got some of those papers, the ones they ripped up in the square.”
She pulled them from a pocket. It was dark behind the counter, so she pushed them carefully along the floor until they were out of the shadow. She and Dave stayed back out of sight, trying to see what they were looking at.
Dave gave a grunt of recognition at the heading. “Catheter Holdings. Duncan Catheter was doing some kind of local land deal. Brownfield site.”
“Doesn’t look very brownfield to me,” said Esther. “See where it is?”
Dave failed to make out any hint of a location.
“It’s that area at the back of the church. It’s mostly steep and inaccessible, but there’s part of it that looks flat. He was going to build houses there.”
“Makes sense,” said Dave. He could see there were numerous house-shaped boxes drawn around an access road. “What are those circles?”
Esther shuffled forward. “It says they’re sinkholes. Sinkholes? Wow. And what’s that?”
Dave peered closer. “Playground and recreation park.”
“Built over a sinkhole? The man was a complete monster!”
“He’s dead, remember.”
“I used the past tense.”
Dave tapped the map in thought. “So, the elves were pretty pleased this isn’t going ahead now—”
“Way ahead of you,” said Esther. “That’s got to be where their hideout is.”
Dave nodded. “Where we need to go and look for the kids.”
Esther got up from the floor, clearly as pleased as Dave to have a sense of purpose. “Yes, but how? We can’t just walk up there and hope they won’t notice us. We don’t stand any kind of chance in a full-on fight against hundreds of elves.”
Dave started to pace the floor, but realised that would draw the attention of the elves. He squatted again. “There was a tractor.”
“Sorry?”
“A tractor, on the road not far from the church.”
“Yeah! ” grinned Esther. “Turn it into an assault vehicle and squash and barge our way into their bloody grotto.”
“Squashing and barging are good,” said Dave, pleased to see life and energy come back to her. “Assuming the tractor can climb that gradient.”
“Assuming one of us can drive the thing.”
“How hard can it be? It’s just a big car, isn’t it?”
Esther didn’t look so sure. “I spent one summer helping out on a collective farm in Cuba. I sat up in the tractor once. It didn’t look like just driving a car.”
“That’s probably just Cuban tractors,” said Dave. “Come on, it’s going to work. We’re going to squash them and barge them. We’re going to annihilate the buggers.”
“Vaporise them,” said Esther.
“Well, that would be nice.”
“I’ve got an idea for the headlights.”
She dragged some of the supplies she’d used earlier onto the floor and picked up the scissors. “We haven’t got time to do the whole A-Team thing and transform the tractor into an armoured vehicle, but if I put a mask around the headlights so they shine in the shape of an elf cross, maybe it will fry some of the little shitbags.”
“Elf lasers! You work on that, I’m going to see if we can rig up some stabby things. I did see a broken coat rack near the bins. It would be quite dangerous if you fell on it.”
“If it’s got heavy bits with nails sticking out then it sounds brilliant,” said Esther without looking up. “Look in the kitchen area for knives as well.”
“Cool.” Dave said. “And there’s this pole thing for opening the skylight in here as well.”
“Bring it all,” said Esther.
***
63
The hollowing out and sausagifying of Mrs Scruples occupied many of the elves for quite some time. They took obvious glee in the task.
Guin used her own time wisely, reading from the academic book of elf stuff and discussing what she read with Wiry Harrison and Tinfoil Tavistock to make sure they understood completely. Perhaps, at some point, the book would save their lives. Newton sat close by, knees drawn up to his chin, eyes raised and muttering to himself. Guin wondered if he’d gone mad. There was a thing, years and years ago, like probably in Victorian times, when all the cows in England went mad because they’d been given bits of dead cow to eat. Maybe Newton had caught Mad People Disease. Whatever it was, it was distracting her from her reading.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Counting sausages,” he said, gazing at the ceiling of the cavern.
“Okay,” she said. “Why?”
“They’ve made at least a hundred sausages so far.”
“From one old lady?”
“I know. I counted. And up there.” He pointed at the links of stored sausages, loops upon loops of them.
“And then there’s all the sausages already eaten at the market,” Guin added helpfully. “Those are just the leftover ones.”
Guin considered the tonnes of sausages. She had no intention of counting them, but it was clear the elves must have been processing people on an industrial scale. “I think these elves are part of the Wild Hunt,” she said.
“You mentioned them before, at dinner.”
“Maybe these ones got lost, or decided to set up a base. A sort of non-moving hunt.”
