Pure Dead Brilliant Part 6

"Paxshhhh?" he mumbled through a mouthful of croissant, spraying his quilt with crumbs.

"That's why I'm here," Pandora said. "I wanted to say sorry for being so . . . unhelpful the other day."

"Mmmfle," said t.i.tus indistinctly. "But I was being pretty foul too. Gloating and rubbing it in . . . after I'd stopped trying to tell you about the weird e-mails."

Pandora reached out for a slice of toast. Suddenly she was starving. "If I promise to listen properly this time, would you tell me again and in return I'll tell you what I've found in Mrs. McLachlan's bedroom?"

t.i.tus laid down his fork with a shudder. Since reading the haunted e-mails he had endeavored to put as much distance between them and himself as possible. Attempting to pull down a psychic shutter and forget what he'd seen was proving to be impossible, and last night's nightmares had more than demonstrated the futility of trying to resist. To his embarra.s.sment he realized he'd picked up his fork again and was gripping it like a weapon. Using it to spear a tomato and pop it whole into his mouth, t.i.tus found himself dribbling juice and seeds down his chin as he began explaining what he thought had happened in the map room.

Ten minutes later they stood shivering in front of t.i.tus's laptop. The map room, untouched since t.i.tus had fled from it the day before, looked so ordinary that for a moment he wondered if he'd dreamt the whole thing. It was cold, but then the subterranean map room was always cold, which was why the family rarely ventured into it, preferring the relative comforts of the library or kitchen or any of the other ninety-four rooms on offer inside StregaSchloss. Here the walls were lined with maps that dated back to times when such charts were drawn and colored by draftsmen whose apparent disdain for measurements, geography, and general accuracy brought a whole new meaning to the phrase "artistic license." The older maps sought to disguise their inaccuracies with embellishments designed to draw the eye away from their lack of cartographic correctness. Strange sea serpents boiled out of oceans, lochs bore intricate legends of "here beye monsteres," and round exquisitely limned mountain peaks, dragons flew in tight formations. The most beautiful of these maps hung over the empty fireplace in a ma.s.sive gilt frame. As family history had it, this had been drawn on vellum by an ancestor whose pa.s.sionate love of hot-air ballooning explained the relative accuracy of his draftsmanship.

While t.i.tus attempted to resuscitate his ailing laptop, Pandora peered at the perfect postage-stamp-sized rendering of StregaSchloss and surroundings, noting the presence of a formal garden leading down to what must have been Lochnagargoyle. Unable to make out the tiny words written below those indicating the Kyle of Mhoire Ochone, she turned round just in time to see the laptop spring back to life.

t.i.tus flinched and turned in his seat to clutch at her arm. "It's still there," he said, the pitch of his voice betraying the suffocating terror that had overtaken him as the computer rebooted.

"What does that wee envelopy thing mean?" asked Pandora, adding, "The one that's flashing on and off?"

"It-it-it's telling me there's more," groaned t.i.tus. "More mail. Please, Pan, let's go. Leave it. This was a really bad idea. . . ." But even as he spoke his fingers were automatically straying to the mouse pad, and before he could stop himself he'd moved the cursor on top of the envelope icon and pressed ENTER.

YOU HAVE MAIL.

the dialogue box informed him, this information immediately replaced by another dialogue box stating that the laptop was helpfully downloading not only the incoming mail but also an application that would a.s.sist in deciphering it.

"I feel sick," whimpered t.i.tus, closing his eyes and trying to stand up.

"Oh look-isn't that clever, t.i.tus, what's it doing now?" Immune to her brother's feelings of dread, Pandora was glued to the image appearing on the screen. "It's a film clip," she said, nudging t.i.tus with her elbow. "Move over, I can't see properly."

Onscreen a t.i.tle bar scrolled past with the words "Forthcoming Attractions" in a Gothic font.

"Wha-?" t.i.tus's mouth fell open as the screen filled with an image at once vaguely familiar but also utterly alien. "The Auchenlochtermuchty cemetery," he said, his voice flat and colorless. "Like my dream from last night-"

The t.i.tle bar vanished, and the sound of tires on gravel filled the map room. Transfixed, t.i.tus watched as onscreen . . .

. . . a line of black cars drew up at the gates to the Auchenlochtermuchty cemetery and halted, engines idling, while the driver of the first vehicle negotiated with the gatekeeper. Removing his woolly hat, presumably out of respect for the dead, the old man looked up at the darkening sky.

