Floods 7

by Colin Thompson

  She felt her spirits rise. The last time she had felt her spirits rise, she had let them rise just above her shoulders and then she had torn their heads off and eaten them raw with a green salad. Her spirits had kept their heads down since then, but now they were rising again. This time, however, the doctor told her to let them fly free.

  ‘See them hovering below the ceiling?’ said the doctor. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, some of them are rather overweight. So it’s not surprising you feel the weight lifting. We will deal with them in a moment – but first, tell me why you are here. I mean, what on earth could make you, one of the most powerful and evil witches in the world, so depressed?’

  ‘The Floods.’

  ‘Ahh, I see,’ said the doctor. ‘You feel the Floods are your nemesis?’

  ‘Oh no, that was my grandmother.’

  ‘Your grandmother was your nemesis?’

  ‘No, no, she was my only comforter,’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘Nemesis was her name.’

  ‘So what do the Floods represent?’

  ‘Failure,’ said the Hearse Whisperer, dropping her head as her spirits began to fall again.

  Dr Reversion handed her an umbrella.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘take this. It will keep your spirits off.’

  The Hearse Whisperer said nothing. Her spirits were rising and falling like yoyos. One minute they were soaring and hitting their heads on the ceiling. The next they were bouncing off her umbrella and grovelling on the floor. Dr Reversion suggested that they go outside. The next time the Hearse Whisperer’s spirits soared, they vanished up into the clouds. The Hearse Whisperer and Dr Reversion ran back inside and locked the door.

  ‘And now,’ the doctor said, ‘when we have stabilised you and you are totally dispirited, or, as I prefer to say, Spirit Cleansed, we can take you into the Transferation Laboratory and give you a spirit transplant.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We can give you a spirit transplant,’ said the doctor. ‘We have a huge store of brand new and second-hand spirits, from Happy Fluffy Bunny to Leap Into Prams And Eat The Baby. I don’t see you as a Happy Fluffy Bunny and we’ve had problems with the Baby Eater. No matter how many times we de-bug them we can never completely remove the trace of guilt or the indigestion.’

  ‘Well, right now, I’d like the Curled Up Asleep In Bed,’ said the Hearse Whisperer, ‘with added Never Wake Up Again.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Dr Reversion. ‘I didn’t realise you were in such a bad way. I think we will have to give you acupuncture.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said the Hearse Whisperer.

  ‘Sit,’ the doctor commanded and, as she left the room, she added, ‘Stay.’

  Choose from the following reasons why she left the room. You may choose more than one answer:

  She was going to get the acupuncture hammer and nails.

  She was bored.

  It was lunchtime.

  She needed to go to the toilet.

  She was actually a robot and her batteries were going flat.

  The Bold & The Beautiful was about to start on TV.

  She was overcome with even more depression than the Hearse Whisperer, having just discovered her heroine was not invincible but old and tired and depressed.

  She had heard the ice-cream van outside and was dying for a Cornetto.

  Some of the above.

  All of the above.

  None of the above.

  None of the below.

  Dog food.

  Toilet rolls.

  Vinegar. 27

  The Hearse Whisperer lay back on the examination couch and closed her eyes. Everything was still white and a thousand thoughts, some evil, some miserable, some seriously weird, all fought for her attention. These included imagining the long list of things the King would do to her if she failed to bring his precious Mordonna home to him. The traditional water-skiing on Lake Tarnish, an honour the King reserved for his enemies, would be mild compared to what the King would do to her. Thoughts of moving to a foreign country under a false name came into her head, but where could she go?

  She had no friends and the few relations she had who were still alive – or at least sane enough to not spend all day talking to a stain on the wall – were all in Transylvania Waters, and that was probably the last place she should go. Of course, she was there already, but pretended she wasn’t because visiting the Sulfuric Clinic was something you kept very quiet about. In fact, the clinic provided its patients with a special service where they sent postcards to your friends and family pretending you were having a wonderful holiday in Bali. All this was irrelevant because the Hearse Whisperer had stopped talking to her relatives three weeks before she had been born, apart from her beloved grandmother, who was deaf anyway so it didn’t really matter.

