Floods 7 (3 page)

‘I would say,' said Nerlin, pulling over, ‘that whoever lives up here does not want visitors.'

‘You think?' said Betty.

‘Well, nothing we've seen so far is any risk to us,' said Mordonna. ‘Don't forget we're witches and wizards. Bombs and diseases have no effect on us.'

‘Maybe one of us should go ahead on foot to scout out the situation,' said Nerlin.

‘OK, if you like,' said Mordonna. ‘Off you go, Parsnip.'

‘Sky falling down. Snip-Snip cold,' said the old bird as the clouds came down around them. ‘Need hot soup.'

‘You go and see what's ahead. There's a good boy,' said Mordonna. ‘And when you get back I'll give you a big mug of mulligatawny soup, with real tawny in it, your favourite.'

‘No prob, like, er, man. Snip-Snip go see wassup,' said the bird, who had also got into the hippy thing.

He jumped down off the right-wing mirror and started walking up the track.

‘What are you doing, you stupid bird?' Nerlin shouted after him.

‘Snip-Snip go ahead on foot, like you said, man.'

‘OK, OK. Well, there's been a change of plan,' said Nerlin. ‘Go ahead on wing.'

‘Right off, dude man,' said Parsnip and flew into the cloud.

Meanwhile, the Hulberts had arrived back at Acacia Avenue to find that the worst had indeed happened. The Floods' houses at numbers 11 and 13 had not simply been burnt to the ground, they had been blasted into total oblivion. There were no bits of brick wall or smouldering armchairs. There was just a very deep, black, still smoking hole. The whole site was cordoned off with that black and yellow keep-out tape and a team of policemen and forensic scientists were digging up the garden.

The trouble was that the blast had disturbed some of the Floods' relatives who had been
buried there. Great-Aunt Blodwen's knees had gone flying through the bedroom window of a house across the street and Uncle Flatulence's rib cage had trapped a small child who happened to be walking by at the time. Cousin Vein, who had only been half dead when he had been buried, was now wholly dead and mixed up in the branches
of a big tree, from where he was dripping onto an ambulance.

So now the police were treating the whole thing as a murder investigation.

‘Well, I always said they were a strange family,' said the man who had woken up to find bits of Great-Aunt Blodwen in bed beside him. He was standing
in the middle of the street with the rest of the neighbours, trying to see past the keep-out tape.

‘So did I,' said his wife.

‘But who would have thought they were mass murderers?' said the man.

‘They killed my cat,' said the man's daughter.

‘No they didn't,' said his wife. ‘It was run over by a car. The Floods just ate it.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' said Mrs Hulbert. The Hulberts had arrived in their small rental car just as the road was blocked off by the police, so they were standing with the rest of the neighbours.

A creepy woman with a hat pulled down over her face and a very large pair of dark glasses came over to the Hulberts. She was holding a pencil and a notebook. It was the Hearse Whisperer.

‘Excuse me,' she said. ‘I am from the
Morning Herald
. Can I ask you a few questions?'

‘Oh, er, um, we were away on holiday when this happened so we don't know anything,' said Mr Hulbert.

‘Really, where?'

Fortunately, Winchflat, being a genius, had suspected the Hearse Whisperer might hang around looking for clues, so he had made each of the Hulberts a miniature Hearse-Whisperer-Warning-Device and implanted them under their armpits. If the Hearse Whisperer approached them the warning devices would start to tingle.

They were tingling like mad.

‘Monte Carlo,' said Mr Hulbert at exactly the same time as Mrs Hulbert said, ‘Las Vegas,' and Ffiona said, ‘Paris.'

‘We've been on a tour,' said Mr Hulbert.

‘Blooga, blooga, amphibious,' said the baby Hulbert, Claude.

The Hearse Whisperer could tell they were lying, but she also knew that Mordonna must have inoculated each of them so that no matter what she did, they would never be able to tell her the truth even if they wanted to.

‘So you didn't know the people who lived in the bombed houses then,' she said.

‘No,' said Mr and Mrs Hulbert.

‘How do you know it was a bomb?' said Ffiona. ‘It could have been a gas leak.'

‘Or a lightning strike,' said Mr Hulbert.

‘Or someone left the gas on,' said Mrs Hulbert. ‘And no, we did not know the Frauds.'

‘The Frauds?' said the Hearse Whisperer.

‘Wasn't that their name?' said Mrs Hulbert.

‘Blooga, blooga, lighthouse,' said Claude.

‘Well, little girl,' said the Hearse Whisperer, turning to Ffiona to try one last time to get the information she needed, ‘did you have a lovely time at, um, where was it you said you'd been?'

‘Scotland.'

