The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale (11 page)

Nurd’s shoulders sagged. He wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. Samuel was right.

“Yes,” he said, “I understand.”

“I don’t,” said Wormwood. “But then, I never do.”

“I’ll explain later,” said Nurd.

He placed a consoling hand on Wormwood’s shoulder, then looked for somewhere to wipe his fingers. Mrs. Johnson gave him a cloth.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Nurd. “Honestly, it doesn’t. But just for a while, it felt like we were part of something.”

“You
are
part of something,” said Samuel. “You’re part of our family. Right, Mum?”

Mrs. Johnson didn’t answer immediately.

“Mum?”
urged Samuel.

“Yes, yes, of course they are,” said Mrs. Johnson, under pressure. “I just tell people they’re from your dad’s side.”

Nurd tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. He took one last look at the invitation, then tore it up and threw it in the bin.

“Let’s go upstairs, Wormwood,” he said. “You can entertain me by making unusual smells.”

They left the kitchen. When they were gone, Mrs. Johnson turned to Samuel.

“He has a point, you know,” she said. “We can’t keep them cooped up in here forever when they’re not working. If they’re going to stay in this world, they have to find their place in it. I don’t mean a physical place: they’ll always have a home here, even if I do sometimes wonder what Wormwood does in the bathroom, because he certainly isn’t washing, or if he is, then it isn’t working. No, what I mean is that they need to be happy in it, and to be happy they have to discover what makes them happy. Maybe you should let them go with you to Wreckit’s. They’ll have a lovely time, and it will help them. I’m sure of it.”

Samuel nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Go on,” said Mrs. Johnson. “Bring their invitation back to them, and tell them to think about what they’re going to wear. Now, I’m late for bingo.”

She went into the hallway, grabbed her coat, and rushed out of the door. Samuel knelt by the bin and prepared to fish out the pieces of the torn invitation, but they weren’t there.

The invitation had vanished.

25
. Somebody should really have given Sir Charles himself a tip, namely, don’t go into battle with only five hundred men against ten thousand spear-wielding natives, which is what MacCarthy did in 1824 when he was governor of the Gold Coast in Africa. MacCarthy ordered his men to play “God Save the King” in the hope that it might scare the natives away. It didn’t. The natives attacked and MacCarthy’s force was almost entirely wiped out, not helped by the fact that they had accidentally brought macaroni with them instead of spare ammunition. MacCarthy’s heart was eaten by the victorious natives, and they kept his head as a souvenir, displaying it on special occasions and the odd holiday.

26
. Similarly, only old Mr. Spiggit, the founder of Spiggit’s Brewery, Chemical Weapons & Industrial Cleaning Products Ltd., knew that Shan and Gath, the chief brewers in his Dangerously Experimental Drinks Department (DEDD), were pig demons. Everybody else just thought they were two big fellows who had drunk too many of their own brews, since the list of side effects caused by sampling Spiggit’s Old Peculiar on a regular basis included massive weight gain, hairy palms, molting, and unusual beard growth. And that was just what it did to women. To the list could be added speech difficulties, tooth loss, tooth
growth,
and explosive wind. Basically, it was Shan and Gath in a nutshell.

In Which We Learn That Hilary Mould May Have Been Even Odder Than First Suspected

S
AMUEL KNOCKED ON THE
door of the bedroom shared by Nurd and Wormwood and waited until Nurd’s voice gave him permission to come in. Samuel was very conscious of giving Nurd and Wormwood as much privacy and space as he could. The little bedroom was their home within the home, although they hadn’t done much to change it apart from putting up a few posters on the walls. Nurd had opted for pictures of ancient monuments in far-off countries: the Pyramids of Egypt, the temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and the Inca site of Machu Picchu in Peru. Wormwood, by contrast, preferred pictures of terrible boy bands. He even had a signed poster of BoyStarz, given to him by Dan and the dwarfs. According to Dan, there were plenty more posters where that came from. Hundreds.

Thousands.