"It's gaunny chuck it doon," he observed, throwing his weight against the rusty iron gates, pushing them open with agonizing slowness to the accompaniment of a threnody of squealing metal. This done, he latched them open against stone pillars and stood back, head bowed, allowing the funeral cortege access to the graves.

"Awfy sad, yon," he muttered to his shoes. "Poor wee bairns, left withoot a faither . . ."

"Gosh, t.i.tus," Pandora breathed. "Aren't computers just amazing?"

The first car rolled past, bearing its cargo of two funeral directors and their boxed client. In its wake, one of the many wreaths of white lilies piled on top of the coffin bounced out of the hea.r.s.e and onto the road. The gatekeeper sneezed and casually wiped his nose on his sleeve as the second car edged through the gates.

Onscreen, the image cut to the interior of this vehicle.

"Disgusting old man," muttered a woman sitting in the rear. "Here, give him this, would you?" She produced a tissue from a box on her lap and pa.s.sed it to the driver. Sitting back in her seat, she glared out of the tinted gla.s.s windows at the rows of tombstones that stretched ahead of her up the hill, those farthest away merging with the gloom of a midwinter afternoon sky. Sitting beside her, a younger woman gave a stifled sob and began to weep in earnest.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Damp, pull yourself together."

"DAMP?" shrieked Pandora, pulling back from the laptop as if it had sprouted fangs. "Then . . . then that old bag must be m-m-meeee." Stuffing a fist into her mouth, she glared at the screen and muttered, "I can't believe this is really happening, I mean this is just a film, isn't it?" In the absence of a reply from t.i.tus, she fell silent and watched in stunned horror as the film clip rolled on.

Pandora pulled a handful of tissues from her box and thrust them at her sister. "You'll set us all off, and then the whole day will just turn into one long blub-fest. . . ."

The sobs redoubled as Damp pressed a soggy wedge of tissue to her face and gave way to grief.

"Oh, come on," Pandora insisted. "We have to be strong for Mum. How d'you think she feels? Or Dad?"

The sobs turned into gasps interspersed with little howls. Pandora tapped the driver's shoulder.

"Pull over here for a moment, would you?" she said. "My sister needs a minute or two to compose herself."

Obediently, the driver parked beside a pitted marble angel whose outstretched hand pointed skyward, either indicating the direction of heaven, or pointing out the fact that it was probably about to start raining.

Pandora reached across the rear seat and took her sister in her arms. "Hush, now," she whispered. "Hush, Damp. No more tears. Save them for later. . . ." Pandora lifted Damp's chin and gazed into her sister's red-rimmed eyes. Gently she tucked a stray wisp of hair behind Damp's ear and smiled bravely. "You're a mess, girl," she said, bending down to look in her handbag. "Let's see if we can do a quick repair-job before Mum sees you."

Pandora found a small lipstick and pa.s.sed it over to Damp along with a tiny mirror. Damp sniffed deeply, rubbed her eyes with a gloved hand, and peered miserably at her reflection.

"I look like death warmed over," she remarked, somewhat tactlessly. "Honestly, Pan, I really think that soon-I mean, after all this is over"-she waved a hand in the general direction of the serried ranks of tombstones and then uncapped the lipstick-"once the estate is settled and we find out how much we're going to inherit, I'm definitely going to see that dear wee man in Harley Street about a face-lift"

"The plastic surgeon?" Pandora's voice rose to a horrified squeak. "WHAAAAT? But you're, you're only-"

"Thirty-one," said Damp, snapping the cap on the lipstick and handing it back to her astonished sister. "Yup. Time flies. Should have had it done when I was twenty-seven, but, hey-it's pointless thinking about the past."

"But, Damp-" Pandora gasped. "Plastic surgery-that's for babes, bimbos, fluff-brains. I mean, speaking personally, the very thought of going under the knife just to knock a few years off my age fills me with disgust."

"Precisely," snarled Damp, uncrossing her long, silk-clad legs and unfolding herself from her seat to open the door. "And that's why you look every one of your forty years, sister dear."

"Oh ughhh. URRK EURCHHHHH!" wailed Pandora. "Forty? FORTY? I can't cope with much more of this. . . ."

Damp flung open the door and climbed out on the gravel path, turning back to watch as Pandora staggered inelegantly toward her.

"Don't look at me like that," said Damp. "I'm not something nasty that you just found growing mold at the back of the fridge. I'm merely telling you the truth. You look sad, Pandora. Sad and old and wrinkly."

"OF COURSE I LOOK SAD!" yelled Pandora. "I'm about to bury my brother, for heaven's sake. How d'you think I should look? RADIANT?"

