Floods 5

by Colin Thompson

  ‘We must stay here tonight,’ he said. ‘The detector hairs in my nose tell me there is an evil presence in the school and I think it will try to follow us home.’

  ‘This is a wizard school,’ said Merlinmary. ‘Of course there’s an evil presence here.’

  ‘No, this is different,’ said Winchflat. ‘This evil presence has come from outside and it has come specifically for us.’

  ‘What?’ said Satanella. ‘Surely you don’t mean that pathetic Grusom character?’

  ‘No, no. It’s something unseen, something to do with the dead professor,’ said Winchflat.

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with us,’ said Morbid. ‘I mean, the body was here when we arrived this morning.’

  ‘Except,’ said Merlinmary, ‘we didn’t arrive this morning, did we? We were here all night.’

  ‘Yes, but I still don’t see what it’s got to do with us,’ said Satanella.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Winchflat. ‘I just have this overwhelming feeling that we must stay away from home.’

  ‘Well, we’d better ring Mum and tell her,’ said Morbid.

  ‘No. We must stay totally away from home – no phone calls, no email, not even a carrier vulture,’ Winchflat insisted. ‘We are being watched.’

  Although there seemed to be no evidence to back up Winchflat’s strange feeling, everyone knew that when the hairs in his nose tingled there was danger about. Winchflat’s hairy nose had saved them from all sorts of accidents and had never been wrong.

  ‘We’ll split up and meet in the catacombs after everyone else has gone home,’ he said.

  Night fell and everyone slept on the case.

  Narled’s baby son, Narledy Junior, literally slept on the case – his dad.

  Elanora Bedlam propped the dead professor up against a gravestone, climbed into the grave she had been retrieving bone marrow from and fell fast sleep. Her snoring was loud enough to wake the dead – which, when you are sleeping in a cemetery, is not a good thing. The next morning there were a lot of complaints from various corpses, mainly the ones who had slept through it all and had missed the party.

  Grusom slept on a bed of stinging nettles, thistles and brambles at the foot of the brick shed wall. Small insects came and licked the blood off his forehead and he had horribly vivid dreams that were so scary, he was too frightened to wake up in case they were real.

  Under the cover of night many weird things happened in the valley. Being the place on Earth with a thousand times more magical power than all the other magical places added together, many weird things happened there every night, so this was nothing out of the ordinary.12

  The valley’s magical power was only partly due to the school and everyone there. The valley had been intensely magical long before the school had been built, even before creatures had evolved from fish and begun to walk on land. There are those who believe the valley existed before Earth itself, and that it isn’t so much a valley as a spaceship sent from a distant galaxy to create and populate the Earth.13

  The next morning everyone woke early.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Early complained. ‘I’m always the one who has to get up first.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ said everyone. ‘We have to get up before you so we can wake you up.’

  This, of course, has nothing to do with the story.

  When the school buses arrived, bringing all the students back to school, the Flood children came out of hiding and mingled with everyone just as they would have done on a normal morning.

  Avid found Winchflat and asked him to help her look for her boss. Winchflat went and got the twins, Morbid and Silent, so they could use their extra-sensory powers to search in places no one else could – for instance, in the middle of big lumps of concrete, or in the school gymnasium, where no self-respecting witch or wizard would ever go.14

  The one person who should have known where Grusom was – Grusom himself – didn’t know, because when he woke up he was blindfolded in total darkness. The first thing he thought was that it must still be the middle of the night.

  ‘I don’t remember tying myself up before I went to sleep,’ he said, or rather, that is what he would have said if he hadn’t had a gag over his mouth.

  By wriggling his jaw around he managed to push the gag under his chin, leaving himself free to say, ‘I don’t remember tying myself up before I went to sleep.’

  ‘That’s because you didn’t – I did,’ said a voice somewhere behind him in the darkness.

  ‘Who’s that? Where am I? What’s going on? What time is it? What’s for breakfast?’

  ‘Me. Here. Nothing. Today. Cold water,’ said the voice.

