Pure Dead Batty

by Debi Gliori

  “WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO LET HIM GO!” roared the DCI. “EAT HUMBLE PIE. APOLOGIZE. WRITE A MILLION REPORTS.” Scowling at several pedestrians, who immediately tried to pretend they weren’t listening as they hurried past, he continued hoarsely, “Fill out forms in triplicate, attend disciplinary meetings, grovel to the press—”

  “Sir”—the DS tugged at his collar, which suddenly seemed too tight for comfort—“there’s also the matter of the—er, oh, Lord. The moat, sir. Their moat. At the house. We, er, accidentally demolished it with one of the diggers. Will we have to … er …?”

  “YES!” bawled the DCI. “We’ll have to rebuild the damn thing. Put it back. Bring the diggers back, send in the marine architects, technical engineers, stonemasons … It’s going to cost an absolute fortune. In fact, you can just forget the tea,” he said, patting his briefcase meaningfully. “I’ve got a bottle of Scotch right here. Shall we just take a wee drive somewhere quiet and discuss this over a wee dram?”

  DS Waters’s brow furrowed in some confusion. “Are you suggesting that we should consume alcoholic beverages while on duty? Sir?”

  “No, Sergeant,” DCI McIntosh snapped. “That’s not a suggestion. It’s an order.”

  Munro MacAlister Hall sat in the Hotel Bagliadi cocktail bar, his face hidden behind an English newspaper. On the table in front of him lay a dish of black olives, a whisky and soda, and his cell phone. On the opposite side of the room a large party of noisy Italians were draining their glasses before going in to dinner. Munro observed them from behind his paper, his curiosity piqued as one of their number slipped away in order to make a phone call in private. The Italian removed a cell phone (Lord, Munro thought, that’s one of those hideously expensive Swedish jobbies, isn’t it?) from the breast pocket of his suit (and an Armani suit if I’m not mistaken) and leaned casually against a pillar, his eyes raking the perimeter of the barroom. Munro hid behind his newspaper for a few seconds and then resumed his surveillance. The Italian had lit a cigarette (Golly, is that allowed?) and was keying a number into his phone. (Obviously not one he used frequently, otherwise he’d have speeddialed, Munro deduced.)

  The remainder of the smoking Italian’s party trickled out of the bar, the diminishing clamor of their voices replaced by the sound of muted opera trickling from the Bagliadi’s state-of-the-art sound system. On the table in front of Munro his cell lit up and launched loudly into a squeakily computergenerated travesty of “The Ride of the Valkyries.” With a roar, Munro snatched his phone off the table, cursing his son through gritted teeth, and consigning him to the outer darkness for secretly changing the phone’s ring tone.

  “This simply isn’t on, Rand,” Munro hissed under his breath. “Not bloody funny. Leave my stuff alone or I’ll halve your allowance, understood?”

  Across the room the Italian removed his cigarette from his mouth, dropped it to the floor, and frowned, holding the phone away from his head before replacing it and resuming his telephone conversation. Munro frowned too, unable to understand one single word of what was being said to him.

  “I say. Sorry,” he managed, at length. “I seem to have my wires crossed. Thought you were my son, actually. Now, about the pickup—”

  A rapid burst of Italian peppered his ear, loud enough to make him wince. The voice on the other end did not belong to a happy chappie—that much was obvious from both the tone and the volume of what was now pouring into Munro MacAlister Hall’s ear. Peeved at being thus addressed by someone who was, when all was said and done, little more than a hired thug, the lawyer held the phone away from his ear and summoned a waiter to refill his glass.

  From his cell came the ranting of a tiny voice, its volume diminished to that of a psychotic elf. Across the room Munro saw Armani Man, hand waving, barking something incomprehensible down his cell, then pausing for a moment to light another cigarette, his eyes flicking in his direction. Smiling conspiratorially (cell phones—such a nuisance), the lawyer noticed that as the Italian resumed his tirade, so too did his anonymous caller. Odd, he thought, as two more instances of synchronicity occurred, his phone falling silent each time Armani Man paused to draw deeply on his cigarette. Then, just as the waiter tonged two ice cubes into Munro’s drink, he put two and two together and arrived at a sum that made him grab his whisky and soda and drain it instantly.