A fat tear plopped onto her tweed coat and was instantly absorbed in the fabric.

"t.i.tus?" Pandora's voice shook. "Can we stop now? I think I've seen enough."

Beside her t.i.tus looked as if he'd been turned to stone. White marble, to be precise. Onscreen a familiar figure appeared and the hideous film clip continued.

Mrs. Flora McLachlan emerged from a third car and hobbled across the gravel to where the sisters stood glaring at each other through teary eyes.

"I'm ashamed of the pair of you," their old nanny hissed. "Bickering and squabbling like a pair of vixens-today, of all days."

Damp blushed and mumbled an apology, offering her weeping sibling a soggy tissue.

"Mummy!" A miniature version of Pandora lunged from the rear of the third car and hurled herself at her parent.

"Now, dear." Mrs. McLachlan patted Pandora's shoulder. "Wipe your eyes and look after your wee girls while I help your mother." A second little girl emerged from the car, tripped over a marble flower urn, and fell onto a crumbling gravestone with a wail of dismay.

"Oh lord-" Pandora spun round, alerted by the loud howls coming from her daughter. "Rose, poppet, Mummy's coming. . . ."

Little moans escaped from Pandora's lips as she absorbed this unwanted snippet of information with gla.s.sy-eyed horror. Twins, she thought, TWINS? But I never want to have children, I've always said that. . . .

"Clumsy, isn't she?" confided the first little girl, slipping her hand into Damp's gloved one and gazing adoringly at her aunt. Behind them, Pandora picked up the sobbing Rose and bore her off in Mrs. McLachlan's wake.

"Where is Uncle t.i.tus?" continued the child, tugging Damp's hand to gain her attention. "Can we see him? Is he in that box? Is he sleeping? Mummy says he's going to heaven, but how will he find the way? Mummy used to say he was awful at reading maps-"

"It's a Borgia failing," sighed Damp. "Come on, Lily, let's go and find Grandma, shall we?"

Minutes later, a small group of mourners stood at the ornate metal gate to the family crypt, shivering as they watched the pallbearers coming toward them with a coffin on their shoulders. Behind them came Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia, followed by Damp and Pandora. Around the crypt lay banks of lilies, waiting for the time when all the living had gone, leaving the dead to wither along with their flowers. Pandora stumbled and retraced her steps to where one of her shoes lay embedded, its heel stuck in a gra.s.sy hummock.

Mrs. McLachlan's eyes began to water uncontrollably as she saw the three little figures of t.i.tus's bereaved children running across the graveyard in the wake of their mother, Mercedes Strega-Borgia. t.i.tus's glamorous widow was currently loping across the gra.s.s toward the crypt, trailing furs and pearls and arriving in a cloud composed of equal parts aggression and hysteria.

The widow gathered her sons about herself and glared at the a.s.sembled mourners. Mercedes's eyes were suspiciously dry. Moreover, her immediate concerns appeared to be more materialistic than spiritual, as the occasion demanded. To wit: "-and if you vultures think you're going to see one penny of my husband's estate, you can think again." Mercedes waved her bejeweled hands for emphasis.

"Oh, per-lease," hissed Damp. "Spare us. I hardly think that now is the time to be discussing t.i.tus's money."

Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia made no comment. Shrouded in deepest black, their pale faces bore witness to the fact that they were living through every parent's worst nightmare, coming here to this depressing Scottish graveyard to bury their only son. Swathed in black organza, Signora Strega-Borgia clutched her husband's arm for support. Lily and Rose, dimly sensing that this was not a Happy Day, began to whine.

A gray drizzle began to fall at the same moment as a tiny member of the family emerged from the crypt. Tarantella, tarantula extraordinaire, paused on the stone step, produced a microscopically small lipstick from some hidden part of her anatomy, and raked the family with a withering stare.

"Oh, come on," she said. "Cheer up. It's not the end of the world. . . ." She paused, applied a smear of lipstick to her mouth, and waved a few legs in the direction of the leaden sky. "Sure, it's raining, and that is pretty hideous, but as for this"- she scampered out of the crypt, scaled the leg of one of the pallbearers, and leapt onto the lid of t.i.tus's coffin-"it's not as if he's going to be all alone. There's five hundred or so of my children down there in the crypt, just waiting for him, and they'll make sure he's comfy. . . ." With a hairy leg, Tarantella pointed back into the crypt, where, dangling from cobwebs, the whole interior appeared to be alive with grinning spiders.

