The secret potion, p.7
The Secret Potion, page 7
“Don’t you dare insult me,” Augustine hissed. “If I have any more trouble from you I’ll have to move James from his nice, comfortable room to this cell with some friends of mine. The sort of friends he won’t like.
“Let me introduce them to you.” He turned to one of the guards and ordered: “Pass me the boxes containing my pets.”
“Yes, master,” said the smaller guard, picking up six of the 12 wooden boxes he had brought into the cell earlier and left on the floor behind him. He passed the first box to Augustine.
“These boxes contain my collection of spiders and scorpions,” purred the evil wizard gleefully. “Now what have we here?” He inspected the box and then answered his own question: “Ah, it’s Trevor. He’s a tarantula. Let me show you.”
He opened the lid of the box and placed it on the lap of a trembling Herbert, who watched in horror as two large spider’s legs emerged from the front of the box, followed quickly by others. Herbert’s screams did not deter the two-inch hairy tarantula crawling out on to his heaving stomach, which was covered only by his shirt, and making its way cautiously towards his chest.
The spider’s eight eyes, the middle two of which stood out from its triangular head, seemed to be focused on Herbert’s face and its jaws opened in anticipation of food.
“Would you like to see another?” asked Augustine The Awful, as a second box was passed to him. “This one is called Roxanne and she’s a red-back. Just one bite from her and you’ll be in no state to attend to any demands Mrs. Richards may make of you. You’ll be in excruciating pain, sweating all over and vomiting like mad.”
He opened the lid slightly and pushed the box towards his victim so that the red-back’s eight long spindly legs could be seen making frantic movements in a bid to get free. A reddish-orange stripe down its back was plainly visible.
“No, no. Take it away from me,” shrieked a near demented Herbert, sweat dripping from his forehead and receding hair line.
“I take it she’s not your type,” taunted Augustine, putting Roxanne’s box to one side. “It’s just as well because she has this nasty habit of eating her partner after mating and spinning up to eight round balls of web containing hundreds of eggs. Never mind, I’ve plenty of others. How about Bobby the black widow?”
Herbert screamed again.
“No?” queried Augustine. “Well, there’s Michael the mantid or Hector the huntsman.” He peered into another box.
“Hector, like most of his family, comes from the tropics – I had him shipped over from the Caribbean. If he sinks his fangs into you you’ll suffer swelling, sickness, headaches and maybe palpitations.
“Oh, how disappointing. It looks as if Hector is asleep. He wouldn’t be in the mood for running about.”
As he spoke the tarantula continued to make slow but deliberate progress up Herbert’s chest within inches of his mouth which was now emitting bile as he retched in disgust.
“I know,” said Augustine, a sparkle coming briefly into the deep pools of black that were his eyes. “You and the tarantula would find it simply riveting to meet Ralph my red scorpion.”
Augustine The Awful opened a large box containing the red scorpion and tipped it upside down so that a reddish-brown creature measuring a full seven inches fell on Herbert’s lap. It’s abdomen plopped against Herbert’s shirt, which was now covered in sweat.
The scorpion raised itself on its eight stringy legs. Ralph’s upwardly curved tail – arched threateningly over its back, ready to sting – moved sharply from side to side in an agitated manner as it spotted the tarantula.
The tarantula stopped in its tracks and turned to face the scorpion, which was opening its two lobster-like claws in anticipation.
“When the scorpion captures a victim with its claws it inflicts a disabling string with its tail,” Augustine The Awful explained, grinning fiendishly. “The problem for you is that you are shaking so much you are upsetting Ralph even more than Trevor is. And Trevor doesn’t look very happy, either. I hope Ralph doesn’t bite you because he’s a special breed and can be deadly.”
Every nerve in Herbert’s body was on end as he tried to stop himself making a violent movement that would cause the two potential combatants to join forces in attacking him.
“It will be interesting to see whether one of them bites you first or each other,” mused Augustine. “Perhaps I should give them something to whet their appetites.”
With that, he took a jar from one of the pockets of his gown and held it in front of Herbert for him to see. It contained hundreds of smaller spiders all crawling over each other as they frantically tried to get out of their glass cage.
“These are not poisonous but they crawl literally everywhere,” said Augustine as he slowly opened the top of the jar and shook it so that the spiders tumbled out on to Herbert’s chest, some falling on to his skin where the top two buttons of his shirt were undone.
Herbert screamed hysterically but the wizard ignored his cries.
“They are frisky little fellows aren’t they?” he said. “Look at them. They’re running in all directions. Some down your chest towards your stomach and others towards your mouth. I’m sure no matter how tightly you close it that they’ll find a way in. Or maybe they will prefer to go up your nose and…”
Herbert let out three more ear-piecing shrieks before he finally passed out.
When Herbert awoke the spiders were gone. He blinked in disbelief at finding himself at home in his own bed and not in Augustine The Awful’s castle. But Herbert’s feeling of immense relief could not compensate for the state of shock he was still in.
He lay on the bed trembling and perspiring as his wife Marjorie wiped his forehead and arms to get rid of the sweat which had made the sheets quite damp.