Nurd was lying on the top bunk, flicking through the travel
supplement from one of the weekend newspapers. Wormwood was listening to music on his headphones. It was loud enough for Samuel to be able to hear some of the words: something about how love was like a garden, or a rosebush, or a snail. Whatever it was, it sounded dreadful, but Samuel said nothing. It made Wormwood happy, which was all that mattered. As if to confirm this, Wormwood gave Samuel a smile and a big thumbs-up. Samuel waved back and climbed the ladder on the bunks so that he could speak face-to-face with Nurd.

“Is everything all right?” asked Samuel.

“Everything’s fine,” said Nurd, although his expression suggested the opposite was true.

“It’s just that you don’t seem to be yourself lately,” said Samuel. “I’m worried about you.”

Faced with Samuel’s obvious concern, Nurd put the travel supplement away.

“That’s just it,” he said. “I’m not sure what being myself means anymore. When I was in Hell, I was Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities. I wasn’t very important. I wasn’t important at all, really, but I had a name, and I knew my place, even if it wasn’t a very nice one. But here on Earth I live under a false name, and I have to hide my face. I crash cars for a living. Don’t get me wrong, I like crashing cars, or I used to, but there’s only so many times that you can crash a car and survive a fireball before it starts to get a bit samey.”
²⁷

“What can I do to help?” said Samuel.

“Nothing,” said Nurd. “It’s not your fault. It’s just me, that’s all. I’ll figure something out.”

Samuel wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t know how to make life better for Nurd. If he’d had money, he’d have given it to Nurd so that he could travel and see a bit more of the world, but Samuel and his mum were barely making ends meet as it was, even with the wages that Nurd and Wormwood earned from testing cars.

“Look,” said Samuel, “maybe you should come along to the opening of the toy shop after all. It’ll do you good.”

Nurd shook his head.

“No, what you said downstairs was right. We shouldn’t attract any more attention to ourselves, and we wouldn’t want to frighten anyone.”

He picked up his travel supplement again. On the cover, a young couple smiled in front of the Taj Mahal in India.

“I’m sorry,” said Samuel as he climbed down from the bunk. “I thought you’d be happy here.”

“I am happy,” said Nurd. “I just wish I was . . . happier.”
²⁸

• • •

Maria, accompanied by Tom, came round to Samuel’s house later that evening. Samuel showed the invitation to them, and they were both impressed.

“Maybe if we keep hanging around with you, some of your
celebrity will rub off on us and we’ll get invited to openings, too,” said Tom.

“Well, can you keep rubbing, then,” said Samuel, “because I don’t want to be a celebrity at all.”

“Still, it’s nice to be asked,” said Tom. “I mean, if the only reward for being famous was being chased by demons and dragged off to Hell every so often, then it really wouldn’t be worth being famous at all, would it? Are you going to bring someone along with you? I’d go, but my mum and dad are keeping me out of school that day so we can visit my gran in Liverpool.”

“I expect Lucy will want to go,” said Samuel.

Maria winced, but said nothing. The nature of her friendship with Samuel had changed a lot since Samuel had started seeing Lucy Highmore. Lucy didn’t like Maria, and Maria certainly didn’t like Lucy, so when Samuel was with Lucy he couldn’t be with Maria, and even when he was with Maria without Lucy, there was now a certain chill between them. Samuel wondered if it was always that way when a group of friends had to deal with the fact that one of them now had a girlfriend or boyfriend. He wished there was somebody he could ask about it, but the person he would usually have asked was Maria. There was no point in asking Tom: Tom was as close to being married to the rest of the rugby First Fifteen as it was possible to be without them all exchanging rings and sprinkling confetti on one another.

“Since we’re all here,” said Maria, “we may as well get some work done on our project.”

Tom groaned.

“I
hate
this project. I have to look at old buildings and try to find something to say about them other than that they’re a bit gloomy and should probably have been demolished a long time ago. Yesterday I nearly got knocked out by a piece of brick that dropped off one of them. I’m lucky to be alive. Whose idea was it to write about Hilary Mould anyway?”