  It was a voice that Grusom didn’t recognise, but being a highly trained forensic scientist with years of experience15 at the cutting edge of his profession, Grusom knew straight away that it belonged to a man – or a woman with a very deep voice, or a child with a really deep voice, or someone disguising their voice, or an incredibly well-trained parrot, or possibly none of the above. The air was filled with the smell of what seemed like hot rubber about to burst into flames. Grusom decided he needed to hear more.

  ‘Cold water, you say,’ he said. ‘What sort of temperature are we talking about here?’

  ‘Room temperature,’ said the voice.

  ‘Which room?’

  ‘This one.’

  Aha, thought Grusom. You walked right into that.

  ‘So we are in a room then?’ he said.

  Considering he was totally blindfolded and tied up in a dark, damp room, Grusom was acting with remarkable confidence. He didn’t consider for a moment that his captor might attack him. It’s hard to know whether his attitude was because he was a highly trained scientist who was used to dealing with weirdos every day or because he was stupid.

  ‘Look, mister,’ said the voice, sounding annoyed that Grusom had gained the upper hand, ‘if you don’t start being a bit more scared, I’ll come and pull all your nose hairs out one by one with a pair of rusty pliers.’

  ‘Would those be the rusty pliers that have your DNA all over the handles?’ said Grusom with just a hint of triumph in his voice.

  ‘Damn,’ the voice cursed under its breath.

  ‘Besides, part of our FSI Basic Training is to have all our nose hairs surgically removed in case we get tied up and blindfolded in a dark cellar by a crazed killer,’ said Grusom.

  ‘I’m not a crazed killer,’ said the voice, ‘but I am a witch. I could pull all the hairs out of the rest of your body without even touching you.’

  ‘You certainly fit the description of a crazed killer,’ said Grusom.

  ‘Well, I’m not, and I’m really upset you should think that,’ said the voice.

  ‘Listen, sunshine,’ said Grusom, ‘I’m a professional with years of experience. I think I know a crazed killer when I meet one.’

  ‘But … that’s really unfair!’ said the voice. ‘I mean, have you any idea how hurtful it is to be told something like that?’

  ‘Well, of course I haven’t,’ said Grusom. ‘I’m on the side of the good guys. Anyway, look at it from my point of view. I mean, you’ve kidnapped me, tied me up and dragged me into a dark cellar. How do I know you didn’t kill Professor Open-Graves too?’

  ‘Oh, but …’ the voice began, and before it could say anything else it began to cry.

  ‘Now you see,’ said Grusom, ‘there you go, crying like a baby. That’s typical crazed killer behaviour, unless of course you actually are a baby.’

  ‘I, but, I …’

  ‘Why don’t you untie me and we’ll talk about it.’

  ‘Would you?’ said the voice, cheering up. ‘Would you really do that?’

  ‘Of course I would,’ said Grusom, glad that it was so dark the voice couldn’t see he had his fingers crossed.

  He flexed his muscles as laid out on page 347, subsection 23 of the seventh volume of the FSI Handbook, under the heading ‘How to Make Yourself into a Lethal Coiled Spring with the Po
wer to Kill with a Single Blow while Appearing to be Completely Weak and Pathetic’. Small hands fiddled around with the knots tying his hands and feet together.

  ‘Umm … I can’t get the knots undone.’

  ‘Why don’t you turn the light on?’ Grusom suggested. ‘It would be a lot easier if you could see what you were doing.’

  ‘I can’t reach the light switch,’ said the voice.

  ‘You could stand on a chair.’

  ‘I haven’t got one.’

  ‘But if you really are a witch,’ Grusom said, ‘can’t you just make the light go on without touching it?’

  ‘But I promised my mum I wouldn’t play with electricity,’ said the voice. ‘Not after the thing with the kitten.’

  Grusom was intrigued. If his kidnapper had promised their mother something, did that mean they were not a man but a child? Normally that would be the case, but as everyone knows, especially an expert like Grusom, crazed killers are often very devoted to their mothers, and have even been known to keep their dead mothers propped up in a chair with mice in their hair and make them cups of tea every afternoon at four o’clock for years and years after they’ve died.

