Doctor Illuminatus (15 page)

Pip removed her earphones. The noise persisted. Perhaps, she thought, it was some game Tim and Sebastian were playing. Yet the sound coming from Tim’s room was now the low, insistent hum that one might hear in the cockpit of a Boeing 747-400 on autopilot. She turned to switch off the computer, catching a brief glimpse of her face reflected in her bedroom window.

But her face was superimposed over another’s. Above it was a black top hat, hair hanging down on either side in dreadlocks that shone as if they had been oiled.

Pip opened her mouth and screamed.

The face did not move, but one of the eyes winked at her.

She became conscious of feet running in the passage outside her bedroom door. Tim and Sebastian rushed in.

“What’s up, sis?” Tim asked.

Pip could do nothing but grab her brother’s arm and point at the window, another scream filling her mouth yet somehow not able to escape.

Tim followed her finger and exclaimed, “It’s Splice!”

He prized Pip’s hand off his arm. Her fingers were stiff with fear. Sebastian took her hand.

Moving towards the window, Tim shouted, “Splice! What do you think you’re doing? This is my sister’s bedroom. You can’t just . . .”

A hand appeared from below the window sill and, as if with extreme politeness, lifted the top hat. Splice’s skull had been caved in, the soft pinkish sponge of his brain exposed, blood trickling down the dreadlocks.

The scream escaped from Pip’s mouth, but it was not so much a piercing shriek as a squeak, such as a rabbit might make, trapped in a snare.

A bright light shone from somewhere in the distance. By it, Tim could see Splice was not alone. Hovering in the air behind him were the other hippies. Abby was just a disembodied head, the flesh of her neck hanging in ragged tatters. Reedy was grinning lewdly, his lips spattered with blood. Dark Horse held up the severed leg Tim had seen under the bush and was waving it as he might a club. Filomena, her hair disheveled like a grotesque halo around her face, held Starlight upside down by one leg, as a miscreant child might hold an unloved teddy bear.

The sound Pip had heard was that of Gazer grinding his teeth, which had been filed to points.

The light grew brighter and split into two beams, like brilliant halogen eyes in the darkness. They were rapidly approaching the house, moving fast across the field.

In an instant, the hippies were gone. The eyes moving towards the house were extinguished. All that was left was a small, nondescript moth scrabbling against the windowpane, attracted by Pip’s bedside lamp.

From downstairs came the sound of a door slowly opening, footsteps and a voice which called out, as if reciting a nursery rhyme, “We’re back! We’re back! It’s time to hit the sack. No time to take another tack. We’re off to hit the sack.”

Another voice said, “I hope you remembered not to touch the chicken.”

“Did you sleep well?” Mrs. Ledger asked Sebastian at breakfast the following morning.

“Yes, thank you very much, Mrs. Ledger,” Sebastian replied, casting Pip a sidelong glance. “It was much more comfortable than my normal bed.”

“Would you like me to drive you home?” Mrs. Ledger offered. “I shall be going into Brampton with Pip. I have some shopping to do and Pip has a doctor’s appointment later in the morning. I can easily drop you off.”

“It is most kind of you, Mrs. Ledger,” Sebastian said, “but I would not wish to inconvenience you.”

“You don’t have a bicycle,” she came back. “It must be a long walk to your home. And I assure you, it will not inconvenience me one . . .”

“We’re going fishing,” Tim butted in, rescuing the situation and bringing an end to his mother’s oblique inquisition.

Pip and her mother departed as soon as breakfast was over, leaving Tim and Sebastian in the kitchen. Together, they cleared away the breakfast plates and boxes of cereal.

“Why does de Loudéac keep on targeting the house?” Tim mused. “Is it you he’s after?”

“I think not,” Sebastian said. “He knows of me, of my whereabouts. It would be much easier for him to catch me off my guard away from the house, which is where he knows I have my greatest power. For de Loudéac to come here is, from his point of view, foolish.”

“Is he trying to scare us out?”

“Again, I think not. We do not hide here. We frequently leave this sanctuary. He has plentiful opportunity.”

“Is it, like,” Tim considered, “he’s sending in his troops to spy on us?”

“Once more, I think not. Why use his cohorts? He need dispatch but one mouse to be his spy. One ant. No,” Sebastian said, “he wants something, yet I cannot assess what it is.”

“How can we find out?”