‘Excuse me,' said the Hearse Whisperer. She walked over to a large tree and banged her head against it.

Because it was the evil Hearse Whisperer doing this and not an ordinary person, the tree came off the worst. All its leaves shrivelled up and died and several of its larger branches came crashing down, squashing a cat that was just about to leap on a small bird, and totally wrecking a police car.

Which just goes to show
, the Hearse Whisperer thought as she left,
that every cloud has a silver lining. Or in this case, two silver linings
.

‘Snip-Snip bring love and peas, man,' said Parsnip when he arrived back at the Floods campervan an hour later.

‘So it's hippies,' said Nerlin, ‘and not a top secret military base.'

‘Chill out, wizardman,' said Parsnip. ‘Isallcool.'

They drove along the track, stopping to clear the rocks that had obviously been put there deliberately. Some of the rocks were so big it must have taken at least a dozen people to push them into place. Of course, for wizards, moving them
wasn't a problem. Each of them took it in turns transforming a rock into the vegetable of their choice. Everyone agreed that Betty's two-metre-tall cabbage was the best because when they drove the van into it, it rolled off down the road like a huge rolling cabbage.

The final obstacle on the road to Nowhere was a three-metre-wide ditch that had been dug across the road, but all it took to fill it in was a very small earthquake.

After that everything changed. They drove round a corner and the road began to go downhill. The clouds cleared and grass began to appear, then bushes then trees, then birds and softer, greener grass and softer, greener bushes and prettier birds until they found themselves in the most beautiful valley they had ever seen. It was the floor of a long-dead volcano, hidden away from the outside world like an enchanted place out of a fairy story.

Except for the scruffy old hippy who was standing right in front of their van.

He was smiling and holding out his open
hands in a love and peace sort of way, which usually means, ‘Give me a piece of everything you've got and I will love you.'

‘Welcome to Nowhere, man,' he said. ‘I am Nameless.'

‘Nameless?' said Mordonna.

‘Yeah, man. I am Nameless because names are like possessions, they cage you. So when we all came here, we left our names out there.'

‘How many of you are there?' said Nerlin.

‘Thirty-seven, though we are one, man,' said Nameless.

‘Including the women?' said Mordonna.

‘What?'

‘And you're all called Nameless?'

‘Yeah, man.'

‘So how do you know who is who?' said Mordonna.

‘Yeah, well, man, no one said it was easy being, like, alternative,' said Nameless.

‘So absolutely everyone here is called Nameless?'

‘Oh, no, man,' said Nameless. ‘The Cool One is not called Nameless. He's called Sanguine. He's like, our guru.'

‘What about your animals?' asked Betty. ‘Are they called Nameless too?'

‘No, man. The dogs are all called Dog and the cats are all called Cat, though the Cool One is thinking of changing their names because he says it's, like, stereotyping.'

‘So I suppose the chickens are all called Chicken?' said Betty.

‘No.'

‘What are they called then?'

‘Ethel.'

‘What, all of them?'

‘Yeah.'

‘OK,' said Mordonna. ‘Moving on. Can we, like, chill here for a while?'

By now there were about fifteen Namelesses all gathered round. They nodded and did a bit of chanting and then said, ‘Sure, man.'

‘And remember,' said one of the Namelesses, who may or may not have been the same one they had been talking to earlier, ‘there is, like, only one rule here and that is that there are no rules.'

‘So where can we park?' said Winchflat.

‘Oh, like, anywhere, man,' said Nameless.
‘Well, I say anywhere and that's cool, but don't park over there by the orange yurt because that's, like, where the Cool One lives and he needs his space. And, like, down there is the Stamping Ground and that needs a lot of space for everyone to stamp. Same for the Sacred Chanting Place over there. And not under that tree, man, because there's a magpie's nest there and she's got, like, eggs and stuff so she needs her space. And not up there because that's, like, the Vegie Garden and, like, vegetables need their space too, man.'

‘So how about over there by the fence?'

‘Yeah, that's kind of cool, though of course the fence needs its space, man.'

‘OK, where then?'

‘Well, like, right where you are is cool.'

‘If you are all so free,' said Betty, ‘why do you have a fence? It's not as if there's any way to get in or out of the valley except by the track we came on and the fence doesn't actually fence anything.'

‘Well, you might see it as a fence,' Nameless began.

‘Because it is,' said Betty.

‘No, but to us, it's, like, a symbol of the outside world where everyone is fenced in by authority and rules and stuff,' another Nameless finished.

‘Yeah, no rules, no rules,' the others chanted over and over again until one of them pointed out it was five past six and they were all late for the Six O'Clock Chant.

