The Quest for the Bone Idol

The Quest for the Bone Idol-3

Stitches waved a hand dismissing the mirth of his colleagues.

“If you've quite finished with this childish giggling, I did come in with something to tell you,” he said. “Although to be honest I'm not sure I want to now.” He tried to pout but all that did was make his face look like the back end of a cat.

“Aww, go on, mate,” said Ollie, slowly recovering. “I'm sorry.” He paused for a few seconds. “It's just that you looked so funny with your hips behind your shoulders.”

Five minutes later after Ollie and Ronnie had calmed down once more, Stitches, seething in righteous indignation, imparted the news that he'd been trying to get out for the last ten minutes.

“I've won a competition,” he announced.

“What competition?” said Ollie. “I didn't know you'd entered a competition. What was the competition about?”

“Oh, nothing really. Pizzle, the new landlord of The Bolt and Jugular held a competition; well it was more of a raffle really. I just happened to be in there at the time so I bought a ticket. And guess what?”

“You won the competition,” said Ronnie, thinking that he needed to get over to the pub as soon as possible. The Bolt and Jugular wasn't his usual watering hole but a new landlord offered up ample opportunities for ingratiation, general snivelling, and free drinks galore.

“I did win the competition,” said Stitches.

“So, don't keep us in suspense. What was the first prize in the competition? Not that I'm holding my breath,” said Ollie.

The last time anyone had won anything in the town was when Nile Throat, a local troll, had become the recipient of the Skullenian undertaker, Caractacus Coffin's, free funeral giveaway. He'd instigated the scheme as a form of advertising as business could be a bit on the slow side in a place where everyone lived for rather longer than was usual, and dying didn't always mean the end of an existence (you can't keep a ghost in a casket no matter how much sealant you put in the gaps). It had worked though. When a very pleased Mr. Throat turned up with his voucher twenty minutes later, the redoubtable Mr. Coffin had murdered him, and then invited everyone that he could fit into his shop to attend and watch him perform his craft, (those he felt he could unobtrusively measure up without them getting suspicious anyway), have a cup of tea, and pre-arrange their own internment.

(Authors note. Please accept my humble apologies for using the word competition nine times during the last few paragraphs. I want to enter the competition to see, 'how many times the word competition can be mentioned in a piece of writing,' competition. It's a yearly competition that can lead onto entry into other, more illustrious competitions. That's fourteen competitions now. Fifteen. If I keep this up I could actually win the competition this year. Sixteen. Mind you the competition, seventeen, does draw in some good stuff that could prove to be very stiff competition. Eighteen. Well, if that's not enough then I don't deserve to win the competition. Nineteen. Phew).

“A cruise,” said Stitches, triumphantly.

“Really!” said Ollie, in more than mild surprise. “Well, I must admit to being more than mildly surprised.”

“I'll say,” said Ronnie. “I've only ever heard of one other raffle being held round here.” (And don't go banging on about continuity errors with regard to Nile Throat. That was a giveaway, which is totally different to a raffle, so there).

“Oh, I remember,” said Stitches. “Humpback Harry won that weekend getaway in Paris didn't he?”

“Whatever happened to him?” asked Ronnie, “because he never did come back did he.”

“Nope. I heard that he fell in love with some Parisian girl and wrote a travel guide about French cathedrals. 'Bells, Belles and Why Can't I Tuck My Shirt In At The Back,' I think it was called,” said Stitches.

“So, go on then,” said Ollie. “Tell us about this cruise, although to be honest I'm not expecting much more than a short, and very wet jaunt, down the River Phlegm in a wooden crate.”

“Well that's where you're wrong,” said Stitches, retrieving a crumpled brochure from an inside pocket of his crumpled jacket. (I was going to add that said jacket covered his crumpled skin but that many crumples in one sentence is one crumple too many. Don't want to get into that competition nonsense again. Woo hoo, that's twenty! Anyway he wasn't so much crumpled as bendy and slightly crinkly, in a packet of crisps left open for too long sort of way).

“Jolly Roger Pleasure Trips has the happy task of being your hosts on your forthcoming trip,” he read off the ticket.

“Jolly Roger,” said Ronnie. “Hardly original. Still, it does conjure up images of sailing the high seas in search of treasure and adventure.”

“I suppose so,” said Stitches, reading further. “Except it's less treasure and adventure and more souvenirs and sightseeing.”

“Sounds okay,” said Ollie, trying to be encouraging. “So where do you set sail from?”

“Desolation Harbour. We leave in three days and the trip itself lasts ten. Can't complain though, it's free after all.”

“Yeah well, I suppose…hang on a minute. What do you mean we?” said Ronnie.

“The trip is for me and four friends,” said Stitches, “so I took the liberty of signing us all up.”

