CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE RIVALS

Constable Lokemup and Spotty find their way along dark and ghostly passages towards Griselda.

“It's th-th-this way,” stammered Lucifer aka Spotty, pushing at the back door and watching it swing open. He and the strange policeman with an unbelievably appropriate name had made their way back to the University and were, at that moment, intent on entering it.

“You'd better lead the way,” decided Constable Lockemup. “I usually like to go first when there's danger, but I don't know the way,” he explained, glad, for once, that he had an excuse for self-preservation.

“Ok-k-kay,” hissed Spotty, wishing he was out in the woodland hugging a nice rugged oak tree and administering a sloppy French kiss onto its gnarled old bark. Any tree would have done, though he did have a fondness for a particularly rugged oak. He had even thought of proposing marriage to it until he met Griselda in her role as her own niece, and since then he'd been besotted with her more human and enticing flesh.

The corridor on the other side of the door was as shadowed as ever. It seemed, to Constable Lockemup, that the sun never dared take a peek in such a dark and dismal place lest its own fires be dimmed. And that may well have been the case, for the walls and as much of the interior they could see were ancient beyond belief.

“Keep c-c-close by,” whispered the tree-hugging student as he crept furtively along. “This university is dead old and some of these passages are ev-ev-even older. I heard it said that this one might even pre-date the b-b-battle of Hastings, and that was m-m-more than a thousand years ago!”

“If I was anywhere else than here I'd call it spooky,” muttered the policeman, brushing the trailing thread of a spider's web from his hair. “In fact, it is spooky,” he added. “I wonder if it's haunted?”

“I've h-h-heard tales,” whispered Lucifer.

“Tales?” asked Lockemup, who had a fondness for ghostly sagas and yarns of the supernatural.

“They do s-s-say the principal used to lock people down here if he thought they were bad or d-d-didn't work hard enough,” breathed Spotty. “I've heard it said that some actually d-d-died down here and their b-b-bones were never found. Maybe their g-g-ghosts wander to this day, looking for a way out of the darkness! But that was in the olden days, and things are better now. At least I hope they are.”

“What I don't understand is why anyone ever applies to come here in the first place,” said the constable quietly. “After all, it's off the beaten track and nobody I know has even heard of it. I asked in the village down the road and even the locals didn't seem to know anything about there being an actual university here. They say it's spooked so nobody comes near the place, and then if you ask more probing questions they go schtum, and stay quiet as little mice on the subject.”

“That's what I l-l-liked about it when I chose it, the insularity, the fact that n-n-not many people have heard of it. but I think I'm ch-ch-changing my mind,” replied Spotty. “There's quiet and there's ghostly and I don't like the idea of ghosts! I've never had m-m-many friends, you know. Even when I was y-y-young back home I was the one left out. That's why I t-t-took to h-h-hugging trees and getting to be one with nature. It filled a gap in my life, and I got to love it. There's something solid and eternal about a tree with a good heart. You can feel it in the sap.” He stared earnestly at Lockemup, and sighed. “Then when I started applying to U-u-universities and saw that this one had a t-t-tree-hugging club I knew it was the right place for me!”

Constable Lockemup paused and looked at the spotty youth thoughtfully. “Is everyone here like you?” he asked. “I mean, not necessarily stammering or stuttering or spotty with a penchant for cuddling trees, but isolated and friendless, and do they end up here because it offers a ray of hope in their otherwise dark and monotonous lives?”

“Hey! I'm n-n-not that bad!” protested the tree hugger. “I might be a bit sad and lonely sometimes and I might not know much about l-l-ladies and their un-un-underwear, but I'm not completely friendless. There's G-g-griselda!”

“Ah, the lovely Griselda,!” sighed Constable Lockemup. “I was her private policeman when she was Prime Minister, you know, and I got on great with the young woman she calls her niece, though I know better than most who she really is!”

“Griselda is young!” protested the younger man. “She's not into politics or pr-pr-prime minstery things! She's a t-t-teenager who wears very n-n-naughty skirts that turn a man's mind into j-j-jelly!”

Constable Lockemup grinned. “Judge her when you know her better,” he said, hollowly. “I've known her for quite some time, and I reckon I know more about her than does anyone.”

But Spotty's mind was off on a track of its own. “She's so pretty and young,” he whispered, “H-h-have you seen those eyes? Deep, they are, like w-w-windows into her very soul. And her lips, luscious lips just made to be kissed! And she wears that little t-t-tartan skirt that drives me demented! Every time I look at her I get a … you know what in my pants...”

The policeman shook his head, not sadly but certainly not happily either. He had known what it was like to be hooked by Griselda, and at the same time he knew quite a lot about her. But this youth, this ignorant child, knew virtually nothing, just that she had good legs that she showed off by wearing an appropriately brief skirt. And that choice of outfit didn't leave him unmoved, either: he was only too aware of that!

“Let's get a move on,” he whispered, “And hush: I think I hear voices.”

“I thought I h-h-heard something too,” breathed Spotty in the shadowed darkness

The two of them crept on. The shadows darkened as they got further from the light, until the only illumination was an eerie glow and its eerier shadows that seemed to emanate from the rocky walls themselves. And there was the distant rumble of what may have been voices: it was hard to tell. Everything gained its own echo, every whisper, every footfall, every tiny sound, and it was almost impossible to say where and how the rumbling noise originated.

But it grew louder as they went on. Spotty was still in the lead, but he had hardly ever been down there before and was already uncertain of the way. His problem was it wasn't a single corridor but what seemed to be a whole network of passages that criss-crossed each other. And to add to his confusion, some seemed to be going upwards and others seemed to be going downwards. And they all had about them the texture of long years in darkness, of age, of the tortured night.

“I think we should make for the noises,” whispered Constable Lockemup when they paused, obviously lost. “I've decided that they're probably voices, and not far away at that.”

“I think I'm scared,” breathed the student. “It's horrible down here! I wish I was somewhere else, anywhere else, maybe with my arms round a dirty great oak tree with the wind blowing through my hair and acorns falling all around me.”

Constable Lockemup sighed. “And I wish I was back on my beat in Swanspottle, arresting Thomas the Greek for selling watered-down beer or cycling past Griselda's cottage with the fragrance from her cauldron filling my lungs with magic! But you're not out there with Mr Oak and I'm not in Swanspottle, and if I read things right my very favourite woman needs our help!”

“You mean Griselda?” asked Spotty.

“Of course I do! I'm sorry and all that, young man, but Griselda most certainly isn't the woman you think she is. Not at all! But I'll let her explain that to you if we ever get her safe. Now come on, I think we're almost there.”

“I th-th-think she's beautiful,” sighed the younger man, and together they rounded a craggy old corner and stood stock still, and silent, as they took in the scene in front of them.

There stood Griselda, older than ever and dressed all in black, but quite decidedly Griselda, and in front of her was a green and somewhat slimy-looking toad, and that toad, that amphibian with its slitty eyes, seemed to be capable of understanding speech! It was gazing at her, and the expression on its reptilian face was one of loathing mixed with fear.

Griselda was standing and staring somewhat scornfully at it.

“I'm just behind you,” she told it. “Now you just behave yourself, do what I order, and all will be well for you!”

The expression on the toad's face remained beautiful to behold, but there wasn't enough time to enjoy the scene.

“That's what you think, witch!” came a voice from the shadows opposite to where the student and the policeman stood, and they could see, both of them, that it was Professor Stroggleoff holding, in one hand, what could only possibly be looked on as a rather spiky magic wand, and dribbling copiously onto the hard rocky floor as if he was anticipating a rather special meal.