“With ease,” Sebastian replied, and he smiled. “This morning, I think we shall go a-hunting. Do you possess a bicycle?”

Ten minutes later, the house locked up and the alarm system activated, they set off for Brampton. Tim rode his mountain bike while Sebastian took Mr. Ledger’s racing cycle. All down the drive and for the two hundred meters of road, Sebastian weaved from one side of the road to the other, much to Tim’s dismay.

“You can ride a bike, can’t you?” he asked Sebastian nervously, all the while listening out for any approaching vehicle.

“I have been known to,” came the reply, “but it is not a mode of transportation with which I am familiar nor have any great experience.”

By the time they had covered a mile, however, Sebastian was more steady and coped well even when a large truck overtook them.

“If we meet my mother in town . . .” Tim began as they freewheeled down a gentle slope in the road.

“You need not be worried on that account,” Sebastian reassured him. “She will not see us.”

They reached the town, and Sebastian pulled up outside a garage.

“We shall leave the bicycles here,” he announced, dismounting and heading for a huge pile of old tires waiting to be taken away for disposal.

Tim was worried. “What if somebody finds the bikes and nicks them?”

“Nicks?”

“Steals, pilfers, filches, walks off with . . .”

“They will be quite secure,” Sebastian said, disappearing round the corner of the tire mound.

Tim followed him, leaning his mountain bike against his father’s racer.

“What next?” he asked.

“Our plan now is to seek out de Loudéac in the town. This will not be hard. I believe I will be able to locate him, for I have come to know his ways.”

“And we can always follow our noses,” Tim added wryly.

“In a manner of speaking,” Sebastian replied. “In fact, we shall follow my nose.” He stood with his feet apart, his hands on his hips. “And now for our disguise.”

“Disguise!” Tim said. “What disguise?”

“It is time, Tim,” Sebastian answered, “that you undertake the experience of shape-shifting.”

At this, Sebastian put his hand on Tim’s shoulder and murmured something in what Tim assumed was Latin. He felt slightly odd for a few seconds, but it passed.

Sebastian had vanished. Tim looked around, wondering what he should do next.

A Jack Russell terrier appeared from behind the tire stack. It was white with brown markings.

“If you contrive to call me Patch or Spot,” the dog declared, “I shall be mortified. Try to think of something more original.”

Tim’s mouth fell open.

“Come, Tim,” the dog continued. “You are to take me for a walk around the town. I shall direct us. You just follow. Now, attach the leash to my collar and we shall be on our way.”

Although he had no idea how it had got there, Tim found he was holding a dog lead and did as he was told.

“It
is
you, isn’t it?” Tim ventured. “I mean, like, you’re Sebastian.”

“Indeed,” replied the Jack Russell. Its lips lifted in a canine smile.

“This,” Tim said, “could be fun.”

Sebastian the terrier tugged on the lead and they set off. Looking back to check the bicycles were safe, Tim could see no sign of them whatsoever.

They had not gone fifty meters along the pavement before, ahead of them, Pip and her mother stepped out of the baker’s shop. Tim’s step faltered. The terrier looked up.

“Don’t be concerned. Walk on,” the dog said, although the words sounded more like a canine snarl than a sentence.

“Where to next, Mum?” Tim heard his sister ask. “The greengrocer’s,” his mother decided. “They sell bedding plants.”

With that, they turned towards Tim and Sebastian the Jack Russell. Playing the part, the dog started wagging his tail furiously, tugging Tim in the direction of his mother and sister. He steeled himself for the encounter.

Sebastian uttered a little yelp of greeting.

“Hello,” Pip said, bending to stroke him. Then, looking straight at Tim, she asked, “What’s his name?”

What on Earth, Tim thought, was going on? Here he was, walking through Brampton with a dog on a lead and neither his sister nor — of all people — his mother saw fit to take him to task for it.

Flustered and nonplussed, he replied, “Patch.” He was tempted to add
What’s the matter with you two?
but resisted it.

The dog cast him an askance look, jumped up on his hind legs and gave Pip a quick lick on her chin.

“He’s certainly a happy little chap,” Tim’s mother said. “Come along, Pip.”

Pip gave the dog a final rub behind its ear and went off after her mother. It was then Tim caught sight of himself in the baker’s shop window. He was a middle-aged, white-haired lady in a prim, two-piece suit and a white blouse with a rhinestone brooch shaped like a butterfly pinned to it.

