Vol.7, Ch.2, P.8
“Nap” was the word. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure, but it was most extraordinary down here in the bush. Absolutely bed-ish, if you know what I mean. The air was cool, the turf soft, the flowers sweet, the bugs non-belligerent, and a thievish view of the outside was courteously provided. Amenities of the first water, no question about it.
But, it’d been amidst that restorative doss when I was rudely roused by a general hustle. Thrusting face through foliage, I peeped out, and found that Polliwog and his well-oiled tongue of a chum hadn’t been lying: a company of their blood-sucking fellows really had come to set up shop at the old bookhouse.
Sweat exuded. Had I gone in for the more manmade side of the accommodations over there, then pip, pandemonium, and everything in between would’ve been bursting at this very moment. A wild goose chase, if you get me. Mercy! Well, mark that an adventure gladly missed, what?
I rested on the literal laurels under-bum. Thank you all, I cooed, caressing them indebtedly. Then, peeping out again and upwards, I goggled the bookhouse. Right-ho. There they were, perched behind the high windows: the bow-toting, dark-browed, kitling-kicking fustilarians, monitoring the prems like eagle-eyed hawks. Never mind about the princess or the dashed Nafílim; these stinkers weren’t going to let a single louse through without a meticulous undressing and a particularly uncomfortable interview. Ghastly lot, what? Well, a fico for them. They couldn’t see me nor they would hear me, no, no, not from these bushes, bless! Why, I ought just turn over and resume snoozing through this entire thickness. Let it flutter on by, if you will.
And that I did. Smiling to myself, I leant back and slowly closed the face-curtains. Good show, André. You’ve done it again. Expect any less from as cool-headed and battle-hardened a twig off the old Håkansson branch, and one loses bets—wait, dear me! I’d forgotten to scout out the other direction, hadn’t I? My, my. Close call. Wouldn’t want to wake up to a kick and a circle of stares, now would I? Rather! So tossing about, I got to it.
…Hmm? Hallo, what’ve we got here? There seemed to be somebody else mooching ’round the lawn!
I kneaded the spy-balls. And sure enough, there was another bloke on the prems. A ways to my right, across the bookhouse, all stooped and looking jolly fishy. I squinted hard. And then…
…and then, my very soul shrieked from under the ribs!
Mercy! O, mercy, mercy, Yoná Almighty, mercy! It’s him! Slaughter incarnate! Eater of babes! Śāṭān!!
But why? Why rear his deuced map again!? At that moment, I felt it: Death, Śāṭān’s boyhood chum and carousing partner, bending over behind me and running a long, bony finger frostily down the old scruff and spine.
I shivered like a bedraggled pup. Despair oozed hither, gingerly closing in from all sides. No! No, no, no! Please, Śāṭān! Stay, stay! I beg of you! Biff off to some other place! Just leave me be! I beg! I beg!
Directly the sinuses quaked and the tear ducts surged. And I’d begun to lift the sluices when I spotted another rumminess: that Śāṭān hadn’t come alone. I fixed the goggles. This second bloke—a codger he was, what? And a crumb familiar, at that. One of the, er… the princess’s minders, from the look of the broom-brush haunting his upper lip. A royal guard or some rot. But never mind about him—Śāṭān! No nearer, you rabid, venomous dog! Not one step nea—he’s here! O Deiva, he’s here!! Stampeding nigh! Why!? Why, why, oh why!? Is badgering me such a relish!? Am I some pin cushion to you!? What’ve I done to deserve your dudgeon!?
And then, like sunbeams piercing the clouds, a moment of clarity bathed the old loaf. This blighter, this walking calamity—he wasn’t here for me, no, but for the bookhouse! For the rapscallions inside! He was, you see, scurrying close from bush to bush in a rather roundabout and burglar-esque sort of manner, all the while eyeing the building postern where, sure enough, there stood a side entrance! But then, throttling that shining clarity were the clouds of thick realisation: that nestled within one such bush was bally old André!
I then remembered it again all too vividly: that dashed day upon the mountain, when I’d fled in misery and took the scenic tumble down into the valley. And it was amidst that trip, giving the slopes a back-scratch of the century, if you’d also recall, that the only thing to flash through the old, spinning bean hadn’t been the life of dear old self… but rather, that bally black stare of Śāṭān’s. I’m bound to say, that’d been a dark bend in the career of André Håkansson; without a doubt, the day the true meaning of fear was carven into his soul, if you understand me.
But now, that black stare was come again. Closer, closer—hard-by! Creeping ’round to the back of the wain! Right to where I could sniff its master’s sooty stench! Uwooaah!? screamed I into the inner depths! He’s here! He’s right here!! Eyes, nose, fangs and all! Couching directly outside my hidey-bush! Staring with all menace at the bookhouse!!
