The Fathom Flies Again

by James Walley

  Timbers smirked beside him, in spite of the newly delivered mighty haymaker which was hurtling towards them. “How many leprechauns have you seen?”

  There was no time for a clever reply, as Zephyr changed direction once more. The Bobs flapped frantically in their crow’s nests, but to no avail as the mechanical fowl performed a daring loop the loop that would have probably delivered big points from a judging panel, had he not been carrying a hefty-sized galleon in his claws, and had such a panel been present. The Fathom crashed back down onto the crest of the rainbow in an uprush of gleaming color, as the leprechaun’s upper cut screamed by, inches from the hull.

  “We need to get off this rainbow,” Kate chipped in, still clutching a flapping, strobing koala in her free hand.

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Timbers replied, “but it’s not like they have intersections.”

  Her brow furrowing at the captain’s reply, Kate attempted to continue the debate, but was cut short by another heaving tilt to port, as two gargantuan lepre-hands clapped together, clutching at a stretch of rainbow that had been heavy one pirate ship moments before. The shimmering band of color rippled under the force of the strike, sending it furling backward like some impressively unravelling, but outlandishly over-tye-dyed rug.

  Grudgingly, in no small part because nobody had laughed at his clever retort, Timbers conceded to Kate’s suggestion. “She’s right, we need to depart pronto before Seamus O’Humongous there turns us into kindling.” He turned to deliver orders to the crew, just as Whipstaff dashed by, heralded by an impressive, if somewhat unheroic battle cry. “Give us your gold, you massive bearded goblin!” Trotting after him, and somewhat less enthusiastically, Oaf delivered an apologetic half-shrug, as he and the first mate catapulted over the side and directly towards the waiting giant.

  Timbers watched, open mouthed as the would-be mutineers sailed through the night sky, landing in a tumbling heap on the shoulders of the enraged leprechaun.

  “Gold,” he growled, turning with a shake of his head towards Marty. “Always with the gold, those two.”

  Marty offered what shred of logic he could pick out of this insane situation. “They’re pirates, Timbers. Tell me you aren’t a little bit tempted.”

  The little captain paused, reflecting on what was indeed his very job description. He raised his good eye to meet Marty’s gaze and beamed. “Marty, I may be a pirate, but I’m not a damn fool.” He took a step towards the quarterdeck as Zephyr let fly with a deafening shriek, signaling another jolting change of direction.

  “I’ll charge into a fight, I’ll even start one if it looks like fun.” He trotted up the staircase, heading for the aft of the ship. “But I won’t stand for mutiny, and the lads aren’t getting squished before I get a chance to kick their sorry backsides first.”

  Benji shrunk back against Kate, shivering slightly. “Sir, that’s just reckless.” He turned a violent shade of yellow, a color which required no translation. “This is all so very dangerous.”

  “Hopefully,” Timbers shouted, angling an order up to his navigators. “Bobs…dive!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Police constable Michael O’Riley was finally living his primetime TV cop shows. Fire? Check. Explosions? Check. Dastardly wrongdoers? Well, sort of check, if you counted a dozen or so braying, grease-painted demons from a serial killer’s birthday party. In truth, he could have done without the latter part of this particular scenario, but one does not choose the hero’s trial into which one is flung, even if one protests violently and secretly wishes for a warm bed, or at the very least some kind of SWAT team backup.

  The station lay in pregnant silence, punctured only by the incessant and guttural breathing of something outside, waiting to come in. Even the incessant ticking of the large, often over-watched clock atop the front doors seemed to have been muted to the point of sheepishness by the tension in the air. O’Riley wondered, quite justifiably, if he was still breathing, and glanced down to check whether his chest was going through the appropriate motions. A rasping, cautious breath crept out of hiding from somewhere within his ribcage, and huffed under duress from between the officer’s quaking lips. Momentarily thankful he hadn’t had a heart attack, O’Riley immediately began to curse the feverishly pounding muscle, which was all too obviously belting out a white flag beat in his ears, now that his mind had enquired after its wellbeing. All at once, the other parts of O’Riley’s body, hitherto trying to remain unnoticed amid the mounting suspense, formed an orderly queue to lodge complaints to his brain, which began to reel at the sudden onrush of unwanted information. The legs department seemed to be the most insistent, phoning in a mayday, and clearly not too sure whether it was currently dealing with alcohol induced wobbliness, or had recently run a couple of marathons. O’Riley steadied himself against the water cooler next to his desk, inwardly reminding his legs that they belonged to an officer of the law. It was their very duty to be upstanding.