“Get the people to come to them. Draw them in with a cheesy Christmas market?”
A great shout went up from the elves in the centre of the cavern. Gui
n raised herself as high as possible to see what was going on. One elf was holding something white and long aloft.
“That’s a leg bone,” said Guin, in a matter-of-fact manner she wouldn’t have expected of herself when seeing a leg bone of the recently deceased.
“They seem very excited about it,” said Newton.
As one elf held it out, another placed a plastic ruler against it. Whatever the result, it was a source of much delight. The chief elf, Bacraut, snatched it up, and like a marching band majorette swung it about as he led them all out of the cavern.
Soon after, the elves came for Guin and Newton again. Guin noted that Gerd was especially keen to see if Guin had finished her food. Pleased that she had, the elves untied them, using teeth to pull apart the worst granny knots, and led them away.
“More tests?” said Newton.
“Nei tala!” shouted Gerd. Newton wisely shut up.
They were drawn deeper into the tunnels. The darkness grew about them and they were suddenly pressed in among countless elves heading in the same direction. The air became close and foetid.
“Smells like the stables,” whispered Newton. A moment later they passed by a side opening onto a deep, well-lit cave, lined with animal stalls.
“More reindeer?” said Guin.
“Nei tala!” shrieked Gerd from somewhere close.
The massed elves erupted into a hall which nearly rivalled the great storage cavern in size. It appeared the elves had put more effort into this part of their lair than any other. Guin concluded the elves had a construction philosophy which generally blended great skill with a blasé attitude, like an order of genius artisans and craftspeople who had become extremely lazy. Their workshops, their machines, even their stitched together reindeer all had flashes of technical brilliance but were, for the most part, run down and falling apart.
This hall was quite different. The floor was polished to a marble shine. The arches were carved with geometric precision. Pillars, decorated with red and white candy cane spirals were brilliant and immaculate. The pointy-eared elves behaved accordingly and stood in neat rows, while Bacraut with the white glued-on beard took up his knife and waved it over the elves.
The elves sang. They sang well. They sang like mice on helium, but their voices were high and pure. “Hriupp all chiand nin og tu þei pokðið.”
Gerd prodded Newton and Guin.
“Singing practice,” said Guin. “We’re expected to join in.”
“But we don’t know the words.”
“Stihem ina sac þeiog sjúút litun,” sang the elves. Guin was just about able to join in.
Newton stumbled and failed. He tried to just mouth long.
“You have to try,” Guin whispered.
Newton was just about to point out he was trying when the knife flew out of Bacraut’s hand and speared an elf on the front row.
“Hriupp all chiand n-i-i-n!” he yelled at the quite dead elf. “Chiand n-i-i-i-n!”
Guin used the pause to quickly try to teach Newton. “Hriupp all chiand nin og tu þei pokðið,” she whispered.
“Rip all Channing, octopus potted,” he said.
“Stihem ina sac þeiog sjúút litun”
“Stick’em in a sack, bog shut lantern.”
“Ripeir blocks táí hádífa.”
“Rip her blocks to Halifax.”
“Ráupp meðó fu og fið.”
“Wrap my tofu in figs. Got it.”
When Bacraut took up a fresh knife for his new baton, Newton was ready to join in. Five repetitions later and he was really getting into the swing of it. Gerd watched him shrewdly throughout but did not complain and, more importantly, no one else got a knife through the chest.
As the practice came to an end, and most of the elves dispersed back to wherever they’d come from, Newton bent to whisper to Guin. “Maybe I can learn elvish after all. Making toys and crackers, singing songs about, whatever, sparkles and raindrops and living in a magical winter wonderland.”
“No,” she said. “That song wasn’t about sparkles or unicorns—”
“I didn’t say unicorns.”
“I think it was about what elves like to do to children.”
“Give them presents?”
“The bit which actually translates as ‘Stick ’em in a sack’…?”
“Yeah?”
“It was the nicest bit of the song.”
Guin looked around. At the far end of the hall was a raised dais with a huge shape – a statue or a space rocket or a tree or something – hidden beneath a red velvety cloth. Two elves, with Mrs Scruples’ leg bone between them, scuttled under the cloth and started banging and thumping about.
“Thing I want to know is,” said Guin, “if they’re practising songs and making Christmas presents and crackers and stuff, what are they doing it for?”
