The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

XXI

In Which the Dwarfs Make a New Friend. Sort of.

DAN AND THE DWARFS had discovered that getting out of the basement was harder than it looked. To begin with, the basement now seemed much bigger than it had when they arrived, which couldn’t be right yet somehow was. They had been walking around for half an hour and still hadn’t found the stairs. This development might have worried ordinary people, but the dwarfs were far from ordinary. They were seasoned drinkers of Spiggit’s Old Peculiar, and so were well used to walking around small spaces for long periods of time without being able to find the door, often while singing loudly and seeing small multicolored elephants flying around their heads.

On this occasion, though, the dwarfs were 99 percent sure that they hadn’t been drinking. Dan had been very clear on that point: they needed this job. It was a steady earner until Christmas. Plus, if they made enough money, Dan would be able to have the van repainted, and they would no longer have to go around advertising themselves as Dan’s Sods.

“Maybe we should split up,” said Dan.

“Why?” said Jolly.

“Because we can cover more ground that way. Two groups: if one group finds the door, it keeps shouting until the other group arrives.”

The dwarfs thought about this.

“That sounds like a great suggestion,” said Jolly after a while. “Nobody ever got into trouble by separating from his friends in a dark basement and hoping for the best.”

“Absolutely,” said Angry. “It can’t fail.”

So they split into groups, Dan, Jolly, and Angry in one, and Mumbles and Dozy in the other.

“Lucky for us that Dan is in charge, eh?” said Dozy to Mumbles as the footsteps of the others faded away. “We’d be lost without him.”

Which was literally true. Seconds after Dan had left them, Dozy and Mumbles were completely lost.

• • •

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

Pause.

“Are we there yet now?”

“No.”

Pause.

“Are we there—”

“No!” said Dan. “No, no, no! We’re not there. We’re here. I don’t know where there is. I’m not even sure where here is.”

He stomped off to look around the next corner, leaving Jolly and Angry behind.

“I love doing that,” said Jolly. “Never fails.”

“It’s a classic,” admitted Angry. “Still, I wish we were out of this basement. I’m getting a bit tired of looking at walls and boxes. And I could be wrong, but it does seem to be getting darker down here. I thought your eyes were supposed to get used to the darkness the longer you spent in it, but my eyesight is getting worse.”

He kicked at a scrap of crumpled newspaper. As it rolled away, the dim lightbulb above their heads caught the headline. It announced the defeat of Germany, and the end of the Second World War.

“I think it’s been a while since anyone’s been down here,” said Angry. “That, or World War Two took a lot longer to win than I thought.”

There was a door to Jolly’s right. They had been routinely opening every door they came to in the hope of finding a stairway, or a lift, or a beer. So far, they’d had no luck on any count. Jolly opened the door and wished silently for a little good luck.

Sometimes, if you squeeze your eyes shut, and you think about good things, happy things—snowflakes, and fairies, and bluebirds singing—and picture your wish coming true, picture it like it’s happening in front of you right here and now, then the universe will find a way to make it come true.

This wasn’t one of those times.

Reality was fragmenting, and when reality fragments strange things happen.

The tentacled entity inside the closet wasn’t sure how it had got there, or how long it had been there, or even what a closet was. All it knew was that one minute it had been minding its own business in a quiet corner of the Multiverse, idly wondering which tentacle to use to feed a smaller creature into one of its many gaping mouths, and the next it had been squashed into a very small space with spiders crawling across its face. Because the space was so small, the entity was entirely unable to move, and so it had been trying to blow the spiders away with whichever one of its mouths was nearest. It had tried eating one of the spiders by catching it on its tongue and pulling it into its mouth, but the spider’s legs had caught in its teeth, which annoyed the entity greatly. The spider hadn’t tasted very nice either. Now the entity’s tentacles were starting to cramp, and it really needed to go to the toilet very badly, but it didn’t want to go to the toilet in the closet because it already smelled bad. In addition, the piece of its bodily equipment that it needed to get to in order to go to the toilet was currently squashed against one of its legs and the entity wasn’t sure what would happen if it just took a chance and decided to relieve itself. Frankly, it thought, that stuff could go anywhere.

Suddenly a light shone upon it. One of its heads peered from between a pair of crossed tentacles. Another peered from between its legs. A third popped out of the mouth of the first and squinted at the small figure before it.

Jolly stared at the entity for a couple of seconds, then closed the door. He scratched his chin. He nibbled a fingernail.

He called Angry over.

“What is it?” said Angry.

“Open that door,” said Jolly.

“Why?”

“Just open it.”

“No.”

“Come on, for me.”

“No! I know what’s going to happen.”

“I bet you don’t.”

“I bet I do.”

“Go on, then. Tell me what’s going to happen.”

“I’ll open that door, and a broom will fall out and hit me on the head.”

“I promise you that won’t happen.”

“A mop, then.”

“No.”

“A bucket.”

“I guarantee,” said Jolly, “that if you open that door, nothing will fall on your head.”

Angry raised a finger in warning.

“If anything falls on my head . . .”

“It won’t.”

“Because if it does, we’re going to have a disagreement.”

Jolly took a step back as Angry opened the door.

If the entity was surprised the first time that the door opened, it was better prepared on the second occasion. Jaws snapped. Tongues lolled. Tentacles squirmed ineffectually. It made a horrible sound somewhere between a gibbering howl and an echoing shriek.

Angry gave it a little nod and closed the door softly.

“Did you put that in there?” he asked Jolly.

“Yes,” said Jolly. “I’ve been keeping it as a pet, but I didn’t want to tell anyone because I thought they might make me hand it over to the zoo.”

“You can’t keep that as a pet,” said Angry, on whom sarcasm was sometimes lost. “You need a bigger hutch, for a start. It’s cruel keeping a—whatever that is—cooped up like that. I ought to report you.”

Jolly punched Angry on the arm.

“Of course I didn’t put it in there,” said Jolly. “I just opened the door and there it was.”

“Well, what’s it doing in that closet, then?”

“I don’t know!”

“I wonder how long it’s been in there?” said Angry.

From behind the door came what sounded like a sigh of relief, and liquid began pouring from inside the closet. Jolly and Angry took some quick steps back.

“Quite a while, I think,” said Jolly.

“We can’t just leave it there,” said Angry.

“We can’t take it with us,” said Jolly. “Did you see those teeth? Nasty, those teeth. Not the teeth of a vegetarian. Never met a bone they didn’t like, those teeth.”

On the wall nearby was an ancient blackboard. Fragments of dusty chalk lay on a shelf beside it. Angry picked up one of the pieces of chalk and wrote on the door. The writing was slightly uneven because Angry had to lean at an awkward angle to avoid the liquid that was still spilling from inside the closet.

“What’s it been drinking?” said Jolly. “If he doesn’t finish soon, we’ll drown.”

“There,” said Angry. He looked admiringly at his handiwork. On the door were now written the words

DO NOT OPEN!

“That should do it,” said Angry.

“Can I have that chalk?” said Jolly.

Angry handed it to him, and Jolly added one more word.

MONSTER!

“Better,” said Angry. “Much better.”

He slipped the chalk into his pocket.

“Now let’s find Dan, just in case we need any more doors opened.”