John Connolly - The Creeps - A Samuel Johnson Tale

“Oh,” said Dozy.

He had seen many horrible things in his time. He had seen demons. He had seen Hell itself. He had even, due to an unlocked bathroom door, seen Jolly without any pants on. But he believed that he had never seen, and never would see, anything more terrifying than the figure standing before him.

Until he saw the one that appeared next to it, because, unlike its nearly identical twin, it had only one eye. The remains of the other, Dozy guessed, were still stuck in the treads of one of his boots.

“Eh, Dozy,” said Jolly. “I think there’s a gentleman here who’d like a word with you.”

“Should we start running again?” said Dozy.

“I believe,” said Jolly, “that would be a very good idea.”

• • •

Above the dwarfs, in the store itself, Samuel, Lucy, and the policemen were fighting a rearguard action against ranks of dolls that had been reinforced by assorted cuddly toys. The humans had retreated to the first floor, where Samuel had equipped them with guns capable of firing plastic darts and foam bullets. They were having some effect on the demented dolls and threatening teddy bears and yapping demon dogs with large jaws, most of whom struggled to get back on their feet once they’d been knocked over. Some, though, were made of sterner stuff, so Samuel and Lucy, their relationship problems temporarily set aside in the fight for survival, had begun to collect footballs, basketballs, toy cars, and various heavy objects instead. Now, like soldiers in a castle raining down boulders on the besieging forces, they tossed their ammunition with maximum force at their attackers, and watched with satisfaction as dolls lost heads and teddy bears lost limbs.

“I never liked dolls anyway,” said Lucy as a particularly well-aimed rugby ball fragmented a Sally Salty Tears. “They represent the imposition of outdated gender roles on girls too young to know better.”

Samuel looked at Constable Peel, who shrugged. Samuel thought that Constable Peel might have been almost as frightened of Lucy as he was of the attacking dolls.

“Have you noticed anything funny about those dolls?” asked Sergeant Rowan.

Constable Peel goggled at him. He looked like a goose trying to cough up a feather.

“Funny, Sarge? Funny? You mean, apart from the fact that they’ve come alive and seem intent upon killing us, or isn’t that funny enough for you?”

“Now, now, son,” said Sergeant Rowan, “panicking won’t do us any good. No, what I mean is that they seem to have stopped trying to get up the stairs. It’s as if they’re happy enough just to have forced us up here.”

The sergeant was right. The initial assault had petered out, helped in part by the fact that so many dolls and soft toys were no longer in a position to do much assaulting because of a lack of legs, arms, and heads. Reinforcements continued to arrive, but instead of attempting to scale the stairs they were retreating to positions of cover, from which they were happy just to bare teeth or wave sharp items of cutlery. There had been a worrying moment when the giant twenty-foot teddy on the ground floor had begun moving and seemed about to join in the conflict, but it turned out to be too big and heavy to get to its feet. It had instead remained slumped in a corner growling, like a fat man who had eaten too many pies.

Samuel took a moment to get his bearings. They were in the games department, and it didn’t look like any of the board games, tennis rackets, or cricket bats were about to come to murderous life. The walls, he saw, were decorated with life-size cardboard models of characters from nursery rhymes. He recognized Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet, Humpty Dumpty on his wall, and Little Bo Peep along with assorted sheep. At the very rear of the floor was another flight of stairs. A thin figure watched them from halfway up it.

“Look!” said Samuel. “It’s that Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley.”

“He doesn’t look very happy,” said Constable Peel. “Then again, half of his doll department is in pieces on the ground floor.”

Sergeant Rowan stood up. He unbuttoned the top left-hand pocket of his jacket and from it removed his notebook.

“Oh, he’s in trouble now,” said Constable Peel to Samuel. “Once that notebook comes out it’s not going back in the pocket without someone’s name being written down.”

Sergeant Rowan coughed and licked his pencil. It hung poised over the notebook like the Sword of Damocles. 42

“Right you are, Mr. St. John-Cholmondley,” said Sergeant Rowan. “I’d appreciate it if you’d join me here for a moment and explain just what’s going on.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley. “The answer you seek can only be found by moving higher into the store. The truth lies on the top floor.”

“Well, sir, we don’t have time to be running around chasing answers and truth. We’re policemen, not philosophers. I think you should come down with us to the station and we’ll have a chat about it all over a nice cup of tea in one of the cells. Why don’t you just open the doors and stop all of this nonsense, there’s a good gentleman. In the meantime, I’m going to write your name in my notebook as a ‘person of interest.’ ”

Sergeant Rowan was just about to do that when he noticed that his pencil was gone.

“Here, who’s made off with my pencil?” he asked as his notebook was yanked from his hand and disappeared into the shadows on the ceiling, leaving only a sticky residue on Sergeant Rowan’s fingers. He pulled at it, and saw that it was spiderweb. He looked again at the ceiling, and noticed that the shadows on it appeared to be moving.

“Ah,” he said. “Right.”

Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley smiled at them from the stairs, then skipped up to the next floor. Samuel barely noticed him go because another figure was moving toward them. It was coming from where the cardboard model of Miss Muffet used to be, except the model was no longer on the wall.

What appeared before them was not Miss Muffet, the beloved figure of nursery-rhyme fame. 43Either this one loved spiders an awful lot or she hadn’t run away fast enough when the first one appeared, and it had brought lots of friends along with it for company. She was dressed entirely in black, and wore a veil over her face, a veil that, as she drew closer, was revealed to be made, not from fabric, but from spider silk. The little black spiders that crawled across it, and the dead flies trapped in it, gave the game away on that front. More spiders poured from her sleeves and from beneath her skirts: brown ones, black ones, red ones, yellow ones. There were webs between her fingers, and webs under her arms. Beneath her veil of black spider silk her features were almost entirely concealed by sticky white strands, with only the vaguest of holes torn in them for her eyes and her mouth.

A small black spider descended from the ceiling and dropped onto Sergeant Rowan’s shoulder. He quickly brushed it away, but another fell, and another. He got rid of them, too. One of them scuttled toward Lucy. She stamped on it. When she lifted her foot, it was still there. It looked slightly flatter but was otherwise unharmed. Lucy tried again, but was still unsuccessful in killing it. This was clearly no ordinary spider.

“Ugh!” said Lucy loudly. “How horrid!”

Little Miss Muffet’s head turned in her direction. It was one thing trying to crush her pets, but obviously quite another entirely to describe them as horrid.

“Not horrid,” said a soft voice from somewhere behind the silk. “Beautiful.”

Miss Muffet was having trouble speaking properly. She sounded like she had hairballs caught in her throat. The spider strands around her mouth trembled, and a fat brown spider emerged from between what might have been her lips. It was quickly followed by another, and another, and another. 44