Newton shrugged. “Maybe the unveiling of their Christmas tree composed entirely of human bones.” He nodded at the shrouded shape.
“Be serious,” said Newton.
“I dunno. Christmas Day?”
Guin gave him her best serious look, the kind she used on stupid teachers and idiot school children who wouldn’t let her join their gangs. “Do you want this lot to be in charge of Christmas Day?”
Newton looked worried for a moment, which Guin judged to be the correct response.
***
64
While Esther cut out her elf cross headlight covers, Dave manufactured the world’s first industrial elf-stabbing tractor fender from a clothes rail and a dozen bent coat hangers.
When they judged they were finished, they made their way cautiously out of the shop. The street was quiet. It looked as though the search for them had moved off elsewhere.
They crept on, away from the town centre and down the narrow lane leading between the houses and up to the church. Dave struggled to carry all of his metal elf-destroying kit without making too much noise, but they made it to the tractor. It was bigger than Dave remembered, which was good.
Esther crouched to look underneath. “Checking for elves,” she said.
He was about to make light of it, but he would have done the same. The damned creatures secreted themselves in every hidey-hole, enough to make a man paranoid. He instinctively looking up and scanned the rooftop in the houses that crowded on either side of the lane.
“Let’s do this,” he said, fastening his clothes-rail-elf-destroyer to the front of the tractor with the remaining coat hangers. Twisting the thick wire was really hard on his fingers, but it was worth the discomfort. He climbed up into the open cab and stashed the weaponised window pole. He added to his weapon supply with some edging bricks that had surrounded a nearby garden. A well-aimed brick could come in handy.
Esther fixed her elf cross stencils onto the headlights. Dave looked around the cab, wondering how the lights turned on. Come to that, he wondered how the tractor actually started. He looked down at the controls and tried to relate them to what he knew about driving.
“There’s two gear sticks!” he hissed to Esther.
“Pallets!” hissed Esther in reply.
He frowned. She pointed to an alleyway across the road where there was a pile of empty pallets. “We can use them to protect the cab.”
Dave jumped down to fetch them. They were surprisingly heavy and he had to take them back to the tractor individually. By the time he had four of them lashed into place over the front and side windows with baling twine, it felt more secure.
“It’s going to be a bit tricky to see where we’re going,” he said as Esther climbed up to join him. “But I reckon we can manage
She peered forward. “We can do this,” she said. “Right, let’s fire her up.”
“Oh yes, about that,” said Dave. “I’m not sure how—” The engine roared into life, cutting off his words.
Esther grinned at him. “Collective farm in Cuba. Off we go!”
Standing in the cab behind his amazing and resourceful girlfriend, Dave picked up th
e pole in one hand and a brick in the other. Esther had to turn the tractor so they were facing the right way. He could tell it wasn’t easy to manoeuvre in a tight space, but Esther managed it with a combination of dextrous handling and crushing everything in her path.
“It’s like Mad Max, isn’t it?” he said, grinning despite himself.
“If Mad Max was a Christmas movie.”
“True.”
“And set in rural northern England.”
“Yes.”
“It’s more Wallace and Gromit than Mad Max really.”
“Possibly.”
***
65
From choir practice in the great hall, Newton and Guin were shuttled to their next task: reindeer. Newton wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
On the one hand: reindeer! Furry, soft-nosed quadrupeds in need of the kind of love he was eager to dish out.
On the other: the reindeer in the cavern of animal pens were all like Blinky: partially decomposed, partially reconstructed; patched together from old reindeer or bits of animals that clearly weren’t reindeer.
Still … reindeer! Ugly or not, these were innocent creatures a lad like Newton was born to care for. Yes, they were a bit bitey. Yes, they looked like they favoured human flesh over grasses and moss, but that wasn’t their fault, was it?
A new energy had overtaken the elf cavern since the bizarre excitement with Mrs Scruples’ leg bone. Elves ran back and forth, carrying things. Bells, big and small, rang continuously, echoing along the tunnels like large scale tinnitus. Even in the reindeer cavern, elves were hurrying about, checking harnesses and reindeer against clipboards.
Gerd led Guin and Newton up one side of the pen and down the other, chanting a long list as they went. “Hér er Bitður, Barari, Hlager og Gouper…”
“There’s got to be hundreds here,” Guin whispered.
“I know,” said Newton. After realising most of the creatures would try to bite off his fingers if he stroked them, he was making sure to give every one of them a cheery wave and some direct eye contact to show he was friendly.