“Thank goodness you’ve woken up at last,” his wife said, soothingly. “You’ve obviously had a dreadful nightmare.”
“Yes,” he muttered. “It was about spiders. They were crawling all over me.”
Marjorie’s lightly freckled face grimaced in disgust. “How awful,” she said.
Herbert was on the point of telling her about the wicked wizard. But then his mind went blank and he remembered nothing of Augustine The Awful, the castle – or the computer disc. Nor could he explain the cut on his cheek. But the shock to his nervous system left other unseen scars and a lifelong fear of spiders.
Chapter Fifteen
JODY’S shock at finding herself in a cell in the bleak east tower of Augustine The Awful’s castle was matched by her disgust at sharing such a confined space with several beetles and two rats.
The stone walls and floors of the small room were completely bare, apart from a bed covered by a single sheet on which the Bag Man had placed his carrier bags. He had already inspected the cell door, made of solid oak, which was securely locked, and found that the only ‘window’ was a narrow slit in the stone wall on the right, above the bed. By climbing on to the old fashioned wooden bed frame he could peer through the slit and see a sheer drop to the moat that surrounded the castle four floors below.
“I suppose there’s no chance of escaping,” Jody sighed, flopping dejectedly on to the edge of the bed.
“It would appear not,” the Bag Man agreed.
“When Augustine The Awful comes I’ll tell him James is my brother and demand he sets all three of us free,” she said defiantly.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” the Bag Man advised. “If Augustine The Awful has wiped out James’s memory and tricked him into working in the forest then he will hardly want to release him. And should the evil-minded Augustine find out you are James’s sister he’ll never let you go. But I doubt if he would release us anyway, now that you know he has found the formula for everlasting life.”
“What can we do, then?”
The Bag Man shrugged. “We can’t do anything at the moment. We’ll just have to wait.”
The wait proved to be a very long one as several hours passed without a sound, apart from the two large rats scurrying across the stone floor and water dripping from a leak in one corner of the ceiling, which housed a family of cockroaches. Jody, overcome by morbid fascination, watched them moving from one crevice to another.
It was getting dark in the small, smelly cell because even a full moon could not throw much light through the narrow slit of a window.
Finally, they heard a noise of approaching footsteps and the cell door was unlocked by two pixies, dressed in dark blue uniforms and pointed hats. They were the direct opposites of each other. One was large and the other comparatively small.
The large pixie had rugged features, with a scar running down his otherwise unmarked face. The small pixie was spotty, with a bent nose and a squint. He seemed to have something in his mouth that caused him to chew and squint alternatively. In fact, the chewing and squinting were just nervous habits.
“I am a very naughty girl who cannot be trusted,” Jody told them. The pixies looked at each other and then at Jody as if she was deranged. But they quickly pushed the heavy wooden cell door wide open to allow some light to flood into the gap – and Augustine The Awful to enter. He brought with him an aura of evil just like his brother Hugo, and the very sight of him made Jody’s flesh crawl.
“WELL,” bellowed Augustine The Awful menacingly, through his rubbery lips as he strutted into the cell in his usual arrogant manner. “Are you now prepared to tell me the true purpose of your visit to the woods?”
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” cried Jody, jumping off the bed on which she and the Bag Man had been sitting.
“You’ve told me lies for a start,” Augustine The Awful roared back at her, huffing and puffing, which caused his chest to rise and fall sharply with each intake of breath.
“What lies?” the Bag Man inquired, getting off the edge of the bed and rising to his feet.
Augustine The Awful looked at him with scorn. “You told me you just happened to be walking in the woods. So it may interest you to know that when my brother Hugo Toby telephoned to arrange to visit me tomorrow he informed me that a girl with long brownish hair, just like this one, visited his house looking for her brother James. Do you still claim you just happened to come across the boy by accident?”
“All right, I was looking for him,” Jody admitted, defiantly. “And he is my brother. I’ve come to take him home.”
“Have you now?” Augustine The Awful mocked, a vile smile spreading across his shallow cheeks and swollen lips.
“Presumably you are unaware your father has seen for himself that your brother is being well treated here?”
“That’s not true,” shouted Jody.
“Enough!” ordered Augustine The Awful, holding up his hand. “I think the time has come to put an end to your rudeness by silencing you for good.” He rolled up his sleeves menacingly.
“Leave her alone!” challenged the Bag Man, moving towards his old foe.
“Is this you being assertive again?” taunted the evil wizard.
“Yes, it is,” snapped Milo. “And I can be threatening, too.” He clenched his fists and raised them.
The two pixies stepped forward to protect their master, though the smaller of the two, still chewing and squinting, was content to let his colleague take the initiative. But Augustine The Awful was in command of the situation. “It’s all right, Olaf,” he told the larger pixie. “Seeing you and little Grog inflict some pain on Milo would give me great pleasure, but I think he needs to be taught a more subtle lesson.”
The Bag Man swung a blow at his old foe, who ducked to avoid it. With that Augustine The Awful clicked his fingers and uttered a curse. There was a puff of smoke and the Bag Man vanished.
