The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

“Make them stop,” said Jolly, his hands pressed to his ears. “Please!”

“It’s very hard,” said Dan. “They see a light and they start performing. I’ve tried electric shocks, but that just seems to make them livelier.”

These were hard times for the boy band BoyStarz. For a start, they were no longer as young as they were, but “MenStarz” didn’t have the same ring to it. Phil in particular looked like a doorman at the kind of nightclub where people got killed on a regular basis, while Sparkle, Twinkle, and Gemini had only enough hair among all three of them for two people to share. Their career had never recovered from vicious rumors that the BoyStarz could not sing, and they simply mimed along to songs recorded by more talented vocalists. This led to the BoyStarz signing up for a special tour to prove the doubters wrong. In this it was successful, to a degree. The tour did prove that the BoyStarz could sing.

Horribly.

One critic compared the sound of BoyStarz singing live to the final cry of a ship’s horn as it sinks beneath the waves with the loss of everyone on board. Another described it as only marginally less awful than being trapped in a room with a flock of frightened geese that were honking in panic as they bumped into the walls. A third wrote: “If Death had a sound, it would sound like BoyStarz.”

The BoyStarz kept trying. They turned up for the opening of shopping malls, but nobody came. Then they started showing up for the opening of individual stores, but still nobody came. Eventually they grew so desperate that if somebody opened a newspaper, or a packet of crisps, BoyStarz would pop up beside them and start warbling about how love was like a flower, or a butterfly, or a sunny day. People started complaining. Where once the BoyStarz had been driven everywhere in limousines, they now rode bicycles, or they did until someone stole the bicycles to stop them from showing up unexpectedly. It was all very sad, unless you actually liked music, and songs being sung in tune, in which case it wasn’t very sad at all.

The dwarfs felt partly responsible for the run of bad luck that the BoyStarz had endured because it was they who had ruined the filming of the video for the BoyStarz’s Christmas single “Love Is Like a Castle (Built for Two).” They had done this by taking bits of the castle in question and flinging them from the battlements until the castle built for two looked like a shed built for one. When the dwarfs had decided to set up a talent agency with Dan, it seemed only right and proper that they should try to find work for the BoyStarz. So far, the only work they’d found for them was in a hamburger restaurant, and even then they’d lasted only a day because they insisted on singing about how love was like a lettuce leaf, or a chicken nugget, or a bun.

“All right, boys,” said Jolly, “the song’s had enough. Time to put it out of its misery.”

The BoyStarz stopped wailing.

“Has you got work for us?” asked Gemini.

“Is we going to be stars again?” asked Twinkle. As he said the word stars, he tossed fairy dust in the air.

“Where do they get that fairy dust from?” asked Angry. “They never seem to run out, do they?”

“I’ve searched their cell—I mean, their room—and I can’t find a trace of it,” said Dan. “I think they just produce it from their pores, like sweat.”

“What are you feeding them?” asked Dozy.

“Mostly cheese.”

“Well, that doesn’t explain it. Whatever you get from eating lots of cheese isn’t going to look like fairy dust, or smell like it either.”

“When is we going to sing again?” asked Starlight.

“What does he mean, ‘again’?” asked Jolly. “And why can’t they tell singular from plural?”

“I think they’re becoming a single entity,” said Dan. “Except for Phil, of course.”

“Ah.”

They all looked at Phil, who bore the same relationship to the other three as an emu might to three ducks. Every boy band had to have someone who looked like Phil in it. It was a rule.

“What are we going to do with them?” said Angry. “We can’t keep them down here forever. Eventually somebody is going to come looking for them.”

“Really?” asked Jolly.

Angry thought about it.

“Possibly not,” he said. “Still, we have to find something for them to do or else we’ll just end up with four old people living in our basement who can’t sing, smell of cheese, and appear to be made partly of fairy dust.”

There was a soft thud from above them as a copy of the Biddlecombe Evening Crier dropped through the letter box.

“Maybe there’ll be a job for them in the newspaper,” said Dozy.

“Unky,” said Mumbles.

“You’re right,” said Dozy, “it is highly unlikely, but you never know. Sometimes good things happen to good people.”

“And what about us?” said Angry.

“Sometimes good things happen to us, too,” said Dozy, “although only by mistake. Or through theft.”

They closed the door on the BoyStarz.

“Good-bye, little men,” said a voice. It might have been Starlight’s. Nobody knew for certain. They all looked the same.

Except for Phil.

And through the door came the sound of four voices singing loudly, if not terribly well, about how love was like a little man.

• • •

The dwarfs sat in Dan’s office and thought about their future. It looked bleak.

“This is terrible,” said Jolly. “We’re broke, and we have a talent-free talent agency.”

“Maybe we could sell the BoyStarz into slavery,” said Angry.

“They wouldn’t make very good slaves,” said Jolly. “They’re too delicate. Except for Phil.”

He looked at Dan.

“So?” he said. “Is there by any chance a job for the BoyStarz in the newspaper?”

Dan beamed at him. At last, a bit of good luck.

“No,” he replied, “but there’s a job for all four of you!”

21. This is how parliaments work.

VIII

In Which the Forces of Law and Order Encounter the Forces of Lawlessness and Disorder

SERGEANT ROWAN AND CONSTABLE Peel were enjoying a nice pot of tea and a couple of pea-and-pork pies at Pete’s Pies. The sun was shining, the pies were good, and all was well with the world.

“Hello, Sergeant,” said a passerby, walking his dog. “Criminals taking a day off today, are they?”

Sergeant Rowan smiled. When he chose to use it, he had a smile like a fatal gunshot.

“Do you have a license for that dog?” he said, and the man hurried quickly along.

Constable Peel sipped his tea.

“Do you think criminals actually take days off, Sarge?” said Constable Peel. “I mean, if they’re on holiday and someone leaves a car unlocked or a wallet unattended, do criminals think, ‘No, I’m not stealing that, I’m on my holidays’?”

Since he’d been dragged to Hell, and then escaped, Constable Peel had begun to take a different view of life. His belief was that any day that didn’t involve demons, the undead, or being hauled off to Hell was a good day as far as he was concerned.

“I don’t know, Constable, but here comes a criminal. Let’s ask him.”

Sergeant Rowan stretched out a hand and gripped a passing dwarf by the collar.

“Bless my soul,” he said. “If it isn’t Mr. Jolly Smallpants, off to find something that isn’t nailed down.”