“It was
mine,
” said Maria icily. “And you really will be lucky to stay alive if you don’t stop complaining. We either studied the Mould buildings or spent our Saturdays wandering around shopping centers counting shoe shops. At least Mould is interesting.”

“Only if you’re a depressed pigeon with no friends,” said Tom. “And then there’s that business with his statue.”

They all agreed that the statue was odd. Nobody ever saw it moving around. It would be in one place for an hour, or a day, or a week, and then it would be somewhere else. Some weeks earlier, Maria had suggested that their science class should do a study of the statue, but Mr. Lugosi, the science teacher, didn’t believe it was a good idea.

“Who knows what might happen if we start paying attention to it?” he said, a statement which led Maria to suspect that Mr. Lugosi wasn’t really cut out to teach science.

“Perhaps it’s a quantum statue,” Tom had suggested, “so that it’s in every possible place in Biddlecombe until someone observes it.”

“Very clever, Hobbes,” said Mr. Lugosi, “except that the statue appears to have only six known preferred locations.”

“Sir?” called Mooch, who always sat at the back of the class
and walked with a slight stoop, as though auditioning for the role of bell ringer in an old cathedral.

“Yes, Mooch?”

“Seven, sir.”

“Seven what?”

“Seven places the statue seems to prefer.”

“Why do you say that, Mooch?”

“Sir, it’s outside the window.”

And it was.

“Don’t look at it,” said Mr. Lugosi. “Ignore it and it will go away.”

Everybody ignored Mr. Lugosi instead and looked at the statue, but after a while it began to give them the creeps, so they looked away again. Seconds later, the statue had gone.

“If anyone asks, that never happened,” said Mr. Lugosi.

But Maria in particular continued to be intrigued, and when Mr. Franklin, the geography teacher, had told them to form groups of three and come up with a project on buildings and public spaces in Biddlecombe, she had twisted the arms of Samuel and Tom until they’d agreed to look at the work of Hilary Mould. The subject was now quite topical due to the reopening of Wreckit & Sons.

“This bloke Grimly will have to do something pretty spectacular with Wreckit’s if he doesn’t want to send little kids home crying and wondering what the point of life is,” said Tom.

“It is a strange building to turn into a toy store,” said Samuel. “I know it’s right in the center of town, but it still looks like it should be used for something else.”

“Storing dead bodies,” Tom suggested.

“Storing
undead
bodies,” Samuel offered.

“A rest home for retired vampires.”

“Kennels for werewolves.”

“Will you two shut up!” said Maria. “Look, I’ve printed off a map of Biddlecombe. I thought we could use it as the centerpiece for the project, and mark the Mould buildings on it. Then we could add a picture of each building, and a little potted history of it. Now that Samuel is going to the grand opening, maybe he can find a way to interview Mr. Grimly. Samuel might have more luck than the local paper has had. How does that sound?”

It was certainly better than anything Samuel or Tom had come up with. There were six Mould buildings in total in Biddlecombe, and they had taken two each to study. Samuel and Tom hadn’t done much more than walk by their buildings, which in Samuel’s case included Wreckit’s, and then move along as quickly as possible, but Maria had already completed her histories and taken her photos. Now, as they sat around the table, she placed dots on the map indicating the locations of the six Mould buildings.

Maria sat back. She appeared troubled.

“What is it?” asked Samuel. “Did you make a mistake?”

“She doesn’t make mistakes,” said Tom, which was kind of true. What Maria did, she did well.

“Don’t you see it?” said Maria.

Samuel and Tom didn’t see anything at all, apart from the names of streets and buildings, and six black dots. Maria picked
up her pen again, grabbed a ruler, and began drawing lines on the map, connecting the dots.

“
Now
do you see it?” she asked.

They did. It might have been a coincidence, but if it was, then it was a very large one. The dots, when joined by lines, made a very distinct pattern. It looked like this, with Wreckit & Sons at the center: