Pure Dead Batty

by Debi Gliori

  “Na. Hot. Not likeit hot. Scratchy. Not likeit jaggy.”

  “Look, smout, when youse’re thousants a’ years auld like yer dad, youse’ll be aw jaggy an’ hafta shave an’ aw. An’ a right pain in the bum youse’ll find it as weel. Noo settle doon, eh? Ah’m no gettin’ oot a’ bed tae have a shave the noo, right?”

  “Na, na. No wantit. MUMMMMAAAA.”

  There was a crash, the sound of vast feet taking the stairs down to the dungeon three at a time, a roar, a scream, a brief argument—then heavier thudding feet taking the stairs to the upstairs bathroom five at a time, followed by the slam of the bathroom door and a prolonged buzzing sound as the Sleeper applied himself to Luciano’s electric shaver.

  Moments later the smell of toast filled the house.

  In the mushroom, Rand lay facedown on his bed, vowing that if he ever got himself out of this mess, he’d always pay close attention to what it said on the label, even if the label only happened to be stuck to a can of beans. Who’d’ve thought a couple of letters in the wrong place could have had such a catastrophic effect? Acanthoid—arachnoid—he still could hardly tell them apart. With a heartfelt groan he rolled over and clapped a hairy leg to where his forehead used to be. Mrs. Borgia’s totally pathetic attempts to return him to his normal teenage self had only resulted in reducing him to normal spider size. Before Titus almost stood on him, she had helpfully pointed out that the only way to break the wax’s enchantment was for him (yes, him, Rand MacAlister Hall) to weave a counter-spell in spider silk (like, how?) during the next waxing (like, yeah, Rand thought, nice touch of irony there) of the moon. So … let’s see, that gave him, what—about three weeks to learn how to spin spider silk? Oh, yeah, like that was going to happen. Furious, he pummeled his pillow with all eight legs and screamed out loud. God. It was just so unfair. Now, instead of being transformed into a bloke with a deep voice and a sprinkling of hair on his chest, he was a spider with a deep voice and hair all over his chest, his face, his legs, his legs, his legs.…

  A peal of laughter came from behind his bed, making him spring onto all eight legs and rapidly check all around. There it was again, and more than one voice by the sound of it. Not threatening, though. Just girls. Vastly amused girls. Hang on a minute, though. He was a spider, right? Girls weren’t too keen on spiders, were they? If they saw him, these girls would probably go, “Ewwwww,” before trying to squash him flat. Better run for cover then. Rand scuttled across his mountainous pillow and vaulted over the cliff-edge of his mattress, falling straight into another world entirely, but one which looked suspiciously like heaven to him.

  Seven pretty young women were slung under the bed, two dangling from the springs and waving at him, one coyly peeking out from behind a discarded sweet wrapper on the carpet, and four linking their legs and surrounding him in a circle of feminine charm.

  “Ooooh,” they chorused. “Aren’t you just yummy? Look at all that fur. Mmmhmmm. Step this way, big boy.”

  Rand blinked in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening to him. Dimly he tried to recall what little he knew of a spider’s life cycle. Wasn’t there some catch? Some problem with being male?

  “Erm … ah,” he managed.

  “Oooh. That voice,” breathed Epicsaga. “Come and talk to me, gorgeous.”

  “No, me,” demanded Emailia, batting her numerous eyes at the bewitched Rand.

  “Oooh, I want to have his babies,” sighed Diarya. “Hundreds of them, just like him.”

  “No, me,” insisted Emailia.

  What was it? Rand wondered, sinking backward into a harem of long legs, shining eyes, and widely smiling mouthparts, dimly aware that somewhere, way off in the distance of his memory, a warning bell was ringing.

  Still Me Inside

  Titus woke up, stiff, sore, and decidedly crumpled. Pale dawn light illuminated the sleeping shape of Mrs. McLachlan beside him and, on the other side of the bed, Pandora, also fast asleep. Latch was slumped across the armchair, the rhythmic sound of his breathing indicating that he too was sleeping soundly. Tiptoeing downstairs to make himself some breakfast, Titus discovered that Minty had got there before him. The nanny stood propped against the range, a cup of coffee in her hands and a puzzled expression on her face when she caught sight of him.