A croaking sound was coming from where he had been standing, and Jody looked down in horror to see that in the Bag Man’s place was a very mournful-looking frog.
“That’s better,” said Augustine The Awful, sneering. “Now I have changed you into a frog you look much less assertive, though I must say more appealing.”
He turned to Jody. “As for you, a night in this cell with a frog will teach you a lesson. Then I’ll decide what to do with you. You look quite a strong girl, are you any good at chopping trees and swimming?”
But Jody wasn’t listening to him. She shrieked: “Look what you’ve done to the Bag Man. You horrid, horrid wizard. Change him back immediately.”
The frog croaked in agreement.
“Don’t you dare tell me what to do,” bellowed Augustine The Awful, enraged at the girl’s insolent remarks. “I’ll never change him back – he will be a frog until the day he dies – or in his case until he croaks for the last time.” He laughed at his own cruel joke.
“Why are you doing this to us and why have you got my brother working for you?” questioned Jody, her blue eyes flashing angrily at him.
“I needed your brother and those other two boys to climb those giant trees for me and collect the golden berries from them because, apart from Olaf here, none of the other pixies or goblins are any good at climbing. They kept falling off the trees long before they got to the top. After all, those Golden Berry trees are the tallest in the world.
“Boys love climbing trees so it was no problem for them. The fact that your brother and the other two are good swimmers has proved helpful as well because I also need plant life from the river-bed.
“That has left Olaf and Grog free to attend to other important tasks. Isn’t that right, Grog?” He turned to the smaller pixie who nodded his head, too scared to open his mouth in case the wrong words came out. Grog actually stopped chewing but carried on squinting.
“So I recruited boys young enough to do as they were told, but old enough and big enough to work hard.”
“But why do you want the boys to climb trees for golden berries?”
“I suppose there’s no harm in telling you,” the wizard mused. “The juice from the berries is one of the main ingredients those two treacherous goblins wanted to steal from me. By getting Olaf and Grog to extract the juice and mix it with a secret compound from the river-bed as well as my own special potion I have produced the powerful formula that will stop me from ageing.
“I had to try out hundreds of different compounds before I finally hit upon the right formula for ever- lasting life. I have tested it on a guinea pig, which has not aged at all.
“Now I simply need to get some more plant life from the bottom of the river and keep mixing it with the berry juice and my own special potion. Once it is refined I can drink it regularly and will be able to live for ever, building up my riches and increasing my power until I rule the whole world.”
“Does that mean you will let James go?”
“No it doesn’t,” snapped the wizard. “The formula has to be taken every week so there will be a lot more trees for your brother and the other boys to climb. And when they are not climbing for the berries they will be plucking more plant life from the river-bed.”
“But James can’t stay here. He has to go back to school and lead his own life,” Jody insisted. “He should never have come here at all.”
It seemed Augustine The Awful was going to ignore the girl’s impertinence, but he couldn’t resist telling her how clever he was to lure James to his castle.
In making the effort to honour her with an answer, as if even speaking was too much trouble for him, Augustine The Awful slowly parted his puffy lips so narrowly that his voice sounded even more sinister than usual.
He hissed: “As I told your father, James came here of his own accord. I sent out an advertisement from my computer website, inviting boys to come to the Castle of Dreams for a free holiday – and climb as many trees as they liked. Lots of boys answered by filling in my questionnaire. I chose James and the other two boys because they best met my requirements so I transported them here.
“James wanted to return home to tell his parents about the adventure holiday I was offering him, but I persuaded him that it was first necessary for him to sign a short work placement agreement to pay his way.”
“How short?” Jody demanded to know.
“I believe the figure 25 was mentioned,” Augustine The Awful recalled.
“Months?” Jody queried.
“Years”, he sniggered. “The small print on the back of the consent form also said that if the boys don’t stick to the agreement there is a penalty clause under which I can turn them into goblins.”
“You wicked, wicked man,” Jody screamed. “You tricked James and then you wiped out his memory, didn’t you?”
“I thought that would be for the best,” Augustine The Awful confided. “I’m sure your father would rather not have any memory of his brief encounter with me – after all, it gave him the biggest nightmare of his life.”
“What do you mean?” Jody demanded.
Augustine mocked her with a shame-face expression as he revealed: “Your father looked on James’ computer disc and found that he had replied to my website. So I thought I had better bring your dad here to straighten things out. I taught him a lesson with the help of my friends Trevor, Roxanne, Michael, Hector and Ralph.”
“Who are they?” she asked.
“They are my collection of spiders and scorpions. They loved your father so much some of them crawled all over him.”
“You loathsome man,” Jody shouted, revolted.
“Such anger,” Augustine taunted. “I think it would be best if I wiped out your memory as well as that of your brother’s and father’s. But I’ll sleep on it and decide what to do with you tomorrow. I must go now – I hope you and the frog have sweet dreams.”
With that he marched out of the cell door, which the two pixies slammed shut behind him and bolted from the outside.
Jody looked across at the frog, who was sitting silently on the stone floor. “Oh, you poor Bag Man – I mean Milo,” she said.
