Danny Yates Must Die. Stephen Walker
they were the ones who said he sang about hats.
Faster, faster, ever faster, revelling in the twelve-mile journey’s every step. His tune grew with each corner that brought his destination closer.
By the final turn, he was whistling so loudly people shouted from their windows, ‘Call the constabulary. Call the constabulary. There’s a madman loose.’
Regardless, he turned the final corner.
And Hejediah Johnson’s world crumbled.
Every door on that street had been painted red. Not just any red, but the blazing scarlet of his fondest remembered sunset.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ said a neighbour. ‘Now we’re all different – just like you.’
No, it bloody wasn’t wonderful.
Over the next two weeks, Johnson threw himself into insanity, installing a temperamentally unsuitable gazelle as a gazebo. His neighbours copied it. He built a spaghetti statue of the Phoenician war goddess Burut Ana, using pasta for plaster. His neighbours copied it. No act seemed too lunatic for them to emulate.
On May 8, 1926, Hejediah Johnson ate Wheatley.
Then with only an egg for an implement, he built a new home, one so nightmarish that no one would copy it.
And no one did copy it.
Except Miss Xenia Minnlebatt.
And that was the story of 353, Plescent Street.
At least, that was how Lucy told it.
‘It’s frightening,’ said Danny. ‘Take me home.’
‘This is your home now,’ she told him. ‘Play your cards right, lick up to Annette, cough up a quid, and one day, when she graduates and leaves town, this’ll be all yours.’
Lucy called from the porch. ‘C’mon, Danny. What you waiting for?’
He stood, hands in pockets, kicking a heel, head down, leaning back against a cab door. ‘I do not want to live there.’
‘Course you do. Anyone would.’
He looked at her accusingly. ‘Then why don’t you live there?’
Sighing like she was dealing with an exceptionally dim child, she strode down the porch step, then along the path, toward him. ‘You think I don’t want to live here? Daniel, I would kill to live here. But I’ve not been invited. You have. You can’t turn down a chance like this. This is the coolest address in Wheatley. When I tell them about this at Poly, they’ll be so-o-o jealous, they’ll be queuing round the block, waiting for you, with baseball bats. Now come on.’ Grabbing his hand, she yanked his arm half out of its socket, and dragged him up the path, up the step and onto the porch.
They stood watching the front door, with its cobra’s head door knocker.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Knock.’
‘Lucy.’
‘Knock.’
With a deep breath, he half-heartedly pulled knocker away from door. But her hand prevented him knocking. She said, ‘Hold on a mo.’
‘What now?’
‘I almost forgot something.’ She took a silver chain from around her neck and placed it round his own.
He gazed down at the large, looped cross at the chain’s end and held it between thumb and finger. ‘What’s this?’
‘An ankh.’
‘An anker?’
‘Ankh; an ancient Egyptian lucky charm. All the pharaohs wore one. Some wore two. Tutankhamen wore dozens. He was famous for it, the Liberace of his day – and he played the piano. Annette insisted you wore one before entering. I hope you appreciate this, Danny; I had to slap the eighth toughest girl in Fabric Studies to get this off her.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘Beats me. Annette said something about it protecting you from the head-sucking demons who infest every third corner of the house.’ She grinned, gaze running up and down the door. ‘Demons. Cool or what?’
He didn’t answer. He was heading back to the cab.
‘Danny?’ she called. ‘Where you going?’
No reply.
‘Danny?’
He climbed into the car, slammed the door shut and demanded to be taken home.
‘He’s gone?’
‘I said he would.’ Having watched Lucy’s taxi drive off up the road, Annette Helstrang let the cobweb pattern net curtain fall closed and she told the boiler-suited legs protruding from beneath her bed, ‘There was no way he was going to move in. He’s not the type.’
The legs protested, ‘But this can’t happen.’
‘You think not? If there’s a wrong decision, bet on him to make it.’
‘But it’s his fate to move in here.’
‘So?’ she asked.
‘If even one person refuses to follow his fate, it sets in motion a chain of events that may destroy us all.’
‘I fail to see what Danny Yates could do that could destroy us all.’
‘We must make alternative arrangements immediately.’
‘You want me to kidnap him?’
‘Would you like to do that, Annette Helstrang? Would you like to tie him to that chair by the door, and for several weeks feed him a diet of bread, water and bromide to keep his lusts to a minimum?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. Lucy might. But she might torture him.’
‘We might still be able to cut him off at the pass.’
‘Pardon?’
‘You must get a pedicure.’
Perched on the bed. Ribbons Melancholia gazed down at the legs, suspicious. He swiped at them with his ginger paw, missed, and lost balance. He hit the carpet with a disdainful miaow, shook himself down, tried to look dignified, failed to look dignified, then jumped back onto the bed. He circled three times before resuming his legwatch.
‘Wheatley is full of bad feet,’ said the legs. ‘Only two people in this town have ones of the necessary quality, and, being a slightly tall girl, the other would be unsuitable.’
‘I’m sorry?’ asked Annette.
‘You shall see.’
‘But how can a pedicure save us all?’
‘How many over the aeons have asked us that? Always it comes down to feet.’
‘Then I’ll go and get them seen to.’ She didn’t know what was going on. Since first appearing, the legs had talked in nothing but riddles. Where were they from? Who did they work for? They wouldn’t say. But clearly, they worked for a higher power. Magic’s twelfth rule was that only the very highest powers could leave disembodied legs beneath your bed.
Grabbing her blackest coat, adopting her most earnest face, she headed for the door. ‘C’mon, Ribbons. We’re going.’
‘Wait,’ said the legs.
She stopped at the door, held the handle and looked to the bed.
‘You may not go yet. And there is one particular pedicurist you must visit.’
‘There is?’
‘Yes.’