  “Morning,” he mumbled, hauling open the cereal drawer and immediately slamming it shut as he remembered that it still contained the same weevil-infested bag of muesli that had been the sole cereal on offer at StregaSchloss ever since Mrs. McLachlan had gone.

  But, Titus thought joyously, she wasn’t gone anymore. She was upstairs, sleeping, healing—whatever she had to do to get better—and once she recovered … Guiltily he stifled this happy thought, trying to throw a psychic blackout over it, lest Minty read his mind and see how happy he was that her predecessor had returned. For, he realized, as a blush crept across his cheeks, Mrs. McLachlan’s return meant that they now had two nannies, not one. The young woman bending down to retrieve something from the baking oven; this girl with lavender-blue eyes—she would have to go. Titus’s heart sank. With the best will in the world, they only needed one nanny at StregaSchloss. However, he thought, they were missing one cook. A smile hovered round his mouth as a whole world of delicious possibility opened up in front of him. Minty didn’t have to go. At least, he sincerely hoped she didn’t. She was funny, brave, resourceful, and clever—not to mention stunningly beautiful; not that beauty had anything whatsoever to do with it.

  Minty straightened and placed a baking tray onto a wire rack in front of her. Tendrils of steam curled up from whatever it was she’d just taken out of the oven, and Titus was struck by how much she seemed to like cooking. She was brilliant at it, obviously quite obsessed by it in fact. Her seventeen suitcases, rucksacks, and trunks, which he’d effortfully dragged upstairs to her bedroom, had proved to be full of recipes, whisks, pans, cookie cutters, loaf tins, tube molds, icing bags, pizza cutters, jam thermometers, soufflé dishes, and enough ramekins to remodel Tock’s moat in fluted white porcelain should she so wish. She’d even brought seven cook’s aprons and ten pairs of oven gloves too. I mean, he thought, you don’t waste your money on all that stuff if you hate cooking. Do you? He gazed at her, unaware that he was staring.

  Minty removed her oven gloves and smiled at him. “Muffins,” she explained. “Raspberry ones. Apparently they’re Titus’s favorite. Any idea where he is?”

  Titus frowned. What was she on about? He was here, in front of her, wasn’t he?

  “Er …” he ventured, his voice emerging with distinct adolescent squeakiness. It was then that he remembered. That wax. That stupid, stupid wax. It had worn off, stripping him of his “enhanced features” with no warning, leaving him beached, blushing, and—damn it—a boy again. “Um,” he began, wondering how on earth he could even begin to explain. It’s me, he wanted to yell. It’s still me in here. He nearly howled with the indignity of it all. I’m still Titus, even though I’m a lot younger than you’ve come to expect. Just because I look different doesn’t mean my feelings have changed. Oh, bloody hell, he thought miserably, she was now regarding him, not as an equal, but like someone you had a duty to look after. Some … some kid. He looked down at his feet, suddenly aware that his dad’s trousers now hung in folds around his ankles, and that the sleeves of his shirt dangled beyond the tips of his fingers. He’d shrunk somewhere between bedroom and kitchen, shrunk back to being a kid again. Titus was assailed by a feeling of such acute bleakness that he had to grab the worktop for support and take a deep breath.

  Phwoarrr, that was a bit better, he thought, taking another breath. Hmmm. And another, and another. Wow. Those muffins. They smelled sensational. A thought occurred to him—admittedly a somewhat unworthy thought, but given the circumstances, an entirely understandable one. After a very brief struggle with his conscience, he decided to go for it. Smiling appealingly up at Minty, he said, “Actually, would you like me to take some muffins up to Titus? He’s not really himself just yet.…
”

  Heavy snow had continued to fall overnight, forcing Luciano to abandon all hope of returning home until daybreak. Briefly he’d entertained desperate notions of skiing home, or borrowing snowshoes and walking or even hiring a helicopter and being airlifted to StregaSchloss. Good sense had prevailed and he ended up spending a passable night curled up in a quilt on an ancient Chesterfield in Ludo’s study. Dusty leather-bound law books lined the walls and Ludo’s vast desk was buried beneath tottering piles of torts, tracts, tomes, and hundreds of model soldiers, for, as the lawyer explained, war games and strategies were his passion. Which was why, Ludo said, pressing a hot-water bottle into Luciano’s hands before turning in for the night, he would be more than happy to assist in the finding and eliminating of Luciano’s half brother, Lucifer.

