by Jack Spain
Some hours passed and the sun eventually went down. Balor looked at Chopper, who was by now dozing off, and shook him slightly.
‘It’s time,’ he whispered. The rabbit duly opened his eye and followed Balor out into the site. They kept all three eyes peeled as they cautiously made their way across the site and disappeared into the dark fields at the end of it.
McManus Castle
Moriarty awoke with a start. It was dark now so it didn’t take long for his eyes to adjust to being open. He looked surprised that he had fallen asleep. Nonetheless, he pulled himself together and got up. It was very quiet in the garage. The only light came from the door that apparently led into the house. It was slightly ajar. Suddenly, something went past the door that made Moriarty jump. It was shorter than a man and he wasn’t sure what it was. He froze on the spot.
’It’s well past your bedtime, Emily,’ said a loud female voice from somewhere in the house. ‘We’re going to bed too soon, so go on; get back into bed.’
There was another more muffled voice that sounded like a child protesting. Moriarty assumed that the shadow had been from the child passing the door so he quietly made his way around the motorbike before creeping across the garage floor and over to the door. Carefully, cautiously and ever so quietly, he pulled the door to one side and peeked around. It led into a well-lit kitchen, quite large with a shiny marble floor that looked very like a great white lake. Suddenly there was a loud noise that sounded like two pieces of plastic flapping together. Moriarty was startled and jumped back behind a table leg in the hallway, out of sight. A few seconds later, he peeked around to have another look. The kitchen was empty, so he crept inside and made his way to the hall door. He could hear voices from the far side of the house. A man and a woman were arguing.
Moriarty began to hear his heart pounding as he started to plan what he was going to do. A few moments later he checked that the path was clear and then made his way across the kitchen and into the hallway.
From the hallway he could see Michael McManus and his wife arguing in a bedroom. Michael used her name often to enforce a point, starting sentences with ‘Listen, Sally’ or ‘Now, Sally’. The argument seemed to be about a party they were going to have for someone called Finnegan. Michael wanted a large lavish affair with outside catering. Sally wanted a large lavish affair where she would do the catering. Sally repeatedly pointed out that she was a prize-winning cook and had written a book about it. Michael’s argument was that as she was a vegetarian, and Finnegan wasn’t. He wanted outside catering so that they could eat meat. Sally argued that she could cook meat just as well as vegetables. Michael argued that meat cooked the French way didn’t taste the same as meat cooked the Irish way. In the end, Michael argued that it was his party and, although she was the best cook in the world, as far as he was concerned, he was getting outside catering. Sally told him that this would be over her dead body and stormed out.
There was a very long uncomfortable silence. Michael shouted that he was going to have a shower but Sally didn’t reply.
This made Moriarty think. He had made his way to a hall table and was hiding behind one of the legs. To his right was the door to the bathroom. He could see that Michael was sitting on the end of the bed, taking his shoes off. He slowly pulled his sword from its sheath and gripped it tightly in his left hand before cautiously making his way down the corridor, looking through every doorway as he made his way to the bedroom.
Suddenly and without any warning a child emerged from a bedroom dragging a small blanket behind her. She was barely six years old and was rubbing her eyes as she went towards the kitchen. Moriarty jumped back and hid behind a table leg. From where he hid he could see the child being comforted by her mother in the kitchen.
‘Damn,’ he said under his breath. He looked at the sword for a moment and then back at the child who was being comforted by Sally. He leaned back against the table leg and thought for a moment as he looked at his sword. He sheathed the sword and pulled out the Comither magazine, checked it and put it back in his pocket. He sighed and then waited until the coast was clear and ran over to the open door of the bathroom.
Moriarty scanned the dimly lit bathroom from the door before running in. It was quite large, with a bath, a shower and a sink. There was a toilet and a bidet, which just looked like another toilet but looked as if it was only good for washing feet. He jumped up into the shower and looked up at a shelf beside the taps. It was too high for him to reach so he jumped out and climbed up onto the toilet seat. When he looked across, he could see that there was no soap on the shelf in the shower. There was, however, a bar of soap on the sink, which was within easy reach.
