by David Sinden
The Inspector took out his notepad. “So fairies do exist,” he said.
“Tiana’s my friend,” Ulf told him.
Ulf stood up on his foot bars. He rode around the lake, across the paddock, past the bulltoxic, and back toward Farraway Hall.
“Open,” he called. The gate opened, and he rode into the yard.
“And that must be your giant,” the Inspector said, pulling up behind.
Orson the giant was dragging the lifeless body of the dragon out of the operating theater toward the incinerator.
“That’s Orson,” Ulf explained. “He works here. He handles the larger beasts.”
They rode around to the courtyard and parked the ATVs in the vehicle bay.
Dr. Fielding came out to meet them. “Did you see everything you needed to?” she asked the Inspector.
Inspector Black stepped off his ATV. His legs were wobbling. Mud and mucus were dripping off his pants, and his hat was squashed.
“Most educational,” he said. He took out a handkerchief and wiped the mucus from his coat sleeve.
Ulf started checking the Inspector’s ATV for damage.
“Before I go, I have a couple of questions,” Inspector Black said to Dr. Fielding. He opened his notepad and flicked through the pages. “Did you say you saw two dragons on the radar last night?”
Ulf listened.
“Yes,” Dr. Fielding said to the Inspector. “A mother dragon and her baby.”
“Dr. Fielding, if I wanted, let’s imagine, to capture an adult dragon alive, how would you suggest I go about it?”
“You’d have to get it onto the ground first,” Dr. Fielding said.
“And what would a mother dragon do if I shot its baby out of the sky?”
“She would follow it down.”
The Inspector tapped his pencil on his notepad. “Then I put it to you that our beast hunter was not after the baby dragon at all, but was in fact after the mother. I believe he shot the baby so he could capture the mother dragon alive.”
Ulf was looking up from beside the Inspector’s ATV.
“Dr. Fielding, does the Ring of Horrors mean anything to you?” Inspector Black asked.
Dr. Fielding’s eyes widened.
“I have heard rumors that our beast hunter is planning a Ring of Horrors, and so I suspect he has taken the mother dragon alive.”
“But that’s—”
“Rumors, Dr. Fielding, merely rumors at this stage. Though we ignore them at our peril.”
Ulf stood up. “What’s the Ring of Horrors?” he asked.
The Inspector looked Ulf in the eye. “It would curdle your blood if I told you.”
He took a little knife from his coat pocket and sharpened his pencil.
“Dr. Fielding, I think we should speak alone,” he said.
“Ulf, please will you take a crate upstairs for me?” Dr. Fielding asked. “But—”
“Please, Ulf. It’s in the kit room.”
Ulf walked toward the yard, then peered back around the corner of the house, trying not to be seen. “Dr. Fielding, we must find this criminal before it’s too late,” Inspector Black was saying. “I will search the crash site for clues. I suggest you step up security here.”
“You don’t think he would come here, do you?” Dr. Fielding asked.
“I suspect he may come for a fighting beast. From what I see, you have plenty here for him to choose from. Perhaps your giant could make sure all the enclosures are secure.”
“I’ll see to it right away,” Dr. Fielding said. “And I’ll carry on checking the files. They may contain a clue to the beast hunter’s identity.”
“Good thinking,” the Inspector said. “Keep me informed if you find anything. If he’s as clever as I think he is, you could all be in trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“This person, whoever he may be, is clearly no common poacher, Dr. Fielding. We are dealing with a master criminal.”
The Inspector’s shoes squelched as he walked to his car. His trouser legs were still tucked into his socks.
“Be on your guard!” he said, getting into his car. He started the engine, and Dr. Fielding opened the entrance gates. Inspector Black waved as he sped off up the driveway.
The huge iron gates clanged shut.
Chapter 9
“TWO LITTLE DRAGONS FLYING IN THE SKY. Baby goes BANG! Mummy goes bye-bye.”
Druce the gargoyle was singing from the rooftop of Farraway Hall. His voice sounded croaky and out of tune.
Ulf glanced up. “That’s a rotten song, Druce,” he said.
