The Fathom Flies Again

by James Walley

  “Then what?” Whipstaff echoed grandly. He paused, chewing at his sack cloth thumb, before turning to Marty. “Then what?” he asked, much more timidly than his initial assertion.

  The familiar, half-baked lets-see-if-this-works coda crystalized in Marty’s mind, and he threw caution and good sense to the wind, believing that justice invariably prevailed. And anyway, a man’s time on this Earth was fleeting—why not garnish it with the sort of blaze of glory that a tepid, mainstream rock band might one day write a song about?

  Marty wrestled with his thoughts, attempting to file them in some sort of order. Tricky at the best of times, without the prod of impending peril, and the fact that many of them were still about cheesecake. He cast his mind back to their previous run-ins with the psychotic travelling circus. How they had high-tailed it from the Hall of Mirrors, been chased through Stellar Island’s inflatable funhouse, and scarpered from Downtown amidst much ice cream throwing and tactical confectionary wagon acceleration. Now that he came to think about it, much of his dealings with the clowns had involved either charging toward, or valiantly legging it from their nemeses, usually in short order after Plan A became Plan Oh No. Marty waved away the troublesome latter half of this train of thought, latching on to the intriguing, vaguely plan shaped idea which was forming in his mind.

  “It’s simple,” Marty lied, although it was only a tiny lie. He hadn’t really thought it out, and therefore it was very straightforward, and also ridiculous. He cleared his throat, hoping that a solid declaration would give his plan wings, and a decent smoke screen to hide behind.

  “We go and find us some clowns. Then, we tactically retreat to the Fathom, and lead them back to the big tent, and this portal thingie. It’s cat and mouse, bait and switch…taunt and, erm, run away.” Marty was dimly aware of a history lesson about a battle in Olde England, ten-sixty-something or other. If memory served, this sort of sneaky play had worked out quite nicely for William the Wotsit, so it was going to work now. Probably.

  “Let me get this straight.” Timbers stroked his woolen beard thoughtfully. “You’re proposing that we swoop into a nest of angry, clown sized hornets, drop our trousers and wave our backsides at them, then pull a one-eighty and head for the hills, like some kind of portal hopping pied piper?”

  Marty squinted, his brow furrowing as the half-baked nonsense was spelled back to him. “Umm. Yes. Something like that,” he mumbled, already hoping that someone had concocted a better idea.

  “Isn’t that a little half-cocked? Foolhardy? Not to mention ridiculously dangerous?” the little captain asked.

  “Again…yes. Quite,” Marty mustered.

  Timbers grinned, clapping his hands together excitedly. “Fantastic, just making sure.” He scuttled back up to the quarterdeck and turned sharply on his small cluster of crewmates, who were still clearly attempting to digest what had just been suggested. “Bobs, make ready to dive, we’re going back in.” His captainly orders returned to the deck. “Lads. And lass. And…rodent. Grab your best clown hunting gear, we’re going fishing.” Delivering a supportive wink to Marty, Timbers took up a position behind the wheel on the quarterdeck and set his feet firmly, in anticipation of the imminent descent. “Look lively!” he bellowed.

  Amid the sudden flurry of activity on deck, Kate caught Marty’s eye and arched an eyebrow uncertainly. “Marty, are you sure about this?”

  “As sure as I have been about anything so far,” Marty replied, in the closest thing he could find to confident assurance. Kate winced. “Ooh, that’s what I was afraid of,” she replied through a cheeky half-smile. “What the hell, we can’t stay up here all night.”

  Benji had been quietly glowing a faint shade of yellow beside her, and sending out silent quivery objections to everything being proposed. “Excuse me, would it be all right if I stayed up here please?” he moaned feebly.

  Whipstaff eyed the marsupial curiously. He was no expert in zoology, but he was sure that koalas weren’t in possession of wings. He continued his scrutiny nonetheless, just to make sure. “I dunno, can you?” he asked, spying neither wing, parachute, or comedic cartoon umbrella.