  “Signore?” The waiter raised his eyebrows. “Is there something the matter?”

  On the other side of the room the Italian was staring straight at him, a twisted smile on his lips. Oh, Lord, Munro MacAlister Hall thought. I’m in trouble now. This wasn’t supposed to happen. No face-to-face contact. Ever. What bloody awful luck …

  Walking through the door of the cocktail bar came proof that luck had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Considerably better dressed than he had been earlier that evening, the taxi driver sauntered across to whisper something in Armani Man’s ear. Both men now turned to stare at Munro, both wearing identically chilling smiles. From the speaker over Munro’s head the plaintive arias of grand opera swelled and grew, drowning out his attempts to call for help. Over at the bar, a man with a ruined face stirred his drink with a finger and stared into the middle distance, studiously ignoring the scuffle now taking place on the other side of the room. The bartender, polishing glasses with a linen cloth, was deaf to MacAlister Hall’s muffled screams; his mouth was set in a pale, thin line. The lawyer’s body was dragged out of the bar, but the waiter carried on scrubbing the table where he’d sat without looking up; removing every shred of evidence that he had ever set foot in the same hotel as his final, fatal client—the man with the ruined face: the notorious Don Lucifer di S’Embowelli Borgia.

  Meet the Relatives

  Unaware that a death had recently taken place in the StregaSchloss kitchen, Rand was conducting a thorough search for signs of Mrs. Borgia’s fabled acanthoid wax. Sitting on a shelf, level with his horrified gaze, was a stained glass jar with what appeared to be a human brain floating inside, suspended in a sulfurous yellow fluid. Closer examination of a brown label stuck to the jar revealed the contents to be a cauliflower in saffron broth, which, judging by the date of its bottling, was a vegetable with a similar vintage to Rand’s father. Snorting down his metal-studded nostrils, Rand continued his hunt. Problem was, Mrs. Borgia had no clear filing system in place, he decided. Eyeballs of newts rubbed shoulders with larks’ tongues in calves’ foot jelly. Except, he reminded himself, eyeballs and tongues don’t have shoulders … And really, half this collection of rancid old parts had to be well past their spell-by date. God. This pantry was a bacteriological minefield.

  Rand shuddered, dragging his gaze away from a canning jar with what had to be a human heart in a gruesome state of decomposition floating inside it. His eyes skittered across dark jeroboams festooned with cobwebs, vaulted over rusty tins sitting in puddles of ooze, and finally scanned a high shelf which bore witness to having recently been disturbed. There was a clearly discernible gouge dug through the dust and spiderwebs; could this possibly be a furrow made by dragging a jar of acanthoid wax across to the edge of the shelf before removing it from the pantry?

  Seconds later Rand was balancing precariously on top of a flour bin, one hand outstretched, his fingers seeking purchase on a tiny stoppered jar which slid out of reach a couple of times before finally rolling effortlessly into his grasp—and just as effortlessly sliding away to shatter on the floor below. Cursing under his breath, Rand leaped off his perch and gathered up the jagged shards of the little jar, some of which still bore the tattered remains of a label stuck to them, their reverse side coated with a thick waxy paste which, judging by its smell alone, contained something very powerful indeed. Try as he might, Rand was unable to piece the tiny jar back together, so he laid all the fragments out on a lower shelf, label side up, and shuffled them around until he was reasonably happy with the result. There was an A, something that looked a bit like ca, an exceedingly hard-to-read th, and a clearly legible oid. Eureka! He managed, with s
ome difficulty, to restrain himself from pulling his T-shirt up over his head and running round in circles like a victorious soccer player, mainly because he heard the sound of heavy footsteps climbing up from the dungeons. Hastily he scraped the waxy residue off the back of each pot shard with a finger that was almost quivering with excitement.

  Taking a deep breath, Rand braced himself for acanthoid-accelerated manhood.