The gargoyle gurgled, flapping his arms and wings. He looked up and sniffed the air. Black smoke was drifting in the sky, coming from the incinerator chimney.
“Bye-bye, dragon,” Druce gurgled. His mouth drooped sadly and he turned to stone.
Ulf turned away. He saw Orson’s legs sticking out of the door of the feed store and ran to talk to him.
“Orson, what’s the Ring of Horrors?” Ulf asked.
The giant was taking a nap. He was leaning against a mound of grain, snoring. Beside him was a half-empty barrel of apples. There’s nothing a giant likes more than a belly full of apples and a little snooze after a morning’s work.
Ulf heard Dr. Fielding’s voice. “Calling Orson. Calling Orson. Orson, are you there?”
Orson’s walkie-talkie was flashing on his belt.
Ulf unhooked it. “Hello, Dr. Fielding. It’s Ulf here,” he answered.
“Is Orson with you?” Dr. Fielding asked.
Ulf tugged the giant’s ear. “Dr. Fielding wants you,” he said.
“Mmm, lovely apples,” the giant mumbled. Orson opened his eyes and stretched his huge arms. “That’s better,” he said, taking the walkie-talkie in his fingers.
“Orson, please can you secure all the enclosures and bring the biganasty in from the forest.”
“Is there trouble?” Orson asked.
“It’s just a precaution,” Dr. Fielding said. “And remind Ulf to take a crate upstairs.”
“Right you are,” Orson replied.
“Over and out,” Dr. Fielding said.
The walkie-talkie crackled, and Orson switched it off. “Better get back to work,” he said, standing up. He ducked his head and stepped into the yard.
“Orson,” Ulf called, following him to the kit room. “What’s the Ring of Horrors?”
Ulf watched as Orson knelt by the kit room door.
The giant reached in and pulled out a thick rope. “Now, why would you want to know about a thing like that?” Orson asked.
“Inspector Black says the beast hunter is planning a Ring of Horrors.”
Orson tied the rope into a lasso. He laid it on the ground. “The Ring of Horrors was banned before I was born,” he said. “It’s evil. Wild beasts are taken from their homes and chained up. They’re thrown into a deep round pit—that’s the ring. Then they’re made to fight to the death.”
Ulf was shaking. “That’s horrible,” he said.
The giant placed a huge hand around Ulf’s shoulders. “It’s humans that do it,” Orson told him. “Not good humans like Dr. Fielding, but bad ones—rotten ones. Great crowds of them, gambling their money on which beast will kill the other.”
“The Inspector says the beast hunter has taken the mother dragon alive,” Ulf said.
“Then we’d better save her,” Orson told him. “And when we do, I’ll show the beast hunter the size of my fist.”
He stood up and threw the lasso over his shoulder. Ulf felt glad that Orson was around. He watched as the giant headed through the gate into the paddock.
Orson turned. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking a crate upstairs?” he called.
Ulf quickly stepped into the kit room. He grabbed a flashlight from a hook on the wall, then picked up a dusty old crate from the floor. It was full of junk. He carried it across the yard, heading toward the side door of Farraway Hall. In the flower garden at the back of the house he could
see sparkles. “Tiana!” he called.
The fairy came flying over. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“I promised Dr. Fielding I’d take a crate upstairs,” Ulf told her. “Come with me, will you?”
“No way,” Tiana said. She started flying back to the garden.
“Please,” Ulf called.
“It’s creepy upstairs,” she called back.
“But I need your help with something.”
Tiana hovered in the air, thinking. “If I come with you, you have to go in first.”
Ulf smiled. Tiana didn’t like going upstairs. Upstairs was where the ghosts lived.
Chapter 10
DEEP IN THE WOODS, TWENTY MILES NORTH of Farraway Hall, a tall crane was trundling through the trees. It stopped and lowered a huge metal cage to the ground. Draped over the top of the cage was a tarpaulin sheet.
The small man named Blud stepped out of the cabin of the crane. He slipped a gas mask over his face, then reached up, pulling a gas cylinder from behind his seat.
He lifted the corner of the tarpaulin sheet and peered through the bars of the cage.