  Benji sighed, flashing blue before returning to his now apparently trademark chicken-liver yellow. “I suppose there’ll be trees down there. I can hide with something to munch on while you folks go about your outrageously dangerous business.” Whipstaff crowed at the mention of danger. Some laughed in the face of it, but being much more of an enthusiast of peril than a vanquisher of it, he preferred the way of the whoop, and delivered another excited punch to Oaf’s shoulder to punctuate the sentiment.

  Oaf absently tugged at a stray thread in his stitching, and turned to regard his crewmate with a mixture of surprise and more surprise. He didn’t care either way about peril, so long as people spoke slowly and in words of one syllable or less.

  Kate hoisted the tiny koala protectively in her arms. “You’re staying close to us, Benji,” she soothed. “Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with me.” She smiled, that smile that Marty had seen a hundred times before, but only from Kate. Only she had that power to turn carnage into comfort, and clearly Benji noticed it too. He radiated a soft pink and immediately stopped quaking.

  Timbers hopped from one foot to the other on the quarterdeck, clearly eager to get stuck into the aforementioned peril. “Are we off then?” he demanded. “Come on, I haven’t shot at anything in at least ten minutes.”

  Marty hustled up to where his captain stood, and struck as heroic a pose as he could generate on such short notice. “Ready to get down there and goad some evil chucklers when you are, Timbers.” He turned to the little corsair, awaiting the order to disembark. Timbers doffed his hat, a broad grin spreading beneath his wickedly gleaming good eye. “This is your town, squire. And your show. Give the order.”

  Marty returned the grin, bigger and backed by the gleeful prompting of the miniature madman at his side. “Bobs,” he hollered up into the rigging. “Take us down!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  When your town is being overrun by all things giggly, bitey and explodey, quiet streets are at a premium. And yet as the Fathom drifted serenely back through the clouds and into the fray, it seemed worryingly fray-less, and bereft of anything that the crew had been gearing themselves up to face. Even old thirty story Seamus was nowhere to be seen, which was odd, since there weren’t too many places a Cthulhu-sized leprechaun could effectively hide amongst the not too towering buildings of Main Street. The midnight sky had returned to its familiar twinkling serenity, and the rainbow which only moments ago had carried them on a torrent of technicolor had seemingly vanished along with its lumbering protector.

  “This is no good. No good at all,” Timbers muttered, pounding the ship’s wheel with a tiny bunched fist. “I’d got my fighting trousers on and everything.”

  Zephyr fell into a glide, bringing the Fathom into a sweeping cruise, barely ten feet from the ground. Up ahead, a small municipal garden stretched out from the town hall, boasting a rather handy pond, with a path skirting around it.

  “I must say, this town has gone out of its way to provide us with decent mooring facilities,” Timbers observed, motioning for the Bobs to initiate a parking maneuver. “We’ll have to send them a thank you card. Oaf, take a letter.”

  Oaf was readying the anchor for deployment, and stopped to give the order his full attention. “Which one?” he enquired. With twenty-six letters to choose from, it was important to get some clarity.

  “Never mind all that, Oaf. There’s an anchor that needs awaying,” Timbers shouted, as Zephyr brought the mighty galleon to rest in the town’s municipal pond. Those on deck swayed slightly as the boat connected with the still waters, and Marty immediately turned his attention to the slumbering town, which seemed remarkably untouched by the wrecking ball of clownish incursion. No booze fueled weekend warriors carried their impending hangovers homewards, no frantic taxi drivers ferried their rowdy passengers to their beds, and no hideous lunatics sprung
jerkily out of the night towards them. The whole town appeared to be stuck in valium day at an old folks’ home.

  Timbers scampered down from the quarterdeck to join Marty in his muted surveillance. “Well, this is…dull,” he ventured, cracking the silence which gripped the street. Marty could sense the disappointment in his pint-sized ally, and in spite of himself, felt a little of it too. He had been riding on the crest of a plan for the first time since rejoining his little gray life, and was now fighting to avoid the wipeout of impending safe tranquility. Had they all gone? Had the shadow of looming destruction and grease-painted Armageddon just simply left?

  Whipstaff let out a cry of exasperation. “Is this it? Where are the clowns? The explosions? The heads to aim a flying boot at?” He huffed irritably and stomped across the deck to find something inanimate to kick.

