Survivor (10 page)

Mr Hulbert took one look at Igorina’s face and screamed.

‘Dada,’ she said, looking at Mr Hulbert and grinning as widely as she could.

This was a bad move.

Her jaw fell off.

Mr Hulbert fainted. Nerlin, who was used to that sort of thing, climbed out of his coffin, picked the jaw up and pushed it back into place. Igorina touched him gently on the cheek.

‘There’s a good boy, er, girl, er, umm…’ said Nerlin. ‘You stay there.’

He picked up the unconscious Mr Hulbert and carried him out into the tunnel, making sure to shut the door and close the three massive bolts on the outside of the door. Just to be on the safe side he turned the key in the lock and jammed a wooden chair under the handle.

‘He needs a forgetting spell,’ he whispered to Mordonna as he lay Mr Hulbert on the couch. ‘Where’s Winchflat?’

Mordonna put a damp towel over Mr Hulbert’s
face and muttered a few words. The poor man came round with all memories of Igorina wiped from his brain.

‘Ooh, my head,’ he said.

‘Poor darling,’ said Mrs Hulbert. ‘Maybe Mordonna can do a little magic and take your nasty headache away.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Mordonna and gave him an aspirin.

‘I can see your knees,’ Mr Hulbert whispered to his wife. ‘I’d forgotten how nice they were.’

‘Mmmm,’ she said, blushing as if she was a teenager again. ‘And you aren’t wearing your tie.’

‘Oh no, sorry, dear.’

‘I think maybe it’s time for a change,’ said Mrs Hulbert. ‘Time to let our hair down a bit.’

‘I haven’t got any to let down,’ said Mr Hulbert.

‘But I have,’ said Mrs Hulbert and pulled out the twenty-four hair pins that had held her hair back for so long they had begun to go rusty.

Her long brown hair tumbled down all over
Mr Hulbert’s face. It was the first time in the fifteen years since he had met his wife that he had ever seen her hair out. Her hair was long and shining and beautiful and it smelled of roses, and as it fell over her husband’s face three brilliant butterflies flew out of it. Mr Hulbert began to smile, not the shy awkward smile he usually did, but the big proper smile he hadn’t done since he had been five years old.

Then he fainted again.

‘I think it’s time I took him home,’ said Mrs Hulbert when her husband came round again.

‘Why doesn’t Ffiona stay for a sleepover?’ Mordonna suggested.

Mrs Hulbert did her best to hide her excitement. Other people’s children had sleepovers. She’d read about them in magazines, but no one had ever asked Ffiona to go on one before. Of course it meant that Ffiona would want to ask Betty back for a sleepover at their house and that would mean at least a week getting the house really, really spotless and probably even having to buy a new toilet seat and painting the inside of the cupboard under the stairs, but it would be worth it, for Ffiona’s sake.

So Mr and Mrs Hulbert and Claude went home. As they left the Floods’ house, Mr Hulbert said, ‘You know what, I think maybe it’s time we got a television.’

‘Winchflat, get down here this minute!’ Mordonna shouted up the stairs.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Winchflat.

‘The thing down in the cellar,’ said Mordonna. ‘The thing in the coffin. I think you better explain yourself.’

‘Oh, you mean Igorina. It’s nothing to worry about,’ said Winchflat.

‘Nothing to worry about? Nothing to worry about!’ said Mordonna. ‘What is it? I mean, who is it? I mean, where did it come from?’

‘It’s just Igorina,’ Winchflat explained. ‘I made
her, like in the
Frankenstein
movies.’

‘What, you mean with a bolt through her neck and the brain out of a psychotic murderer?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Winchflat. ‘Where would I get a brain out of a psychotic murderer? This isn’t Transylvania Waters, you know. You can’t just go into a brain shop and buy one. No, it’s an ordinary human brain. I sort of borrowed it.’

‘Borrowed it?’ said Mordonna suspiciously.

‘I got it out of an accountant while he was asleep,’ said Winchflat. ‘No one will miss it.’

‘Well, I imagine the accountant will.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Winchflat. ‘Have you ever met an accountant?’

‘Well, I think you’d better dismantle it and put all the bits back where you got them from.’

‘But … but … that would be murder,’ said Winchflat. ‘And besides, she’s my new best friend. I mean, Betty’s just got one and so have you and Satanella and even dad’s got Mr Hulbert as a sort of friend. So I want one.’

‘The twins haven’t got new best friends and
neither have Valla or Merlinmary, so you’re not the only one.’