  Seconds later his entire body was aquiver—this time with disgust and with the sheer effort required to stop himself spitting the entire mouthful of acanthoid wax straight back out. The taste … it was gross beyond belief, greasy like—like lard, with a pronounced flavor of what he imagined rotting meat must be like, overlaid with something cloying, sickly sweet, closely related to—twinned in fact, maybe even the soul brother of—er, an overripe sock. Closing his eyes, Rand forced himself to swallow, just as the Borgias’ pet dragon waddled into the pantry. Despite the horrors taking place inside his mouth, he couldn’t help but notice that Ffup wore a furtive expression and was trying to conceal the loaf of bread she was clutching between her paws.

  “AAAARGHH!” she shrieked, then, “Phwoof. What a fright. Er … do I know you?”

  Opening his mouth would surely make him throw up immediately, so Rand smiled apologetically and waved his hands in front of his face to mime that he was eating, and thus unable to speak. Ffup peered at him in some confusion, enlightenment gradually dawning as Rand’s hand signals became more frenzied.

  “Ooooooh,” the dragon squealed. “Charades. I love charades. What fun. Let me see now. Fan mouth? Flap lips? Wave hands? Burping wave hands? Belch and hush mouth? Puff cheeks and roll eyes? Gosh, this is a difficult one.” She babbled on happily for several minutes as Rand clutched his stomach, groaned, and staggered toward a stone sink in a corner of the pantry, stuck his mouth under the tap, and drank hugely.

  “Golly,” Ffup muttered. “This is far harder than it looks. Um … choking? Drowning? Cough and splutter? Drink up? Cold water? Cool down? Water? Water water … ah. Er. Oh, dear. Are you all right? Gosh, you poor thing. And all down your T-shirt too. What a pity. Still—judging by the smell, it’s better out than in, hmmmm?”

  Edging toward the door and breathing through her mouth, Ffup realized she was still holding the incriminating loaf of bread between her paws. Eyes swiveling from side to side, she dumped it in a dark corner behind a flour bin (the same place where she’d hidden its five predecessors) and headed for the dungeon with her appetite temporarily put on hold.

  Minty sat on the edge of her bed, her thoughts in turmoil after Latch had gone. This had not been part of the job description, she decided. Life at StregaSchloss was nothing like she’d been led to believe. No one had mentioned that her workplace would be crawling with policemen, nor that it would be populated with the entire cast from some B-movie fantasy epic, nor pointed out the sheer impossibility of communicating with that poor, poor, lost, little Damp.…

  Abruptly Minty stood up, commanding herself not to think about how small and vulnerable the lost child was; not to consider just how many physical hazards and potential toddler-traps lay both inside and outside StregaSchloss. Latch had said not to worry, but what did he know? He was a butler, not a nanny, Minty reminded herself. If the domestic fires went unlit and the silverware was tarnished, then the butler was held responsible; but if the children were unwashed, unfed, or, perish the thought, missing, then the entire household would unite in pointing a finger at the nanny. Don’t worry, Latch had said, before heading down to the lake.

  Loch.

  Minty frowned. Had she corrected herself? For a moment there … But no. It had sounded remarkably like another voice, somewhere in the bedroom.… Shaking her head, she walked across to her dressing table and sat down in front of it. Behind her pale-faced reflection hung some of the family’s large collection of portraits commemorating Borgias long buried. Dating back to the thirteenth century, this assembly of dark-eyed forebears had frowned down upon successions of wet nurses, ladies-in-waiting, nursemaids, governesses, and nannies; the combined weight of their masculine disapproval probably driving some of the more sensitive members of the domestic staff to plead for quarters in rooms with less of an atmosphere of manly gloom. As part of a stately home, the Ancestors’ Room was spectacular, but as a bedroom it was downright spooky.