  And then two and two added together and were joined by six and a half and the Hearse Whisperer thought, If Transylvania Waters is the last place I should go, then my enemies would think that too, so in actual fact, as long as I stayed indoors, Transylvania Waters is probably the safest place I could go because it would be the last place anyone would expect me to be.

  And then, just as an even more totally brilliant thought was about to replace that one, something else hit her, but it wasn’t the brilliant thought. It was Dr Reversion’s first acupuncture nail and that knocked all thoughts and ideas out of her head with the most painful agony she had ever felt.28

  ‘AAAHHHHHHHH!’ the Hearse Whisperer screamed as the first nail was knocked into her left ear.

  ‘F@@#XXX!!!!£,’ she cried as another nail went in through her right ear.

  ‘GR!!***&8¢¢KK*!’ as another went up her nose.

  ‘This might hurt a little bit,’ said Dr Reversion, holding up a really big nail.

  ‘Might? Might?’ cried the Hearse Whisperer. ‘Why didn’t you warn me before?’

  ‘I wanted you to be nice and relaxed,’ said the doctor, knocking in a few more nails.

  ‘Relaxed,’ the Hearse Whisperer whimpered. ‘I haven’t been relaxed since 1965.’

  ‘Well, try to relax now while the nails go to work,’ said the doctor. ‘Here, have a toffee. I’ll be back in an hour.’

  Mackerel, Mackerel, Mackerel, F@@#XXX!!!!£!!, Organiser!!!, thought the Hearse Whisperer as she fought to stay conscious through the excruciating pain.

  But gradually the pain subsided, partly due to the incredibly powerful sedatives in the toffee and partly because the agony was making her faint. Floaty hippy music tinkled from hidden speakers and the Hearse Whisperer felt herself drifting back in time.

  The sky turned a beautiful green colour like the skies of her childhood when all that lovely acid rain had drifted over Transylvania Waters, making everyone wonderfully white as it bleached their skin. The Hearse Whisperer was a little girl again, playing in the back garden of the childhood home she had only had inside her head. There were the kittens she had nailed to the fence. There were the blindfolded chickens walking into the bonfire. And there was her beloved grandmother, collecting the pretty berries from the belladonna plants to make her delicious purple custard.

  But where was her Mama?

  ‘Mama, mama,’ she cried.

  ‘Yes,’ said a voice. ‘Where are your parents?’

  ‘I, I …’

  ‘You had them locked up in prison on Howlcatraz, didn’t you?’ said the voice. It was Dr Reversion.

  That broke the spell.

  ‘No I didn’t,’ said the Hearse Whisperer, sitting bolt upright.

  This was a bad move as she still had the acupuncture nails sticking into her. She screamed and fell backwards as, one by one, the doctor removed them. Now her only problem was blood spouting from all the nail holes.

  ‘That’s it, let it all out,’ said the doctor. ‘Let it go.’

  ‘What, all my blood?’

  ‘Yes, every evil drop, as you did to your mother and father.’

  ‘I didn’t lock up my parents,’ said the Hearse Whisper
er. ‘They were carried away by vampires.’

  ‘But it says in your notes that you locked up your mother and your father for being too nice. It also says that this is something you used to be very proud of. Yet now you are denying it as if you feel shame for what you did,’ said Dr Reversion.

  ‘No, no, that’s not true,’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘I have never felt shame.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  ‘I think I’d remember if I’d done something as pathetic as that,’ the Hearse Whisperer replied. ‘Look at me, I am a totally shame-free zone.’

  ‘Well, no, not necessarily, you see, because the mind has a way of suppressing things that we might be ashamed of,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Yes, but if I had got my parents sent to prison, why would I deny that? I mean, it’s not like it’s a bad thing to do, is it?’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘People do it all the time, don’t they?’