‘The twins have had new best friends ever since they were born. They’ve got each other,’ said Winchflat. ‘And Merlinmary’s got the national grid and Valla’s got a whole room full of blood corpuscles. I haven’t got anyone.’

‘He does have a point,’ said Nerlin.

So it was agreed that Winchflat could keep Igorina, but he had to look after her properly and clean her cage out every day and exercise her regularly.

‘Though of course, you must never take her out in daylight,’ said Nerlin.

‘Probably not before midnight, actually,’ said Mordonna.

‘Can we see her?’ asked Ffiona.

So they all went down to the coffin cellar. It was exactly as Nerlin had left it. Winchflat turned the key, pulled the chair out from under the door handle and slid back the three massive bolts.

The room was empty.

Winchflat turned on the light and looked in each of the six coffins.

The room was still empty.

Winchflat sank to the ground, buried his face in his hands and began to cry.

‘Nobody loves me,’ he wailed. ‘Not even someone I manufactured.’

‘She can’t have gone far,’ said Betty, patting her weeping brother on the shoulder.

‘But I gave her everything,’ Winchflat sobbed. ‘My very best titanium nut and bolt through her neck. I thought, should I use an ordinary steel nut and bolt seeing as how this is my first attempt? But no, I used the best of everything, spared no expense, no tacky version of Windows to program her brain. I used the best Apple operating system. No feeble Bluetooth connection to join all the synapses, I used super Air Port Express and all eighty-seven volumes of the
World Encyclopedia
, including the full-colour maps.’

‘Maybe that’s the problem,’ Betty suggested. ‘Maybe all that information and especially the full-colour maps made her run away to see the world.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Winchflat.

‘Could be. Maybe you should have only put a
local street map inside her head. At least until she was house-trained.’

‘I have an idea,’ said Ffiona.

‘Really?’ said Betty, Mordonna and Nerlin at once.

‘Well, maybe it’s not such a good idea,’ said Ffiona.

‘No, go on,’ said Mordonna.

‘Well, Betty said that Winchflat was a genius and could build anything…’ Ffiona started.

‘Yes, I did. It’s true,’ said Betty.

‘Well, couldn’t you build a tracking machine that could show you where Igorina’s gone?’ said Ffiona.

‘Brilliant,’ said Mordonna, Betty and Nerlin.

‘Probably,’ said Winchflat. ‘Though I have a terrible feeling I already know where she is.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Mordonna. ‘Is there something you’re not telling us?’

‘Umm, well, it’s the feet,’ said Winchflat.

‘The feet?’

‘Yes, I used Grandmother’s,’ said Winchflat. ‘I
asked her first. I didn’t just take them, and she said it was all right because being buried in the coffin in the back garden she didn’t need them.’

‘So you think Mummy’s feet may have led your creation astray?’ said Mordonna.

‘Not so much astray,’ said Winchflat, ‘as home.’

‘You mean?’

‘Yes, back to Transylvania Waters.’

This, of course, had all sort of terrible implications.

Firstly, it meant that none of them could go and fetch Igorina because Mordonna’s father, King Quatorze, had spies everywhere whose entire existence was devoted to finding out where Mordonna was and bringing her back to Transylvania Waters.

Secondly, it meant that if Igorina fell into the wrong hands –the only sort of hands there were in Transylvania Waters – they might be able to use her to lead them back to Acacia Avenue.

‘Could you build two machines?’ Ffiona
asked. ‘One to track her down and another one to program her brain remotely so she thinks she comes from somewhere completely different?’

‘Yes, like Belgium,’ said Betty.

‘It’s possible,’ said Winchflat. ‘Though I’d have to build a third machine to block any machines someone else might make to deprogram my reprogramming.’

‘Well, you better get started then, hadn’t you,’ snapped Mordonna.

‘And to be on the safe side I’d better build an anti-deprogramming-reprogramming-monitor with a cloaking device just to make sure everything goes to plan.’

‘How long is all that going to take?’ said Mordonna. ‘I have a terrible feeling we’re going to have to move a long, long way away.’

‘At least until dinner time,’ said Winchflat.

‘What,’ said Betty, ‘you mean you could build all four machines in three hours?’

‘Of course I’ll have to leave the safety warnings off and use cardboard instead of welded steel, but
I should be able to do it OK,’ said Winchflat. ‘Though it would help if we had dinner a little bit later tonight.’

‘How much later?’ asked Mordonna, who liked to get dinner on, near or under the table on the dot of seven.

