excitement,â said Nerlin.
âYou get excited about going to the toilet?â said Valla.
âDoesnât everyone?â
On Tristan da Cunha, the Hearse Whisperer had just regained consciousness. The last thing Dr Reversion had done to her before sending her back there was to poke an Ultrasonic Vacuum Cleaner into her ears and suck out all her recent memories. Of course, even the best vacuums can never get into those tight, hard-to-reach corners where the nastiest bits always hide. Although the doctor had removed all memories of the Hearse Whispererâs visit to the Sulfuric Clinic, she knew she had been somewhere . This made her depressed, which was why she had been to the clinic in thefirst place. But she comforted herself by thinking that maybe the place she had been to had been a flower shop.
âA flower shop?â she said. âDonât I hate flowers? All that pretty colour and perfume? Isnât that the opposite of everything I stand for?â
But the Flower Shop Spirit was stuck right in the front of her brain so every time she closed her eyes and tried to visualise something evil like a jagged, rusty, yet really sharp knife, all she could see were yellow chrysanthemums. She concentrated and tried to recall the smell of someone who she had just chopped into little bits, but all she could smell was yellow chrysanthemums.
I feel as if I am only one short step away from sitting in a chair smelling of wee and having conversations with the wall like my old grandmother did , she thought.
âI need help,â she said, but there was no one there to answer her. This was good because she knew that if anyone had heard her say that she would have had to kill them.
Except , she thought, I wouldnât so much kill them as give them a nice vase of yellow chrysanthemums .
âI need to go and get help,â she said, but all the information in her head about the Sulfuric Clinic had been vacuumed out and her instinct told her she would get the help she needed in a flower shop.
Then she dug back deep into older memories that the doctor hadnât been able to remove. There was a vague thought that had been nagging the back of her brain. It had been a sudden brilliant thought on the verge of exploding into her consciousness whenâ¦
What?
There had been a penguin and it had asked her what she was doing, buried up to her neck in snow in the remotest place on Earth, and she had said she was waiting for someone and the penguin had said somethingâ¦
What was it?
âDo you not think that maybe â and this is just an idea â do you not think that this is probably the very last place you would ever meet them?â
YES! That was it!
And then a really, really large penny had dropped, and she had been distracted, but now she was focused.
And she put two and two together with the really, really large penny and the thought jumped up and hit her so hard it gave her a headache.
And the thought was this:
Maybe Tristan da Cunha was not the last place on Earth you would ever meet someone you were looking for. If the someone was the Flood family, maybe the whole remote island thing was a red herring and I hate fish. Maybe there was actually somewhere that was even less likely. Somewhere that was the very, very last place anyone would expect the Floods to go.
Transylvania Waters.
The idea was so unlikely that it was obvious. Or was it all a super, triple, quintuple, double, double bluff, and those bumps in the snow, halfway down the path to Potato Patches, were not just snowdrifts but the Floods. Or not.
The Hearse Whisperer stared at the bumps and concentrated. The snow melted and nine sheep stood there in a confused group with clouds of steam coming off their wool.
âThatâs it,â said the Hearse Whisperer. âTime to go home.â
Because sick, evil, double-agent spies get homesick from time to time, so even if the Floods werenât going to Transylvania
âYou get excited about going to the toilet?â said Valla.
âDoesnât everyone?â
On Tristan da Cunha, the Hearse Whisperer had just regained consciousness. The last thing Dr Reversion had done to her before sending her back there was to poke an Ultrasonic Vacuum Cleaner into her ears and suck out all her recent memories. Of course, even the best vacuums can never get into those tight, hard-to-reach corners where the nastiest bits always hide. Although the doctor had removed all memories of the Hearse Whispererâs visit to the Sulfuric Clinic, she knew she had been somewhere . This made her depressed, which was why she had been to the clinic in thefirst place. But she comforted herself by thinking that maybe the place she had been to had been a flower shop.
âA flower shop?â she said. âDonât I hate flowers? All that pretty colour and perfume? Isnât that the opposite of everything I stand for?â
But the Flower Shop Spirit was stuck right in the front of her brain so every time she closed her eyes and tried to visualise something evil like a jagged, rusty, yet really sharp knife, all she could see were yellow chrysanthemums. She concentrated and tried to recall the smell of someone who she had just chopped into little bits, but all she could smell was yellow chrysanthemums.
I feel as if I am only one short step away from sitting in a chair smelling of wee and having conversations with the wall like my old grandmother did , she thought.
âI need help,â she said, but there was no one there to answer her. This was good because she knew that if anyone had heard her say that she would have had to kill them.
Except , she thought, I wouldnât so much kill them as give them a nice vase of yellow chrysanthemums .
âI need to go and get help,â she said, but all the information in her head about the Sulfuric Clinic had been vacuumed out and her instinct told her she would get the help she needed in a flower shop.
Then she dug back deep into older memories that the doctor hadnât been able to remove. There was a vague thought that had been nagging the back of her brain. It had been a sudden brilliant thought on the verge of exploding into her consciousness whenâ¦
What?
There had been a penguin and it had asked her what she was doing, buried up to her neck in snow in the remotest place on Earth, and she had said she was waiting for someone and the penguin had said somethingâ¦
What was it?
âDo you not think that maybe â and this is just an idea â do you not think that this is probably the very last place you would ever meet them?â
YES! That was it!
And then a really, really large penny had dropped, and she had been distracted, but now she was focused.
And she put two and two together with the really, really large penny and the thought jumped up and hit her so hard it gave her a headache.
And the thought was this:
Maybe Tristan da Cunha was not the last place on Earth you would ever meet someone you were looking for. If the someone was the Flood family, maybe the whole remote island thing was a red herring and I hate fish. Maybe there was actually somewhere that was even less likely. Somewhere that was the very, very last place anyone would expect the Floods to go.
Transylvania Waters.
The idea was so unlikely that it was obvious. Or was it all a super, triple, quintuple, double, double bluff, and those bumps in the snow, halfway down the path to Potato Patches, were not just snowdrifts but the Floods. Or not.
The Hearse Whisperer stared at the bumps and concentrated. The snow melted and nine sheep stood there in a confused group with clouds of steam coming off their wool.
âThatâs it,â said the Hearse Whisperer. âTime to go home.â
Because sick, evil, double-agent spies get homesick from time to time, so even if the Floods werenât going to Transylvania
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