He leaned over, taking the magazine of Comither out of his pocket, and, stretched between the toilet and the sink, he carefully broke each vial and poured the contents over the soap.
‘Lucky break, McManus,’ he said quietly as the Comither soaked in. ‘Let’s see if we can convince you to turn the road somewhere else.’
When he was finished, he jumped down off the toilet seat and hid behind the shower door and waited for Michael McManus to come. But he didn’t. A few moments later he could hear what sounded like a shower from behind the wall. To his surprise there were two bathrooms in the house, the second one being an en-suite in the main bedroom.
Moriarty rolled his eyes up in frustration and leaned his back against the wall to re-plan, again.
‘Damn it,’ he whispered. ‘Now I have to kill him!’
Sally put the child back to bed while Michael had his shower. When she came out into the hallway she picked up Emily’s toys. One of them was particularly messy. It was called an ooze monster and consisted of a ball of brightly coloured goo. To the average adult it was a pointless toy but to children it was proof that the adults who invented it were in fact geniuses. She picked it up and, after a little trouble, squeezed it into its container. This made her fingers very sticky.
The light went on in the bathroom and in walked Sally. Moriarty’s heart sank and jumped at the same time. This was very bad. Sally turned on the taps and looked around. She clearly didn’t like the soap, preferring the bottle of soap cream that she usually used, so she turned off the taps and walked out of the bathroom, switching the light off on her way.
Moriarty sighed with relief, but a second later the light went back on and Sally came back in, turned on the taps, picked up the soap and began to wash her hands. Moriarty began to gesticulate wildly and silently, waving his arms all over the place to contain his frustration. As Sally washed her hands, she looked in the mirror. She was talking to herself and admiring her eye make-up at the same time.
‘I’ve won prizes for cooking,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Fancy telling me that...’ She had started to feel a tingling sensation in her hands. She stopped rubbing them and stepped back from the sink, dropping the soap onto the floor. Moriarty froze. Whatever she told herself now would stay with her for the rest of her life. She looked into the mirror and finished her sentence:
‘...I can’t cook.’
It wasn’t too bad. Moriarty was relieved that at least she hadn’t told herself that she was a chicken. Sally turned around and walked out of the bathroom. Moriarty leaned back and slumped against the wall. It had all gone terribly wrong, but he assumed that all that could go wrong had gone wrong.
However, just as he assumed this, little Emily came into the bathroom. She probably just wanted to go to the toilet, but when she came in, she looked down and saw the bar of soap on the floor. Aware of the dangers of a piece of soap on the floor, especially if one were to slip on it, she automatically bent down to pick it up. Moriarty acted instinctively. He knew that Comither was especially dangerous to children. Something inside him made him shout out:
‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’
Emily froze to the spot.
Moriarty was filled with an enormous sense of regret, combined with an overwhelming sensation of terror. Now he knew that he was in trouble. Emily h
ad stopped just before she touched the soap. Slowly she turned her head to the left. There was absolutely no emotion on her face as she cast her big eyes on the small figure of Moriarty with his hands stretched out in front of him. It was one of those long uncomfortable silences, the sort that last only a few seconds but seem to go on for hours.
Finally Emily screamed and then ran out of the bathroom and began screaming again. With no time to lose, Moriarty ran out of the bathroom too, but realising that the soap was still on the floor, he ran back in. He snatched some toilet paper and used it to lift and throw the bar of soap into the toilet bowl.
Michael and Sally came running. Emily had gone into the living room and was hiding behind the sofa, screaming, stopping to breathe, and then screaming again. Moriarty saw this as a chance to escape so he looked back once and then ran towards the kitchen.