  In the conversational style employed by stately home tour guides the world over, a voice informed Minty, “Due to the constancy of the northern light falling upon it, this room was favored by Apollonius ‘the Greek’ Borgia; mapmaker, draftsman, lutenist, and cartographical adviser to His Majesty King James the Thirteenth, the monarch known to his detractors as ‘Frozen Buns the Baker’s Dozen’ …”

  Reflected in the mirror, Minty caught a glimpse of movement inside the frame of one of the portraits on the far wall. Unable to believe what she was seeing, she turned round, hoping that by confronting the reality rather than the reflection, she would restore normality. This was not to be. Staring brazenly out of the gilt frame housing Apollonius “the Greek” was a man for whom the word hero might have been invented. His smile dazzled, his eyes shone, and he breathed and moved as if he were the golden, living being, and Minty, by some reverse alchemy, had turned into an inanimate, leaden painting. Moreover, she now saw that he was not alone. In their assorted gilded frames the dead Borgias had come to life. Ruddy-cheeked, raucous—some with lace jabots at their throats, others resplendent in ruby-rich velvets and brocades—the heads nodded, the mouths smiled, and the heavy eyelids blinked away the sleep of centuries. Here, framed beside the fireplace, his face stained brown with wood smoke, was the first of the Borgias to shelter under the roof of StregaSchloss, Malvolio di S’Enchantedino Borgia, beloved grandson of Strega-Nonna, dead for hundreds of years—yet here he was, calling his assembled descendants to order, chiming a wicked-looking notched dagger against the bowl of his pewter goblet.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen, I beg you. Pray, silence, please. Order, if you will. I wish to bring your attention to the fact that there has been a breach of the barrier between the worlds of the quick and the dead. A breach, gentlemen, a rip in the fabric of Time itself, allowing the past foreknowledge of the future, and the dead to find shelter among the living. I would caution you all to beware, to avoid temptation, to ignore the siren song of the Other Side. Stop up your ears, cover your eyes, and resist at all costs. There will be signs and portents, the dead will dance on the cradles of newborns, and the living will seek the solace of the crypt. Whole oceans will drain away to wastes of salt, islands will rise out of waters where no islands existed before, and Evil will walk the Earth.”

  Malvolio took a deep breath, looked down at his dagger, and lifted his pewter goblet to his lips, draining its contents. In the ensuing silence Minty saw the portraits dim and darken one by one across the room. Bizarrely, this was even more frightening than when they had all sprung to life. This felt far more sinister, as if each ancestor was falling under the shadow of a malign eclipse.

  One portrait remained vivid and animated: Apollonius’s, his head nodding slowly, his hand beckoning her forward. Aghast, Minty found herself obediently standing up and walking toward the wall, one hand in front of herself as if she would bump into an invisible membrane separating her world from his. Up close, she saw his eyes were flecked with gold. Though a chill wind blew through the picture frame, making her hair swirl around her head, blowing strands against her mouth and eyes, Apollonius’s breath felt warm against her face. Still she pressed forward as if spellbound, entranced, her mind tearing itself softly apart, its rational part offering all the resistance of wet tissue paper. Underfoot, the floor creaked and lurched, and she would have lost her balance, fallen …

  … had it not been for a hand which clasped hers above the wrist and hauled her upright. The wind howled, deafening her; it was hard to make out what Apollonius was trying to say. Minty became aware of her surroundings, numbly accepting the reality of her situation even as the logical par
t of her brain curled itself into a ball in a corner of her skull and howled in denial. She clutched at the tarry ropes holding the wicker gondola below the silk panels of Apollonius’s balloon and forced herself to look over the edge and down …

  … down below, hundreds of dizzying, stomach-lurching meters, down to where vast cascading waterfalls were reduced to thin white lines like scars on the mountains; down to where clouds lay far below her feet, lying in wisps and strands, trapped in coires, and wrapped around high lochans; down to where no juniper or heather could cling; down to high plateaus where only lichen could live; down to the haunt of hawk and ptarmigan, the territory of the black grouse and mountain hare; all fleeing from the skimming shadow their balloon sent scudding across the quartz-strewn rocks below …

  “The Devil’s Retort,” Apollonius said, his ink-stained fingers indicating a nearby peak wreathed in mist, its twin horned tops breaking through the veil and grazing the sky above. Now the balloon swung out, way beyond the mountaintops, the view opening out beneath them like an abyss. Thousands of vertical meters of nothingness lay between them and the turning Earth, but this, Minty realized with mounting horror, this was only a temporary state of affairs. Apollonius hauled on a rope, and with a roar, hot air rushed out of the balloon and they began to plunge toward the ground. Minty’s ears popped, her eyes streamed, and she clung to Apollonius in terror.