  Wiping the slick film of sweat from his palms, he clumsily wrestled the chamber of his pistol open. There were precious few nuggets of bravery remaining nestled within O’Riley, and even fewer nuggets of lead sitting in the gun. If there was a way out of all this, it was unlikely to come from the smoking barrel at the end of it. He had spent around twenty whole minutes practicing on the police firing range, and approximately none of the targets had been clown shaped. What little confetti shaped destruction he’d managed to wreak so far had most certainly been more luck then judgement.

  What exactly was going on in his town? Although this was certainly a violently speeding train of thought that was best left for a less life threatening occasion, O’Riley couldn’t stop the finger prodding at his mind, enquiring whether this was all some sort of psychotic dream, and if he wouldn’t mind awfully waking up, please.

  Almost surprising himself, O’Riley heard his own voice speak up shakily in the shattered gloom of the office. “Pardon me,” he began, somewhat less authoritatively than he had hoped. “You are interfering with police business, and causing damage to town property. I’m going to have to ask you to disperse, or…” He wasn’t exactly sure how to end that sentence. He wasn’t even sure where it had come from in the first place. Gritting his teeth, O’Riley summoned up the lingering scraps of heroism in what remained of his train of thought. “…or I’m going to have to write you all up on an 808.” It wasn’t the most awe inspiring, angry mob quelling command ever uttered, but police protocol was the only thing that presented itself as his mind struggled to remain afloat. “That’s disturbing the peace,” he added, redundantly, as if clarification would in some way add weight to the limp order that echoed out into the night, and whatever lurked within it.

  Still framed against the frosted glass of the front window, the motionless figures struck up a reply, causing O’Riley to tighten his grip on his gun, and loosen his hold on his bowels.

  “Police HQ is falling down, falling down, falling down,” came the drawling lullaby from outside, altogether less charming than O’Riley remembered it, and once again, his legs attempted a sit down protest.

  “Police HQ is falling down. Give us Peepers!” The song devolved into a mass of chuckling and squealing, and O’Riley did the simple math in his head which pointed out that he was not paid nearly enough to deal with this sort of insanity.

  Behind him, and past the cells which housed the object of the mystery intruders’ desires, was a back door. Suddenly it was all that O’Riley could think about, and his feet made an executive decision to head for it as the second round of hideous clown karaoke filtered into the room. Clearly feet held precedence over legs, and seemed far more interested in staying attached to their owner.

  “Ring a ring o’ roses, a pocket full of posies.”

  It was safe to say that O’Riley’s childhood memories of being sung to sleep had been altered forever as he broke into a semi-cowardly gallop towards the back entrance of the station.

  “A-tishoo! A-tishoo! Give us the clown.”
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  Scarcely ten feet from the back door, O’Riley risked a glance into the cells that flanked the corridor he was so shamelessly legging it through. Three cold, ghostly faces pressed up against the bars, watching him as he flew past. They grinned, gnashing horribly yellow teeth at him and hopped manically at the prospect of imminent rescue. The end cell housed the largest of the red nosed prisoners, and he glared with impossibly huge eyes which seemed to turn O’Riley’s flailing feet into lead weights. There was something deep and devious within that burning stare, that he had not seen in the vacant maniacal faces of the other clowns. It seemed to reach out, calling a whispering halt to the officer’s escape, hypnotically beckoning him to the bars of the cell.

  O’Riley shifted, acutely aware that there should be a policeman-shaped hole in the back door by now, and yet the tiny voice inside him that wanted answers had seemingly wrestled free of the dogpile of panic in his mind. “Who are you?” he whispered, feeling like a small boy poking at a hornet’s nest with a stick. “What is all this madness?”

  The hornet’s nest stirred, and the gleaming eyes bore down on O’Riley as the giant clown slithered towards the cell door. Two floppy gloved claws grasped at the bars. O’Riley stumbled backwards, inwardly body slamming his troublesome curiosity.

