215. The Touchables

The villagers bolted for their houses. There was pandemonium as they violently shoved each other in an attempt to not be the first to get eaten alive.

Claire had mentioned the children were at risk, but no one seemed very concerned for their welfare at the moment. Some were grabbed and dragged along but many were left to fend for themselves. Those who got trapped underfoot were unceremoniously kicked out of the way.

We hapless three, Maurice, Dudley and I, watched them run around without any sense of decorum, in some cases running in the wrong direction and having to correct themselves and run back the way they’d just come. We did our best to stay out of their haphazard paths.

The monster’s roar, which was like a howl that went on longer and with more modulation than a Mariah Carey live performance, carried on over the top of the villagers’ antics. They disappeared into their homes, diving in through windows and slamming doors behind them.

The last few stragglers were kids who had been left behind and were bawling uncontrollably. Nervous heads poked out, made sure the coast was clear, then ran out to yank a kid into the air, and ran back with the kid trailing behind like a kite on a very short string.

Within a minute or so, they had all gone. The howling continued, carried on the wind.

The seven naked women were still there, though. I wouldn’t want you to think just because I hadn’t mentioned them, that they’d run off, too. They hadn’t. Still standing proud. Still naked.

“Oooh,” said Flossie.

“What is it?” yelled Dudley, rushing towards her.

“Ah need a wee.”

Not surprising since they’d been up there all day. You would expect women to be much more leaky than they are. After they have children and get a bit older, things do get a bit more loose, I believe, but I’m not an expert. There’s a vulva and a urethra and that’s more information than I know what to do with.

“I’ll get you down,” shouted Dudley. Maurice was right behind him.

“No!” said the priestess. She leaped in front of the girls (still naked, by the way), and her followers did the same. They formed a ring around the girls. A ring of nudity. Then they began gyrating.

You might think it would be quite sexy, a bunch of women with nothing on, shaking their bits in a big circle. It was more awkward than sensual. Especially with your girlfriend watching from on high.

Some people are into the sort of thing. Outdoor sex and orgies. Confident in their bodies and eager to perform in front of others. I can’t say I’ve ever found the idea appealing. It’s like lending someone my toothbrush. Urghh. I don’t want to borrow yours, I don’t want you to use mine.

However, as a way to stop a couple of nerds from charging to the rescue, it was very effective. Maurice and Dudley stopped in their tracks, unable to defeat the wall of vulva. They held up their hands and looked away before they were turned to stone. Or wood.

“We shall keep these women safe,” said the priestess, her arms going up and down as her hips went from side to side. “You must find and eliminate the monster.”

There were seven of them, but they didn’t have any weapons (unless they were very well hidden) apart from the suspiciously shaped staff the priestess had planted into the turf as she got her groove on. I could see her groove from where I was standing.

We could rush them, use our superior masculine strength to get to the girls and cut them down. Dudley had his bow out, ready to snipe a couple. Once they lost one or two, they’d probably run for it.

Couple of problems with that strat. First, our superior masculine strength wasn’t all that superior. These women looked like they’d been working out. Naked yoga is nothing to sniff at.

Second, they showed no concern that they’d be overpowered by the likes of us. Nothing convinces you that you ain’t shit like a bunch of naked women staring at you like you ain’t shit.

A real man would have ripped off his own clothes and convinced them otherwise. Conan and James Bond and Dirty Harry wouldn’t be intimidated by a couple of exposed nipples. But then real men are hard to find.

We still would have tried to force our way past the women and our own inhibitions, but there was a third and much more convincing reason to stay where we were. The dancing women raised their hands to the dark skies, and lightning fell in seven streaks.

The ground around us cracked open where the lightning struck, sending up dust and dirt. If the piles of wood around the girls had been hit, they would have ignited instantly. Not even Flossie’s bulging bladder would be enough to put out that fire.

“Go meet the monster as the One True God has commanded,” said the priestess. “If you fail, only the sacrifice of these women will appease it.”

The seven naked women who could call down lightning were not giving any of us a hard on. I had no desire to throw dollar bills at them. I’m not sure what the equivalent in British strip clubs is. We don’t have one pound notes anymore, just pound coins. I don’t even want to guess where strippers expect you to put them.

The howling increased in volume, somewhere outside the village.

“Go!” commanded the priestess. We went.

The other two were reluctant, but I led the way, giving them a look that said I had a plan. Which I did, although not necessarily a good one.