"But, but-" Pandora gasped, "t.i.tus hated. . . ."

The image on the screen froze, the millions of spiders halted in mid-dangle, Pandora's face caught for all time with her mouth open, the soundtrack playing, as if stuck in a rut, "hated, hated, hated, hated . . ." the incessant repet.i.tion removing all meaning from the word until, as t.i.tus and Pandora simultaneously stood up to leave the map room, to their ears it sounded more like "fated, fated, fated, fated . . ."

Under the Weather Signora Strega-Borgia turned off the shower and wrapped herself in a towel. Wiping steam off the bathroom mirror, she gazed at her reflection with a critical eye, then, picking up the hairbrush, began the ritual of readying herself to face the morning. Halfway through getting dressed, she was. .h.i.t by a wave of nausea so strong, she barely made it to the sink in time.

"Oh dear," she whispered, turning on the cold tap and opening the bathroom window to remove the sour smell of vomit. "Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear . . ."

Luciano was right, she thought: storing rodent droppings in a coffee jar was foolhardy, horribly unsanitary, and probably the cause of her current malaise. Recovering slightly, she pulled on a black linen dress and slipped her feet into a pair of fuchsia-pink flip-flops. As she walked along the corridor to the stairs, she wondered if she dared risk breakfast, given the upset state of her stomach. Descending the main staircase, she caught the faintest odor of cooked bacon and nearly gagged.

Hoping to have a quiet word with Signora Strega-Borgia and raise her deep concern about the threat that Fiamma d'Infer posed to Damp, Mrs. McLachlan kept the kitchen door ajar and listened for the distinctive sound of her employer's flip-flops shlepp-shlepping downstairs. Peering into the corridor, she caught sight of her employer suddenly stopping halfway down the main staircase and clutching the banister. Puzzled, the nanny watched as Signora Strega-Borgia gingerly descended to the ground floor then-at high speed, considering her footwear-bolted out the front door to be abruptly sick over the stone griffin that graced the front steps.

"Oh dear," muttered Signora Strega-Borgia, propping herself upright on a stone pillar. She was dimly aware of the familiar engine sound of the family car, and she looked up from the besmirched statuary to see her husband pulling up on the rose-quartz drive, waving and mouthing something through the driver's window. Another wave of nausea forced her attentions back to the stone griffin, and when she next opened her eyes, it was to see Luciano bending over her, his eyes full of concern.

"Cara mia," he murmured, wrapping a protective arm around her shoulders and producing a clean linen handkerchief, which he used to wipe round her mouth. "You are unwell," he stated, somewhat unnecessarily, since Signora Strega-Borgia bent once again over the griffin, and provided ample evidence that this was indeed the case. Mrs. McLachlan appeared on the doorstep with Damp and Nestor trailing behind her.

"Oh, you poor dear." The nanny made soothing clucking sounds and patted her employer on the back. "Let's get you inside and I'll make you a cup of mint tea to settle your stomach." So preoccupied was she with her ailing employer that she failed to notice when Damp hauled a large golf umbrella out of the stand by the door and started to wave it around purposefully. It wasn't until Signor Strega-Borgia had picked his wife up in his arms and carried her inside that Mrs. McLachlan turned her attention back to Damp, just in time to see the little girl wave the umbrella in the direction of the boot cupboard.

"NO! DAMP! STOP-"

There was a crash, immediately followed by the unmistakable sound of breaking gla.s.s. The nanny groaned as she peered round the door of the cupboard. Where seconds before had been the family and their guests' collection of ancient Wellingtons, gardening shoes, rusting ice skates, muddy soccer cleats, tennis shoes, broomstick crampons, fork-toed mules, ceremonial high-heeled calfskin waders, and moldy hiking boots, now stood rows of gleaming gla.s.s slippers, in every size from infant up to adult. Broken gla.s.s littered the floor of the cupboard, where toppling piles of footwear had succ.u.mbed to the laws governing gla.s.s and gravity.

Firmly shutting the door of the boot cupboard, Mrs. McLachlan removed the offending umbrella from Damp's hands and tutted. "My fault, dear. I should have been paying attention. No umbrellas or shooting sticks for you, I think. . . ."

Plucking Damp up into her arms and calling for Nestor, she headed to the kitchen to make Signora Strega-Borgia's promised mint tea.

In the pantry, the rats Mult.i.tudina and Terminus were deciding how best to treat the recent amputee, Tarantella. The tarantula lay between them on a spotlessly clean tea towel, eyes closed, and utterly motionless as overhead the rats discussed her condition.