  “Elim—elim—eliminating him?” Luciano’s face paled in the flicker of light from the log fire. “But—but surely that means we would become as despicable as him? If we descend to the level of going around cold-bloodedly killing people then we’re … we’re …”

  The lawyer laid a restraining hand on Luciano’s arm. “If we descend to the level of cold-bloodedly killing your half brother, then you, your wife, and your children all might stand a chance of surviving to see another year. Otherwise …” Ludo didn’t overdramatize this point by doing anything so crass as drawing a finger across his throat; instead, allowing the silence to speak for him, he left a considerable pause before he patted Luciano on the arm, bade him good night, and headed to bed.

  To his own astonishment, Luciano slept. Convinced that a combination of the day’s events, the subject matter of his conversation with Ludo, and his understandable impatience to return home to his family would all conspire to render him sleepless, he was pleasantly surprised when waves of exhaustion rushed toward him the moment he lay down. Ludo’s battered leather Chesterfield was deeply comfortable, the hiss and crackle of logs in the fireplace soothingly reminiscent of campfires in his youth, and the shadows cast by the flames onto the ceiling were those of hundreds of model soldiers, all steadfast and all fighting on his side. Moreover, someone had been decent enough to replace all the bones in his body with warm Play-Doh and plate his eyelids with lead. Gratefully Luciano let go.

  Overnight, Argyll had been transformed into a scene from an Advent calendar. Waking in the dazzle of low-slanting sunshine, Luciano was at first totally disoriented—home, prison, where?—and then brought back to his senses by a distant waft of real coffee. Across the study a set of clean clothes had been laid out on a button-back club armchair, plus a towel, bathrobe, and a well-thumbed copy of The Art of War by an author with an awful lot of military awards after his name. This, when opened, had a yellow Post-it note stuck to the title page. It read:

  L

  Help yourself to bath/shower/coffee/breakfast/whatever you need.

  “Mi casa è su casa,” huh? Hope you slept well. Sorry to abandon you, but I’ve got court at 10. Have a think about what we discussed. If you’re game, you might find this volume of some use. Otherwise, I’d strongly advise you to consider finding a bodyguard and going into hiding with your family.

  Trust me, Luciano, he’s not going to give up now.

  Whatever you decide, let me know?

  Yours

  Ludo

  Luciano took a deep breath. Sunshine glinted off the ranks of model soldiers and dappled the floor with lozenges of light. It was time to go.

  An hour later he stopped at one of the gates barring the entrance to the StregaSchloss estate. Some comedian had changed the sign that had warned trespassers about the dangers of straying onto the land between this gate and the distant loch. Now the sign read:

  Underfoot, the snow was thawing rapidly, dropping off the leafless branches of the chestnuts and retreating to all but the highest peaks of the Bengormless range. The air smelled cold and clean; in the distance he could see his house silhouetted against the loch. A thin thread of smoke trickled out of one of the chimneys. Luciano shaded his eyes against the sun and calculated that someone, probably Latch, had just lit the fire in the library. He was afforded a brief vision of himself, curled on a sofa in front of that same library fire and surrounded by his beloved family. This was no vision of a hysterically happy reunion, more of its peaceful aftermath; a relaxed vision, comfortable, cozy: Titus immersed in a computer manual, Pandora in a book as thick as a doorstep, Damp breathing heavily over a picture book, Baci chewing the end of her pen as she puzzled over the crossword, and himself …

  Checking that the book was safely zipped into the pocket of the jacket he’d borrowed from Ludo, he pulled up his collar and stared into the light. Later, he decided, banishing thoughts of his half brother to the back of his mind. There would be time for all that later.

  Up ahead, a figure detached itself from the broad mass of the house and stood still for a moment, as if trying to work out who he was. Then it waved, and Luciano waved back, his feet breaking into a run, his voice cracking with the joy of saying her name. His daughter began to run toward him, her hair flying around her like a flag to welcome him back home.

  Gliossary

  BOG-ROLL: Humankind’s answer to the post-poo bottom-laundering conundrum. Otherwise known as toilet tissue, we Celts refer to it as bog-roll because one applies it to one’s bottom in the “bog” (the bathroom) and in the U.K. it comes rolled round an inner cardboard tube—hence: bog-roll. Not to be confused with a Swiss-roll (a form of sponge cake) or a morning-roll (a form of white bread-fluff consumed by the dozen in Scotland, and thus called because as soon as the clock ticks past midday, the morning-roll becomes a stale-roll), or even a bacon-roll, which is the single most astonishingly perfect food substance known to mankind, but only if bought from the man in the van parked at the West Coast of Scotland beauty spot rejoicing in the name of Rest-and-Be-Thankful. Go there. Buy one. See if I’m not right.