We hurried out of the village, Maurice and Dudley looking behind them with anxious faces, like they were more afraid of what would happen back there than what we were heading towards.

“Are you afraid lesbians are going to steal your girlfriends?” I asked them, trying to jolt them out of the daze they seemed to be in.

“Yes,” said Maurice. “Eventually, someone will. Could be them. Could be anyone.”

“I’m not sure we should refer to them as lesbians without asking first,” said Dudley, also nervously looking over his shoulder. “Seems a bit presumptuous”

There was another long, eerie howl somewhere to the left.

“Shouldn’t we be heading that way?” said Dudley.

He’d noticed we were heading away from the howling rather than towards it.

“We’re not going to fight the monster.”

“Where are we going then?” asked Maurice.

“Well, the way I see it, if the man in Wizard’s Tower is the monster, then he isn’t at home. Perfect time to drop in for a visit. I think there’s more chance of finding a way to stop him at his place than trying to take down some invisible entity we don’t know anything about.”

“What about the girls?” said Dudley sounding alarmed.

“We’ll have to hope it’s only an experimental phase.”

We made our way back to the woods. It’s not that easy finding a building in the middle of nowhere, even when you’ve been there once. It was a clear night with stars filling the sky. It wasn’t much light but enough to see by and only occasionally trip and fall. I was reluctant to use magic to light our way in case it drew attention from our howler.

“There,” said Dudley, his sharp eyes able to see in the dark, too, it seemed. The tower rose up before us.

Maurice wiped his glasses with a corner of his shirt and put them back on to get a clearer look. “Looks quiet.” It had looked the same last time, so that didn’t mean much. “How do we get in?”

I walked up to the door and gave it a shove. It was locked. I pulled and banged and looked for a keyhole or lock of some kind. Then I tried to open the small slot the man had looked through. It moved.

By pressing hard and sliding it along, it slowly shifted. I wasn’t sure what good it would do to have such a small opening to work with, but it was a start.

As I got it halfway across it moved a lot easier and slid aside with a bang. Two eyes appeared on the other side.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I jumped back. “Ah. Oh. You’re in.”

“Of course I am. Not going out with that all going on, am I?” There was another howl. “No thank you. Those nasty women making all that racket.”

The little slit slammed shut.

We stood there.

“I don’t think he’s the monster,” said Dudley.

“No shit.” I banged on the door. “Hey!” There was no response.

“We could smoke him out,” suggested Maurice.

We were the three pigs trying to get inside the Big Bad Wolf’s house. Who wasn’t as bad as the stories had led us to believe.

“Probably set the whole thing on fire if we did that,” I said. “Not a bad idea.”

The slot banged open. “You clear off, now. Not safe starting fires in the middle of a forest.”

Howls drifted towards us on the night air.

“That noise, that’s the priestess?” I asked him.

“Of course.”

“Why did she tell us it was you?”

“Who knows? Women are like that, aren’t they? Always stirring. Once they get what they came for, they’ll go off until next month. Stay indoors and wait for it to blow over.” The small opening slammed shut.

If it was the priestess who was responsible for all the howling, what was the plan? Why get us involved and what did she really want?

“We should go back,” said Maurice. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“I concur,” said Dudley.

We headed back to the village. There was the crack of lightning in the distance, over and over. We began running. I lit a ball of light so we wouldn’t fall, not caring about the monster finding us.

It always seems quicker on the return journey. We ran into the deserted village, to the green. There were three empty stakes in the ground, firewood piled high around each, but no sign of the girls, and no naked women. Lesbians had stolen our girlfriends.

Whatever had happened, it had the feeling of being planned that way. For some reason, the girls had been taken from us, used as hostages to make us go after the man in Wizard’s Tower, and while we were off doing that, they had been taken somewhere else.

If they had wanted the girls, why not just take them? They clearly had the ability to do so. The whole thing felt like a staged performance, but I had no idea what the point had been. Or why it required so much naked dancing.

I didn’t know who was behind it—the priestess, their God, some figure hiding in the shadows—but I suspected their actions were due to frustrations with failing to get into show business.

“What happened?” said Maurice. He kicked over a pile of wood.

“There’s no sign of them,” said Dudley, sadness and loss pervading his words.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I think the villagers were in on it. They know more than they’re saying, at the very least.”

