Skullenia

by Tony Lewis

  He charged at the devilish opposition player and took the ball from him with a deftly played and perfectly timed sliding tackle that left a furrow twelve feet long and two deep. Quickly regaining his feet he dribbled down the pitch (make up your own joke here). The crowd gasped in amazement. Ollie, Stitches, Ronnie and Ethan gasped collectively in disbelief. The ball seemed to be glued to his feet as he beat one, two and then three players, leaving them reeling and confused in his wake. He had the skill and grace of a Brazilian international (not an international with a Brazilian, that would be a completely different story altogether). He got to within twenty five yards of the opponent’s goal when the Djinn and Tonic’s goalie rushed out, eager to stop Flug in his tracks. Seeing him coming Flug slowed down ever so slightly and delicately chipped the ball into the air. It sailed majestically over the goalkeeper’s outstretched hands before dipping just under the cross bar and landing in the back of the net.

  Douggie blew the final whistle and that was the signal for the crowd to go mad. Well, madder. The pitch was invaded quicker than the Chatham branch of Poundland during its half-price sale, as beings of every description poured on to congratulate the winning team.

  Ollie, Stitches, Ronnie and Ethan rushed over to their colleague and hugged him fiercely, congratulating him over and over again.

  “Amazing,” said Ollie.

  “Superb,” said Stitches.

  “Blinding,” said Ronnie.

  “Outstanding,” said Ethan.

  Flug looked at his friends and the assembled masses clapping and cheering for him and his teammates.

  “Can I have some sweeties now?” he asked.

  * * *

  A couple of hours, quite a few drinks and many plaudits and well dones later, the boys were sitting back at the restaurant, a small winners cup sitting in the middle of their table.

  “Isn’t that amazing,” said Ollie proudly.

  “Mystifying, more like,” answered Stitches. “Who would have thought it? Flug the hero. Good huh, mate?” he added, slapping the monster’s shoulder.

  Flug didn’t reply straight away. He had slipped back into his own little world of blissful ignorance and was busy working his way through a party size packet of Fizzy Fantoms.

  “Mmmm,” he said finally, around a multi-coloured, gooey mass of refined sugar. “Did we win at football, Stitches?”

  “That we did, Flug. And you were the main man.”

  “Okay.”

  Douggie came in at some point, they weren’t sure of the time, but it was somewhere near dawn. He was gushing congratulations about the game and their overall performances, and offered them the opportunity to defend their title the following year.

  “Well, that’s a very generous offer,” said Ollie, “but we’ll have to wait and see what we’re up to at the time. Meanwhile, maybe you could answer a question for me?”

  “Och aye. Anything. It would be a pleasure.”

  Ollie reached into a pocket and pulled out the first map, laid it on the table and pointed to the little drawing of the well.

  “Do you have any idea where this might be?” he asked innocently.

  Douggie studied the paper closely and tapped it with his finger.

  “Aye, I know where that is sure enough. Aboot seven miles outside o’ toon is the Tonboot wood. There’s a nature trail, you’ll see the signs. Follow that and you’ll come right te it.”

  Ollie stood up and shook Douggie’s hand, indicating that not only was he extremely grateful, but that it was time for them to turn in.

  They bade the Mayor goodnight and made their separate ways off to bed.

  “What time do you want to set off?” asked Stitches as they ascended the stairs. “Early might be best. At least that way we’ll avoid the admiring rabble. I’m not sure I like being a celebrity.”

  “Yeah, we need to get out of here,” said Ethan who was following behind them, supporting a rather drunken Ronnie.

  “Crack of evening then, I reckon,” suggested Ollie. “We’ll be up and gone before anyone else is about. See you all later.”

  * * *

  After a good sleep, a hearty breakfast inside them (or in Ollie’s case, a breakfast that had come from inside a heart) and a quiet getaway from the still slumbering town, Ethan brought the hearse to a stop in a small clearing at the edge of a vast forest. The guys piled out of the car and wandered over to a brown information board.

