I came out just off from the bar in a shower of dust, coughing and spluttering, and trailing little polystyrene balls all over the carpet like an ecologically unsustainable Hansel and Gretel.
This pub didn’t have regulars. It had a clientele. You know the sort of place I mean. The kind of pub that puts a bit of salt on Sweaty Betty’s old PE plimsolls, calls it a ‘filet de gamon’ rather than a gammon steak, puts a drizzle of fruit juice over a carrot and a slice of potato on the plate and charges sixty pounds to choke all three mouthfuls down over a glass of something vinegary and unpronounceable. And to top it all off, they won’t let you in without a jacket, tie and a dossier of genealogical records proving your family has kept everything within a radius of two villages since 1549.
They’ll let you in if you’re visiting the local attractions of course, but then only on lower ground where the real guests can leer over you and use your casual attire to assure themselves that they were right to skip that cricket match in Nottingham because you never know what type of tweedless ruffian you might meet outside the ridings. It’s rumoured some of that rabble don’t even own shotguns.
Yeah, you know the sort.
Of course it was gonna be like that with all that trophy hunting down below. But right now, they all looked exactly like those off-duty goblins from five minutes ago and I hadn’t even gone through a wall this time.
There was a veteran-looking type in the corner, twirling an impressive moustache as he watched one of the staff measuring up his woollen-clad feet for a case of hiking boots by his side. A trio of capped chaps by the bar were grumbling about the snazzy new Jeep that Geoff’s aunt’s neighbour had just arrived in and how it really wouldn’t fit in with Little Raughnen’s garage colour coordination scheme. And a trio of capless chapesses, who were almost slavering into their martinis as they watched a standing man’s rippling biceps. I don’t think his demonstration of safe spear-swinging distances was getting much attention, and the poor dude was foreseeing a penetration of a very different kind on his next tour out of Gate A.
At least that’s what I reckoned they were doing before they turned to gawp. Now it was easy to see them for the morons they were.
“Where the ‘ell did you come from?” growled the man with the spear. All risk of personal injury aside, he’d been well on the way to a cream tea upsell and wasn’t exactly relishing the sudden appearance of my less-than-appetising aroma of soggy cave.
It was a sensible question, I thought. None of the others had thought to ask.
“Below,” I replied. “I took a wrong turn on the way in.”
“Come off it!” he roared. “I mean what town. You look... unsavoury. You ain’t from Leeds, are yer?” The three boys at the bar bristled. One even picked up his shotgun. I was getting pretty pissed off by shotguns by that point.
“Oh, come now, darling,” drawled one of the tarts. “He wouldn’t be too bad with a side of buttered parsnips.”
“As long as we trimmed the fat,” breathed one of her friends, swigging from her glass.
“Just dropped by the office to see how things were running. I’m afraid you might need to get a plasterer down at the exhibit.” Despite the dodgy-looking blokes and peckish ladies, I persisted with my hints. I was trying to be suave, to adopt a position of power. James Bond. Only it was more like James Bond after he’d gone off the rails, took an early retirement and started a daring assignment to identify which of the painters at his dad’s decorating business kept snaffling the bourbons out the drawer marked private at the Portakabin. You remember that film? Neither do I.
But, I shit you not, it only went and worked. One second it was just a cosy eight in the room, and the next there was some gorgeous blond at the bar. Let me tell you, she was bloody radiant. Glowing. At least an inch of foundation, oranger than an orange. Just like we like ‘em at two o’clock on a Saturday night.
Who am I kidding? We like them all at two o’clock on a Saturday night. She was fit is what I’m saying. 30C, I reckon....
Anyway, where was I? This gorgeous lady took one look at me, then the tectonic plates around her gob shifted and cracked. “Oi, mum!” she screeched. “Got ‘im right ‘ere. Come on in!”
From deep within the forbidden rooms beyond the bar, something garbled and groaned. The walls shook. I took a step back towards the top of the stairs, doubtful that my cunning plan would do much against whatever creature the mum had unleashed.
But it turned out it was mum after all. She was a bit of a creature, though. The like of which we will not describe in too much detail here. Let’s just say I can see why hellbeasts wouldn’t tangle with her. She was all hips and tangled hair and raucous, fag-broken croak that could clear a street-full of honest, well-to-do, hard-working folk in ten seconds flat.
“Mrs. Bradley?” I whispered.
