The Cornerstone, page 20
‘Max!’ Merelie warned, coming up behind him. ‘Get out of the way!’
He held up an arm. ‘Leave this to me, ma’am,’ he said. The accent was supposed to be a macho Texas drawl, but sounded more like Foghorn Leghorn with a head cold.
Max stepped out into the garden - it was still drizzling for anyone keeping note - and sauntered towards the Wordsmiths.
The blast wave of energy that came rolling at him rivalled the one Merelie and Imelda had used against Elijah.
Merelie felt it coming and knew Max Bloom was dead.
However, Max smacked the blast to one side with a contemptuous flick of the wrist and gave her a cheeky wink.
This was so cool penguins could have mated on it.
Rather less cool was the fact the diverted energy wave hit Charlie’s Austin Montego, driving it through the rotting garage doors.
Inside, the car scraped along the concrete, sparks flying. This caused a leaky diesel canister to catch fire and explode. The Montego’s half full petrol tank joined in on the act and the whole lot went skywards with an apocalyptic roar.
Max stared dumbfounded at the destruction he’d caused.
Mum’s going to kill me.
In a poorly judged moment of hilarity, Fergil cackled out loud when he saw the look of horror on Max’s face.
This was noticed, digested and steps were taken.
Fergil and his companion were picked up by invisible hands, Max flexing his word shaping muscles. He smartly knocked them together three times, rendering both completely insensible and let them drop to the ground.
Merelie, eyes wide and stunned, came to stand in front of him.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘You… you… ‘ She pointed at the comatose pair, the burning garage and back at Max.
‘Yeah… looks like you were right,’ he said, offering her an apologetic smile. ‘Don’t expect lightening bolts to start shooting out of my arse, though.’
- 8 -
Nugget wasn’t dead.
As a massive barrel of a dog, built of hard muscle underneath all that fat, he’d been in many scrapes over his eight years and survived all of them.
From falling down steep river banks to colliding with boys on pushbikes - Max had come off worse in that incident - he’d put his body through the mill on countless occasions, as any self respecting big slobbery dog should.
Any animal that can survive mini-catastrophes like that and face down Biff the insane ginger tom must be as hard as nails. A little thing like being propelled across the kitchen floor by magic hasn’t got a chance of killing him.
Knocking him senseless for a bit? Indeed.
Killing him? Absolutely not.
As Charlie staggered into the pantry, a dazed Nugget was quite contentedly munching on a mouldy potato.
Max ventured back into the kitchen, the shell-shocked Merelie in his wake.
‘Nugget!’ he shouted in delight, making his head hurt. The rush of Wordcraft was leaving his body and many aches and pains were now making themselves known in no uncertain terms.
Nugget saw him, broke free of Charlie and trotted over on wobbly legs, planting a paw in Max’s crotch.
The pain was almost worth it.
‘Never known a dog like it,’ Charlie said, wiping his eyes. ‘Good old Nuggie.’
Max patted the Labrador on the head and wiped masticated potato onto his jeans.
They all heard the sound of a car roaring up the driveway.
‘Police?’ Max said.
‘Let’s go see,’ Charlie replied.
He opened the front door in time to see a lime green Fiat Punto come screeching to a halt in front of the porch.
Slumped in the passenger seat was a man with a toilet bowl on his head.
Imelda Warrington - looking like she’d been on a date with The Terminator - got out of the driver’s side and gave Max a long, hard look. Her hair was a tangled mess, her clothes were covered in grass stains and mud.
‘What have you done now, Max Bloom?’ she demanded.
- 9 -
While Charlie Pearce ate his chocolate bourbon just before all hell broke loose in his front room, Imelda Warrington was once again faced with the spectre of Elijah, still possessed and hungry for vengeance.
Only this time she was alone.
Bugger.
‘Where’s the girl?’ he snarled.
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘I will devour your mind.’
‘Oh yes, yes,’ she replied with contempt, and not a little bravado. ‘What is it the children say? What-evah.’
Discretion being the better part of valour, Imelda turned tail and ran into the rear garden. Elijah gave chase.
The librarian reached the middle of the lawn and shaped a bolt of power at the Arma.
If this had come from the newly appointed Wordsmith Max Bloom, Elijah might well have been occupying a different postcode, but Imelda had nowhere near that level of power, especially miles from the library.
Elijah shrugged off the attack and slammed into her, sending both sprawling into a nearby flower bed, his hands grasping at her throat.
It fast became a one-sided fight. He was a two hundred pound battle hardened soldier and she was… well, a librarian, for heaven’s sake.
As the air was choked out of her, Imelda desperately scrabbled around for something to defend herself with.
Peter Bloom liked gnomes.
This tells you virtually everything you need to know about his sense of humour. That and the fact he used toilet bowls to pot plants in.
Amanda Bloom was about as keen on gardening as a chronic hay fever sufferer, so the wide plot of land at the back of their house was all his to play with.
The gnome army had therefore built up over the years.
There were nineteen of them now.