Maurice nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. The mayor. He probably knows something.” He looked around, scanning the different houses. “We should find him and ask him a few questions. That one, I bet.” He pointed at a house at the far end of the village that was a little larger than the others, with a wall around it where the others had a small fence at most.

It had been too much bedlam to keep track of where everyone ran to, but if you were the mayor, it stood to reason you’d have the fanciest house.

We headed over, peering in through windows as we went. There were no signs of life. The entire population were hiding under their beds, it seemed.

The mayor’s house had a big, solid-looking front door with a large knocker on it. The stone walls were only waist-height with no gate, and the garden within was lined with flowery borders. It had a very quaint feel to it, even at night.

I knocked on the door. There was no response. Maurice stepped forward and began slamming the knocker over and over. I assumed his plan was to irritate them into submission, which wasn’t a bad plan.

The only problem with that approach was that the mayor had armed guards at his disposal. We didn’t know how many he had in there with him, but even a couple would be tricky to deal with. And there could well be more than that; I had counted a dozen when we first entered the village.

There was still no response.

“I think I can see them,” said Dudley. He had his face pressed up against a shuttered window, peering in through the slats, his hands cupped on either side of his head. “I think they’re behind the furniture.”

“How many?” I asked him.

“Mmm,” he muttered as he counted. “Six?”

Maurice tried the front door. It was open. He held it slightly ajar and took out his sword.

“We can’t fight six all at once,” I said. “And I doubt they’ll attack one at a time like they do in kung fu movies.”

“Flashbang,” said Maurice.

“Okay,” I said, “but how do we—”

Maurice was already on the move. He walked over to the window Dudley was peeking through, and raised his sword. Dudley darted out of the way as Maurice smashed the wooden shutters to pieces. The time for taking notes was well and truly over.

“Hey! Stop that!” shouted the mayor.

“Where are the girls?” I shouted back. “We left them in your care, Nelbum.”

“This is your own fault. If you’d done as you were tasked, they’d still be here. You failed them.”

There’s nothing more annoying than people at fault trying to manoeuvre the blame onto someone else. Especially when you’re that someone else. Well, I’m sure there are more annoying things, but this was the one annoying me right now. I made a ball of light and threw it through the window.

We turned our backs as it exploded in a blinding flash. We turned back, ready to rush in and disarm all the men, perhaps kick a few of them in the balls as circumstance and opportunity dictated, and then demand answers.

The door burst open, knocking Maurice back, and a large, bald man came running out with a sword held aloft.

It wasn’t the mayor, it was one of his flunkies, and he’d obviously managed to avoid getting blinded. But he was the only one.

He bore down on Maurice who had stumbled to the ground. He was quick, but not quick enough to dodge the arrow Dudley fired into his ankle.

His feet slid out from under him and he fell face-first onto the sword Maurice was holding up in his shaking hands.

I don’t know the man’s name, what kind of person he had been or who he left behind. Wife, kids, dependent granny... he may have been the lynchpin who held the community together. He died immediately and without so much as a whimper.

Maurice heaved him off and rolled him onto his back, the sword sticking up. He didn’t stop to say a few words, didn’t express regret or guilt. He grabbed the sword and yanked it out as he ran into the house. Dudley and I raced in after him.

Inside, the other men were crawling around, unable to see anything. We grabbed weapons off them and threw them out of the window.

They didn’t put up a fight, just sat against the wall rubbing their eyes and moaning as their sight slowly returned. I picked up the mayor and pushed him into a chair.

“Tell us what happened,” I said. “Where did the priestess take the girls?”

“Can’t you see this was the better way?” said the mayor. “If it hadn’t been them, they would have taken our children.”

“Who? The priestess?”

“Leave it be, I say. The women are gone. Pray they do not return.”

“Where are they?” screamed Maurice. He grabbed the mayor by his fur collar and choked him. The chair tilted back, threatening to fall over.

“I can’t tell you that,” said the mayor, only just managing to squeeze out his words. “If they find out we said anything, they’ll kill us all.”

Maurice stared into the mayor’s eyes, pure rage shaking him bodily. Then he released him and stormed out.

The mayor had a fearful but defiant look on his face. This was the man Joshaya had asked me to kick in the balls. I was starting to warm to the idea.

“You will tell us what we want to know.” I didn’t feel as confident as I sounded, and I probably didn’t sound all that confident, but how were we supposed to get them to talk? Torture them? It was an option, but not a very palatable one.