I flinched before any sound had come out of that gaping maw. It seemed to take a week to open to full battle mode.
“WHERE THE ‘ELL DID YOU COME FROM?” she shouted.
“Middlesbrough,” I managed, resisting a sudden urge to check my eardrums for blood. And not to weep too. Suddenly, I felt like a naughty little boy. “Middlesbrough, I swear down, not-”
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“COME OFF IT! I MEAN JUST NOW!” Her flipper came up from her side, rolling pin in hand. My god, I think she wanted to spank me with it. A woman... hit a man! What could come next?
“Just been... been... to see the staff,” I said. “But they didn’t want overtime.”
Somehow, I’d got the gist across and saved myself from sonic implosion. Mrs. Bradley’s sour, angry face became a sour, worried face.
“Just me and me daughter today,” she spat sourly, yet blessedly at semi-normal volume, as a couple of the lasses came up for cocktails. No-one was going to be put off by a little noise, it seemed.
“And the-”
“DESTROY ‘IM!” Mrs. Bradley screamed. “SPEAR HIM! BLOW HIS BLOODY HEAD OFF! POUR THE KETTLE OVER HIS TOES!”
An urgent shuffle all around, the scraping of chairs. The guns and the sneers came up at about the same time. The man with the spear handed his weapon over and pattered off out back. Presumably to fill the kettle.
But the scream was fear, not fury. It made up my mind that my sudden plunge into a mile-long underground death-trap wasn’t just a potential consequence of stepping foot inside a Grade II - listed building.
True, I’d thought all that unexpected fleeing from gun-wielding frenzied goblins might’ve just been a misunderstanding. I hadn’t paid, after all, and you get nowt for free these days.
But then again, I hadn’t forked out at the museum either. So I’d took a minute to prepare a little something before I came out off the stairs. Just in case.
I whipped my phone out, tapped the home button, and held it at arm’s length in front of me, straight at the troubled face of Mrs. Bradley. Did I mention she was wearing a ton of make-up? How disgusting.
“WHAT’S THAT?” she boomed. Then she squinted and read through the message like an archaeologist translating an ancient cracked slab in the middle of a desert.
“You can’t do that,” she begged. “Now let’s get you comfy, shall we?” She lurched from behind the counter, pulling out a chair and unfolding a waxed doily from somewhere in her apron at the same time.
“I bloody well can,” I said. I straightened my back and didn’t move. I really was a slightly shit James Bond now. “I classify myself as highly dissatisfied with my visit. I think there’s a few things I need to tell future customers about, so they come to enjoy this place knowing exactly what it is.”
“Can’t you bloody read, man?” puffed the major. He gestured at one of the twenty-six identical plaques around the walls. Or was it twenty-seven? I was in the middle of something. “You’re above the last refuge of the wild English goblin.”
“So you get paid to let everyone come to butcher them to within an inch of existence?” I snapped.
One of the farmer-types shrugged. “It’s what we do with all the other wildlife. It’s a national park, for god’s sake!”
I shrugged too. But more suavely. “You have a point. Perhaps it’s the only way to keep them truly wild.” I hovered my suave finger suavely over the send button on my suavely-worded review.
Mrs. Bradley groaned. “But that’ll ruin my impeccable five-star rating.”
“Preposterous!” roared the major. “It’s locally owned. And they serve a damned fine beef wellington!”
Mrs. Bradley wrung her hands. “Please, I’ll do whatever you want!”
I didn’t take my finger away. I held in my hand the power to make people mildly outraged, and that was more powerful than a dozen shotgun shells. “You can do some explaining then.”
“Fire away,” she gasped. And then, “Not you,” to the farmer. Just in time.
And so that, ladies and gents, is how I learned that the Bradleys, the tourist booth worker, a nosey museum receptionist and Dave, the owner of the Hunter’s Inn, were all part of the Order of the All-Seeing Ankle, who have beef (I’ve earned a little street cred by now, right?) with the good old Glordites due to an absolute drubbing on the bowls green a couple of weeks back, even though they told them to go easy because Barry had just had a new hearing aid put in the Tuesday before.