  ‘How long has your mother been gone?’ he asked as gently as he could.

  ‘Gone where?’ said the voice, definitely beginning to crack up. ‘No one told me she was going anywhere.’

  ‘I mean, gone to the other side,’ Grusom explained, trying to be gentle.

  ‘What are you talking about? We’re witches and wizards. We live on the other side.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well, how about if I gave you permission?’ Grusom said. ‘Could you make the light come on then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘See, I knew you were a crazed killer.’

  ‘Not! Not! Not!’ shouted the voice.

  ‘Well, turn the light on then.’

  There was a loud crackling noise and lots of lightning flashes and the room filled with smoke. The smell of burning rubber got even stronger.

  ‘Still can’t see anything,’ said Grusom.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said the voice.

  There was another crackling noise, more smoke and an extra big flash of lightning and Grusom’s blindfold flew off.

  ‘What about the ropes?’ he said.

  More crackling, more smoke, and the smell of burning rubber became so strong it made Grusom’s eyes water, and then he was free. He leapt to his feet, ready to kill his kidnapper with his extra-special FSI Karate Chop,16 but all he could see was thick black smoke.

  As the smoke cleared, he could see he was in a dark tunnel – but where was his attacker? He spun round, but there was no one behind him either.

  ‘Down here,’ said the voice.

  ‘What the …?’

  Standing about two metres in front of him, no higher than his knees, was a small dark creature with piercing yellow eyes in a tiny green face. Apart from the face, the creature was completely covered in black hair that flashed and crackled with electricity. The smell was coming from a pair of thick red rubber gloves on the creature’s hands. The gloves were on fire.

  It was Merlinmary Flood.

  ‘Who the …? Where the …?’ said Grusom, relaxing his killer karate pose a little, but keeping himself ready just in case.

  ‘Merlinmary Flood. In the catacombs under the school,’ said Merlinmary, now talking in her own voice, which was a bit like sandpaper fracturing a lightbulb. ‘I was wearing the gloves so I wouldn’t give you an electric shock and kill you.’

  ‘Flood, Flood … Is that weird tall skinny boy your brother?’ said Grusom.

  ‘Winchflat? Yes, he’s the most brilliant boy in the school,’ said Merlinmary.

  ‘You are kidding, right?’

  ‘No. He is a total genius,’ said Merlinmary seriously. ‘He is so clever, he often stays behind after school to teach the teachers what to teach.’

  ‘OK, OK, fine,’ said Grusom. ‘Why did you kidnap me?’

  ‘Well, you were outside the secret entrance,’ said Merlinmary.

  ‘When? No I wasn’t. The last thing I remember was hacking through bushes and stuff and finding a deserted shed that looked as if no one had been near it for years.’

  ‘That’s right, the secret entrance.’

  ‘Well, it was secret, all right,’ said Grusom. ‘I mean, it was completely overgrown and forgotten.’

  ‘Not by everyone,’ said Merlinmary.

  ‘Come on,’ Grusom protested. ‘I’m a forensic scientist. I was the first person to go anywhere near that hut for at least twenty-five years. Until I got there, no one had even touched a blade of grass within fifty metres of the place.’

  ‘Not the way you came, no.’

  Merlinmary opened a door to reveal a narrow staircase, which she went up, indicating that Grusom should follow her. The stair came out inside the tiny brick hut.

  ‘See, the secret entrance,’ said Merlinmary. ‘We hardly ever use it. It’s more of an emergency exit than a secret entrance, but what with the dead professor, it was decided we should come and unlock the door and oil the hinges in case we needed to get away quickly.’

  ‘You mean, you know who the murderer is?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Merlinmary.

  ‘Well,’ said Grusom, ‘who is it?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Merlinmary, climbing back down into the tunnel and beckoning with one burning glove for Grusom to follow her. ‘I thought you were supposed to be an expert.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ Grusom started to follow Merlinmary down a long dark tunnel, but he was too distracted by Merlinmary’s revelation about the murderer to notice where he was going.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Merlinmary, ‘you should know the murderer is nearly always the very last person you’d suspect.’