He assumed that he would hide in the garage until the morning. But when he ran into the kitchen, he found himself confronted by an enormous black dog which was standing in the middle of the floor. Moriarty didn’t have time to stop, or even be afraid. Instinctively he slipped down onto the ground and slid lengthways under the dog, before scrambling back up onto his feet and running towards what looked like a dog flap in the back door. The dog spun around quickly and tried to run after the little man, but no matter how quickly his legs moved, he couldn’t. The marble floor was too slippery for the dog to get enough grip for a high speed pursuit, and this bought Moriarty valuable seconds. He crashed through a large dog flap in the door and out into the back garden.
Moriarty assumed that he would run across the back garden, dive through the fence and make an escape. He began to run but suddenly felt himself being grabbed by the collar and pulled down to the ground. He assumed that it was a dog, and assumed that he was going to be eaten, so he began to swing one arm wildly to defend him as he grabbed his sword with the other.
But it wasn’t a dog. It was Balor.
Moriarty looked up, Balor looked down, and before Moriarty could speak, Balor slapped him on the head.
‘How many times have I told you that stay put means stay put?’ Balor scowled and spoke in a muffled angry voice. Chopper was there too but he was staying well out of it.
‘BUT THERE—’ Moriarty began, and Balor hit him again.
‘Be quiet. I’m doing the speaking here,’ Balor continued.
Moriarty tried again, ‘THERE IS A D—’
Balor hit him again.
‘BUT, BUT, THERE’S A—’ Moriarty tried to warn Balor about the dog but every time that he spoke, Balor smacked him around the head.
Eventually Moriarty managed to force his way back up onto his feet with Balor constantly smacking him. He grabbed Balor’s hand, so Balor hit him with the other one. When Moriarty grabbed the other hand, he looked at Balor with an angry scowl on his face.
‘DOG!’ Moriarty yelled.
They both turned to look at the dog flap at the very instant that the dog came charging out through the dog flap and stood in front of them. The dog hadn’t expected to see two of them, and Balor hadn’t expected to see a dog. Chopper seemed to be pleased with the situation. Moriarty, on the other hand, wasn’t the least bit surprised.
The little men looked at the dog, and the dog looked at the little men for a few seconds more before charging. Moriarty and Balor stood to one side and let Chopper charge through. The dog and the rabbit were set for a head-on collision.
‘Come on. Let’s get out of here,’ Balor ordered. The dog and the rabbit collided, knocking Chopper’s eye patch off.
‘What about Chopper?’ Moriarty protested.
‘The dog is outnumbered,’ Balor replied as he grabbed Moriarty by the arm and dragged him running down the long driveway towards the iron gates. Chopper and the dog were engaged in some sort of mortal combat. Without his eye patch, the cross-eyed Chopper was technically fighting two dogs, making him repeatedly lunge into empty space. This served to confuse the dog who thought that it might be a diversionary tactic. Chopper showed no signs of confusion but continued to lunge wildly between the big dog’s legs, which made the dog even more confused.
It gave Moriarty and Balor enough time to get through the railings of the gate. They called out to Chopper who made the dog tumble over before he turned around and came running at high speed down the long driveway. As Chopper drew closer, Moriarty could see that something was wrong. Chopper didn’t see the twenty bars of the gate; he saw forty. For some inexplicable reason this made him run a bit faster.
It was too late before Moriarty realised exactly what was going to happen, and Chopper struck an iron railing very hard, knocking them both backwards.
The dog had already recovered and started to run down the driveway towards them. Moriarty and Balor struggled to pull the semi-conscious Chopper through the gates as the dog picked up speed. He too collided with the gate, snapping wildly just a hair’s breadth short of the rabbit’s back legs, at the same second that Chopper was pulled clear. The rabbit came around and Balor helped him up. Moriarty just looked at the dog, growling and barking ferociously at them from the other side of the gate. Then Balor grabbed Moriarty to lead them away from the gate. As they left, Moriarty looked back. He could see the collar and tag on the barking dog. Its name was Fang.