This was jolly thick. I was really in the soup now, with the spoon descending to serve me up to the maw of the Dark Prince. No! It can’t end like this! Don’t move a tittle, André! Don’t squeak a single squawk! Else it’s down into the Deuce’s tum with you!
As soundlessly as I could manage, I then shoved the fingers into the Håkansson gob, and in gripping desperation, restrained the teeth from chattering like a woodpecker with a grudge. I next sensed the old gizzard twisting in a somersault, sending today’s breakfast back up with the thrill of a volcano. But that, too, I cheesed with a timely exertion of the larynx. And left without breath all that while, the mouth dried to a scorching desert, and the whole frame moistened to a cold jungle.
Dash it, I tell you! Dash it all! How could I’ve been so fat, so full of myself! So certain the Håkansson chin had grown a stubble of wit at last! But nay! Think one way, and things all push off in the other, what? Drat! Oh—and that blasted wain! I ought never’ve bothered with the bally old thing! Better to have left it stewing under the sun, “weapses” aboard be dashed!
Aa—agh!! So near! Too near! Śāṭān! How his presence sears the soul! Curses, cankers, codswallop! No helping it, then—but to keep at it! That’s right, André! Stay hidden! It’s pie, what! But could I? Me? From Śāṭān? The slayer of armies? The chewer of bowels? The sort of bloke to send his blade goring through any wisp of hostility that so much as tickled his hackles!? Nay…! I can’t! Impossible! This is it! I’m dead! Goodbye! Tinkerty-tonk!
No… hold it! Just stick to the plan, André! Keep calm… and quiet! And concealed! Also, what’s this about “hostility”!? I haven’t got any for him! No, not a smit! Why, I just can’t stick him at any price! That’s all! Dump us in different baskets and I’m a happy egg! Right-ho, André! No thoughts! Bean empty! Become an egg! A stone! A wayside pebble! That’s your speciality! Your style! The way you’ve lived your whole life, what!? Yes, there we are! There’s a good fellow! Just like that! If he turns this way, you know what to say! “What-ho, what-ho! Never mind about me! I’m just a rock! Pip pip! Toodeloo!”
And so, I did as the captain ordered. The joints locked. The lungs cheesed. The stone sat.
…And after what seemed an eternity in the pits of Dis, I witnessed Śāṭān, like a leaf to wind, beetle off and vanish from view.
Mercy. What a waterfall it was, let me tell you, that crashed over the gaunt and wrinkled Håkansson soul. Poisonous despair washed away; crisp and fruity respair reconstituted the tissues. I felt a revived and forgiven soul, what? But wait—just to make absolutely certain, I tossed back and peeped out again at the bookhouse. And there, I discovered that a beastly row had broken out. Arrows were screaming, voices were flying, and the windows flickered with scrambling men. And down on the lawn was Śāṭān, making a mad dash through the raining arrowfire.
I pulled away. Relief resumed relieving. “Bwohahh!!” I burst. And dilating the larynx, I guzzled air by the oxen-load, sensing late what thin and flappy sacks the entire travail had turned my lungs into.
Good heavens. What a mess I felt. A steaming, sweating, panting, goggle-eyed ooze of a man. Well, you wouldn’t blame me, now would you? I’d already been served a lifetime’s dallop of dread back at that deuced mountain, don’t you know, only to just now have another helping or a hundred shoved down the old esophagus.
Anyway, I sat there shivering still. Hands, knees, lips, you name it; the whole frame absolutely vibrated. But yanked by curiosity, I went in for another ogle at the outside proceedings. Śāṭān was now nowhere to be seen, having evidently stormed the bookhouse like a bull after a winking heifer. His chum, the old bodyguard, was also busy with a bit of storming himself, having got going what I could only guess was a moment later.
I wondered this with a dubious brow. They weren’t keen on… evicting the residents, now were they? I mean to say, two versus ten, twenty? By the Deiva. The bloodlust of some coves, what? But after mere minutes of suspense and boggled observation, a hush fell about the place all of a sudden. Indeed, that was it. Things had fizzled out. The bookhouse had changed hands, as it were. Evil had won. Well, won over another evil, but there it is.
In a moment, Śāṭān came strutting out of the joint, followed by his animated broom of a mate. And then they were off, disappearing down west, I reckoned. Oh, dash it. Never mind about where they went. Whatever the deuce they were hatching, I wasn’t going to touch it with a ten-passūs pike. Absolutely not. No, I was perfectly pleased to stay hidden in this hidey-bush. In fact, I fancied never to set foot outside again.
Yes, that settles it. Henceforth would André Håkansson live out the rest of his days as a shrubbery. Right-ho. Pip pip, toodeloo.
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Notes
Passus
(Language: Latin; plural: passūs) A unit of measure used by the ancient Romans, taken from the length of a pace (2 steps). 1 metre is equal to 0.6757 of a passus. A passus, therefore, can be roughly equated to 1 and a half metres.
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