  ‘That’d be me,’ said Grusom. ‘I’m the last person I’d suspect on account of the fact that I was thousands of miles away and I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Are you sure the professor was killed here?’

  ‘According to the feedback from my blue torch, he was definitely murdered in this valley,’ said Grusom. ‘I was thrown off the scent for a while by the mud sticking to the soles of his shoes.’

  ‘Oh, you mean the mud that is only found on one remote and little-used footpath in Tristan da Cunha?’ said Merlinmary. ‘Yes, my brother told me about that.’

  ‘So he would have told you that the footpath is not even on the main island but on Inaccessible Island, where nobody lives?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Merlinmary. ‘I told you my brother is a genius. He can just sniff some mud and tell you where it comes from in the world to within ten metres. So I suppose,’ she added, ‘that you know about the only person who ever lived on Inaccessible Island, apart from Florence Inaccessible, who died a hundred and fifty years ago?’

  ‘Umm, yes, of course,’ said Grusom. ‘Just remind me again.’

  ‘You know,’ said Merlinmary, realising instantly that he didn’t. ‘The forger.’

  ‘The forger, oh, yes.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And what was it he forged again?’ said Grusom. ‘It seems to have slipped my memory.’

  ‘Bus tickets.’

  This seemingly ridiculous piece of information slapped Grusom in the face in the same way a very big dead fish would. It threw a whole new light on the case. The dead professor had bus tickets in every pocket of his clothes. Were they all forgeries? Had the professor been the brains behind an international fake bus ticket ring, exploiting an insatiable desire from collectors all over the world to own the rarest and most valuable tickets?17 Or had he found out about the forgeries and been killed so he couldn’t spill the beans? Or had he simply been a keen collector murdered for his priceless collection?

  Even though these thoughts were racing around inside Grusom’s head and not coming out of his mouth at all, Merlinmary seemed to sense what he was thinking, for she said, ‘Hardly. If he was killed for his collection, how come he still had tick
ets in his pockets – especially the rarest of all tickets, the “Tuppeny Pink”?’

  ‘Maybe the killer was disturbed,’ said Grusom.

  ‘Aren’t all killers disturbed in some way?’ said Merlinmary. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t be killers.’

  ‘Umm …’ Grusom began, but he was now finding it difficult to concentrate.

  The two of them had reached the far end of the tunnel and now came out into the main catacombs below the school cemetery. On all sides the walls were lined with little recesses just large enough to contain a single coffin. There must have been several hundred of them and almost all were full. Some of the recesses had iron doors fixed shut with big bolts or padlocks, and Grusom could have sworn he saw light coming from around at least two of the doors, though the lights went out the instant he and Merlinmary entered the chamber. One of the heaviest doors, locked with six padlocks, was leaking blood and groaning eerily.

  Halfway along the catacomb, the ceiling suddenly dipped lower. Grusom guessed they were directly below the cemetery because there were lots of dead people’s legs sticking down through the ceiling. It was too dark to see much and Grusom kept being poked in the eye by toes in varying states of decay, from fresh and just a bit slimy to dried brittle bones. Merlinmary, of course, was not tall enough to touch the dead feet. This was a bit of a shame because, although most humans don’t like having dead people’s feet poked in their eyes, nothing pleased Merlinmary more than having a nice bone to chew on. Merlinmary thought of asking Grusom to break her off a few toes, but decided against it.

  ‘These are the new catacombs,’ she explained. ‘The old ones are below us.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Grusom, going back to something that had been worrying him since he had arrived at Quicklime’s. ‘Why would a school have a graveyard at all?’

  Merlinmary explained that going to school at Quicklime’s was actually very exciting and that lots of ex-pupils chose to be buried there when they finally got very old and died or didn’t so much die as feel like a bit of a lie-down for a century or two.

  ‘Of course,’ Merlinmary suggested, getting back to the original subject, ‘the professor might have had nothing to do with the bus tickets. They could have been planted on him.’