  “Not another bloody forest,” said Ronnie edgily. “The last time I went in one of these I ended up in a right mess.”

  “Ah don’t worry, mate,” said Stitches encouragingly. “You’ve got us lot to look after you this time.”

  Ronnie gave him a derisory look that screamed ‘and that’s supposed to make me feel better, is it?’ before retrieving his battered tobacco pouch from his coat pocket and rolling himself a thicker than usual cigarette.

  “Looks reasonably straightforward, if this map is anything to go by,” said Ollie tracing a path with his finger through the generic, childlike depiction of the wood. “The nature trail starts over there.” He pointed to another, smaller sign that said ‘The Nature Trail Starts Here’. “That’s where we need to go. Couldn’t be simpler.”

  “The last time you said that, we ended up fighting for our lives,” remarked Stitches sullenly.

  “He does have a point,” agreed Ethan, shrugging into his rucksack. “I don’t think we should be taking this too lightly. We really are heading into the unknown.”

  Ronnie flicked his fag to the ground and squashed it out underfoot.

  “They’re right, Ollie mate. And it’s not like we’re just outside Skullenia poking around this time. We’re miles away from home and pretty much cut off if anything goes wrong.”

  Ollie considered their various points of view and admitted to himself that he had to agree. And ultimately he was responsible for these guys, who had become his close friends as well as work colleagues. He couldn’t and wouldn’t be blasé with their safety, or their comradeship when it came to it.

  “Okay,” he said, hands raised in supplication, “all excellent points and well made. Let’s go steady, stay frosty and watch each other’s backs. No, not like that, Flug.”

  Flug removed his nose from between Stitches’ shoulder blades.

  “Sorry, Boss. Wot you mean?”

  “I mean let’s be careful, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  To all appearances, the nature trail looked like any other that you might find in any area of countryside. The path was nice and wide, enough to fit two abreast, the ground was covered in mushy brown bark chippings and the trees formed a wonderfully lush, verdant canopy overhead. All that aside, the differences between this and any other nature trail that looked like any other you might find in any area of countryside, were more than a little apparent. The night time forest dwellers were making enough noise to drown out a Motörhead concert, and all the crashing and banging made it sound like there was a rugby match going on around them.

  “Not so much off the beaten track,” commented Stitches, looking around warily. “More like if you get off the track you’ll get beaten.”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” responded Ethan. “You lose it out here and you can kiss it all goodbye. Ollie?” he added.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got a suggestion. How’s about I get changed and scout ahead, see what we’re heading towards?”

  “Good idea. Might as well make best use of our resources. What about you, Ronnie? Fancy disappearing and having a look around?”

  “I would,” answered Ronnie after a moment’s consideration, “but I can’t mask my odour, and at this time of night that’s what most creatures use to track. I’d still be a pretty easy target, especially out on my own.”

  “Plus the fact that if there was a way of totally eliminating body odour, we would have used it on Flug by now. Well, if there was enough left after, they’d deployed it over France first,” said Stitches.

  Ollie shot him a
wry grin but totally ignored the comment, something that he was becoming increasingly adept at. He figured that if he didn’t pay any attention to Stitches’ joking and mickey taking, he would stop. It was a work in progress that so far had yielded, by his reckoning and based on how much the zombie used to arse about before, compared to how much he arsed about now, absolutely no results whatsoever. He was still as big a pain as ever.

  “Just one thing, though,” Stitches continued. “Once you’re changed, Ethan, will we be safe? No offence.”

  Ethan chuckled quietly to himself.

  “None taken, mate. No, you don’t have to worry. You guys have essentially become my pack, so there’s no way I would ever do anything to hurt any of you. Well, most of the time.” He winked slyly.

  “But Obsidia did,” the zombie added, still smarting over the memory of the betrayal by the now deceased female lycan. “She got a couple killed, didn’t she?”

  “She did, but that was a human decision she made, not a wolf one. Please, don’t worry. You’ll be perfectly okay.”

  They all nodded their acquiescence, and watched as Ethan made his way off the path and into the dense foliage.