‘Like, the Cool One gets totally freaked if anyone is late for the Six O'Clock Chant,' said Nameless.

‘But I thought you said there were no rules?' said Betty.

‘No, there aren't, man,' said a Nameless.

‘Except the Six O'Clock Chant rule,' said another.

‘And the Eight O'Clock Chant rule,' said another.

‘And the Midnight Chant rule,' said another.

‘Yeah, man, and of course the Dawn Chant rule,' said another. ‘Which is actually around ten o'clock in the morning because the Cool One says
doing anything before then is, like, totally playing into the brainwashed work ethic thing.'

‘And the three daily Stamping Rules.'

‘And the Earwax Rule.'

‘Don't ask,' said Mordonna, putting her hand over Betty's mouth.

‘So you're saying,' said Winchflat, ‘that there are no rules unless the Cool One makes one up.'

‘Well, no, man, because the Cool One doesn't make up rules. He just leads us along the path to Nirvana with his, like, extreme wisdom and guiding hand.'

‘I bet he never does the washing up, does he?' said Mordonna.

‘Well, no, of course not, man. That is a great honour awarded to all the chicks.'

‘What's washing up, man?' said another Nameless as they ran off to chant.

Nerlin drove the van well away from the rest of the old vans, buses, yurts, assorted containers, sheds and tents and parked under the shade of a huge old tree.

‘I expect it's not good to park here. All those dead leaves in the grass probably need their space,' said Valla and they all fell about laughing.

‘Are we actually going to stay here?' said Betty. ‘They're a bunch of complete idiots.'

‘I know that, sweetheart,' said Mordonna. ‘But this is probably the best place to hide while we work out what to do. The Hearse Whisperer would never suspect for a second that we'd be in a place like this.'

A dreadful wailing noise drifted down the valley as the Six O'Clock Chant reached its peak. It sounded as if every single one of the thirty-seven hippies was chanting in a different key. The cats and dogs ran for shelter. The chickens, although they had heard the chants dozens of times, all did their best to fly up into the safety of the nearest tree.
⁷

‘No wonder the cats are running away,' said Winchflat. ‘That noise sounds like ten cats being strangled.'

‘I wonder if they've got a manager,' said Satanella. ‘I reckon every witches' coven in the galaxy would buy a CD of that, if only to keep evil spirits from running away.'

‘Nevertheless,' said Mordonna, ‘these strange people could be very useful.'

‘You have a plan?' said Nerlin.

‘Several.'

It was dark by then, which meant none of the hippies could see what the Floods were doing. So they collected seventeen sticks, three paper bags, four gold rings and a partridge in a pear tree in a pile next to the van. Mordonna got out her best wand – not the one she used every day for boiling kettles and getting rid of spots, but her special occasion wand – and, with a couple of spells, she turned the pile into several bedrooms, a kitchen and the only bathroom in the valley.

The chanting stopped and the Floods
watched the group of flickering lights disperse as the Namelesses went back to their vans, tents and yurty things.

‘Thank goodness that's over,' said Nerlin.

‘Mind you,' said Valla, ‘the vibrations have loosened my earwax a treat.'

As the family all sat round cleaning out their ears with blunt sticks,
⁸
Nameless came up to them.

‘OK, like, people, the Cool One has summoned you into his Aura,' he said to Mordonna.

‘Really?'

‘Yeah, it's, like, a seriously awesome invitation.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘Yeah, man. I mean, not everyone gets summoned into the Aura,' said Nameless. ‘I've never been there.'

‘So much for you all rejecting the petty privileged class system of the outside world,' said Mordonna. ‘Now you go and tell your so-called Cool One that if he wants to see me, he can come here.'

‘Oh, no, man, I can't possibly do that,' said Nameless, obviously terrified at the prospect.

‘Why not?'

‘The Cool One never comes out of the Aura Area.'

‘What, never?'

‘No.'

‘So none of you have ever even seen him?'

‘No.'

‘Do you mean that he never sets foot outside his yurt?' said Betty.

‘Oh no,' said Nameless. ‘He comes out quite often.'

‘So you have all seen him then?'

‘No, he comes out wearing his floating yurt,' said Nameless. ‘It's like a personal tent that covers him from head to foot. Though my sister Nameless says that once, when she was lying on the grass in the pose of the dandelion, she saw one of his toes.'

‘I wonder why he won't let anyone see him,' said Betty. ‘I bet he's really ugly.'

‘No, he says his aura is, like, so bright that if any of us saw it, it would strike us, like, totally blind.'

‘Yeah, right,' said Betty.

‘Well, off you go and give him my message,' said Mordonna.

‘No, I can't,' Nameless whimpered. ‘Please don't make me.'