Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help (18 page)

The ballet slipper tickled his ear.

Harry stood in the middle of the room, like an orchestra conductor, and flamboyantly gestured to Stu that now, indeed, was the time to indicate to Massimo that there was
no way out.

This was impeccably timed. Massimo had just begun to frantically search his pockets, seeking his appallingly modern key.

The key was, in fact, hovering in front of his nose. Massimo snatched at it in desperation, but it was now hanging playfully over his head. He slapped at it, hoping to trap it between his hand and his scalp, but he only succeeded in hitting himself rather hard, as the key fluttered off to dangle beside his left ear.

Milrose Munce and Arabella briefly wondered what further part they were to play in this theatrical extravaganza. But it was soon obvious to them that anything this entertaining would require an audience. And so they sat side by side on the comfy sofa and watched with delight the unravelling of Massimo Natica’s mind.

Desiccated Douglas, who had been waiting impatiently in the wings, was now set into motion by maestro Harold. Douglas had a subtle role, involving a very unsubtle object. He placed the mace on the floor in front of him and began to move it slowly towards Massimo Natica. It was a very un-mace-like motion. The weapon slithered. It rolled. It meandered. And yet it approached.

This was the most brutal assault yet (apart from the poetry, of course, with which nothing could remotely compete), for the mace, which would have been pretty frightening were it swinging properly, was utterly terrifying because it was not. What is it going to
do?
wondered Massimo in desperation. Why is it
slithering?

And yet all the mace really did was slither. It snaked and circled about his feet; it withdrew, coyly, then made another surreal pass.

Massimo Natica ducked and wove, fear alternating with madness in his eyes, as the cattle prod whined and soared, the key dangled and darted, the slippers slipped, and the mace meandered, slithersome.

Hurled Harry stood gesticulating majestically: he was indeed conducting all of this as if it were a symphony.

At one point these various activities came together in such a powerfully dramatic fashion that Milrose Munce and Arabella were moved to a spontaneous standing ovation.

And to punctuate that glorious crescendo, Desiccated Douglas swung the great mace, shattering the almost invulnerable window set high into the steel door.

“Act Two,” announced Harry in the silence that followed.

Whatever Hurled Harry had planned for his second act was immediately upstaged by a drama so utterly convincing that you could never imagine such a thing being scripted or rehearsed. Or tolerated by a responsible stage manager.

The repulsively modern lock suddenly whirred and clicked—accompanied by the sound of leprechauns gagging—and flew open to admit the almost airborne person of Archibald Loosten.

“Aiee!” cried the poor guidance counsellor as he dove behind a comfy chair.

“Professional Help,” growled Sledge as he barrelled into the room in pursuit. Barrelling equally ferociously, since Sledge had him in a headlock, was the brute who had all this time been delivering their meals.

“Mr. Borborygmus!” said Milrose Munce with
genuine surprise. “I never before noticed what large and brutish arms you have.”

The poor trapped teacher had no time to reply, as Sledge continued to barrel, marvellous in momentum, straight into the wall opposite the door. He probably would have broken (or re-broken) that appalling nose, had not the head of Borborygmus barrelled into the wall first.

The room crunched. Not just the wall—which did not in fact splinter—but the room itself crunched. And creaked. And groaned horribly, as it tipped, slowly but with ineluctable motion, until it settled on its side.

Nobody had ever seen a room roll over before. The wall was now the floor. The ceiling was now the wall. And—marvel of marvels—the door in the ceiling was now a perfectly placed exit.

“I have a headache,” said Borborygmus, who had not been otherwise damaged.

“Professional Help,” growled Sledge, and immediately continued in his barrelling, dragging unfortunate Mr. Borborygmus at great speed through the newly accessible door.

Nothing happened for a moment or so. What does one do when the room in which one has been standing is suddenly tipped on its side? Obviously, the first thing to do is pick yourself up from the brand-new floor, onto which you have been tipped
along with all the room’s furniture, knickknacks, and weaponry. Nobody was horribly hurt, but everyone was copiously confused.

And into the midst of this confusion wandered Cryogenic Kelvin, with a beaming smile on his cadaverous face.

“Milrose, old pal!” said Kelvin, pleased to see his friend alive and merely bruised. “So this is it, huh? The famed Den of Professional Help. Just came down to see what all the racket was. Place sure is a mess …”

Creeping slowly towards the door, trying hard not to be noticed, was half-mad Massimo Natica, whose hair was mussed and suit slightly wrinkled. “Massimo the Mediocre!” cried Kelvin, immediately recognizing the Professional Helper. Cryogenic Kelvin made himself fully visible, fully hideous and standing between the Helper and the doorway, just to make sure that Massimo would be dissuaded from exiting that way.

Hysterical with terror—and worse, insulted—Massimo scampered, still on all fours, into a complex mess formed by a group of thrown chairs. He disappeared like a lizard beneath a rock.

“You know this guy?” asked Milrose in wonder.

“Just by reputation. Seen his picture a few times. He was on a poster, you know.”

“A what?”

“A poster. Circus poster! Famously bad act.”

“Massimo Natica is a clown?”

“Well, he is a clown, but that was not his official position in the circus. The not-quite-famous Rotting Apple Circus.”

Cryogenic Kelvin was clearly about to launch into an anecdote. Nobody was in the mood to stop him. In fact, nobody was in the mood to do much of anything. And so they listened.

“Yes, I have friends from the Rotting Apple. Briefly dated a dead contortionist, in fact. But I treated her bad, and she got a little bent out of shape.”

Kelvin stopped, as always, to gather the response to his punchline. Milrose chuckled weakly.

“And she told me all about Massimo the Mediocre. Billed as the greatest hypnotist ever to swing a watch. Used to hypnotize the whole audience. Problem is, all he ever managed to do was put them half asleep. And so, no matter how good the rest of the show, the audience would just sit there yawning, bored to distraction. It took hours before they properly emerged from this hypnotic state, by which time they were usually at home telling their friends what an incredibly dull circus they had just witnessed. Didn’t do much for the Rotting Apple’s reputation.”

“Hm,” said Milrose. “His skills have improved.”

“Well, yes. They were already getting better at the time of the disaster. He had progressed from being
Massimo the Massively Awful to Massimo the Merely Mediocre. He was to the point where he could now put a group of people fully to sleep. And this, my friends, was the problem.”

“You don’t have to tell this anecdote!” cried Massimo Natica from his hiding place between the chairs.

“Of course not,” said Kelvin. “You never
have
to tell any particular anecdote, do you. You just do it, purely for the entertainment value.”

“This is not entertaining!”

“Not for you, clearly. How about you, Milrose? You entertained?”

“Wildly,” said Milrose. Which was not far from the truth.

“Me too,” said Thor.

“Got me hooked,” said Harry.

“I am enjoying this, yes,” said Arabella.

“You might use a more luscious vocabulary,” said Percy.

“Right, then,” said Kelvin. “To continue. Oh, and shut up, Percy. Yes, Massimo had mastered the art of the collective snooze. Didn’t matter who you were, or what you were doing—Massimo could send you straight to slumberville.

“The disaster occurred during a rehearsal. Everyone was practising their act for the big day ahead, when they were to open in front of their
largest audience ever. They had never been more than a two-ring circus, and at last the Michelin Guide had granted them a third ring. It was the final rehearsal, and for this they never used safety nets or padding.

“The trapeze artists flung and the acrobats flipped. The clowns clowned. The lion tamer tamed. And Massimo rehearsed his routine.”

Cryogenic Kelvin paused for effect. It was not a punchline, true, but it was equally deserving of a moment’s dramatic silence, for clearly something very bad was about to happen. Kelvin made sure that everyone’s breath was properly bated before he continued.

“Yes, Massimo the Newly Semi-Competent went through his tedious act, to be sure that he was in shape for the next day’s show. And he was good. Best ever. Every single person in the tent fell asleep.

“The trapeze artists began to snore mid-air, and fell with great squashing noises to the floor below. The acrobats, who thought they could do triple flips in their sleep, in fact could not. Also breaking their necks were the contortionists—including my darling ex—since they were tied into the sort of knot in which you really aren’t supposed to relax, much less fall into a hypnotic coma. The lion tamer fell asleep, but the lion itself did not, which was regrettable. Even the clowns, who were walking on their hands,
sustained concussions, and died the next morning of brain fever while telling confused jokes.

“The ringleader, who alone survived, had no choice but to fire Massimo the Mediocre.”

“He didn’t fire me,” piped up Massimo Natica. “He accepted my resignation.”

“That’s not how my girlfriend told the story. At any rate, fascinating to bump into you. Always wondered where they’d put a has-been hypnotist out to pasture.”

“Well, this explains a lot,” said Milrose Munce. “We kind of questioned why we were doing all the mindless and murderous things this fraud suggested.”

“I am not a fraud,” wheedled Massimo. “I am a Professional.”

“Diploma?” asked Arabella, diplomatically.

“It’s in my drawer,” said Massimo Natica, with even less credibility than usual.

“I have searched your drawers,” said Deeply Damaged Dave, who had been until now uninvolved in the general merriment, “and they are free of any form of accreditation.”

Milrose was excited to see his mentor at last join in the ritual humiliation: he expected great things.

“And you,” said Dave with great authority, pointing at a sofa, “are hereby stripped of your licence to cause misery.”

Mr. Loosten’s head slowly rose from behind the
sofa. He had the look of a cornered weasel: terrified, but cruelly determined. The flabby mouth opened, and an incomprehensible incantation began to emerge.

“Put a cork in it, Loosten,” said Dave, who then suddenly launched into a fearful incantation of his own, also incomprehensible, but much more impressive than Loosten’s diminished efforts. A giant cork appeared in the air, conjured up from nothing, and hovered in front of the Dread Exorcist’s face. As Dave’s incantation rose to a pitch of fearful incomprehensibility, the cork whirled and flew at the guidance counsellor, lodging solidly in his mouth and effectively bottling him up. His own incantation was reduced to a muffled grunt of distress.

Clearly, Dave had become staggeringly good at all sorts of ghost chemistry, some of it almost subtle.

With the evil guidance counsellor silenced, Dave began to incant in earnest. He produced a large notebook from a bag he was carrying, opened it, and began to read from it—or, rather, sing from it: a more tuneful brand of incomprehensible syllables.

“New counterspell!” Kelvin whispered into the ear of Milrose Munce. “And a really good one. Wow. He’s exceeding himself.”

Even the mortals could sense it: as Dave sang from his notes, the spell on the first floor was coming undone. A prodigious creaking filled the air.

Loosten worked his face and grunted, but whatever spell he was desperately trying to conjure in response was stopped short by the massive cork. The creaking was punctuated by the occasional crunch. It grew in volume. The crunches become less occasional. As Dave’s voice majestically crescendoed, both creak and crunch were for a moment unbearably loud, and the entire room swam blindly in a shared headache. And then it was over.

The ghosts cheered. Deeply Damaged Dave, his chanting accomplished, closed his notebook and—for an encore—casually made a comfy chair explode.

Led by Milrose, Arabella, and flower, the victors departed the Den of Professional Help. First followed the warriors (scientific, athletic, and poetic); then Cryogenic Kelvin, carrying the mace (which would add a dash of spice to his next performance in Biology); penultimately, at some distance, the red-faced and disgraced Massimo the Mediocre; and finally—dismissed and all but forgotten—a corked and completely powerless Archibald Loosten.

The new exit from the Den opened, surprisingly, into the hallway where you could never, at one time, turn left. From this door, you turned right. Nobody thought to look back when the procession had finally made its way through that door and down the hall, but if they had they would have noted that
this exit, so newly arrived in this world, had disappeared. No, you could no longer turn left, and never in the long future of the school was it possible to turn in that direction again.

In the weeks that followed, much was changed among both the living and the dead.

Massimo Natica disappeared, but word was that he had run away to find work in another circus—the Sleazy Peach Pit—considered by many the very worst circus in the world. Because his reputation preceded him like a foul wind, however, even this stumbling troupe had taken him only after he hypnotized them during the interview so that they awoke to an iron-clad contract.