What we really needed was Claire to read their minds, but the stupid bint had got herself kidnapped.

“Where are they?” screamed Maurice from outside. “Speak. I’ll give you until three. One. What’s the matter? Can’t talk with a sword in your mouth? Two. This is your last chance. Three.”

There was a wet, sickening crunch.

The men in the room flinched. They looked around, scared and confused. They looked over at the mayor who shook his head at them.

Maurice came back in dragging a body behind him. His sword was sticking out of its head, reinserted into the wound he’d inadvertently made earlier.

The dead guy was quite big, and Maurice, for all his time in the great outdoors, was still quite weedy, so it took some effort to drag the corpse into the room, pulling it along by one arm.

He let go and pulled the sword out of the forever-surprised face.

“Who’s next?” Maurice looked at the men against the wall, cowering together. By his expression you wouldn’t think he was bluffing. Maybe he wasn’t.

If it was an act, it was an act from an Oscar winning movie and if it worked for Sean Connery, it could work for us. But how far was he prepared to take it? Killing an already dead dude wasn’t really crossing the line. If he followed through on his threat, no matter how justified he might be, it could change him forever. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Gandhi said an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, but that isn’t strictly speaking true. An eye for an eye would leave everyone with one eye, which isn’t so bad. The only real loss would be 3D movies, and most people would see that as an improvement.

One of the men rose, his eyes darting about wildly. The others looked ready to follow his lead. Rush us and take back control. They were panicked and desperate enough to risk it. Dudley fired three arrows, one in each boot and the last taking his hat off his head. He sat down with a bump.

“The priestess might come back,” I said, “but all she’ll find is a village full of dead people. We have no problem killing as many of you as we have to.” I set my hand on fire for dramatic effect. “Why did you want us to kill the man in Wizard’s Tower?” I asked him.

He moved his head side to side. “That’s what he told us to do. He said we had to convince you. It was the only way. He brought the women here and told us what to do. He said it was the only way.”

He was rambling now. Repeating himself and half-raving.

“He? Who is he?” I asked.

“Joshaya. The man in Wizard’s Tower. He brought the women here.”

“They were his prisoners?” said Maurice.

“No. They took the place of the children willingly.”

I was starting to get the feeling our lovely girlfriends hadn’t been entirely on the level with us.

There was a sound from outside. A horse whinnying, the sound of hooves and maybe a vehicle.

We left our prisoners and rushed to the window. There was a cart and horse outside. The driver was dressed in full armour and wore a helmet covering his face.

By the time we got outside, he had removed the helmet to reveal bushy white eyebrows hanging over familiar beady eyes. His silvery hair was in the exact shape of the helmet he’d removed. Whether this was due to the helmet moulding his hair, or him cutting it to perfectly fit inside, it was hard to say.

“Are you ready?” said Joshaya.

Now that I could see more of him than the small door slit allowed, I realised he was a far bigger man than I had assumed. Fat would be another word for it.

“Ready for what?” I asked him.

“To rescue your fair damsels, of course.”

The mayor came running out. “Garet’s dead. They killed him.”

“Yes?” said Joshaya. “Would you rather it had been three more children?”

The mayor didn’t answer. His men came out and gathered around him. They looked a sorry, forlorn bunch.

“Was this the idea all along?” I asked.

Joshaya nodded. “This was the way your women wanted it.”

It’s very aggravating when people force you into doing things for your own good. Even if it’s the right thing to do, no one likes being manipulated and coerced. They could have just asked, and I could have just said no. But they had decided to be sneaky about it.

I was supposed to be untouchable. No connections forcing me to do stupid things. It didn’t feel that way. If I could see the tentacles around me now, I felt sure there would be more than a few attached to various parts of my body. Holding me down. Tying me up. Strangling me.

“Let’s go,” said Maurice. He climbed onto the back of the cart. Dudley followed, his bow slung over his shoulder.

I remained where I was.

“We can have it out with them later,” said Maurice. “Let’s go.”

I got in. “Where are we going?”

“Witch’s Castle,” said Joshaya.

“Because it belongs to someone called Wit Chez?” I said.

“No. It belongs to the One True God.” He leaned over and spat on the ground. Why do manly men think that’s cool?

“So he’s real, Old One True?”

“Of course he’s real,” said Joshaya. “And a complete bastard. How do you think he got to be the One True God? Killed all the other gods, didn’t he?”

Joshaya snapped the reins and the horse set off.