  “Madness?” The slimy voice issued from within the cell like a slowly deflating balloon filled with Sulphur and nightmares. “Oh my little friend, this is just the entree.” Hot jester breath hit O’Riley like wriggling gummi worms. He glanced over at the back door, wanting to bolt, but needing to hear more. His curiosity, it seemed, could take a kicking and keep on ticking.

  “There are worse things than giggly funsters arriving in your little town tonight,” the pantalooned fiend continued. “The monster that lives under your bed and only comes out at night, or the teddy bear with something nasty and pointy hidden behind his back.” It giggled excitedly. “I’m sure you’ll get to meet all my friends in due course. My name is Mr. Peepers, and I’ll be here all week.”

  Mr. Peepers doffed an imaginary cap, and bowed theatrically, emitting a shuddering cackle that seemed to call all the clowns in the world through the main doors of the police station.

  Curiosity finally waved a white flag, and allowed bare faced self-preservation sole access to O’Riley’s ‘run away’ switch. As he crashed into the door frame at the back of the office, Mr. Peepers threw a snaking, unsettlingly cheerful farewell from within his cage. “Thank you for the hospitality.”

  Looking over his shoulder, O’Riley kicked into Olympic sprinter mode, as Peepers waved smugly, and cracked a smile wide enough to play the xylophone on.

  Back in the darkness of the office, a crescendo of candy coated chaos whirled jerkily in his direction, all limbs, grins, and bright red noses.

  “We’ll be seeing you soon.” Xylo-clown spat as the shrieking policeman burst out into the night and fled, his clownish tormentors giggling and jeering as he wholeheartedly scarpered.

  This was most definitely not how it went down on TV.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When you’re thirty stories above the ground, and watching it rapidly surge up to meet you, it is conceivably quite acceptable to loudly and publicly lose the plot. With the absence of a parachute, or suitable hang gliding equipment, one could be forgiven for misplacing more than a few of one’s marbles.

  As the Fathom hurtled Leprechaun-wards like an oddly shaped, piratey javelin, those spilled marbles would have been lost over the side which Kate and Marty clung to, clattering along the dipping rainbow to be lost along with the last remnants of sanity that had fleetingly inhabited the situation.

  From behind him on the quarterdeck, Marty caught a peripheral glance of Timbers, crouched against the gushing wind, and shouting something in his direction. “Marty! I’m just popping out for a bit, the ship’s yours ‘till I get back. Don’t break it.” This was the declaration he thought came from the little captain, and of course, with the remaining vestige of reason now sent fluttering to the night sky, it was probably exactly what he’d said. The fact that Timbers proceeded to vault over the side of the quarterdeck also seemed to lend some weight to this possibility, and Marty leapt to the railings to see where the valiant little maniac had disappeared to. He needn’t have looked far, as the colossal face of the disgruntled leprechaun filled his line of vision, like a rapidly rising, red-bearded sun. The leprechaun’s attention, however, was not focused on the Fathom. He flapped and swatted at his splendid green tunic as Whipstaff and Oaf darted from collar to pocket, like scurrying ants looking for sparkly golden sugar. The mighty sprite screamed as another miniscule figure landed in a tumbling heap on his shoulder. It was Timbers, and the little pirate wasted no time in scampering across to the giant lapel that his crewmates were busy rappelling down. He appeared to be shouting at them, and Marty imagined that it was probably not something for young ears, although the bellowing of the leprechaun seemed to be drowning out most of the assumed expletives.

  “Are we all going over the side? Because if anyone’s interested, I don’t want to,” Benji babbled nervously from beside Marty. Still holding the little koala tightly, Kate bore the look of someone quite happy to stay on the rainbow coaster, and as acting captain, Marty had no intention of following his cash grabbing comrades into the melee.