  They all stood as silent and still as statues for five minutes. They could hear the odd snapping sound and stretching noise, as if some unseen person was bending a freshly sawn piece of wood. They also detected yelps of pain from the area that Ethan had gone to.

  Then quiet. Not just from Ethan’s position, but seemingly from the whole forest. It was as if a vast cotton wool blanket had descended and damped down every sound to almost zero. It seemed as if everything living, unliving or whatever had suddenly become aware of the superior creature now in their midst, and whether out of respect or just plain fear, each and every entity had become mute.

  The undergrowth parted, and the wolf that Ethan had become re-joined them on the path. He was immense, a mass of undulating, rippling, densely packed and fur-covered muscle. He was the only thing that they had ever come across that made Flug look a little on the small side. In its vice-like jaws was the only clue to its former identity. His clothes. He padded over to Ollie, his eyes almost level with the startled half-vampire’s, and placed them gently at his feet. Then, with his enormous muzzle, he indicated the rucksack that he had taken off a few minutes before.

  “I see,” said Ollie, “you want me to put your clothes in there and take them with us, don’t you?”

  Remarkably, the wolf’s large head nodded and Stitches could have sworn that he saw Ethan smile, impossible as that must be.

  Flug was almost apoplectic with fear. His breath was coming in huge gasps and his eyes were bulging out of his head like a cartoon character’s.

  “Flug, it’s okay” said Ronnie, approaching the petrified monster. “It’s Ethan. He’s not going to hurt you, okay.”

  Flug didn’t respond, he was that scared. They hadn’t seen him like this since the time that he had seen a meteor shower and had been convinced that aliens were invading, and were going to investigate his nether regions. Stitches hadn’t aided the situation when he had helpfully pointed out that when the little green men landed, they would ‘probe Uranus until it turned into a black hole that nothing would ever escape from ever again’.

  Ethanwolf must have sensed Flug’s fear and discomfort. He approached him and tucked his wet nose under one of Flug’s hands and sniffed it before manoeuvring it onto his head, moving it back and forth. Flug looked down into Ethanwolf’s shining eyes and in an instant, he visibly relaxed and patted the great creature as you would a family pet.

  “Hi, Ethan,” said Flug quietly, a smile on his scarred and battered face. “You nice and soft.”

  Ethanwolf gave a small, almost puppy-like yip, and licked the hand affectionately.

  “No,” said Flug, “me not scared now.”

  Ethanwolf yipped again.

  “Okay. Be careful dough.”

  Ethanwolf slipped away into the forest, and was gone.

  “He goin’ ahead now,” Flug stated, unconsciously wiping a slick hand on his trousers. “We walk on path. Ethan come back soon.”

  “Well, bugger me with something long and spiky,” said Stitches in total astonishment. “Did that just happen, or did I fall asleep and dream that I was in a Lassie film? Flug, did he tell you that little Johnny has fallen down a mine shaft and we’ve got to come quickly?”

  “That was real, alright,” said Ronnie, still bemused. “Flug connected with him.”

  “That he did,” said Ollie, putting Ethan’s clothes into the bag and giving it to Stitches. “Flug, were you talking to Ethan in your head?”

  “Yeah I fink so,” said the giant. “When I look at Ethan’s eyes I hear his voice in here,” he tapped the side of his skull “and he tell me everyfin’ will be okay.”

  “Remarkable. Something special seems to have been unlocked between those two,” said Ollie to Stitches and Ronnie. “It’ll be interesting to see whether it’s just a one off.”

  “Well, according to the sign,” said Stitches, changing the subject and pointing at the brown board whilst holding a torch in the other, “the well is about three quarters of a mile away along the track. If we take it slow, Ethan will have plenty of time to warn us if anything goes awry.”

  Twenty minutes later, the trees and bushes started to thin out.

  “We must be getting close,” Ronnie pointed out and, as if to prove him right, Ethanwolf appeared from their left like a vast, hairy shadow. He went straight to Flug and they gazed into each other’s eyes.

