Of Toys and Curses
22
The Green Ganderino
In the distance, behind a closed door, a phone was incessantly ringing.
In fawn trench-coat, brown wool sweater, light brown pants and worn old black shoes, Larkis Dovesworth trekked up the corridor. He had a newspaper rolled under his arm and was carrying a brown paper bag with bread sticking up out from the top. He stopped at the brown chipped door that had the number 506 marked in faded silver on it. He unlocked the door, slipped the keys back into his pocket and locked it back up behind him.
Larkis flicked the light switch, raising the gloom into a glowing red hue. In the centre of the living space was a lounge. Opposite, was a square window showing it was nearly sundown.
On the left wall was his photography station, with developer trays and chemicals, a line across the front of the shelves, a few photographs pegged up on it. Beside this table was a pin-board, made busy with dates, various notes, photographs and newspaper article printouts. He walked to the right, stopping at his study desk just before the table with his al-chemical equipment; beakers, test tubes, conical flasks and a Bunsen burner. Compared to the others, this first desk was essentially simple. It was a home for his laptop, printer, old style study lamp and his persistently ringing phone.
Over the table hung a few billboard posters.
Come see
The Green Ganderino!
Magic! Mystery!
Coming to the St Canard Regent Theatre
This July to September 1967
The Green Ganderino!
A World of Mystery and Magic Awaits You
At the St Canard Regent Theatre
This October to December 1969
Larkis dropped the newspaper under his arm onto the desk in front of the ringing cordless phone. Almost on cue, the phone stopped ringing.
As Larkis carried the bread back to the kitchen, the phone began ringing again. From the paper bag's contents, he assembled a tuna, mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato sandwich and ate it hungrily as he put away the small carton of eggs and other groceries into the fridge. The phone stopped and started ringing again a few times. Larkis took out the old lettuce and other questionable food remains and put them into the bin. He wasted no time taking the rubbish bag out to the garbage chute.
With a glass of water in his hand, Larkis casually returned to the desk and picked up the phone.
There was a delay and he drank his water, appreciating how nice the new silence was in his flat and set to removing his previous case from the pin board. Half a minute passed before the woman's voice on the other end came in an uneven rush. "Larkis?"
"Hi Clover," he tossed the items into a folder, "you sound out of breath."
"Yes; I was taking in the washing when you picked up."
He checked his watch, "Huh, so it is that time. How's Joey and Max today?"
"Behaving. More or less."
"And the pool?"
"Still coming up at bath time. If they're like this next year, I might end up putting an actual thing in the ground."
Larkis chuckled. "Who knows, you may be looking at a couple of deep sea explorers in the making."
"Maybe." She laughed, "At least they'll have warmer gear then."
"So, what's up?" He started pacing the length of the room.
"37 Alabaster Street, One Tree Hill." She read into the phone, "the description fits the 'free form non-repeating' category. It was reported three days ago."
"What's S.H.U.S.H.'s ETA on the scene?"
"You have a minimum of twenty five days." She stated stiffly.
"If they're busy, I'm busy..." Thinking on S.H.U.S.H. made Larkis stop to look through the window. He saw a black thing with long sharp claws on the S.H.U.S.H. roof, "what the heck is that?!"
"What?"
Larkis blinked and saw a duck in purple. "It's a doggone HEA curse!"
"A full beast conversion?"
"No, the guy's shifted back now."
"Where is he?"
"Right on the S.H.U.S.H. roof!" He exclaimed at the nearness of it.
"Don't you go up there! Those snipers will get you!"
"Clover, I'm sevent-..." He looked at the building opposite him. "The snipers are gone..." He dropped the phone, staring out at the suddenly vacant roof tops. "He's cleared out the snipers for me."
Larkis opened the window, looking over to the empty roof directly across from him, opposite to the S.H.U.S.H. building. Focusing his mind on the roof, he jumped his mind over the distance. Now, in the open air, he had a better view of the scene as the darkness gathered around them.
The beast form was peculiar. It rose up out of the the duck's feathers, his fingers grew long sharp claws. Then it drew back within the duck. From his new vantage point, Larkis could just make out the ever-present twisting, coiling in the air around the duck like tendrils of thin black smoke. It was as though there was something intensely smoldering beneath the purple duck's feathers.
He seemed to have more control over it than a typical curse victim; and was making a marvelously threatening show for his captured audience. He seemed to be saying things, but it wasn't loud enough for Larkis to make out.
All show.
And that was Director Hooter.
Larkis had so many mixed feelings over seeing his old boss he was compelled not to interfere.
A vampire and yellow clothed duck appeared the moment the sun vanished below the horizon.
The cursed one captured the vampire with a sprinkling of fairy dust.
Still all show.
Third and last to take on the cursed was the yellow costumed duck. This one gave Larkis the impression of a tough room and a flat foot; the smoking duck was a benign curiosity to him. Yellow was primarily focused on investigating what was going on between the cursed and Hooter.
As for Director Hooter himself, Larkis couldn't make out many words, but by his voice he was clearly terrified and trying not to be. The question suddenly occurred to Larkis about how long they had spent on the roof together before his arrival.
"...The antijack-Hooter-you...!"
The cursed shuddered and collapsed.
"...Agent SplasherQuack, please take Drake Mallard to the morgue. Have Doctor Bellum do a full neurological dissection, bisection-trisection-quad-section, and while she's at it, a dissertation on what the heck I was just forced to endure!"
Most of Hooter's sudden loud rant was meaningless to Larkis, but these words he understood quite clearly.
The yellow duck went inside the building with Hooter and for the first time in forty years, the S.H.U.S.H. roof was vacant.
Larkis Dovesworth jumped his mind across to take stand where SplasherQuack had just disappeared with the curse victim.
He waited a time for the vampire to lose interest in the place. A motorcycle went off into the distance. Ten minutes was surely enough.
The only room in the building he knew with accessible unlocked windows was the infirmary on the middle floor. Larkis scaled down the side of the building, carefully making his way down to the row of windows of the infirmary and climbed inside.
A duck in a white medical jacket was standing over the curse victim, her dark hair in a pony tail, a large array of medical equipment at her disposal. It spelled two things quite clearly; this duck was still, for the moment, alive.
Larkis waited for her to finish the procedure before interrupting. "Dead, alive... Just a minor detail to S.H.U.S.H.." He frowned.
Doctor Bellum twisted, startled.
"What grave typicality." He eyed her in reproach. A very pretty version of Doctor Vykes and probably just as demented.
"Who are you?"
"Till death do us part." Larkis answered cryptically.
"How did you get in here?" She asked more intently, implement still in hand.
"Someone was good enough to remove the snipers from the roof." He answered simply. "This poor soul, I believe."
She stared at him.
"Those snipers have only been keeping me out forty years."
She stared blankly at him.
"The Green Ganderino?"
She shook her head.
"No, of course not. Hooter would only share that information with his most trustworthy agents." He smiled lightly and nodded. "You won't find anything in the sectional procedures on this fellow. You're looking in entirely the wrong place."
"How would you know that?"
"He's suffering a variant of symptoms I've seen several times before." He swerved casually past her, looking at the readings on the equipment. "Very low energy readings; practically negligible. The victim will need days to build his energy back up. Would you say this was a result of the 'antijack' that Hooter used to pacify him?"
"Ye-es... how do you know about that?"
"I heard mention. Thank you for confirming it; I really couldn't hear very well. Do you enjoy your work, Doctor Bellum?"
"I do..."
Larkis summoned the energies and cast a hypnotic field around her.
"Drake Mallard died at one thirty-two am.
All di-bi-tri and quad sections were performed as ordered by Director Hooter.
Autopsy results yielded the deceased was the carrier of an unidentified blood curse.
I, Doctor Bellum, am therefore attributing the deceased's surprising behaviour and physical... acumen to said curse and its interaction with the antijack."
He stopped the cast and she sank into a stupor.
Larkis snatched a sampler from the tray. He took a blood sample from the curse victim and put it in the pocket of his trench coat. He'd take a curse investigation over a ghost every time.
"So, 'Drake Mallard'," he read the name on Doctor Bellum's reports out loud before disconnecting the power to the machinery. Now he had it three times for memory's sake and she wouldn't second guess the idea that Drake Mallard was dead. No S.H.U.S.H. orderly would move a living patient to the morgue; he was safe.
On with the show. Larkis moved to the door and opened it. What he saw made him freeze in terror.
"Hooter..." He widened his eyes, looking at the narrow corridor and multiple doors before him. "You didn't!"
Larkis stepped backwards into the infirmary. He slammed the door shut, breathing heavily, back against the door. "How... he knew..." he shut his eyes, "Hooter, you monster..." he swallowed. The echo of carnival music rose from his memories. The sinister sound of maniacal laughing. Where it had happened...
"No!" He yelled, banishing the maelstrom from his head.
He stood for a long time, his head in his hands.
It was Doctor Bellum stirring from her stupor that forced him to regain his sense of himself. Larkis went to the nearest window and climbed out as Doctor Bellum shook herself, confusedly brushing off the sleep.
"Fatigue." She yawned, "I really ought to stop working so late." She self-diagnosed and busied herself with pushing the medical carts away from Drake Mallard's bed.