Balor and Moriarty argued almost the whole way back into the hill. It took them quite a long time to get there as, without his eye patch, Chopper was a strange mixture of cross-eyed, aggravated and confused. When they finally arrived a few hours later, they sheepishly made their way up to the entrance and down the long tunnel to the hill. The King was in the large opening in front of the exit, playing a game of golf to amuse himself while he waited for news of the roadworks. Chopper was the first to enter, followed by Balor and then Moriarty. Much to the King’s surprise, they all went in separate directions. Balor walked directly to his hut, Moriarty walked directly to his and Chopper, cross-eyed without his eye patch, was unsure of which direction to go so he carried on walking forward to the King.
The King was eager for news of the roadworks so he yelled out, ‘How did it go?’
‘Fine,’ Balor yelled back without looking around as he stormed off towards his hut. Moriarty didn’t even reply. The King was not the sort to tolerate insolence from anyone, although he was a little more lenient where Balor and Moriarty were concerned. Experience, however, had taught him not to bother trying to talk to the druid when he was in a foul mood, as only one of three things would come of it. Balor would dismiss what he saw as irrelevant, failing which he would answer the King’s questions in such a cryptic manner that nobody would know what he was on about, failing which he would exaggerate parts of what he had to say so much that it was useless to act on the information.
Chopper walked up to the King and stared hard at him. This unnerved the King somewhat, as he naturally felt intimidated whenever he was near sabre-toothed rabbits with big claws.
He didn’t have to worry though. Cross-eyed Chopper was just surprised to see that there was two identical Kings.
The King looked at the rabbit a moment before he patted him on the head while he watched Balor disappear into his stone hut. ‘I think I had better go and have a look at this road,’ he said to the rabbit before resuming his game of golf. ‘I have a few ideas of my own,’ he said before he took a shot. Chopper instinctively ran after the ball, caught it and returned triumphantly to the King and dropped it down in front of him. The King sighed and though about his predicament before he stepped forward and took the eye patch off Chopper. He then stepped back and put the ball on a tee and took another shot. Chopper was seeing double again, and was amazed that the King and his twin could take the same shot at the same time. He spun around and looked for the ball for a few seconds and ran after it. However when he got to it, he saw two and couldn’t decide which one to bring back and just sat waited for the King.
‘You’re a genius, Bruan,’ the King told himself before strolling towards the ball with the golf club on his sh
oulder.
The Bonsai Trees
Moriarty made his way through the narrow alleys that separated the stone houses of the cavern. The hill had come alive at night time, as it always did, and dozens of little men and women went about their business. He slowed down to walk past the blacksmith and watched as he beat some white hot metal with his two assistants. Swords hung from racks on the wall, some new, and some just freshly sharpened. He continued on past the recyclers who were sifting through a pile of old mobile phones and stopped to watch one old man carefully stripping gold contacts from a circuit board. The old man paused and looked up at Moriarty. It was an uncomfortable stare.
‘Relax,’ Moriarty told him, ‘I’m not Balor.’
The old man just looked back up at him for a few seconds more before he returned his attention to what he was doing. He thrust a blade into a burning pot of coals and when it was hot enough he used it to slice the gold from the contacts. The gold fell onto a leather blanket at his feet. He turned the board around and thrust the blade back into the coals before he looked up at Moriarty again.
‘I don’t need your gold, old man,’ Moriarty told him before he turned and walked up a slight incline between two houses, and out into the main square of the village.
The square was large and could easily accommodate a thousand people. It was neatly cobbled but the stones were smooth and had been well worn by thousands of years of footfall. It was lit like a football stadium, with six massive street lights, four of which were mounted on posts at the corners of the square and two that were attached to the ceiling of the cavern, maybe twenty feet or more above the ground. A massive flat screen television took up half of one side.
There were around thirty or so little people in the square, setting up tables to sort through bags of debris and other lost items from the Irishmen. A few others were removing some computer network cable that had been made redundant by the new wi-fi set up that Balor was experimenting with. They were careful enough to set out barricades and warning signs for the people to avoid the holes in the pavement.