  Marty hoisted himself onto the gangplank which had been dutifully extended by Oaf. “They’re out there somewhere. Things like this don’t just pop out of existence.”

  Timbers tugged at Marty’s leg. “Well, technically, they did just pop into existence, so…”

  Benji, still cradled in Kate’s arms, was quick to add weight to Timbers’ point. “Yes, they’ve probably all just toddled off to where clowns go. Norway, or somewhere like that. Let’s just call it a night.”

  Marty gripped the deck railing tighter. They couldn’t just call it a night, because the morning wasn’t far behind, and with it came the prospect of commuters and bystanders, and all manner of collateral damage for the erstwhile wrongdoers to bear down up. And worse still, he had to go back to work tomorrow. “This isn’t over,” he growled. “They’re out there, somewhere, and we’ve got a job to do.” How unfortunate that he should deliver such a line, with no camera and film crew to record it and craft some kind of movie trailer around it. Timbers, at least, was on hand to appreciate the sheer action-hero-ness of his words, and spoke up in support. “We’ve landed now. Least we can do is take a look see. Maybe there’s some stragglers we can throw things at.” He raised a half-hearted thumb in Marty’s direction. Marty managed a strained smile in return. The flickering embers of his plan were still alive, and Timbers was doing his best to fan them.

  Whipstaff ceased his quest for something on deck to smash, and returned to the gangplank. “Right you are captain,” he chimed, apparently eager to find or start a fight. “Oaf, go fetch your mallet. There’s got to be something out there we can whack.”

  Oaf trotted up behind his crewmate, hefting his mighty wooden hammer, and filed in behind the troupe of disembarkers as they made their way back onto dry land.

  Marty continued to scan the street, expecting something to come slithering out of the darkness at any moment, but nothing moved, and it was beginning to bother him.

  “How are we going to do this?” Timbers asked from beside him. “I can go fetch a megaphone to announce our presence if you like?” He scratched his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know if I’ve got one, but it’s the kind of thing I’d expect me to have lying around somewhere.”

  Marty shook his head faintly, his eyes still trained on the shadows. “No, I think we should keep the element of surprise for as long as possible,” he whispered, taking a step closer to the road to get a better view along it. “We should find a bunch of these creeps first, then we can make all the noise we want.”

  “What do you propose?” Whipstaff chimed in. “If we’re going up in the Fathom again, this town had better be known for its extensive collection of municipal ponds.”

  “We don’t need to get airborne to reach higher ground.” Kate was already moving at a cautious trot, still clutching her tree dwelling companion. She pointed across the street, to where an impressive looking building reached up out of the gloom and into the night sky, much taller than its neighbors. Standing some five stories high, the structure had once been Acey’s department store, before it had gone bust a few years back. Now it stood, a flaking monument to consumerism, and was used for little more than storage of old stock. It was certainly a useful vantage point from which to recon the surrounding area, and more importantly, it sported what looked like an old, gothic clock tower on its roof. From there, they would be able to get a full three-sixty of the town. If only I had a sniper rifle, Marty thought. Such locations were tailor made for, and almost demanded the use of something stealthy and scoped, but alas, this was the real world after all. Marty wasn’t even sure if he owned a set of working binoculars. Such are the drawbacks of not living in an action movie.

  Leaving the Bobs to mind the ship, and without a sound (no mean feat when in the company of tiny, excited pirates), the crew ducked into an alley beside Acey’s, and crept around to the rear of the building. It too lay in quiet stillness, empty save for a few old pallets and several overflowing bins.

  “There has to be a fire escape or something back here,” Marty whispered, scanning the wall which was predictably light one fire escape. “Health and safety would have a field day. No wonder this place closed down,” he tutted. Stepping forward, Whipstaff made mock rolling up actions to sleeves he didn’t have. “Right, looks like we’re doing this the old-fashioned way then.” He hopped up onto the nearest bin, which lay beneath a grubby window. “Oaf, pass me your thumper.” His lumbering crewmate clutched the precious hammer to his chest momentarily, before giving it up to the grabbing hands of Whipstaff.