  “Everyfin’ okay,” Flug rumbled. “Nuffin’ dodgy here. He say wait here while he check da well. It just over dere.” He indicated an area that was still out of sight.

  A few minutes later, Ethanwolf returned and indicated to Stitches that he wanted his clothes. The zombie did as he was bid, and placed Ethanwolf’s attire onto the ground. The creature picked them up in his slathering jaws and returned to the trees. Minutes later, Ethan returned, a big smile on his face.

  “That was a turn up for the psychic books,” he said, crouching down to tie his laces. “I didn’t expect that at all.”

  “I’ll say,” commented Stitches. “Try it now, see if it works.”

  Ethan approached Flug and stared into his eyes.

  “Hi, Ethan. Wot you doin?”

  No matter how hard he concentrated, what had been as easy as someone in roller skates falling off a greasy, spinning log now wouldn’t happen.

  “Nothing,” said Ethan. “It must just happen when I’m in wolf form.”

  “What was it like, mate?” Ollie asked with genuine interest.

  “Strange, really. I wasn’t consciously trying to get through to him, it just happened. Whatever I was thinking, he seemed to pick up on. The weird thing was that whilst we were connected, I got the impression that somewhere in that head of his there’s an intellect trying to get out.”

  “Well it’s not trying very hard,” observed Stitches ungraciously. “An F for effort there I’m afraid. And the F stands for fu…”

  “Be that as it may,” Ollie cut in. “It’s not only quite an amazing thing that we’ve witnessed, but it also has the potential to be incredibly useful. It saves Ethan having to transform every time he needs to tell us anything.”

  “That is a fair point that I have to concede,” said Stitches happily. “It takes him long enough to get changed to go out as it is.”

  Ethan emitted a low growl, but the curl of his upper lip couldn’t belay the underlying affection that had grown in him for these people over the last couple of months. He had been close to his pack mates at the werehouse, that was a given, but the creatures standing before him offered something different and filled a gap in his life he hadn’t’ previously identified. Maybe it came down to choice.

  Ethan had been born into quite a well to-do family in Esher in Surrey, the sort of people who use a brand new four wheel drive all year round and had their shopping delivered from Fortnum and Mason and never, ever watched
anything on ITV unless Sir Derek Jacobi was in it. Young Ethan had had a reasonably happy childhood up until the age of nine, when he was packed off to boarding school by his workaholic parents. His father was a high flying financial consultant and his mother worked extremely hard at shopping, drinking expensive coffee and spending time with her equally affluent and equally busy friends.

  His first term had been an absolute nightmare. A never ending battle against bullies, know-it-alls and smart arses. His fellow students had been even worse. It began to tail off after the first year and a half, but he always felt like his school time was a constant struggle for survival.

  In his fifth year a new boy had started at St Martins. He was a quiet lad, softly spoken and somewhat effeminate, but Ethan felt a kinship towards him. They started spending a lot of time together and it wasn’t long before Ethan and Rupert had become the best of friends.

  One night in a cold, frigid January, Rupert had told Ethan that he was sneaking out of school to meet some friends, and asked if Ethan would like to join him. Ethan had at first been a tad reticent. He liked to think of himself as a model student. Not for any reason, other than he figured it was the best way to keep a low profile. If you shine, you stand out. If you stand out, it’s easier to be shot down. Once you’ve been shot down you have a low profile for a different reason. Still, he reasoned that a midnight sojourn conducted whilst everybody else was asleep would most probably be alright, and without a doubt the most exciting thing to happen to him in the last five years. And anyway, they would never get caught, and besides that, he didn’t want to disappoint Rupert and put their friendship to the test.

  They had snuck through the school halls to the kitchen, which in turn led to a small passageway at the end of which was a wooden door that took them into the garden. Rupert had led them through the spartan winter undergrowth to a shaded copse on the other side of a country road. Rupert was confident and assured leaving Ethan with no doubt that he had done this many times before.

  As they entered the copse, Ethan was startled to hear voices in the near distance, but Rupert assured him that it was only the people that they had come to meet.