Some were the old fashioned type: sitting on mushrooms, holding a fishing rod - you know the sort. Others were a lot stranger - including gnome versions of Darth Vader, Abraham Lincoln and Gene Simmonds, the bass player from Kiss.
Imelda grabbed the first heavy thing to hand and hit Elijah round the head with a surprisingly accurate gnome rendition of cartoon favourite Captain Caveman.
The big man grunted and fell to one side, allowing her time to catch her breath.
She scrabbled away, getting to her feet as he launched at her again, blood pouring from where she’d belted him.
Putting the tall rotary washing line between her and Elijah, Imelda tried to gather enough Wordcraft to put him down for good.
The weak bolt she sent hit the Dweller in the face, making him stumble into the washing line, where he became entangled.
Anyone who’s had to wrestle with one of these monstrous pieces of equipment will testify that if you’re not careful, you can get caught fast in the thing worse than a fly in a spider web. The nylon strings get under your arms and snagged on your clothing, while the metal poles always make a bee line for your head, giving you a nasty whack between the eyes.
Being an evil creature from the void doesn't prevent this.
Elijah floundered as his arms plunged into the line, the heavy leather ties on his tunic getting snagged in the nylon web.
Backing away, Imelda noticed a dilapidated swing set sitting at the back of the garden, rusting itself into the earth.
She took a deep breath and began to pull in as much Wordcraft as she could muster in the brief time she had, while the Dweller struggled to get free.
She focused on hooking the swing set with her mind, clenched her fist and attempted to send it flying at him.
It was a large and heavy contraption however, so ‘flying’ isn’t quite what happened. It did meander like a happy drunk across the grass though, gathering just enough speed to clout Elijah, ripping the washing line from its concrete base as the whole lot crashed to the grass.
For a second it looked like this had done the trick. The indestructible creature lay still.
Given the Dweller’s resiliance to everything that had been thrown at it so far though, it came as no surprise when it sat Elijah’s body up and extricated itself from the swing set / washing line combo with a series of grunts and growls.
‘Oh for crying out loud,’ groaned Imelda.
She hobbled towards to the house and had made it as far as the conservatory when the Arma caught up, spun her round and slammed her against the glass.
‘Enough games,’ it slobbered. ‘Tell me where the girl is.’
‘I have no idea!’
The thing grabbed her by the throat with one arm and studied her terrified expression.
‘Then you’re no use to me… time to eat.’
Thick, living smoke began pouring from his eyes.
Panic rose in Imelda’s chest as she kicked fruitlessly against him.
Despair swelled in her heart as the black smoke started to invade her mind.
Complete surprise poked her in the ribs as a toilet bowl dropped onto the Dweller’s head, finally ending the battle in her favour.
- 10 -
Shopping on a Saturday morning with an eleven year old girl is marginally more stressful than defusing a nuclear bomb.
The above statement would get wholehearted agreement from Amanda Bloom, who was at last returning home with her grumpy daughter from the hell that was the shopping precinct.
Monica was in a mood because she’d once again been denied the joy of owning her own pair of Ugg boots, in favour of badly needed school shoes. She was also fed up because her mother had dragged her round Tesco for an hour, picking up a few much needed essentials – including some migraine tablets.
Monica was really living up to the nickname Moan-ica right about now.
‘It’s not fair, I never get what I want,’ she pouted.
Amanda, who remembered the hundreds she’d spent on a Nintendo DS Lite for Monica’s birthday, chose to remain silent and grind her teeth as the car turned into Green Vale Road.
There was a puke green Fiat Punto parked outside the house.
It was in the space Amanda favoured, the one closest to the front door - a godsend when loaded down with six Tesco shopping bags.
Guaranteeing a visit to the dentist in the near future, she ground her teeth more and parked further along.
Monica leapt out of the car as soon as it came to a stop and flounced off towards the house.
‘Thanks for the help, my little ray of sunshine,’ Amanda said under her breath, lugging the shopping bags from the back seat.
As she locked the car Monica came back over, a scared look on her face.
‘There’s people in the garden, mum.’
‘What?’
‘People in the garden! A woman in a suit and a man dressed in leather. They look like they’re fighting!’
Amanda heard a loud clatter of metal; the sound of a rusty swing set hitting a nylon washing line.
‘Stay here,’ she ordered Monica.
Amanda hurried across the front garden and down the side of the house, slowing when she saw a bedraggled woman running towards her being chased by a reject from Iron Maiden.
Amanda winced as he slammed her into their conservatory.
Oh God, he’s going to kill her.
She was absolutely sure of it.
There was a sex fiend in her garden about to do horrible things to a defenceless woman - just like in that video she’d watched the day the crime prevention man had come in to work.
She had to do something!
The back garden didn’t offer much in the way of weaponry - either melee based or ballistic - but what it did have were several old toilets Peter amused himself planting flowers in. Most of these were full of dying or dead plants, but there was one near her feet that Peter had emptied out just before flying to Malaysia.
Three years of obsessive gym attendance finally paid off in a few seconds as Amanda heaved the toilet bowl into her arms, staggered over to the conservatory and rammed it down onto the attacker’s head, issuing a scream of sisterly rage as she did.