Ollie snorted. “Well I can't vouch for the others, mate,” he said, “but there's more chance of Mrs. Ladle winning Miss Skullenia than there is of getting me on a boat.” (Actually she did win once, but that was because the only other entrants that year were a barely functioning ghost, a passing vampire hunter, and a two hundred year old female troll who was about as feminine as a two hundred year old male troll. As it turned out it'd been quite a close run thing in the end until the vampire hunter, slightly ahead on points after the evening wear section, had been recognised as a vampire hunter and lynched by a mob of vampires who were out hunting vampire hunters. Disqualified for not being properly attired for the next round {he didn't have a head}, Mrs. Ladle won by default after the ghost got lost in a patch of fog, and the troll ate his shoes. It also helped that she'd promised to cause the head judge more pain than he could possibly imagine, endure an eternity of physical torment at the clawed hands of some very unfriendly goblins and, to sweeten the deal, offered him one of her Turquoise Ginger Badger Flans. After declaring her the winner, said judge went home and prayed for the arrival of the impish hellions, stating that having pointy bits of wood stuck up his bottom from then until the end of time was more preferable than having to ingest one of Mrs. Ladle's kitchen based abominations).

“Oh, mate you've got to come,” pleaded Stitches, tapping the brochure against the crumpled arm of the chair (Oops, crumpled again). “It's five passengers minimum and the list of names is final, so if you guys don't tag along I can't go. Come on. Please.” He then offered such an ingratiating smile that Ollie thought he could hear a faint ripping sound.

“Yeah, come on, Ollie,” said Ronnie. “Where's your sense of adventure. It could be fun indulging in a little bit of sun, sea, sand and swimming.”

“More like seasickness, scurvy and scabby sailors,” Ollie responded.

An hour of intense negotiation followed, at the conclusion of which Stitches, resorting to the tried and tested method of 'when all else fails, go and tell tales,' threatened to inform Count Jocular that Ollie was to vampiring what Eugene the golem was to rhythmic gymnastics. And so, after a ten minute verbal assault from the half vampire that questioned everything from the zombie's parentage to what he kept in his trousers, or lack thereof, Ollie 'decided' to go along.

The other two members of the group were delighted with the news and were more than happy to go. Ethan took to the idea like a dog to water and immediately went off to pack, whilst Flug got so excited about going 'on da holeeday' that he jumped into the air leaving a considerable rift in the floorboards and an interestingly concave, decorative addition in the ceiling.

Once the dust had settled, both figuratively and literally, Ollie sat at his desk on his own. He reckoned it wouldn't actually be that bad and, if the worse came to the worst and it did turn out to be as much fun as having Freddy Kruger check your prostate, he could spend the trip in his cabin catching up on some reading. He was currently halfway through a very interesting biography of Vlad the Impaler that he'd found at the bottom of an old wardrobe. He'd figured it had once belonged to his Uncle. Not only was, '101 Things To Do With A Wooden Pole', his deceased relatives sort of read, the human skin bookmark was a dead give-away. It wasn't Ollie's usual literary material of course because reading anything vaguely scary gave him daymares. He usually preferred stories of a more sedate and less blood soaked nature, such as the detective works of Ladyboy Partridge, or a nice fantasy epic like 'The Hoard of the Things' by R.J.J. Notlike.

Still, if nothing else, it gave him a bit of an insight into the mad old buggers psyche. Not that you had to be Sherlock Holmes to arrive at the earth shattering conclusion that a full blood vampire might just be a bit of a loon. Highlighted sections such as, 'push slowly to avoid rupturing', and, 'dealing with internal splinters', were ample testament to him being a deranged and dangerous psychopath who made Idi Amin look like a boy scout, albeit one with a penchant for killing and eating people.

It wasn't too bad a read though. He was currently midway through a section on, of all things, recycling. It stated that, for the sake of the environment, once the 'impaled corpses of your nefarious and infidel foes, bravely vanquished on the glorious field of battle' had rotted away to nothing more than dripping innards and memories, the remaining stakes could be used as garden fencing or low cost building materials for the local peasants. Then, handily, if the plebs decided that they'd had enough of living under such an oppressive regime and wanted to air their grievances, you had a ready supply of poles all set to be thrust up their ungrateful backsides. So, you can say what you like about the people of the twelfth century and the degraded horrors that they perpetrated, but you can't deny the fact that they were well up to speed on the green issues. You try to get someone to reuse a blood soaked piece of wood that's caked intestines in this day and age and you wouldn't half get some funny looks. It's political correctness gone mad.

Ollie mulled over what he'd need to take with him on the trip, but eventually decided that it didn't really matter because, hopefully, there would be plenty to do. He would, however, definitely need his sun protection equipment. Not only would he have the glowing orange orb to contend with, but the glare from the water would make it twice as bad, and the last thing he needed was a burnt chin. It would rub on his collar something awful.

The items had been languishing at the back of a drawer since their little jaunt last year, so he decided that it might be best to get Crumble to give them the once over to make sure that they were still functioning properly. The last thing he needed was to be stuck in some sun drenched paradise, reach for his balaclava and find that it was about as useful at protecting him from the solar rays as an ice cream hat.