7. The Terrible Triplets

THE HIDDEN FOREST - 7

Despite their diminutive size, there was nothing charming or amusing about the so-called triplets. And as Davey cast his eyes over them he wondered how it was that three living beings could be so identical down to the least detail including a mole on each of their noses. Even a skin blemish was triplicated, and that seemed to be an impossibility in nature.

“Blondeau wants you and what Blondeau wants, Blondeau gets,” they said to him and Paul, their voices so synchronised it was hard to believe the words came from three separate mouths.

“Follow me!” they barked, and in order to show they meant business they produced gold-plated pea-shooters.

“Oh dear,” murmured Granny Glamm to the triplets, “be careful, sirs, we don’t want any blood this early in the day.”

“They get what they earn,” replied the three tiny figures in spooky unison. “It’s what Master Blondeau created us for, to make sure that his orders are obeyed, and obeyed they will be!”

“Where did you think we should go?” asked Davey in his best policeman-on-duty voice, giving the impression he was going to come forth with a ‘hello, hello, hello, what have we here’, speech at any moment.

“This way!” ordered the triplets, and together they aimed missiles from their pea-shooters at Davey’s face. “And that’s to show we mean business!” they added. Before he could reply or indicate that he’d learned a mighty painful lesson the three pushed at the back of his legs so that he was obliged to stagger forwards, rubbing his face and noting smears of blood where the pea-shooter missiles had struck.

“We’ll have to see what the lads at the nick will make of this,” he grunted, careful not to be too loud, “and no doubt they’ll find nice cosy cell for little these monsters when we get back to Brumpton.”

It was then that Paul and Davey realised that they were totally out of control and being propelled towards the porch and its open door. Then, after stumbling on a well-worn step, they tumbled into what must have been a glamorous porch in its heyday. But that was a century or more earlier and now it was scruffy, dusty and interlaced with generations of spider’s webs.

Inside the porch, which besides being drab was a sizeable room, they found themselves facing the main entrance door to the manor house, and that door itself was an ancient wooden monstrosity held together, it seemed, by old rusted bolts that gave it a menacing appearance, with streams of dried rust like antediluvian dust falling from them. Paul muttered that he’d seen doors like that on old black and white horror films, and not any one of them led to anything other than a nightmare.

“Ope!” ordered the triplets, addressing the door as if it was a sentient being, still in such close harmony that they sounded as if they were using a single set of vocal chords between them. At the sound of their voice the ancient door creaked and shook slightly, but stubbornly remained closed.

It was the turn of that door to receive projectiles from three identically aimed pea-shooters, and as they struck its worn and tarnished surface it seemed to Davey that the door actually grunted ‘ouch’ as if it was aware of suddenly being pricked by minuscule missiles.

“Ope!” repeated the trio, and this time as well as shuddering the door slowly and, as if in pain, swung open. Its hinges squealed and howled as if protesting that it was too weary to obey the commands from three whiskery dwarves, but with geriatric reluctance it swung open.

The two prisoners, for that is how they felt they might be, were propelled through the door into a huge hall. To eyes accustomed to a bright morning outside, it was dark in there, for the windows were small and, truth to tell, in need of a good window-cleaner. Scattered, seemingly randomly on the floor were several ancient buckets, made, apparently, of wood and clearly containing liquids, probably water, because some of them had filthy fluids oozing through splits.

The smell was worse than musty. It smelled as though there might be dead flesh decomposing in murky corners, and Paul felt like vomiting, but he was certain that his vast stomach was totally empty and vomiting was therefore out of the question.

“This is terrible,” murmured Davey.

“But in a way it feels like home,” added Paul, “it most definitely has that, how shall I describe it, Fairweather feel to it, as if I could easily get used to it if I had to.”

Davey looked at him and shook his head. “If that’s how you see it then you have my heart-felt sympathy,” he muttered, “and looking at that roof, I get the impresssion that it might fall on top of us at any moment.”

“Move!” barked the triplets, and poked Davey in the bottom with three pea-shooter missiles.

“There’s no need to do that!” he barked, his voice morphing from sounding very much like cracking glass to something like that of an authoritarian policeman, but the change didn’t have one iota of influence on the trio of terrors.

“Move,” the repeated, and unable to do anything else Davey and Paul stumbled into the hall.

The focus of everything seemed to be something at the far end, and they found themselves staggering towards it, still being cruelly guided by painful missiles.

“Danged rats!” muttered Granny Glamm, who had been silent up to that moment, though Paul was sure he heard her snigger when the triplets assaulted Davey’s trousers with their missiles. The reason for what might have seemed like a meaningless comment was obvious straight away, because a rat had obviously dislodged itself from the thatch high above them and fallen squealing to the floor, where it bounced once, then scurried away, limping.

“You’ll need to get that fixed if you want to move in,” muttered Davey to Paul, “can’t have things like that falling onto your head whenever they feel like it.”

“I feel suddenly sick,” mumbled Paul, “I never did like rodents.”

“Move!” urged the triplets, ignoring the rat as if the sudden appearance of such creatures was commonplace.

At the far end was a large glass jar, the size and shape of an old-fashioned a dustbin, upturned, with its open end on the floor. And sitting on a golden throne inside it, protected from dust and falling nasties and whatever else might be in the air, was the oddest thing Davey had ever seen or even dreamed of seeing, not even in a nightmare.

It may have been a tiny man, or it could have been some kind of ugly monkey, or there again it could have been anything with the capability of looking ugly. He (we’ll assume it was male because it probably had to be something and was clearly too ugly to be female) was sitting on a chair that looked as if it might be made of woven strands of pure 24 carat gold. He was perched on a luxurious cushion which gave every impression of being made of some precious fabric stuffed, for comfort, to the point of almost bursting so that he appeared to be sitting on a giant pimple. And the face of the figure inside the jar was covered with ginger downy hair except for his mouth, which was blood red, and eyes, which were azure blue and sharp as … very sharp things.

On his head and on a mass of gingery curls upon was perched a finely wrought silver crown encrusted with dark red rubies and huge emeralds. The whole thing gave the appearance of unadulterated luxury, but on a really small scale, and isolated from its environment by the clear glass jar which, apparently, nobody thought of cleaning now and sgain.

“Master,” whispered the triplets, “we have brought the prisoners for your decision. Which of us is to feed off their flesh? Can my triplet chums and I drink of their blood? Is there any greater bounty on this world than that?”

The figure in the bell jar smiled, and two rats falling from above splattered on the glass, smearing it with blood and making the grotesque little monstrosity duck and wince.

© Peter Rogerson, 08.11.20