‘About three weeks.’

‘WHAT?!’

‘Just joking,’ said Winchflat and then, looking a bit confused, added, ‘At least, I think I was.’

‘What do you mean you think you were?’ said Mordonna.

‘Well, I’ve never made one before,’ said Winchflat.

‘What, one of those machines?’

‘No, a joke.’

‘I wish Betty worked at your father’s office,’ said Mrs Hulbert the next morning when her husband had gone off to work.

She was about to start ironing Ffiona’s socks – which she always did since her own mother had done it for her and old habits die hard – but since meeting the Floods she knew it was time to invite Mr Relaxation into her life. Mrs Hulbert had read about Mr Relaxation in a magazine and for months she thought it was a real person.

Not only would she stop ironing socks, but she would also use a rubber band to hold her hair back
instead of twenty-four hair pins. In fact, she might even think about the possibility of considering the idea of spending a whole day without holding her hair back at all, though of course she would have to make sure that no one except her family saw her.

‘Why?’ said Ffiona.

‘I’m not supposed to tell you this, but your father is having a terrible time. You know how you used to get treated at Thistlecrown? Well, that’s how they treat your father at work,’ said Mrs Hulbert.

‘What, you mean they flush him down the toilet?’

‘No. I think they tried once, but he wouldn’t fit,’ said Mrs Hulbert. ‘But how his boss acts is just as bad.’

Ffiona felt really sad. Her dad was a kind, quiet man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. In fact, he caught flies and, instead of squashing them like most people would, or eating them like the Floods did, he took them out into the garden and gave them their freedom. Of course, most of the time freedom meant the opportunity to fly straight back inside the Hulberts’ house and carry on eating the chocolate icing on Mrs Hulbert’s cake, which they’d been doing when Mr Hulbert had grabbed them in the first place. Then Mr Hulbert would sigh and take the fly outside all over again. This could happen five or six times before Mrs Hulbert would squash the fly when her husband wasn’t looking.

That’s how kind Mr Hulbert was – and he never complained, either. It had taken him several years to tell his wife he was having a bad time at work.

‘So you have to promise me that you won’t let him know I told you, all right?’ said Mrs Hulbert.

‘All right, Mum. But maybe Betty
could
help him,’ said Ffiona.

‘No, sweetheart. It’s not like school,’ said Mrs Hulbert, regretting she’d said anything. ‘Your father could lose his job.’

‘But…’

‘No, promise me that none of this is to leave the room,’ Ffiona’s mother insisted.

In that case I’ll have to get Betty to come here. Then I can tell her in this room
, Ffiona said to herself, though she had already decided to tell her friend anyway, because if anyone would know what to do it would be Betty.

‘First of all,’ Betty said when Ffiona told her, ‘we have to find out exactly what the problem is.’

‘Yes, but how do we do that? We can’t just go to my dad’s office and see what’s happening.’

‘No, we can’t,’ said Betty, ‘but Winchflat will help us. He’ll invent something.’

They went back to Betty’s house, but as usual Winchflat was nowhere to be found. This was why Mordonna had made her son install a special Winchflat-Summoning-Button in the kitchen. If she hadn’t he would have missed every single meal and probably starved to death because he was not the sort of boy who snacked between meals, apart from the odd beetle or earwig.

‘Is it dinner time already?’ said Winchflat as he arrived in the kitchen.

‘No,’ said Betty. ‘It was me. We need your help.’

‘Why should I help you?’ Winchflat asked. ‘After you stole one of my books and poured water over everything.’

‘Oh, I didn’t think you’d notice,’ said Betty. ‘I was just trying to help my friend. Sorry.’

Betty’s magic may have left a lot to be desired, but when she tilted her head down a bit, fluttered her eyelids and said ‘sorry’ in a really small pathetic
voice, almost everyone – except her mother, who had taught her the trick – fell under her spell.

‘OK, little sister, just for you,’ said Winchflat. He went straight to his secret cellar.

He locked himself in and sat in his magic chair.

Counting backwards from twenty-seven, he pressed a combination of buttons on a key pad and vanished. He reappeared in his secret, secret cellar that no one knew about. It was hidden in the last place anyone would ever look for a cellar – up in the roof – and it was here that Winchflat kept his most secret experiments and his bizarre collection of very weird creatures.

‘Angela, I have a job for you,’ he said to a ball-point pen.

‘Yes, master,’ said Angela, who obviously was not a ball-point pen or she wouldn’t have been able to speak.