“Patch!” the dog muttered with disdain.

“Never mind your name,” Tim replied. “Do I really look like ... like a retired primary-school headmistress?”

“If you think you look thus,” Sebastian said, “then thus you look and thus will others see you. Now, let us continue our hunt.”

“You could at least have made me into a man,” Tim complained, but Sebastian was already at the end of his lead, tugging hard.

They reached the post office. Coming down the steps was a shabbily dressed old man walking with the aid of an adjustable cane, a scratched leather shopping bag in the other hand. For just a moment, Sebastian stiffened. He need not have bothered. Tim caught the unpleasant and now all-too-identifiable whiff of sweat, urine and cheesy feet.

The old man stood by the letter box, surveying the street, taking in every detail with his shifty eyes. To kill time and disguise their presence, Sebastian cocked his leg against a bus-stop sign.

Not believing himself to be not under observation, de Loudéac set off along the pavement. He walked with a shuffling gait, leaning on the stick, his back slightly hunched, but his head up, facing forward, looking hastily from side to side every dozen steps.

Tim and Sebastian followed at a distance, Tim pausing to look in a shop window every now and then, Sebastian sniffing at lampposts, a black-and-gold trash bin and a terra-cotta trough full of flowers outside Curlers ’n’ Clippers, the ladies’ hairdresser’s salon.

They had to stop longer than usual by the flower display as de Loudéac was studying the headlines at a newsstand. Tim, concentrating on their quarry, did not notice the hairdresser glaring at him through the window, nor did he see the door open.

“Excuse me, madam,” the hairdresser said.

Not realizing he was being addressed, Tim continued to watch de Loudéac surreptitiously.

“I said,” the hairdresser repeated starchily, “excuse me, madam.”

Tim turned, to be confronted by a woman in a pink pinafore, with an array of hair clips attached to the neck strap.

Sebastian started to lift his hind leg.

“I would be most grateful,” the hairdresser continued tartly, “if you would take your dog elsewhere. Those flowers cost a lot of money.”

Sebastian let out a tiny squirt of urine and lowered his leg.

“Well, really!” the hairdresser exclaimed with disgust. “Some people have no respect for the property of others.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Tim apologized. “I’m afraid my mind was elsewhere. Patch! You naughty boy!”

The hairdresser turned on her heels in a huff. Tim coughed. Had that really been his voice? All fruity, upper-crust and plummy . . .

“You should control your dog better,” whined the Jack Russell, and he tugged on the leash.

De Loudéac went a short way, then turned into the butcher’s shop.

“Go in and see what he’s buying,” Sebastian growled. Tim tied the lead to a hook in the butcher’s shop wall, beneath a notice that read,
Please leave your dog

here,
and went in. Sebastian sat and scratched behind his right ear with his right hind leg.

De Loudéac was standing at the counter, purchasing two lambs’ hearts. When he turned to leave, he looked Tim straight in the eye.

“Good morning,” Tim greeted him cheerily, glad the smell of the butcher’s shop went some way towards disguising the old man’s vile cocktail of body odors.

“It is for some,” de Loudéac muttered, and he walked to the door where he stood, counting his change.

“What can I get for you, madam?” It was the butcher, wearing a white apron and a straw boater with a blue hatband.

Tim had to think fast. He had no money on him and he did not want to buy anything — yet to make no purchase, having entered the shop, would seem suspicious.

“Do you have any marrow bones?” he inquired. “For my dog,” he added hastily.

“I’m sure we can find something for him,” the butcher replied and, reaching into a tray under the counter, produced a huge bone. “Here we are. That’ll keep him busy for a while. Shall I wrap it or,” he looked over Tim’s shoulder to where Sebastian was looking in from the door, not a meter from de Loudéac’s feet, “would he like it straight away?”

“Straight away,” said Tim, not wanting to be hampered by having to carry a bone down the street in a plastic bag.

De Loudéac had still not gone. Tim had to stall. “How much is that?” he asked, ready to declare he had forgotten his purse or left his handbag in the baker’s, at home, in his car.

“No charge, madam,” the butcher replied.

In a mirror behind the butcher, on which was engraved
B. Whitton & Son: Purveyors of Fine Meats & Poultry
, Tim was relieved to see de Loudéac step out into the street.