  The list of things one can do with a hammer and a window is a very small one, and Marty put two and two together just as Whipstaff began his arcing swing. “Whoah! Easy on the breaking part of breaking and entering. We haven’t even looked for a back door yet.”

  Whipstaff sighed. “Oh come on, Marty. I live for this stuff. If I’m not allowed to break a window, why did you even bother bringing me along?”

  Kate nodded in agreement. “He’s right. We do have sort of a higher purpose here.”

  This was all the incentive Whipstaff needed, and he launched the hammer once more towards its target. “The ayes have it. You can’t make an entrance without breaking a few windows,” he declared, and gleefully sent the pane shattering inwards.

  Marty might have expected a few whoops of approval, given the company he was in, and was surprised as something inside him sent a small cheer up to join the chorus. Even Kate seemed to enjoy the forced creation of a new entrance to the building. Aside from the increasingly familiar sight of a cowering Benji wholly not getting involved, it was safe to assume that everyone was a fan of breaky noises.

  Even before the dust had settled, the crew of the Fathom had vaulted up to the stricken window frame and peered inside, like excited children on Smashmas morning. Oaf turned back towards Marty, brushing dust from his face. “It’s all dark,” he moaned.

  “’Course it is. It’s night time, genius,” Whipstaff chuckled over his shoulder as he hoisted his captain through the aperture. “Careful sir, Some pointy bits there. They could have a man’s stuffing out.” Marty wondered if Timbers still had his sewing kit handy, but decided not to pose the question as Timbers jostled through into the blackness beyond. A clatter, followed by gruff pirate swearing signaled the captain’s arrival on the other side of the wall. “Who puts a tin of paint right under a window like that?” an angry voice squeaked from inside. “It’s almost as if they didn’t want visitors.”

  “Visitors probably use the door, Timbers,” Marty replied, suppressing a grin, and moved to where Whipstaff and Oaf were now just two pairs of waggling feet in the window hole.

  “Let me get through, then you come after.”

  “I can’t, I’m in now.”

  “I wouldn’t call this ‘in’. Did you learn nothing from the cat flap incident?”

  The bickering ceased as both pirates cork-popped through, and judging by the returning expletives, onto their captain.

  By the time Marty, Kate, and Benji made it through into the store, the arguing seemed to have settled, however. Whipstaff was already snooping, as was clearly his preference these days, whilst Oaf peered ne
rvously into the dingy gloom of what appeared to be a loading bay. Beside Marty, Timbers was busy shaking white paint from one leg of his trousers. The boot and once shiny buckle appeared to be beyond rescue, a trail of thick emulsion leading back from it to the offending overturned paint can. “If this doesn’t wash off, I’m coming back later and broadsiding this place,” he grumbled.

  Aside from a few piles of carefully stacked junk, there didn’t appear to be anything of interest in the bay. Small and grubby, its dimensions were only discernable due to the pale moonlight issuing through the broken window. Marty pointed over to the far wall, where a heavy hinged door stood next to a small box on the wall, helpfully marked ‘Keys’. “I wonder if they label all their valuables too,” Timbers huffed. “This is too easy.”

  “Never say it’s too easy,” Marty whispered, glancing furtively behind him. In his experience, fate had a nasty way of making you regret dancing around in front of it and sticking your tongue out. “We’d better get a move on, we’ve got a few stories to tackle before we reach the top.”

  A weathered steel table stood against one wall, laden with this and that, and Kate turned from it, brandishing a torch that she had found amongst the debris. “Check this out, lucky or what?” she beamed. Marty replied with a smile of his own, delivering a wink that he now kept on standby for whenever she did something awesome. He used it a lot. Maybe this IS too easy, he mused, before telling his mind to can it, or risk the wrath of fate.

  Several keys later, Marty heaved the rusty door open, and peered tentatively into the gloom of Ground Floor: Menswear. A shaft of bright yellow light shot past his shoulder as Kate played the torch across the vacant rows of clothes rails and hangers. Aside from a swirling fog of dust, nothing peered back at them from the darkness. Fate, at least for now, seemed to be appeased.