  DIARRHIC: One of those words better said than spelled, I fear. Actually, better said than done, given that it describes an involuntary eruption of liquid poo from a dragon’s nether regions. Lordy, this is one of those days that makes we Gliossary-compilers wish we’d chosen a less challenging career option. Pronounced, but not at mealtimes, as die-ah-ree-ick.

  DINNAE GIE ME ANY A‘ YER GRIEF, WUMMAN: Don’t try and bring me down, lady. This is usually yelled just prior to “SHOOTING THE CRAW” and has a tendency to leave the “WUMMAN” incandescent with rage and on the brink of throwing a “WOBBLY,” possibly followed by a “WEEBLE,” followed by all the “SYLVANIAN FAMILIES” she can lay her hands on, and then sitting down for a good howl punctuated by many wipings of her eyes with “BOG-ROLL.” What fun lives we Scots lead, huh?

  HIGH-HEID YIN: The big cheese, il grande Parmigiano, or even il mondo mozzarella. This is an irreverent way to refer to the person in charge, the senior suit, or in this case, the weasel-faced Detective Chief Inspector Finbar McIntosh. Pronounced hi-heed yan.

  LOST THE PLOT: Completely losing one’s grip on reality, as in … um … well, in truth, as in doing what this writer does from nine till five each day. I have to lose my grip on reality, otherwise I’d be typing turgid but factually accurate guidebooks to the West Coast of Scotland instead of indulging myself by writing wild fantasies about it.

  MASHIE NIBLICKS: Gulp. I confess. I have committed the ultimate authorial no-no. I have used a word, well, two words actually, neither of which I can define or even Gliossarize. What on earth is a mashie niblick? For an answer, I disguised myself in expensive leisurewear and went to the Auchenlochtermuchty Golf Club in the hope of being enlightened. Alas, being an institution steeped in history, not only is the Auchenlochtermuchty Golf Club members only, it also does not allow women through its gates. Thus, dear Reader, I can tell you that a mashie niblick is something that I can easily live without, and you would be well advised to do the same until the AGC rewrites its rule book and drags itself, wheezing and puffing, into the twenty-first century.

  MINGIN: Beyond the scope of this Glioss
ary to convey the depths of Doric disgustingness implied by this word. However, in this case, we’re only talking about the unwashed state of the Strega-Borgia family car, so this is a pure dead mingin’ with scant bacterial involvement, a kind of Grade 2 mingin’, on a sliding scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is grubby with a chance of dust bunnies and 10 is awash in raw sewage with a light garnish of maggots. Pronounced ming-ahn.

  SHOT THE CRAW: This doesn’t refer to some gruesome Scottish sport involving rifles, big black birds, and loud bangs, but simply means “left in some haste” or “speedily departed,” as I imagine one would when released from prison. I suppose there are some very odd individuals who might hang around outside the prison gates, begging to be allowed back in, but Luciano certainly wasn’t one of them.

  SYLVANIAN FAMILY: Apparently known in the U.S. as Calico Critturs, the Sylvanian Family of Damp’s babyhood are little animal figurines, covered in peach fuzz and dressed in faux-Victorian clothes. Loving parents can find themselves in Deep Debt trying to ensure that their offspring’s alarmingly accessorized Sylvanians are properly equipped with the Sylvanian boat, the Sylvanian Village Bus, the Sylvanian twin-engine Cessna with optional Cadillac … okay, I made that last bit up. There is also the matter of Sylvanian accommodation, since it is simply not good enough to keep these little figures in a shoe box under one’s bed—they must have their own architect-designed apartments. Somewhere at GlioriSchloss lies the little village of Insolvenyia, complete with schoolhouse, mansion, hospital, post office, windmill, country cottage … I wish I was making this bit up, but I’m not. Damp’s Sylvanians are a far more plebeian assortment, most of which were handed down from Pandora, all of them missing items of clothing of a perfect size to be devoured by the vacuum cleaner.