The Beasts of Upton Puddle (18 page)

Heinrich straightened, apparently hoping to be
exonerated. “I do feel very tired.”

“No excuse,” she barked. “Lilly should not still be running free.”

A little deflated, Heinrich tried something else. “Redwar Industries called trying to make an appointment with you. I told them you are unavailable.”

“Redwar? Calling here again?” She waved the wine bottle. “Oh, I'm in the perfect mood to be dealing with
him
.”

She marched toward the phone, then paused. “Why are you still here?” she shouted. “Get outside and bring in those animals. Now!”

Heinrich almost dropped the rope as he muddled his way out of the vault in a panic.

“Should I come back later?” offered Joe.

Mrs. Merrynether hesitated again as she picked up the receiver and glanced at the open box. “I'm afraid you will have to wait until another time before you can meet Kiyoshi. Would you be so kind as to run upstairs to room sixteen? I'm afraid Lilly has made a terrible mess in a very short space of time. I'll join you as soon as I've had a word with this fat buffoon. It's up the stairs, last door on the right.”

Pushing aside his frustration at not seeing the new creature, but relieved to escape the charged atmosphere, Joe nodded and left the vault to head upstairs.

Finding room sixteen was a simple matter; the task of clearing up the mess was not. Joe stared at the aftermath of a drunken marathon. Smashed beer glasses littered
the stained wooden floor, the unidentifiable remains of various fruit adorned the walls in the form of smeared graffiti, and every piece of furniture had been either dismantled or smashed. Various sharp objects dangled from the ceiling as if some bizarre dare game had been played, and across the length of the walls, Joe could see the remnants of an intricate pulley system which looked like it had been used as some sort of alcohol delivery system. A few broken bottles were still attached to frayed bits of rope.

“Where on earth do I start?” Joe said to himself.

Picking a path through the debris, he made his way to the back of the room where a splintered bookcase leaned precariously against an equally abused crate. One nudge and there would be an avalanche of planks.

Joe decided his first job would be to rescue the bookcase. He slipped on something hideous and pushed his arm toward an overturned table to steady himself. His fingers connected with something soft, whose scream was drowned out by the clatter of collapsing furniture.

The flash of a pale green waistcoat told Joe that he'd almost bagged the infamous cluricaun. Joe clambered across the wreckage to shut the door and prevent any chance of Lilly's escape. The door's slam preceded a silence that only the drip-drip-drip of a half-empty beer bottle dared to interrupt. Joe scanned the room, hunting for any sign of the elusive party animal, but as usual, the only clue to his existence came in the form
of an Irish voice.

“A hangorver loike ya wouldn't believe, and den some idjit sticks his hand in ya gonads! Well, if it's a foight ya want, it's a foight ya'll get, boy.”

The sting of something wet and rotten bit into Joe's cheek as a series of items flew at him from a variety of directions.

“Victory or death!” yelled the tiny man.

The sound of at least a dozen chuckles followed Lilly's war cry. The cluricaun was not alone.

Joe looked around the room, surveying the broken furniture, beer stains, and sliding remains of a food fight on the walls.

“There's more than one of you?” he asked, hoping for a glimpse of another cluricaun.

“He's broight, dis one,” came a voice near the bookcase.

“And ogly too,” said another.

“Hey! I'm not ugly.”

“Are too! I bet you were even oglier as a baby. I bet ya mammy had to pull the covers up orver ya head at noight so dat sleep would have da courage ta creep up on yaz,” came Lilly's voice.

“Well, at least I don't have a girl's name . . . Lilly!”

Joe's comeback provoked some hearty laughter from one of the corners.

“What loike . . . Josephine, ya mean.”

“It's Joseph.”

The laughing from the corner hadn't stopped, and more cackling came from the other side.

“Heh . . . Lilly? He torld us his name was Maximus.”

“Shot ya face!”

“Don't tell me ta shot me face, ya fat tart.”

“How dares ya! And may the devil swallow me soideways if oi ever invoites ya ta me house again.”

An uproar of swearing and shouting, punctuated by the crash of flying bottles, soon escalated into a full-scale riot. Joe imagined there had been a continuous cycle of drinking, fighting, and passing out like this for the last several hours while Heinrich had been drugged and Mrs. Merrynether labored in the garden. Ducking below an expensive-looking bottle as it exploded into the door, Joe reached for a chair, fumbled to open the door, and fell into the corridor, dragging the chair with him. He slammed the door and wedged the chair underneath the handle. With a little luck, Joe could get either Heinrich or Mrs. Merrynether upstairs before the fight had finished and the cluricauns realized they had been trapped inside.

Joe saw a window at the end of the corridor and ran to it, knowing Heinrich had been sent outside to catch the escaped animals. Perhaps if he saw Heinrich, Joe could shout down to him to come up while he guarded room sixteen. Breathless from his narrow escape, Joe undid the latch and lifted the window to look outside.

Sure enough, there was Heinrich in the garden, but
the situation looked far from under control. Yowling and hissing coupled with excited cheering spoiled the otherwise peaceful atmosphere of the grounds as Cornelius the manticore leapt and bucked across the grass, contending with several little men clinging to his mane for dear life. The cheesy grins, distinctive clothes, and drunken laughter revealed them to be more of Lilly's friends. Heinrich ran behind the panicked beast as he wailed at the cluricauns to get off, but it was clear they were having far too much fun to take any notice.

Joe cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned out of the window. “Heinrich!”

Heinrich looked up. “Joe?”

“I've caught Lilly.”

“What?”

“I've caught the cluricaun.”

A stray sprout hit Heinrich in the side of the head as one of the tiny men catapulted out from a bush and then dashed out of sight again.

