The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

good idea to put as much distance as possible between himself and his new “friend.”

“No, but we won’t ever be if we start looking for receipts from each other, will we?” asked Angry reasonably. “Friendship is about trust. Without trust, what do we have? Nothing.”

Angry put his left hand on his heart. There were tears in his eyes, although they might have been left over from his laughing fit. He put his other hand over Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley’s heart, and discreetly stole his pocket handkerchief.

“Well, since you put it like that,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley as he was hustled from the room by the rest of the dwarfs.

“I’d still quite like a receipt, though,” he said as the door closed on him. “You can even sign it ‘Your Friend,’?” he shouted through the keyhole.

Eventually, they heard his footsteps move away, but by then they were already changing into their outfits. They fitted almost perfectly, although Dozy’s was a little more snug in certain places than he might have liked.

“I think something’s being crushed down there,” he said. “I’ll do myself an injury.”

“You’ll do someone else an injury if that button pops on your trousers,” said Angry. “You could take an eye out with it.”

“I must have put on a pound or two since—”

Dozy stopped talking and began thinking.³³ “Hang on a minute, how did they know our sizes? I mean, these suits are very nicely cut. Very good quality, these suits. Not like the usual ones we’re given.”

It was a good question. How did the suits fit so well?

“Nipsomash?” suggested Mumbles.

“Yeah, maybe Mr. Singing-Chimney has a good eye for fashion,” agreed Jolly.

“If he does, then it’s the only good thing about him,” said Angry. “I wouldn’t trust him an inch, and this is me speaking. I don’t even trust me, but I trust me more than I’d trust him.”³⁴

“It’s the mustache,” said Jolly. “You have to look out for blokes with mustaches. A bad lot, your mustache- growers.”³⁵

“I wonder how they’ll dress Father Christmas?” said Dan. “If you’ve got those threads, his suit must be fit for a king.”

“By the way, where is Father Christmas?” said Jolly. “We should meet him before all this starts. We don’t want any misunderstandings later.”

By “misunderstandings,” Jolly meant that he didn’t want Father Christmas complaining when the dwarfs sneaked off for a nap, or took the occasional sip of Spiggit’s Old Peculiar to keep their spirits up, or gave the odd annoying kid a slap on the ear.

“We should go and find him,” said Angry. “Introduce ourselves. Let him know we’re on his side, as long as he’s on ours.”

“Hang on,” said Dan. “Mr. Snippy-Chinstrap told us to wait here. He seemed very keen that we didn’t go wandering off.”

“Well, Mr. Saggy-ChapStick isn’t around, is he?” said Angry. “And it’s important that we say hello to Father Christmas: we’re his elves. Without us he’s nothing, and without him we’re just small men with no excuse for going round a toy shop where there’s lots of stuff that someone could steal if we don’t get to it first.”

And so, with Dan in tow, the dwarfs set off to find Father Christmas and set him straight on the difference between “stealing” and “borrowing with no real intention of giving back.”

• • •

The stone house that served as Santa’s Grotto sat silent and dark on the top floor of Wreckit & Sons. The trees of the forest seemed to stretch out their branches like arms toward the house. Ivy decorated their trunks, and frost sparkled on the bark. From a distance, it looked almost real. Up close, it became apparent that it was real. The trees had rooted themselves in the floor, breaking through the boards and anchoring themselves on the metal supports. A peculiar-smelling sap oozed from the bark, forming sticky yellow clumps that glowed with an inner light. The ivy was growing at a remarkable rate, twisting and coiling as it wound around the trunks of the trees, and extending itself across the floor to form a carpet of green.

And it was cold up there, so very cold. Had there been anyone in the vicinity to exhale, they would have seen their breath form thick white clouds that froze in the air and dropped to the ground with the faintest of tinkles as the crystals shattered. The walls began to disappear as the darkness nibbled away at them, and the little fairy lights in the ceiling started to blink out one by one, and were replaced by strange constellations from another universe.

Slowly, a faint humming arose. It came from everywhere and nowhere, as though an unseen hand had set the strings of this universe vibrating. It was a foul, unsettling noise, a melody composed of pain sculpted into notes: if great evil had a theme tune, that is how it would have sounded.³⁶

From inside the grotto, a white glow appeared. Tendrils of shadow forced themselves like smoke between the gaps in the stones. In one of the windows the shape of a man became visible and a voice that had, until now, spoken only from the walls found an almost human form.

“Bring them,” it said. “Bring them to us.”

33. Dozy could do one or the other, but not both at the same time. This is not an uncommon flaw in those who tend to speak before they know what’s going to come out of their mouths, and then look a bit surprised at what they hear. Before speaking, it’s a very good idea to consider if what you’re about to say is better than silence. If it isn’t, then perhaps you shouldn’t say anything at all.

34. Angry had once stolen one of his own shoes.

35. The question of why men grow mustaches is one that has troubled philosophers for centuries. At best, a mustache looks like someone has decided to transport caterpillars on his upper lip; at worst, it looks like a bird has flown up his nose. It is also a fact that a great many bad sorts have been wearers of bad mustaches, as can be seen from the lineup below of Stalin of Russia, Hitler of Germany, and Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia:

Now I am not trying to suggest that all those who grow mustaches are secretly demented dictators or bloodthirsty tyrants. That would just be silly. But, as our study shows, having a bad mustache is a clear sign that you might be one.

36. And it wasn’t BoyStarz, who at that moment were being bribed to stop singing after the crowd had taken up a collection.

XVIII

In Which Maria Explains Things to the Scientists

PROFESSORS STEFAN AND HILBERT eyed Maria’s map, then eyed each other. To their right, Dorothy was eyeing them both. She was still wearing her false beard. It struck Professor Stefan that she was growing disturbingly fond of it, and had taken to wearing it even when there was no danger of her being seen by strangers. She also seemed to be wearing a man’s suit today, along with a shirt and tie. He made a mental note to have a serious conversation with her, while there was still a “her” to have a conversation with.

Professor Hilbert, meanwhile, was regretting calling Maria “little girl,” even if he had done so only in his head. She had spotted something that he had missed entirely. It could have been a coincidence, but Professor Hilbert was a scientist and took the view that although coincidences were sometimes just that and nothing more, there were times when coincidences were actually patterns that you had previously failed to spot.

What they were looking at was clearly an inverted pentagram formed by five buildings, all of which had been designed by the mysterious Hilary Mould. It wasn’t a perfect pentagram: the crematorium, which occupied the top left point of the star, was slightly too far to the right, but if you included the cemetery next to the Church of St. Timidus then it was closer to the mark. Similarly, the Biddlecombe Visitor Centre and Battlefield Museum was slightly too far to the right, but again, if you allowed for the battlefield itself, it was spot-on.³⁷ Throw in the old lunatic asylum, the abandoned prison, and Mr. Pennyfarthinge’s Sweete Factorye and, hey presto, there was your pentagram.