  The Fathom plunged past the crazed face of the leprechaun. Zephyr banked hard to give the towering creature a wide berth, as it threw wildly pinwheeling arms sweeping towards the departing hull of the ship. Mercifully, Seamus O’Gulliver still seemed more preoccupied with his scampering boarders, and crashed heavily into a row of office blocks, which flanked the street below as he attempted to deal with his piratey infestation. Ahead, the rainbow twirled majestically up and sharply right, where it barreled off down Main Street, twisting the Fathom over and down to join its gushing resplendent course. Still galloping and cursing alongside them, the leprechaun wove its way along the line of meagre stores and offices, like a huge drunken line dancer. Peering over the side, Marty watched with dismay as a hefty buckled shoe sliced the roof off Peppe-Ronnie’s, his favorite pizza place. This was definitely the wrong street to be leading an angry, monstrous rainbow dweller down, and he squinted into the murky distance, to where a row of the best fast food joints in town sat, oblivious to their inevitable tramplement. Marty whirled, craning up into the rigging, where the Bobs were being spectacularly ignored by Zephyr. The mighty bird was clearly on auto pilot, and engaging in his own spontaneous evasive maneuvers.

  “Kate, we need to get in his face.” Marty shouted as the giant beside them ploughed on, taking out the huge decorative zeppelin which hung over The Hinden-Burger. Slapping a mortified hand to his forehead, Marty lurched over to where Kate was trying her best to hang on to a mast and a terrifyingly strobing koala. “He’s going to mow down the whole of this street if we don’t stop him,” he ranted.

  Kate flashed a wild look, replying in no calmer terms. “How do we do that? He doesn’t look in much of a mood to be reasoned with.”

  Marty glanced feverishly about the deck. “I don’t know, we could throw something at him maybe? Do a fly by? Fire a cannon at him?” Something clicked inside Marty’s head, and the small boy in him that dealt with such matters turned the question into an exuberant statement. “We should fire a cannon at him!”

  Kate’s eyes widened, as Marty pin-balled back across the deck to the nearest deck mounted mortar. “Marty, are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, how many cannons have you fired before?”

  Marty turned briefly, realizing this was a rational question he could happily brush aside. “Just the one, but I took out a clown at thirty paces with it.” He beamed triumphantly. “Besides, they’re all pointing outwards, it’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.” He gazed up at the enraged behemoth alongside them. “All right, it’ll be like shooting huge scary monsters in a barrel.” He checked himself, as realization threatened to rob him of what had, moments ago seemed like a brilliant and explos
ive idea. “Umm, like shooting one huge scary monster, from inside a barrel.” The analogy had become less appealing, but Marty was committed, and had reached the nearest cannon. Good sense made one last attempt to interject, but the leprechaun was bearing down on Unlucky Fried Kitten. Granted, it wasn’t Marty’s favorite eatery, but this had to stop, otherwise, who knows how many menus he would have to bin in the morning? Marty yanked the short cord on the back of the cannon, and the world which occupied the ten feet in front him erupted with an immensely satisfying, fiery boom. Marty whooped with the unadulterated joy that any man receives from firing anything loud, destructive, and incendiary. A cannonball shrieked from its iron nest towards the unsuspecting pixie.

  Thirty or so stories below, the lowly drive thru attendant at Unlucky Fried Kitten uttered a silent prayer to his deity as a gargantuan boot plummeted towards the tiny building in which he sat. “Only two more days to retirement as well,” he muttered, as the boot closed in.

  High above the hapless skivvy however, divine intervention tore through the heavens and found its mark between the eyes of the hulking sprite. “Ahhh, begorrah!” the leprechaun squealed, as the cannonball sent him sprawling sideways, and into a neighboring, and mercifully long derelict shopping mall.

  Marty sighed, resting on the still smoking barrel of the cannon. The purveyor of questionable fried meats was safe. For how long, was open for debate, as the vast velvet clad monster struggled back to his feet and loped after the Fathom. This was an unexpected turn of events, and Marty hadn’t thought as far down the line as reloading, which would have been handy, as their towering pursuer strode ever closer. Further along the deck, another cannon bellowed its cargo at the gaining leprechaun, and Marty turned his attention to Kate, who stood proudly, hand on firing cord, and watched her broadside fly ear-splittingly towards its target. The leprechaun’s huge eyes widened. He ducked as the cannonball whistled past his head, carving a scorched black line across his dandy green hat. “Will ye cut that out!” he bellowed, slowing to regain his mighty footing. “For the love of…” The ranting was cut short as movement at his side tore his attention from the annoying little boat with the silver budgie atop it. Scampering, scurrying, pilfering movement, which he had apparently forgotten all about amidst all this gunfire and restaurant squashing.