  ‘That’s true, but there’s something else, isn’t there?’ said the doctor.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on. It was in the papers. You were voted Creation’s Most Evil Being because of it.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said the Hearse Whisperer, torn between pride and denial.

  ‘Yes, that,’ said the doctor. ‘You appeared to have had a total change of heart and got your parents set free and everyone thought you had gone soft, but then it turned out you’d had them released so you could eat them. Remember?’

  ‘Well, they deserved it. Everyone said so, even Grandmother and all my other relations. In fact, I – I mean we – had a big party afterwards and they all helped eat them,’ the Hearse Whisperer explained.

  ‘I thought you said you had stopped speaking to your family,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘But now you’re saying you had a big party.’

  ‘We did, but I also said we were eating my parents,’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘And as everyone knows, it’s very bad manners to talk with your mouth full.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said the doctor, who was a bit of a cannibalism enthusiast.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  ‘So could you stop me bleeding now?’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘I’m feeling rather faint. In fact, I think I’m approaching a Becoming-Dead situation.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about that?’

  ‘No, I just want it to stop.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about why you want it to stop?’

  ‘No, I, er …’

  Dr Reversion felt the Hearse Whisperer’s pulse and, when it had finally stopped beating, one of her assistants wheeled the body into the Transferation Laboratory. They laid her out on a black marble slab, stuck corks in all the holes left by the acupuncture nails and began to fill her up with fresh blood, a special recipe tailored exactly to suit her particular needs, or rather Dr Reversion’s needs, give or take a few species that were currently out of stock.29

  ‘Pity we’ve run out of warthog boils,’ said the doctor, ‘but I think washing-up liquid will do.’

  Once the Hearse Whisperer’s veins were full up, she came back to life, but, as the doctor still needed to perform the spirit transplant, an operation that required the patient to remain perfectly still, Dr Reversion was forced to put the Hearse Whisperer back to sleep again with her special doctor’s Big Rubber Hammer.

  ‘Spirits, spirits … let me see,’ said the doctor, leafing through a thick folder. ‘We are supposed to give her back her terrifying motivation and her evil, reckless edge and love of mindless violence. I imagine that’s what she wants.’

  ‘Of course, Doctor,’ said her laboratory assistant, Flusher, ‘but do you not think that maybe she is actually too old to contain all that fury?’

  ‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ said Dr Reversion. ‘Sad, isn’t it? And anyway, I have no intention of restoring her to her former glory. You see, when I was growing up, the Hearse Whisperer was my greatest hero – a magnificent, totally invincible creature who I worshipped. But I wrote to her seventy-three times and do you know how many times she replied?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘None,’ said the doctor.

  ‘So you feel cheated and disillusioned?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said Flusher.

  ‘Careful now, that’s my line.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Flusher. ‘Well, would you like to have some revenge?’

  ‘I would, I would.’

  ‘Well, now you are the one with the power,’ said Flusher.

  ‘I am, aren’t I?’ The doctor laughed and, flicking through her spirit catalogue, she added, ‘It’s payback time.’

  She gave the Hearse Whisperer another highly skilled and professional whack on the head with the Big Rubber Hammer and drilled a hole in the top of her skull.

  ‘Right, where shall we start?’ she said, poking a funnel into the hole.

  She closed the catalogue, shut her eyes and picked a page at random.

  ‘Brilliant!’ said Flusher, as she uncorked the bottle. ‘Do another one.’

  Flusher and the doctor collapsed on the floor laughing. They tried to pull themselves up but each time they reached table height, one look at the Hearse Whisperer lying unconscious on the operating table made them collapse again.

  ‘Not sure about that one, she might enjoy it.’

  ‘You know what, doctor?’ said Flusher in a voice of deep admiration. ‘I think you were wasting yourself adoring the Hearse Whisperer. You are every bit as evil as she is.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘You also have wonderful knees,’ said Flusher.

  They gave the Hearse Whisperer another seven feeble unpleasant souls, three of which hated the other four, which meant she had a permanent headache. Then, while she was still unconscious, they sent her back to the volcano’s rim on Tristan da Cunha.