Inside, a huge dragon lay half conscious, smoke drifting from its nostrils as it snorted noisily, in and out.
“You’re an ugly beast,” Blud whispered.
The dragon half opened its red eye.
“Want some more medicine?” Blud said.
He pointed a hose from the gas cylinder and sprayed the dragon’s face with tranquilizer gas. The dragon’s eyelid drooped.
“Sleep tight,” Blud sniggered. He took the gas mask off and dabbed his runny nose with a soggy red rag. Then he walked out through the trees into a clearing.
In the middle of the clearing was a huge round pit. Blud walked to its edge and looked down. A tall ladder leaned against the wall of the pit. At the bottom, the big man with a thick beard and long greasy hair was digging. He was throwing up clods of earth with his shovel.
“Have you still not finished, Bone?” Blud asked.
Bone wiped his face with the front of his black vest. “You can help me if you want,” he called up.
Blud sat down, dangling his legs over the edge of the pit. “You’re the digger, I’m the gas man,” he said.
“I always get the heavy work,” Bone muttered under his breath.
“If you’ve got any problems, then talk to the Baron.”
Bone rested on his shovel. “Have you got the dragon?”
“It’s sound asleep,” Blud said. “I gave it a double dose. We don’t want it waking up on us.”
“The Baron said he wants it angry.”
Blud sniggered. “When that dragon wakes up and finds out we’ve killed its baby, it’ll be really annoyed.”
Bone laughed. He pushed his foot on his shovel, chuckling as he dug deeper and deeper.
Chapter 11
FARRAWAY HALL WAS SET IN A REMOTE VALLEY on the coast. It was a country mansion, the former home of the Farraway family. For a hundred years it had been the headquarters of the RSPCB and the world center for the study of cryptozoology. On the ground floor, many rooms had been modernized, including the surgery, laboratory, and office. Upstairs, on the first and second floors, the older rooms had hardly changed in decades.
Ulf carried the crate up the back stairs and down the Gallery of Science, a wide corridor with drawings of beasts framed on the walls.
As Tiana flew alongside him, he told her what had happened that morning.
“But why would anyone kidnap a dragon?” Tiana asked, flying past a diagram of a sphinx’s brain.
“Inspector Black says the beast hunter is planning a Ring of Horrors.”
“What’s a Ring of Horrors?” Tiana asked.
“Beast cruelty,” Ulf told her. “Come on. We can check it out in the library.”
Ulf headed past a picture of a mermaid’s digestive system and another of the skeleton of a troll. At the end of the corridor he followed Tiana through the Room of Curiosities: a large room with wood-paneled walls. Cabinets and cupboards were crammed together. Tables were stacked with old objects and souvenirs. There were microscopes and veterinary tools, wooden chests and silver boxes. The room contained every artifact from the RSPCB’s history since it had been founded a hundred years ago.
Hung on one wall was the net used in the first-ever fairy rescue and two wooden oars from an early expedition to study a South Pacific sea serpent.
Ulf wove his way between the cabinets as he carried the crate, and followed Tiana to a large wooden door at the end of the room.
“You go first, Ulf,” Tiana said, hovering near the handle.
From behind the door, Ulf could hear moaning and groaning. The door led to the old library, the room where the ghosts lived.
Before Ulf could turn the handle, the door creaked open by itself.
Ulf glanced at Tiana, then carried the crate inside. The library was dark and gloomy. The curtains were drawn. He could just make out the bookshelves lining the walls and the two tall bookcases standing in the middle of the room. Between them was a large reading table. He could see row upon row of books, and more stacked in piles on the floor. The library contained every book ever written on cryptozoology.
“Fly along the shelves, Tiana. Look for anything on the Ring of Horrors,” Ulf said.
Tiana shivered. She clung to Ulf’s shoulder. “Look,” she said, pointing up.
A shapeless glowing mist was moving along the upper reading level. Ulf heard the sound of footsteps. Then, as the mist disappeared into the wall, he heard a cry. A ball of green light flew out from a dark corner and shot across the room. Inside it, a mouth was screaming.