Winchflat explained that he would give Angela to Ffiona, who would give Angela to her father to take to work, where she was to record everything that went on that day.

‘If there’s a problem, simply send me a distress signal,’ said Winchflat and, pointing to a red button on his shirt, he added, ‘One press of this emergency button and you will be beamed back here in an instant.’

‘No problem, oh great creator,’ said Angela. ‘It will be good to get out and do some real work instead of sitting round here trying to make intelligent conversation with the pencils. If I have to listen to that wretched 2B or not 2B joke again, I’ll burst my ink tanks.’

‘Right then,’ Winchflat said as he re-appeared in the kitchen. ‘This is Angela and she will send us a report of what’s happening in your father’s office. ‘Don’t tell your dad. Just let him think Angela’s an ordinary pen.’

‘OK,’ said Ffiona and, looking at Angela, she added, ‘You can write like an ordinary pen, can’t you?’

‘Duhhh,’ said Angela, ‘yeah, in black and red, and I can do self-correcting spelling in fifteen languages. I can’t do Belgian, of course. I’m not that sort of pen.’

Ffiona gave Angela to her dad that evening.
This confused him because it wasn’t Christmas or his birthday, which were the two days he was usually given pens.

‘You didn’t do anything wrong, like steal it, did you?’ said Mr Hulbert.

‘No, of course not,’ said Ffiona. ‘I, um, Betty gave it to me.’

‘It’s not a magic pen, is it?’ said Mr Hulbert. ‘It’s not going to do anything weird like turn into a werewolf or start talking to me?’

Angela bit her refill, which is like biting your tongue if you’re human. It was all she could do not to speak.

‘Dad, it’s a pen,’ said Ffiona. ‘I thought you might like to use it at work.’

‘Oh no,’ said Mr Hulbert. ‘I don’t think I’d better take it to work. It’s much too smart. Someone might take it.’

Angela sent an emergency signal to Winchflat, who made a few instant adjustments. Angela’s gold clip turned chrome and her shiny blue lacquer changed into a dull grey with a few scratches.

It’s only for now
, Winchflat said inside Angela’s brain.
When this is over I’ll make you gorgeous again.

‘It’s just an ordinary pen, Dad,’ said Ffiona.

‘So it is,’ said her dad and put it in his jacket pocket between two cheap plastic biros, who kept Angela awake all night talking about ink.

‘Got your new pen, Dad?’ said Ffiona the next morning as Mr Hulbert was leaving for work.

‘Yes, sweetheart, but I’m still not sure I should take it with me,’ Mr Hulbert replied.

‘It’ll bring you good luck,’ said Ffiona.

‘OK, sweetheart, just to make you happy.’

When he reached his office, Mr Hulbert laid Angela on his desk. Within five minutes Mr Gross, Mr Hulbert’s bullying boss, stopped in front of him, picked Angela up and stirred his tea with her.

‘Oh dear, Halibut,
³³
I hope I haven’t hurt your new pen,’ he said.

Angela screamed. Her voice was too high for
humans to hear, but Winchflat detected it on his equipment and sent her a special spell for cooling down boiled ball-points. Because he was always prepared for every single eventuality, Winchflat had actually created the spell a few days earlier, along with a cleaning spell to remove earwax from the end of pens when people stuck them in their ears to clean them out. This was exactly what Gross did next.

‘Good pen, that,’ he said. He waited for Mr Hulbert to say he could have it, but Mr Hulbert didn’t.

‘My d-d-daughter gave it to m-m-me,’ he said. ‘Your daughter!’ sneered Gross. ‘I didn’t know you had a license to breed, Halibut.’

Mr Hulbert, as usual, said nothing. He bent his head over his paperwork and waited for Gross to go away.

‘Fancy that, everyone,’ said Gross. ‘The halibut’s been breeding.’

The office looked embarrassed, but no one said a word.

‘I always thought you lived under a stone,’ Gross continued. ‘I find it hard to believe there’s a Mrs Hulbert.’

He went on like that for another five minutes before walking off, taking Angela with him. While all this had been going on, Angela had been transmitting every detail back to Winchflat. Gross went in to his office and sat down at his desk,
putting his feet up on the box he kept under the desk to rest his short legs on.

That was the basis of Mr Gross’s problem. He was very short and it made him feel he had to be the boss of everyone. He didn’t just need to feel better than everyone else, he needed to try and make them feel much worse than him. Most people who worked for Gross didn’t stay longer than a few weeks.