The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

XVII

In Which BoyStarz Return to the Limelight, Thus Making a Bad Situation Worse

A LARGE CROWD HAD GATHERED outside Wreckit & Sons to witness the grand reopening of the new store. There were lots of small children doing the things that small children do: talking, crying, complaining they wanted to go to the bathroom, and, in the case of one little girl, asking Jolly where he thought he was going with her mother’s purse. They were being entertained, if that was the right word, which it probably wasn’t under the circumstances, by BoyStarz.

Dan had convinced Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley to allow BoyStarz to perform some songs at the grand opening. Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley had never heard of BoyStarz. More importantly, he had never heard them sing, which was why he had agreed to allow them near the store, and had also promised Dan some money, even if Dan was never going to live to collect it. Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley started to regret his decision as soon as he heard the opening lines of “Love Is Like a Toy Shop,” but by then it was too late.

Dan and the dwarfs walked to the rear of the store, where Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley was waiting impatiently at the service entrance. He tapped his watch as the dwarfs approached.

“Is your watch broken?” asked Jolly.

“No, it is not. You’re late.”

Jolly looked at his own watch. At least, it was his own watch now, but about five minutes earlier it had belonged to someone else.

“I don’t think so. I have us bang on time.”

“I’m telling you—” insisted Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley, but Angry interrupted him.

“Here, give me a look at that. I’m good with watches.”

Before Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley could object, the watch was off his wrist and in Angry’s hand.

“Ah yes, I see what’s wrong here,” said Angry. “I’ll have that fixed in no time.”

The watch vanished into Angry’s pocket, never to be seen by Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley again.

“Now,” said Angry, steering the bewildered Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley into the store, “best be getting along. Don’t want to keep the little ’uns waiting, do we?”

“Er, no, of course not,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley. “By the way, do you think you could make BoyStarz stop singing?”

“What?” said Dan. “Make them stop? But they’ve only just started. Listen to them. They’re like nightingales, they are.”

“They’re more like seagulls,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley. “And you can’t hear them properly because your ears are stuffed with cotton wool. All of your ears are stuffed with cotton wool.”

“Ear infection,” said Dan.

“Very contagious,” confirmed Angry.

Outside the store, BoyStarz finished their first song. There was some applause, but only because people were relieved that they’d stopped.

“Quick, let’s get inside before they start up again,” said Jolly, and Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley didn’t try to argue.

He led the dwarfs down the back stairs of the store. They passed no one else along the way, and Wreckit & Sons seemed very quiet.

“Where are all the staff?” asked Dan.

“They’re getting a last-minute pep talk from Mr. Grimly,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley.

“Will we get to meet Mr. Grimly?” asked Jolly.

“Oh yes,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley as they reached the dressing room. “You’ll be meeting him very soon, and he’s very anxious to meet you, too. Dying to meet you, you might even say.”

He smiled at the dwarfs the way an anteater might smile at a line of ants, but the dwarfs were too distracted by their elf outfits to notice. In the past they’d worn suits that were either so loose that a bookmark was needed to find the wearer, or so tight around the neck and waist that the wearer resembled a Christmas cracker. Those same suits were often made of the kind of material capable of conducting near-fatal levels of static electricity. Angry had stuck to a carpet on one job and had to be removed from it with wooden spoons; on another, Jolly had amused himself by building up a static charge and then poking Mumbles in the arm. Mumbles had received such a shock that his eyeballs had lit up.

These suits, on the other hand, were made of what felt like velvet. They were red with green trim, and while they might have had too many bells on for Jolly’s liking, they were still more than a step above normal.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley. “Please wait here when you’re done, and I’ll come and get you in—”

He tried to check his watch, then realized that it was no longer on his wrist.

“Excuse me, about the watch,” he said to Angry.

“What watch?”

“My watch.”

“Oh, that watch. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.”

“Would there be—? I mean, perhaps I should—?”

“Out with it, man, out with it,” said Angry. “We have elf work to do.”

“Well, I was wondering if I might perhaps have a receipt for it?”

When the dwarfs had finished laughing, which took a while, and Angry’s sides had stopped hurting, which took even longer, he finally managed to speak.

“Friends don’t need receipts,” said Angry.

“Are we friends?” asked Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley.

He sounded like he didn’t believe that this was the case and, if it was, he was wondering if it might be a good idea to put as much distance as possible between himself and his new “friend.”

“No, but we won’t ever be if we start looking for receipts from each other, will we?” asked Angry reasonably. “Friendship is about trust. Without trust, what do we have? Nothing.”

Angry put his left hand on his heart. There were tears in his eyes, although they might have been left over from his laughing fit. He put his other hand over Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley’s heart, and discreetly stole his pocket handkerchief.

“Well, since you put it like that,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley as he was hustled from the room by the rest of the dwarfs.

“I’d still quite like a receipt, though,” he said as the door closed on him. “You can even sign it ‘Your Friend,’ ” he shouted through the keyhole.