When they learned that I had accepted a quest to free Tim, they realised that I’d now have a ‘Mark of Dread’ that he brands his servants with. I searched everywhere then, and I did find a mole just beneath my right armpit that I couldn’t remember having before, but I’m not sure that’s Tim’s style. And some high-up bright spark decided that rather than, you know, actually helping me out to do what I had to, just to piss the Glordites off, they could see me off instead and use my mark to transfer the Seal of Trapping to an object on my cold, dead body. (I fumbled around, and they’d have had a choice of car keys, cinema ticket or pack of chewy. We’re not in some whimsical film here. This is real gritty stuff.) That way, they could draw magic power secretly off the poor sod for their own spells instead, while letting the Glordites take care of all the teabags and stuff for Tim while they were trying to work out why all their big boy transformation spells were turning trees into minnows instead of municipal mana circles. I’d have to be pretty close for the transfer to take place, and here they wouldn’t even have to get their own hands dirty. I’d just be tragic accident number 126 at the Hunter’s Inn. No biggie.
I didn’t want to tell you everything word for word because a) I couldn’t be arsed and b) I may or may not have asked some pretty stupid questions that may portray me in a less than amazing manner. It’s a bit disappointing that the Ankle in question doesn’t really see. No googly eyes, either.
But the plan was all genius really, wasn’t it? Then I remembered the whole death of me part and got a bit cheesed off.
I’d only got so much out of the woman because of my finger, a centimetre away from unleashing all the busybody short-haired Karens in Yorkshire upon the quaint little genocidal hotspot for all the family. They were gonna be really pissed when they found out that dear Tommy’s headshots weren’t quite as devastating to our local wildlife as they seemed.
On the other side of the bar, though, the risk of having my head blown off and then some private receipt or crumb or other being used to control my old mate Tim was keeping me in check.
We were at a bit of an impasse. So I decided to try and move things forward.
“Alright, alright, we’ve all had a drink...”
“No we ‘aven’t!” scowled one of the farmboys. “Not since five minutes ago.”
“...so where do we go from here?” I finished hurriedly.
Mrs. Bradley folded her meaty arms. “FIRST YOU GET OUT OF MY BLOODY ESTABLISHMENT!” she barked.
“And if you do it now, by god, you might do it alive,” the major snapped over a mysteriously garnered glass of red.
I let my finger twitch closer to the screen, just to be sure. The shotgun muzzles twitched too. “Just like that?” I snarled.
The gorgeous Miss Bradley cut in then. “Just like that. Oh, and I’ve also sent a message to the Glorious Order, telling them some rogue crackhead’s got out of Lancashire and he’s on his way to fuck shit up. That they better move all their seals and portents, double their guards, and better summon the Giant Ghoulworm of Killing at the altar just to make sure.”
Mrs. Bradley drew her daughter close. I thought I heard a bone snap but I couldn’t be sure. “Oh, sweetheart... maybe we haven’t lost out after all. As your mam always told you, if you can’t stab your enemies in the back, make friends. Why, with your quick thinking, maybe they’ll even let us in on the twenty seventh annual onion show after all. I’ve got a beauty down at the allotment.” She cupped her hand conspiratorially around her bulbous lips. “IT’S THE CAVE-RESIDUE. SHHHH!”
But I wasn’t really listening then. It was beginning to dawn on me that me and Tim might really be in the shit now. If things weren’t bad enough being in a den of freaks without the promised freak-hunter on my side, well, now I had a buggering time limit too.
I backed up towards the door, slowly, and if I didn’t catch a glimpse of the three tarts eyeing me up too. My god, they really were desperate, weren’t they?
“I’ll see you later then, Mrs. Bradley. It’s been a pleasure. Just a shame you’ll be too late. I’m fitter than I look, you know.” I admit I did swing a look at the brunette then. Perhaps I was desperate too. I’d even let her take the parsnips to bed if she liked. “I hope you didn’t put too much magic energy into your psychic osmosis thingy to Grandmaster Bob. I’ll be up there in less than a week, I reckon.”
I was thinking what I’d first thought about when I gave up whatever memory it was for that shady tea-dealer in the playground. Magic was nothing compared to technology. Bless them all, typical Yorkshire lads and lasses, always behind the times and all that.
Then the juicy Miss Bradley laughed. Oh, she even had all her teeth and everything. Straight in the wank bank, that one.
“It’s Gary. You know, Grandmaster Gary?” And then she held something up. Something black and shiny she’d had behind the counter all along. Something like the black and shiny thing that I had too. “And it was a text, you idiot?”
I stuck out my arse, barged out into the afternoon, and ran. Curse these millennials.