  ‘Shouldn’t we give her a blanket?’ said Flusher. ‘There’s a blizzard blowing.’

  ‘Then she’ll have a nice blanket of thick snow,’ said Dr Reversion.

  ‘But she could freeze to death.’

  ‘Promises, promises.’

  ‘What was it you wanted to look at in the cellar?’ Betty asked Winchflat. ‘When you went to get Brastof you said there was something down there you wanted to check up on.’

  ‘Yes, little sister, well remembered,’ said Winchflat.

  ‘So what was it?’

  ‘You know I said there were six Terrible Pools of Vestor?’ said Winchflat.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, five of them are a chain of Yak Burger restaurants in Mongolia and the sixth one, the real Terrible Pool of Vestor, is right here under this very building in a dark catacomb next to the dungeons.’

  ‘F@@#XXX!!!!£,’ screeched Vessel with excitement. ‘Who’s a pretty boy? Who’s a pretty boy? Who’s a pretty boy?’

  ‘You are, my darling,’ said the Queen. ‘What are we waiting for?’

  ‘As well as the good news, which is that I’ve found the Terrible Pool of Vestor,’ said Winchflat, ‘there is bad news, which is that it’s sort of evaporated.’

  ‘You mean it’s all gone?’ said the Queen.

  Winchflat nodded.

  ‘So you haven’t so much found the Terrible Pool of Vestor as the Dent In The Ground That Used To Be The Terrible Pool Of Vestor?’ said Mordonna.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘If it’s not there any more,’ said Nerlin, ‘how do you know it is the Terrible Pool?’

  ‘There’s a brass plate saying, “In this dent lay the Terrible Pool of Vestor”,’ said Winchflat.

  ‘Double, triple GR!!***&8¢¢KK*!’ said Vessel.

  ‘You can say that again,’ said the Queen, so he did. ‘Is there nothing we can do?’

  ‘There is a little bit of dust left in the bottom,’ said Winchflat. �
�Maybe we could add water to it and bring the pool back to life.’

  ‘OK, let’s go,’ said Nerlin. ‘Someone get a bucket.’

  ‘I should warn you,’ said Winchflat. ‘There’s a strong possibility that the dust is not pure. It could have all sorts of pollution in it. I mean, supposing someone was sweeping the floor? It’s the obvious place to dump the dust, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’ll risk it,’ said the Queen. ‘Get the bucket.’

  ‘What would happen,’ said Mordonna, ‘if one of us who hadn’t been turned into a bird and trapped in an enchanted cage went into the pool?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Winchflat. ‘There’s no information on that.’

  ‘Well, before we put Vessel and his cage in the the pool, I suggest we put someone else in and see what happens,’ said Valla.

  ‘Who?’ said Betty. ‘I’m not going to volunteer.’

  ‘None of the children can volunteer,’ said the Queen. ‘If anyone is going to test out the pool, it should be me.’

  ‘OK,’ said Mordonna.

  ‘Aren’t you going to protest a little bit?’ said the Queen. ‘After all, it could be dangerous.’

  ‘No,’ said Mordonna. ‘You’re the obvious choice.’

  ‘Yes, I am, aren’t I,’ said the Queen through gritted teeth.30

  ‘And you can carry the birdcage in with you,’ said Mordonna. ‘That way whatever happens you will both be together.’

  ‘F@@#XXX!!!!£,’ Vessel whispered to himself.

  When the pool had been filled to the brim, Winchflat tipped the Queen out of her backpack and did his best to join all her bones and floppy insides back together. One leg seemed to be a lot shorter than the other until he realised he had joined her left arm on where her left leg should be. Two of her fingers were stuck so far up her nose it was impossible to remove them, but eventually Queen Scratchrot stood proudly before them looking as wonderful as only a half-decomposed corpse with green slime leaking from way too many places can look. Because the Queen’s remaining fingers refused to talk to each other, Winchflat tied Vessel’s cage round her neck and led them to the pool’s edge.