"Did you get the cobwebs?" Terminus looked up from her perusal of an ancient copy of Allopathica for Arachnidae, open at the section "A Disquisitione on the Mattere of Amputatione and Hydropathie."

"Check," muttered Mult.i.tudina, dipping her front paws into a stolen capful of dish soap. They emerged green and slimy and, wincing slightly, the rat began to rub them across the bristles of a toothbrush (also stolen).

"What on earth are you doing?" Terminus peered over the edge of her book and sneezed as a flurry of soap bubbles drifted across the pantry.

"Scrubbing up," coughed Mult.i.tudina, her head surrounded by a cloud of froth from the dish soap. "I'll be the surgeon, you can be the anesthetist. . . ."

Terminus returned to her studies, skipping forward from "Amputatione" to "Anaesthesiae" with some difficulty, since the pages appeared to be stuck together with dried blood. Minutes later she looked up in alarm to see Mult.i.tudina holding a lit match in one paw and an enormous darning needle in the other. Flickering shadows flitted over Tarantella as Mult.i.tudina held the needle in the flame.

"What are you doing now?" squeaked Terminus.

"One of the first principles of surgery," muttered Mult.i.tudina, her eyes narrowed in concentration, "is that everything has to be squeaky clean, so I'm sterilizing this needle with heat. . . ."

"Well, I'm going down to the cellar for some anesthetic," Terminus said. "Try not to burn the house down while I'm away. . . ."

Half an hour later, Tarantella regained consciousness to find that she'd died and gone not, as expected, straight to heaven, but to some dark and nightmarish place. By the light of a guttering candle she saw two rats bending over her, one wielding an enormous needle with a long piece of pink thread trailing out of one end, and the other rat inviting her to drink something out of a thimble.

"Drink?" she squawked. "Are you out of your tiny mind? I'm a spider. I don't do wet."

She attempted to struggle into an upright position, then suddenly something hard crashed into her head, and everything went mercifully black.

"What did you do that for?" Mult.i.tudina squeaked reproachfully. "You didn't have to hit her with the brandy bottle, just persuade her to drink some of its contents-"

"You're way too sensitive to be a proper surgeon," hissed Terminus. "Come on. Stop wasting time. She's unconscious now-you may as well get on with it. . . ."

Terminus slumped back on her haunches beside Tarantella, watching for signs of returning consciousness. She was desperately trying not to look as Mult.i.tudina's needle dipped in and out of the skin round the wound where Tarantella's leg had been so violently amputated. To distract herself from the gruesomeness of the surgery, she returned to her reading matter, but the soggy crunching sounds coming from the operating table were hard to ignore.

At last Mult.i.tudina threw down her needle, bit off an extraneous length of pink thread, and spat it on the floor. "There," she said with considerable satisfaction. "Done." She stood back to admire her handiwork. Where previously had been a gaping wound, there was now a neat little line of pink st.i.tches. She turned to look at Terminus just in time to see her draining the contents of the thimble.

"A toashhht," Terminus hiccuped. "To-um-to . . . hic-"

"You drunken slob. You're totally legless," Mult.i.tudina said accusingly.

"On the contrary," gasped Tarantella, regaining consciousness in time to catch the tail end of this exchange. "I'm legless, and you, madam, are just plain drunk."

Soggy Batteries t.i.tus and Pandora sat on the end of the jetty, staring morosely across Lochnagargoyle, listening to the gentle slap and suck of waves against the worn planks beneath them. Drifting down from the meadow came the voices of Signora Strega-Borgia's cla.s.smates practicing their craft. So immersed in thought were t.i.tus and Pandora that they didn't even attempt to bat away the clouds of gnats feasting on their exposed skin. Overhead the sun beat down out of a clear summery sky, but down on the jetty the mood was closer to winter.

t.i.tus shivered, the motion causing ripples to spread outward from where his feet dangled in the loch, his toes white and shriveled from prolonged immersion. Clearing her throat, Pandora broke the silence.

"Eughhh. That was just so horrible, wasn't it? And so real, too. I mean, how did they do that-make Mum and Dad look so old and Damp grown-up? Where could they find actors that looked just like us? And why? Why did they do it?"

"They?" said t.i.tus. "They? What d'you mean? There isn't a film company on the planet that could do that. . . ."

"The special effects weren't that special, t.i.tus. With makeup and latex masks and . . . and, well . . . anyway, it can't be that difficult to make a wee film clip and post it on the Internet."