That about did it for the Dweller in Elijah’s body. It had been abused and beaten ever since it had arrived on this nasty little rock.
It’d been thrown across a library, trapped in a shrieking metal box with wheels, hit with a garden play set and finally… brained by an Armitage Shanks.
If there were ever a good time to give up the ghost, this was it.
Existing as a non-corporeal entity in a cold, tractless void may have its drawbacks, but you were never likely to get a toilet dropped on your head.
Imelda rubbed her throat and tried to catch her breath while Amanda stepped back to let the pole-axed Arma crash to the ground.
‘Thank you,’ Imelda gasped.
‘Er… not a problem,’ Amanda replied. ‘Are you ok?’
‘Oh yes, I should say so.’ Imelda tried to tuck her errant hair back. ‘Your timing was perfect.’
‘Who is he?’ Amanda looked back down at toilet head.
Imelda had told quite a few lies today to keep the locals in the dark and was ready for this one. ‘I have no idea. I was merely walking along the road when this man jumped out from behind a bush and attacked me! I ran for dear life and ended up in your back garden.’
That sounded plausible.
‘Did you hit him with my daughter’s swings?’ Amanda’s eyes flicked over to the ruined metal swing set.
‘Um… yes, yes I did. You know what they say… in times of crisis you get a surge of strength you never knew you had!’ This was less plausible, but she was on a roll, so what the hell.
‘I think we should call the police,’ Amanda suggested.
‘Yes! Good idea. Why don’t you run in and give them a bell?’
‘Will you be alright while I do it?’
‘Me? Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ll watch this one until you get back. Wouldn’t want him getting away now, would we?’
‘No, of course not.’ Amanda wasn’t sure the sex fiend would be going anywhere, but went off to make the call anyway.
The second she was out of sight, Imelda jumped into action.
The police were the last people she wanted to see again today and another incident involving her and Elijah wouldn’t look good, however much you tried to spin it. She had to get away from here as quickly as possible.
Dragging a large man with a toilet on his head is not an easy thing to do, especially when you’re a fifty two year old woman who’s been on the go for a while now, and could really do with a nice sit down and a cup of tea.
She managed it though, weaving what limited Wordcraft she could to lighten the load and help pull Elijah over to her Punto.
As she was ramming him into the passenger seat, Amanda re-appeared.
‘What are you doing? The police are on their way.’
‘Excellent! Good work.’
‘What are you doing with him?’
It would have taken a couple of hours to manufacture a believable lie for this one, so Imelda didn’t bother.
‘Look Mrs Bloom - ‘ she began, then cursed herself.
‘How do you know my name?’
‘I know your son.’
‘Max? How do you know him?’
‘Look, I don’t have time to explain, but this man isn’t someone the police can deal with and I have to leave right now before they get here. I promise to pay for the damage to your garden.’
Amanda looked worried. ‘What’s my son got to do with this? Is he alright? Do you know where he is? I haven’t seen him all day. Have you seen him today? Is he alright?’
Imelda put her hands on the woman’s shoulders. ‘Max is fine, my dear, I have no doubt of that,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you more but I really do have to be going.’
She moved round to the driver’s side, jumped in the car, started the engine and looked back out past toilet features.
‘I promise I’ll get Max to ring you once I see him!’
Amanda didn’t answer, just stood there in shock.
A small girl that Imelda supposed was Max’s sister joined her by the kerb.
‘Why has that man got a loo on his head, mummy?’
Imelda didn’t wait to hear the answer.
She stuck the Punto in gear and drove away, holding her arm out to stop the top heavy Arma whacking her on the shoulder with his new porcelain headpiece.
If I were a teenager with a clever mouth and a knack for getting into trouble, where would I be?
Imelda turned onto the main road and saw a column of smoke rising to the north above the suburban tree line, a mile or so away.
Ah ha!
- 11 -
‘None of this is my fault!’ Max protested.
Imelda glared at him, indicating she didn’t believe a word of it.
‘Aunt Emerelda, are you ok?’ Merelie asked.
‘Aunt Emerelda?’ Max said.
‘Yes, Mr Bloom, Merelie and I are related. I got this thankless job because her father doesn’t like it when his little sister argues with him.’
‘You’re going to have to explain that to me at some point,’ Merelie told her.
Charlie Pearce had been staring at Imelda for a few moments, trying to work out where he knew her from. It dropped into place when he’d mentally rearranged her hair into a neat bun and removed the mud and grass from her face.
‘Miss Warrington?’ he said in amazement.
Imelda studied him for a moment. ‘That copy of Catcher in the Rye is a week overdue, Charles.’
This was getting too much for Max.
‘Do you know her?’ he said to his grandfather.
‘Oh yes, we’ve had several stimulating verbal battles about the literature on offer in her place of employment,’ the old man said, with fond recollection in his eyes.
Max looked back at Imelda, who was scowling at him again.
‘I can do magic!’ he said with pride, feeling the need to add his own revelation to proceedings.
They were all aware of quite a crowd forming at the bottom of the driveway - pointing and staring at the house with its new flaming garage feature.