Eventually, they heard his footsteps move away, but by then they were already changing into their outfits. They fitted almost perfectly, although Dozy’s was a little more snug in certain places than he might have liked.

“I think something’s being crushed down there,” he said. “I’ll do myself an injury.”

“You’ll do someone else an injury if that button pops on your trousers,” said Angry. “You could take an eye out with it.”

“I must have put on a pound or two since—”

Dozy stopped talking and began thinking.³³ “Hang on a minute, how did they know our sizes? I mean, these suits are very nicely cut. Very good quality, these suits. Not like the usual ones we’re given.”

It was a good question. How did the suits fit so well?

“Nipsomash?” suggested Mumbles.

“Yeah, maybe Mr. Singing-Chimney has a good eye for fashion,” agreed Jolly.

“If he does, then it’s the only good thing about him,” said Angry. “I wouldn’t trust him an inch, and this is me speaking. I don’t even trust me, but I trust me more than I’d trust him.”³⁴

“It’s the mustache,” said Jolly. “You have to look out for blokes with mustaches. A bad lot, your mustache-growers.”³⁵

“I wonder how they’ll dress Father Christmas?” said Dan. “If you’ve got those threads, his suit must be fit for a king.”

“By the way, where is Father Christmas?” said Jolly. “We should meet him before all this starts. We don’t want any misunderstandings later.”

By “misunderstandings,” Jolly meant that he didn’t want Father Christmas complaining when the dwarfs sneaked off for a nap, or took the occasional sip of Spiggit’s Old Peculiar to keep their spirits up, or gave the odd annoying kid a slap on the ear.

“We should go and find him,” said Angry. “Introduce ourselves. Let him know we’re on his side, as long as he’s on ours.”

“Hang on,” said Dan. “Mr. Snippy-Chinstrap told us to wait here. He seemed very keen that we didn’t go wandering off.”

“Well, Mr. Saggy-ChapStick isn’t around, is he?” said Angry. “And it’s important that we say hello to Father Christmas: we’re his elves. Without us he’s nothing, and without him we’re just small men with no excuse for going round a toy shop where there’s lots of stuff that someone could steal if we don’t get to it first.”

And so, with Dan in tow, the dwarfs set off to find Father Christmas and set him straight on the difference between “stealing” and “borrowing with no real intention of giving back.”

• • •

The stone house that served as Santa’s Grotto sat silent and dark on the top floor of Wreckit & Sons. The trees of the forest seemed to stretch out their branches like arms toward the house. Ivy decorated their trunks, and frost sparkled on the bark. From a distance, it looked almost real. Up close, it became apparent that it was real. The trees had rooted themselves in the floor, breaking through the boards and anchoring themselves on the metal supports. A peculiar-smelling sap oozed from the bark, forming sticky yellow clumps that glowed with an inner light. The ivy was growing at a remarkable rate, twisting and coiling as it wound around the trunks of the trees, and extending itself across the floor to form a carpet of green.

And it was cold up there, so very cold. Had there been anyone in the vicinity to exhale, they would have seen their breath form thick white clouds that froze in the air and dropped to the ground with the faintest of tinkles as the crystals shattered. The walls began to disappear as the darkness nibbled away at them, and the little fairy lights in the ceiling started to blink out one by one, and were replaced by strange constellations from another universe.

Slowly, a faint humming arose. It came from everywhere and nowhere, as though an unseen hand had set the strings of this universe vibrating. It was a foul, unsettling noise, a melody composed of pain sculpted into notes: if great evil had a theme tune, that is how it would have sounded.³⁶

From inside the grotto, a white glow appeared. Tendrils of shadow forced themselves like smoke between the gaps in the stones. In one of the windows the shape of a man became visible and a voice that had, until now, spoken only from the walls found an almost human form.

“Bring them,” it said. “Bring them to us.”

33. Dozy could do one or the other, but not both at the same time. This is not an uncommon flaw in those who tend to speak before they know what’s going to come out of their mouths, and then look a bit surprised at what they hear. Before speaking, it’s a very good idea to consider if what you’re about to say is better than silence. If it isn’t, then perhaps you shouldn’t say anything at all.

34. Angry had once stolen one of his own shoes.

35. The question of why men grow mustaches is one that has troubled philosophers for centuries. At best, a mustache looks like someone has decided to transport caterpillars on his upper lip; at worst, it looks like a bird has flown up his nose. It is also a fact that a great many bad sorts have been wearers of bad mustaches, as can be seen from the lineup below of Stalin of Russia, Hitler of Germany, and Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia:

Now I am not trying to suggest that all those who grow mustaches are secretly demented dictators or bloodthirsty tyrants. That would just be silly. But, as our study shows, having a bad mustache is a clear sign that you might be one.

36. And it wasn’t BoyStarz, who at that moment were being bribed to stop singing after the crowd had taken up a collection.