“I cannot hear you,” he shouted, rubbing his temple.

“I'll come down.”

Joe took off along the corridor, down the stairs, into the hallway, out the main entrance, and around the back to the garden. The cluricauns' cheers still echoed through the grounds as Joe approached.

Heinrich stood by one of the statues, hands on knees, panting. “I . . . don't know what . . . to do. Look.” He pointed and shook his head.

Cornelius bucked and reared as he tore a muddy path through the grass. The curiously human face contorted in frustration as he beat his wings and thrashed his tail, but even as the manticore roared, the sound of Irish jeering drowned him out. At least six tiny men clung to the beast's red fur, two of them swinging from his mane.

“Apart from Lilly, Cornelius is the last. All the others were easy to catch . . . but him . . . them?”

“I've got an idea. Play along, and this might work.” Joe winked, then spoke as loud as he could—enough that the cluricauns would hear. “I've got Maximus and some of his friends trapped in room sixteen. I think we've got plenty of time to get him, though, Heinrich. I heard him say they had all day to drink the whiskey because the lightweights had gone outside.”

“Who's Maximus?” whispered Heinrich.

“Long story. I'll tell you—”

“Loightweights?” spluttered a furious voice. “Da swoine carled os loightweights! We'll shor
him
who da loightweight is.”

Joe suppressed a grin as a host of roaring cluricauns jumped out from behind trees and bushes, led by the six who had leapt off the manticore in anger.

Heinrich made an unsuccessful attempt to snatch some as they shot past and then threw himself to the ground with a shout, “Get down, Joe!”

“What? What is—?” But Joe was too late. A pain
like the thrust of a red-hot poker lanced his shoulder, and he staggered back, stunned by the blow. The next thing he felt as he turned to see where the attack had come from was a peculiar heat traveling from his shoulder, into his chest, and down his side. He slumped and, through blurred vision, saw Cornelius thrashing his tail, spraying spikes toward the fleeing cluricauns.

Then came the numbness with nausea as Joe tried in vain to move his stiffening limbs. A cry from Heinrich echoed somewhere distant as another stray dart powered into his leg. The heavy blackness of unconsciousness sucked away his fading thoughts.

Joe woke in a groggy stupor. A curious odor, like apples fermenting in a bucket of lavender, reached his nostrils as he breathed in, but it was not unpleasant. In fact, it was quite soothing. He felt soft bedcovers as the pins and needles subsided in his fingers and, through a watery haze, he saw deep blue walls and a collection of Victorian furniture, including an old grandfather clock that clunked its peaceful rhythm in the corner closest to him.

Joe squinted at two blurry figures. One was Mrs. Merrynether, and the other was Danariel, whose ethereal light bathed the room in what looked like moonbeams. Their muffled voices discussed something in conspiracy at the end of the bed. He thought the splintering throbs in his head might drown out their whispers, but
as the fog of sleep lifted, their words became clearer.

“If you really are right about him, Danariel, then we must keep him safe. This cannot happen again.”

“I understand your fear, but you should trust me, Veronica. I am rarely wrong about these things.”

“Rarely wrong? So you
have
been wrong before, then.”

A brief silence gave Joe the opportunity to test his voice.

“Hello?” the word rasped through his throat as though he hadn't drunk water for a month.

Mrs. Merrynether turned to look at Joe, a kaleidoscope of emotions crossing her features. “How are you feeling?”

“I've got a headache. What's that smell?”

“It's a special ointment we're using on your shoulder.” She smiled. “A little something I dug out of my medicine cabinet, and I'll get Heinrich to fetch you some aspirin for that headache.”

“Is he all right? We were hit by Cornelius's quills.”

“Heinrich didn't get hit. Only you did. If Heinrich hadn't got you to me as quickly as he did, you'd be . . .” Her prune-like lips tightened.

“You would not be talking with us now,” Danariel finished as she hovered to the side of Mrs. Merrynether's face and placed gentle hands on her cheek.

“Thank you, Danariel. She's right, Joseph. I should never have left you unsupervised with such dangerous creatures on the loose.” She looked away. “I have been grossly negligent.”

“But you've got them back now?” Joe asked.

“All but Lilly.”

“Lilly? But I had him trapped in room sixteen.”

“I'm sure you did, but cluricauns are highly skilled at evasion, and it's extremely rare to see one at all. The room was empty when Heinrich checked it.”

“So where did they all come from? There were so many of them.” Joe tried to sit up but felt a lurch in his stomach and a hammering through his brain.

“Never mind them,” said Mrs. Merrynether, easing him back onto the sheets. “You need to rest awhile.”

“There is a cluricaun in almost every home,” Danariel explained, sitting at the end of the bed, “especially homes with wine cellars. Nobody knows how they communicate with each other, but on rare occasions they do get together like this, and the results are always chaotic.”

“Oh,” said Joe, rubbing his head. “Look. What time is it? I should call my mum. She'll be wondering where I am.”

“Already done,” said Mrs. Merrynether. “I told her you had a bit of an accident with one of our animals but that you were fine.”

“And she was okay with that?”

“Well . . .” Mrs. Merrynether drew a deep breath. “Your aunt Rose is coming to collect you now. Both she and your mother are very concerned, and to be truthful with you, so am I.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Oh, no, no, no! The fault is entirely mine. You see, it
was very irresponsible of me to get you involved in this situation. In my anger, it didn't cross my mind for a moment that you may be in considerable danger with so many wild beasts on the loose. I should have sent you home immediately.”

“But I'm all right now, aren't I?” Joe felt another wave of nausea.

“You will be fine. But it could easily have been different, and you may not be so fortunate if something similar were to happen again.”

Danariel flew in front of her face. “No, Veronica.”