Tiana darted into the crate as the ball of light vanished behind a bookcase.
“I don’t like ghosts,” she said.
There had always been ghosts at Farraway Hall, and more had been brought in recently, rescued from houses that had been knocked down or graveyards that had been built over.
The science of cryptozoology studied not only the corporeal or physical beasts, but also beasts from other dimensions, such as demons, angels, dream beasts, and ghosts. At the RSPCB, ghosts were treated no different from other beasts, and were given everything they needed to pass the time.
As Tiana flew to the bookshelves, Ulf placed the crate on the floor. He took the flashlight from his back pocket, flicked it on, and shone it around the room. Dusty paintings hung on the walls. He saw an old mantelpiece and a cracked mirror covered in cob-webs. In the corner of the room, an empty chair was rocking back and forth. It had been rocking back and forth for nearly a hundred years.
From the crate, Ulf took out a broken desk lamp. He placed it on a shelf by the rocking chair, then stepped back. The lamp began to flicker, on and off, on and off. “The ghosts like the lamp,” he said to Tiana.
Tiana was flying along the shelves, glowing brightly in the gloom. She perched on an old grandfather clock. Its pendulum was swinging, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The clock’s hands were moving backward.
“Why are they going the wrong way?” she asked.
“It’s a ghost trying to turn back time.”
Ghosts are restless beasts. They’re made almost entirely of leftover emotions from unfinished lives, like fear or regret, love or longing. They exist only because something from their previous life remains unresolved.
Ulf could hear the sound of fingernails scratching down wood. He shone the flashlight on a cupboard in the corner. From the crate he took out a broken violin. He placed the violin inside the cupboard, then quickly shut the door. Music started playing inside.
“I can’t find anything,” Tiana said, perching on a stack of books.
“Keep looking. I’ll be with you in a minute,” Ulf said. He took out a porcelain vase and carried it to the mantelpiece. He was about to put it down when it flew out of his hands and smashed against the wall.
Tiana squeaked.
“Don’t worry. It’s just a poltergeist,” Ulf said.
; “No, Ulf. Look!” Tiana said, hovering by a low bookshelf.
Ulf shone his flashlight along the shelf, reading the book titles: Handling Storm Beasts, Living with Zombies, The Spotters’ Guide to Invisibles, Monsters of the Deep, The Dietary Habits of Vampires.
“Here,” Tiana said.
The Ring of Horrors.
Ulf pulled the book out and opened it. Inside were drawings of beasts fighting one another, with crowds of humans watching and cheering.
“That’s evil,” Tiana said, looking at a picture of a pack of demondogs attacking a dragon. “How can humans do such a thing?”
Ulf read to her: “The Ring of Horrors reached its height during the time of the Roman Empire. All kinds of beasts were made to fight to the death, the most popular being dragons, particularly firebellies.”
“Stop,” Tiana said. “That’s enough.”
She pushed the book shut.
“Firebellies,” Ulf muttered. “The dragons on the radar were firebellies.”
“It’s horrible,” Tiana said.
“If the mother dragon has been kidnapped, then—”
“I don’t want to know.”
Tiana was covering her ears.
Ulf imagined the mother dragon being thrown into a pit and made to fight.
Just then, he heard a scream. The screaming mouth flew out from behind a bookcase. Ulf looked over. High on a shelf, a book was edging out. Ulf shone his flashlight on it. The book was floating in midair. It drifted down in front of him.
He looked nervously at Tiana.
“Let’s get out of here,” Tiana said.
The book opened and its pages began flicking fast, as if they were being turned by invisible hands. It was a notebook, handwritten and full of drawings.
Suddenly, the pages stopped. Ulf and Tiana stared. The book was showing a picture of a dragon chick hatching from an egg. It was labeled: AZIZA THE FIREBELLY.
“Let’s go. I don’t like it in here,” Tiana called, flying toward the door.
The book shut in a cloud of dust and fell to the floor. Ulf picked it up and put it back on the shelf. But as he edged toward the door, the book floated after him. It was pushing itself into his hand. Ulf felt a sudden rush of cold air as a ghost passed straight through him.